After barely surviving a mandatory shutdown in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, the executive class running some of the largest film studios in the world decided that they weren’t quite ridiculously rich enough yet and furthermore they hadn’t taken enough liberties – financial, creative and moral – with those employed by them.

And so the actors and writers collectively said no and downed tools for five months in a dispute over pay (including residual payments in the age of streaming), working conditions, and especially the increasing threat of artificial intelligence being used to not only write screenplays based on algorithms but to steal the likenesses of actors (living and dead) and store them in perpetuity without just compensation.

With Hollywood productions quiet for half the year and none of the “talent” allowed to promote those movies that were completed prior to the strikes, we ended up with a more limited and less enthusiastically received slate of major releases. Not even superhero movies or franchise sequels fronted by Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise were guaranteed hits anymore.

Despite all this, 2023 ended up being a pretty good year for cinema, with plenty of examples of not only memorable blockbusters but of distinct filmmakers leaving their mark and under-represented communities providing vibrancy and freshness to a myriad of new stories. Based upon UK release dates, these are my 10 Best Films of 2023.

Follow me @SSPThinksFilm on X (Twitter).

10. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah Review

2023 has been a great year for films about how Gen-Z processes their major life experiences, and this delightful, hilarious little film starring most of the Sandler clan (including Adam as an adorably schlubby dad) is up there with the very best.

As she approaches her her 13th birthday and the Jewish coming-of-age ritual, Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) is determined to make her Bat Mitzvah the most perfect and memorable of her peer group, including that of BFF Lydia (Samantha Lorraine). But things get a lot more complicated as hormones, teenage crushes and petty but damaging psychological manipulation via social media enter the mix.

Five years ago, Bo Burnham made his memorable feature debut with Eighth Grade and told one of the most connective, visceral stories about becoming a teenager in years. Sammi Cohen’s film has the same aim but demonstrates how seismically culture has changed in just half a decade, all through a Jewish cultural lens. There may have never been a more challenging time to be growing up in an always-online age, and Alison Peck’s insightful script in addition to the across-the-board wonderfully naturalistic performances help to make this an unexpectedly profound crowd-pleaser.

9. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 Review

#JusticeforJamesGunn incarnate, the final chapter of the unlikeliest a-hole superhero team’s story shatters expectations and satisfyingly delivers on almost every level.

After years of defending the countless worlds together, the Guardians team has reached a precarious place. Their leader Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) has slumped into a depressed, alcoholic stupor after losing the love of his life Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), and Rocket’s (Bradley Cooper) past as a bio-engineered test subject comes back to haunt him in a very real way. Can the team come together one last time and save the galaxy, and themselves?

Marvel is seen as a pretty risk-averse studio and certainly much of their recent output has been received with a shrug from many viewers, but Guardians Vol 3 shows what happens when one of the best directors they partnered with is left to finish the story he wanted to tell. The action has never been more polished and visually dazzling, the performances from people and animated raccoons alike so honest and full of pain, Gunn’s love of animals so prominent as the team go up against a truly detestable figure who causes pain for the hell of it.

Recommended for you: MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranked

The Spider-Man franchise has gone through more reboots than any other comic book character since Sam Raimi first brought him to the big screen in 2002. Over that time, whoever currently fills out the spandex has faced a variety of crazed scientists, criminals and rivals brought up to Spider-Man’s level by advanced technology, superpower-bestowing industrial accidents and cunning exploitation of the hero’s secret identity.

4 iterations of Spider-Man, 10 movies, many bad guys to fight, but which were the biggest threat to him and his nearest and dearest? A web of spoilers lies ahead in this edition of Ranked from The Film Magazine: Feature Film Spider-Man Villains Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

16. Aleksei Sytsevich / Rhino – The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

“I am the Rhino! I told you I’d be back!”

A Russian mobster embarrassingly foiled by Spider-Man during a heist involving an armoured truck and a lot of plutonium, Aleksei is only too happy to don a rhinoceros-shaped mech suit (like you do) gifted by Oscorp’s Special Projects division to get his own back.

Aleksei is small-time, a wannabe tough gangster shown to be humiliatingly inept in his two fights against Spidey that bookend The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The usually-excellent Paul Giamatti is outshone by his forehead tattoo and is reduced to shouting in an outrageous accent straight out of a terrible Cold War action movie as he is webbed up and pantsed in his civilian clothes and then defeated in freeze-frame in his stupid robot rhino form.

15. Harry Osborn / Green Goblin – The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

“You don’t give people hope, you take it away. I’m gonna take away yours.”

Peter Parker’s childhood friend returns to New York to say goodbye to his terminally ill father and discovers he carries the same genetic blood disease that makes you grow talons and turn green. Harry discovers that Spider-Man’s altered blood may somehow offer a cure but, when the hero refuses him, he takes an untested spider venom formula that warps his body and mind, leading him to take vengeance against the Wall-Crawler.

We’re told rather than shown that Peter and Harry have a history here and expected to buy Dane DeHaan’s twitchy take on the character’s rapid physical, mental and moral decline simply because we know a Green Goblin has got to show up in this Spider-Man universe some time, somehow.

In the race to set up a Sinister Six spin-off movie that never happened, all of Harry’s characterisation seems to have been excised so we’re left with a petty arch-nemesis who meets the Webslinger precisely twice and decides to kill his girlfriend on a whim because it took him a ridiculously long time to remember his company had made a battle suit with a bodily repair function and only used it after he’d already taken the uglifying spider-formula.

14. Eddie Brock / Venom – Spider-Man 3 (2007)

“Oh! My spider-sense is tingling… if you know what I’m talking about!”

A shady and arrogant photographer and rival to Peter Parker at the Daily Bugle who gets taken over by an alien symbiote and plans to take revenge on Parker for the part he played in Brock losing his job.

Before Tom Hardy took the role down the schizophrenic antihero route, Topher Grace brought a very different version of Eddie Brock to life. First he’s just a jerk competing with Peter for a staff photographer job before his faked photos get him blacklisted. Then, coincidence of coincidences, he goes to pray at the same cathedral where Peter is trying to separate himself from the personality-altering symbiote in the bell tower above. The symbiote jumps to Eddie and he immediately goes all the way bad and hatches a plan to make Peter/Spider-Man suffer.

