Maestro (2023)
Director: Bradley Cooper
Screenwriter: Bradley Cooper, Josh Singer
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, Sarah Silverman, Sam Nivola

When On the Waterfront opened in 1954, its score gained just as much critical praise as any other element of the film – which isn’t a light feat considering it won eight Oscars. Amazingly, it would remain Leonard Bernstein’s only contribution to cinema. At least, his only contribution that was intended to be part of a film – the music he composed for West Side Story is probably some of his most iconic work, but it was composed for the stage rather than for the screen. For a character as big as Bernstein with a mark on American culture of similar stature, it’s amazing to think that it has taken this long for his second mark on cinema to be made.

Bradley Cooper writes, directs, and stars in Maestro as the man himself. Cooper’s belief in his own ability to multitask is clearly quite strong, and its strength is only matched by his ambition to make a film that spans a life as long and as rich as Bernstein’s. We meet him as an old man who has already done it all, and then we take a step back into his mid-twenties in the early 1940s.

Maestro is a rare case in which style becomes substance. Bradley Cooper’s performance as Bernstein changes to fit each historical era that the film visits – he is more stagey and theatrical in the 40s, and looser and, seemingly, more improvisational in the 70s. It’s not only Cooper’s performance that changes – the cinematography changes to suit the era it’s portraying in more ways than just the use of black and white footage for the older sequences.

As Bernstein himself ages with constantly shifting makeup and facial prosthetics, the look and feel of the world around him informs us as to when it is all taking place by becoming a part of the era it’s portraying. When it’s showing us something from the 40s, it could easily be dropped into a Charlie Chaplin film, whereas the shots that take place in the 70s could be mistaken for Deliverance. In the few glimpses we get into the 80s, it has the atmosphere of a cheesy Miami-set disposable action movie.

The only aspect that isn’t changing and reinventing itself throughout is Felicia, Bernstein’s wife portrayed by Carey Mulligan. Mulligan’s performance is in such stark contrast to Cooper’s that it accentuates both of their characters – Felicia is caring and stable while Leonard is passionate and erratic. They aren’t compatible as lovers, but they share a warmth towards each other that neither takes for granted.

Bernstein is such a flawed character that, if it wasn’t for Felicia’s stability beside him, it would be hard to empathise with why he makes such chaotic life choices at every available opportunity. Maestro never advocates for those choices or attempts to put Bernstein in a light that he isn’t worthy of – it’s as critical of him as it needs to be – but seeing how quickly his personality and his life can change does go some way to creating some relatability for how he could become so self-destructive. A kind light is encouraged by the wealth of context that we’re afforded.

Of course, Maestro isn’t breaking new ground in telling quite a personal story in contrast to an otherwise well-crafted public image. Tár even beat it to be the first one about a conductor to be released in the 2020s. The best comparison for Maestro, however, is probably in something it’s the opposite of, The Greatest Showman. They’re both films about Americans who broke new ground in their respective eras – the former as the first American to lead a symphony orchestra and the latter as the American (P. T. Barnum) who popularised the circus. What makes Maestro and The Greatest Showman so different, though, is that Maestro never attempts to glorify its subject under the pretence that his achievements should outweigh his character. It celebrates his art while retaining the integrity of his flaws.

What it all amounts to is a biopic that is long overdue but served well by its existence now that it is finally here. Bradley Cooper has managed to make Maestro a thoughtful depiction of Leonard Bernstein’s life and character, but also of the world that shaped him and the people who were around him for it all.

Score: 17/24

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
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Dream Scenario (2023)
Director: Kristoffer Borgli
Screenwriter: Kristoffer Borgli
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Dylan Baker, Tim Meadows, Lily Bird, Jessica Clement, Paula Boudreau, Marie McPhail

Nicolas Cage has become an internet darling in recent times, to the point that he’s the first actor since John Malkovich who has been able to comfortably play himself in a film without it seeming self-indulgent. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck turning up for a small cameo in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back might qualify for a special dispensation, however. The thing with Nicolas Cage that makes him unique, though, is that he is one of very few actors who pops up in anything and everything. He can just as easily carry a huge budget blockbuster as he’s likely to be the face of a straight-to-streaming B-Movie. What we can always guarantee is that he’ll always give it his absolute best. Whether that means creating a new meme or garnering widespread critical acclaim doesn’t really matter, because either way we’re in for something special.

To that end, Dream Scenario seems like, well, a dream scenario for a Nicolas Cage film. At its base, it’s about an unremarkable professor, played by Cage, who wants more from his life, and suddenly finds notoriety when he starts popping up in people’s dreams. As a premise, it’s weird and compelling, but it also comes with the backing of A24 – a studio who have built a certain level of trust among audiences with films like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Past Lives in recent memory. It sounds like a B-Movie fit to garner the internet’s next favourite meme, but it’s backed by a studio that could give us Cage’s next Academy Award for Best Actor.

