Ready Player One

(M) ★★★½

Director: Steven Spielberg.

Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Mark Rylance, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Simon Pegg, Hannah John-Kamen.

Gandalf had stumbled onto the set of the new Final Fantasy movie by mistake.

Is it stating the obvious to say Spielberg is the greatest director of all time? Or is that too safe of a bet? Not "hot take" enough for ya?

Anyway, what's continually impressive about his career is his ability to switch gears. After the excellent Cold War spy drama Bridge Of Spies, he did a decent job on the family-friendly flick The BFG, before diving into this epic-scale sci-fi adventure. Oh and in the middle of the massive post-production period of Ready Player One, he made and released the tidy little journo-thriller The Post.

It's all evidence of Spielberg's understanding of what makes films tick. No matter the genre, his ability to give audiences what they crave (whether they know it or not) is what makes him the best in the biz. Understanding how a plot should roll, where the beats need to be, how to make you cheer and boo - it's all there in everything he does. Looking back, he hasn't made a bad film since Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, and from all accounts a fair amount of the blame for that can be levelled at his old mate George Lucas. Yes, not every film has been pure top shelf, but he rarely serves up anything crap.

So where does this one sit in his career? The definitive answer will come when The Incredible Suit slots it into his excellent Spielberg ranking list (although he didn't rate The BFG so nobody's perfect), but for now Ready Player One is in the pile of shameless entertainers Spielberg wheels out from time to time. It's part-The Adventures Of Tintin, part-Minority Report, and part-The Goonies (which he produced).

Based somewhat loosely on Ernest Cline's 2011 novel, Ready Player One is set in a future where the majority of people spend their time in The Oasis, a massive online gaming experience where you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want.

In the wake of the death of The Oasis' creator James Halliday (Rylance), everyone is hunting for the Easter Egg he left behind in the digital realm - a MacGuffin that gives its finder ownership of the entire Oasis. This bequeathment pits lowly teens like Wade Watts AKA Parzival (Sheridan) up against evil corporations such as IOI, which is owned by the hissable Nolan Sorrento (Mendelsohn).

Mixing a CGI-enhanced real world with a fully motion-captured digital one, this is Spielberg's most visually ambitious film since Tintin. Both planes of existence are beautifully realised, although maybe a stronger palette difference would have been better.

But when it's firing on all cylinders, it's hard to top. An early car race (once the clunky world-set-up exposition is out of the way) is full on and a bit mind-blowing, as is the scale of the final battle. The pace in this is like that of a novice in a car racing game - foot to the floor, all the time.

Where it falls down is in its characters. The most fascinating creation is Halliday. Rylance (quickly becoming Spielberg's muse - this is film #3 with him) gives a fleeting but intriguing performance means Halliday looms over the film in a sadly beautiful way. His spectral presence helps make the MacGuffins less MacGuffiny and the clues less computer gamey, as they hint at increasingly interesting character depths.

The next most interesting role is Mendelsohn's Sorrento, who is surprisingly well-rounded for a villain, followed by the hero Parzival. Sheridan does a good job in the lead, but his character feels underwritten. We know enough to care, and his desires and actions drag us along, but he's nowhere to be seen on the leaderboard of great Spielberg characters.

Faring far worse is Cooke as Artemis (it's spelt Art3mis but I'm having no part of that shit). Artemis is an incredibly important player in the story but done a disservice by the script. She's headstrong and smart, which is great, but the whole "love interest" side of things slips through too easily and is undercooked, bringing her character down to a strangely bland level. Equally shortchanged are the rest of Parzival's mates (played by Waithe, Zhao and Morisaki), who turn up when it's important for the plot and are entirely one-dimensional. TJ Miller's B-villain I-Rok is also a little underdone, but a very welcome addition as comic relief.

The plot feels a little clunky in places, and devolves into a weirdly kidsy ending, which is pretty odd for a film that references Alien in a pretty full on way and bases a whole sequence on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. But something it does incredibly well is manage to be, for all intents and purposes, a film based on a (admittedly non-existent) video game. With its various levels, puzzles and plot points that revolve around gameplay mechanics, Ready Player One shows it is theoretically possible (in a very meta kind of way) to make a computer game adaptation that doesn't suck.