Very obviously a late addition to Spider-Man 3’s plot by a reluctant Sam Raimi, Venom is only really in the film for the final action scene and is a very simplistic, weirdly camp take on the character who fails to leave any real impression.

Recommended for you: 10 Best Moments from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Screenwriters: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham
Starring: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Jake Johnson, Issa Rae, Bryan Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez

After four long years, the sequel to the “electric, atmospheric festival of colour” that was Sony Pictures Animation’s Oscar-winning, genre-defining, form-shaping Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has arrived. The film that fought against a tried and tested formula, that rewrote the lore of a studio staple, that was so fresh and interesting it was almost as if it should have never existed, was such a critical success that perennial safety shooters Sony were willing to experiment once again. This time, Miles Morales and company, under the stewardship of original co-writers and producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, are rewriting even more of the rule book.

Shameik Moore’s cool and relatable hero is introduced to a wider spider-verse by Hailee Steinfeld’s returning Gwen Stacy, who takes on a more central and well-rounded role in this highly-anticipated sequel. The heroine uses portal devices to cross between a multi-verse of spider-people as she and Miles experience grave family struggles. The concept of the multiverse may have been overplayed in recent years, but so rarely has it seemed this original, dynamic and brimming with life, and only in Into the Spider-Verse have the personal stakes been this high.

There are spider-people and spider-creatures galore, the cameos and more influential inclusions each being illuminated by an array of animation styles, a cornucopia of unique audio-visual elements. There are eye-widening design choices and smile-inducing casting choices, and every promise Sony’s marketing department offered in Across the Spider-Verse’s trailer is spectacularly realised.

Across the Spider-Verse is the longest animated feature in history at 2 hours and 20 minutes, but it leaves barely a moment to blink, the rapid and ever-original action slowing only to propel moments of inner conflict, interpersonal dynamics or existentialism to the forefront. Every central character is well taken care of, the beating heart that made the original so comforting and charismatic still intact – every development in Across the Spider-Verse feels at one with the film that came before. This is more than a good sequel that ramps up all that we enjoyed about the original, it is a reach into an unknown pool of perfection, a ginormous studio-backed swing at something special.

This version of Spider-Man has undergone one of the more trying coming-of-age tales of the feature film spider-people we’ve seen across various live-action franchises to date, and the connection this has forged between us and him ensures that each of his potentially multiverse-altering choices is felt from the off. Lord and Miller, who worked on the original Spider-Verse and fellow Sony Pictures Animation film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, have always given a lot of room for character choices in their texts. And, in a world of so many moving parts – characters, narratives, themes, animation styles – it is testament to their commitment to character choice that Across the Spider-Verse manages to capture the same connection as the original.

There is a short period in the middle of the film where the narrative sags a little, and certainly more could have been done to develop one of the film’s two central villains and the extent of their powers in the first half of the film – where we are left guessing as to just how much of a threat this character could be and what this might mean for Miles and Gwen – but these pitfalls are barely noticeable among the pantheon of extraordinary efforts made to excite and ignite our imaginations. In these moments, comedy, cameos, references and soundtrack take the lead, each expressively exploding out of the animation.

As an animated film, there are few contemporaries. Not since Toy Story rewrote animated feature history in the mid-90s had mainstream western animation been evolved and shunted forward with such force as in Into the Spider-Verse, and Across the Spider-Verse is somehow even more eccentric. Whether it be minutes of black and white sequences, pen lines and all, or watercolour constructions that change colour to match the conflict apparent in the dialogue, Across the Spider-Verse is an Oscar-winning short film’s unique and ultra-expressionistic sensibility attached to a mainstream intellectual property and presented by over 1,000 of the world’s best animators. It’s wondrous stuff, the kind of style that is worthy of the film’s dream-factory concept.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is why people go to the cinema. It is why you should go to the cinema. It is a phenomenon of style and substance that begs to be seen on the big screen. Lord and Miller, and their partners at Sony Pictures Animation, have once again captured lightning in a bottle. Across the Spider-Verse is ultra modern storytelling that captures the personality, fears and ambitions of our current era – it is eye-popping spectacle and hearty, moving passion side-by-side. As a sequel, we must consider this among the pantheon of greats that Spider-Man 2 (2004) belongs to, and as an animated film this is a certified all-timer. There’s no doubt that you’ll be left wanting more, but as things are… Spider-Man doesn’t get better than this.

Score: 22/24

Recommended for you: Spider-Man Movies Ranked

Please note that this article contains spoilers for the films Men, Annihilation, and Ex Machina.

On its most basic level, Alex Garland’s newest movie, Men, tells a fairly simple story. Jessie Buckley plays Harper, a woman whose husband James (Paapa Essiedu) has recently died. This happened while they were in the process of divorcing (on her initiative, not his): during one of their arguments, James struck Harper, and she kicked him out of their apartment. James then slipped and fell to his death while trying to break back in. Now, Harper isn’t sure whether James merely slipped (it was raining) or whether he “let himself go,” as she puts it, since he’d already threatened to kill himself if she went through with the divorce. (He also said that he would haunt her, and that she would have to live with his death on her conscience). With all of these thoughts weighing heavily on her mind, Harper leaves London, looking to get away for a couple of weeks in order to find some measure of peace. But James’s ghost continues haunting her (as tends to happen in Gothic horror stories, which Men explicitly invokes), and the young widow winds up experiencing a long night of the soul, at the end of which she directly confronts James’s spirit. The film then ends somewhat ambiguously, though I think we’re meant to believe that Harper has found the peace she’s been seeking (but more about that below).

