CARRY-ON**

With CARRY-ON, director Jaume Collet-Serra (BLACK ADAM) delivers a po-faced, humourless, holiday-themed action thriller that is competent but never thrilling.  Taron Egerton (KINGSMAN) plays an aimless loser TSA agent co-opted by a mercenary (Jason Bateman - Arrested Development) who wants to smuggle a nerve agent onto a plane on Christmas Eve. Cue confused looks from co-workers and pregnant girlfriend/colleague as our hero starts muttering to himself and acting weird.  Luckily a sparky black policewoman (Danielle Deadwyler - TILL) - following our recent trend from WICKED LITTLE LETTERS and VENGEANCE MOST FOWL - realises something is up.  No prizes for guessing how it resolves.

I give it two stars from some genuinely good banter between Bateman and Egerton in the first act, with Bateman needling Egerton's TSA agent for his lack of ambition. But where's the warmth?  This film probably suffers from the fact that I recently rewatched the original DIE HARD. In that film we had jokes, we had catchphrases, we had actual relationship peril between our working class guy and his business executive wife.  We had a properly iconic villain.  This film lives in DIE HARD's shadow with its basic plot beats and concept, but feels so much more drab.

CARRY-ON is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 119 minutes. It was released on Netflix earlier this month.

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL*****

It's hard to believe that Wallace & Gromit have been entertaining us for over 35 years. They have become veritable national treasures, along with their inventor and animator Nick Park.  And this latest instalment of their adventures, given a prime-time slot of Christmas Day in the UK, is an absolute delight!  The films remain as wonderfully funny, heat-warming, cine-literate, and genuinely pleasing to all ages as the rest of the franchise. We were guffawing, spell-bound and heartily pleased.

Park is joined by co-director Merlin Crossingham, on debut, in VENGEANCE MOST FOWL.  We begin with our beloved inventor Wallace, now voiced by Ben Whitehead, creating a household helper called Norbot to help with his long-suffering sidekick Gromit's daily tasks. Of course, the mute dog Gromit can never voice his scepticism at the ruthless efficiency of Norbot, but his expressively animated face tells us that he is not the least bit surprised when Norbot is hacked and placed in Evil mode, spawning a whole series of nefarious droids.  And who has hacked them? None other than our duos nemesis, Feathers McGraw!  Currently incarcerated in a zoo thanks to Wallace & Gromit's past crime-fighting capers, McGraw is out to re-steal the Blue Diamond, with the help of his minion-Norbots. Can our trusty duo save the day?!

This film has everything you might hope for in a Wallace & Gromit spectacular. Lovingly hand-crafted clay-mation. Tons of visual gags and cinema references, particularly to break-out films and heist movies.  And some wonderful voice cast cameos - not least Diane Morgan aka Philomena Cunk as Onya Doorstep, a local news reporter.  In the main cast, I loved Reece Sheersmith (Inside No.9) as Norbot and newcomer Lauren Patel as PC Mukherjee.  

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL is rated PG and has a running time of 79 minutes. It was released on BBC One in the UK on Christmas Day and will be released on Netflix on January 3rd.

GRAN TURISMO**

There's an essay to be written on what happens to spiky independent directors who sell-out to dumb franchise movies, cf Ben Wheatley's MEG 2 and Neill Blomkamp (formerly of the superb DISTRICT 9 and CHAPPIE) helming this piss-poor piece of product merchandising.  It's hard to see anything of Blomkamp's political satire and visual artistry in GRAN TURISMO. Instead, we get a painfully tired, cliched, nakedly commercial, underdog sports film about a sim racer turned actual real life racing driver, based on a true story.

There are many flaws with this film, and a ham-fisted script is the largest one. Second, we have a cast basically phoning it in (that's you David Harbour), or playing it one shot shy of a camp Bond villain (Orlando Bloom). But the real problem is that the racing doesn't excite. I love a bit of F1 and have watched many an autosport movie. It says a lot that you can stage scenes at some iconic tracks - not least the beast of the Nurburgring - and not set my pulse racing. I think the problem is that Blomkamp doesn't distinguish between sim and real racing. In fact, he does the opposite. He makes real racing feel like sim-racing by adding on visual trackers and taking away any real life feel for track noise and atmosphere. When I watch a racing movie, I want to feel the heat, the sound, the the tension, the stakes. I want to smell the burning rubber.  This film gave me none of that.

Still, I am awarding the film two stars. One for its young lead actor Archie Madekwe who puts in an earnest and compelling central performance. And one for the comedy value of seeing real-life F1 Principal's wife and ex-Spice Girl Gerri Halliwell uttering the immortal line "these lentils are nice".

