Mary Poppins Returns: Film Review

Mary Poppins Returns: Film Review

Cast: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, Colin Firth
Director: Rob Marshall

How do you solve a problem like Mary Poppins 2?

With the longest gap between sequels ever recorded in cinema history, it seems like the return of the English nanny that so delighted so many decades ago was always bound to be divisive.

So it is with Mary Poppins Returns, a film that is both respectful of its nostalgia and yet also seems to be bound up by it, unsure of its own path to follow.

Set in the Great slump, London is facing a post-war depression with the inhabitants of Cherry Tree Lane in the firing line of the Depression. Newly widowed Michael (Whishaw, in mournful elegaic mode) and sister Jane (Mortimer, perky, but under-used) face losing the family home due to lack of mortgage payments.

With 5 days to find a shares certificate which will give them fiscal freedom, the Banks children and their own children are more in need now of a visit from Emily Blunt's Mary Poppins....

There's a sense of loss pervading lots of Poppins 2; and there's a lot of juggling needed for the tone of the Depression and balancing it with the edges of an old school Hollywood musical. It doesn't always quite work, in all honesty, and the film's blighted with the fact it's barely blessed with some truly memorable songs in the vein of Spoonful of Sugar, Chim Chim Cher-ee et al.

There's one central song that does soar - even if it has Lin-Manuel Miranda's Jack and his lamplighter brigade firing around on bikes like an outtake of a BMX festival - and that's Trip a Little Light Fantastic With Me. This one mixes both the terrible Cockney accent along with a memorable chorus, to produce an ode that gathers speed and is brilliantly translated to the screen.

Blunt's Poppins is a nicely starched character, with moments of eye-twinkling mixed with some sad mournful looks as she realises how far the children have fallen - and how much the London depression has hit.

In many ways, it's easy to see Mary Poppins Returns as a rejoinder to current political climates (the celebration of London, the demonising of the banks, the Depression) within the UK, but the timelessness of the first is what is, at times, missing from this, even if there is a sweet sense of escapism on offer this time around.

Yet, there is magic within Mary Poppins Returns, as it tries to rekindle an "excess of imagination" in both its subjects and the cinema audiences, who are becoming more enamoured with musicals (La La Land, The Greatest Showman).

"She never explains anything," says Miranda's Lamplighter Jack, a dismissive oneliner which says much about Poppins' appeal and the nonsensical edges of the flights of fantasy within. It's a meta line if ever there was one, and one which applies to Mary Poppins Returns - it may hit a younger audience, but an older audience, brought up in the memories of the first replayed through the years, may find it lacks a killer hook to keep you whistling along afterwards.

Aquaman: Film Review

Aquaman: Film Review

Cast: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison, Nicole Kidman
Director: Jason Wan

The litany of DC movies is scattered with almost-rans.

For every Marvel success, there’s been a thudding DC failure, a reminder that tone and story still triumph in the comic book medium.

So it’s pleasing to reveal that Aquaman goes some way to addressing prior failures, by telling a story early on that packs heart and heft, before the usual rote destructive CGI chaos steps in to clean up in the final act.

At its heart, in terms of plot, Aquaman is DC’s take on the political in-fighting last seen in Marvel's Black Panther.

Momoa is Aquaman, aka Arthur Curry, a half-human, half Atlantian, who's keeping the seas safe from the likes of marauding pirates, when he finds himself hauled into a political coup after red-haired Mera (Heard) emerges from the waters of his long-lost home world.

Warning him that the war that's unfolding at the hands of King Orm (Wilson) will affect his beloved surface dwellers, Aquaman's thrown into a battle over the rights to the underwater throne and a birth right he doesn't potentially want...

Aquaman offers a Tron-like spectacle with an underwater world that's vibrant with life and teeming with visual creativity and depth. Atlantis looks like it's a lived in world, a world that breathes as it floats below, and as various sea creatures float by, with CGI in overdrive to showcase its very best.

Sadly, the same can't exactly be said about the more human elements of the film which are overwhelmed by the script's over-stuffed nature.

Momoa treads a thin line between knowing cheesy dialogue and performing endless action sequences while revelling in the OTT nature; but he has the charisma for Curry (and performs enough hair flips through water to look like he's advertising premium shampoo), and lends Aquaman the kind of reverence - and occasionally irreverence - the DC material affords him.

The problem is some of what is populated around him.

With one-note characters like Mera offering mainly exposition (and a clumsy attempt at romance that should have been drastically re-worked at the script level before being committed to screen) and Orm proffering petulance and discord, the film's tonal shifts are seismic in their execution and occasionally jarring as it swims between cornball and seriousness.