Part of what makes Men an unusual film is that, while its story may be simple, its presentation isn’t; rather, it plays out like various European art films of the 1960s and ’70s. Watching it, I was reminded of movies such as Repulsion, Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Suspiria, and Possession. I was also reminded of Andrei Tarkovsky’s work in general, and if Annihilation was Garland’s response to Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Men would seem his response to that man’s other science-fiction movie, Solaris (which features a dead spouse who keeps returning). A lot of what we see onscreen isn’t always literal, the movie’s events being filtered through Harper’s perspective. Garland also makes extensive use of associative editing, periodically interrupting the story with flurries of other images. (For example, when Harper sits down to play the piano, Garland cuts to shots of nature, which we’re meant to associate with Harper’s music; they may even represent what Harper is thinking about while she plays.)

And that’s not all. Complicating both these elements is the fact that Men does something unusual with its casting: all of the men in the village where Harper is staying appear to be the same man, or at least strongly resemble one another. That’s because all of the men that Harper encounters—her landlord Geoffrey, a cop, a petulant little boy, the local vicar, the pubkeeper and his two customers—are played by the same actor, Rory Kinnear, a feat accomplished through costumes and make-up, and a little CGI. On the one hand, this aspect of the film is something of a sly joke, a droll observation of how in some small towns, everyone looks the same because they’re related, and we should remember here that what we’re seeing is from Harper’s point of view. (This is another way in which the Irish Harper is made to feel out of sorts, since she’s the outsider, both to the countryside and the country.)

But Garland is up to more than just that. Each of the characters that Kinnear plays represents a different aspect of patriarchy, or institutionalized male authority; in that way, they are, on a structural level at least, all aspects of the same otherwise invisible cultural force. Harper, whose relationship with her husband was fraught to say the least —flashbacks show him alternately pleading with her, threatening her, warning her, striking her—can’t find respite in the village because, wherever she goes, she finds reflected back to her on a larger, societal level all the same problems that she experienced in the waning days of her marriage. (Other elements of the countryside also trigger strong memories—e.g., dandelion spores drifting through the air recall the dust motes that were swirling around her apartment at the time her husband died.) To put this point another way, while the men that Harper encounters in the village aren’t the same person, and aren’t the same person as her husband, they’re all products of the same system that birthed James (and her), and the grieving Harper sees all these men as embodying, individually and collectively, the same manipulative behaviors that James manifested during her time with him. (This is true regardless of whether the character is gently and unintentionally patronizing, as is Geoffrey, or downright sadistic and cruel, as is the young boy who curses out Harper when she refuses to join him for a game of hide-and-seek.) Harper experiences all of these encounters as an accumulating series of intrusions and disturbances, even as others try to tell her that nothing worrisome is happening (e.g., a female police officer dismisses the naked homeless man who trespassed at her house as being harmless), and their collective emotional burden intensifies until, by the end of the long night, she concludes that there really is no escape from James’s ghost. (As she says early on to her friend, “this sort of thing is going to keep happening for the rest of my life.”) This realization leads her to directly confront her memory of the man, in an attempt to learn what she must do in order to lay his spirit to rest.

But that still only scratches the surface of what Garland’s doing here, because he is using the genre of the Gothic horror film, the formal devices of the European art film, and the theme of patriarchy to explore one of his favorite concepts, which is what’s known in philosophy as “the problem of other minds.” Put very simply, this is the problem that there’s no way for any of us to tell whether other people have minds similar to ours, capable of thinking and feeling the same way that our minds do. (Related to this is the problem that there’s no way for us to empirically prove that the world is actually real, and we aren’t instead programs running in a computer simulation, or as older philosophers put it, ideas in the mind of God.) All three of the films that Garland has directed revolve around some version of this problem. In Ex Machina, Oscar Isaac’s Nathan invites Domhnall Gleeson’s Caleb to his home in order to help him judge whether or not the A.I. that he’s created, Ava (played by Alicia Vikander) is self-aware, or merely a clever computer program that’s pretending to be self-aware. In Annihilation, husband and wife Lena and Kane (played by Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac, respectively) reunite after having ventured inside an alien phenomenon known as “the Shimmer” (which refracts information the same way a prism does light), only to wonder if they’re still themselves, or whether they’re both now duplicates, clones produced by the alien. (They also aren’t sure whether the alien is self-aware, working according to an intelligent design, or mindless, the way that nature is mindless, acting according to happenstance.) In Men, Harper’s most immediate problem is that she’s unsure what to make of her husband’s behavior (almost as though he were an A.I. or an alien entity): was he a lying, manipulative bastard who would say anything to prevent her from divorcing him (and who did in fact kill himself, just as he threatened he would), or was he sincere, a troubled and unstable person who nonetheless wanted to save their marriage (and who slipped, accidentally falling)? At the end of the film, Harper confronts James’s ghost head-on, asking him what he wants, to which he replies, “Your love.” But even this answer isn’t clarifying, due to the problem of other minds: has the ghost returned in order to speak the truth? Or is this yet another attempt by James to manipulate the woman he’s been haunting?

The problem here, as Garland knows full well, is that there really isn’t any way to tell (which is why other minds are a problem in philosophy). And I don’t think that Garland is trying to solve this problem via his films so much as he’s representing how this dilemma manifests itself not only in things like A.I. research and marriages and patriarchy (and other cultural institutions), but also in art. (Garland is the product of a family of scientists and artists, and I assume he’s fascinated by how both art and science wrestle with alternate versions of this problem). Accordingly, each of his three directorial efforts see Garland seizing on a central artistic image that embodies the problem of other minds, and which functions as a metaphor for the whole film—that stands in for the film in miniature, so to speak. In Ex Machina, this image is the Jackson Pollock painting that Nathan keeps hanging in his home; Nathan asks Caleb whether he thinks Pollock produced the painting by accident, just flinging paint at random, or whether the man was in full control of what he was doing as he dripped paint on the canvas (as Nathan claims that Pollock was). In Annihilation, the image is the invading alien entity, the Shimmer, which is certainly up to something, rearranging nature in unsettling, unusual ways, but whose true intention (if any) is difficult to discern; is the Shimmer, like Pollock, self-aware and in control of what it’s doing, making something deliberate? Or is it all just one big accident, an alternate natural logic, a mindless entity that’s invaded our own like a virus, refracting and warping the landscape willy-nilly, spreading wherever it can?

