X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

 “She’s not your little girl any more.” 

It's always instructive where a movie that has a lot seemingly going for it, like this one,turns out to be mildly disappointing. Not that it's terrible, but there's no denying that it fails to translate the excellent of Christ Claremont and John Byrne's source material, nor that the promising first half hour with lots of interesting character development and subtext yields to a load of dull fighting against a bland alien threat. Beyond the fact that we can by now be sure, I think, that Simon Kinberg isn't the person who should have been in charge of these films. But what went wrong?

There's a lot of good stuff in the early part of the film. All the characters feel real and well-rounded, even relatively minor ones like Quicksilver and Nightcrawler. There's some interesting questioning of Charles' habit of manipulating people's minds for their "own good". There's also a nice point made of Charles pushing the X-Men, at great danger, to be superheroes and to be popular, as the alternative is to be hated and feared: it's effective to see how quickly Jean's antics have the X-Men change overnight from popular celebrities to feared outcasts. It's unexpected, and effective, to have Raven die at the hands of Jean.

And yet, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender aside, the main cast are all a bit bland, despite a splendidly charismatic performance by Evan Peters as Quicksilver, for the last time in this continuity. And then there's the vague nature of where the Phoenix force comes from and the equally vague aliens looking for it. There's a lot of good ideas here, but no real way of resenting them once the plot gets moving. A sad ending for the Fox X-Men movies. Let's hope we see them again under happier circumstances.

Macbeth (2015)

"What's done cannot be undone..."

I consider myself a Shakespeare geek. I know all but a handful of his plays. I've read the sublime Macbeth several times, but have only ever seen it performed once: at Leicester in 1990 when I was far too young to appreciate what I was seeing. I was surprised, watching this film, that I know the play much better than I thought. Certainly enough to realise ths film is, well... underwhelming.

On paper it has a lot to recommend it. It's a fairly faithful adaptaton of one of Shakespeare's finest plays. It's a realistic evocation of 11th century Scotland (look, no kilts!) with authentic accents, a shockingly rare virtue which adds a lot and hides many faults elsewhere. It stars Michael Fassbender, a very good actor. The cinematography is bleakly artistic, with subdued colours and severely bleak locations.

And yet... this bleakness doesn't serve the play. Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are excellent but their performances seem to lack charisma here in ways they don't elsewhere- perhaps Justin Kurzel is not an actors' director? The gloriously poetical lines seem to be cancelled out at every turn by a crushing dullness that pervades everything.

The locations are haunting. The performances good and often excellent. The film beautifully shot almost if not wholly on location... yet I find myself yearning for a stagey old BBC 1970s style production with multiple cameras.This fim seems to please the critics, but it disappointed me.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

“Angels always speak German...”

I've been watching a lot of David Cronenberg films lately, something which stems from both an increasing admiration of the diversity and extraordinary quality of his work and their ease of availability, particularly as several of them have been available on Amazon Prime of late. Sadly, I've seen rather more of the later films which tend to be subtitled than the older, more stereotypically Cronenberg "body horror" films which Amazon Prime seems unable to subtitle although its rival Netflix seems to have no trouble subtitling everything. Still, this superb film can't be blamed for that, and is another example of Cronenberg's late career peak.I hope, with increasing desperation, that he hasn't retired.

Superficiall this is a typical late Cronenberg film in that the camerawork and mood feel like Cronenberg and, of course, Viggo Mortensen plays a prominent role. Yet this is anything but a typical sort of film for Cronenberg to helm, being an adaptation of a period stage play that eschews the visual in favour of psychology. In every sense.

This is a fascinating portrait of three figures in intellectual figures- the well-known figures of Sigmund Freud and Paul Jung and the less famous yet pivotal figure of Sabina Spielrein.The film deals with several themes which echo those of psychoanalysis- father figures, sexual repression and guilt, and a very Belle Epoch approach to kink and kink-shaming, but also such things as social class and the tension between a comfortable yet repressed bourgeois life and a Bohemian life of freedom without security. It's a fascinating film of ideas, in that sense reminiscent of Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, but also a film full of repressed passion.

The whole thing is anchored by the three central performances of Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and expecially Keira Knightley, whose performance is simly extraordinary. A splendid film.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

“Well, at least we can all agree the third one's always the worst...!