Paul (Nicholas Cage) is instantly quite relatable as a character – he lives a normal life with a normal job and a normal family. It’s comfortable, but it isn’t anything exciting. We get a glimpse into the kind of person he is when he sets up a meeting with a former colleague, Sheila (Paula Boudreau). Sheila is about to have a piece of research published that Paul believes he should be credited for. Whether he actually should or not is never confirmed, but Sheila certainly doesn’t agree with him.

As we get to know Paul more, it’s quite easy to believe it might well have been a reach on his behalf in an attempt to gain any kind of recognition in the field he has been working in for his entire life. Paul’s wife, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), encourages Paul to record the meeting so she can hear her husband demand what he’s owed, but he deletes the recording before she’s able to hear the truth of what actually happened.

Paul and Janet go to the theatre together where an ex-girlfriend, Claire (Marnie McPhail), recognises Paul. She’s excited to see him because he has been on her mind lately, albeit unwillingly. He has been appearing in her dreams. He then learns that he has been appearing in his students’ dreams too, and then also the dreams of a bunch of random people who are asking who he is and why it’s happening on Facebook.

Initially, he’s besotted by the limelight, and he actively takes his space in it. People are excited to meet him for what appears to be the first time in his life and he can’t get enough of it. He even derails whole lectures to engage in a Q&A sessions with students who are seeing him in their dreams. What he isn’t so happy about is that, like in real life, he always seems to play a passive part in the dreams. As he starts to play a much more active role in his own life, the version of him that appears in people’s dreams follows suit, but it isn’t to a desirable end.

Dream Scenario is far less weird than it seems. Much like Being John Malkovich, it uses its surrealist nucleus as a driver to explore much more usual themes. Through this odd phenomenon where Nicolas Cage’s Paul is appearing in everyone’s dreams, we’re asked to consider cultural phenomena that are relevant to modern life. The newly instantaneous and unfiltered nature of how a person can rise to fame, the loss of nuance that comes with the sudden mass awareness of a flawed individual, and the frivolity of cancel culture are all brought into question.

There isn’t really anything in Dream Scenario that absolutely has to be driven by the idea that this random person has started showing up in people’s dreams, though, nor is there any attempt to explore how or why it might be happening. If Paul had just gone viral as the result of pulling a strange face in the background of a news report, for example, most of Dream Scenario would be exactly the same film.

The story of Paul’s rise and fall could still be the same for the large majority of it, and in a way, it might have even been more satisfying as a complete narrative. There wouldn’t have been any abstract concept to dive further into when there was clearly no interest in doing so. The interest of the film is plainly in deconstructing and commenting on modern viral celebrity culture and the pitfalls that come with it.

Dream Scenario is a showcase of what Nicholas Cage does very well, or at least one of the things he does very well. It’s a character study of a man who’s frustrated with a life that most people would be satisfied with because he wants more from it. It’s as if Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation was rewritten to replace the references to orchids with an allegory about a mild-mannered Freddy Krueger, and who else could play such a role? It’s effortlessly watchable and compelling in a number of ways, but it wouldn’t have hurt to further explore the absurd concept that it all comes from.

Score: 19/24

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
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Wingwomen (2023)
Director: Mélanie Laurent
Screenwriters: Cédric Anger, Chris Deslandes
Starring: Mélanie Laurent, Adéle Exarchapoulos, Isabelle Adjani, Manon Bresch

In the early 2000s, just before the big superhero boom, there was a trend of lighthearted, easily digestible action movies that revolved around an endearing central friendship. Charlie’s Angels, Shanghai Noon and Ocean’s Eleven were all a part of it. Now, in 2023, we find ourselves at the other end of the superhero boom. Just as box office returns are diminishing for Marvel and general audiences seem to be moving on from the churn of comic book adaptations, Wingwomen takes a look back at the trend we all left behind.

Wingwomen opens with a simple sequence of our two protagonists in what comes across as a training mission of sorts. For what, we’re never explicitly told. Carole (Mélanie Laurent) is the calmer, more level-headed and focused half of the duo, while Alex (Adéle Exarchapoulos) is the maverick who never misses a beat, even if her mind is preoccupied with the latest man in her life ghosting her. They’re pursued through a forest by an army of military drones – Carole drives a quad bike while Alex shoots from the back, being sure to vent about the instability of her love life throughout.

It’s campy and cheesy, but it’s also very watchable for one good reason…

From the moment Wingwomen starts, it is quite obvious that one aspect of it holds a lot of promise. In Carole and Alex, we have two leads who feel like real people, and who interact with one another in such a way that makes it hard not to succumb to their charms. They’re in some kind of an extraordinary situation, but they could just as easily be painting a wall together and it would be just as compelling to watch.