In Men, the central image that unites art with the problem of other minds, as well as Harper and James’ individual marital problem with the broader institution of patriarchy, is the baptismal font that Harper encounters in the village church, and which then recurs throughout the film (appearing at various places and times, including at one point in Harper’s London apartment). That stone basin is adorned on opposite sides with two different but related pagan fertility symbols: its Western side is inscribed with an image of the Green Man, a being who’s essentially half-man, half-plant, and who is perhaps best known today from his appearance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (which just formed the basis of another A24 film), while its Eastern side bears an image of the Sheela Na Gig, a woman who is holding open her vulva. The Sheela Na Gig is less well known than the Green Man, presumably because people throughout the ages have considered that image more obscene—and Garland is clearly interested here in why the Green Man has become the more dominant of the two.

The Green Man / Sheela Na Gig pairing recurs throughout Men (it really is the movie’s central image), and we should note how the icons on the stone are facing away from one another, peering in opposite directions. Perhaps as a result of that, the relationship between the two figures turns out to be unequal in the movie, with the male figure usually dominating the female. Even in the church, the Green Man icon is positioned to face the celebrants, with the Sheela Na Gig turned away from them and hidden (seen by only the vicar). And even before Harper stumbles upon the baptismal font, she goes for a walk in the woods, where she encounters a former railway tunnel, a large stone hole cut through nature that resembles the pagan stone. Harper enters the tunnel and starts singing, using the space to construct a song (another unification of science and art). But in doing so, she disturbs a naked homeless man, who is lying at the opposite end of the tunnel. That man, which the film associates with the Green Man (he’s later seen adorning himself with leaves) lurches to his feet, then starts running down the tunnel toward Harper, shouting, forcing her to retreat. And this is but one example; throughout the film, Harper finds herself on the opposite side of structures—windows, doors—from men who are peering at her, reaching for her, struggling to break in. Even the film itself is bookended by two versions of the same folk song, “Love,” written by Lesley Duncan, and while she sings the first version that we hear, as Harper drives out of London, it’s Elton John’s cover that plays over the closing credits (and is the version that follows us as we exit, humming).

Part of what Garland is doing here is pointing out how when Christianity arrived in the British Isles, it appropriated and repurposed pagan concepts like the Green Man and Sheela Na Gig; like a religious version of the Shimmer, the early Church absorbed and rearranged those icons into the story of Christ’s death and resurrection, refashioning them into a new artwork and cultural institution. (That’s why the stained glass window of Christ looms over the pagan stone in the church, bathing it in its “miraculous” light every morning.) The Church also privileged the Green Man over the Sheela Na Gig (being a patriarchal institution). Accordingly, Christ and the Green Man become bound up over the course of Men: when James dies, one of his arms becomes impaled on a fence spike, recalling the Crucifixion, and the man’s wounds later appear on the Green Man, and all of the men in the film. Watching the movie, I couldn’t help but think about how there are more than a few Green Man icons in the vicinity of my apartment, just like there are more than a few Christian churches; meanwhile, the Sheela Na Gig has slipped into relative obscurity.

Given the strong thematic connections between Alex Garland’s films, we should read the ending of Men in light of the endings of his other works. In Ex Machina, is Ava truly self-aware? In Annihilation, are Lena and Kane still themselves, or clones who can’t tell the difference? We can’t say; the problem of other minds defeats us. In the case of Men, we see that Harper has survived her long night of the soul, her encounter with the ghost; she also seems to have found the peace that she came to the countryside seeking. Certainly, the closing imagery is idyllic, Gothic horror giving way to the pastoral: the flowers surrounding Harper have all transformed from blue to pink, matching the clothing she wears throughout the film, and she’s smiling as she holds up and studies a leaf, a fragment of the Green Man. Perhaps the Sheela Na Gig has reasserted herself, dominating the Green Man? Or perhaps those two forces have been put back into balance? Or maybe Harper has merely chosen to deceive herself, submitting to James’s last lie? Whatever the case may be, we can’t really say; only Harper knows what she’s thinking.

Written by A. D. Jameson

Ex Machina (2014)
Director: Alex Garland
Screenwriter: Alex Garland
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Sonoya Mizuno

We had waited such a long time for a film to truly deliver on the promise of an AI thriller. 2001: A Space Odyssey’s most memorable passage is an astronaut trying to reason with the murderous computer HAL, but that’s only about one third of Kubrick’s epic sci-fi. The Terminator and Matrix franchises are action vehicles first and foremost, and we’ve also seen such disappointing offerings as I, Robot, which soon dispensed with anything cerebral in favour of Will Smith star power, Chappie which was underdeveloped to the point of being incoherent, and Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron which was spectacular but muddled and overstuffed. After proving himself as an accomplished screenwriter for Danny Boyle (writing 28 Days Later and Sunshine), Ex Machina saw Alex Garland finally try his hand at directing. What a debut it proved to be. 

When Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) unexpectedly wins a competition to meet the reclusive founder of the technology company he works for, little can he guess what his trip to Scandinavia has in store for him. Over the course of a week, Nathan (Oscar Isaac) uses his star-struck employee as a guinea pig for a unique experiment. Caleb’s mission is to conduct a series of Turing tests on Nathan’s artificial intelligence, Ava (Alicia Vikander), to find out whether or not she can fool others into thinking she is human. As the trio test each other, it becomes increasingly clear that everyone has their own agenda, and nothing is as it seems.

As well as fielding all the usual discussions that come with the concept of artificial intelligence – free will, what it means to be human, etc. – Ex Machina also explores the twin themes of observation and control. From the very first shot Caleb is being observed; he is observed from the moment he meets Nathan and especially when he comes into contact with Ava and she starts to process his “micro-expressions”. Likewise, Caleb observes Nathan and Ava constantly, always trying to figure out what their endgame is. All three of our central characters are battling for control, manipulating each other to gain the upper hand. This is a plot that is a constantly shifting chess game of a character piece.

