Plane films (return leg): Crazy Rich Asians, Jurassic World 2, King of Thieves, Searching and Leave No Trace

Crazy Rich Asians

I didn't think I would like this film, which received a lot of hype this year and was a big part of the reason 2018 was called a year of great Asian representation. Honestly, the trailer looked obnoxious and I didn't think being money-hungry, snobbish, exclusionary and wastefully profligate was what I would call positive representation. But while I wasn't by any means blown away by the originality of the film, I really enjoyed watching it and at several points it actually made me laugh. 

While I am no means a crazy rich Asian - though the way the older ladies in the film grew up probably wasn't so different from how my mother grew up in one of the richest families in Sarawak - a lot here was familiar. One fun part of the film was seeing key locations and thinking, 'Oh, I've eaten there,' 'I've been in that church, 'I've done that with my Chinese family too!' And a family wedding in Singapore, while by no means a crazy rich party, was still one of the most fun and memorable ceremonies I've been part of. 

This story is not particularly new or original. A normal girl dates a guy, finds out he's actually extremely rich, but the family disapprove so she has to face hard times before we end up having to discover whether or not true love will win through. It's a very common story, whether in Asian dramas (Korean TV dramas in particular have this plot over and over) or throughout time in the West, and if this gets remembered as historically significant, I'm sure people will be a little perplexed as to why. But this is very timely, and it's purely and simply because this old chestnut of a story is about Asians - but meant for American consumption. Not only Asian-Americans, though their presence and market share in the States no doubt had to grow big enough to get this green-lit, but Americans in general. 

I get it. I get that this is far outside the norm because Asians have not been represented well in Western cinema, especially recently. Asians can be warriors, computer nerds, funny sidekicks or quirky cookie-cutter girls with a streak of colour in their hair. But this film, for a general American audience, can present Asians as headstrong, influential, self-assured, and perhaps most importantly of all, sexy. And while it shouldn't be, that's a very significant thing right now. 

How rich the Asians are gets stressed much less than I'd expected. Only the prologue in London is an outrageous demonstration of wealth. The rest is just big houses and expensive items, which isn't that exciting. The most interesting characters are by and large the less wealthy people and while sure, fantasising about absurd wealth is fun, this is more cautionary tale than aspirational, whichever perspective you might be looking at this story from. 

Definitely interesting to watch and enjoyable throughout, I certainly recommend watching the film. But it's certainly not particularly special. 

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Given how unnecessary the first Jurassic World seemed, this sequel certainly didn't strike me as essential viewing. But plane viewing? Sure. 

Isla Nublar is about to EXPLODE. Yeah, the volcano became active and the whole place is going to explode. Good-hearted characters from the last movie want to save them, but as usual they're not in a humanitarian expedition but an exploitative capitalist one. Wasn't that what happened to Alan Grant? 

Despite how often this film tries to hark back to it with music cues and repeated dino entrances, we're a long way from the first movie here. There's so little heart in this action-packed sequel and so little desire to give the audience anything new or unexpected. Only the first third of the movie is spent on the island, and the rest is about unravelling the cartoonish bad guy's cartoonish plot, with the help of junior Lara Croft. 

It's all supremely unlikely, of the new characters only the kid is vaguely likeable - and MAYBE the useless Mos from The IT Crowd type - and her backstory raised about the only interesting questions in the script as well as justifying her final decision in a way that wasn't hugely hypocritical for a little girl who isn't a stringent vegan. way too many coincidental things have to fall together for this story to work. Overall, there's little to recommend this movie and it's going to date very, very quickly, but hey. There's nothing exactly terrible about the film either. It's just really mediocre. 

Perhaps worst of all, the whole thing ended on an insipid cliffhanger that I don't care to see concluded. They didn't even bother to tell a full story. 

King of Thieves

On one level, it's always going to be fun to watch elderly British acting royalty doing anything, from staying in a hotel to robbing diamonds. On the other, this film does glorify a life of crime a little too much for my tastes. 

That said, the first half of the movie, with the heist and initial divvying-up, is hugely fun. The silly old men are very, very entertaining. I find it faintly hilarious that Paul Whitehouse, who I used to love doing his Michael Caine impression on the Harry Enfield show, is now sharing screen time with him. Plenty of other stellar cast members - Michael Gambon, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent. There's a lot of funny bumbling about but getting the job done. 

The second half, where the thieves get paranoid about one another and start clamouring to double-cross their old partners, is a bit of a drag - even if it perhaps has slightly better moral lessons for us. I'd like to see how much this is based on a real story. 

I have to say, though, a few guns to wave around would have made this a fair bit more convincing. The young man could very easily overpower the rest when they bully him, so some scenes don't exactly ring true. But I'd probably watch this cast read the phone directory together. 

Nice to see shots of my neighbourhood in London, too, with the cable car running happily in the background. 

Searching

Honestly, I thought that I was scraping the barrel when I started watching Searching. I hadn't heard of it and didn't think there was much chance it would be a good movie. But it turned out to be by far my favourite of the movies I watched on my plane trips this time. Not that the competition was that fierce.

Of the various found-footage-type gimmick movies, this one is probably done best. The whole movie plays out on a computer screen, through streaming, Facetime calls, movie files and social media sites. By and large, the movie also manages to use real sites and operating systems, which is so much better than using fake imitations. 

The thriller mystery functions well, with a twist ending I didn't see coming, having fallen for one of the red herrings. The method of conveying a story was remarkable too, with a lot of story coming through text so strong performances not really needed - except for John Cho's at the centre of it. To my mind this film did the things Gone Girl tried to do far more adeptly and believably (even if the fundamental story was different). It's a shame this apparently didn't become a cult hit, because I thought it took its gimmick and did good things with it. Though perhaps there was a little too much cheesiness in the final act. 

Leave No Trace

Well, I finished off my movie-watching with Leave No Trace (though I had an hour or so extra both ways, so I watched March of the Penguins 2 on the way to the UK and Charles Dance's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? on the way back). Compared with the comic book fluff I mostly watched, this was on the heavy and serious side. 

Very slow-burning, somewhat uneventful but absolutely beautifully-acted, this movie tells the story of a man who, wracked with the PTSD of so many soldiers, has withdrawn from society and began to live in the woods using all his survival skills. But the twist is that he has his young daughter with him, aged about 13. She is well-used to living in the wild and her father makes sure she's educated, but of course when the two are caught and she gets an introduction to life in civilisation - and society - doubts begin to grow in her mind. 

The narrative isn't all that important here. What matters is the hook and how the characters develop from there. The interpersonal relationships are fascinating, in good times but mostly when things become fraught. While this isn't a film I would care to rewatch, it's certainly one I was glad to have experienced once. 