Their character archetypes go as far back as Laurel and Hardy – one is organised and the other is a mess, essentially. It’s the same dynamic that films like Rush Hour and Lethal Weapon have created such memorable relationships with. Wingwomen takes it in a slightly different direction, one that’s more concerned with subverting expectations and creating a reliance on one another along the way. Carole experiences problems that would feel more natural to Alex, and Alex is the best possible person to help her reason her way through those problems. Carole isn’t going through anything that Alex hasn’t had to learn how to cope with herself, often just to survive the hectic life she leads. The touching element of it all is that it gives Alex a selfless purpose in this relationship too, despite being the messy one. They need each other more than either of them knows, and it’s hard not to feel warmed by it when the characters are so authentic.

Unfortunately, as the narrative unfolds and we learn more about the world that these two find themselves in, it quickly starts to feel like we actually learn less. Quite early on, Carole and Alex decide they want nothing more than to lead normal lives. It’s one of the most exciting parts of the film, because by that point it’s already abundantly clear that these two characters are the heart and soul of Wingwomen. To see them transition into normal lives together would be fascinating.

Instead of diving further into these two characters though, we’re just introduced to more and more plot points that only exist for the sake of facilitating mediocre action sequences. There are super high-tech concepts that are introduced and then immediately abandoned – like a retina-scan secured bunker in the forest that blends into its surroundings because it’s a big mirror that they can see out of but nobody can see into. It’s visually appealing, but it comes and goes without leaving any impression or being given any explanation. That’s true for more or less everything outside of the core story which is just the richness of Carole and Alex’s friendship with one another.

Just as Wingwomen is a film of two halves from a narrative perspective, it is also one from a technical point of view. Some of its cinematography is beautiful, and there are a number of shots that are reminiscent of films like Parasite. In those moments, everything comes together to create a visual image that tells as much of the story as the dialogue filling the scene could hope to. Then there are moments when the screen feels as if it’s filled with disposable clutter instead. One example is during an ad-hoc musical sequence that, again, comes and goes without anything to justify its inclusion.

There is a very strong heart to Wingwomen that is constantly undermined by a tendency to create flamboyant set pieces with poor execution. Carole and Alex are wonderfully written characters with a beautiful dynamic as friends, but it’s hard to truly appreciate how brilliant that is when the bells and whistles attached to them are so loud and pointless. Even so, if this was shown as part of an early-2000s buddy action marathon it would be very difficult to spot the imposter. In fact, the only thing that might give it away is how well the buddy part is written while the rest is on par. If this trend is to make a comeback in the wake of the superhero boom, then hopefully they’ll at least have characters that are as compelling as this early entry into its revival era.

Score: 12/24

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
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The Bikeriders (2023)
Director: Jeff Nichols
Screenwriter: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist

Jeff Nichols has never been shy of doing what he wants as a filmmaker. His filmography has everything from an acclaimed independent darling (Shotgun Stories) to a high-concept existential drama (Take Shelter) and a number of shades in between (Mud, Midnight Special). This time he has made a film about bikers, just because he found a photobook about bikers and thought it was cool. The coolest thing about The Bikeriders is that Jeff Nichols didn’t just recognise the photobook itself as cool, but more so the people pictured inside it.

The Bikeriders is under no illusions that it’s the first film of its kind, and it openly references Easy Rider and other films from the biker canon to affirm that. What it does to differentiate itself from every other biker movie is it dissects what it means to be cool for each of its characters. Tom Hardy stars as Johnny, the leader of the gang at the centre of it all. In one of the film’s highlights, we’re shown that he came up with the idea of starting a motorcycle club while watching Marlon Brando play The Wild One’s Johnny Strabler. He’s besotted with his character – quoting lines just after they’re said and fantasising about what it means to be that kind of person. Clearly, he could have found a worse role model, as he leads the club with respect, honour and fairness.

Austin Butler’s Benny is the stoic outcast with anger issues. He’s something of an understudy to Johnny, and the two share an unbreakable bond founded on mutual admiration. When Benny meets Kathy (Jodie Comer – who deserves praise for her incredible regional accent), he does everything he can to become a permanent fixture in her life. That doesn’t mean showing any emotion though. “Everything he can” amounts to sitting outside of her house on his motorbike until her boyfriend gets so frustrated about it that he moves out. Five weeks later, they’re married.

Throughout the course of the film, we meet a range of characters including new members of the club, members of rival clubs, and aspiring teenagers who’d give anything to become a part of the club. How Johnny and Benny react to these characters is where the heart of the film comes from, but how Kathy tells their stories is just as poignant. She’s somewhat of an outsider to the group, but she has an insight to it that nobody else could lay claim to as Benny’s wife. The Bikeriders benefits from a sense of earnestness in having Kathy as the voice of the story because she’s a character who has no ego in any of this. We get a perspective of each character that makes them feel like entirely real people, and we get to know them so well that we can infer how that perhaps wouldn’t be the case if they were in charge of their own stories.