For the most part we follow just three characters as they observe each other, and we notice both major and minuscule changes in their behaviour as the situation shifts. The scale of the task facing three actors under such close scrutiny was not a small one, but Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander and Oscar Isaac are well up to the challenge. Gleeson and Isaac are both extremely good fits for their characters, playing them as good-natured everyman and charming, subtly creepy schemer respectively, but it is Vikander who makes the biggest impression as Ava. We’ve seen a lot of humanoid robots in movies, and a good number of them have appeared to be almost human – Vikander could have gone the full Robocop with stiff, controlled physicality, but she cannily chooses to instead make Ava naturalistic in all but a few of her movements. You can forget Ava is an artificial being until a slightly odd change in expression or movement doesn’t quite fit the rhythm that a real person gives off. It’s subtle, sometimes even barely noticeable, and all the more uncanny for it.

Ex Machina has an eerie, uncomfortable atmosphere throughout, but this is balanced with moments of extreme beauty, unexpected humour and shocking horror. Here, Garland has proven himself a talented director with a clear vision right out of the gate, but he is first and foremost a screenwriter, and the script of Ex Machina represents his finest achievement. The screenplay is layered and intelligent without being overwhelmingly science-y, preferring to always to shift focus to how its three core characters behave in each other’s company or how they perceive their place in the rich tapestry of life. The film’s dialogue is economical and snappy, summing up its complex ideas succinctly in profound, brief statements rather than dreary monologues (“If I hid Ava from you so you could just hear her voice, she would pass for human. The real test is to show you that she’s a robot and then see if you still feel she has consciousness.”). Garland also indulges his love of left-of-field plot turns and steadily piling up the tension for a thrilling horror-tinged finale.

Garland’s work is aesthetically distinct and memorable, but is not concerned with fireworks. Ava’s introduction is one of those moments on film that will stay with you. It’s not showy, in fact it’s rather understated. In wide shot, against a wide window, she walks slowly into view in profile, her robotic innards revealed by the light shining through her. The plot quickly finds a contrivance for Ava to conceal her inner workings and in doing so save the film’s modest budget, but it makes sense with her character and also makes the occasions when we do see her artificiality laid bare all the more startling.

You could dig far deeper into the themes, character motivations and plot of Ex Machina, but it’s the kind of film where you really don’t want to know any more than you have to before you experience it for the first time. It’s a sci-fi you want to go into cold to get the very most out of it. See it now if you haven’t already, and if you’ve already seen it, then see it again and debate it with others. This film can only become richer and more enthralling upon multiple viewings and through intense debate. 

23/24

The Letter Room (2020)
Director: Elvira Lind
Screenwriter: Elvira Lind
Starring: Oscar Isaac, John Douglas Thompson, Brian Petsos, Eileen Galindo, Alia Shawkat

The Letter Room is the 2021 Oscars’ most star-studded short film. Oscar Isaac, known for starring in the most recent Star Wars trilogy as well as a number of critical hits, is the focus for each and every frame of The Letter Room’s 30 minute runtime.

Written and directed by documentarian Elvira Lind, whose spouse happens to be the star she focuses her short film upon, The Letter Room oozes the same class of a mainstream feature film, each scene shot crisply and well blocked, the narrative cleverly constructed, the performances strong enough to make convincing characters even within the limitations of the film’s reduced runtime.

Isaac plays a corrections officer; one who seems to fulfil all the tropes of your typical on-screen jailhouse hero – he listens to the inmates, he tries hard at his job but is more fair and balanced than his workmates, he offers favours and humanity to those who need it, and he then goes further to find the humanity in each of them. Like Tom Hanks’ Paul Edgecomb in The Green Mile, Isaac’s Richard is extraordinary within the tough but fairly ordinary life he leads. As is to be expected at this stage in Isaac’s reputable career, he is wholly engaging, gifting his character a likeable tone to his voice and bringing forth the little bits of spark from beneath the almost cartoonish moustache he sports.

It is through him that we exclusively experience the world, the camera focused on Isaac for almost every moment and the narrative locked onto his perspective. He deals with death row inmates as well as the office culture of his penitentiary behind the scenes, comically coming into contact with a series of erotic letters to one prisoner that he takes a particular interest in.

Living alone and feasting on microwave meals each evening, Richard finds a spark of inspiration in the letters he reads, a reason to go to work. As if accessing something much more sordid, he hides the pleasure he feels from reading them behind teenager-like defensiveness and evasiveness to his boss, and side-glances at the prisoner who receives them. It has a comical edge, as does much of the movie, and Isaac’s character and performance are the key factors in making this as engaging as possible within the confines of the story at its heart.

There are a few occasions in which the eye make-up and pristinely trimmed eyebrows of its star are apparent in such a way that you can’t help but to see Oscar Isaac beneath the moustache and his layers of characterisation. At no point does it feel like you’re watching a real person, more a Hollywood star playing a part, and it’s an issue that the film suffers from throughout – there is a genuine scarcity of true emotional resonance owing to how The Letter Room never fully immerses you in the world of its story, offering something relatively cartoonish in its place. It’s a film that has some things to say, but seems to have intentions away from any major political statement or artistic signature, bringing into focus the lives behind the faces on death row but offering little other than a darkly humorous office comedy otherwise, which works only to compound the feeling of disconnect apparent elsewhere.

With The Letter Room exist a number of top class elements, and the film as a whole must certainly be considered proof of Elvira Lind’s potential in the feature drama realm, so while there are a number of disconnects in the machinations of the film, this Live Action Short nominee at the 2021 Oscars has more than enough about it to be worth the small fee it takes to purchase it; The Letter Room an interesting experiment worth exploring for fans of Lind or Isaac in particular.

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You can watch The Letter Room for a small fee via Vimeo.

Images courtesy of Getty and Paramount Pictures.

The film will follow Coppola as he tries to get his film made despite creative differences with the studio. A big factor of the production was the film’s star, Marlon Brando, who at the time was believed to be past his prime, and was seen as a gamble. Coppola’s auteur style clashed with Evans’ need for a hit to keep the studio afloat, which will no doubt be focused on throughout the film. Levinson has since concluded that “Out of the madness of production, and against all odds, a classic film happened.”

