MATERIALISTS*

Writer-director Celine Song's follow-up to her wildly, and rightly, praised debut feature PAST LIVES is a dud.  I just don't get it. It wasn't funny, it wasn't romantic, it didn't have a lot of dramatic tension, and it tried to balance wry commentary on modern dating with a very serious assault storyline that jarred tonally and was handled too lightly and peripherally for my liking. I don't think you get to use a plot device like that to further your protagonist's emotional arc.

Dakota Johnson stars as a modern day matchmaker dealing with New Yorkers' unrealistic expectations.  She values her clients according to material aspects - age, wealth, height - and given her childhood marred by parental fights over money - seeks a rich husband herself.  At a client's wedding she seemingly gets everything she wants in "unicorn" rich handsome Pedro Pascal.  But she also runs into her old boyfriend, a poor and shambolic wannabe actor played by Chris Evans. There is zero dramatic tension as to who the matchmaker will end up with.  This story is one of her journey to accepting actual real love as opposed to material comfort.  Even worse, there is none of that intimate, deeply felt, perceptive storytelling that we got in PAST LIVES.  There's only one scene that even approximates it, when Johnson and Evans' characters are observing a wedding from a distance, just as the couple created imaginary stories for diners at the start of PAST LIVES. What a tremendous let down.

MATERIALISTS is rated R and has a running time of 116 minutes. It was released in the USA in June and will be released in the UK on August 15th.

THE LIFE OF CHUCK**

I don't get the Toronto film festival audience hype for the latest Stephen King adaptation, THE LIFE OF CHUCK. It barely feels like a film at all, but two short films that do not cohere.  I wasn't moved: I didn't get it.  To be fair, I really liked part one.  It's a dystopian future where the world has been overtaken by climate change.  In affluent America, a divorced but friendly husband and wife (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan) potter about their everyday lives, navigating the rising suicide rates and the intermittent loss of the internet.  The quiet, calm observation of how the end of the world might intrude upon our everyday lives is well observed and an interesting thought experiment. The only weird note is that they keep seeing billboards thanking an accountant called Chuck for his great life - "the last internet meme".  We never learn what was behind the billboards, but we do then flip into Chuck's backstory. He's an orphaned kid raised by his charismatic grandparents - Mark Hamill as the sardonic, weary but fun grandpa has his best role in years.  Chuck learns to dance with his grandma and has two dance set pieces - one with the young Chuck at a school dance and another with the adult Chuck and a busker.  Adult Chuck is played by Tom Hiddleston, who is himself an internet meme with his love of dance. So it doesn't feel like a character is dancing but Tom is on another instagram reel. The social media notoriety actually took me out of the story, insofar as I was ever in it, and the dance scene had none of the loose breaking free of Mads Mikkelsen in ANOTHER ROUND.  What's the message of this strange film? That we all contain multitudes because we contain memories of all the people that we have ever loved? I can get behind that. That we are so narcissistic we think the whole world existed so we could dance? Er...okay.  Strange film. Doesn't work. 

THE LIFE OF CHUCK is rated R and has a running time of 111 minutes. It was released in the USA in June and will be released in the UK on August 22nd.

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH****

It is with no small irony that the new Jurassic Park film asks us to imagine a world in which consumers are bored with dinosaurs, given that this franchise has offered diminishing returns to the viewer since its inception thirty years ago.   In this new film, boredom, climate change, and disease have combined to make dinosaurs irrelevant to anyone living beyond a narrow band around the equator where they still flourish, and humans are strictly forbidden. Of course, that won't stop unscrupulous capitalists trying to exploit them for cash. Cue a trip to the Caribbean for Rupert Friend's evil pharma exec,  Scarlett Johansson's special ops team leader and Mahershala Ali's ship's captain. And, because Jurassic Park, they will pick up some capsized cute kids en route.  

Set up complete. What about the execution?  Gareth Edwards (ROGUE ONE) has made THE BEST Jurassic Park film since the original and, whisper it quietly, perhaps even surpassed the iconic Spielberg original. A tight script from the original screenwriter, David Koepp combine with superb performances from a heavyweight cast to create character depth and backstory quickly and convincingly. I actually cared about these characters' moral choices and evolving emotional relationships.  

And what of the thrills and spills? It should comes as no surprise that the director who made MONSTERS knows what he's doing with simultaneously frightening and awe-inspiring beasties. We see them move through the water like Jaws, or nuzzle up to each other in fond embrace. It's all spectacular. I particularly liked a scene shot behind a character where a beastie we know well from the original is taken out by its predator. But the tour de force set piece is in the film's final act, where chiaroscuro lighting, tension-inducing editing, superb scoring from Alexandre Desplat and a truly mesmerising performance from Mahershala Ali combine to captivate us. And because of David Koepp's script we know enough about his character to truly understand and respect his motivations. The only bum note in the film is when Edwards chickens out with a bit of improbable schmaltz, more befitting a Spielberg film than one of this own. But we can't have everything I guess.

It also surprises me that social media trolls haven't labelled this film woke, and have instead directed their ire at SUPERMAN and SNOW WHITE.  After all, the message of this film (which I heartily endorse) is that "science is for everyone" not corporations with patents.  And in a lightly-done but profound scene, we hear a hispanic dad (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) tell his daughter's apparently feckless but actually rather lovely boyfriend (David Iacono) not to think the worst of himself - others do that already. This is what a David Koepp script gives you.  Subtle moments rather than heavy-handed exposition.  

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH has a running time of 133 minutes, is rated PG-13 and is global release.

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND****

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND is a delightful film.  By turns funny, charming, moving and wise. It's so low-key it might slip from notice but that would be a terrible shame.  