There are elements of The Bikeriders that call back to films like Goodfellas. The organisation of the bike club, much like the organisation of the gangsters in Goodfellas, is almost fetishised. Everyone who’s a part of it takes confidence from it, everyone who has a connection to it wears it as a badge of honour, and everyone else is either intimidated or enamoured by it. It could be accused of a lack of nuance from that point of view – there are surely more detractors around than just Kathy’s ex-boyfriend. Nonetheless, what it does choose to present is done with such sincerity that it doesn’t really matter.

The Bikeriders isn’t breaking any new ground, but it does approach an often-told story with a relatively fresh approach. We already know what motorcycle clubs are, what they stand for and how they tend to be perceived. What we haven’t experienced quite so readily is the inner workings of what motivates their members to join them. By shining a light on that side of the story, we are given a relatable take on how and why these clubs even existed in the first place. They aren’t that different from the rest of us after all.

Score: 18/24

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
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Dumb Money (2023)
Director: Craig Gillespie
Screenwriters: Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo
Starring: Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Seth Rogen, Vincent D’Onofrio, Talia Ryder, Myha’la Herrold

Dumb Money isn’t the first film in recent times that has attempted to convey an element of the volatile nature that the modern economic system is built upon. Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street has become a bit of an unfortunate mascot for hustle mentality, probably unwillingly, as a result of its depiction of just how game-like it all is. Whether that’s a good basis for such a system is up for debate, but it is surely difficult to argue that it doesn’t appear to be a bit of a blasé way for the world to run. What Dumb Money does differently is it commits entirely, in no uncertain terms, to a line of thought that says such a system is unfair and is entirely appropriate as a subject of our ridicule.

Given the true story that it is based upon, it would have been hard for Craig Gillespie (director of I, Tonya and Cruella) and company to present it as anything else.

Back in 2020, a bunch of hedge funds and large investors engaged in short-selling stock for popular video game retailer GameStop. The practice of short-selling is essentially making a bet on a company’s imminent failure – the investors borrowed stock from a panel of brokers and sold it on to new investors with the hopes that the price would fall, meaning they could rebuy the stock at a lower price to return the borrowed stock and keep the monetary difference between the two as profit. It’s risky, as the price could also rise, but it’s rare that Wall Street traders lose these bets. What they couldn’t have foreseen is a Reddit forum – r/wallstreetbets – coming together to buy the stock en masse, led by a YouTuber under the alias of Roaring Kitty, played in Dumb Money by Paul Dano.

Because so many stocks were bought by so many people, prices dramatically rose. A lot of hedge funds and large investors lost large amounts of money, and a lot of normal people were able to make some. The absurdity of the situation was picked up by international news outlets, celebrities and politicians as the ethics of artificially inflating stock prices became a popular debate.

Dumb Money, in telling its story mostly from the perspective of Roaring Kitty, sets itself on the side of the normal person trying to wrangle back a tiny crumb of payback from a system that isn’t set up to benefit them. America Ferrera plays a nurse who browses Reddit in her spare time. Anthony Ramos is a young GameStop employee from a working class family. Talia Ryder and Myha’la Herrold are students who’ve experienced first-hand the devastating effects that stock plummeting can have on ordinary families while hedge funds and large investors cheer it on. Of course, making money during it is nice, but they all have a moral fight to partake in too.

Nick Offerman, Seth Rogen and Vincent D’Onofrio are presented as the villains of the piece, playing Gabe Plotkin, Steve Cohen and Kenneth Griffin respectively. Each of them is extremely wealthy, and extremely arrogant when it comes to stock markets. They disregard every advance that r/wallstreetbets makes on the GameStop stock because they know the odds are stacked in their favour. The odds being stacked in their favour is an essential part of the story, because it’s the only way any of them could ever be so rich. They’re all presented as absolute clowns.

There are comedic moments throughout, but where Dumb Money really, and voluntarily, shows its colours is where the humour is pointed. When Roaring Kitty or the non-professional investors are in a scene that’s supposed to make us laugh, we’re laughing with them. When it’s the professional investors, it’s very much at them. While Anthony Ramos’ Marcus gets one over on his boss, we’re laughing because we’re encouraged to cheer him on. While Seth Rogen’s Gabe Plotkin questions an aide’s suggestion that his wine collection might make a distasteful backdrop for his subpoena hearing, we’re laughing because we’re encouraged to see him as stupid. At every opportunity, the person in power is the butt of the joke.

Dumb Money is a thoughtful take on a true story. It’s funny without ever becoming satirical, and it rips apart the power structures that led to the story it tells with confidence and assurance. Its existence won’t inform the masses of how the stock markets work, but it does give a moral steer on whether it works in a way that is fair or not.

Score: 18/24

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
Twitter: @rbrtjones

Scrapper (2023)
Director: Charlotte Regan
Screenwriter: Charlotte Regan
Starring: Lola Campbell, Harris Dickson, Alin Uzun, Laura Alkman, Ambreen Razia

In the middle of a Venn diagram that has circles for “debut feature”, “written and directed by a woman named Charlotte” and “explores parental trauma through the perspective of a young daughter”, there are two films that have both been released fairly recently: Aftersun and Scrapper. It’s difficult to avoid comparing the two when they have so much in common, especially when they’re both (very) British. But actually, the two films really don’t have much in common beyond those surface-level connections. Where Charlotte Wells gave us an ambiguous masterpiece that saw its parental trauma through both pre and post-facto lenses in Aftersun, Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper presents something far more accessible, linear and, in its own way, hopeful.