I haven't read the book, but after reading a plot summary it seems like the film may have turned shit into sherbet. One hangover from the book that is inescapable however, and quite frankly odd, is the movie's fixation on the '80s. It's a bit cute for those of a certain age who might be prone to pop-culture fanaticism, and it is somewhat understandable - it stems from Halliday having grown-up in the '80s - but it's really weird for all these teens in 2045 to be running around with a love of an era six decades ago. It would be akin to adolescents in 2018 being obsessed with late '50s culture, listening to Bill Haley and Buddy Holly while greasing up their hair and idolising James Dean. Or kids in the '80s dressing up as flappers and listening to '20s jazz.

Peculiarities aside, Ready Player One is a burst of fun which is breathlessly paced and visually stunning. It never lets up and is thoroughly gripping, especially if you are Gen X or Gen Y and were known to game in your youth. It's unlikely to find its way in to a Spielberg top 10, but nonetheless it's another crowdpleaser from the master.

REWIND REVIEW: Chasing Ice

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Jeff Orlowski.

Cast: James Balog, Svavar Jónatansson, Adam LeWinter.

"Why the fuck did I put my mailbox way up here?"

Firstly, let's get the obvious unfunny gag out of the way - no, this isn't about people trying to score meth.

It's actually about something which sounds like potentially the most boring documentary subject ever - glaciers. Yep, slow-moving rivers of ice that gradually roll into the ocean. Sounds great, right?

But Chasing Ice is about so much more than that. Yes, it's about glaciers, but more importantly it's about climate change, and one man's quest to illustrate the dire situation we face as a planet so people can understand it. Orlowski's documentary is brilliant because of the wondrous way it shows a worldwide story and a personal one at the same time.

It's incredible and terrifying but brilliant as well. Chasing Ice manages to be both global and personal, beautiful and bleak, illuminating and depressing. Visually, it's the most remarkable nature-based docos you're likely to see that doesn't have animals in it. It shows us rarely seen or previously unseen elements of our planet that demonstrate climate change in indisputable and astounding ways.

The story centres on photographer James Balog, and his Extreme Ice Survey. The project involved setting up about two dozen cameras in some of the most inhospitable conditions on the planet with the aim of recording the slow disappearance of some of the world's biggest glaciers over three years, thus showcasing the impacts of a slowly warming planet.

The film is quite simple and direct in a lot of ways but continually riveting. It finds small narratives to drive the pacing - the issues in setting up the cameras, Balog's problems with his knee, a film crew waiting to capture the seemingly unfilmable.

It's strangely powerful stuff, and Balog's passion is all consuming. It seems to infect his colleagues, which is oddly funny, especially when you see the lengths they're willing to go to for their leader.

Boasting wonderful cinematography, a straightforward delivery, and an Oscar-nominated song sung by Scarlett Johansson, this is a surprisingly gripping film that shows us a world slowly falling to pieces, but in a way few of us really understood.

I watched this film at F Project Cinema. Full program here.

Pacific Rim Uprising

(M) ★★★½

Director: Steven S. DeKnight.

Cast: John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, Jing Tian, Adria Arjona, Zhang Jin, Karan Brar, Ivanna Sakhno, Mackenyu.

"Did he just call us Decepticons? That's it - he's fucked."

Within the first five minutes of Pacific Rim Uprising, it is already a hundred times better than its predecessor.

The reason for this improvement lies in the character and charisma of Boyega's Jake Pentecost, the washed-out son of a hero (played by Idris Elba in the first film). He's a bundle of clichés - hell, the whole film is - and in the first five minutes we know what will become of him, but at least he's interesting, we can barrack for him, and it doesn't sound like his dialogue was written by a 10-year-old. 