Film movies (outbound): Ant Man and the Wasp, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Ready Player One

Ant Man and the Wasp

One of the Marvel movies I didn't get to see was Ant Man and the Wasp. And a superhero movie is usually the first thing I watch on a plane - I don't want to have to engage my brain but I want to be entertained. And this movie fit the bill, while still being one of my least favourite Marvel movies of recent years. I definitely wanted to see Black Panther more, though. 

Recent Marvel movies have really refined the balancing act between goofy humour and seriousness. It started with Guardians of the Galaxy, became most pronounced in Thor: Ragnarok and now even pervades the Avengers movies. And I really like it. They've taken that smug Wheadonesque humour I used to despise and found a way to make it less smug, less jarring, less self-aware - basically by making it dumber so that it feels like what people in the situation might actually do. 

Ant Man and the Wasp attempts to do this too, but doesn't quite get there. It's extremely hit-and-miss. Some moments that undercut the seriousness work really well, like a phone call in the middle of a hostage situation. Some, like Scott being possessed by someone else and doing awkward things, are just stilted and awful. And it's not the performers. Most of the time Scott himself, the FBI agent and the dodgy former criminals do this well, but all sometimes just seem to miss the rhythm of the jokes. Most of the time Michael Keaton and the Wasp do it really badly, but sometimes it clicks for nice amusing moments. But it needs to work all the time, or very nearly all the time, for things to hang together. The movie was just nowhere near as funny or character-driven as it needed to be. Especially after Thor: Ragnarok did that so well. 

I don't get too hung up on the nonsensical science here, but this is also the most confusing of the Marvel properties - at least Doctor Strange is just meant to be magic being magic. In the first movie we were told the technology just squashes down atoms by reducing the empty space, and Scott's punches still carry the mass of his full size, but then we get people picking up cars and buildings. Why are they so light? How is being sub-atomic possible if the atoms are not altered? How are the CGI ants controlled with such precision? Are they psychic? And now we get this extra layer of mumbo-jumbo with quantum entanglement meaning instructions and 'antennae' can be planted in others' brains by contact in dreams...it's just a bit too much for advanced-technology-is-synonymous-with-magic. All strung around a dodgy plot where 90% of the action hangs purely on the antagonist's attitude being "I won't wait a few hours, I must do everything NOW."

Still, though, with brain off and detailed blurred over, it was still a fun way to pass time and Scott has a good place in the Avengers line-up as a particularly minor character. He's shown up in the trailers for Endgame so I'm interested to see what role he'll play in the next biggie. 

Solo: A Star Wars Story

This movie got a lot of flack for being the first big failure for the Star Wars franchise. Everyone could tell from Disney's reactions and adding certain missing figures - like marketing budgets - to the reported profit/loss numbers that this was not a winner at the box office. As a result of which, several potential spin-offs may never see the light of the day. It was eviscerated by online fan voices like Ethan Van Sciver and widely mocked. But reading between the lines, the impression I always got was that this was actually a decent film that basically got punished for how much everyone hated The Last Jedi. 

And I think that's true. If this had come out before Last Jedi, it would absolutely have done much better. It's not bad at all. Not as fun or interesting as Rogue One but certainly better than The Last Jedi or any of the prequel trilogy. It hit a lot of notes well, told a moderately interesting story that I grant you nobody really needed, but it was by no means a chore to get through. I wouldn't rewatch it, I'm glad I saw it on the plane instead of paying to see it in a theatre, but I don't regret seeing it. 

Here, we discover that Han Solo grew up as a kind of Artful Dodger to some huge gaudy space-eel-Fagin, escaped with his wily ways, and got tangled up in a heist that made him the loveable but grizzly rogue we see in the main series. There's romance, comedy, some interesting interactions with Lando and a lot of nods to lines from the originals that are much less forced than they were in The Force Awakens. Though it IS kind of awkward that Han just never comes across any force users and somehow manages to go through life thinking it's a myth. And showing him to be inadvertantly instrumental to getting the rebellion started was a bit awkward, too. 

I liked Woody Harrelson's mentor figure a lot, and his crew at the beginning was pretty interesting. I also liked Donald Glover as Lando, letting insecurities peek through the facade. The main actor felt a bit wooden to me, not really resembling Harrison Ford at all and mostly looking more like a young Jack Black when he tried to pull faces reminiscent of the older version of the character. And Emilia Clarke was pretty as always but didn't bring anything very unique to the character, whose final scene, though fun with the unexpected cameo, was either a reference I don't get or likely to be a cliffhanger than never gets resolved. And I really disliked L3 (L337 also being among the worst possible choices for a name). I get that she was meant to be fierce and empowered, but the way that was written she was basically just snide and unpleasant to everyone, less a revolutionary and more like the middle-aged entitled women with the asymmetric haircuts who retail workers dread because they're going to be demanding and sarcastic and make them go and get the manager. And if she was meant to be an inspiring revolutionary agitator, what happened as soon as she actually got involved in an uprising seemed more like a lesson to learn than a celebration. 

Overall, this wasn't too bad. For every moment I wasn't sure about - the character's name is an English pun? The final plan really works in that way despite how incredibly unlikely the set-up is? - there was a fun action sequence or effects-heavy shootout. Nothing special or original, but certainly a long way from the disaster its detractors make it out to be. 

Ready Player One

Something about this film didn't sit well with me. And not the various flaws the film had, like being way too long, not world-building very well, being super clumsy with how people respond to death of people close to them, or generally very stilted dialogue. It was something more fundamental and conceptual. Even though I'm squarely in the demographic this was aimed at, it just didn't sit well with me. 

Firstly, the gimmick isn't much of a stand-out any more. Seeing characters from a bunch of franchises together was a thrill back when Kingdom Hearts came out, or when the first Wreck-It Ralph filled the screen with surprise cameos. It's not that new any more, even if it still makes for some great moments, be it bizarre momentary team-ups like Chun-Li and Tracer, or battles between various robots I never knew I wanted to see interact until it was right there on the screen. Undeniably there's a geeky thrill to that, and the Shining portion allowed Spielberg to pay tribute to his great friend and influence in a way that was part homage and part hokey cg-fest. 

But it's not just that this isn't very new. It doesn't tell a story I thought was engaging. The idea of people inhabiting virtual worlds and that having a significant influence on their real lives is very old - Red Dwarf did it, .hack did it multiple times, Sword Art Online did it, 1/2 Prince did it, and perhaps the closest iteration of it to this movie is the vastly more heartfelt and compelling Summer Wars. So the key part is to tell a really interesting story. All Ready Player One can muster is a boring by-the-numbers misfit-teen beats dastardly-corporate-guy set up. Corporate-guy--who-wants-everyone-to-have-to-watch-ads-and-becomes-a-homicidal-maniac-over-it-and-could-never-have-won-anyway. Then there's a romance with all the simmering tension of the produce in a fish market with that old groaner of revealing a tiny facial blemish that the lover interest believes is horribly disfiguring. 