Georgie (Lola Campbell) is the daughter at the centre of Scrapper’s story. She has had a rough time of it recently with her mother dying, leaving her to live alone under the rouse that a fictional uncle has moved in to take care of her. As a 12-year-old she has now inherited the burdens of being a renter in a single-person household, a pre-teen outcast at school, and, as if she didn’t have enough going wrong in her life, a West Ham fan. When Jason (Harris Dickson) turns up by climbing over her garden fence, things change dramatically. He’s the father who abandoned her, and now he’s here to challenge the new identities that she has had to make for herself. She is no longer solely responsible for paying rent, she has someone in her corner when she needs it, and she now knows who bought her the West Ham shirt that she wears every day.

The problem for Georgie is that none of the things that Jason has turned up promising to be is her mum. To make it worse, this is the person who walked out on the two of them before Georgie even had a chance to remember who he was, so of course she’s sceptical of letting him in. Both literally and figuratively, as she only accepts that he’s here to stay once he foils her plan to lock him out of the house by breaking back in; something that she likely respects deep down, seeing as she has been getting by for the last however long by stealing and selling bikes in the local area. But it does give her cause for concern – who is Jason, what does he do, and why is he here now?

What ensues is a game of cat and mouse that subverts our expectations again and again. Regan is such a skilful writer that she has crafted entirely real personalities for both Georgie and Jason in a swift 84-minute runtime, and as such it’s so easy to slip into Georgie’s cynicism towards him. Perhaps the nicest example is when Georgie is driven to search through Jason’s belongings to find out more about him, and we’re given multiple Chekhov’s Guns to look out for. Whether they all go off or not is really up to us to decide, but it creates a feeling that we’re coming to Georgie’s conclusions about Jason at the same time as she is.

Outside of the two central characters, there are some stranger approaches to storytelling. A theme that runs all the way through Scrapper is the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. Of course, Georgie initially rejects that in favour of raising herself, but we’re given multiple snippets of ‘The Office’-style pseudo-documentary inserts where characters speak directly to a camera about what they think of Georgie. The woman she sells her stolen bikes to, a popular girl from school, and the social services officers who’ve bought her story about a fake uncle, are all featured. They’re largely played for quick laughs though, in a film that is otherwise thought-provoking and heartbreaking. Instead of providing much-needed humour amongst a narrative that would be otherwise difficult to take emotionally (which seems to be at least part of the idea behind them), these inserts simply become distracting.

There’s enough substance in Scrapper that its flaws aren’t enough to supersede its qualities. Charlotte Regan’s debut feature knows the rules of its genres well enough that Scrapper is able to break them in consistently thoughtful ways, even if some might work better than others. That’s what elevates this to being such a worthwhile take on a story that isn’t often told.

Score: 17/24

Recommended for you: 100 Unmissable BBC Films

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
Twitter: @rbrtjones

The Out-Laws (2023)
Director: Tyler Spindel
Screenwriters: Ben Zazove, Evan Turner
Starring: Adam DeVine, Nina Dobrev, Pierce Brosnan, Ellen Barkin, Lauren Lapkus, Poorna Jagannathan, Lil Rey Howery, Richard Kind, Julie Hagerty

When a film starts with the Happy Madison Productions logo card, we know what we’re about to get. 50 First Dates, Click, Grown Ups, take your pick. Everything they’ve done, with maybe the exception of 2022 basketball drama Hustle, is a light-hearted, inconsequential comedy that revolves around Adam Sandler, with a plot that appears to be reverse-engineered from its title. That’s not always a bad thing, there’s certainly a space for it in the vast reaches of filmmaking, but The Out-Laws is quite a bad example.

Adam DeVine plays Owen, the character that Adam Sandler usually would have played. He’s a loveable bumbling idiot who has somehow ended up in a job that requires a far more responsible person than he is. As a Bank Manager, he’s in charge of the safe and its voice-activated security system. The voice-activated security system exists for the sole purpose of a joke where Owen sings a Blink-182 song to it as a password again and again.

It’s his wedding weekend. His traditional parents (Richard Kind and Julie Hagerty) are unapproving of his yoga-teaching fiancé Parker, played by Nina Dobrev, and his soon-to-be in-laws (Pierce Brosnan and Ellen Barkin). The problem regarding The Out-Laws appearing to have been reverse-engineered from its title, is that we have to sit through so much set-up for a forgone conclusion that we’re already privy to.

