Bridget Jones - Mad About The Boy

Keeping Up
With The Joneses

Bridget Jones -
Mad About The Boy
Directed by Michael Morris
UK/France/USA 2025
Universal

Warning: Some character spoilers from the outset.

So once again, after a substantial break in the franchise, Renée Zellweger returns to the role which really put her on the map, at least internationally. Bridget Jones - Mad About The Boy is the fourth of the Bridget Jones films and, to be honest, after the last couple I really wasn’t expecting all that much from it. I’m happy to say I was wrong but, more on that later.

It’s interesting in that, while most of the important regular actors from previous installments are back for this fourth time round the merry-go-round that is Bridget Jones’ life… some of the characters are no longer with us at the start of this one. So we get a brief new scene in this featuring Jim Broadbent as her father, in a scene reminding us how important he was to Bridget before it’s revealed that, alas, his character has now passed on between films. Similarly and also very importantly to the title character, Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy character has also been tragically killed between movies, leaving Bridget alone to cope with their young son and daughter on her own. This doesn’t, however, stop Firth from turning up every now and again as a kind of memory ghost when Bridget needs him to.

One important character who is back was absent from the last movie, that of Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver. He’d spent the last go round missing presumed dead until it was revealed at the end that he had been found… he’s here now as a much more mellow, vulnerable and toned down version of the character and, as usual, Grant does it amazingly well, as a true friend and baby sitter to Bridget.

And, as Bridget decides to go back to her old job, she Tinders herself into a tryst with a new toy-boy suitor played by Leo Woodall and also gets interested in her kids new science teacher Mr. Wallaker, played by the always brilliant Chiwetel Ejiofor (who I shall eventually forgive for trying to kill Captain Mal in the Firefly movie Serenity). So it’s business as usual for Miss Jones (aka Mrs. Darcy) and all the usual shenanigans apply as she tries to engage with various different, sometimes overwhelming jigsaw puzzle pieces of her life at once… taking on Brazilian lip serum and negotiating the prospect of labial adhesion midst the minefield of problems life throws in her way.

Now I loved the original Bridget Jones’ Diary (don’t worry, I’m not going to make the same grammatical mistake as the people who marketed the first movie) but found the two sequels - Bridget Jones - The Edge Of Reason and Bridget Jones’ Baby to be much less interesting or even entertaining movies. So I’m very pleased to say that this last entry in the series is a much more satisfying film (despite a more linear structure than I was expecting in terms of the new relationships she has to juggle) and easily the best of the sequels, for my money. Not only that but, it also gets very emotional and, all I’m saying is there may have been tears for this audience member. Most of the jokes don’t fall flat and the actors are all absolutely great… it’s also nice to see James Callis back as the ‘one hit wonder’ millionaire who is still very much ‘in the money’ after his song is used in a viral video of a dog doing mathematics.

It was also great seeing actress Josette Simon, who I remember playing Dayna in Blake’s Seven when I was a teenager, added to the cast of characters. Glad these people are still working.

Another thing is, the film is true to the original characters quite a bit, with Zellwegger perhaps looking slightly more streamlined in the face but absolutely on point playing Bridget once more. This whole film seems like a non-starter after all this time but it’s actually a lovely way to conclude the series (although, I do see how they could maybe do one more if they wait another ten or so years, I think). So as far as I’m concerned, Bridget Jones - Mad About The Boy is an absolutely lovely film and a big recommendation from me. As I said earlier, easily the best of the sequels.

Venom - The Last Dance

Knull And Void

Venom - The Last Dance
Directed by Kelly Marcel
USA/UK/Mexico 2024
Columbia Pictures
UK Cinema Release Print

Okay... so Venom - The Last Dance was not quite the Venom film I was looking for but I think criticisms I’ve heard about it from various quarters have been a little harsh. It’s been said that it’s ‘all over the place’ both tonally and plot wise but... I don’t think that’s true. The various set pieces do not outweigh or distract from the fact that there is a distinct through line and it all does hold together quite well. At least in as much as most Hollywood large budget productions these days are mostly just set pieces strung together with a bunch of connective tissue anyway.

That being said, the story such as it is... evil Knull, imprisoned in some kind of dimensional void but with bizarrely God-like powers enough that he can send powerful demon dogs to other universes through portals to hunt down a codex to free himself... is utterly ridiculous and doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. I mean, if you can control all that power... why are you still imprisoned in the first place? Just open up a portal around you dude! Also, if the codex is only in the incarnation of the Venom/Eddie Brock symbiote because he brought Eddie back to life in a previous film and that’s what magically causes one to manifest (for absolutely no logical reason I can fathom) then what about certain other lives in the movie which were saved by other symbiotes? Wouldn’t that also generate another codex? Take your pick.

And that’s the only real problem with this one... well, the main problem, anyway. That the story and logic of that through line, which I assure you is there and at least holds things together, is so idiotic and paper thin that, you just don’t really care about the action that the story is holding up anymore.

