All my optimism was an illusion.

Magic in the Moonlight

(2014)

(SPOILERS) I couldn’t say I’m an avid follower of Woody Allen’s films these days, mostly due the sheer variability of his output. He churns out a picture a year, come rain or shine, so Woody would have to be pretty damn consistent to follow avidly. I’ve found it increasingly takes a lot more to disguise the sound of his voice than it did, and a general air of repetition that has crept in. I guess that’s partly down to him being (almost) 80 and all, but no one is asking him to work so much. Anyone would think he was Clint Eastwood. It’s probably also partly because it’s easier to accept his offerings when he is on screen himself; there’s less chance of mimicry or surrogates. Magic in the Moonlight is a decidedly tepid affair. Its title suggests likeable whimsy, which scored him a big hit recently, but its closer to the rusty period trappings that made Match Point such a risible chore.

That’s a bit unfair, maybe. There’s little Woody has done that’s quite that bad (that I’ve seen anyway; I’ve yet to catch the Ewan McGregor one), but for a director whose approach to dialogue has never been modernistic, it’s curious how jarring his treatment of period can sound (here 1928). It worked in Midnight in Paris as that was a playful, colloquial take on the worship of artistry, and very charming for it. When period is combined with the industry of make-believe (The Purple Rose of Cairo, Bullets Over Broadway) the homages tend to work. Here, during the early stages, where Colin Firth is introduced as irascible stage musician Wei Ling Soo, there’s a similar sense of the broad and heightened that carries amusingly enough.

It’s when Soo’s real persona Stanley Crawford investigates the case of spiritualist Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) that Allen slowly begins to come unstuck. Allen only has one plotline, and it’s at least one too few; non-believer Stanley slowly falling in love with the woman who makes him believe again. The belief/non-belief is a metaphor for finding true love (at one point a character even says, “Love at first sight is a kind of magic”), but it doesn’t really excuse how thinly filled in Crawford’s status as a Houdini/James Randi-esque (although it appears Allen was inspired by William Ellsworth Robinson) debunker of fake mediums is. It suggests Allen couldn’t be bothered to go to any great effort to underpin his plot.

Despite his arch-scepticism, it takes very little to convince Stanley her fakery is the real deal. Of course we know, this being Woody Allen, that the plot isn’t suddenly going to about face and indulge the thought that something else might be out there, any more than he’s going to deliver a script with no mention of psychiatry. Both of those come with a caveat; unless he’s beginning to get sentimental or senile in his dotage.

Allen and cinematographer Darius Khondji make the South of France look gorgeous, but that same warmth is lacking in the screenplay. With this title, one might have expected something closer to the frippery of A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy. Unfortunately, 100 minutes is too long to have Firth, good as he is, puffing and gruffing away in an uptight acerbic fashion while Stone, who I’m usually a fan of, is not quite at ease, ill-served by the rictus nature of Allen’s characterisations. Unsurprising, as he’s stuck in the same routine as he was 40 years ago. I also wasn't remotely rooting for Firth and Stone to get together, even though I usually relish a 30-year age gap in a love story. I didn’t once buy that they had any real affection for each other; there’s certainly no romantic chemistry there.

This needed to be light and frothy, but instead it drags. If Sophie and Stanley had been but one of a trio of mismatched couples finding love, the flaws in the screenplay might have been less evident and the whole might have been significantly more appealing. Supporting players (Marcia Gay Harden, Simon McBurney) are reliable but nothing more than that. Allen’s obsessions are much less endearing when revealed in such an unfiltered fashion. It’s as if he’s running on empty, his formulaic approach relieving him of putting any extra effort into making his scenario credible or his characters likeable.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Prepare the Heathen’s Stand! By order of purification!

Apostle (2018)
(SPOILERS) Another week, another undercooked Netflix flick from an undeniably talented director. What’s up with their quality control? Do they have any? Are they so set on attracting an embarrassment of creatives, they give them carte blanche, to hell with whether the results are any good or not? Apostle's an ungainly folk-horror mashup of The Wicker Man (most obviously, but without the remotest trace of that screenplay's finesse) and any cult-centric Brit horror movie you’d care to think of (including Ben Wheatley's, himself an exponent of similar influences-on-sleeve filmmaking with Kill List), taking in tropes from Hammer, torture porn, and pagan lore but revealing nothing much that's different or original beyond them.

You can’t just outsource your entire life.

Tully (2018)
(SPOILERS) A major twist is revealed in the last fifteen minutes of Tully, one I'll happily admit not to have seen coming, but it says something about the movie that it failed to affect my misgivings over the picture up to that point either way. About the worst thing you can say about a twist is that it leaves you shrugging.