As soon as we find out that Owen’s about to get new in-laws, its fairly obvious that they’ll turn out to be the out-laws. But we still have to go through the awkward introductions, Owen defending their aloof nature to his parents, and the standard “In-laws, eh?” humour that stand-up comedians have long since left behind. It all might have amounted to something that isn’t worth skipping if Owen went on to deduce that Parker’s parents were the out-laws all along in a way that felt anywhere near satisfying, but he essentially just recounts what we’ve just seen in the order we’ve just seen it.

The Out-Laws is so clearly an Adam Sandler vehicle in the same vein as almost every other Happy Madison production that it almost triggers an uncanny valley feeling to see Adam DeVine play the lead role. That’s not his fault, and the problem isn’t anything to do with his performance or comedic instincts, it’s just not his film despite being his film. Pierce Brosnan and Richard Kind do have some comedic potential as opposing in-laws, but The Out-Laws never really makes much use of it. Nina Dobrev, Ellen Barkin and Julie Hagerty unfortunately all fade into the background due to a screenplay that clearly isn’t bothered whether they’re all there or not.

What’s most emblematic of how far The Out-Laws misses by is the character of Tyree, played by Lil Rey Howard. Just by virtue of being Lil Rey Howard, he’s able to bring some relief to an otherwise dry and unsuccessful attempt at a family comedy, but he plays the exact same character as he did in Get Out. Obviously, with Get Out being a racially-charged horror that depicts some really rough stuff, it’s good to have a character that provides a space to decompress here and there. The Out-Laws really shouldn’t need the same character to do the same thing when it’s supposed to be a light-hearted comedy.

Unfortunately, there just isn’t much substance to The Out-Laws. It starts where it ends and it repeats itself on the way with very little to laugh at while we get there. It’s really just one in a long line of low-effort, low-stakes comedies that are designed for us to watch and quickly forget about, and that’s exactly what we’ll do.

Score: 5/24

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
Twitter: @rbrtjones

The Flash (2023)
Director: Andy Muschietti
Screenwriters: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein, Christina Hodson
Starring: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Michael Keaton, Ben Affleck, Jeremy Irons, Maribel Verdú

When the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) debuted with Man of Steel in 2013, it was already playing catch-up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The Avengers had recently whetted our appetites for big superhero crossovers. As such, we got Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice before we’d even been introduced to a new iteration of Batman. Nearly ten years later, we’re preparing to say goodbye to the DCEU in favour of James Gunn’s latest project as the head of newly-created DC Studios, but they’re still doing the same thing. Spider-Man: No Way Home created its own legacy as a film that held the power to bring audiences back into cinemas at a time when a lot of us were still worried about the consequences of going to see a film during a pandemic, and what The Flash seems to have taken from that is a message that we need more multiverses and more cameos than ever before.

From the very beginning, The Flash feels like a cynical cash-in. On the strength of the premise alone, it becomes little more than just another film in a long line of DCEU projects trying to have a stab at something that the MCU has recently done to some applause. Weirdly enough, though, it’s actually alright.

The Flash’s story starts by framing Barry Allen’s The Flash (Ezra Miller) as a kind of low-level member of the Justice League who Alfred (Jeremy Irons) turns to when everyone else is busy. There’s a disaster going on a few blocks away that only he’s available to help with, so he does with some comedy segments of varying success interspersed. He’s essentially the nerdy kid who’s just happy to be there, and a lot of relatability comes with that as we see him performing extraordinary actions in order to save a bunch of babies falling from a higher-level floor in a multi-storey hospital. Admittedly, this sequence in particular is an example of one that perhaps tries a bit too hard for laughs, but restraint is shown where it matters.

We get into the multiverse stuff because The Flash himself has a multitude of reasons to need to. His mother (Maribel Verdú) was murdered when he was a child, and his father (Ron Livingston) was wrongly sent to prison for it. When Barry discovers that he has the ability to run so fast that he can time travel, of course he wants to go back to change it all. The method is farfetched, but the character’s motivation is absolutely reasonable and believable. That can’t always be said of the actions that precede a multiversal adventure.

The big cameo coming into this one was the return of Michael Keaton as Batman, and his appearance does indeed go as far as it possibly can. We get all of the sets and the visuals from Tim Burton’s 1989 classic, along with snippets of the score and a gallery of batsuits. The biggest relief of The Flash though, is just how aware it seems to be of the purpose its cameos are serving.

The idea of worlds colliding so that we can see our favourite heroes on screen with one another can easily and quite quickly begin to feel tacky. There are only so many times a film can deliberately elicit the kind of emotion that makes a packed cinema say “Oh!” in unison before it begins to feel manipulative. The way that The Flash avoids that is by keeping those moments in the realms of tribute above anything else. It feels as if we’re seeing these different worlds as a way to pay respect to them, and it never veers far away from that.

Most importantly, The Flash is a superhero movie that does more than just the required lot of providing us with a fun, good time. By exploring Barry’s backstory – the tragic events that he went through as a child and the trauma that’s still developing to this day – it tells the kind of story that rarely makes its way into a blockbuster with so much thought. Not only is it a decent action movie, but it carries the spine of a devastating tearjerker too.

