The Fall Guy (2024)

You fall down, you get right back up. How far would you go for the one that you love? Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) works as the double for famous action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson) who always says he does his own stunts. However, he is severely injured during a stunt gone wrong and he abandons his career and his girlfriend camerawoman Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). 18 months later, Colt, now a valet for a small Mexican restaurant, is contacted by Tom’s film producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham). She informs him that Jody is directing her first film, sci-fi epic Metalstorm, and wants him to work on the production in Sydney Australia. After arriving on set, Colt learns that Jody never requested him and is still angry about their breakup. Gail reveals that Tom has disappeared after getting involved with drugs: she wants Colt to find him before his absence causes the film’s cancellation. Not wanting Jody’s directorial debut ruined, Colt visits Tom’s hotel room and a nightclub, where he gets into fights. In the hotel room, he finds a dead body in a bathtub full of ice. When Colt returns with the police, he finds the body has disappeared. Meanwhile, as production of Metalstorm continues, Colt and Jody begin to rekindle their relationship until Gail abruptly informs him that he has to go back to the US. Instead, he continues looking for Tom by tracking down his PA Alma Milan (Stephanie Hsu) and they are both attacked by people looking for a phone belonging to Tom in Alma’s possession. Colt defeats them after an extended chase through Sydney involving a rubbish truck. He and his friend Dan Tucker (Winston Duke), the stunt coordinator on Metalstorm, unlock the phone at Tom’s apartment. They discover a video of an intoxicated Tom accidentally killing his previous stuntman Henry. The henchmen attack Colt and Dan, destroying the phone with shotgun pellets. Dan escapes, but Colt is captured and brought face-to-face with Tom, who has been hiding out on a yacht on Gail’s instructions. He reveals that Gail is framing Colt for the murder using deepfake technology to replace Tom’s face with Colt’s on the incriminating video. Tom also reveals that Colt and Henry’s ‘accidents’ were orchestrated by himself. Henry’s body is discovered and the doctored video is released on news media, while Gail tries to convince Jody that he is guilty. Colt escapes and is presumed dead after a boat chase, though he swims to safety … I’m the director. You’re a stunt guy. We need to keep it super profesh. If last year was the Summer of Barbenheimer, that compound of mutually assured box office billionairedom, the films’ respective supporting stars are the whole show of this decade’s Romancing the Stone, at least its descendant by way of Howard Hawks and screwball. Much has been written concerncing memed-about Gosling’s super-ironic commentary on modern masculinity, a career pivot which makes him – in the words of a Guardian writer’s recent article – the most important Hollywood star, so we’ll go with it. Dry supercilious wit being a thing Blunt does well, they’re a great pairing in a story that both sends up Hollywood and mines its great romantic inclinations. Adapted very loosely by Drew Pearce from the beloved Eighties TV show created by Glen A. Larson which starred Lee Majors, Heather Thomas and Jo Ann Pflug/Markie Post not to mention a Rounded-Line Wideside truck (and an outdoor bathtub). Stuntman turned director David Leitch cut his teeth on great action movies and is responsible for helming John Wick among others and this is not just the most recent ode to the craft (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Gosling’s own turn in Drive, Burt Reynolds was Hooper, then there’s The Stunt Man, to name the most outstanding in this sub-genre) which is due to be honoured at the Academy Awards one of these years, it’s a clever metatextual behind-the-scenes examination of the business, the deceptive nature of stars’ PR, and the pitiless nature of the production machine when you’re not flavour of the month (or fit to work). It’s all of that but mostly it’s a crash-bang-wallop action movie with ever more spectacular sequences. This is a precision-tooled mainstream hit with something for everyone, a genuinely warm and funny knowing adventure-satire with finely tuned star performances. Unlike the show, when Majors got to croon The Unknown Stuntman (covered here by Blake Shelton in a great soundtrack featuring AC/DC and Kiss), Gosling hasn’t got a theme song – this year’s showbiz highlight has got to be his Oscars rendition of I’m Just Ken, but he doesn’t need another tune, that’s already part of his star text so everyone just incorporates it and tucks it away into what they know about supposedly the most important Hollywood star, the self-deprecating caring sharing modern action man. And, since this is about stuntmen, big up to Logan Holladay for all those rolls. Huzzah! It ain’t about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024)