Also, what the hell is going on with the casting? I mean, I know since the Disney MCU/Columbia merger from the last few years that we’re now in a different aspect of the multiverse but, having two actors who are known for portraying villains in the Marvel films as different characters is pushing it a bit. I mean, the Chris Evans callback to another era thing just about worked in Deadpool and Wolverine (reviewed here) but having Chiwetel Ejiofor, who played two different versions of Baron Mordo in two different Dr. Strange movies... and  Rhys Ifans, who played The Lizard in both a Columbia and an MCU Spider-Man movie... here playing completely unrelated characters... seems to me to be a couple of odd choices. As good as these actors are.

Okay, so we have Tom Hardy as both Eddie and the voice of Venom and that stuff, the double act he does, still hasn’t gotten old and is really entertaining. And there are some spectacular sequences... such as the Venom horse and the short action sequence in Mexico near the start of the film. And it also addresses Tom Hardy’s cameo appearances in the MCU films too, right from the outset. But there’s just something unsatisfying about all this good stuff without a really credible story to give the fantasy a believable foundation to act as secure tent pegs.

And what could have been a very moving couple of sequences at the end... did still seem quite moving, to be fair but, they just didn’t have the gravitas they could have had in the service of... well, a better story. And, okay, the final montage sequence of the movie (before the two post credits scenes) did seem quite clumsily executed, it has to be said.

But there’s stuff in here which is still worth a watch, such as the expected cameo appearance of Peggy Lu, returning again as Mrs. Chen (it probably works better if you like ABBA songs, I’m guessing). And, overall, I have to say I was fairly entertained by Venom - The Last Dance but it’s definitely my least favourite of the Venom movies, I would say.

As far as the future of Venom at the cinema goes... I’m sure the plan is to keep things going symbiote-wise for a while but possibly not with the inclusion of Venom or Brock as characters themselves. However, Columbia’s other two Spider-Man spin off characters this year are not going to be as successful as this one, for sure. Madam Web (reviewed here) was okayish but a bit of a let down and seems to be generally hated by the general public (and at least one of the lead actresses). And as for the upcoming Kraven - The Hunter... well... this looks about as far away as the original Spider-Man villain as you can get. I’m really expecting it to fall flat on its face, just like Madame Web and Morbius (reviewed here) did. Things are really not looking good for Columbia’s Spider-Man universe movies and I wouldn’t be surprised if another co-production deal with the Disney MCU is going to be on the cards in the near future. Time will tell, I guess.

Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness

Stephen Things

Doctor Strange And
The Multiverse Of Madness
USA  2022 Directed by San Raimi
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Yeah, this’ll have some spoilers.

Okay... this is going to be a fairly brief review, I think. It’s not that I didn’t like Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness... I did (and it might still grow on me some more). It’s a fine film and certainly an example of what is, currently, a typical Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. With more in the same vein teased in the first of the mid and post credits scenes. But I wasn’t exactly bowled over by it either... which is a shame because I think Sam Raimi can be a good director (I don’t think it’s his fault, for the record, as to why I had a less positive reaction to it than I'd expected) and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Marvel character of Doctor Stephen Strange.

The plot in this one deals... not with fall out from Spiderman No Way Home (reviewed here) as you would expect (although Spidey does get a quick mention)...in fact, it turns out that this film was originally supposed to have been released before that one. Nope, this one has a definite plot device of its own to cause alarm in one of the facets of the multiverse that Strange travels to. I said there would be spoilers in this review and so, if you want to avoid them, stop reading now...

It’s not a secret that joining regulars returning from the original Doctor Strange MCU film (reviewed here)... including  Benedict Cumberbatch (as Doctor Strange), Benedict Wong (as Wong), Rachel McAdams as Dr. Palmer and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Baron Mordo... is Elizabeth Olsen, reprising her role as Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch. Well, this film is pretty much kick started from fallout from her TV show WandaVision (reviewed here) but, instead of being a heroic character as she became after a brief stint as a villain at the end of Avengers Age Of Ultron (reviewed here), she actually reveals herself from very early on to be the main villain of the piece. It is she who is trying to get hold of new MCU character America Chavaz (played really nicely here by Xochitl Gomez). Chavez can travel through the multiverse but Wanda wants to kill her and take her powers to travel to a variant universe where she has children instead... which actually makes less sense than you might think, since she can piggy back into other versions of herself anyway.

It all gets a bit fraught and we get to see some guest character appearances, in different versions of their previous Marvel selves, along with new actors playing other variants. So Patrick Stewart enters the MCU as yet another version of Professor X (this film apparently marks the character’s fourth death on screen as played by Stewart), Hayley Atwell as Captain Peggy Carter (but a new superhero variant where she’s a kind of Captain Britain character who was in the What If? cartoon series) and John Krasinski as Reed Richards (yep, a multiverse variant of Mr. Fantastic also gets his MCU debut here)... plus a few others. And all of them die pretty horrible deaths at the hands of Wanda, it has to be said, although this is in no way a horror film, as some delicate parents have suggested (it’s a 12A certificate over here, for goodness sake and probably could have gotten away as a PG). True, there’s a person whose head implodes and another cut in half but, yeah, it’s all pretty bloodless for the most part (including those specific scenes), it has to be said.