Tim Key (Alan Partridge) is a widowed lottery-winning millionaire who decides to pay his wife's favourite folk band to play a concert on his beautiful but largely unpeopled British island. Much like Simon and Garfunkel, the band was once successful but has long-since split and both of its members are on their uppers.  Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) still bitterly resents his writing partner for leaving him and the now married Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) needs the money from the gig, but resents Herb for living in the past. 

Over the next ninety minutes we watch these three people deal with their past with good humour and grace.  The initial set-up is comedic. Tim Key's islander talks constantly with an off-kilter sense of humour and an intrusive starry-eyed fandom that borders on, but never crosses the line into, creepiness.  Meanwhile Tom Basden is the awkward out-of-towner stuck in the middle of nowhere with the dawning realisation that he is playing a concert for one.  There's a running joke that he can never buy anything he needs in the village shob, which always seems to sell an adjacent but not helpful object. 

But as the movie progresses and Nell turns up we get further into the emotional backstory of our characters. The movie gains depth but never gives us easy, sentimental answers. The protagonist actually experiences a credible and compelling emotional arc. And I was truly charmed by its denouement.

Director James Griffiths (CUBAN FURY) and his writer-stars (Key and Basden) have created a truly lovely, uplifting but never twee film that deserves a wide audience. What an unexpected pleasure it is!

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 99 minutes. It played Sundance and SXSW 2025 and was released in the UK in May.

MR BURTON****

MR BURTON is a handsomely made, restrained, and surprisingly moving film about the creation of iconic actor Richard Burton.  When we meet him he is actually called Richie Jenkins. He is a lanky school kid in a poor Welsh mining town, living with his beloved sister and her husband. He shows some talent in school, but his first love is probably rugby, and he is forced to leave at school 16 and look for work.  And there might have been the end of Richie Jenkin's story were it not for an earnest and closeted English literature teacher called Mr Burton who fought for Richie to come back to school, to enter the RAF which in turn got him to Oxford University and thence to the Royal Shakespeare Company.  Mr Burton gave Richie his love of literature but also sloughed off his rough edges - whether his manners of his accent. By the end of the film the lanky kid is now a handsome young man with that iconic deep resonant voice.  He is the finest actor of his generation and perhaps of all time. But he remains riddled with demons and is already drinking heavily.  In a late scene he turns his wrath on his mentor, Hal to Mr Burton's Falstaff, but they cannot part.  It's a slow build to the only physical contact they will share. An acknowledgment that an adoption and name-change of convenience belie true paternity and care. It's a desperately moving moment.

Director Marc Evans (HUNKY DORY) handles all of this with elegance and assurance. A final act set around the theatre is beautifully put together - lighting, editing, score. And I also loved the screenplay by Tom Bullough and Josh Hyams. They never skirt the question of what Mr Burton's motives were but leave a lot unsaid, as befitting of the sexual mores of the time.  This suppression sets up the final act explosion of intense anger from Richie. Which brings me to the superb performances that anchor this film.  Aimee-Ffion Edward and Aneurin Barnard are impressive in small but important roles as Richie's sister and brother-in-law.  Lesley Manville and Toby Jones are - as ever - impeccable as "Ma" and Mr Burton.  But it's Industry's Harry Lawtey who truly impresses, turning from unsure boy into cocky but troubled man, and all while capturing Richard Burton's shifting accent and elocution.  It is quite the performance and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves.

MR BURTON has a running time of 124 minutes, is rated 12, and was released in the UK in April.

SUPERMAN (2025)***

Writer-director James Gunn (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) has jumped ship from Marvel to reboot the DC Universe, and the first film in this endeavour really suffers from setting up the chessboard.  It's a film that is overstuffed with ideas and characters and so many aliens that I couldn't give a shit about. There's also a scrappy dog called Krypto that is presumably adorable if you like scrappy dogs (I do not) and that's basically ripped off from Terry Pratchett's Luggage - a super-powerful, super-loyal chaos agent.  As a result, the real life human characters - whether Clark Kent's adoptive parents or his Daily Planet colleagues - are given way too little screen time.  Poor Wendel Pierce as Perry barely gets a line and even Rachel Brosnahan's Lois Lane feels sidelined.  All to make way for alien monsters, quirky robots (come on Alan Tudyk - do something new!)  and endless gonzo fight scenes.  This far into the Marvel universe it's just all so blah.  I would rather have seen Superman rescue a cat from a tree than yet another Big Bad ripping up Metropolis.

So for much of its running time I was basically quite bored by this film. I realised about two-thirds of the way through that I would probably rather just watch Nathan Fillion's Green Lantern doing his comedy schtick in his own film. I guess that's coming.

Part of the problem is that this film needs to pick a lane in its look and feel. Is it in a contemporary near-future in which evil mastermind Lex Luther (Nicholas Hoult) has super technology and sleek Marvel-style henchmen and headquarters? Or is it in a world where people actually care about newspapers, and take notes with a pencil and notepad, and record interviews on dictaphones rather than iPhones? The whole concept of the Daily Planet is basically anachronistic now and I don't think the film knows how to handle that. 

Thing is. Thing is.  By the denouement, despite all of its flaws. This film had me.  Because its core message is a good one. And a moving one. That to be kind and think the best of people and not be cynical is actually "punk rock".  And that to be human is to make your own choices and to make mistakes and to try to be better.  And that family is what you choose it to be. I want my Superman to be in day glow blue and red and to be earnest and kind.  I don't want moody post-modern dark Superman.  Superman has always been hokey and kitsch because that's what we need.  Onwards!

SUPERMAN is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 129 minutes and is on global release.