Crimes of the Future (2022)

 "Surgery is the new sex."

From looking at the iMDb rating, this film isn't rated very highly. I'll come straight to it: I think it's brilliant. Those who dislike it, I suspect, were looking for something else. David Cronenberg doing body horror again after all these decades, after all, creates certain expectations. People will expect this to be like his body horror of the '70s and '80s. And, yes, there's some of that. Yet, like all Cronenberg's films of the last decade or two, this is entirely a film of ideas.

It's a future set in a pleasingly low budget society, claustrophobic, studio bound, beautifully and artistically shot with precious little nature to stop Cronenberg being in total control of his artistic environment. Only the first, shocking sequence, with its plastic bin eating and its graphic scene of filicide, takes place anywhere near nature.

No: this is a world in which both pain and infection are things of the past, and surgery is therefore a light matter, while the human body is evolving fast (let us briefly handwave away that this isn't how natural selection works, just as Saul handwaves away the impossibility of traits arising from surgery being inherited) in order to survive in a plastic, polluted environment.

Only in this world can exist a couple like Captice and Saul, using the routine surgery of the removal of his emerging mutant body organs as performance art. This despite the scepticism of the Detective to whom Saul is reporting, who scoffs at random emerging organs being “Picasso, Deschamps, Francis Bacon, perhaps?

Yet there is also a blatant subtext of surgery as sex, as fetish. This is, of course, not the first time Cronenberg has explored such themes, and one may certainly raise an eyebrow at this. 

Body horror abounds- tattooed organs, a zipped abdomen- but the ideas just keep coming in this thoughtful, disturbing dystopia. Cronenberg has most certainly still got it

Enola Holmes 2 (2022)

 "You really are a nincompoop!"

It's been a while, but I've finally got round to seeing the sequel, in large part due to the pleasure of some truly exquisite company last night! And not only was it a thoroughly enjoyable experience, but I noticed in the credits that the writer was one Jack Thorne, whose distinguished career has included Adolescence among other things (must get round to that!) and who is, rather interestingly, rumoured as a possible new showrunner for Doctor Who... but we'll see.

The script is superb, working perfectly both as a murder mystery with twists and turns which all makes perfec sense at the end but also as a fun, watchable drama with a light touch, lots of fun and lots of wit. It's also, as last night's exquisite company remarked last night, based on the match girls' strike, a very real historical event, and the scandal with white phosphorus was a very real thing.

But Millie Bobby Brown yet again carries the whole thing with aplomb, a truly talented leading lady despite her youth, carrying the whole thing with wit, charisma and those delightfully quirky asides to the camera. To say that she carries the whole thing means a lot given the cast we have here- Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes and Helena Bonham Carter as their mother Eudoxia, in particular. I love the little Sherlockian moments, and it's clear from fairly early on that the film will end with Holmes meeting Watson.

In the end, then, a splendid film. A pedant may observe that the film is set in 1885, too late for Holmes meeting Watson and too early for the match girls' strike (Sarah Chapman is a historical figure), but I'm learning to be better with my pedantry. A hugely enjoyable film.

The Batman (2022)

 "It's all connected."

While the later films didn't quite manage to maintain the excellence, one would perhaps naturally assume that Christopher Nolan had perfected the Batman film back in 2005 with Batman Begins. Yet it would seem not. We have a new contender.

So why is this film so good? Wisely, it skips the origin story and, notably, focuses on a very realistic portrayal of Gotham, with zero supernatural or sci-fi elements. The film is superbly and stylistically shot. Robert Pattinson is perfect as Bruce Wayne, while Zoe Kravitz and Jeffrey Wright also excel.

The use of villains is also excellent. This is a brilliant way of using the Riddler, while Penguin is toned down to become a mere mob boss, no doubt to appear again. The character of Selina Kyle is very well written indeed.

Yet this is at root a crime film very much reminiscent of the Saw franchise and not only in its visual style. Not necessarily in terms of the tiresomely excessive gore but the elements of those films that were actually good- the dark, almost hopeless feeling that violent, corruption and despair are ever-present, and the complex, multi-layered mystery, something which works supremely well here and makes everything feel very fresh indeed.