It was fairly entertaining but the text was extremely dense and, on the way home from the cinema I was reflecting on why it mostly failed to connect with me. Well, despite a couple of scenes featuring Bruce Campbell (it’s a Raimi movie, so of course), there’s really not much humour in it. I mean, sure, some of the characters act in a humourous manner sometimes but, yeah, the script is not loaded with amusing dialogue and one liners like, say, the recent Spider-Man and Avengers movies. The film has a lot of gravitas and sometimes I felt like the writers were beating the audience over the head with the weight of the emotional consequences for various characters when they maybe should have injected a little more fun into things.

Raimi regular Danny Elfman was trying his best with the score here but, while he does include Michael Giacchino’s excellent leitmotif for the Stephen Strange character, it’s mostly very subtly done when, honestly, we needed that familiar theme to pop up way more often in the film, I think. It’s an okay score but, again, not much chance of me really finding out just how good or bad it is because, at time of writing, Hollywood Records have only released it on a useless electronic download and not on a physical CD... so this is another modern movie score I won’t be able to listen to properly, alas.

The first of the post-credits scenes, technically a mid credits scene, sets up another movie as a woman confronts Strange on a New York street and opens a portal to take him, once again, into another part of the multiverse. Well, this scene disappointed me because, when I saw the woman I was thinking to myself... “... please don’t be Clea, please don’t be Clea”. But then I checked the IMDB and, sure enough, this character is supposed to be the first appearance of Clea in the MCU. Frankly, she has none of the look and gothic impact of Doctor Strange’s future wife (and niece of the Dread Dormammu, if memory serves) and, yeah, she looks just like every other Marvel superhero clone (in fact, she looks more like the original version of Valkyrie in the comics). So I felt a bit deflated after that.

And that’s me done on Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness... which really does feel like a sequel to WandaVision more than anything else, truth be told. If you like the usual Marvel movies you will probably like this and, I certainly didn’t hate this one. However, all I will say is that, for residents of the UK, this is not the best of the multiverse movies at cinemas at present. For a much more entertaining look at alternate realities, check out my review of this one here.

Infinite

The
Regeneration
Game

Infinite
Paramount USA  2021
Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Warning: Plot spoilers, I guess.

Infinite is a new science fiction action adventure based on a relatively new novel, The Reincarnationist Papers, by D. Eric Maikranz. Now, this information surprised me because the story is very much a riff in the vein of a Philip K. Dick kind of concept and yes, it’s yet another of these recent sci-fi movies which feels like it's exploring concepts from 1950s science fiction, it seems to me. However, it’s a nice enough concept but... it’s kind of wasted the way it’s been presented here.

The Infinite of the title is the name a certain, smallish underground section of the population give to themselves. They are basically people who, from adolescence, can now recall all their past lives leading up to this point... so they don’t have to learn new skills and are pretty much experienced at everything they’ve tried their hand at for thousands of years. When they die, their soul is just reborn into another body and so on. However, the Infinites are split into two warring factions. There are the Believers... the good guys of the film who want to use their special skills to benefit mankind... and the Nihilists, the bad guys of the story who want to destroy the world so they don’t have to keep coming back in new bodies.

To this end, many years ago, the main villain Bathhurst, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor (who nearly always makes a good villain but he seems to have some truly terrible lines here... much like all his costars in this), invented an egg of destruction which, when activated, will wipe out all life on the planet. In a blistering car chase action sequence at the start of the movie we see a character, one of three Believers who die in the opening sequence, steal the destructive egg and we are told later that he has ‘hidden’ it somewhere. Why Bathhurst can’t make another one is not really made clear but, anyway, it’s up to the Nihilists to find the egg so they can destroy humanity and the Believers to find the egg to keep it hidden or, preferably, destroy it. However, nobody knows where the main action hero at the start of the movie hid it before his death.

Enter Marky Mark Wahlburg. That character has now been reborn into his character, Evan. However, he doesn’t know he’s an Infinite because of him being treated as a schizophrenic throughout his life (and the tin plate in his head doesn’t help either). However, when both factions of Infinites realise it’s him, the Believers nab him from under the noses of the Nihilists and start trying to ‘jog his memory’ about the heroic action man he really is and, more importantly, where he hid the egg.

And that’s the main set up and I won’t say much about the plot. All the actors including those just mentioned and the likes of Sophie Cookson, Dylan O’ Brien, Toby Jones, Liz Carr, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson and Jason Mantzoukas... are all pretty good. However, the dialogue they are asked to deliver in the film is, generally, not. Take the aforementioned Ejiofor, for example. We’ve seen him play a villain in numerous films and he’s always so threatening and not someone to be trifled with. Here, however, nothing much he’s saying is worth listening too and that goes for pretty much all of the other characters in this. The only redeeming moment in his character is the fact that, with the beard and black costume choices he has, he does tend to come off as a kind of knock of Roger Delgado as The Master (from the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who), so I was at least able to enjoy his performance on that level.