One decision – one small mistake – can change everything. Federal police detective Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) attempts to coerce further information about an international money laundering scheme from a company employee, Alice Russell (Anna Torv) but she refuses to give him any further information when he approaches her on the school run. The next day, she embarks on a corporate team-building hiking retreat to the rainforest in the (fictitious) Giralang Ranges of Victoria with four other company employees, her boss Jill Bailey (Deborra-Lee Furness), childhood friend Lauren (Robin McLeavy) and sisters Brianna aka Bree (Lucy Ansell) and Bethany aka Beth (Sisi Stringer). Three days later, Falk receives an incomprehensible phonecall from Alice which quickly drops out, only to later be informed by fellow agent Carmen Cooper (Jacqueline McKenzie) that Alice’s hiking partners had returned from their trip injured and Alice is missing. Suspecting something has happened to her due to her being a whistle blower, Falk and Cooper quickly join the search to find her. In flashbacks, it is revealed that Falk’s mother Jenny (Ash Ricardo) also disappeared from the same area during a hiking trip with him (Archie Thomson) and his father Erik (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor). After tirelessly searching for her for days, the pair finally found her injured and malnourished but she ultimately died shortly afterwards in hospital. Alice’s co-workers reveal that during the first night of the trip, Jill’s husband Daniel (Richard Roxburgh) who was responsible for the laundering scheme, met up with the group and led Alice away from them. Afterwards, Alice became frantic and desperate to leave the trip early even after Daniel has left. Brianna, who’s been hospitalised due to a bite from a funnel web spider, reveals that she’d misread the map in her hungover state and caused the group to become lost. While attempting to follow the river back home, the map falls into the water and Lauren is injured while attempting to retrieve it. Bethany later admits to Falk that she previously had a drug problem, which had resulted her in serving jail time due to her neighbours reporting her for selling her sister’s belongings for drug money, which resulted in Alice not trusting her. The group continues on and Jill finds out that Alice has seemingly been intentionally leading the group in the wrong direction and becomes furious. The next day, the group discovers an abandoned cabin and decide to stay there for the night despite Alice’s protests. Later on, they discover the gravesite of a dog, causing Alice to insist they may be on the hunting grounds of an infamous serial killer who lured his female victims using his dog, but the group brushes her fear off as her trying to persuade them to leave the cabin … Your mind starts to play tricks on you out there. You get really paranoid. That talented Australian novelist Jane Harper wrote one of the best novels of the past decade The Dry and following its successful adaptation starring the great Eric Bana a followup was destined to be on the cards – the 2017 novel Force of Nature came first and this adaptation was made in 2022 in a very different and non-dry environment. Perhaps it should be called The Damp. Everyone is soaking. Moving deep into the undergrowth of the rainforest acts as a kind of metaphor for a story that has many tangled strands – Aaron’s own psyche and past, his association with whistleblower Alice, her school-age daughter Margot’s (Ingrid Torelli) alleged bullying of her colleague Lauren’s daughter Rebecca (Matilda May Pawsey), the financial misdeeds at Alice’s company boss and the crimes of a four decades-old serial killer in the very area Alice is missing. Knitting these together into a coherent screen story seems almost impossible very quickly particularly when the four remaining women’s recollections resemble those of Rashomon – overlapping, contradictory and untruthful. Linking the search for Alice with Aaron’s retracing his steps into his own history with a trip taken alongside his parents seems a trope too far – and one presumes it forms a link to the notorious serial killer – yet clever construction, transitions and characterisation through the twists and turns of a mystery plot ultimately keep everything from tipping too far into the realm of coincidence or predictability. The local police sergeant Vince King (Kenneth Radley) wonders why Aaron is really out here, a long way from finance fraudsters. Paired with the brusque Carmen, Aaron’s forced introspection means that the flashbacks conjoining his mother’s predicament with Alice’s situation force them – or squeeze them – into the same narrative loop. The undercurrent of female relationships – at work, mothering, friendship and colleagues – with their basis in bullying is never far from the surface. And could they be any worse prepared for this trek? Can we just keep this between the five of us please? And, the quid pro quo into which Alice has been forced by the feds for what she was prepared to do for her daughter is the moral quandary that literally turns this in to a guilt trip writ large, adding melodrama to an already busy screenplay. Everyone has reason to dislike and even motive to kill Alice but we find ourselves asking why sisters are working at the same company and why Alice and Lauren are friends. It seems unlikely. Perhaps this structure dilutes the impact of the first film with the multiple storylines and one unresolved plot issue but Bana is somehow the still centre of the complications, a restless soul with a desk job whose past knowledge of the territory makes it more navigable. Even with a background in tragedy however this doesn’t have the emotional resonance it strives for and the mood is broken by issues of plotting placing it at some distance from a famous Aussie film about a disappearance, Picnic at Hanging Rock. It helps that this is lined out with some of the country’s best (and best known) actors with Torv now an international name thanks to TV’s The Newsreader, while Furness, a scene-stealing Roxburgh and an underused McKenzie are a pleasingly familiar ensemble, driven by a powerful score from Peter Raeburn. Beautifully shot in a number of Victoria parklands by Andrew Commis, this is written and directed by Robert Connolly, reprising his role from the first film. At least out there Nature holds us all to account

The Equalizer 3 (2023)