Yet what works even better is the way the Riddler is reinvented in the vein of Jigsaw, as a crusader for truth. Even better, there's a thread of Gotham having dark secrets in its past, which is used to comment wryly on the extremely harmful conspiracy theory online culture that exists today. It makes the point, rightly, that conspiracy theories are not mere harmless fun.

I hope this film is the first of several. It certainly seems to be setting things up for the future. Overall, though, this film is a triumph..

Morbius (2022)

 "I'm going to get hungry. And you don't want to see me when I'm hungry."

I'm not too familiar with the Morbius character; he tended to not really be around when I was reading Marvel comics in the '80s and very early '90s, when I stopped due to shiny covers, too many crossovers and too much indulging of arrogant star artists. Anyway, here we are, and I believe (although there may be one or two TV movies and the like) that this is as of now the last Marvel film of any kind that I hadn't seen...

Oh. I still have to see Madame Web. Gulp.

I'm well aware of this film's... mixed reception, shall we say, but I rather enjoyed this rather straight riff on Michael Morbius' origin story, despite the modern directorial techniques as seen in the overly CGI'd action bits and the literal darkness pervading everything. I mean, can't they turn the lighting up a bit, just occasionally? But the script is solid and, while I wouldn't use a stronger word, so is Jared Leto. The character of Morbius is nice and nuanced, despite Martine, Nicholas and even Milo being a bit one-note.

The highlight of the film is, of course, Matt Smith making the very wise acting choice to chew as much scenery as possible while having fun as the baddie, as without him the film was threatening to be far too po-faced. There's not a lot of humour in the rather straightforward, competent yet workmanlike script, so this redresses the balance a bit.

The film, then, is quite good. No more than that: it's an unusually expensive looking B movie. It's fine. It's fun but doesn't pretend to have any depth.

That post-credits, mind... the Vulture is in the Venomverse (are we saying that?) and... he's doing a Nick Fury and assembling a super team of Spider-Man adversaries. Er, that's bonkers. Which is excellent. Bring it on.

Enys Men (2022)

 "Trim your feeble lamp, my sister!"

I'm only 25% Cornish, I've never listened to an album by Gwenno, and I've only actually visited said great country once, but you know what they say: ottuma ugens mil gernow a vynn godhvos a reson.

Aren't online translation thingies great? Anyway...

This is an extraordinary, unique, and very Cornish film, which uses incredible cinematography and the uniqueness of the Cornish landscape to create a mood. It's at once increasingly unsettling as the run time moves on and visually poetic to its core. It's both arty and horror. Think The Wicker Man crossed with Un Chien Andalou, but with more lighthouses, chapels and ghostly tin miners. 

The narrative is, and this is the whole point, far from linear. The film consists entirely of Mary, a botanist, alone on the island to study some rare flowers, and we follow her routine with its subtle little variations. There are ghosts, yes, but what sort of ghosts? Do they belong to the island or to her psyche? It's nice to see a creepy turn as a preacher by the great character actor John Woodvine, still charismatic at ninety-two.

The film is slow, despite not being overly long, but the slowness is the point. Everything is a visual metaphor, and the visual metaphors are the narrative. There's probably little more than a hundred words of dialogue, and some of them are in Cornish. It's a film I'd recommend to fans of thoughtful, artistic horror. But if you enjoy this sort of thing, and having to concentrate, this is one of the finest films I've yet seen from this decade, and certainly the best directed.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

 "Youtr brother is with the ancestors"

This is an interesting film, centred on Letitia Wright as Shura, yet full of thoughful subtext, full of lots of glorious Agfrican cultural imagery. Yet... it's average.

Sadly, Chadwick Boseman- a man my age-is dead. That usual Marvel spiel at the start makes a fitting tribute here, being entirely dedicated to him, is wonderful to see. And is more than just avtribute. Because this is a film defined by his absence.

Black Panther was one of the MCU's finest films at the time, and even more in hindsight. It's brilliantly Afrofuturist message and visuals have percolated into society and had a hugely positive effect within this world we live in, in which American police officers, supposed to protect the public, seem to routinely torture and murder young black peope, and where far too many black people in the west live in disproportionate levels of poverty and, indeed, imprisonment. The social legacy of slavery is real. And that's before we get into the legacy of colonialism in Africa as well as elsewhere. Black Panther is at once escapism from this depressing reality and a message of hope.