Another huge problem is the opening of the movie. It starts off with this truly brilliant action sequence (rendered less effective by some rubbish rap song over a lot of it) but... it’s the best set piece in the movie. It’s too strong and makes all the other action sequences in the film which follow look bad in comparison. And I’m sorry but, Marky Mark riding his bike off a really high cliff in Scotland and managing to land it on the wing of a plane which has already been in the air for two minutes really doesn’t help things. This film is definitely going for the action stakes but, as far as I’m concerned at any rate, it really fails to deliver for a lot of the time. Don’t get me wrong, the film is entertaining enough and the kicks, punches, slices and explosions are fine... they just aren’t enough to save it and, coupled with the script... yeah, I was a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing. And I still can’t figure out why a secret society would advertise their whereabouts to the enemy by flying around in aircraft with a big Möbius strip logo on the side.

What I wasn’t underwhelmed with was the action score provided by the great Harry Gregson-Williams. This was, frankly, the only reason I bothered to see the movie, it has to be said, as I'd already bought a copy of the limited edition CD release from La La Land records and I wanted to hear how it played in the movie before listening to it as a stand alone. And how it plays in the movie is... mixed way too low when it could have been way better highlighted against all the bangs and pops of the drab action sequences. But I know the CD will get a fair few spins so, at least there’s that. Thanks to the company for allowing La La Land to put this one out.

And... not much more to say about this one. The film has some nice concepts such as an electronic acupuncture machine to help stimulate memory and a gun that fires bullets which capture the souls of Infinites so they can’t resurrect again, stored in a computer chip instead but... the execution seems lousy on this one, for some reason. Things just don’t seem to be either pumped up enough or gritty enough to be consistently watchable and, yeah, well I won’t be watching Infinite again anyway, I would say. If you like sci-fi action movies then it’s not absolutely terrible and it’s not too dull a diversion of an evening. Just don’t go in expecting an epic.

Mary Magdalene

Mary, ‘Cross The Fair Sea

Mary Magdalene
UK/Australia/USA 2018
Directed by Garth Davis
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

I was always lead to believe that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute and I’ve seen that alluded to a fair few times in films over the years. Not so, apparently. According to the end of this film it was some pope who spread such stories many centuries ago. Now, I can’t say if this is a great adaptation of certain sections of The Bible or not, to be honest. The last time I read it... or, you know, a version of it... I was very young (maybe four or five?) and, frankly, I’m not a religious person. That’s not to say I don’t believe in God or some kind of Godly presence... if I can give consideration to the possibility of aliens and ghosts I can certainly believe in the possibility of that too... but I certainly don’t think any organised religion is going to have some kind of true, unvarnished story of what did or didn’t happen all those years ago. So, if you want to know what hill I’m sitting reviewing this from... it’s from the one where I’m not necessarily ungodly, just not prepared to decipher my way through a lot of man made, rabble controlling nonsense disguised as any of the religions of the world.

The reasons I wanted to see Mary Magdalene, as I missed it on the one week it was available at my local cinema last year, are two fold. Firstly, I quite like Rooney Mara and think she’s a great actress who possesses a certain quality that makes her kinda unique. Not necessarily better than all the others, just unique and... I haven’t been let down by her yet. I enjoy her work. Secondly, I knew the musical score was by Hildur Guðnadóttir and Jóhann Jóhannsson, which means this must have been one of the last scores that Jóhannsson worked on before he was found dead in a hotel room in Germany and I wanted to hear what he had done with it. So those are my reasons and the viewpoint from which I am approaching this film.

Now, it has to be said that this movie got my back up right away because, even though I’m not a religious person, the caption at the start informs us that it’s set in the year 33CE. Well, I’m sorry but I don’t agree with CE as something useful as anything other than a stupidly politically correct and possibly cowardly stance so as not to offend people of religious sensibilities believing in something other than what some people would mistakenly have you believe are, ‘the right religious sensibilities’. I know the term CE is, in fact, many centuries old but, frankly, I’ve have had BC and AD in my life for a long time and they outdate the alternate terms by around 1600 years. So I’m not having any of it. I may not be religious but it’s BC and AD or nothing, as far as I’m concerned. Have some respect for the past is what I say (not to mention the future).

Okay so, in spite of that, this is a quite a nice if, mostly, joyless take on the story of the last days of Jesus Christ. Christ is played by Joaquin Phoenix but everything in this film is seen through the eyes of Mary, played so interestingly by Mara, so we don’t even get to Jesus until a good twenty minutes or so into the film. Which is a bit of a double edged sword in terms of getting across the oft told story from the source material but, in all honesty, it makes a nice change.

Now, the director has gone for a lot of muted colours and, aside from the built in gravitas which seems to mostly be an inherent trait of the way this material is always handled, we also have a fairly sedate and less than colourful series of shots which add to the effect, despite some big smiles from Phoenix, that this is not a fun film in some respects. Although, if you believe in what the bible says then I can understand that a certain section of the audience will get more of a happier experience out of the content of the movie... just don’t look for it in the mise en scene.