 Yet again an X-Men film that isn't supposed to be all that great turns out to be pretty damn good viewing. Oh, I know that the continuity has been pretty dodgy anyway and at this point they just give up and blatantly contradict stuff about all kinds of characters. It's also awkward having two alternate casts, the less expensive of which we see here. But it's nice to get an X-Men film where Scott gets to be a likeable hero for once. It's also nice tht Wolverine, rather than hogging the limelight as usual, only gets a Weapon X cameo.

Apocalypse is a solid villain, with  suitably epic backstory and oodles of power. The film has metatextual fun with its 1983 setting, hence the line above, ostensibly about Return of the Jedi but, well, you know. It’s also fun utilising the freedom to make characters like Angel (him off EastEnders), Psylocke and even Storm be baddies for a bit. There’s the obligatory “how Charles lost his hair” bit. Of course there is. There are the obligatory philosophical scenes with Charles, Eric and Raven, but not too much. But most of the time it’s what we want to see: cool set pieces. And few are cooler than Quicksilver, even if he is dead in Marvel’s other celluloid universe. This film is quite simply just fun to watch. The timeline  and cobrinuity may be utterly broken but the film makes the right decision to ignore all that and just go with it. Quite right too.

Is it just me, though, or are we all fed up of Colonel William bloody Stryker...?

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

“Humanity has always feared what is different,"

 I've read a lot of Chris Claremont's run on X-Men (the comic book, of course) but not this seminal storyline although, of course I have a broad awareness of it. It’s a good choice of storyline for the next film and, course, offers a great opportunity for a bit of sneaky retconning; welcome back, Jean and Scott.

It’s all very much what we Doctor Who fans call “timey-wimey”, of course; Wolverine is sent back in time to 1973, with shades of Life on Mars, in order to prevent a Sentinel-riven hellish dystopia, and we follow the twists and turns as he does so. It’s an enjoyable concept and one not slavishly following the comics, as we find a disillusioned Charles who has clearly been taking hairstyle tips from me, while Magneto’s allegiances are again ambiguous and interesting. Michael Fassbender is, of course, superb, and it’s a shame we don’t see more of Ian McKellen but this film is crammed to the rafters with characters jostling for something to do.

The cast is superb, to the point that I’ve had to leave the likes of Elliot Page, Halle Berry and Famke Janssen off the tags through lack of space as the boys, alas, drive the plot and hog the screen time. There are some magnificent performances, though, the highlight being the interaction of James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart as the two Xaviers talk. Plus of course we have cameos from so many characters including an awesome-looking Bishop, Kitty Pryde and Colossus, and Peter Dinklage being superb as the villainous yet idealistic Bolivar Trask.

This may not be the greatest film of the series but it’s solidly entertaining, well-acted and full of surprises, so the Utopian ending comes as a surprise. The post-credits sequence suggests trouble to come, though...

X-Men: First Class (2011)

"I've been at the mercy of men just following orders all my life. Never again!"

Wow. Best X-Men film ever, or at least so far. Thank you, Matthew Vaughn.

Of course, this is the Fox continuity, in spite of only a cameo appearance by Wolverine linking it to its predecessors, and rather divergent from the comics; Banshee seems like he's going to die, for example, and doesn't. And there's the silly fact that Chares Xavier has a British accent and has done since childhood, in spite of having grown up in that mansion in Westchester County. And why is Moira MacTaggart now an American CIA agent, having previously been shown as English and never Scottish?

But we'll ignore all that because this is a brilliant and exciting tale of a deep friendship unable to withstand ideological differences; you really believe in the friendship between Charles and Erik. James McAvoy is good, but Michael Fassbender is exceptional.

It's interesting that Mystique is Charles' step-sister, and to see her gradually being drawn towards Magneto. Her connection to Hank McCoy is well-handled, too, as is the question of whether mutants ho look unusual should visually conform or not. The Beast's fate is cruel but poetically appropriate, especially given the allusions to Jekyll and Hyde.

The Hellfire Club gives us two impressive villains in January Jones as Emma Frost and the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon as the mercurial Sebastian Shaw- perhaps he's Joseph Dashwood in this continuity? But there are striking similarities between Shaw and what Magneto becomes although, of course, he killed Magneto's mother and must die.