Because these were the biggest problems of Pacific Rim: dire dialogue, bad performances, and the presence of Charlie "Can't Lead A Movie" Hunnam (admittedly I haven't seen Lost City Of Z). In between the horrible talky bits, Guillermo del Toro pitched his giant robots (jaegers) against his giant beasties (kaiju) with CG skill and excitement. It was a shame everything but the mecha-v-monster battles was so lame.

So it's a great relief that DeKnight (making his directorial debut after years as a great TV writer on the likes of Buffy and Angel) has fixed the problems and made Uprising a really enjoyable piece of big dumb fun. 

Set about 10 years after the first film, it introduces Jake Pentecost as a party-loving thief living the dream in a post-kaiju world. But when he is out-thieved by teen prodigy Amara (Spaeny), his attempt at revenge attracts the attention of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps - the military force that runs the jaegers.

Jake is offered a choice - jail or return to the PPDC and continue the brilliant career he threw away all those years ago. The choice is obvious, but less obvious is the source of the mysterious new jaegers that are attacking the PPDC's robot guardians.

Uprising isn't going to win any awards beyond the ones its CG wizards wholeheartedly deserve, but that doesn't matter. It's silly but immensely enjoyable and has a couple of half-decent characters we can actually got on board with. Boyega is great - he's a charismatic lead with a deft touch for the welcome comedic moments.

Eastwood's character Nate Lambert is less well-defined, but he's good enough to make it work. Spaeny is suitably feisty and does a solid job, as does Kikuchi, who was the lone stand-out in the first film. Even Day and Gorman get a better deal this time around. Their pairing as the comic relief in the first film was grating, but here they are far more interesting and more than just plot points with bad jokes.

By doing away with most of the tin-ear dialogue (there are still some clangers) and getting better performances, the pacing improves dramatically and Uprising doesn't feel like a burden between CG bouts of the Godzilla/Iron Giant kind. Because, let's face it, that's why we're here - to see oversized dinosaur-types punching on with enormous Transformers.

Obviously this is where the movie excels. It's ridiculous and dumb and silly, but by gods it's cool. And it's exactly why the film exists.

There is nothing deep or profound about Uprising. But it does what it sets out to do, and that's have monsters fight robots. The first Pacific Rim did this too, but with a bunch of humans we either didn't like or didn't care about in between the cool bits. Uprising gets that second bit right, making this one of those rare sequels that improves on the original, although that's damning this bombastic and fun slice of sci-fi with faint praise. 

The last songs played live by famous musicians (part one)

(This blog is going to be a morbid one, so apologies in advance.)

So many musicians I love are now dead. It seemed in particular that 2016 was a killing field, but 2017 wasn't much better.

It made me start to wonder a possibly strange and morbid thing about these late musicians - what was the last song they played live? I started thinking this after Chris Cornell died and footage began emerging of Soundgarden's last show and final song.

So I began doing some research and went down a bit of a rabbit-hole. Here's what I learnt.

(Sorry but most of the audio in this of a really terrible quality.)

Musician: Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)
Last song played live: Heart-Shaped Box
Date: March 1, 1994
Location: Terminal 1 Flughafen München, Munich, Germany

Kurt Cobain was clearly unwell by the time Nirvana unwittingly played what would be their final show - you can hear him struggling to hit the higher notes in Heart-Shaped Box in the above recording. Nirvana had spent almost all of February touring Europe, and life on the road combined with his addictions and mental health problems had pretty much broken Cobain. Three days after this final gig (the rest of the tour was cancelled), Cobain overdosed on champagne and Rohypnol. His wife Courtney Love later said the incident was a suicide attempt. About a month later, Cobain was dead, having unfortunately decided it was "better to burn out than to fade away", as he put it in his Neil Young-quoting suicide note.