Meshing the myth of Excalibur, Karate Kid training, Splash's inter-species love story with a pro-environmental message, and the politics of power and squabbling brothers that we've seen in Thor and Black Panther, Aquaman never really lays any claim to originality - nor would it expect to with some of its utter po-faced dialogue and frankly creepy digital de-ageing of stars like Morrison and Dafoe.

What Aquaman does deliver is spectacle, and radically changes the game for what's to be expected of DC films - it still has the pomposity of the dialogue of Batman Vs Superman and ends up in an utterly messy CGI fight as its denoumenent, but those troubles are inherent to all comic book films, not just the long derided DC Universe.

There's a lack of emotional investment in Aquaman's central character, but there's plenty on show early on in Morrison's heartfelt turn (some of his best work yet) and pre-credits love story with Kidman's Queen of the sea. It's a welcome touch, before the continual shock and awe of the action overwhelms everything and builds to a deafening crescendo.

In terms of cache, there is no denying this is a major step up.

But Aquaman's over-reliance on CGI spectacle, bombast and underwhelming quest a-to-b type story, coupled with a lack of depth on its hero and his glistening abs, means that Aquaman is more a film that delivers on its outlandish promise, rather than holding back a little and running with what sticks to the wall.

The Predator: Blu Ray Review

The Predator: Blu Ray Review

It's clear early on that Shane Black's Predator film is not going to be a serious one.

Despite opening with some sci-fi trappings as a Predator-piloted spacecraft plummets down to earth, within minutes, we're back in Black's trademark comedy way of life. A satellite is smashed as the Predator's ship tumbles to the ground, and this brash, in-your-face opening is really all the 2018 Predator is about.

After being picked off by Boyd Holbrook's sniper Quinn McKenna, the Predator's gear is shipped off to his autistic son (Tremblay) for safe-keeping and to protect Quinn from the authorities. But as the scientists pick at the Predator, he re-awakens, bringing a desperate fight for survival to life.

It's hard to exactly pinpoint why The Predator doesn't quite fully work.

Perhaps it's the abandoning until the end of why the films have worked previously - ie man vs something bigger than itself and slowly losing; perhaps it's the injection of comedy that tips over into the downright unfunny and unnecessary - step forward, a soldier with Tourette's for nothing more than gags or a line about a "retarded" kid that's woefully out of place with 2018 - or perhaps it's the fact that the film lacks any defining set pieces or visual moments of flair.

But all combined, The Predator is perhaps the biggest disappointment of the year when all its parts come together.

Kudos must go to Olivia Munn whose scientist kicks as much ass as the boys, and whose support is more about her skills than anything else; and even Holbrook manages a sort of soldier grunt edge that's hard to beat, even if the human edge is lacking.

There's a climate change message thrown in as well, as Black tries to re-start the franchise with some cunning ideas and reasons why the Predators have been coming here for years, but the threads are so weakly constructed that pulled narratively tighter they simply unravel and make you bemoan the fact more could be on the way.

In the jungle's final sequence, Black reminds us why The Predator has worked, with some smartly and tautly executed kills which fill the quota. It's easy to see why he went for a band of misfits taking on the bad guy, as it's suited to his writing style, but mostly, thanks to misplaced comedy that's out of step with the zeitgeist, this flags badly when it should zag wildly.

If this was an attempt at a reboot of the film, the seventh in the series, and one that was meant to evoke the 80s trappings of the originals, Black has failed The Predator miserably. If it was an attempt to produce something scrappy, something unenticing that lacks a warmth and empathy for its characters, then it's succeeded wildly.

Either way, the set up for the sequels feels like a missed moment, a killer film without a killer edge and a film that in parts leaves a distinctly unsavoury taste in your mouth. 

Sorry To Bother You: Film Review

Sorry To Bother You: Film Review

Cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer, Steven Yeun, Patton Oswalt, David Cross
Director: Boots Riley

Possibly this year's most biting satire, Sorry To Bother You's ramshackle approach to its story wields unlikely dividends for an audience looking for more beneath the surface.

Get Out's Stanfield plays Cassius Green, a down on his luck unemployed man searching for work.

Conning his way into a telemarketing job, sakjfdsfds learns that there's money to be had by putting on a white man's voice and selling. So against the odds, and desperate to get out of living in his garage
with his supportive girlfriend Detroit (Thompson, on fire form), Green takes the advice on board - and it works.

Swiftly rising in the corporate world, Cassius finds his life at odds due to his former telemarketer colleagues protesting conditions. But there's much more going on at the mysterious company than Green realises...

There's a lot to digest in Sorry To Bother You, a savage indictment of the underclasses in America and also building on the work done by last year's Get Out.