Yet Chadwick Boseman, an actor of huge charisma, is no longer with us, and cannot just be replaced. Recasting would, of course, have been repugnant. So this film, wisely, reflects this reality, being entirely about grieving and loss amongst an overwhelmingly black and female cast. Shuri takes on the mantle of Black Panther- and of queen- only with reluctance and after much grieving for T'Challa.

Wakanda faces a more hostile world without the respected T'Challa, with other powers openly jealous of Vibranium and quick to scapegoat the African nation for hostile acts with a highly suspicious eagerness. There's also a new power in the world, also with Vibranium, as the MCU finally introduces us to Marvel's oldest protagonist- Namor the Sub-Mariner, a bit less of a dick here than he is in the comics. Wisely, Namor's underwater kingdom is not called Atlantis but rather "Talokan", and is given a rather less silly origin with its roots in Meso-American culture and colonialism- thematic unity- rather than the Hyborean Age and the Great Cataclysm. It's great to see Namor at last, and Attuma too. 

The film perhaps lacks the sheer excellence of its predecessor, perhaps understandably. But for a film so bloody long I found this thoroughly enjoyable.

Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical (2022)

 "This isn't school. It's a prison."

This is the first time I've seen a film at a cinema for a shocking three years, at the splendid and, I'm pleased to see, expanding Phoenix Arts Cinema in Leicester, and once again the reason was Little Miss Llamastrangler. Many thanks to my brother and sister-in-law for treating us.

The film is,of course, splendid fun for all the family, with delightfully witty lyrics courtesy of Tim Minchin. It is, as it necessarily had to be, a very different beast from the 1996 film, set in a very British 1980s of Irn-Bru and bikes from my childhood. Alisha Weir is a revelation and a triumph as our titular heroine, while Emma Thompson is magnificently evil as Trunchbull, whose cruelty is far more apparent here than in the previous film, although there are also hints of a possible actual hinterland..

It's all about the visuals, though, and of course the brilliant songs. There's far more of a whimsical, mischievous sense of humour here that owes far more to Roald Dahl's writing itself than the previous adaptation. There is, of course, a possible subtext- I love Matilda's comment, upon seeing Miss Honey's home, that teachers must be "really badly paid", plus it's easy to see Miss Trunchbull's Gradgrindian regime as a metaphor for the National Curriculum, which was very much an issue ij the late 80s when the novel was written and the film is set. If so, though, any such subtext is worn lightly. More than anything, the film is great fun. Both Little Miss Llamastrangler and I enjoyed it enormously.

Count Magnus

 "What did I do?"

This, the latest Christmas adaptation of a short story by M.R. James, whose work I have not read, is as chillingly well-constructed as we have come to expect. As ever with these things, the plot is simple. It is the essence of the Gothic: an Englishman investigates the tomb, and the unholy antics, of the eponymous count, his curiosity leading to a truly horrific and inevitable downfall.

The Swedish setting is atmospheric and the grisly history superb, with hints of alchemy, devilish beings and the Antichrist. The tale of the two villagers who met their own grisly fates echo that of poor Mr Wraxham, almost the stereotype of the cheerfully ignorant travelling Victorian Englishman. A scholar, a cheerful man, taking nothing seriously until it is too late, he is- with Jason Watkins trning in a perfect performance- quite magnificently doomed by his very complacency.

The plot is nothing unusual; just the same tropes arranged a little diffrerently. No; it is the atmosphere that makes this tale, like all of them, so chillingly effective. May Mark Gatiss haunt our Christmases for many years to come.

Portrait of God (2022)

"Why does God appear to them and not us?"

This, at seven and a bit minutes long, is a serious contender for the best horror film I've ever seen. It's a simple, existentially deep idea, perfectly executed. 

The framing of the shots, and the camera's use of darkness, are exquisite. From the very beginning the darness blurs the distinction between the diegetic and the non-diegetic. And the horror comes not from jump scares and gore but from old-fashioned suspense, and what we don't see. Darkness again.

As for the brief appearance of God... Slenderman, step aside. The design and framing of the concluding moments are another level of exquisite.

Werewolf by Night (2022 TV Movie)

 "But what of the darkness...?"