GRAN TURISMO has a running time of 134 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is on global release.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE*****

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is the action film other action films want to be when they grow up. It brings us glamorous destinations and stunts that are better choreographed and more audacious than a James Bond, Bourne or Fast film.  But most of all, it brings us a depth of relationship dynamic that we just don't get with other films.  The characters care about each other, they riff off of each other, and they have a profound moral sense. This means that amidst the action scenes we get moments of real pathos.  We actually care that the characters survive.  We actually believe in their mission.  

The big bad in this film couldn't be more timely: a sentient AI that has gained access to every major nation's defense and intelligence systems.  Governments are vying to control it and so become the world's next superpower.  By contrast, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his friends and colleagues in the Impossible Mission Force want to stop it. And to do so they need to unite two half of a cruciform key AND figure out what that key unlocks.  This mission will lead them from an attempted theft in Abu Dhabi airport, to a car chase in Rome, a brokered deal in Venice, and an interception aboard the Orient Express.

The stunts are just incredible. The car chase in Rome neatly references THE ITALIAN JOB and gives us the physical comedy of Cruise driving a tiny Fiat. But the money shot is the one that was featured in the extended trailer, showing Cruise motorcycling off a mountain then free gliding onto the Orient Express.  And yes, in a world of CGI, the fact that we see and know that it is Cruise makes all the difference. 

But as I said before, what makes this film fantastic are the layered relationships and call-backs.  I love Vanessa Kirby channelling Vanessa Redgrave from MI1, as Max's daughter and Alanna.  I love having Harry Czerny back as Kitteridge, and how Macquarrie shoots him in a askew angles, just like Brian de Palma in the first film.  As for the much ridiculed MI2 I would argue that Hayley Atwell's Grace is basically Nia Nordorff-Hall redrawn with more spunk.  From MIs 1 to 3 on we get both Simon Pegg's Benji and Ving Rhames's Luther as the IMF's IT experts, with some great banter as to who is the best coder. (Clearly, Luther!)  And from MI5 and 6 we get Rebecca Ferguson's literally kickass former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust. In other words, the gang's back together and we really feel their love for each other: indeed that bond is an integral part of the plot.

It's worth taking a moment to note that the core group of players is one of the most diverse in contemporary action film. Few films are making their crack coders older black men.  Even better, that we rarely see a MI woman in a bikini (unless she's training to hold her breath underwater).  These are all professional competent women. They aren't (with the exception of Nia) damsels in distress. And while Grace is a shit action driver, well, wouldn't we all be? But we have no doubt that she would be a skilled member of IMF in due course.  And let's just highlight the careful writing of the character Paris, played superbly by Pom Klementieff. In a Bond film, she'd be just another crazed evil henchman.  But in this film she's given growth, nuance and dignity.

It's also worth remembering that what Tom Cruise and Christopher Macquarie have achieved is rare: they have pushed forward the action genre while also creating a mournful meditation on the toll secret work takes on personal relationships and the refuge that is found family.  And, if that sounds po-faced, they do this while also making meta-jokes about latex masks and how everyone thinks the IMF is the International Monetary Fund. 

I cannot speak highly enough for the way in which this franchise has developed. MI3 had been my favourite instalment up until now but this just blew me away.  See it now, on the biggest screen with the big sound system you can find. 

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE has a running time of 163 minutes and is rated 12A in the UK and PG-13 in the USA. It is on global release.

SILENT NIGHT****

Camille Griffin's brilliantly nasty little black comedy, SILENT NIGHT, deserves to become a cult Christmas classic alongside BAD SANTA and TRADING PLACES. It basically satirises all those posh, mawkish, godawful Richard Curtis films as well as middle-class Englishness in general. It gathers together a bunch of well-heeled university friends in a lovely country house for Christmas dinner, where the angst is about whether or not Waitrose has run out of sparkling water and sticky toffee pudding. Except, there's something bigger going on than your typical One Percent Problem. The world is about to end because of an irreversible environmental disaster, and everyone is going to take a suicide pill after Crimbo dinner.  These pills have been provided by the government. I mean, not to everyone, you understand. Not to immigrants, and the homeless and people who don't count in our affluent society. And as with the current climate and epidemiological crises, there are people who are in denial and think it's all a conspiracy. Not least the increasingly desperate son of the hosts, played by JOJO RABBIT's Roman Griffin Davis (conveniently the son of the director) much to the chagrin of his exasperated parents (Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode in standard posh mode).

The darkest of dark comic conceits is played beautifully by the superb ensemble cast. My favourite moments are those with the best swearing, or those with the most surprising pathos:  a little girl who won't cuddle her mummy, because mummy spent her trust fund on a pair of shoes.  It prompts a fun parlour game: what would YOU do if the world were about to end? What would you spend on? Who would you shag? And would YOU take the pill?