That being said, and while I am on the subject of mise en scene... there is some nice photography and shot design in this movie. Although the cliché of the ‘very slightly moving hand held camera for shots that would normally be static’ methodology is applied during a lot of the film, there’s some nice shot design on hand too. I was especially impressed with a shot towards the end with Rooney Mara’s veiled, white head in close up as she’s telling the other disciples that Christ has risen. One particular shot where her head in the veil is splitting the screen vertically is great because the blurred background behind her head is full of dark texture on the left and light texture on the right... so her head becomes the focal point that the rest of the shot leads the eye too. That was a nice piece of work there and I wish they’d gone back to the that shot set up later on in the conversation because it was more effective than some of the other stuff they were doing in that scene.

Mara and Phoenix are both good in this, as is the always Chiwetel Ejiofor who pays Peter and some guy called Tahar Rahim, who plays Judas with wide eyed enthusiasm which helps the character come across as a somewhat naive person, it has to be said. So no problems on the acting front although, truth be told, I found the early parts of the movie... Before Christ (BC), so to speak... a little more gripping than the rest of the story.

In fact, the rest of the story does, in fact, kinda play out like a ‘selected highlights’ or ‘greatest hits’ compilation of famous set pieces of Jesus’ final days and, to a certain extent, you can’t blame the writers and directors from taking that approach. Especially since it’s pretty much the same approach that most films over the last 100 years have taken. However, the director and writers have, perhaps a little too conveniently, used the guise of having the narrative switched to Mary as a focal point, so they can skip a whole load of stuff which either a) she wasn’t allegedly to have been witness to or b) would have taken a lot more time and money to produce, I suspect. I don’t mind that so much myself and was somewhat relieved, since the film does drag a little at two hours, to not have to sit through things like the trial before Pilate and some other noteworthy bits of the various accounts of the events during the already longish running time.

Though, I have to say that this means it was only watchable to me, in terms of the coherence of the story content, because I already knew the basic tale of Jesus in the first place. Something I’m sure a certain percentage of the audience will have to fall back on but, I have to say, without this prior knowledge of the ‘between the lines’ of the events depicted on screen, I would have had a pretty hard time trying to piece together what was going on if I was new to this particular set of religious ideas. So, I can’t help but feel that the built in nature of audience expectation on the part of the film-makers here is a little arrogant and a smidge irresponsible/optimistic. It might, of course, promote further research for some of the audience or... you know... may not. Which is in itself a bit of a challenge unless you’re willing to take things that have been passed down through the years as ‘gospel’... so to speak.

At the end of the day, Mary Magdalene is a little dull in places but the performances of the leads are electric and if you have a prior knowledge of the source material on which this tale is being based and that stuff doesn’t offend you, then you will probably have an okay time with this one. I quite enjoyed it and, although it did drag a little in places, as I said, it never really outstayed it’s welcome and I was glad I chose this film to watch as my Easter Sunday viewing this year. I always like to have some kind of Easter connected film to watch over this period and so that was today’s choice.

Oh... and in case you were wondering, the music didn’t let me down. A nice score which I’m happy to see is on CD and which I will probably listen to a fair few times over the years. Not the best material any of the leads or principal movers on this movie could have chosen but glad to have followed them on their journey. Check this one out if you’re so inclined as it’s certainly not the worst film I’ve seen on the subject.

Doctor Strange

Benedict In Monks

Doctor Strange
2016 USA  Directed by Scott Derrickson
UK cinema release print.

Doctor Strange is one of those comic book characters who I loved as a kid and I got quite excited when I’d heard Johnny Depp was in consideration for the role. I wasn’t too disappointed when he exited the scene because, frankly, Benedict Cumberbatch is one of those actors who you know will do a great job with any material he’s given and I could see how the arrogance his Sherlock character projected would be something which could really help bring the pre-magical version of Dr. Stephen V. Strange to life (the V stands for Vincent and that was who the original look of the character in those early 1960s appearances in Strange Tales, which I loved so much in reprint form, was based on... Vincent Price).

Now, I used to love these comics because Doctor Strange could jump out of his physical body and do battle on the astral planes, while somebody was hanging around and guarding his physical form so it was kept safe from harm. As a young 7 or 8 year old, of course, I was all about things like astral projection and ‘out of the body’ experiences so, when you had a Marvel superhero who could do all that stuff, it was a treat.

I went to the cinema on the first night of release in the UK, which was unusual enough in that it was a Tuesday, because I just couldn’t wait to see how this character fits into and pushes the boundaries of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the answer, on both those counts, was... well, actually pretty well. Scott Derrickson, who directed this wonderful movie, has actually treated the material with the respect it deserves and you get a real feeling of those early short strips co-created by Stan Lee and, as importantly (perhaps more so), original Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko, who helped write and then drew the strips. They were pretty much a guide to the psychedelic world of the spirit in its hippiest, trippiest form but, a good few years before all that wave of counter culture hit (I’d personally say that certain sequences in Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle of movies also foresaw and possibly ‘usher’ed in the birth of psychedelia... possibly as influenced by the colour work that Mario Bava brought to the cinema and which the people at AIP studios at the time were more than aware of).