There's something wrong with the sky.

Hold the Dark (2018)
(SPOILERS) Hold the Dark, an adaptation of William Giraldi's 2014 novel, is big on atmosphere, as you'd expect from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) and actor-now-director (I Don’t Want to Live in This World Anymore) pal Macon Blair (furnishing the screenplay and appearing in one scene), but contrastingly low on satisfying resolutions. Being wilfully oblique can be a winner if you’re entirely sure what you're trying to achieve, but the effect here is rather that it’s "for the sake of it" than purposeful.

Well, you did take advantage of a drunken sailor.

Tomb Raider (2018)
(SPOILERS) There's evidently an appetite out there for a decent Tomb Raider movie, given that the lousy 2001 incarnation was successful enough to spawn a (lousy) sequel, and that this lousier reboot, scarcely conceivably, may have attracted enough bums on seats to do likewise. If we're going to distinguish between order of demerits, we could characterise the Angelina Jolie movies as both pretty bad; Tomb Raider, in contrast, is unforgivably tedious.

If you want to have a staring contest with me, you will lose.

Phantom Thread (2017)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps surprisingly not the lowest grossing of last year's Best Picture Oscar nominees (that was Call Me by Your Name) but certainly the one with the least buzz as a genuine contender, subjected as Phantom Thread was to a range of views from masterpiece (the critics) to drudge (a fair selection of general viewers). The mixed reaction wasn’t so very far from Paul Thomas Anderson's earlier The Master, and one suspects the nomination was more to do with the golden glow of Daniel Day-Lewis in his first role in half a decade (and last ever, if he's to be believed) than mass Academy rapture with the picture. Which is ironic, as the relatively unknown Vicky Krieps steals the film from under him.

No one understands the lonely perfection of my dreams.

Ridley Scott Ridders Ranked
During the '80s, I anticipated few filmmakers' movies more than Ridley Scott's; those of his fellow xenomorph wrangler James Cameron, perhaps. In both cases, that eagerness for something equalling their early efforts receded as they studiously managed to avoid the heights they had once reached. Cameron's output dropped off a cliff after he won an Oscar. Contrastingly, Scott's surged like never before when his film took home gold. Which at least meant he occasionally delivered something interesting, but sadly, it was mostly quantity over quality. Here are the movies Scott has directed in his career thus far - and with his rate of productivity, another 25 by the time he's 100 may well be feasible – ranked from worst to best.

This is it. This is the moment of my death.

Fearless (1993)
Hollywood tends to make a hash of any exploration of existential or spiritual themes. The urge towards the simplistic, the treacly or the mawkishly uplifting, without appropriate filtering or insight, usually overpowers even the best intentions. Rarely, a movie comes along that makes good on its potential and then, more than likely, it gets completely ignored. Such a fate befell Fearless, Peter Weir’s plane crash survivor-angst film, despite roundly positive critical notices. For some reason audiences were willing to see a rubgy team turn cannibal in Alive, but this was a turn-off? Yet invariably anyone who has seen Fearless speaks of it in glowing terms, and rightly so.

Weir’s pictures are often thematically rich, more anchored by narrative than those of, say, Terrence Malick but similarly preoccupied with big ideas and their expression. He has a rare grasp of poetry, symbolism and the mythic. Weir also displays an acute grasp of the subjective mind-set, and possesses …

Outstanding. Now, let’s bite off all the heads and pile them up in the corner.

Venom (2018)
(SPOILERS) A 29% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes can't be wrong, can it? To go by the number of one-star reviews Sony’s attempt to kick-start their own shred of the Marvel-verse has received, you’d think it was the new Battlefield Earth, or Highlander II: The Quickening. Fortunately, it's far from that level of ignominy. And while it’s also a considerable distance from showing the polish and assuredness of the official Disney movies, it nevertheless manages to establish its own crudely winning sense of identity.

The whole thing should just be your fucking nose!

A Star is Born (2018)
(SPOILERS) A shoe-in for Best Picture Oscar? Perhaps not, since it will have to beat at very least Roma and First Man to claim the prize, but this latest version of A Star is Born still comes laden with more acclaim than the previous three versions put together (and that's with a Best Picture nod for the 1937 original). While the film doesn't quite reach the consistent heights suggested by the majority of critics, who have evacuated their adjectival bowels lavishing it with superlatives, it's undoubtedly a remarkably well-made, stunningly acted piece, and perhaps even more notably, only rarely feels like its succumbing to just how familiar this tale of rise to, and parallel fall from, stardom has become.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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