The rules of the world are also bewildering. We get a set-up where people are on treadmills but then they can experience flying around in the air upside-down and they use this gear in the streets and you can fall backwards off a chair and that somehow gets translated. How this machine works is bewildering. Then the idea of one particular avatar, the curator, becomes ridiculous when you think about what he must have been doing outside the main character's interactions with him. The rules of the game at the centre of the story are kind of absurd, requiring extensive research into the life of the creator and some really random logic in the Shining part - which may not have been in the original book, I know, since there was a different world for that. And the avatars used are so inconsistent. Our main characters each use super unique ones but other people like to be famous game characters, and a lot of them hang out exclusively with other people following the same theme, like the Sanrio mascots. We know from Second Life people are seldom random original avatars and usually just follow the latest memes, like Ugandan Knuckles. 

The ending was strung out way too much. We didn't need yet another car chase sequence, or gun-waving showdown. None of that really affected the story. I was very bored by the end, despite the endless kabooms and hi-yas. And I have to say, if you bring in the Holy Hand Grenade, at least give a bit more of a reference. 1, 2, 5!

Annabelle: Creation

I enjoyed this film more than I expected to. That’s mostly because my expectations were very, very low. A derivative of a derivative of a derivative, this is about the breaking point of how far James Wan projects can be stretched. When they completely abandon ‘things-based-on-things-the-Warrens-claimed’ angle for Conjuring spin-offs with The Nun, I think that might be a step too far. This one is just about grounded in their exploits still, though it goes wholly into invented-plot territory by showing where the creepy Annabelle doll was made. The real one, of course, was made in a factory with all the other Raggedy Anns, but movie Annabelle is an ugly, creepy pseudo-Victorian doll. Here, we find she was made by American dollmaker Samuel Mullins in the 40s. Because I guess someone still had to make creepy dolls that they didn’t even sell back during WWII.

I was so uninterested in the particulars of this movie that I didn’t even realise it was the second Annabelle movie. I thought it was the only one, but there was an Annabelle before Annabelle: Creation, itself a prequel to the Conjuring films where the story of the cursed doll was told in brief. I guess that film only covered the events that led the Warrens to investigating the doll, whereas this one covers how the doll was made.

Honestly, the doll barely figures into the story. It has nothing to do with the tragedy that kickstarts the action, acts as a vessel in an episode told only in flashback, and then is only briefly the place a nefarious being resides (that can in any case project itself out around the house in just about any form) before spending most of the film being just a bit of background decoration. The film wants to show a darker evil than an ugly doll, but in doing so makes the doll seem superfluous.

But there were some things I liked here. While it shared with the other Conjuring films a propensity to show too much of the monsters/spirits that come with the tedious jump scares, there were some scenes where tension was built quickly. The level of gore was ramped up a bit from the safe boundaries of the other films. Plus while we’ve had a whole lot of creepy kid and creepy doll movies in the past few years, other than IT – adapting an older property anyway – there have been strangely few films with kids on their own being terrified. Slicing them up is probably way off-limits for a film like this, but having the nasty hauntings happening to little orphan kids without parents to run to felt a little different from other properties.

There are some fairly decent performances, too. The Mexican nun caring for the kids and the father are very believable, but the two main kids are definitely the most interesting. I wonder if the two kids will go on to have interesting careers. The rest of the kids did their best with the roles they had, but they were paper-thin - little more than bully girl, token black girl with no discernable personality, smallest girl, etc.

The film trundles along with jump scares and some creepy setpieces, never really shows any interest in defining rules as to what this evil spirit can and can’t do, gets a bit lost with which girl the audience follows as the core of the narrative, and then comes to a satisfyingly bombastic climax.

Nothing new, nothing clever and nothing exceptional, it was nonetheless a solid, safe Hollywood film. I expected it to be dreadful, so being merely mediocre leaves me feeling quite positive about it.

A Dark Song

A slow-boiling, low-budget indie horror, A Dark Song was something a bit different from the other, glossier films we’ve been watching lately. The set-up reminded me of Lord of Tears, only with performers who can actually act and a genuine sense of danger, while the feeling of being trapped in a mansion with the supernatural in the UK reminded me of The Quiet Ones.

A grieving mother hires an abrasive occultist to work through the lengthy Abramelin Operation from The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abremelin the Mage. In the world of the movie, working through the ritual leads to a guardian angel not of the internal plane but in the real world, who will grant a powerful wish. Well, it’s not how grimoires are generally presented to work, but it works for a film. At first it’s dubious whether magic is real or whether an abusive man is just taking advantage of a vulnerable woman, but before long inexplicable things start to happen. It’s a bit odd that there’s still some question of whether the ritual is doing anything when it rains gold inside one magical circle.

Things escalate towards the end, and I felt that if they were going to go the route the film finally settled on, perhaps more glimpses of it earlier would have been better. The slow burn is a little too slow. But the human drama of two very different people, who don’t trust one another and are both pretty unstable, is pretty fascinating. I admire the film for showing not only the typical horror elements of the occult, but attempting the transcendental and elevated as well, and the final twist of what Sophia finally says when she’s face to face with what she wanted was quite beautiful.

I wouldn’t sit through this again. A lot of the uncomfortable atmosphere is created by unpleasant impositions occultist Solomon forces on Sophia. Drinking blood, stripping down, being deprived of sleep. It makes for an interesting dynamic between them, like Lara Croft being harangued by Frankie Boyle with a London accent, but takes a little too long. This is definitely not one for the horror fans who just want ghoulies jumping out with loud violin screeches to tell you when to squeal and giggle. This is a horror fan’s horror movie, rather like The Witch or Hereditary, and while I admire how it dares to be something unusual and am pleased to have watched it, it’s definitely not for everyone.

While I’m not an occultism freak, I’ve done a lot of research into Golden Dawn and grimoires and of course encountered Abremelin while reading into Crowley. Even if the film’s take on the guardian angel is very exaggerated, it’s clear there’s a lot of knowledge and enthusiasm for occultism here. I guess that Solomon’s name and the title are a reference to the Song of Solomon – but to be honest, ‘A Dark Song’ isn’t a very good title at all. Something about a ritual would have been better. Great care and attention goes into drawing magical circles and patterns, and the design department seem to be having fun.

There was very little one could call scary, and there isn’t even that much tension, so I can’t say this film got me any closer to finding a horror film that is actually frightening – becoming a bit of a holy grail for me at this point. But it had way more substance than the average by-the-numbers exorcism flick with a CG monster popping out, so I’d rank it as one of the better horror films of recent years. But the quest for something that’s actually scary goes on…

Insidious: The Last Key

Decided to finish the Insidious saga with The Last Key, released earlier this year. And like most horror sequels everything’s stretched very very thin. James Wan is obviously barely involved at this point, and Leigh Whannell seems to be in too deep with this project to know what the audience wants to see and what’s actually entertaining.