Barry Levinson is perhaps best known for directing Rain Man and Good Morning, Vietnam. The former was the highest grossing film of 1988 and won a multitude of awards including the Academy Award for Best Picture. The latter was also a huge success, with Robin Williams garnering acclaim for his lead role. Levinson’s more recent films have not enjoyed as much success as his earlier features, with his most recent effort, 2015’s Rock the Kasbah, failing to recoup its budget. Levinson gave an updated treatment to the script, which featured on Hollywood’s Black List and was orignally written by Andrew Farotte.

Coppola himself has showed enthusiasm towards the film, stating: “Any movie that Barry Levinson makes about anything, will be interesting and worthwhile.” Recently Coppola has been working on a new director’s cut of The Godfather: Part III, which is currently eyeing a December release. No release date for Francis and The Godfather is known at this time.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Director: J.J. Abrams
Screenwriters: J.J. Abrams, Chris Terrio
Starring: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill

In wrestling the two-headed beast that was a divisive audience reaction to The Last Jedi and the ginormous box office flop that was Solo, Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy wielded her lightsaber to oust her original screenwriter-director choice Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World) from the increasingly important 9th Episode of the Skywalker saga, instead opting to return the franchise to the relatively safe hands of the universe’s 7th movie director J.J. Abrams. Abrams, the filmmaker behind the cinematic reboots of both Star Wars and Star Trek, was therefore tasked with steering the increasingly fragile Star Wars ship into calmer waters with the central Skywalker saga’s conclusion; a film long considered a must-win for the Disney-Lucasfilm partnership. With repairs needed between the cinematic universe and its audience in order to appease some portions of the fandom, a box office hit needed to appease Disney accountants circling an increasingly fragile franchise, a critical hit needed to appease the Disney executives who are still considering the role of Kennedy with just weeks left on her Lucasfilm deal, and the need for a satisfying conclusion to one of the most beloved and popular franchise narratives of all time, Abrams seemed tasked with achieving the impossible: a film that wins for everyone. With The Rise of Skywalker, the talented director proved that even for a filmmaker as well versed in audience pleasing spectacle as him, the impossible is perhaps a little too much. There were no miraculous force-wielding powers at play here.

So much was made of the divisive nature of the expectation quelling The Last Jedi upon its release in 2017, Rian Johnson’s universe-rocking screenplay providing what many saw as a shot in the arm for the franchise and others saw as a decimation of all that had made the franchise so beloved in the first place. The resulting ill-natured discourse surrounding Star Wars created one of the most divided audiences in modern franchise history, and any enjoyment found in The Rise of Skywalker seems to be largely determined by which side of the Last Jedi divide you find yourself on.

If you disliked The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker course-corrected successfully enough to ease anxieties, but if you liked The Last Jedi, then a number of creative choices will seem to have completely undermined the character arcs and narratives set forth by Johnson’s 8th instalment, in what must be seen as an angry shove from Abrams to Johnson’s course-changing ideas.

The narrative for The Rise of Skywalker is, then, perhaps more about the creative hands behind the scenes wrestling for their own vision of the saga than the actual story on the screen; the narrative of the multi-billion dollar franchise leading characters (Rey, Finn, Ren, etc.) seemingly pulled in every direction at the whim of the individual filmmakers taken aboard by Lucasfilm to guide the creative side of the reboot project in an ill-judged attempt to recreate the original trilogy’s distinct sense of individuality across franchise entries.

At one stage in The Rise of Skywalker, one of the franchise’s most beloved characters utters the words “I was wrong”, as Abrams and company collectively dismiss many of The Last Jedi’s philosophies and character motivations; the film offering a knowing wink and a nod that explaining away huge creative shifts in momentary dialogue exchanges is by no means good enough, but that if the Star Wars audience wanted what they paid to see – epic action sequences and battles between the light side and the dark – then it will just have to do. The result is an at times disappointing and often disjointed narrative that seems to offer such unstable bedrock to the performers that even some of the most seasoned actors stuggle to find performances becoming of their names and silver screen history.

What’s worse is that the push and pull of creative forces behind the scenes plays out on the screen in the shape of a rushed first act that seems to put a band-aid on what are perceived as the weak points of Johnson’s work, restructuring the universe’s narrative to reconvene with what Abrams had set up in The Force Awakens, and then proceeds to accelerate at an at times impenetrable rate for the remainder of its runtime. The reasons for this are clear, and to many understandable, but it has an undeniably detrimental effect on the film itself, which if not for said pacing issues and The Last Jedi contradictions offers a pulsating, thrilling, emotional rollercoaster of a finale with hugely significant and rewarding moments.

If it was a war amongst the stars you wanted, then The Rise of Skywalker offered it and then some.

Visually, The Rise of Skywalker is unsurprisingly spectacular, the CGI and practical effects combinations creating a tangible quality to the universe that is at times awe-inspiring, while both the sound mixing and score were immaculate, John Williams’ work elevating every last frame of the piece – never before has a score seemed so intrinsic to the philosophical and ideological presentation at the heart of a film.

This 9th instalment also found great success in revisiting much of what made previous Star Wars films so unique and interesting from a universe building perspective, the heroes traversing the stars, meeting unique characters on distinct planets and finding themselves involved in battles alongside characters already embroiled in their own interesting and unique off-screen narratives. Perhaps most pleasing of all, these moments (many of which were dotted through the film’s first act) felt like Star Wars adventures; they contained the same quirks and star-gazing hopefulness of the original trilogy, Abrams successfully recreating the elements of the filmmaking that helped us to explore our collective imaginations all those years ago. Seeing new characters come to life and never before seen visuals burst out of the screen was becoming of a Star Wars film and an undeniable upgrade on The Last Jedi’s comparatively meta and at times drawn out approach to universe building. Perhaps more so than even in The Force Awakens, The Rise of Skywalker felt like a universe that was lived in, occupied by more than just a handful of characters.