Some of the aesthetic choices are a little strange – all of the visuals that we see during the moments where Barry is time travelling are CGI reconstructions of real footage but stylised in a way where everything looks like plasticine. There’s an argument for why this might have been necessary – to make sure everyone and everything could share the same visual style in a certain context – but it’s so reminiscent of videogame cut scenes of the past that it just becomes distracting rather than immersive.

At the heart of The Flash there is a touching story about loss, grief, and our collective regret at not being able to do much about either. It’s just as heartbreaking as it is fun, and it constantly matches its adrenaline-fueled highs with emotional peaks which are every bit as effective. The Flash can be forgiven for some of its humour sometimes failing to land, and its CGI looking a bit weird when it does so much right in other areas.

Score: 16/24

Recommended for you: DCEU Movies Ranked

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
Twitter: @rbrtjones

Plan 75 (2022)
Director: Chie Hayakawa
Screenwriters: Jason Gray, Chie Hayakawa
Starring: Chieko Baisho, Hayato Isomura, Stefanie Arianne, Yumi Kawai, Taka Takao, Hisako Okata, Kazuyoshi Kashida

What do you do when a population becomes too old to sustain itself?

The idealist would argue that you find a way to look after everyone, no matter how difficult it is. Of course, good intentions aren’t always as substantive as we’d hope, and there are multiple factors which contribute to whether or not that is even possible. In Plan 75, the Japanese government has chosen to introduce a programme whereby elderly members of the population can voluntarily terminate their own lives to ease their personal burden on society. This is the titular PLAN 75. The reward for such a selfless act is just enough money to cover a funeral if the participant wishes to use it for that reason.

An expositional cold start focuses on a radio news report to explain the situation. It’s heightened, for sure, but it’s eerily similar to the political landscape of the world today. The culture wars that are raging against anyone with a difference to the median of a given population is in this case fuelled by the ideology that a person has ceased being useful to society at the age of 75 and should therefore be euthanised for the greater good.

The bleakest aspect of Plan 75 might be the imbalanced power dynamic that PLAN 75 creates. It relies on the elderly having such respect for the society that they come from that they’re literally willing to die for it once they’ve stopped contributing to it. You can assume the participants in the programme are usually from a lower socioeconomic background because of that – they wouldn’t be in a position where they’d be seen to cease their useful lives if they were not. The problem is that PLAN 75 shows them none of the respect or servitude that they show their society. In offering a nominal payment for taking part in the programme which may or may not be used for the participant’s funeral, it basically leans on the goodwill of that person to accept a dismal send-off for the sake of the state not having to deal with the problem of what to do with them once they’ve died.

The story of Plan 75 is far more personal than just the evil of national politics though, and we see it through three central characters. Michi (Chieko Baisho) is an elderly woman who finds herself being squeezed towards the outskirts of society as she gets older. Her husband isn’t around anymore, she’s about to retire, and she’s struggling to find new accommodation with landlords unwilling to rent properties to anyone her age. Or rather, with such little time left. Himoru (Hayato Isomura) is a government employee, a sort of salesman for the PLAN 75 programme. He is young and naive to the intricacies of what his job entails because he’s part of a power structure that should be allowed his trust. It’s only when his uncle shows an interest in the programme that he begins to question it. Maria (Stefanie Arianne) is an immigrant care worker who simply can’t afford to turn down the chance to earn more money by becoming a PLAN 75 employee.

It is all, essentially, a lesson in empathy. None of them are extraordinarily good or bad people. The circumstances that they find themselves in are extraordinary to us, but they’re presented with such melancholy that Plan 75 achieves a documentary-like quality. Of course, it helps that every actor is giving a performance capable of such realism, but credit should also go towards the cinematography and set design. Every shot is composed in a way that feels every bit as intimate as the narrative, all while the bright blue and orange PLAN 75 branding pops out of a usually muted colour palette in a way that almost creates a jumpscare out of government bureaucracy.

The most heartbreaking story of the three main characters is that of Michi. That isn’t to undermine the other two – they each have to go through morally agonising personal journeys – but with Michi, we’re with her as she’s waiting to die. The sadness that she experiences as a result of living in a world that is trying to move forward without her is what leads her to take part in PLAN 75, and it continues until all she has left is a government officer helping her to prepare for her final day by telephone. There’s really only one glimmer of joy in her life, and it’s a takeaway restaurant showing her enough kindness to break their usual policy of not delivering to a single-person household.

Between the three characters, Plan 75 encourages us to think about how right or wrong any of this can be. Whether living for the sake of staying alive is worth anything, but also how we might act if we were to find ourselves in a country enacting similar programmes. The perspectives that it doesn’t show are those of the government and the general public who are in support of euthanising the elderly. It isn’t that they feel essential to the overall narrative – this is very much the story of three people rather than the story of the country – but some additional context might have served to provide a more rounded commentary on a future we could easily be heading towards.