But it’s not as though I expected Insidious 4 to be an earth-shatteringly good movie. The previous films have degenerated from creepy but mostly effective to little more than a series of jump scares roped together. Elise was a strong character but already spread thin in the last film. This generic foray into her past with unthreatening bad guy, unconvincing stakes and made-up rules leading to made-up last-moment saves was even less satisfying than ghostly headbutts. Nobody seems to care in this movie and nothing is clever or original other than a couple of very brief visual moments that were kind of neat, like a walking figure becoming hanging clothes, or revelations that some ghosts are not actually ghosts at all.

But a couple of kind-of clever moments in a very uninspired full movie is pretty inadequate, and that’s what this film was. Ticks the box of simple, vaguely thrilling horror movie, but does nothing at all to advance what happened in the previous films.

Insidious: Chapter 3

Possibly watching this after a few artsy horror flicks wasn’t the most charitable thing to do. It was never going to be anything but a piece of fluff, and judging by box office numbers for the likes of The Witch and Hereditary, this is the sort of thing mass audiences want. Not very scary, but with a few little jump scares with ridiculous string section blasts to tell you what you’re meant to think, and then you can laugh and cuddle up to your partner a little more and feel good. This sort of by-the-numbers horror is to horror what The Big Bang Theory is to comedy. Nothing wrong with it, it’s enjoyable to watch and it does what it’s meant to do, but plays it totally safe, follows a formula and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

From Poltergeist to The Conjuring, and quite possibly back to The Exorcist, it’s pretty obvious with these sorts of supernatural films that the interesting people to follow tend to be the exorcists themselves. The often very quirky individuals who show up after all the normal family’s problems have reached a climax point and teach them how to fight back. And that’s true for Insidious, too – I cared a lot more about the funny older lady with the power to look into ‘The Further’ than about the dad of the family who was ostensibly the central figure of the first two films. So this prequel shows her in action again. Not revealing much about her past – it looks like that was saved for the recently-released Insidious 4 – but showing a case from her past and, a little unconvincingly, how she got her team together.

This film is noticeably more ropey than the last two. The family that gets haunted are very wooden, there’s quite a bit of awkward cutting to make it look like a 70-year-old woman is getting violently thrown around. As usual, the things the ghosts do are arbitrary and based more on building up audience tension than actually making any sort of internally consistent sense. Many of the supposedly creepy moments are more comical, as are the times Elise steels her spiritual power to become a badass and fight back. Meanwhile, there’s nothing whatsoever funny about the supposed comic relief guys.

But frankly I don’t watch Insidious 3 expecting anything different from this. So in what it sets out to do, it succeeds. I doubt I’ll remember the details of the story next year, though, never mind in 5.  

A Quiet Place

Another more experimental horror film today, the almost dialogue-free A Quiet Place, which was quite the hit a few months ago. I have to say, my initial stance was a little disapproving – this film is seven parts The Last of Us, three parts The Village, with just a dash of Cloverfield for monster design. A bearded but grizzled father whose name I can’t remember but I always thought of as Joel, has a first-act tragedy to get us invested and introduce the dangers of this world, then has to survive attacks from clicking, sound-sensitive monsters in a post-apocalyptic United States. It’s not unfamiliar territory.

This shows how the long-delayed The Last of Us movie could actually work extremely well and find a very receptive audience. It makes me a little sad that people who watch it when it eventually comes out might be pulled from their immersion by remembering how they’ve seen the Clickers somewhere before.

Beyond that similarity, this is a good chance for strong performances. The kids act well but the adults – the director John Krasinski, and his real-life wife Emily Blunt – get a real chance to shine. They can portray fear, pain, terror, resolve, bravery and even despairing resignation so well without words. For a short movie with a tiny cast, it does everything it needs to with brevity and grace.

Maybe the scares could have been better, and maybe seeing less of the monsters would have helped. The way they find to combat the creatures and the idea that nobody ever tried something like that before seems very far-fetched, but it worked in the little microcosm of the film.

Not bad, but not fantastic either, it at least tried something different. At least, different from other films. Not very different from video games.  

Hereditary

After recommendations from friends, decided to watch this recent horror flick. Backed by artsy distributors A24, it put me in mind of their previous experimental horror movie The Witch, which excited critics but didn’t resonate well with audiences. I remember The Witch fondly, daring to be different with the period setting and slow pace, but its problem was lack of scares. Hereditary is also slow-paced and experimental, and also hasn’t done overly well with audiences, probably mostly because general film audiences prefer to turn off their brains and enjoy formulaic scares when it comes to horror.

As long as it’s done well, I don’t care if a horror film is a rehash of old ideas or dares to be different. Hereditary definitely doesn’t play it safe, starting with a pretty ordinary set-up where a family is seemingly haunted after a death in the family, but soon hammering on the psychological trauma harder than just about any other film I can think of. There’s some degree of ambiguity whether anything is actually supernatural here or just a combination of human machination and delusions, which I quite like, and the film is unafraid of showing some of the starkest and most unpleasant imagery you can imagine.  

Toni Colette also gets real opportunity to shine here. I really loved her performance in The Sixth Sense where she kept everything restrained, but here where things can go to the extremes she gets to show what she can really do. It’s a tour de force that should be lauded regardless of whether it’s in a genre piece.  

Definitely not to everyone’s taste, and perhaps a little too slow and short on real tension for me to be drawn back to it again, and a little marred by some poor choices (like the little girl making a little popping noise with her tongue in an effort to have a creepy recurring sound), it was nonetheless one of the braver and more interesting horror films lately, in a world of Insidiouses and Conjurings that may entertain but don’t really attempt to get under the skin.

Return Plane Films: Big Eyes, Blade Runner 2049, The Commuter, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Founder and A Wrinkle in Time

Plane Films 1: Big Eyes

After finishing off 'The Disaster Artist', which only got more hilarious, I decided to watch a slightly older movie, Tim Burton's 'Big Eyes'. I don't actually remember ever seeing the work of Margaret Keane before the publicity for the movie began. Maybe very vaguely. 

This movie was one I absolutely wanted to see when it came out, but never got around to. So it was a pleasure to see. Not only is this a portrait of a peculiar outsider artist who gained popularity despite being completely outside the mainstream ideas of good taste (and has a very cartoon-like aesthetic I find quite appealing), but a fascinating story of agency stolen by a conman. 

The way the film portrays the situation unfolding is very convincing and dramatically compelling. At first it's a misunderstanding, and then expedience. Then there's a critical moment where there's a clear chance for the truth to come out, or at the very least for him to make the very reasonable assertion that the couple have been painting together - but takes a choice that only leads to lie upon lie and ever more darkness. 