For all of the mishaps and detrimental course correction found in the screenplay, The Rise of Skywalker did see Abrams place a lot more emphasis on a number of elements that were vital to the original trilogy, the most notable and impactful of which was a return to the philosophy of choice, and how choice is what ultimately makes a character good or bad. In The Rise of Skywalker characters are often swept away by circumstance just as they are in any reasonably budgeted blockbuster (including other Star Wars movies), but the film never backs away from forcing its central characters to make key decisions that flip or twist the narrative in new directions, the indication being that this is a universe shaped by people choosing to do something good or to do something bad, and the pay offs to this ongoing revisitation is huge for a number of the leading characters. There is agency therefore placed in the hands of Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo Ren and company, which emphasises the philosophy of the force and its relatability to us in the real world – if we too commit to one small act of kindness, that act can come to have universal significance.

The Rise of Skywalker will be remembered perhaps more fondly than it currently is once behind-the-scenes dramas fade into obscurity and the trilogy can be seen as less than what many hold it to the standard of being: the pinnacle of entertainment. This Abrams offering is fun, it has a number of franchise-leading moments of visual awe and narrative satisfaction, it offers something new while being assured in revisiting the old and it has enough going for it in every aspect to be seen with kinder eyes once the microscope of immediacy is removed. There are issues, many of which were foreseen in the turbulence of the film’s pre-production, and said issues were not handled in a manner befitting of a creative force directed by one singular vision, which is of course of huge detriment to the final product, but so far as space philosophy on steroids goes, there’s more than enough about The Rise of Skywalker to latch onto, even if it comes at a million miles per hour.

The likelihood that Episode IX of the Skywalker saga is the last ever Star Wars movie is slim to none, which makes learning lessons from this trilogy a vital part of the process moving forward at Disney and Lucasfilm. There have long been creative visions torn apart by warring factions, and while the effects are not so terminal in the case of The Rise of Skywalker, these issues do shape what has ultimately been put to screen and any such issues may not survive in the realm of non-Skywalker spin-offs, as seen with Solo. Whether this means reinstating the proposed Rian Johnson trilogy and following through on that filmmaker’s vision or simply rearranging high management at Lucasfilm remains to be seen, but there is a rot in the system that almost every Disney Star Wars release has had hints of before Episode IX and has come to the fore now more than ever.

The Rise of Skywalker faced the impossible behind the scenes and, unlike the force-wielding heroes on it, was unable to overcome the odds and make something truly extraordinary. Nevertheless, with all the forces at work and the height of expectation placed upon it, The Rise of Skywalker did enough to be enjoyed on its own; a solid if not groundbreaking Star Wars movie that succeeded in offering exciting moments of fan service that will long be remembered; a movie of significance if not of the highest artistic integrity.

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Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017)
Director: Rian Johnson
Screenwriter: Rian Johnson
Starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac

Rey and Kylo have an interaction through their Force Connection at 1 hour and 11 minutes into The Last Jedi. It’s a simple scene that was deftly handled compared to any sort of similar scene from the Prequels. First, there’s the concept of the Force Connection in the first place. The editing shows the viewer how the character sees the interaction through their different locations, rather than showing a vision manifesting in a single location through special effects. Rey’s setting is dark with sharp, jagged rocks surrounding her, representing her inner conflict and darkness. The tight shots really show this off in some beautifully constructed work. Kylo is shirtless in his quarters, it’s a plain honesty that comes through in his dialogue and attitude. The shapes in his establishing shots are rounder and softer than Rey’s, perhaps showing Kylo’s seeming acceptance of his place.

The opening lines establish the involuntary nature of this connection and how they are perceiving each other from their own perspective, and begin to move into conflict. Rey can’t understand why Kylo would hate and murder his own father, but Kylo asserts that family is weakness. He shows Rey a vision of the time Luke contemplated killing him (a hard cut and lack of narration tells us she can see it, too), and the tension swells. Cutting back to the scene, Kylo moves forward again, delivering the most important line of the film: “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.” 

Star Wars as a franchise is in a weird place; Marvel’s universe approach has changed the common idea of what film franchises are, kids who watched the Prequels growing up are teens or adults, and the new executives don’t seem to have a united vision on what Star Wars is or where it’s going. Everything Disney has made is set in a time around the events of the movies, some of them leaning heavily on nostalgia to put off actually making a reasonable move forward. The Last Jedi reads as an attempt to try and move forward while playing within limits and balancing the old with the new.

Do I love everything in this movie? No. But, I do think everything feels like it belongs in a Star Wars story. Saving the creatures on the casino planet may seem silly, but the thematic elements are right in line with Star Wars’ ideas about fighting against oppression. Poe’s goofy joke at the beginning is acceptable in the realm of the Star Wars movie, which have always had an element of humor to them. Maybe I’m being too dismissive, but there is so much good to the film that I don’t care about what ultimately comes down to personal taste.

Rey’s journey shows similarities to Luke’s time with Yoda. It delves into the mystical elements of the Jedi, one of the key components of any good piece of Star Wars media featuring Force users. She has a lot to learn about the Force, and it’s immediately clear that she is powerful. Her first session, in which she sits on a cliffside and feels the island around her through the Force, does such a good job of immersing the audience into her feelings. The montage of images is combined with the perfect music, and we feel the warmth, life, cold and darkness that she mentions. She ends on a hole filled with creeping roots that draws her with its dark energy, and it’s easily one of the coolest images in the movie. I’m also going to use this space to praise the Leia scene, which shows us the potential power of an unaware Force sensitive character. It happened, it’s canon, accept it like I have to accept Yoda and Sidious performing acrobatics.

Rian Johnson and his collaborators did an incredible job with the production and set design that feels perfectly cohesive with other films. Costumes are similar to the Imperial era without being the exact same, and the outfits in the casino are imaginative stand-ins for its black tie style. Snoke’s throne room is striking and stands out among the great sets in the history of the franchise. There’s also the design of Crait’s salty surface that plays into the brilliance of the finale, Luke’s final act of heroism. 

Perhaps the greatest, and most controversial, part of the film is the reveal of Rey’s parentage and Snoke’s death…

These moments capture the attitude of “let the past die”. Snoke wasn’t a character in the movies, he was an analogue for Palpatine that lurked as a mystery. His importance lies in what he did prior to the movies, while this story is really about Kylo as the antagonist. Rey’s parentage may have been a fun point of speculation, but Star Wars doesn’t need soap opera connections. In fact, Rey functions better as a representation of the audience this way; a nobody. Someone far away from these events that heard about them through stories. It also allows her to be her own person dealing with her unique set of issues that contrast with Kylo’s.