SILENT NIGHT has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated 15. It played Toronto 2021 and is on release in the UK.

MILITARY WIVES

I've been taking advantage of certain studios making current releases available to stream at home.  The choice is limited, and MILITARY WIVES is perhaps not the movie I would have plumped for on a Saturday night had the full choice of London's cineplexes been made available to me.  Nonetheless, it did want I predicted and wanted - it was lightly funny, rather moving and allowed for some catharsis in these strange times.

Based on a true story, the film is about how women cope when their service-people go off to war.  There are lots of small but moving moments - of a woman packing away her husband's things as she becomes effectively a single mother for six months - or another woman telling a protestor she doesn't have the luxury of being against the war, she has to live with it.  You have to admire the grit and no-nonsense courage of these women who keep home life going, knowing their loved ones may not come back.   What I really like about the film is that it shows you a slice of life - with its own codes and expectations - that I hadn't known existed.  Because the wives are in some ways as regimented as their spouses - and when the fighters go to war, the highest ranking wives have to come up with "clubs" that keep the wives' morale boosted.

And so we have the Military Wives Choir - led by  the no-nonsense Sharon Horgan (CATASTROPHE) and the uptight closed off Kristin Scott Thomas (FOUR WEDDINGS etc).  Both actors are playing to type and the personality clash is both inevitable and inevitably resolved. Naturally, Sharon Horgan's character wants the women to sing pop songs and to be inclusive. Naturally, Scott Thomas' character wants the women to be dignified and to actually practice scales and keep time.  Quelle surprise - it takes both skillsets to create a choir that is genuinely good enough to sing at the Royal Albert Hall's memorial concert. Naturally there has to be a third act falling out and making up, just in time for the big concert.  Naturally, one of the wives turns out to have an amazing voice.

So none of this film is surprising in its broad strokes, and it's only intermittently funny in its scenes.  One wishes Sharon Horgan might have been allowed a pass at the script.  But what the film does do is show something of the real ordeal that these spouses endure, and some of the tougher details of military life.  I can't deny that it got a little dusty in the room on a couple of occasions, and genuinely put a smile on my face by the end.  The film appeals - after all - to that same spirit that has all clapping for carers. In adversity, we seek shared uplifting experiences. Which makes this film rather fitting for this moment. 

MILITARY WIVES is rated PG and has a running time of 113 minutes. It is available to stream on Sky, Amazon, Apple etc.

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING

I'm not sure if the sequel to the 2013 monsters vs robots gonzo action flick PACIFIC RIM was particularly "long-awaited" by anyone, especially when it became known that Guillermo del Toro had left the project to direct the Oscar-Winning THE SHAPE OF WATER.  Still, I rather enjoyed the loud gonzo silliness of the original and was mildly interesting in what the follow-up would be like despite its distinct lack of Idris Elba's hotness. The sad truth is that the sequel is a pretty humourless affair, with less of the carefree silliness of the original, and all to commercial a feel to it.  Directed by TV Hack Stephen S DeKnight of SPARTACUS fame, the film is efficient rather than joyous. And a final act twist that flatters the Chinese market is nakedly entrepreneurial. But the most disappointing part is the sheer lack of charisma from STAR WARS' John Boyega. He plays Stacker Pentecost's son, living in the shadow of his father's martyrdom and unwilling to step up to that responsibility Aragorn-stylee, until surprise surprise, humanity is once again under attack.  This film suggests that Bpyega's not yet capable of carrying a movie on his own but there is some fun to be had from Burn Gorman's camp self-conscious overly annunciated performance as the science-nerd Scotty who makes the tech work just in time. 

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING has a running time of 111 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is now available to rent and own.

CHURCHILL

With the forthcoming release of the THE DARKEST HOUR I thought I would go back and watch the other Churchill film released last year.  Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky (THE RAILWAY MAN) with a script by historian Alex von Tunzelmann (INDIAN SUMMER), this version stars Brian Cox in the eponymous role, Miranda Richardson as his wife, MAD MEN's John Slattery as Eisenhower, Julian Wadham as Monty, James Purefoy as the stuttering King, and Ella Parnell as the obligatory pretty young secretary who exists in the script merely to show Churchill his humanity.  

In contrast to many more blustering biopics, this one shows Churchill exhausted and troubled at the end of World War Two.  It opens with him imagining bloody waters washing up on the shore of a beach, and the film's conceit is that he is so traumatised by his failure at Gallipoli that he is irrationally against another amphibious landing  - Operation Overlord - that we, with the benefit of hindsight, will be a massive success.  The resulting film is thus one that shows us a Churchill who is vulnerable, admirably guilt-ridden by his mistakes and mindful of the human cost of war, and physically exhausted.  It also gives us a Churchill frustrated at being a mere politician rather than a commander, facing danger with his troops. Accordingly, he comes across as similar to the Queen, in The Crown season one, frustrated that his role is to NOT go to the frontline or put himself in danger, but to exist, to survive.