The plot is superb- using the Cuban Missile Crisis is inspired- but ultimately the film works because of its successful focus on Erik and Charles as characters. Superb,

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

"I'm French. We respect directors in our country."

Meh. Quentin Tarantino doesn't exactly make bad films- this is still well shot, and remains fun to watch in spite of everything- but I enjoyed Inglourious Basterds significantly less than any other Tarantino film I've seen, and I've seen most. In fact, I'd go as far as to say this film is merely good rather than great, and for a filmmaker like Tarantino that is criticism indeed.

So what doesn't quite work? Structurally and aesthetically it's as clever as ever, with a non-linear yet easy to follow chapter structure and loads of fun set pieces. I love the chutzpah in the cheerful deliberate ignoring of history by having Hitler and all the senior Nazis die in June 1944. The long dialogue scenes are there, too. But this time they fail to sing without the pop culture references. Christoph Waltz puts in an outstanding performance as the main SS baddie, but he's much better in a less cliched role in Django Unchained.

I think, perhaps, it's an unevenness of tone; little touches like Mike Myers' exaggerated plummy accent and, yes, Brad Pitt's entire misjudged performance take you out of the events.Tarantino has shown a mastery of humour and fourth wall-breaking in the past, but always with an assuredness that is missing here. Perhaps it's simply that Quentin Tarantino, master of so many genres, simply doesn't have quite the same sureness of touch when it comes to the Second World War film. Still, I'd like to see him try again someday.

Steve Jobs (2015)

"I play the orchestra."

Five years after Aaron Sorkin scripted a biopic of Mark Zuckerberg he does the same for the late Steve Jobs, another scion of the Silicon Valley aristocracy, this time helmed by Danny Boyle, whose London Olympics opening ceremony has certainly not harmed his career. The result is gripping, full of quick-fire dialogue (that'll be Sorkin, then) and plenty of zingers and little nostalgic touches. Throughout it all is a portrait of a confident- nay, arrogant, bordering on unlikeable visionary who, while not an engineer or a programmer, is the conductor who cannot play an instrument but plays the orchestra superbly.

The film is structured around the preparation to three distinct big speeches in 1984, 1988 and 1988, all big product launches. It's a brave yet ultimately successful way of limiting the palette in order to produce a cohesive narrative. Michael Fassbender is spellbinding and the excellent Kate Winslet is barely recognisable; a leading Hollywood actress actually playing a role that isn't sexualised.

The emotional centre of the film is Jobs' relationship with his daughter Lisa, starting with his denial of paternity but ending with his actually delaying his speech- a big thing- for her sake. We also see his abrasive relationship with his underlings, but he inspires loyalty in spite of everything. In the end, his vision triumphs, although it's interesting that the film ends in 1997, before Jobs' biggest wave of successes.

I like the nod to the fact that you can't get inside any Apple device without special tools, the grainy picture, the nod to the iPad's origins in Jobs noticing the clinginess of Lisa's Walkman, but at its heart this is a masterful character study. It is an artfully constructed and fascinating little film.

The Devil's Whore: Episode 4

"I took a husband from you."

"You took two."

Suddenly, from a series which has been exploring the heritage of the British Left from the Civil War origins of the Tory/Whig divide, we get what seems to be contemporary political commentary. Lilburne's final days in his Jerseyan Guantanamo may be straight out of the history books, but they have deep contemporary relevance for a drama made in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Cromwell, in choosing rendition over what were, even in 1654, the proper constitutional procedures, begins to look very much like a Blair figure, perhaps even a Bush the Younger, the type who would support ninety day detention and identity cards. His later debate with Angelica over security versus liberty makes this clear, and Lilburne's tragic last few years make it clear that power does not lie with us civil libertarians.

Interesting, then, that all this should be juxtaposed with Cromwell's dismissing of the Rump Parliament, with the prospect of his declaring himself King, and with an angry Sexby, fresh from shooting Percy through the head, confronting him over the circumstances of Rainsborough's death. If Cromwell is Blair here then the comparison is not a flattering one. But then, everyone on the British left considers Blair to be a cuckoo in the Labour nest. Indeed, even we on the non-Orange Booker, Guardian-reading, Coalition-opposing wing of the Lib Dems think of him as a true small "c" conservative, although no Tory. This is also an apt description of the historical Cromwell.

