We heartily disagree on The Creator, a sci-fi film directed and co-written by Gareth Edwards, who made his name with Monsters in 2010, which he made largely by himself for half a million dollars, and quickly graduated to tentpole cinema with Godzilla and Rogue One. José had a wonderful time, finding it marvellous to look at and emotionally effective, though leaving room to criticise cinema’s continued insistence that John David Washington is a star. Mike finds it dull, brim-full of clichés, and even a little ugly at times, although Edwards’ sense of how to convey scale, already shown off in his monster movies, remains intact here.
Also featured: ChatGPT and how AI will kill us all.
The Old Oak, possibly Ken Loach’s final film, is his least challenging for some time, and that’s perhaps why it’s an easier watch than normal. A northern English town sees the arrival of several Syrian families made refugees by the Assad regime; TJ, the owner of the local pub, begins a friendship with Yara, a daughter of one family. The film draws a connection between the displaced Syrians and British former mining communities, both of which groups have had their ways of life taken from them, and sees communal dining as a means to embrace other peoples and practise solidarity. We find it easy to see its cogs turning, and simplistic in its attitudes and characters, but although The Old Oak shows its share of misery and loss, it also conveys a hopeful feeling at times. An interesting film that will generate conversation, and worth seeing.
Denzel Washington returns for the third and final instalment of the Equalizer trilogy, in which former government assassin Robert McCall devotes his time and skills to avenging for the little guy. This time, he finds himself in Mediterranean Europe, embroiled in a fight to protect a coastal town from terrorisation by the Camorra, the Mafia of southern Italy.
The Equalizer 3 shares the contemplative tone and pervasive sense of loss of its predecessors. Here, there’s a focus on physical infirmity and vulnerability, a gunshot McCall receives early on forcing a long recuperation, slow, careful approaches to walking down stairs, and the use of a cane. Action erupts quickly and violently, emphasised by director Antoine Fuqua’s camera and editing – McCall is wounded, but maintains his ruthlessness and murderous efficiency.
We compare the action and Washington to Rambo: Last Blood and its star, Sylvester Stallone, which took a similarly staccato approach to its action, clearly informed by Stallone’s age and inability to move as gracefully as he used to – this film is doing something similar, but less thuggishly, if no less violently. We question the ease with which moral decisions are made in this world, in which right and wrong are easily distinguished and the involvement of a vigilante is sold as an obvious necessity and benefit; the film’s look, which fails to show off its spectacular location; and some of its writing and contrivances, particularly concerning Dakota Fanning’s character, a CIA analyst contacted by Robert, and the Camorra. And we discuss McCall as a neurodivergent superhero.
The Equalizer 3 is a flawed film with a fair bit of dumbness to overlook, but it is easy to do so when the portrait it paints of local life and close community is so absorbing and inviting, and its star has such presence, warmth, and intelligence. It’s an easy film to recommend, bearing in mind that it’s a work of vigilante fantasy. After all, if Batman’s allowed to take the law into his own hands when the institutions around him fail, why shouldn’t Denzel be? At least he doesn’t pretend not to kill people.
José enjoys the examination of contemporary relationships in Ira Sachs’ Passages, a Paris-set romantic drama in which a marriage is disrupted when one partner begins an affair with a friend. Mike thinks that the characters’ problems aren’t real problems and that if the unfaithful partner just grew up then everything would be fine.
The second half of our Barbenheimer double bill takes us to the BFI IMAX in London to see Oppenheimer, the complex story of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s infamous role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, the creation and use of which changed history. Writer-director Christopher Nolan, as he has done increasingly over his career, makes extensive use of IMAX 70mm film to tell the story, but as well the spectacle and landscape we’re used to it showing off, here it’s devoted to the intimate.
We’re joined by Mike’s brother and previous guest Stephen to discuss the film, and consider the use of IMAX for close-ups and portraiture, as well as the story’s structure and how the editing and music create pace, the film’s implicit attitude towards Communism, whether Florence Pugh is treated unfairly, the way in which black-and-white footage is used to convey a shift in perspective, how the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are handled, the Stan Brakhage-esque imagery that conveys the radical sense that all matter is energy waiting to be unleashed, and much more. For José, it’s Nolan’s best film. It certainly deserves to be seen on an IMAX screen.
Michael B. Jordan makes his first feature as director in his third Creed film as star. Creed III sees a retired Adonis Creed living comfortably with his wife and daughter, the walls of their mansion coated with trophies achieved during successful careers… until a figure from Adonis’ past comes back to haunt him.
If that language sounds clichéd, then good, because the film is nothing but. 2015’s Creed was a powerful reinvigoration of the Rocky series, so perhaps it’s fitting that this third instalment is reminiscent of those Roman numeralled sequels, all soap opera and surface. What could have been rich and dramatic is instead thin and uninterested in complexity. But the fights are nice and punchy and Jonathan Majors’ Damian is a bright spark, so there’s that.
We look at another supposed love letter to cinema, Empire of Light, which stars the beautiful Dreamland Cinema in Margate as the titular Empire, the best-developed character in an otherwise lacklustre film. Its themes of racism, patriarchy, mental illness and cinema as escapism form more of a patchwork quilt than a tapestry, and the film is thin throughout. Still, it did the job of activating our memories of cinemagoing and working in cinemas, which we discuss, and despite his knowing it shouldn’t have, the story worked emotionally on Mike. It’s really not good though.
Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited semi-autobiographical reminiscence of his childhood is here, and it’s perfect. Too perfect. José swoons over the way The Fabelmans transports him to its place and time and shows love and understanding to everybody it depicts, but has to admit that a few rougher edges here and there would have done it a favour. There’s only so much drama in the life of Spielberg’s young avatar, Sammy Fabelman, and that which there is is on the tame side. But Spielberg’s love for his parents is obvious and appealing, as is his love for cinema, which he’s unafraid to get specific about – the sequences that show Sammy making and screening films convey an interest in the aesthetics, technicalities, and effects of film, rather than giving it the far vaguer “magic of the movies” treatment such “love letters to cinema” often offer.
The Fabelmans is as unwilling to explore the dark side of humanity as we’re used to Spielberg being, but it avoids his proclivity for schmaltz, and José loved it. So there.
A film Mike was doing his damndest to avoid seeing but eventually agreed to, Babylon is an epic period comedy-drama about the excess and industrialisation of Hollywood in the ’20s and ’30s, and an epic bomb at the box office. Its aesthetics, characterisations, use of race and class, vulgarity, set pieces, bizarre ending and more are up for discussion. Did Mike have as terrible a time as he anticipated?
Cate Blanchett’s performance as the title character is the highlight of the otherwise unutterably deflating Tár. What begins as an unexpectedly captivating profile of a world-class musical conductor and promises to develop into a story of sexual and psychological intrigue ultimately fails to satisfy when it refuses to offer thrills and drama – not to mention plot resolution. We pick through our problems with it, including what we find implausible, its reactionary attitudes and low opinion of young people, and its embrace of ambiguity and lack of interest in developing the story of Tár’s downfall.
Eavesdropping at the Movies 