They should have let me in. Sicily. At a remote winery Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) kills gangster Lorenzo Vitale (Bruno Bilotta) and his henchmen to obtain a key to the winery’s vault and recoup money stolen in a cyber-heist. While leaving the winery, Robert is shot in the back by Vitale’s young grandson (Adriano Sabrie). Robert attempts suicide due to his injury but finds his gun out of bullets and then takes the ferry back to the mainland. While driving on the Amalfi Coast, Robert pulls over and slips into unconsciousness from shock. He is found and rescued by local carabiniere Gio Bonucci (Eugenio Mastrandrea) who brings Robert to a small coastal Italian town called Altamonte where he is treated by a doctor, Enzo Arisio (Remo Girone). As he recovers and regains his mobility Robert becomes acquainted with the locals and becomes fond of the town and its people. He makes an anonymous phone call to CIA officer Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) to tip her off about the winery’s role in the drug trade, disguised as normal business transactions in Sicily. Collins and other CIA operatives arrive at the winery and find millions in cash along with bags of synthetic amphetamines used by ISIS terrorists hidden in a storeroom, confirming Robert’s suspicions. Meanwhile, members of the Camorra harass and kill villagers in an attempt to coerce them out of their housing and take over Altamonte for property development. Robert overhears Marco Quaranta (Andrea Dodero) a high-ranking Camorra member, pressuring local shop owner Angelo (Daniele Perrone) for protection payments. To make an example of him, the Camorra firebombs Angelo’s fish store as the entire town watches. Gio reviews video of the firebombing and calls the Italian central police for an inquiry. Along with his wife Chiara (Sonia Ben Ammar) and daughter Gabriella (Dea Lanzaro), Gio is attacked by the Camorra and beaten for interfering in their operations. Thereafter, Marco demands that Gio set up a boat for him. Overhearing the conversation, Robert asks Marco to move his operations to a different location. When Marco refuses, Robert kills him and his henchmen. The Naples head of police Chief Barella (Adolfo Margiotta) is threatened and tortured by Marco’s brother Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio) the head of the Camorra and is ordered to find the person responsible for Marco’s death … Those people don’t know where to go. Our favourite vigilante returns to equalize everything in sight, starting with the mysterious catalyst whose payoff takes the entire film to establish. Transported to Sicily and the Italian mainland, the violence returns with verve in Robert Wenk’s screenplay, the scribe of the others in the series, in the finale adapted from the TV show that starred Edward Woodward and was created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim. What do you see when you look at me? McCall is ageing now and even he must be tired of all the killing. Lord knows I’m allergic to bad things. Availing of R&R in a pretty village with a pleasant woman restaurateur Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro) which introduces the hint if not the actuality of romance and a civilised doctor to oversee his recuperation he’s glad of it. Do I look like a guy who kills people? That’s an existential question that’s really kinda silly at this point in the trilogy: this film commences with a horrifying sequence of murders – yes, we know it’s McCall doing in some of the Camorra but it’s extremely shocking. Giving the CIA a tip-off is just the start of an elaborate denouement which unearths a terror cell and reveals the extent of the Mafia’s viciousness. The phone relationship with Emma is a preview of coming attractions: You don’t look like you sound/You do! That’s the opening gambit when they finally come face to face 48 minutes in. In these films Denzel is paired with younger women in a non-romantic way – they get the opportunity to do stuff and he returns to pleasantly predictable vengeful type. It’s his question to her that makes her think of the situation from a different angle: Why smuggle drugs into the most secure port in the entire region? That sets her off doing what he knows she will – directing the CIA action where it needs to go and hopefully keeping her out of the line of fire. While the women in this series are given an opportunity for some action it’s curtailed as here, where a well-timed call saves her but effectively puts her out of action – allowing him to rescue her and save the day because he’s the hero and that’s his job. That’s appropriate considering their previous pairing two decades ago in Man On Fire. Washington is an incredibly charismatic movie star and it’s a relief to have the first 45 minutes dedicated to rebuilding his constitution which allows him to cultivate relationships while the gangsters have their way with the locals, setting up an awesome revenge. His medical treatment and slow recovery gives the audience a chance to recover too before the inevitable kicks in. His visceral method leads him to explain his MO to a victim: It’s called pain compliance. It’s like he’s a doctor too! Shot in a palette verging on monochrome with chiaroscuro features by the brilliant Robert Richardson, the scheme complements the black and white morality, with the amorphous evil villainy of the Mafia rather less attractive than the mesmerising Marton Csokas in the first outing. It’s a stylish way for the series to take a bow – a kind of revenge Western with some spaghetti thrown in for good measure and a coda that explains why McCall fetched up there in the first place, a one-man reenacting of The Magnificent Seven against the mafia on their own turf. Directed as ever by Antoine Fuqua. I’m where I’m supposed to be

The Castaway Cowboy (1974)

As the Lord is my witness I am a wrong man. Texas cowboy Lincoln Costain (James Garner) gets ‘shanghaied’ in San Francisco, then jumps ship and washes ashore on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, right into the arms of widow Henrietta MacAvoy (Vera Miles) and her son Booten (Eric Shea) who are struggling to make a living as farmers. A lot of wild cattle often trample their crops, so Costain gets the idea to start cattle ranching instead. The Hawaiian farm hands don’t readily take to the American cowboy culture. You’re making yourself the laughing stock of the island. Costain explains to Henrietta that they need more equipment, unaware that she has to take out a credit note with banker Calvin Bryson (Robert Culp) who has eyes on her land (and her too) while Costain tries to make the locals useful but they make zero progress. He has to deal with a hothead Marrujo (Gregory Sierra) who tries to kill him and who then casts a spell on the farm’s head of staff Kimo (Manu Tupou). Then Bryson decides something has to be done to stop Henrietta making a go of the ranch … You just can’t expect to change a whole culture overnight. Written by Don Tait from a story by Tait, Richard M. Bluel & Hugh Benson, this Disney western is designed to appeal to the kiddies with the customary outstanding performance by child actor Shea, one of their occasional star roster). It also takes advantage of Garner’s amiable trickster persona, established in the back to back Support comedy westerns and which would be plundered to great effect in the longrunning The Rockford Files TV series airing for the first time one month after this was released, securing Garner’s fame and making him a household name. It’s toned down here to suit the tone of the family-oriented drama. TV star (I Spy) Culp makes for a smoothly persuasive villain while Miles is a lovely, trusting mother, just hovering on the edge of worry and hope. They call it death by sorcery. Managing the locals is one thing, Booten desperately wants a father figure and is permanently annoyed that Costain refuses to learn his name and that running gag offsets plenty of slapstick as Costain attempts to train pineapple cowboys. It’s attractively made and according to his memoir Garner for one enjoyed the surroundings of Kauai, the fourth largest of the Hawaiian islands which also served as a location for South Pacific, the 1977 remake of King Kong and Jurassic Park. Essentially a B western transferred to a tropical setting, replete with genre conventions – a stampede, a fistfight – included to build the tension towards an ingenious method of getting the cattle of the island to California, this is playfully done with a great deal of charm. And – Garner sings! Directed by Disney specialist Vincent McEveety. I wouldn’t bet against that man