It's nice that, the night before Sexby meets his doom in failing to assassinate Cromwell, he and Angelica should have what the director makes very clear is good, meaningful, loving sex, sex which ultimately results in the birth of a daughter. 

History takes it's course, and a caption informs us of Cromwell's death and the Restoration. There is a happy ending, of sorts, as Angelica's young daughter sees no devil in the tree.

This is a brilliant, brilliant, unappreciated series, and you must go and watch it immediately. Please. It's really rather good.

The Devil's Whore: Episode 3

"We begin again..."

It's very neat, the parallel between the trials of Angelica and the king, both sentenced to die on the same day. Angelica languishes in a miserable cell, giving birth there, jeered at and humiliated over her last few days, with only the Lilburnes for friends, and dies painfully, with the cruel jeers of Percy ringing in her ears. Except she doesn't, because Sexby has replaced the hangman and her death is faked, if still bloody painful.

Charles actually dies. His humiliations are of a lesser type, though significant for a king; he has to pick up the ball from the top of his cane himself when it falls to the floor. Capaldi is amazing here, showing us both the King's arrogance and his vulnerability. His trial is equally unfair, but he, too, has the ironic support of John Lilburne, who will not compromise in matters of justice and gets himself arrested yet again.

Also unjust is Cromwell's behaviour in Ireland, which is more reminiscent of the Thirty Years War than the comparatively civilised conflict in England. Sexby receives advancement, being made a colonel, but the moral compromises he has to make are appalling. He betrays the soldiers under his command, who are hanged by Cromwell although he had assured then they would not be, and in Ireland he is certainly guilty of war crimes.  The plebeian philosopher at last dips his hands in the blood. (Although, of course,he has fought as a mercenary in the Thirty Years War himself; his hands can hardly have been clean in the first place.)

He's not good enough for Angelica, though, as she refuses his proposal of marriage. She may be increasingly radical, but Sexby would still be a match well below her station. Her eventual reluctant acceptance is a defeat for her.

As Sexby bloodied his hands further across the Irish Sea, Angelica continues her journey into radicalism by joining the radical, stoic and bonkers Diggers sect. She is attracted to their lifestyle but alienated by their creepily conformist religiosity, adhering to a vague, hippyish spiritualism. She is finally cast out of this egalitarian paradise, but not before asking why, if all are equal, do women toil in the fields all day and then cook for their children at night?

The most fun part of the episode is, of course, Lilburne's trial and speech, and his triumphant acquittal. But the last few minutes are far from fun; a damaged Sexby arrives back from Ireland and all but rapes his new wife, and then abandons her. And, worse, the ex-Digger with whom Angelica has now shackled up turns out to be an underling of Percy's...

This continues to be superb. It works as melodrama, with dramatic reversals of fortune, but this also serves to parallel with the experiences of the great and good, and to illustrate history, or rather a particular slant of history that seeks to explore the heritage of the British Left and present things, quite deliberately and fairly, a little anachronistically. All history, after all, exists only in relation to the present.

The Devil's Whore: Episode 2

"How did your husband die?"

"Because I was not tamed."

"The world would have you tamed?"

"I know."

"Then the world is full of fools."

It's puzzling, watching The Devil's Whore again, that it was apparently intended to be twelve parts but was cut down to four. It's hard, not having seen the unedited version, to judge the wisdom of this decision; certainly the version we have does not seem unduly rushed, and is superb to boot. But perhaps this reflects how TV execs generally find the Civil War an unsexy period, with its suspicious lack of Tudors or Nazis.

Who cares. This is still top stuff. We're two years on, the programme is still lit to look like the paintings of the Dutch masters, and Angelica incurs the ire of a strangely nasty Percy from Blackadder after killing a man who tries to tape her, something for which she is unlikely to garner much sympathy in the less than enlightened times in which she lives. She grows close to Sexby, though. Both are philosophical and both are excluded from power, one by sex and one by class. Sexby may be rough trade for a lady of her background, but the two of them seem to have much in common.

John Lilburne continues to be in trouble, his ideas being far too radical for even the Parliamentarian establishment (for which read the mainstream, triangulating left), let alone the Royalists. Angelica and Sexby are on his side, though, even though his ideas extend even as far as putting the King on trial. 