There's so often this kind of partnerships in the art world - the actual artist, who is introverted and finds it difficult to live alone, and the extroverted salesperson who can't convince anyone with their art but shamelessly promote and commercialise the art. This is even more a perfect storm, with the salesman actually taking the success for himself. 

Burton does a great job of the storytelling here, peeling the layers off and letting Walter crumble in his dishonesty. It's done deftly, like when Walter misidentifies acrylic for oil, which prefigures a later revelation. And it's a great examination of an abusive relationship as well. Even with a very ambiguous accent, Christoph Waltz is perhaps the finest actor I can think of that can pull off a conman - so charming, so intelligent and so quickly able to flip to controlling, manipulating and devious. It's completely believable, and Amy Adams puts in a wonderfully believable portrait of the artist taken advantage of. 

Some scenes don't work so well, like a confrontation with a critic that gets massively overwrought at a point of the movie where it should be focused inwards towards the relationship as Margaret is getting emboldened and the promise of the payoff of the focus on how stifling and traumatic 1950s patriarchy could be.

Perhaps the saddest element of the story is that it's very probable that without her husband-manager-abuser-captor, Keane's weird big-eyed paintings likely never would have become famous. 

While perhaps there's a temptation to yell and scream at Keane to escape her torment and come clean sooner, it makes perfect sense given her background and the expectations of the time. 

2: Blade Runner 2049

After being put off by the sheer length of the film during other flights - as I think many audiences were - I decided that it would be good to watch it this time, split between two flights. 

And I'm glad I did. While it's flawed, especially when it comes to length, it was well worth seeing. 

I wasn't keen on the sequel happening at all, to be honest. There didn't seem to me to be a need for a follow-up. The film stood well on its own. There was also no Philip K Dick source material to work from, even if the original had departed from 'Do Androids...' in a big way. And Harrison Ford reappearing in follow-ups to his other big action roles hasn't exactly gone so well. 

Indeed, probably the most expendable part of this bloated film, the part that could have been cut but for the draw of a star name, was Deckard's part. He got a somewhat cool but unnecessary fist-fight, introduced a confused and rushed final-act moral question, flops about as a damsel in distress and then while he was able to give the film a somewhat satisfying conclusion, everything from the point of his introduction - well past the half-way point - seemed inferior, with coincidental plotting, unspectacular locations and odd pacing. I strongly suspect the film was written without Deckard appearing, and hastily redrafted when Harrison Ford agreed to take part. 

Beyond his part, though, there was a rich and interesting film. The Blade Runner future has gotten yet more gritty, with a lot of wastelands and toxic areas. Ryan Gosling's replicant, Joe, is good at hunting down the older, more human replicants. But when he sees there may be something beyond what he's always known, he begins to change. The parallel of his love story with his AI companion helps this grow, and I do like the debate over whether this film is simply mysogynist and objectifies for the male gaze, is simply projecting and thus criticising a highly commercialised future where women are further commodified, or actually sending a strong feminist message with certain key female characters and the central quest for the power to give birth - though I suppose to be right-on in today's world of identity politics, we shouldn't say that giving birth is just a female trait any more. 

What the film does well is evoking the style of the original film. That doesn't just mean instrumentation recalling Vangelis and fun cameos from original cast members - including a remarkable CG-enhanced lookalike scene. It's more about the way pace is controlled to build and release tension, give a sense of wonder and refer back to noir detective filmmaking. That's what works here, when they get it right - and is most glaringly lacking when it isn't quite right. 

But for its faults, this is a film of great ideas, great performances (especially in very minor roles) and great visuals. I loved the way Vegas ended up, and I loved how I thought I'd figured out the twist very early only for that twist to be perfectly undone and undercut. There are many good things to say about this film, but I don't think I'd ever sit through it again - and I'm still not sure it really added much to the original. 

3: The Commuter

After Blade Runner, I wanted to watch something a bit lighter. This thriller on a train seemed to fit the bill. I'd seen the trailer and it looked bland but entertaining. And that's what it was. 

Falling into typecast territory, Liam Neeson as an ex-cop gets a phone call instructing him to find someone on his train or people close to him might meet a bad end. And it builds from there as you might expect. The standoff at the end of the film gets a little more cerebral and some decent crime writing comes through, but the premise just isn't unique enough for this to make much of a big stir. 

Nonetheless, this was a well-made, well-acted Hollywood movie that provides good entertainment and has fewer plot holes than usual despite the extremely convoluted plan the baddies have come up with. Worth a watch even if I'm not sure how much of it I'll remember in 5 years. 

4. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

One of several successful films about hotels from recent years, this one had a truly stellar cast. Just seeing Judi Dench and Maggie Smith together is a pretty special thing, even if their interactions are minimal and it looks pretty conspicuously like the two of them were never actually on set together, but with performances by Bill Nighy, Tom Hiddleston, Dev Patel and Penelope Wilton - that's star power. So many of England's senior actors.

These aren't their most challenging roles of all time, but they certainly get moments to shine. At first I thought that the Indian characters were written in a bit of a daft, overtly soap opera way, but the just have fronts they're expected to show and as the film progresses we see the deeper levels. 

Of course there are feel-good moments and there are some very funny parts too. One interesting part is that there are two xenophobic older ladies, and it's interesting how different the way they come over is. One is so overtly hateful that somehow it's sweet and silly, and she eventually gets won over by the local people. The other has a pleasant facade but makes lots of disparaging comments and never actually learns to adapt even if she has a redemption moment where she accepts the problems with her marriage. 

I can't say this made me want to chase the joie de vivre of India. But it was certainly fun to watch!

5: The Founder

This is an interesting take on the business origin stories that have been popular for a while now. Not the story of the McDonald's Brothers, though they of course feature prominently, but of Ray Kroc, who took a great idea and franchised it across the country. 

Michael Keaton, who I still picture in his Birdman role, does a great job transitioning from struggling salesman to egotistical entrepreneur.

There's some common ground here with Big Eyes, especially when Kroc starts taking the credit as founder, though things of course get much less out of hand. 

There's something about 50s America that also makes me feel nostalgic, even if obviously I wasn't there. It's like they universal Western culture touch point for nostalgia. And it's a lot of fun to watch anything set in the period. Except maybe Grease.

A Wrinkle in Time

I wanted to sleep through the last leg of my flight but was too uncomfortable after walking up once, so decided to watch something light. This seemed to fit the bill.

I don't know anything about A Wrinkle in Time outside the movie. I think it was a novel first, and I vaguely remember one of those stupid debates about whether Diversity is our Strength or whether casting a white or unspecified book character as another race is white genocide. For my part, I have no problem with the casting of this film, and if there's a racial question here it's about why so many characters lack agency.