The movie really does those early 1963 and 1964 tales justice and the origin is pretty much the same as the one depicted in the comics, although I believe The Ancient One was originally based in the Himalayas and, either way, he was most certainly an old man...not Tilda Swinton, who plays the role in the film. And that’s not a dig by the way... the casting of the always brilliant Tilda is a really shrewd one, especially since the wonderful Rachel McAdams plays the only other female character in this movie and she’s pretty much wasted in how little screen time she has for the majority of the story. We also have the amazing Chiwetel Ejiofor, a villainous Mads Mikkelsen and a very funny Benedict Wong in the cast. Along with Cumberbatch, absolutely nailing Strange as you would expect from him, they have a really great ensemble group of actors here... at least two or three of whom will definitely need to come back for further Marvel movies.

I do have a few disappointments in the film but they are really minor. I’ll just get them out of the way now.

Okay... so somewhere in The Avengers (aka Marvel’s Avengers Assemble and reviewed here), I’m pretty sure Doctor Strange is mentioned in the helicarrier (also in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, reviewed here... but that’s a different issue). Now the Stark Tower wasn’t rebuilt as The Avengers Tower until after the events that took place in that movie so... how can a ‘pre-heroed up’ version of the character be looking out on a New York skyline that includes The Avenger’s Tower? Surely the timeline here doesn’t make sense and is a bit of a... well, a huge continuity error? I may be wrong but that kind of hit me between the eyes when I was looking at this movie in cinemas.

The other thing is that the tone of the story seems a bit... hmmm... somehow a bit too ‘even’. The magical battles are really something special in that they’ve done it all superbly... well okay, the astral plane versions of the characters aren't totally white ghosts like they were in the comics but what they’ve done here gets the message across pretty well and probably appears a lot more acceptable on screen than taking the look straight from the page, is my guess. However, there doesn’t seem to be much contrast within the scenes... with the last third of the movie being a few battles at different locations following on in quick succession without any real contrast in the sequences. I felt it needed just a little more ‘oomph and rest’ between set pieces to give you time to breathe and pace things a little more... thus enhancing the action sequences when they come...  but that didn’t quite get that feel here so it almost threatens to become somewhat less than the sum of its parts on occasion.

A third thing is problematic purely because I knew the early comics. There’s a character in here and, as soon as I heard his name, I knew where the story arc was going to be taking him... I won’t reveal the character name here because if you know the comics you’ll know it already... and I don’t want to put in any spoilers here. I didn’t know if they were going to be saving a certain ‘turning point’ for that character for a later movie or maybe they were going to go the full Green Lantern movie route and have that character do his thing in an epilogue scene. Well, this movie has two post-movie scenes, as do a lot of MCU movies these days. One superb one in the middle of the credits with exactly the Marvel character I had suspected would turn up making an appearance and gluing it together with one of next year’s MCU movies... and a post credits scene where the character I mentioned before gets to live up to the character as portrayed in the comics. So, yeah, they went the full Green Lantern on this one... which is fine by me because I’m one of the few people who actually loved the Green Lantern movie and I believe the plot and structure of the new Doctor Strange movie shares a lot of DNA with it, actually. Anyway, my problem was that I knew something pretty basic about a certain character who is in the movie way before it happened and so... maybe that wasn’t the wisest move. Then again, there are probably a significantly less number of people who used to read Doctor Strange than most of the other Marvel comics so... it’s not such a big deal, I guess.

Everything else about the movie works really well. The acting, the look and design, the spectacular special effects are all absolutely brilliant... and the dialogue in this one is really great too. There’s definitely a lot of fun and humour about this movie and it’s certainly a sharp relief from the previous MCU movie, Captain America - Civil War (reviewed by me here). Another great thing about it is the music...

Now, I’m gutted that Brian Tyler didn’t get a chance to work on this because I like how he’s slowly been bringing the musical elements of the Marvel cinematic universe into some kind of coherent style (something the company seriously needs) but now they’ve pulled in Michael Giacchino on scoring duties. Now I quite like Giacchino anyway (although I don’t like his opening, Marvel company fanfare as much as Tyler’s) and he turns in a really great score here. Definitely loved the sitars used in the end titles and it all works really well with the movie. Cant wait to get the CD of this one... it’ll be on for quite a few spins, I can tell you.

This movie has all the usual tie ups that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is known for and I’m sure Doctor Strange will be playing a special role in the proceedings in the third of The Avengers films. There’s a special artefact he always had in the comics, apart from the famous red cloak (blue in those original stories... if memory serves me... it didn’t change to red until later) and I’m sure anyone familiar with the artefact I’m talking about from the strips will realise exactly how this factors in with some of the last few years’ Marvel movies... so I won’t say anything more on that subject here because one of the characters, Wong, makes the connection quite implicit by the end of the film. So, basically, if you’re trying to watch all the specific Marvel movies which link into each other at the cinema... definitely don’t miss this one.

And, really, you don’t want to miss Doctor Strange anyway. It’s a terrific, fun movie and, although it injects a certain gravitas into some of the subject matter, it’s a welcome antidote to some of those solemn, darker super hero movies which have been doing the rounds at the cinema lately... juggling a dark, frightening tone with a light, frothy window dressing. Great stuff and easily the best of the superhero movies I’ve seen this year. Watch it while it’s hot!