Also radical, and sympathetic, is Thomas Rainsborough, an astute politician and military strategist yet, we feel, a little too radical for Cromwell and his ilk. He is immediately and passionately drawn to Angelica, preferring a "free spirit" to a woman who submits to privilege and patriarchy. Sexby, meanwhile, is in gaol and hence unable to seethe with jealousy when she sleeps with him.

Things then get complicated. It is only Rainsborough among the senior Parliamentarians who has the guts to have the King arrested, and it is only Rainsborough who is able to protect Angelica from Percy's nasty, sadistic, misogynistic urge to see her humiliated and hanged.

Lilburne is magnificent, and I'm not just saying this because I so hugely admire the historical Lilburne. Here, he insists to Cromwell that there must be no purge of Parliament without an election. The people will vote for the King's men, as Cromwell point out, but they must have their say, and Lilburne will not budge on that point of principle.

Ironically, Angelica is saved by the freed Sexby threatening Percy and not by any deed of Rainsborough, but she agrees to marry the glamorous general anyway. The lady and the republican have their marriage blessed by a stoic Sexby, and Cromwell agrees to free Lilburne as a wedding gift. The couple are happy ever after.

Except they aren't. Cromwell, embodying all the cynicism of Middle England, has Rainsborough murdered as he furiously prays. Angelica is widowed for a second time and, just to kick her when she's down, Percy arrests her yet again...

This just keeps getting better and better.

The Devil's Whore: Episode 1

"Both armies gave thanks to the same God for the same victory."

I loved this when it was first broadcast in 2007 and I loved it when rewatching it for the blog. It's a neglected gem; a magnificent cast and a script by the people behind Our Friends in the North. The English Civil War is a sadly neglected period in our history, which us a shame; it's a pivotal moment in English and British history and the tribal origins of both right and left in this country; this series is particularly interested in that aspect, and particularly in the heritage of the English left, whether Whig, Liberal or Labour, which has always reminisced about the "Good Old Cause".

The whole thing hangs on Andrea Riseborough's extraordinary performance  as Angelica Fanshawe at a time when she seemed to be all over the telly; remember her turn as the Evil One in BBC4's Long Walk to Finchley? She is exactly what this series needs; quirky yet likeable, with the charisma to be the necessary female need in a series unavoidably crammed with men.

Angelica begins as an aristocratic lady, unthinkingly in the midst of what we can anachronistically call the ancien regime. Angelica knows King Charles I vaguely, but her cousin, best friend and soon to be husband (this is, after all, the aristocracy), is a good mate of the very bizarre Prince Rupert.

Angelica's cousin and husband soon proves that his sexual politics are quite as reactionary as his class politics; in insisting that Angelica be silent in bed he not only shows himself to be crap in bed but gives us a pretty neat metaphor for the patriarchal repression of women.

Angelica has a kind of childlike innocence and a weirdness that makes her a fascinating character, although her vaguely non-Christian spiritualism is arguably a bit anachronistic. Our other audience identification character is the much more grounded and plebeian Edward Sexby, splendidly portrayed by the great John Simm. Sexby is a true everyman, if a somewhat violent and blood-soaked one, an uneducated but thinking centrist whose allegiances shift with his conscience. Any resemblance to the historical Edward Sexby is purely coincidental.

Yet to come into his own at this point is possibly the greatest ever Englishman, John Lilburne, played with an accurately Mackem accent (I'm married to a Geordie) by Tom Goodman-Hill. Dominic West, similarly, uses a very correct East Anglian accent as Oliver Cromwell, who is portrayed very accurately; religiously independent and politically conservative without being (to use a very slight archaism) remotely Tory. There have always been plenty of Cromwells in the Labour Party, of course. West's delivery of his speech defending Lilburne is, however, probably the best thing in what is a superb episode.

The slow descent into civil war is nicely done, with the camera at Edge Hill showing an almost abrasively sunny environment. We see the likes of Cronwell and the side-switching Sexby in the chaotic environment of battle and we get a good look at Michael Fassbender's Thomas Rainsborough who is, unlike Cromwell, a true radical.

The climax features Angelica, I'm the face of Roundhead beseigers, showing considerably more cojones than her foppish husband, only to be castigated by an arrogant Charles for her disobedience to male authority just before she watches her husband.'a execution pour encourager les autres. It is, appropriately, the end of the first chapter and a truly excellent forty-give minutes of television.