Musician: Jimi Hendrix
Last song played live: Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Date: September 6, 1970

Location: Open Air Love & Peace Festival, Fehmarn, Germany

 

You can buy Hendrix's entire final concert from Dagger Records - the officially sanctioned Hendrix estate label. And while that was the last proper performance from The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Hendrix himself turned up at a jam session nine days later (September 15) on the invitation of The Animals' Eric Burdon. Too drug-fucked to join the jam session at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club with Burdon's newly formed band War, Hendrix returned the following night in better shape and sat in on two songs - Tobacco Road and Mother Earth. This was the last time he played in public. Hendrix died on September 18. You can hear him jamming on Tobacco Road in the video below.

Musician: John Lennon

Last song played live: Imagine

Date: April 18, 1975

Location: Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, USA

Unlike most musicians featured in this blog, there was a lengthy gap between John Lennon's final concert and his death - more than five and a half years in fact. In the intervening years, Lennon effectively retired to raise his son Sean, attempting to make up for the fact he had been an absentee dad for his first son Julian. The former Beatle was on the verge of making a return to live performance when he was gunned down - he had been readying Double Fantasy for release in the lead-up to his senseless murder. As for that final gig, five years earlier, it was for a TV special celebrating Lew Grade, a man Lennon had been fighting in court for the previous few years. The whole weird story about it is told best here, but the upshot of it all (at least in terms of this blog) is that his deepest, most powerful and arguably best song ended up being the final one he played live.

Musician: Janis Joplin

Last song played live: Summertime

Date: August 12, 1970

Location: Harvard Stadium, Boston, USA

The final gig of Janis Joplin and her Full Tilt Boogie Band was on a hot August night in Boston and it started an hour and a half late. The crowd was stoned and restless, but the lengthy wait was because some of the musical equipment for the show had been stolen the night before. When Janis finally took to the stage, a bottle of Southern Comfort under her belt, she exploded for less than thirty minutes and was then gone again. This was a typical set for the ragged-voiced powerhouse. After a blistering rendition of George Gershwin's Summertime, Joplin left the stage and the band finished with their blues jam Full Tilt. Over the next two months, she worked on her landmark album Pearl but was dead on October 4, aged 27 - just 16 days after Hendrix died, also aged 27.

Musician: David Bowie

Last song played live: Changes

Date: November 9, 2006

Location: Hammersmith Ballroom, New York, USA

Bowie's final gig seemed innocuous at the time, but grew steadily in importance as almost 10 years elapsed between it and his death on January 10, 2016. It was a simple three song set at the Keep a Child Alive's annual Black Ball fundraiser. He opened with his cover the Oscar-nominated Johnny Mathis song Wild Is The Wind (as heard on Bowie's Station To Station album), followed it with The Lodger cut Fantastic Voyage, and capped it all off with Changes, for which he was joined on stage by Alicia Keys. It would be the final performance he ever gave and it came more than a year after his previous gig. Heart surgery prematurely ended his Reality Tour in 2004 and he only did one show in 2005, which was at the Fashion Rocks variety show in New York where he played Life On Mars? before singing two songs with Arcade Fire. Bowie never gave a reason for the lack of live shows in his later years, but then he always was a man of mystery.

This is part one. Let me know who you'd like to see featured in part 2.

An ode to Future Of The Left

Bad gig photos by me.

Future Of The Left is the type of band you wish more people knew about because they're fucking awesome and they totally deserve all the money and accolades that come with being adored by millions, but you know that as soon as more people know about them you won't get to see them in intimate venues like The Corner anymore and they'll become jaded and changed by money and accolades and fame and suddenly the fucking awesome band is gone and only a cash-filled shell is left.

So if you don't know about Future Of The Left, part of me wants you to go out and buy all their albums like I did when I first encountered their greatness. And the other part of me wants you to go and read something else on my blog, like say my ranking of all the Pixar movies. There - that's nice and harmless.

Actually, technically, it was the second time I encountered their greatness that spurred me to purchase their back catalogue. I don't recall the first time - it was at the Golden Plains Festival in 2008 and I was so cooked that I don't remember their set (and also because Ween and Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings played and that was all the incredibleness that my brain could hold).

Pictured: my brain full of incredibleness.