When a brilliant scientist disappears, leaving his family behind, his daughter Meg gets kid movie issues. She's sad and argumentative and gets bullied at school. 

Luckily for her, her six-year-old brother has done all the legwork, to the extent that this would probably have been more interesting as his story. Except that he doesn't have a growth arc and is just the precocious but adorable little boy archetype (not one of Jung's but common enough). He has contacted intradimensional beings broadly based on question words to help on a quest to find their papa. 

They are joined by Calvin, a boy from Meg's class who is gorgeous in a Disney musical sort of way and incredibly bland in a Disney musical sort of way. His entire personality development is covered in a 2-second vision of his father shouting at him.

Then there are the Misses. A young white woman who's supposed to be mischievous but is mostly obnoxious, a South Asian lady who gets no personality so has to communicate entirely in quotes, and giant Oprah Winfrey in full fabulous drag queen regalia - and you can't go wrong with giant Oprah.

There's very little tension to be found in the kids' quest, mostly hallucinogenic and lacking any goals, direction or direct opposition until the last half hour or so. So it's difficult to care about a story like that.

Looking it up now I’m off the flight and able to go online, I see not only was it a bigger controversy than I thought (I can kind of understand objecting to the removal of Christian themes, but disliking it based on the casting seems dumb to me, there’s nothing about this that should even be remarkable, though I guess I might feel different were I a fan of the book) but it was a huge flop. It’s listed on Wikipedia as perhaps the biggest (even inflation-adjusted) flop of all time if the loss ends up at the upper end of the estimate. Yowch.

Plane films: Goodbye Christopher Robin; The Shape of Water; Tomb Raider; Justice League; Fantastic Beasts; The Disaster Artist

Plane Film 1: Goodbye Christopher Robin

I had this film wrong. Recently there was a trailer for another movie, featuring a grown up Christopher Robin having a somewhat hallucinogenic experience late in life where Pooh seems to visit him and speaks in the Disney voice. This film was completely different, an enjoyable, of course highly fictionalised account primarily about how AA Milne came to write the classic books. I had no idea there were the two different films being made. And I have to say, I still have considerable doubts about Christopher Robin, and likely would have enjoyed Goodbye Christopher Robin more if I hadn’t expected a talking Pooh to appear at any moment.

I very much enjoyed the evocation of the inter-war period, the way Sussex nature looks so idyllic and the very believable performances, convincingly evoking the idea of strong emotions simmering beneath a refined exterior. And the kid playing Billy Moon was also a great find, swinging between emotions and going overboard as kids so often do.  

The characterisation is a bit overly broad. Alan Milne in particular is not convincing, falling too hard into the shell-shocked former soldier character type with not enough of his own personality. There's an attempt at a character arc showing Christopher Robin's parents as neglectful and completely emotionally disconnected from the child they've just left with their nanny for his childhood. It's not very believable after reading Milne's poems, or even seeing all the cute pet names and stories about being very young touched on here. It feels much too much like the result of a scriptwriting 101 class about character arcs and development. 

It's all a redemption arc but because it takes place over several years, there just isn't enough redeeming and much too much bad parenting for the intended sympathy to ring true. Especially since rather than pushing fame upon him, it seems like the think Christopher Robin would resent the most would be getting sent to boarding school, where his life began to get crappy. Yet that point is never raised. Maybe that's my own personal biases based on my own experiences coming through, though. 

Plane film 2: The Shape of Water

Guillermo Del Toro's latest Oscar darling isn't nearly as magical or iconic as my favourite of his, Pan's Labyrinth, but it's still a very compelling and likeable fable. In a grimy vision of Cold War America, a mute cleaning lady named Eliza discovers they are keeping an aquatic humanoid creature in a lab. When Eliza bonds with the creature and learns it's to be vivisected, she does all he can to free it. 

Del Toro's films tend to skirt the line between arthouse and comic book in a way very few others manage - perhaps Burton at his best is the closest. Here there are a lot of cartoonish things, like the ragtag group that helps Eliza, and how one minute, the antagonist seems like a seriously heinous figure, with his views on race and gender roles, the next he's having to focus on his positive thinking after his car gets bashed up. 

Sometimes it feels like it's taking itself too seriously when it's repeating tropes from ET and Free Willy. Still, the balance just about works and the story is very satisfying. Unlike Pan's Labyrinth, it's not one I'd care to rewatch over and over, but absolutely I enjoyed it. 

Plane Film 3: Isle of Dogs

See Animation blog

Plane Film 4: Tomb Raider

After a reboot of the video game series, it made a lot of sense to also reboot the movie franchise. She may not be up there with Bond or Bourne but Lara Croft is definitely an icon recognised the world over and deserves a decent film.

This version is definitely less camp and cheesy than the Jolie films, but I don't think it's going to reignite the franchise like the game reboot did. And the problem is that they didn't take enough cues from that game, which this film essentially adapts. 

It's the same basic story - Lara heads to the Japanese island of Yamatai to follow her father's research and ends up clashing with shadowy organisation Trinity as well as the mysterious forces that were being researched in the first place. It even takes some of the best setpieces, like having to climb a rusty old WWII-era plane. 

But almost everything the film changes in an attempt to improve the action to fit Hollywood ideas of a good screenplay definitely has a negative impact. The game begins right in the thick of the action with Lara having to survive on the island and the backstory getting filled in later. The film shows 40 minutes of dull preamble that's going to date horribly - Lara losing a kickboxing match; Lara is a delivery driver; Lara takes part in some stupid hipster bike chase; Lara goes to a pawn shop; Lara gets her bag stolen in Hong Kong and the chase takes her exactly where she needs to be. 

This Lara is also much less a positive feminist symbol, surprising for Hollywood. Lara in the game starts out vulnerable and feeble but very quickly becomes a capable survivalist constantly staking out on her own. Here she's much too often spured to action only by a male, or motivated by what a male is doing. The more agency the adaptation gives male characters who didn't feature much in the original, the less Lara gets.

And you know what? In a Tomb Raider movie, there should be a whole lot more raiding of tombs. 

Plane Film 5: Justice League

I'd been hoping for Black Panther, but unfortunately it wasn't the superhero flick available for my flight. Instead I got Justice League, which I can't say I had been desperate to see. But I was kind of curious to see how this team came together and how Wonder Woman was integrated. 

That said, I have basically no interest in the DC Cinematic Universe. Batman films have gone downhill in my eyes since Batfleck, and I'm not interested in watching the TV series that would inform me about this teenage version of Barry Allen. 

Justice League seemed to have a really forgettable villain and none of the exuberance of the Avengers films despite a similar gather-the-McGuffins plot. Unlike Infinity War, which had reactions absolutely everywhere I follow online, nobody really said anything about this film or the impact of Steppenwolf. I mostly had Boney M stuck in my head every time I heard his name. 