This is apparently the first of a new kind of Marvel thing on Disney Plus- not a continuing serial, not quite long enough to be a film, but a chance to tell a one off story. And, Halloween coming up as it is, we begin with some early '70s nostalgia in Werewolf by Night- although I remember the character from the late '80s run in Marvel Comics Presents.

I know Jack Russell well as a conscientious werewolf who does his best to not kill anyone when he turns into a werewolf, which is awfully nice of him. I'm also vaguely aware of the late Ulysses Bloodstone, and I love the treatment of Man-Thing in this- Ted- the monster who is not a monster but is, er, Giant Size. The werewolf looks cool but Man-Thing looks extraordinary.

But this isn't just about early '70s Marvel nostalgia, It's about capturing, in monochrome, the tone of Universal horror, including the deliciously camp humour of James Whale. And, with the late Ulysses Bloodstone's corpse being made to mechanically move to his recorded voice like something out of a haunted house, the effect is a chieved with aplomb. Gael Garcia Bernal is excellent as Jack Russell (woof woof), while Laura Donnelly- and I must watch The Nevers- is magnificent as the intrepid Elsa Bloodstone, who ends up in possession of the estate and the Bloodstone itself after her wicked stepmother is violently killed. No doubt we shall be seeing her again, in particular.

This is a wonderfully fun piece of pastiche horror. I love it.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

 "If you don't shut up, you won't be invited to the orgy.

Right, let's just get Taika Waititi to do all the Thor films from now on, shall we? This is awesome: witty, fourth wall-breakingly funny but without crossing a certain line... and absolutely heartbreaking. Jane's death is devastating (but yay for the post-credits) as well as being the right way to end. There's a nice bit of misdirection in that we suspect Eternity's wish is going to cure her, but no. She and Thor, at last deciding to stop pushing people away, fall in love all over again... and she dies, both of cancer and in battle. At least she dies well.

There's so much coolness here. New Asgard as tourist trap. Jane Foster becoming Thor, which I understand is based on a comic story after my time. Thor's look echoing Eric Masterson, which isn't. All those narrations by Korg. Tessa Thompson as the highly relatable Valkyrie. The fact that it's self-evidently necessary to take loads and loads of beer on a heroic mission, which is unquestionably true. Even the soppy ending is both earned and cool.

But, yeah, Russel Crowe as Zeus. With a Greek accent and a thunderbolt. That is certainly something to behold.

Gorr as a villain is similarly, I suspect, from comics after my time. But Christian Bale is superb, and the character's origin is magnificently done. Gorr's visual impression is absolutely extraordinary. And the sheer, existential horror of being told by your gods that they don't care about you, your place is to suffer for them without meaning, and the afterlife is a lie... wow. That's dark.

This is, of course, like the last Thor film, a comedy. Yet it simultaneously manages to function asa superb action film while tugging most effectively at the heartstrings. Utterly splendid.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

 "This time it's gonna take more than killing me to kill me."

Well, thgis film blew me away. It's a huge fanwank treat. It's very Sam Raimi indeed. I love its continuation of the whole vibe of magic being really trippy, man, in the MCU, almost as thought it was some king of metaphor or something.

But, although very good, this film isn't great. It doesn't quite have the swagger and smooth greatness of the best Marvel films but- let me stress- this is no great critiscism. Merely being very good indeedcis no crime.

Plus, this film may be fanwank, but it's fanwank of the first degree. Rintrah! Clea at the end! A brief CGI hint of the Living Tribunal! Chthon! Earth 616!

But this is about the full realisation of the Multiverse- Black Bolt! Captain Carter! Reed Richards! Confirmation, for those of my generation, that Monica Rambeau is THE real Captain Marvel. And we have Professor X... played by Patrick Stewart"! This is a blatant tease about the former Fox properties, using the concept of the Multiverse to the full.

Yet this film is very human as well as high concept. We explore, through different realities, Strange's relations with Christine, and his rather lovely fatherly relationship with the orphaned America Chavez, presumably a comics character from after my time.

Yet also, after WandaVision, we meet Wanda... and she's the baddie, plausibly yet tragically: she's a loving parent, able to see her beloved children only through snatched, one dimensional, dreamlike moments which are better than nothing but no replacement for everyday physical parenthood. I get exactly where she's coming from. It means a lot that she does the right thing, in the end, through love of her children.

No, this isn't a great film. But just being bloody good is no crime.