Johnson was wise to trim the fat from the story. It allowed him to focus on giving the characters adventures to partake in, and getting the themes of wonder, possibility and change into the story. This is reinforced with the indentured servant stable boy at the end using the Force to get his broom, showing that it really is possible for anyone to become an important part of the stories we see.

Of course, the structure of the film may not be “new”. It’s a new version of Rebels versus Empire and parallels Empire Strikes Back, but I think that fault needs to be placed on the producers and JJ Abrams. The Force Awakens created this dynamic, and it’s clear Star Wars isn’t ready to let go of the period of between Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi. The best way to make a movie that feeds on nostalgia and doing the same thing is to acknowledge that shortcoming.

Where will Star Wars go in the future? Are there going to be any changes in management? Will there be conversations at Disney and Lucasfilm about the fundamental nature of Star Wars? When are we going to finally get a movie that takes place in a new era, or features some new character roles and dynamics? Can Star Wars work with a cinematic universe model, or does it need to stay as a simpler, event-driven property? Only time will tell, but if there isn’t an attempt to let the past die and move the franchise forward from the Skywalker era, Star Wars will become the stale, crappy property people think The Last Jedi is. I’d love to see Rian Johnson work with a blank slate and check because the dude knows how to make movies.

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Deadline – 1st Nov 2019

Jodie Foster, Shailene Woodley and Tahar Rahim will support Benedict Cumberbatch in a new movie from The Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald titled Prisoner 760. The film will be a drama based on a real story about a suspected terrorist kept in Guantanemo Bay.

THR – 1st Nov 2019

Sony Pictures Animation have announced that a sequel to their hugely popular Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Oscar-winning animated film will be released worldwide on 8th April 2022.

Twitter – 1st Nov 2019

Get Out stars Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield are set to star in a yet-to-be-titled drama from Warner Bros. about the activist and Black Panther member Fred Hampton. ‘Euphoria’ star Algee Smith will also star.

THR – 28th Oct 2019

2019 Oscar nominee Rachel Weisz (The Favourite) will play iconic actress Elizabeth Taylor in a film from Slumdog Millionaire writer Simon Beaufoy and directors Bert & Bertie (Troop Zero). The film will focus on Taylor’s AIDS activism in the 1980s and will be titled A Special Relationship.

THR – 28th Oct 2019

Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp director Peyton Reed has signed on to direct a third Ant-Man film for Marvel Studios.

THR – 1st Nov 2019

Former Spider-Man lead actor Andrew Garfield has been cast as the lead in the directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda for Netflix Original film tick, tick… BOOM!, an adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical off-broadway show.

Empire – 30th Oct 2019

Paul Schrader, the screenwriter behind Taxi Driver (1976) and the screenwriter-director behind First Reformed (2017), has cast Oscar Isaac as the lead in his next film The Card Counter. The picture will see Isaac play a gambler who seeks to reform a young man out for revenge.

THR – 29th Oct 2019

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was a special guest at the UFC BMF championship weigh in on Friday to announce that he’ll be working alongside the Ultimate Fighting Championship to make a film on famed MMA fighter Mark Kerr. Johnson, who was himself a professional wrestler, will star as the lead and produce the film.

ESPN – 1st Nov 2019

Channing Tatum will star in and produce Soundtrack of Silence from Paramount Pictures. The project will re-team the filmmaker with the screenwriters and producers of his 2010 movie Dear John, and tells of the real-life story of a student who learns he is going deaf and memorises his favourite songs to help remember the most important memories in his life.

Variety – 1st Nov 2019

Oscar-winning actor Casey Affleck is set to star in new Christine Jeffs (Sunshine Cleaning) film Every Breath You Take, a thriller set to co-star Sam Claflin, Michelle Monaghan and Veronica Ferres.

Variety – 31st Oct 2019

‘Game of Thrones’ creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have quit a partnership with Lucasfilm that would see the duo helm a trilogy of live-action Star Wars movies. The pair told of how they couldn’t dedicate themselves to the partnership given their commitments to Netflix in a statement released Monday.

THR – 28th Oct 2019

Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is reportedly still in discussions with Lucasfilm to helm his own trilogy of Star Wars movies, stating “we’re still engaged with Lucasfilm so we’ll wait and see”.

Deadline – 2nd Nov 2019

Patrick Schwarzenegger and Ike Barinholtz have joined the cast of upcoming Amy Poehler Neflix Original Moxie, which is set to be led by Hadley Robinson. The film is based upon the book of the same name by Jennifer Mathieu.

THR – 29th Oct 2019

A sequel to Netflix Original movie The Princess Switch has been given the go ahead, with production set to begin in the UK next month ahead of a 2020 release date. The film titled The Princess Switch: Switched Again will tell of Duchess Margaret (Vanessa Hudgens) unexpectedly inheriting the throne of Montenaro.

THR – 29th Oct 2019

Tank 432 director Nick Gillespie has assembled an ensemble of British TV and film talent for his next film Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunch Break, with Alice Lowe (Sightseers), Kris Marshall (Love Actually) and Johnny Vegas (‘Benidorm’) heading up a group that also includes Tom Meeten, Katherine Parkinson, Kevin Bishop, Mandeep Dhillon, Craig Parkinson, Steve Oram and Pippa Haywood.

THR – 28th Oct 2019

Bill Condon, the director behind Dreamgirls (2006) and Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast remake, is to re-team with the “house of mouse” to make a new musical adaptation of famed novel “A Christmas Carol“. The picture, titled Marley, will focus on the perspective of character Jacob Marley and will have music written for it by Pocahontas Oscar-winning writer Stephen Schwartz.

THR – 28th Oct 2019

And finally…

Delta Air Lines this week came under criticism for cutting same-gender sexual acts from their cuts of popular 2019 releases Rocketman and Booksmart. The airline has since apologised and vowed to restore the scenes to their original films.

Deadline – 1st Nov 2019