Civil War (2024)

We are now closer than we have ever been to victory. The near future. A civil war has broken out between an authoritarian US Government and various regional factions. The dictatorial President (Nick Offerman) who is serving a third term, claims that victory is close at hand. Renowned war photojournalist, Colorado-born Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) saves aspiring photojournalist Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) from a suicide bombing in Brooklyn. Lee and her colleague, Florida-born Reuters journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) intend travelling to Washington DC to interview and photograph the president before the city falls. Lee’s mentor New York Times veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson)asks to accompany them as far as Charlottesville where the Western Forces (‘WF’) of Texas and California are presently assembling. Despite Lee’s hesitance she and Joel agree. Unbeknownst to Lee, Jessie persuades Joel to take her with them as well. After leaving NYC, the group stops at a rural gas station protected by armed men where Lee negotiates the purchase of fuel in Canadian dollars. Jessie wanders off to a nearby car wash, which she saw from the road. There, she finds two men being tortured by the owners, who claim that the men are looters. One owner follows Jessie but Lee defuses the situation by taking a photo of the man posing with his victims. After leaving, Jessie berates herself for being too scared to take photos. Following an overnight stop close to ongoing fighting, the group documents the combat the next day as militiamen assault a building held by loyalists. Lee sees Jessie’s potential as a war photographer, while Jessie photographs the militia executing captured loyalist soldiers. Continuing on, the group spends the night at a refugee camp  before passing through a small town where, under watchful guard, residents attempt to live in blissful ignorance. Look at the tops of the buildings. Be subtle. Lee and Jessie grow closer, trying on clothes at a local shop. Later, they are pinned down in a sniper battle amid the remains of a Winter Wonderland theme park. No one’s giving us orders, man. Someone’s trying to kill us and we’re trying to kill them. The snipers they are with mock Joel’s attempts to ascertain which party they are fighting for or against, telling Joel that they and the sniper in a nearby house are simply engaged in a struggle for survival. Jessie’s nerve builds and her photography skills improve as she witnesses several deaths and she develops a mentorship under Lee … They shoot journalists on sight in the capital. Writer/director Alex Garland’s latest film plugs into the inflammatory State of the Union as it currently pertains, figuring a fissure that is as much physical as ideological with the Western secessionist states of California and Texas pitched against the federal forces that protect a President hiding out in the White House. Garland’s work from The Beach onwards has focused on trouble in paradise and lately on dystopia. Lee and Joel are both camouflaging psychological disturbance from previous war zones – she has PTSD, he has modern-day shellshock and Lee especially exhibits something world weary cynicism to control symptoms that threaten to erupt into something worse. It’s gonna make a good image. How that dissonance within Lee translates into a kind of mentoring relationship with Jessie reflecting Sammy’s relationship with her provides much of the tension as the action and violence spiral the further into the US they travel. I remember you at her age. The juxtaposing of beautiful landscapes with jarring imagery of shock and awe combat provides much of the troubling visual texture. The sense of reality, the minutiae of a road trip under fire and the urgency of the storytelling has the quality of reportage from the front line. The fact that Lee wants to photograph the President to prove he is still alive speaks volumes. What happens ultimately is straight out of the Romanian playbook. The ones who get taken are always lesser men than you think. With no enemies identified, the viewer is asked to come to their own conclusions, a motley crew of varying protagonist-journalists providing a kind of collegiate and immersive focus group of the population, a prism for coming to terms with radical change and war as Americans fight Americans. Every instinct in me tells me this is death. Whether the presence and role of good old-fashioned photojournalists recording events makes a difference is not really questioned here – it’s presumed necessary for history: proof that things are happening because seeing is believing. Hence the acknowledged reference to Lee Miller in Dunst’s character’s name. What kind of American are you? A powerful state of the nation portrait that feels immediate and true. What happened back there is nothing in comparison with what we’re heading into

Wait Until Dark (1967)