Everything here is so grim and pessimistic, too. Everyone keeps moaning about how the world has gone to hell. Even the quirky humour guy, apparently now Barry, has a pretty grim life. The humour also mostly misfired, with the best joke not only in the trailer but already done way better by the Powerpuff Girls decades ago. 

Ultimately, while the Avengers films have been incredibly fun recently, DC just can't make their movies fun enough. 

Plane Film 6: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Despite owning copies of the little charity book this film is based on (they were going to be worth a fortune as collector's items you know), I had litle to no interest in seeing it in the cinema. For me, Harry Potter definitely outstayed its welcome by the end, both the books and the movie series. Definitely more so the movie series. 

So when they announced they were further milking this series with a whole series based on this encyclopaedia-style booklet, I thought it was a terrible idea. 

Well, watching it on the plane wasn't a bad thing. Though I kept falling asleep. Basically, this was an extended episode of Dr. Who. The writing was extremely like Dr. Who - and much as I like seeing Eddie Redmayne, he was definitely  just doing his best Dr. Who. 

Newt Scamander comes to America and stretches credulity in the idea that wizards have managed to keep themselves secret at all by letting various magical creatures loose in a bank to steal people's money and probably ruin a few of their lives - not that they mention it.

He gets mixed up in a vague plot about what's basically a magical time bomb in human form. The ending is very questionable, with what's basically a police shooting ordered by the black female president, and only the big antagonist and Newt are suggesting it might be a bad thing. It also means the action just fizzles out. The way Newt manages to get everyone on his side despite still being a wanted criminal is also highly dubious.

It's only meant to be a bit of fluff. But I definitely feel like I could have got the same level of enjoyment from a mediocre episode of New Who.

Plane film 7: The Disaster Artist

The internet has made Tommy Wiseau a legend. The Room will probably endure now as one of the best terrible movies ever made. And Tommy Wiseau is the reason it's so entertaining to watch it. His terrible stilted delivery, his strong accent and of course his sheer blistering self-confidence. 

This film follows him and his roommate trying to make it in LA. Of course Tommy doesn't do so well, but his roommate starts to get some success and that causes friction. So they set out to make The Room and that's where it actually gets entertaining. 

A charming take on an outsider artist, it's amazing that this film could get made at all, and it's nice to show how some people walk their own path and may even get a film made about them just by doing that.  

Deadpool 2

I can forgive a lot of things in a Deadpool movie that would bother me if the story was meant to be taken seriously. I can forgive a slapdash plot where trying to follow the logic of what the antagonist makes zero sense (Cable not going back into the prison, for example). I can forgive the failure to make the story driving the plot in any way interesting or engaging. I can forgive using the only major female characters in the film as basically a plot-pushing angel and superpowered girls who are kind of along for the ride. I can accept the cast of secondary characters built up by the first film and some interesting new additions to the cast being totally underused. If, and only if, the film is funny.

The problem was that it just wasn’t that entertaining. Recent Marvel movies have done a great job of being laugh-out-loud funny. The Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Thor: Ragnarok and even the recent Avengers: Age of Ultron all managed to be really funny, slip in a whole lot of pop culture references and still switch to serious mode when required. Deadpool absolutely needs to set itself apart by not only being more irreverent and adult than these other comic book films, it needs to be the funniest of the bunch.

And it just isn’t. There were a lot of jokes that left me smirking – repeating the dig about not being able to afford a decent number of X-Men only for them all to be glimpsed watching in disapproval; a really big-name star playing an invisible character; calling out X-Men as a dated analogy for racism in the 60s and making cracks at Black Tom Cassidy not being black. They all got a little smile from me. But I only actually laughed once, and that was the dig at Rob Liefeld and his inability to draw feet (which is actually how I first became aware of him, when people were ranting about his art). And of course that was the point nobody else in the theatre laughed.

The humour just doesn’t work as well as the character-based humour in the other Marvel movies is working. Firstly, the film makes a point of trying to give Deadpool depth by making a good third of the movie a miserable rumination on mortality and being left alone if you’re basically immortal. Which obviously isn’t especially funny. It then sets up a gag where X-Force don’t last longer than a few minutes, and while it’s a little funny it doesn’t work that well after all this pontificating about how losing a loved one can have such a harrowing affect. Don’t Bedlam and Zeitgeist have any loved ones?

A lot of the issue is timing. I feel like a lot of the humour is in the vein of Parker and Stone vein – build something up as important then tear it down. The ‘Holy shit balls’ song for the Juggernaut was definitely very South Park. But I feel like they would have handled the parachute sequence so much better to make the bathos actually funny. Same with the opening credits – they’re a funny parody of James Bond with Flashdance thrown in there, but they’re at a point in the movie that’s just left the audience on a downswing so the humour just isn’t prepped right.

Russell and Cable also don’t work very well. Russell is very unlikeable, even for a kid who is destined for terrible things Looper-style. His storyline also leads Deadpool to making a whole lot of paedo jokes that just didn’t sit well with me because nobody’s gonna find them especially funny or edgy and child abuse is not really something to make light of. Cable just wasn’t very interesting either, seeming not especially driven or edgy. Also, a little ironically after seeing Brolin as Thanos, I just don’t think he was physically big enough for Cable, who is meant to be huge. A huge human, obviously, not huge like the Juggernaut – who I have to say was a highlight here and unfortunately underused.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed. The film only worked if it was actually funny, and for me it fell short. It was sometimes clever, sometimes impressive and sometimes very up-to-the-minute with what it chose to skewer, and thinking back on how the whole publicity campaign was done the concept is amusing, but it needed to actually make me laugh and it didn’t. It didn’t even try to for way too much of the movie. I didn’t particularly like the first film either, but I feel like it at least made me chuckle. Hopefully any future sequels will do better.  

Birdman

It’s been a few years since this came out and proved an unexpected Oscar darling, but I felt like watching some kind of subversion or parody of superhero movies and remembered this. Though there’s an element of superhero parody, especially with one glorious scene late in the film, actually this is much less about movie-making and far more about the entertainment industry as a whole.

The story is quite a simple one. An actor whose star has faded named Riggan wants to be taken seriously as a creative force, so is putting on an adaptation of a Raymond Carver story on Broadway. When he decides his co-star is terrible and an opportunity arises to replace him, one of the play’s actors offers to bring in her boyfriend, who is a highly respected method actor. A series of disasters in the previews and escalating conflicts with the other actors and family members he’s surrounded himself with lead to Riggan’s perception of reality getting increasingly warped.