The Martian

Redded Bliss

The Martian
2015 USA
Directed by Ridley Scott
UK cinema release print.

Okay... the first thing you need to know about me if you’re going to read this review is that I’ve never read Andy Weir’s bestselling novel The Martian, on which this film is based. Therefore, I really can’t give you any idea of how good an adaptation this movie is of the source material, which, with someone like Ridley Scott at the helm, could go either way (I still refuse to watch Hannibal after what he apparently did to it). What I can do, though, is review this purely on its own terms as a personal cinematic experience... which is all a production team would possibly want from a review, I would think.

Ridley Scott used to be my favourite director for a little while, back in the mid-1980s. He directed two of my favourite films, in fact. Firstly, the original ALIEN, the first theatrical release cut of which I would still claim is the best of any of the movies to make use of the titular creature created for it by H. R. Giger. Secondly, he directed what has, since I first saw it as a teenager in 1982 at my local cinema, been my favourite movie of all time (maybe tying in first place with The Third Man). That film being the original cut of Blade Runner (reviewed here)... one of the most moving and spectacular modern noirs I can think of.

Unfortunately he's also let me down quite a bit over the years. The Hannibal debacle was just the start. He also delivered a ‘director’s cut’ of his original ALIEN which, while restoring sequences we all wanted to see, also trimmed footage from the whole experience and sped the film up somewhat needlessly, Scott citing the way audiences change and digest visual information to be the prime motivator in his decisions on that one (if I remember the interviews correctly about that at the time). Similarly, we now have something like five different versions of Blade Runner but, still by far the best, is the one which Criterion put out on laserdisc (now on the latest Blu Rays and DVD box set presentations of the movie) which was a less censored version of the original theatrical release.

So when it comes to Scott I have a lot to gripe about in terms of what he’s done to what were my favourite movies of his, not to mention the abomination of Prometheus... but that’s another story and I reviewed that one here.  The fact that he's about to 'prometheus up' a sequel to Blade Runner is the final nail in the coffin of good taste, it seems to me.

However, he’s visually brilliant, no matter what choices he makes, and since cinema is at least 50% reliant on the visual aspect (I would say) then you can’t deny that the man is a bit of a film making genius... whether you agree with his decisions or not. So I went into The Martian with open eyes and a desire to be impressed because I like science fiction and, also, I quite like Matt Damon as an actor/personality... so, yeah, I thought I’d give it a go.

What we have here is a film about an astronaut left for dead and stranded on Mars with roughly no chance of survival. He then sets about trying to beat all the odds to try and a) survive, b) communicate with his NASA colleagues on Earth and, c) organise some kind of plausible rescue in the kind of time window he has left before the inevitable stranglehold of approaching death comes to claim him.

And you know what? It’s a pretty good film.

Having a likeable celebrity like Matt Damon in the lead role certainly helps lift this and, luckily, he is supported by an absolutely astonishing cast of cool actors such as Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean, Michael Peña and Chiwetel Ejiofor... not to mention a load of lesser known actors (to me, at least) who all knock it out of the park when it comes to performance. That is to say, like the best science fiction, the acting makes everything completely credible and, with a plot like this, where credibility isn’t so much of an issue due to the implied scientific know how... everything seems totally convincing in this movie. Even the bits which might not be quite as scientifically accurate as you might hope or expect.

Scott doesn’t direct this in the same way as the earlier movies that I best remember of his (The Duelists, Alien, Blade Runner, Legend or Someone to Watch Over Me, for example) and I was expecting the movie to be full of extremely long, slow pans and a very specific kind of lighting style which I didn’t see once. Instead, we have a way of shooting, or at least editing, which splits things up into smaller cells of time. Now don’t get me wrong here... this isn’t cut/cut/cut for the MTV generation kind of filmmaking... but it is a heck of a lot pacier and it struck me that Scott has done a clever thing here...

What he seems to be doing is splitting up the Matt Damon scenes of isolation and shooting them from different viewpoints and sources in order to somehow pacify the sense of isolation for the character. The director could very easily have gone down a Mr. Forbush and the Penguins kind of route (reviewed here) with the way in which he shot the lead actor but, instead, he goes from maybe a close up or slow pan to a different view as seen from a monitor... or on another kind of visual source. And quite a lot of the action deliberately takes us away from Damon and shows it all from the point of view of either the people on Earth or Damon’s colleagues, who are on their way back home. Though this is possibly dictated by the content of the novel (and like I said, I really don’t know)... the writer and director could easily have gone for a version of the movie which stays with the title character a lot more and gets information from other sources communicated in a different way than it is here. So it’s an artistic choice and I think either way could have worked very well and got us two completely different looking movies.

Scott’s gone this way and it seems to work really well.

The other thing we have here is a movie with no real central antagonist. Okay, yeah, it could be argued that Jeff Daniels character fulfils that role to a certain degree... almost by default because he’s the one who has to make a lot of tough decisions. However, this is more a disaster movie in the aspect that most people are all there pulling for each other (including Daniels) and this does tend to give the movie a strangely unexpected feel good factor. This is not a downbeat film by any means and, I think, Scott has chosen not to emphasise the chronic sense of danger in the way he’s shot this movie...