I’ll be chopped up into little pieces and end up all over the river. Montreal Airport: Lisa (Samantha Jones) takes a flight from to New York City, smuggling bags of heroin sewn inside an old-fashioned doll. When she disembarks, she becomes worried on seeing a man (Alan Arkin) watching her from the airport roof. She gives the doll to a fellow passenger, professional photographer Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.), for safekeeping. She is roughly escorted away by the other man. A few days later, con artists Mike Talman (Richard Crenna) and Carlino (Jack Weston) a crooked NYPD cop, arrive at the Greenwich Village apartment of Sam, recently married to Susy (Audrey Hepburn), who was newly blinded in an accident, believing it to be Lisa’s place. Harry Roat, the man who met Lisa at the airport, arrives to persuade Talman and Carlino to help him find the doll. After the con men discover Lisa’s body hanging in a wardrobe in Susy’s apartment, Roat blackmails them into helping him dispose of it and convinces them to help him find the doll. While Sam is on an assignment, the criminals begin an elaborate con using Susy’s blindness against her and posing as different people to win her trust. Implying that Lisa has been murdered and that Sam will be suspected, the men persuade Susy to help them find the doll. Mike, posing as Sam’s old army buddy using information gleaned from his previous recce, gives her the number for the phone booth across the street as his own after falsely warning her of a police car outside the basement apartment. Gloria (Julie Herrod) a girl who lives in an upstairs apartment and who had borrowed the doll without permission, sneaks in to return it. She reveals to Susy that there is no police car outside. After calling Mike and realising it’s the phone booth’s number, Susy figures out that the three men are criminals and hides the doll. She tells them it’s at Sam’s studio and the three leave after Roat cuts the telephone line. Carlino stays behind to stand guard outside the building. Susy sends Gloria to the bus station to wait for Sam. When she finds out that the telephone cord has been cut, she prepares to defend herself by breaking all the lightbulbs in the apartment except for the safelight. When did you figure it out about me? When Mike returns, he realises that she knows the truth and demands the doll but she refuses to cooperate. He tells her that he has sent Carlino to kill Roat. Having anticipated their plan, Roat has killed Carlino instead, and then kills Mike on the doorstep of Susy’s apartment, his body falling down the stairs. Intent on acquiring the doll, Roat threatens to set the apartment on fire … Do I have to be the world’s champion blind lady? Alfred Hitchcock said you acquire a play for its construction and he should know. He developed Dial M For Murder by Frederick Knott with great success (especially for his new muse Grace Kelly) and this similar chamber piece by Knott was a huge Broadway hit starring Lee Remick that became a vehicle for Audrey Hepburn with her husband Mel Ferrer in the producer’s seat (a situation that apparently contributed to the end of their already fraught union). Warner Bros. had bought the property prior to its Broadway success so convinced were they of its possibilities but according to her biographer Alexander Walker, Hepburn wanted her participation announced quickly to avoid the situation she’d endured with My Fair Lady when she was accused of stealing the lead from an untested Julie Andrews so discussions were going on prior to the production of How To Steal a Million in 1965. For tax reasons Hepburn wanted to shoot in Europe but that preference and her wish to be costumed by Givenchy was knocked on the head. Initially the aforementioned Hitchcock was mooted as possible director but he immediately rejected the studio’s offer because of Hepburn’s leaving No Bail for the Judge half a dozen years earlier when she wouldn’t agree to the inclusion of a violent rape scene and the project remained unmade. Thus charming British James Bond helmer Terence Young, who a teenage Hepburn had helped escape from Holland when he was shot down during the war, was in the director’s chair. Hepburn prepared meticulously for the role, visiting a clinic for the blind in Lausanne and continuing at the Lighthouse Clinic in New York where some of the film was made (as well as in Toronto) prior to shooting at Warners’ Burbank studio in Hollywood. For all of Hepburn’s detailed physical work, she ended up having to wear hard contact lenses to cover up her inimitably sparkling eyes, removing at least one of her trademarks which cinematographer Charles Lang did his best to illuminate. In a way this is a fraternal (or sororal) twin to the setup in Hepburn’s comic thriller Charade, with three men after something Hepburn doesn’t know she possesses. This thriller as adapted by husband and wife screenwriting team Robert Carrington & Jane-Howard Carrington has no comedy elements however and the premise starts by setting up a drug smuggling story in Canada with a deliriously beautiful woman (model Jones) who will eventually be found dead in one deeply awful moment of discovery: first when she’s seen by Mike and then when Susy puts on her scarf and unwittingly disturbs the dead woman’s hair. It’s a perverse sign of things to come. Arkin’s splashy star-making triple role of the various Roat characters might logically be questioned – how can our blind protagonist spot the difference? (She notes the commonality, in fact). Roat dispenses with his goons as expected and they are performed exceedingly well by the charming Crenna and compelling Weston, both of whom exhibit traces of guilt and fear. Damn it, you act as if you’re in kindergarten! This is the big bad world, full of mean people, where nasty things happen! In the end it’s a one on one fight and when the camera shoots wide for the final attack on Hepburn cinema audiences screamed louder than they’d done since Psycho: theatre owners were warned to turn down their lights to make it an immersive experience. It’s a brilliant shock, a literal jump scare, excellently staged. Everything in the suspenseful narrative leading up to that situation is about how Susy compensates for her devastating sight loss – that’s a classic dramatic writing tool, utilising the protagonist’s apparent weakness and turning it to their advantage. There’s a terrific performance by child actor Herrod as the ungainly little girl whose behaviour is entirely unpredictable but who ultimately proves her worth as an ally, providing Susy with the eyesight she no longer has. This is all about how appearances can be deceptive. Everything planted is paid off in spades. Hepburn may not be outfitted in her preferred designer but she is gifted another Henry Mancini score (using two pianos, a quarter tone apart with eerie echoing phrases) and theme song to accompany this wholly impressive heroine, stripped back to her essence, deprived of one of her senses, cornered behind a refrigerator door by a drug-ridden madman, fighting for her life. It’s a totally committed physical performance, among Hepburn’s very best. Despite receiving an Academy Award nomination, her fifth, she wouldn’t make another film for eight years, divorcing Ferrer, marrying a Roman psychiatrist and having another child, before the world of cinema finally lured her back to Robin and Marian. She would reunite a few years following that with director Young for Bloodline, a disappointing potboiler. How would you like to something difficult and incredibly dangerous?