But I saw them again at Meredith's Supernatural Amphitheatre in 2011 and they blew my mind. The setlist was a mix of stuff from their first two albums, a few killer tracks from their at-that-time-unreleased third album, and some classic Mclusky tunes (the former band of FOTL frontman Andrew Falkous and drummer Jack Egglestone).

As I said, the set made me rush out and buy the widely available elements of their back catalogue - the great Curses, the all-time excellent Travels With Myself And Another, and the somewhat shittily recorded but rad live album Last Night I Saved Her from Vampires. The following year, their by-that-time-released record The Plot Against Common Sense was my #1 album of 2012, and I was telling anyone who would listen that FOTL were the best band I'd heard in ages and a lot of people were nodding in that semi-polite 'that's nice but I really don't fucking care' kind of way.

But why am I babbling about this band (and why have you read this far)?

Well, this is largely being written because I forgot to write a review of their gig at The Corner in January. I got sidetracked, but I want to share with you what makes FOTL so special, which was perfectly encapsulated by that night at The Corner.

They probably hate being described as "alternative rock/noise rock/post-hardcore" (as they are categorised on Wikipedia), but somewhere in there lies the truth. They love bursts of abrasive noise in between the singalong choruses. They adore tricksy time signatures amid their killer riffs. They offer a cynically witty view of the world wrapped up in catchy hooks and ecstatic refrains.

They're not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like noisy, dirty, spiky rock and have more than half a brain, this is for you. They're like At The Drive In without the pretension, or Fugazi without the self-righteousness. They're like a scuzzier XTC circa Black Sea but with the irony, cynicism, and Big Muff pedals dialled up to 11, or Pulled Apart By Horses without the metal inclinations. They're like Gang Of Four but with better riffs, or Idles but with a better sense of humour.

The closest things to hits in their setlist are Arming Eritrea and Manchasm - two songs at either end of the FOTL spectrum, neither of which anyone knows (probably). The first is a bunch of distorted bursts of mini-riffs that give way to a surprisingly triumphant chorus; the second is a dinky two-fingered keyboard garage-pop tune that devolves into a celebration of a cat called Colin (and I have no idea what the fuck either song is about but they're great).

It's all quality. Behold the filthy motorik groove of Beneath The Waves An Ocean. Relish the sturm und drang of If AT&T Drank Tea What Would BP Do?. Quiver at the uncompromising nature of You Need Satan More Than He Needs You. Swoon at the surprising sentimentality of French Lessons. And laugh at the wonderfully titled Robocop 4 - Fuck Off, Robocop, especially the bit where he points out Voldemort looks like Billy Corgan.

Is it too early or too late to recognise Falco as a genius? Aside from the fact he's achieved every man's dream - to play in a cool band and marry an attractive Australian bass player - he is one of the best lyricists kicking round, blending an unmatched wit with a knack for the abstract that leaves most contemporary songwriters for dead. His mind is a steel trap. He's as funny on stage between songs as he is in songs. He never 'umms' or 'ahhs' and handles hecklers with the aplomb usually reserved for veteran stand-up comedians. If scientists built a sardonic wit machine capable of screaming and ranting in tune, it would sound like Falco.

Also, he still plays Mclusky songs because he evidently agrees they're fucking good songs and is not going to be a twat about it.

So in summary, FOTL are fucking great (as is Falco's "not solo" side project Christian Fitness, by the way) and their gig at The Corner was further evidence of their greatness. They did a "secret gig" the following night at the Old Bar, where Falco was promising to play no more than five different songs, and it was a shame I couldn't go because not only would it have been worth it for the five extra songs, but seeing them live will always be worth it.