Through these interpersonal conflicts, various themes get explored – high art versus mass entertainment; personal pride and insecurity; how to bring life meaning and the euphoria of performance; old-school fame through a series of gatekeepers versus social media and going viral by chance. It’s a thoroughly modern, thoughtful script aware of the past while looking at changes the world is going through, and tapping into the fashion for superhero movies was a great relevant choice.

There are a few things that annoyed me here. Mostly I thought the dialogue was great, but there was a bit too much of people walking around talking to each other about profound metaphysical conundrums or huge relationship problems, which even in the world of theatrical luvvies was a stretch. There was just too much soul-bearing without the counterbalance of normal conversation that suggests this isn’t just how they always communicate – which would be totally unsustainable. There was also a bit too much focus on the gimmick of simulating one long uninterrupted shot, which let’s face it isn’t anything new and without considering reel-change cuts has been done since Hitchcock. Some parts, like temporal transitions, really might as well have been cuts and just hurt immersion.

But what was good about this film massively outweighed what didn’t work. The biggest triumph here is the performances, especially the interactions between Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, which are tempestuous, brutal but most of all believable. All the actors here have to show great versatility – the characters all act, put on a façade for others and show the naked truth by turns and all of them pitch it so well. The stakes for a small circle of people with backgrounds that are pretty difficult to identify with over the course of just a few nights really feel significant.

The music is great, too. We basically get a jazz drum solo for the vast majority of the film, for all the original music. It’s a great sizzling jazz kit that at times gives a cool driving rhythm, at time a pounding, rattling, anxious beat that heightens the sense of paranoia, and at other times simply underpins the action and gives a sense of impetus in a film made largely without cuts.

Two things carry this movie. First, the fantastic multifaceted performances. Second, the play-like attention to characterisation, crisis and breakdown. This is dusted by interesting musical experimentation, some grimly comic moments and some great nods to the simple, addictive fun of Hollywood. Really fun to watch, though I would add not quite as clever as it seems to think it is.

Avengers: Infinity War

Keeping this spoiler-free, so it may be a little abstract at times!

I greatly enjoyed Infinity War. These days I don't often go to the cinema, and I don't tend to watch the standalone movies until a while after release day. I didn't see Doctor Strange or the latest Thor until a few months later, and I haven't seen Black Panther yet because I'm pretty sure it will be available on my flight back to England in July. But when they all team up, I get excited and want to go. Glad I saw it on opening day, too, because inevitably my Facebook feed showed a spoiler the very next morning. 

The movie was everything I wanted it to be, which is more than I can say for the first two Avengers movies. The first was fun but the final act had no real sense of a genuine threat or bit emotional payoff. The second was marred by the annoying way they wrote Ultron and his weird plan. This one was much bigger, more spectacular and crazier than the others. Shifting the whole MCU into Cosmic Marvel was always a bit risky, because when things become overblown space operas, you risk losing the human element and the idea that characters like Captain America can still hold their own seems a bit absurd. But the comics manage it, and so have the movies. The careful build-up from the largely human dramas of the first Iron Man movies and the original Captain America mean we're invested in these characters even when realism is long-since cast out. The battles and setpieces here are as far-fetched as anything in anime, but it works.

Thanos is also an excellent antagonist. Brutal and merciless but utterly convinced he is right, vulnerable and not beyond suffering, with a dream of fixing the universe and settling down quietly, he is actually convincing even at this absurd intergalactic scale. It’s believable that he’s committed to his goal and will stop at nothing to reach it. Honestly, his plan doesn't make that much sense in this version. His comic motivation - pleasing Lady Death - probably would seem too ridiculous to work here, but at least was logical. I can understand his modus operandi, but getting the Infinity Gauntlet and unlimited power surely offers alternate solutions to the original problem he wanted to fix?

What impressed me was how elegantly all the different elements here were juggled. The opening perhaps tramples on the triumph of a previous movie in something of an Alien 3 shocker, but it gives us a strong focus for who to follow in the narrative. We then have very clear points of focus during the fetch quest to follow – who has the stones, who is coming for them, and who is there to defend them. Thanos having his Black Order to split up and send to retrieve the stones made sense, even if they could have had much less difficulty teaming up from the start, and even if some of the heroes’ actions are dubious, the scriptwriters put in quite a clever catch-all from Dr. Strange that waves away any missed opportunities or seemingly misguided actions.

The big battle scene is a bit dull, to be honest. It’s great to see lots of heroes in action, but against CGI fodder it has very little impact. Still, this is a bit of a tradition from the Avengers movies. Probably the biggest thrill was having the Guardians of the Galaxy interacting with the Avengers, providing some of the funniest and most awesome moments.

The audience leaves probably a little surprised, perhaps moved, and almost certainly eager for more. I know I want the Avengers 4 ASAP. The story clearly isn’t over, and there are plenty more MCU movies to come. I have a feeling we’ll leave the next movie with a feeling of almost perfect inversion of what we got here. But I’m certainly curious to see what effect this is all going to have on upcoming movies like the next Spiderman and Guardians films. I’m assuming the new Ant-man and Captain Marvel films will be set before this, with some scenes perhaps in parallel. We’ll see.

Either way, this was an action-packed space melodrama with lots of battles that brought a smile to my face and a surprising range of emotions. I definitely enjoyed it, even if a little part of me was sad that we still can’t have the X-Men included in all this. 

Plane film 2: Murder on the Orient Express

I was going to watch the Blade Runner sequel for my second film on the return leg to Japan, but it was far too long and I had no hope of squeezing it in. So instead I opted for a Kenneth Brannagh double-bill.

This time, he was not only starring but directing, in a much more playful and fun role. Like most people who grew up in Britain, David Suchet will always be the definitive Poirot for me, but it’s fun to see such a well-known actor take a crack at this character. The archetype Poirot is part of is also in vogue just now – the eccentric, egotistical genius who is insufferable for people around him but a lot of fun for an audience to watch. See Dr. House, Doctor Strange, Sheldon Cooper etc.

So with an extra focus on OCD, we have another remake of one of the most famous Christie stories. It’s mostly faithful, with various European characters altered to be black or Latino for diversity quota points, because as everyone knows different European nationalities don’t count as diverse.

The cast here is phenomenal. Just about every single character is played by a well-known big name, established or recent. Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Salma Hayek, Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe…the sheer number of recognisable faces who can command top billing all on their own is impressive. And yes, Branagh focusing so much on himself rather than letting these actors shine deserves the criticism it got. And yes, it’s dubious that this was a necessary adaptation when the story has had so many celebrated adaptations before this, and just about everyone knows the big twist – whereas something like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is becoming increasingly little-known.

The film is as well-made as one might expect, with sweeping shots of the railway journey and beautiful costume details. The music is forgettable but fitting, and the anxious feeling of the middle act is well-executed through editing and framing.

Worth a watch but probably not worth launching a new franchise or replacing Sherlock Holmes in the public consciousness.