Deja Vu (2006)

See you yesterday. New Orleans. A ferry carrying US Navy sailors and their families across the Mississippi River for the Mardi Gras celebrations explodes, killing 543 people. ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) Special Agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) evidence of a bomb planted by a domestic terrorist and goes to the mortuary where he examines the body of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) seemingly killed in the explosion but found in the river shortly before the time of the blast. Informing Claire’s father and searching her apartment, Doug learns that she called his ATF office the morning of the bombing and figures out that she was abducted and killed by the bomber hours before the explosion. Impressed with Doug’s deductive ability, FBI Special Agent Paul Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) invites him to join a new governmental unit investigating the bombing. Led by Dr. Alexander Denny (Adam Goldberg) the team uses a surveillance programme called Snow White which they claim uses previous satellite footage to form a triangulated image of events four-and-a-half days in the past. Convinced that Claire is a vital link to the unfolding bomb plot, Doug watches her footage and can track the soon-to-be-bomber when he calls about a truck she has for sale. Figuring out that Snow White is actually a time window, Doug persuades the team to send a note to his past self with the time and place the suspect will be. However it’s his partner Larry Minuti (Matt Craven) finds the note instead, and is shot attempting to arrest the suspect. By using a mobile Snow White unit, Doug is able to follow the suspect’s past movements as he flees to his hideout with the wounded Minuti and then witnesses Minuti’s murder. In the present, the bomber is taken into custody after facial recognition systems identify him as Carroll Oerstadt (Jim Caviezel) an unstable self-proclaimed patriot rejected from enlisting in the military. He confesses to killing Minuti and Claire, taking her truck to transport the bomb and staging her death as one of the ferry victims. The government closes the investigation, but Doug, convinced that Snow White can be used to alter history persuades Denny to send him back to the morning of the bombing so he can save Claire and prevent the explosion … What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world but you knew they would never believe you? The premise of this dazzling sci-fi action thriller is perfectly preposterous but is set up so persuasively it never fails to engage. It helps that this has Washington at his most movie star-ish as you’d expect in his third of five collaborations with director Tony Scott, whose command of the medium is embellished by Paul Cameron’s elegant cinematography. For once in my life I’d like to catch somebody before they do something horrible. The actual time capsule that Doug enters literally enables a race against time. What if it’s more than physics? That’s what Doug suggests to elevate rationale for the potential experience because he’s fallen head over heels for the gorgeous Claire on the mortician’s slab so he calls it spirituality but it’s good old fashioned romance – and he means to have this woman come back from the dead. Seeing her eventually spring back to life is fabulous. One man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot. As the domestic murderer paying homage to Oklahoma, Caviezel has the blankness to match his unshakeable convictions that what he is doing is righteous. Satan reasons like a man but God thinks of eternity, Doug counters with unarguable post hoc knowledge which momentarily throws his captive. Then there’s nothing for it but to enter the world as it was days earlier – and to alter one more bit of history to try change the outcome for hundreds of people: alt-history as we watch. There’s a terrific supporting cast including Kilmer and also Bruce Greenwood and the director’s wife, Donna. Super-stylish, fast-moving and an avowed homage to the great city of N’Oleans, cher. Written by Bill Marsilli & Terri Rossio. I see what’s coming

The Flash (2023)