Setlist
The Lord Hates a Coward
Arming Eritrea
Small Bones Small Bodies
Miner's Gruel
adeadenemyalwayssmellsgood
The Limits of Battleships
Beneath the Waves an Ocean
Manchasm
You Need Satan More Than He Needs You
To Hell With Good Intentions (Mclusky)
Robocop 4 - Fuck Off Robocop
Eating for None
If AT&T Drank Tea What Would BP Do?
Without MSG I Am Nothing (Mclusky)
How to Spot a Record Company
French Lessons/Singing of the Bonesaws/Lapsed Catholics/Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues
Outro for drum kit destruction: Gratitude bass riff (Beastie Boys cover)

Further reading:

Falco's track-by-track dissection of FOTL's excellent Travels With Myself And Another album
Falco on Mr Big's To Be With You - well worth a read, trust me
A much better piece on why Falco and FOTL are amazing
Falco's wonderful retort to a bad Pitchfork review
And he also wrote this wonderfully raw piece on what it is to be in vaguely unsuccessful band

The Shape Of Water

(MA15+) ★★★★½

Director: Guillermo del Toro.

Cast: Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer, David Hewlett, Nick Searcy.

"This is great and all, but my shoe is sinking."

Guillermo del Toro loves monsters.

In an interview with Ain't It Cool he talked about his favourites - Frankenstein's monster, the Alien, the Creature from The Black Lagoon, Godzilla, and the Thing - and it's easy to see how the monster movies he loved as a kid have populated his career. Some kind of creature, ghoul or ghost populates each of his films, from his debut Cronos, through his comic book adaptations (Blade II, the Hellboy films), in his greatest film (Pan's Labyrinth) and his worst ones (Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak).

In The Shape Of Water, he poses the question "what if the monster got the girl?". It's a strange question, with weird answers, but it's one del Toro asks with beauty, delicacy and intelligence.

Set during the Cold War and the Space Race, it centres on Hawkins' Eliza, a mute woman who works as a cleaner alongside her best friend Zelda (Spencer) at a US government facility.

There she encounters The Asset (Jones), an amphibious humanoid captured by the US military in the Amazon. The government, personified by villainous G-man Strickland (Shannon) and curious scientist Hoffstetler (Stuhlbarg), want to see if The Asset's physiology can help in America's quest to put a man in space. That will probably require cutting the monster open.

But Eliza has other ideas - she has fallen in love with this Amazonian creature and wants to save him.

The Shape Of Water is a strange film, although when you think about it, it's no weirder than Beauty & The Beast and that's a much-loved fairy tale. Perhaps the only flaw in The Shape Of Water is too many characters are too quick to accept the really odd things that happen. It's jarring, yet somewhat necessary.

After all, this is a fable about acceptance and equality. By setting it in the '60s, and by using a couple of simple key moments, del Toro phrases his story in the context of the civil rights movement. It's subtly done, and nicely done. On top of that is Jenkins' Giles - Eliza's friend who is struggling with all the things that came with being a single older gay man in that era. These things all flow into the film's themes of love, loneliness and humanity.

As with Pan's Labyrinth - del Toro's magnum opus - the film combines its stunning production design with its far-out story to make a modern (though set 50 years ago) fairy tale. But don't be fooled by the niceties, the beautiful music, and the central love story. Like many of del Toro's films, this is violent and often dark, and uses the horrible aspects of human nature to showcase the good ones.

The compelling story and lush visuals would fail with the wrong people in front of the camera, but del Toro has a perfect cast. Hawkins is incredible, making a very believable character out of some fantastical material. She's well supported by the often-under-rated Jenkins, the comic relief of Spencer and the excellent Stuhlbarg.

Almost stealing the show is Shannon, who is so good at menacing. He doesn't disappoint here - Strickland is utterly repulsive and hissable while still being a fascinatingly well-rounded character. Special mention also to Jones, the unsung muse of del Toro who again does a great job layered in prosthetics. It's fair to say the film would not be as affecting if they'd made the creature a CG creation, so full points to Jones and the design team.

(On a side note, I can't help but wonder if del Toro ever envisioned this as a Hellboy spin-off starring the similarly fish-like Abe Sapien (also played by Jones). Despite the similarity in the characters, that would have robbed this film of its naivety and lumbered it with unnecessary baggage. It's great that this stands alone as a parable for modern and past times.)