Much like Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006), Plan 75 provides us with a snapshot into a near-future where the human need to grow, expand and innovate has caused a problem of overwhelming hopelessness. The existential crisis that it invites is certainly bleak, but it is just as fascinating as it is tragic.

Score: 17/24

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
Twitter: @rbrtjones

Vertigo (1958)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: Alec Coppel, Samuel A. Taylor
Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, Henry Jones

The name “Alfred Hitchcock” carries a level of prestige that makes it difficult to view his films with anything but an overwhelming weight of expectation. He has been praised as a master of the craft by most filmmakers and critics with any right to bestow such a title, and the breadth of films that can be traced back to him by a line of direct influence is astronomical. His 1958 film Vertigo is one that carries a particular weight of its own. In 2012 it was crowned number one in Sight & Sound’s prestigious critics poll, the Greatest Films of All Time list, ending a fifty-year reign of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and becoming only the third film to top the poll since its inception in 1952. Vittoria De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves was its inaugural champion.

If any one film can be used as an example of just how far and wide Hitchcock’s influence spreads, then Vertigo is a solid choice. Fans of David Lynch will notice a dreamy familiarity in Mulholland Drive, whereas Tommy Wiseau enthusiasts might find their ears perk up when a protagonist named Johnny asks a friend whose name begins with M how their love life is. The San Francisco backdrop also helps make the case that The Room was probably made with some reverence for Vertigo, even if it did turn out to be terribly different.

Starting with a situation that has since become a trope in its own right, we meet Johnny, played by James Stewart, who has just retired as a police detective following a traumatic incident which led to him finding out that he has acrophobia, an extreme fear of heights. There are a few dead giveaways of Vertigo’s age in its highly expositional dialogue – it is almost reminiscent of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’, the director’s mystery anthology TV show. Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) stands out early on as a character who is essential in highlighting Johnny’s flaws – she’s intelligent, supportive, and completely wasted on someone so self-centred and easily distracted by his own shortcomings.

An old college classmate, Gavin Elster played by Tom Helmore, asks Johnny, or Scottie as he’s known to his acquaintances, for help with a personal matter. His wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), has been acting strangely lately, to the point that he’s starting to believe she may have been possessed by a dead family member, and he wants Johnny to follow her to find out what’s going on. It all goes wrong when the two find a special connection with one another.

Although upon release The Hollywood Reporter described Vertigo as “One of the most fascinating love stories ever filmed,” what it actually grows into is a story of blind obsession. Johnny doesn’t care about the woman in front of him nearly as much as he cares about his own idea of who that woman should be. The mastery of craft behind it begins to shine through in dialogue that becomes equally as brilliant as it is heartbreaking – it almost seems as if the early exposition exists to set our expectations at a level that allows us to be blown away later on.

As would be expected from a Hitchcock thriller, there are twists and turns that take the clues laid out in front of us to unusual heights. Although the term is associated with a more derogatory meaning since Martin Scorsese’s criticism of the superhero genre went viral, Vertigo is essentially a theme park movie. Everything exists to create an experience of shock and awe, but where it differs from the typical modern interpretation of how to achieve those emotions is that it appeals to them on an intellectual level. We have to take an active role in Vertigo because our thought processes about what’s happening are part of the narrative itself.

Perhaps that’s why Vertigo is so revered today. It exists in a space occupied by multiple forms of entertainment – it has the highs and lows of a rollercoaster, the audience participation of a magic show, and the love plot of a Danielle Steel novel – but it is also a tremendous piece of art in its own right.

Vertigo wasn’t always held on such a universal pedestal, though. Writing in The New Yorker upon the film’s initial release, John McCarten described it as “far-fetched nonsense”, and other magazines at the time were even more scathing in dismissing it as little more than fantastical dross. Even Sight & Sound’s editor, Penelope Houston, was fairly cold on it, writing that its plot was of “egg-shell thinness” and that “One is agreeably used to Hitchcock repeating his effects, but this time he is repeating himself in slow motion.”

Vertigo’s rise to a status that can command the top spot on the Greatest Films of All Time poll that she was instrumental in setting up is partly attributable to the reputation of Alfred Hitchcock as a filmmaker changing over the years. Although difficult to imagine now, he wasn’t always considered a serious artist. It wasn’t until the French New Wave movement, spearheaded by François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, that Hitchcock began to be given the grace of a closer look. In drawing inspiration from his work and giving credit where it’s due, Hitchcock’s use of suspense, his focus on his characters’ psychological states, and his innovative camerawork were finally lauded as more than just consequential elements in throwaway entertainment.

Vertigo is therefore arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest achievement on volume alone. Everything that could have been reassessed as Hitchcock the Auteur rather than just Hitchcock the Entertainer is present, and to a degree that makes it a perfect case study for how perception changes art.

Score: 21/24

Recommended for you: Top 10 Alfred Hitchcock Films

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
Twitter: @rbrtjones