Brian Cox is convincing in the role, giving his Churchill a nuance we rarely see on screen.  Miranda Richardson has less to do in the trademark Clemmie hairdo and poor Ella Parnell in that sexist role of wide-eyed naive girl.  I very much liked the direction and the landscape photography of the beach in particular.  

But as much as I liked this newly shabby, troubled Churchill, the whole thing is guff.  And that cuts it off at the knees.  It's shocking that a female writer would create such a thankless role for the secretary, but even more shocking that an historian who takes other films to task for their historical inaccuracy should commit such gaffes in her own film. I have no doubt that Churchill, thinking of preserving the Empire rather than just winning the war, had different tactical preferences to Eisenhower. And I have no doubt that he was ashamed of Gallipoli.  But to argue that he was against Overlord and that the king and a pretty secretary had to screw his courage to the sticking place is bizarre.  And in her defense of this approach Tunzelmann seems to rely on an out of context quote that Churchill was hardening against the operation. He wasn't.  He wrote on 11 March, 1944, makes clear that he was hardening in favour of a decisive strike:

"I have presided at a series of meetings at which either Ike or Bedell has been present, and I am satisfied that everything is going on well. Ike and Bedell will probably tell you they are well pleased. I am hardening very much on this operation as the time approaches, in the sense of wishing to strike if humanly possible, even if the limiting conditions we laid down at Moscow are not exactly fulfilled. I hope a chance may come for us to have a talk before long. Every good wish."

So CHURCHILL is an interesting film about a vulnerable man. Whether or not you enjoy it depends on how far you care that it's not true.

CHURCHILL has a running time of 105 minutes. It was released last year and is now available to rent and own.

TERMINATOR GENISYS

TERMINATOR GENISYS is a straight forward film that makes no sense. In its first half hour we are in 2029 AD, in a post-apocalyptic world where a rebel leader called John Connor (Jason Clarke) leads surviving humanity in a fight against a sentient computer programme called Skynet.  The rebels destroy the computer but not before it sends back a Terminator robot to 1984 to kill John Connor's mother.  So he sends back his number two, Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), to intercept the Terminator and save Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke).  The surprise is that Sarah and an aged Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) are already tooled-up and ready, both for the original Terminator (young CGI Arnie) and Reese.  In the second half hour of the film, Good Arnie, Sarah and Reese realise that they haven't prevented Judgement Day, the day when Skynet killed humanity, but merely postponed in to 2017.  The humans time travel forward to 2017 and are greeted by an even older Good Arnie and a suspicious  J K Simmons with a plan to blow up Skynet again before the release of its deadly Genisys programme.  The third half hour sees the biggest plot twist in the film which, once you see it, you'll know it was coming. And this sets us up for the inevitable action packed showdown at Skynet.

HOME

HOME is a lovely children's animated movie - funny, beautifully imagined and with a lovely message.  It has received mixed reviews and I really don't get it - I had a wonderful time watching this film.

The movie stars THE BIG BANG THEORY's Jim Parsons as another misfit alien struggling to relate to normal humans(!) - an alien called Oh.  Oh is a Boov - and his species has invaded Earth, fleeing the evil Gorg, and put resettled all humans in Australia. All humans except a young girl called Tip (Rihanna), who was saved from resettlement when her pet cat fooled the detector beams.  Oh is sweet and naive and prone to mistakes, like when he mistakenly emails the entirely galaxy inviting them to his housewarming, including the evil Gorg. As a result both he and Tip are fugitives, and team up for a joint adventure as she tries to find her mum.  On the way, we see two supposedly warring people get to know each other and a bond of true friendship form. 

I really love Jim Parsons, and I think your tolerance for Oh, and his Yoda'd syntax will depend on whether you find his super-expressive speech funny. I also thought Rihanna did a great job acting as Tip, although the Rihanna heavy sound-track got wearing after a while. But the real voice star is Steve Martin, who I haven't seen/heard for YEARS as the cowardly and impetuous Boov leader. Great to have him back.  Ultimately though, the true delight in this film is its visual imagination. The idea that Oh could modify Tip's car with all the machines in a 7-11 so that it's powered by slushies and spits out nachos and popcorn as weapons.  I love how the Boov change colour to show emotion and the sheer cute plasticity of them. And the final twist, though slightly predictable, is so sweetly imagined that I couldn't help but love it.

So, overall, a good old-fashioned warmly funny, earnest children's comedy adventure.  There's no post-modern cynicism here. Just a good old-fashioned belief in friendship and family.

HOME has a running time of 94 minutes and is rated PG.   The movie is on global release.