Boots Riley's frankly indefinable film offers many joys in many ways, and will reward a second viewing with more finer details to be picked up. Suffice to say that Stanfield anchors it with a great deal of heart and innate likeability as the gonzo approach to the film veers into both creative and lunatic territory with veritable aplomb.

There's something of a Twilight Zone here, and an alternate universe as tsadjdsakdsak's world descends into a place of utter disbelief - be it the reality of what's going on where he works, or the commentary on the dumbing down of TV and the reality TV craze that continues unabated.

But Riley's smart enough to pepper these elements throughout, causing viewers to find much for discussion once the lights have gone and once the unease over what's happened has cleared.

Ultimately, Sorry To Bother You may be 2018's most unconformist and subversive ride, but it's also one of 2018's most compelling too - just don't be surprised if the final feeling is one of sickening nausea as you begin to accept reality's coming as close to anything insane produced within.

Bumblebee: Film Review

Bumblebee: Film Review

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Dylan O'Brien, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr
Director: Travis Knight

Essentially an origin story for everyone's favourite Transformer, the clumsy Bumblebee, Kubo and The Two Strings director Travis Knight's relatively stripped back approach to the noise and bombast of the Transformers series actually pays charming dividends.

Set in 1987, with Cybertron fallen, Optimus Prime sends Bumblebee to Earth to set up a base for the Autobots to stop the Decepticons. But when Bumblebee loses his memory, he finds himself in a town near San Francisco and stuck in a VW form. Stumbling across Bumblebee is Charlie (Steinfeld), a on-the-cusp of eighteen outsider, who's struggling after losing her dad.

These two form a friendship, but the Decepticons are soon hot on their tail, intent on wiping out the Autobots for good....

It's easy to be cynical about Bumblebee, a film that really doesn't need to be made.

Starting with the fall of Cybertron, and then grounding Bee on Earth and saddling him with an 80s setting, complete with the tropes of an eighties alien invasion film, it's easy to dismiss Travis Knight's intentions as puerile for a franchise that's largely until now, been clothed in sturm and drang.

Yet, there's something pleasingly earnest and charming about Bumblebee, a film that embraces its innocence and gives it a kind of Spielbergian 80s family vibe throughout, and meshes it with the Herbie overtones.

Sure, there are one too many triggers here and there from the overuse of 80s music, to the shoehorning in of references, but the clearly ET influenced plot works nicely as this earnestly acted, occasionally underwritten and oddly cliched here and there buddy movie progresses along.

Smartly settling on less Transformers and subsequent clutter and feeling like an episode of the 80s TV cartoon delivers a stripped back approach for Bumblebee; one which feels like a pleasant ride in many ways, as it juggles the comedy (largely from Cena's gung ho military jock) to the heartfelt relationship between the two. Equally, the actual transforming action benefits from a crisp clarity of vision and not so much overkill - and there's much to love from the expressive CGI eye work too.

All in all, Bumblebee is a film that benefits from being about a Transformer, not about the Transformers - it's an important distinction, and while it won't win any creativity awards, the decision to make a film in this franchise breathe a little more is a more than welcome change of robot pace.

Mandy: Blu Ray Review

Mandy: Blu Ray Review

Placing the psycho among the psychotropic, Panos Cosmatos' Mandy is a curious beast, likely to satiate an Incredibly Strange audience, but unlikely to burst out of its cult bubble.

Starting with Nic Cage in full lumberjack mode felling a tree (not a euphemism), Cosmatos's under siege piece takes its 80s vibe and fully runs with it.

Cage is Red, who lives with Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) in a remote cabin. Their dream existence is granted a rude awakening when the Children of the New Dawn pass Mandy on a path one day, determining that she should be with them.

Their leader (Linus Roach, in full messianic mode) orders his followers to steal her away - needless to say Red ain't having that.

It's a case of 80s style over substance with Mandy, which is no bad thing if that's what you're looking for. Drenched in a Johann Johannsson score, the film's atmospherics hit every level they're intending to, but it's a case of genre style ahead of anything else in effect here.

Cosmatos makes his piece a masterclass in lighting, soaking many scenes in red and backlighting the fight scenes with spotlights - it's a visual lunacy that's worth embracing.

Mandy may drag a little in parts, a fever dream that's extended beyond need, but Cage's fans will be happy to see their hero, in his tighty-whiteys, doing what he does best - chewing up the scenery (and doing a large amount of cocaine at the end of one scene).

Mandy fulfills its exploitation vibe well, but beyond the deaths and gore it proffers up, it offers little more.

Avengers: Endgame: First Look

Avengers: Endgame: First Look

The first look at the brand new Avengers movie has dropped.

Avengers: Endgame will debut on April  26, 2019.


The film follows on from Avengers: Infinity War and picks up after Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet to wipe people out.