Pan's Labyrinth is better, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Get Out may have been more worthy winners at this year's Oscars, but there is no denying the power, beauty and craft that have gone into The Shape Of Water. It is a strangely fascinating tale, and one deserving of making del Toro the third Mexican in five years to win the best director Oscar.

Tomb Raider (2018)

(M) ★★

Director: Roar Uthaug.

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Kristin Scott Thomas.

"I swear this tank top was teal when I woke up this morning."

The curse of the video game movie continues.

Another great white hope has fallen out of the gate, stumbling its way through a clumsy plot to once again prove that apparently - for whatever reason - computer games can't be turned into films. This is despite the fact we'd already seen how not to make a Tomb Raider film. Twice. You'd think lessons were learnt there. Evidence suggests the contrary.

This Tomb Raider is not as bad as that other supposed saviour of the genre, Assassin's Creed, which featured ever-increasing piles of dumb, but it's also no better than Warcraft, which failed valiantly in its quest to rid the curse. And it's marginally better than the two Tomb Raider films in which Angelina Jolie pulled on the teal tank top of Lara Croft, but that's damning it with faint praise.

Donning the singlet in this reboot is Alicia Vikander. Her Croft is young, feisty and still upset about the death of her father (West) seven years earlier. She has resisted inheriting the wealth he bequeathed her, and instead scrapes by as a bicycle courier.

But the call to adventure that claimed her father is now beckoning her to a mysterious Japanese island where a number of very bad men are searching for the body of a supposedly cursed queen who could bring about the end of the world.

The biggest plus here is Vikander. She's great in the lead role, nailing the accent and throwing herself into the action scenes. She also imbues Croft with the right amount of bravery and fear as she dives headlong into the unknown. This is Croft with her training wheels still on, which is one of the few interesting aspects of the film.

It's a shame Vikander doesn't have a better movie in which to raid tombs. The film's script wobbles from average to bad. It starts out okay as it sets up who Croft is, but any time is has to dive into where her father went or what he was doing, it struggles to do so without boring info-dumping or pointless flashbacks.

Once it gets to its destination, the film doesn't fair much better. Goggins is so close to being a good villain but is too aloof to be really menacing, and the plot bounces from set-piece to set-piece like, well, a computer game with boring or inane cut scenes in between.

And therein lies a lot of the problem. In trying to capture what was great about the game - the puzzle-solving and the tomb raiding - the movie ends up feeling like a bad version of a game in which you can't participate. The puzzles may have been cool on a console, but are silly and over-the-top on film, and pretty quickly it devolves into a poor rip-off of Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, except the bizarre puzzles in that film had a point - they flowed into that movie's themes of faith and belief. And Tomb Raider has no such depth - it's merely a string of so-so action pieces, with the best being an escape from a crashed plane atop a waterfall and the worst involving a falling floor and coloured keys.

To be fair, every lost-tomb-archaeologist adventure owes a debt to Indy's travails, and Croft's creators were no doubt influenced by the whipcracking hero. But Tomb Raider struggles to find any new ground (particularly in terms of the father-offspring dynamic) that wasn't covered better in Last Crusade. Despite Vikander and West's best efforts, they can't elevate their relationship to something worth caring about, leaving a heart-shaped hole in proceedings.

The script also lacks humour, no characters are developed outside of the Crofts, and when you get down to it, the actual tomb raiding is nothing special either.

It would be a shame for Vikander's stint as Croft to be limited to this film, because she deserves a shot at playing the role in a better movie. But if this is the best anyone can offer third time around, then Lara Croft should probably stick to the consoles.

REWIND REVIEW: Wake In Fright (1971)

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Ted Kotcheff.

Cast: Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay, Jack Thompson, Peter Whittle, Al Thomas, John Meillon.

"Are you gonna finish that?"

It seems oxymoronic, but having a Canadian direct Wake In Fright is a huge part of what makes it one of the greatest Australian films of all time.

There is no romanticism in the film, and nothing to suggest the people in it or the country represented are misunderstood or in possession of admirable qualities. No, this holds a very dark mirror up to Australian society, and it may have been difficult for an Aussie director to look back without flinching.