You’re the reason this Zod character is going to destroy the earth? Gotham City. After he has helped Bruce Wayne aka Batman (Ben Affleck, uncredited) and Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot, uncredited) stop a robbery by a terrorist gang, police forensic investigator and member of the Justice League Barry Allen aka The Flash (Ezra Miller) revisits his childhood home, where he lived with his parents Nora (Maribel Verdu) and Henry (Ron Livingston) before Henry’s wrongful imprisonment for Nora’s murder. On the day of her death, Nora had sent Henry to the grocery store for a can of food that she forgot to buy, leaving her alone in the kitchen where she was killed by an unidentified assailant. Overcome by his emotions, Barry accidentally uses the Speed Force to form a ‘Chronobowl’ and ends up travelling back in time to earlier in the day. Despite Bruce’s warnings of time travel’s unintended consequences, Barry puts the can in Nora’s trolley at the store, so that his father won’t have to leave the house. As he returns to the present, Barry is knocked out of the Chronobowl by an unknown speedster and arrives in an alternative 2013 where Nora is alive. He encounters his parents and his past self, and realizes this is the day he originally obtained his powers. To ensure his past self gains superpowers, the two Barrys go to the Central City Police Department, where Barry re-enacts the event for 2013-Barry to be struck by lightning. Both end up getting struck by the lightning, giving 2013-Barry powers, but causing Barry to lose his own. As Barry struggles to train 2013-Barry on properly using his powers, they find out that General Zod (Michael Shannon) is planning to invade Earth. In an effort to fight Zod, the Barrys attempt to assemble the Justice League but are unsuccessful; in this timeline, Diana cannot be located, Victor Stone aka Cyborg (Ray Fisher) hasn’t gained his abilities yet and Arthur Curry aka Aquaman (Jason Momoa) never existed. They travel to Wayne Manor hoping to find Bruce instead finding an alternate variant who has long retired. Bruce theorises that using time travel to alter history affects events both prior to and after the alteration. They persuade Bruce to return as Batman and help them find Kal-El aka Superman (Nicolas Cage) … We’re Barry. A project decades in development, this action hero time travel comedy has its tongue planted firmly in cheek but manages to straddle the line between daftness and sentiment. It benefits from a conscious exercise in superhero identity politics as well as the travails of adolescence, bereavement and the possibilities and problems of an alternative reality through a sliding doors moment. Miller gets the chance to flex those acting muscles as past/present/future versions of Barry and has a lot of zippy fun that explores the various identities with wit and verve, assisted by a gallery of superheroes to provide an array of powers and some nice casting in the ensemble including Kiersey Clemons as Iris West, Barry’s journalist love interest. Wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts! Typical of the genre it’s long but fortunately humorous and upbeat, dealing in an interesting way with deep psychological trauma as well as the utter misrecognition of adults regarding their teenage incarnations. Even if the effects leave a lot to be desired, many of the film’s highlights are about Keaton’s performance: when he dons the Batsuit 70 minutes in and reasserts his alter ego from his whimsical trampy iteration it gives the heart a lift and pushes the action in a more interesting direction – this narrative is really about men finding the better part of themselves not to mention we’ve had this facet of Keaton before in Multiplicity not to mention the Batman and Birdman personae and he’s having a ball. Meta is where it’s at and there are some extremely good jokes including a final appearance by another Batman which really tickles the funny bone: the multiple Batman concept really gives this a lift. Screenplay by Christina Hodson from a story by John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein and Joby Harold based on DC characters. The Extended Universe is in almost rude good health. Directed by Andy Muschietti who has a cameo as a reporter. Our kids are going to want to see this

Sumotherhood (2023)

I’m in this thing and after today everyone is going to know about us. Riko (Adam Deacon) and Kane (Jazzie Zonzolo) are two friends living in a flat in East London who dream of being taken seriously as roadmen. They are in debt of £15,000 to a local Indian crime family, the Patels. Kane failed to get the money after selling drugs to a Somali gang, but was instead beaten up. They devise a plan to get the money to pay them back. First, they attempt to sell a mobile phone to two other men, but they decline as it meant to be a gun after Kane mistook the word strap. The second attempt has them trying to rob megastar Lethal Bizzle but end up getting knocked out, stripped and embarrassed in front of everyone while a Link Up TV cameraman records their predicament. The video goes viral and makes the two a laughing stock. For a third attempt, they hold up the local bank but after an argument accidentally reveal their identities. Leo DeMarco (Danny Sapani) ignores their commands and dares Riko to shoot him. After arguing with Leo, he passes out suffering a heart attack. This gains Riko attention after apparently shooting Leo and earning him the nickname, Rambo Riko. It also sparks interest in gang leader Shotti (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) who sends him, Kane and Dwayne (Arnold Jorge) to retrieve a bag of drugs and money from a nightclub. Riko gets distracted by a girl named Tamara (Leomie Anderson) whom he fancies. A fight breaks out between Riko, Kane and members of another gang. The two win the fight and escape. Riko explains his bipoloar to Dwayne and the two form a bond when he reveals that he himself suffers from autism. They then realise that they forgot the bag from the club but before they can go back for it, they are chased by a rogue and Ian (Vas Blackwood) a xenophobic black police officer and his partner Bill (Barry McNicholl). After crashing the car Riko and Kane are caught but Dwayne escapes. At the police station, Riko calls Tamara who happens to be the stepsister of Leo who has woken up from his heart attack. Leo thanks Riko and tells him that he has decided to quit his gang life and has become a Christian. Unfortunately, Leo’s mental brother Tyreese (Richie Campbell) vows revenge against Riko and rages after he finds out the relationship between him and Tamara. Tyreese goes on the hunt for Riko, even running a policeman over after mistaking the latter for him. Riko and Kane are released and go back to Shotti where they reveal that they forgot the bag, infuriating him. After Shotti is informed that they beat up a member from a rival gang, they reconcile. Shotti lets them tag along for a deal at a warehouse with Polish gangsters … If I was your man I’d be here, innit. And on and on it goes. The culture wars begin here, really, with this ostensibly satirical swing at London gang culture winding up in a shoot-em-up that is as toxically stupid and trope-filled as its target and to anyone outside that milieu (guilty as charged) feels like a genre from another planet, mainly due to the lingo. Comedy it may well be but there’s a shot here of a body that is straight out of a violent gangster flick that’s not remotely amusing. Click Clack! Writer, director and star Deacon is known from Noel Clarke’s ‘hood movies, his own directorial debut urban comedy Anuvahood (2011) and is playing to a knowing sympathetic audience as he sends up the kinds of films he used to star in. It probably helps that Deacon could call on several celebrities such as Jennifer Saunders and Tamzin Outhwaite – and – wait for it – Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour leader – to make cameo appearances and there are some good moments of humour but they become fewer as the narrative progresses with a descent into a tale of rivalries that belongs in Gangs of London. At 25 minutes in there’s a subplot starring Ed Sheeran as Crack Ed which is so appalling we can’t even bring ourselves to articulate what he does. He might well regret his insatiable need to please. The double act leading the fray however clearly have chemistry and make for engaging goons. They came out in droves at least at a local level for this but as for us, we’re a bit mystified, mate. Quite impenetrable and ultimately wearying, this needs simultaneous translating for those of us without a clue about grime culture and all sorts of other things from housing estates in E15, innit. Can everyone stop getting shot?

Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012)(TVM)

There’s war and there’s war. 1990s: Renowned war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (Nicole Kidman) is recalling her youthful relationship with novelist Ernest Hemingway (Clive Owen). 1936, Key West, Florida. She meets him by chance in a bar and back at his house run by his wife Pauline Pfeiffer (Molly Parker) the two’s undeniable attraction is noted. My husband always says kill enough animals and you won’t kill yourself. The two writers encounter each other a year later in Spain where both are covering the Civil War, staying in the same hotel on the same floor. Initially, Gellhorn resists romantic advances made by Hemingway but during a bombing raid the two find themselves trapped alone in the same room and are overcome by lust as dust from the conflagration covers their bodies. They become lovers and stay in Spain until 1939. Hemingway collaborates with Joris Ivens (Lars Ulrich) to make the film The Spanish Earth. In 1940 Hemingway divorces Pauline so that he and Gellhorn can be married. He credits her with having inspired him to write the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and dedicates it to her. Over time however Gellhorn becomes more prominent in her own right, leading to some career jealousies between them. Gellhorn leaves Hemingway to go to Finland to cover the Winter War by herself. When she returns to the Lookout Farm in Havana the maid has quit and she tells him the place looks like a Tijuana whorehouse. Hemingway tells her that he has divorced Pauline. The two marry and travel together to China to cover the bombings by Japan. In China, they interview Chiang Kai Shek (Larry Tse) and his wife (Joan Chen) who Gelhorn can’t best when she expresses her horror after visiting an opium den where she has spotted a little girl. Chiang Kai shek is fighting the Chinese Communists and Japanese invaders. Hemingway and Gellhorn secretly visit Zhou Enlai (Anthony Brandon Wong) the revolutionary content to play both ends against the middle until his time comes. Gellhorn covers D-Day in Normandy. She reports on the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps and his so horrified she runs out of them … There’s nothing to writing. Sit at your typewriter and bleed. Bluster and confidence, the devastation of war, lust and fine writing, a universe of division and conflict and conscience, all are called upon as the affair and marriage of two of the twentieth century’s best writers bear witness to unfolding history. Beautifully shot by Rogier Stoffers using different camera effects and archive montages to insert the characters into both colorised and monochrome footage, there is an uneven tone to this biopic as well as shifts in performance particularly by Owen who doesn’t quite capture the self-aggrandising charisma of Hemingway but certainly asserts his sexist boorish aspect. There is a certain comedy to the introduction of the famous characters, who take time to establish themselves in the narrative and sometimes play minor roles, there to augment and embellish the self-mythologising author who is hard to pin down here (Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris does this with caustic aplomb). Surrounded by an entourage of sycophants and hangers on, only John Dos Passos (David Strathairn) appears to question Hemingway’s macho posturing. When Hemingway admits he’s taken her Collier’s contract, Martha repeats what the man he calls the second best American writer has said of Hemingway and he hits her across the face: we know the marriage must be over. But not quite. There’s still a final act of war and humiliation. They have persuasively created a sexual and co-habiting relationship that is sometimes hard to watch when they exchange harsh words – but then wind up laughing at the good of it all. Until they fight again and it becomes ever more vicious. They’ll still be reading me long after you’ve been eaten by worms. Hemingway’s demise following his marriage to Mary Welsh (Parker Posey), who’s written as a celeb-hunting nicompoop, which may not be quite fair, is dramatic and swift in storytelling time (those presumably causative head injuries in the later aeroplane crashes are not covered albeit the car crash here with Welsh probably contributed to it). It’s a rich tapestry and while not successful overall, with an occasional (if forgivable) lurch into domestic melodrama, there are moments of genuine humour, black comedy and horror. For instance when Kai Shek dumps his dentures into a teacup and his verbose spider spouse does the talking and makes an unwilling Gellhorn take a gift. That’s history. The only thing that really interests me is people. Their lives. Their daily lives. And there are instances in war zones when Gellhorn scoops up children as their parents bleed to death and Hemingway, the father of sons by his previous wives, scoffs yet paradoxically admires her humanity. When Gellhorn walks into Dachau but then says Auschwitz was unbelievably worse and just takes off running we sense her disbelief. Kidman is quite splendid for much of the film. This is an amazingly comprehensive and visually immersive portrait of a man and a woman who were at the heart of a decade of world-changing events whose impact we still live with today. However their characters are almost too big to contain (and the gargantuan 2021 Ken Burns and Lynn Novick docu-series Hemingway has far more biographical information), literally covering too much ground with the prism of a domestic battle perhaps too slight for such an enormous focus. Necessarily episodic, the protagonists’ differences are sketched out schematically so this goes just a little way toward explaining why both are legends and Gellhorn fought so hard for her individuation. As she says here, she’s more than just a footnote to Hemingway. Consider this film restitution. At 155 minutes, this was premiered at Cannes but broadcast as a mini-series by HBO. Written by Jerry Stahl & Barbara Turner and directed by Philip Kaufman. We were good in war. And where there was no war we made our own. The battlefield we couldn’t survive was domestic life