For instance, when Damon’s title character, Mark Watney, accidentally blows himself up while he is trying to find a way to manufacture water to grow potatoes for food, it’s played mostly for comedy and the moment the calamity happens is almost slapstick in the way it is timed and staged. It certainly got a huge laugh from the audience I was with at my local cinema. Sure, we are aware of the consequences but they’re downplayed to an extent where we can watch the drama unfold without taking things too dryly. Now that’s possibly not the most appropriate decision but it’s certainly a solid artistic decision and, whether you agree with it or not, you have to give the moviemakers some credit for taking a less expected route.

At the end of the day, The Martian is a surprisingly strong 'feel good' movie. I certainly wasn’t expecting that from someone like Ridley Scott, who is certainly no stranger at portraying ‘the black dog’ on film... but it’s certainly what I got. It’s maybe not as bleak or as effective in the sense of filling the audience with the appropriate amount of terror that such a situation presents us with but it’s extremely watchable and a real fun trip of a movie. Perhaps not a complete masterpiece but certainly a fine work of art from a great British director... so give this one a go if you like plausible science fiction wrapped up in an addictive little package of a movie. Not one you’d want to miss having an opinion on, methinks.

A Salt on Precinct Jolie

Salt 2010 US

Directed by Philip Noyce

Screening at cinemas now

There will be some slight spoilers here... you are duly cautioned.

There’s not a lot really that I can say about Salt of any consequence. It’s a fairly decently made, mostly entertaining action thriller which checks all the right boxes and cynically sets itself up for a sequel which I suspect will never be made... but don’t go in expecting anything more than that.

I’ve heard it bandied about that Salt is, perhaps, to be considered an intelligent action thriller. Is it? Well no, really it’s just got a halfway decent script and the lines are spoken with some conviction... and the action sequences, which take up most of the running time, are fastly edited but not too fast, thankfully, that you can’t make out what’s going on...

Let’s put it this way... it’s not unintelligent... it’s just not nearly as smart as it’s trying to be. All the twists and turns in this movie are amply telegraphed long before they are “revealed” to the audience. The identity of Salt herself for example and the, is she or isn’t she a Russian spy, thing. The movie tries to have it’s cake and eat it here by making her both who has defected her allegiance to the US government through the love of her husband (played by the King Kong Nazi from Inglourious Basterds). The director does his absolute best to make you think that Salt is “the bad assassin gal” but due to the sense of morality in the film they telegraph her intentions throughout by having her wound or incapacitate any of her fellow countrymen rather than kill them because, you know, she’s really working for the good old US.

Similarly, you’ll probably figure out who the real villain of the piece long before the movie tries to throw any suspicion on Salt herself. If you are in any doubt as to the identity of the “real” mole in the CIA is before you actually see him go into action then... well you’ve obviously been happily mollified by the balletic and energetically edited action sequences with which the film is laced.

No matter. The acting performances are superb and are exactly what you’d expect from such top-notch performers as Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor and the aforementioned August Diehl... although to be fair, Ejiofor and Diehl are completely wasted and it was a bit embarrassing having a final one-on-one scene between Jolie and Ejiofor where Ejiofor’s character acted at complete odds with the character as you’ve seen him in the rest of the movie. His decision really doesn’t make sense but then again, neither does the rush ending. All Jolie’s character has to say is... “Hey, don’t take my word for it... just ask the president when he regains consciousness... he’ll tell you who it was”... but the film doesn’t seem to want to hang around for long enough to tie up all the loose ends.

I think my main criticism of the film is that it’s definitely trying to hit the same, projected, audience pleasing hotspots as the remake of The Bourne Identity. Again, it’s a bit embarrassing but you can almost see the accountants saying... okay, we want a scene where Jolie escapes from a building where everyone is after her... then we want a scene where she’s inching herself around a ledge on a high up building. Oh, and a scene where she changes her appearance please. Ooh... and can we have that bit where Matt Damon jumps in the water at the end of The Bourne Ultimatum in it please. Oooh... and how about starting the movie off with the post-credits sequence from Die Another Day (one of the worst Bond films ever made) but replace tortured up Brosnan with tortured up Jolie and then swap her back like in that movie. And all the while, we want a score which sounds exactly like John Powell’s Bourne scores pumping away in the background please... oh, but don’t get John Powell ‘cause he’s getting pricey... just temp track it with his stuff and then get James Newton Howard on it. He can copy anyone’s style.

My last paragraph says it all I think... I’d have sworn that the score was by John Powell in Bourne mode and nearly jumped out my seat when James Newton Howard’s name came up. Not his fault though... I expect it was heavily suggested to him that he sound like that and I suspect this may be yet another modern day crime against filmanity... temptrackitus.

All in all though, Salt was a fun ride at the cinema for those welcome times when you feel you can switch your brain off and just let the shadows and light wash over you. If you like convincingly delivered lines but with loads of foot chases, gun battles, explosions and stabbings then you might like to give this film a try... Salt is Peppered with sequences like these!