The Canadian in question was Ted Kotcheff, whose subsequent filmography would include the debut outing of John Rambo First Blood (a film that also probably benefitted from having an outsider director) and, believe it or not, Weekend At Bernie's. His work prior to Wake In Fright included some live TV plays in the UK (including one where an actor really died mid-play) and three British films - a largely forgotten sequel to Oscar-winner Room At The Top, a civil rights drama called Two Gentlemen Sharing, and the James Mason-starring dramedy Tiara Tahiti.

None of these indicated Kotcheff was the right man for the job of directing a visceral outback-set nightmare about the worst sides of Australian bush culture and its toxic masculinity. But then, Kotcheff himself wasn't sure he was the right man either.

"Being a Canadian I was a bit trepidatious about directing a movie about a country I knew nothing about," Kotcheff told Indiewire in 2012.

"But then I found that the outback wasn’t that different from the Canadian north. It was the same vast empty spaces that paradoxically were not liberating but were claustrophobic and imprisoning. And they also had the same hyper-masculine societies. In fact, I used to describe Canada as Australia on the rocks."

The big difference between those two locations is, of course, the climate. But Kotcheff was fully aware of how to work that to his advantage. Here, by way of example, is Wake In Fright's opening shot:

"I wanted to recreate what I felt and saw – the heat, the sweat, the dust, the flies," Kotcheff told Luke Buckmaster in The Guardian in 2017.

"I said to the set designer and the costume designer, ‘I don’t want to see any cool colours. I don’t want to see blue or green. Ever. On anything. All I want is red, yellow, orange, burgundy and brown. All the hot colours. On costumes, sets, everything.’ I wanted people to watch the film and be unconsciously sweating."

The ploy worked. Wake In Fright takes you into the outback and dumps you there with nothing to drink but beer. The oppressive heat seeps out of the visuals and the flies bombard you with no relief. And if you're a drinker, you will feel the on-screen hangovers deep in your soul.

The poor bastard struggling in this nightmarish hellscape (it was filmed in and around Broken Hill in case you were wondering) is young teacher John Grant (Bond). Stuck in an outback school due to the onerous bond system of the time, Grant flees his post in the summer holidays, desperate to be reunited with his girlfriend in Sydney. He daydreams of her frolicking in the surf - the only relief from the heat in the entire film.

En route to Sydney he stops for the night in Bundanyabba, where an unfortunate turn of events leaves him penniless and stranded. Relying on the hospitality of the 'Yabba locals, Grant is drawn into a violent world of primal beer-soaked masculinity that he seems unable - and perhaps unwilling - to escape. Just as Grant can't get away from the heat or the beers being thrust in his direction, he finds it impossible to prevent his own downward spiral in a swirl of booze, sex and blood.

"Citylink rules!"

Speaking of blood, one scene in Wake In Fright deserves special mention in this exceptionally directed Aussie masterpiece. It's a sequence in which a drunken Grant joins some 'Yabba yobbos on a roo-shooting expedition, and in a pre-CGI age, there was only one way to do the scene in anything close to an authentic manner - film a real-life roo-shooting expedition.

Kotcheff and a minimal crew joined 16 professional roo shooters on a pre-organised cull. The hunters were collecting the pelts and the meat, and the film crew were merely along for the ride. As Kotcheff later put it, in technically correct terms, no kangaroos died for Wake In Fright - those animals were going to die anyway and he just happened to be there to film it. Regardless, it's a horrendous scene.

"It was just horrific," agreed Kotcheff, who was a vegan at the time.

"They shot the roos, skinned them, cut their heads off. I was up there beside the camera, on the back of the truck, next to a big light. Suddenly I heard a thump beside me. My British producer had fainted. He was so horrified he just collapsed.

"I did not use 75 per cent of what I filmed that night as it was too bloody and horrifying," he later added. He and his production team staged a power outage to make the bloodshed end.

"I've got a bad feeling about this."

Regardless of what ended up on the cutting room floor, the resulting sequence makes for "one of the most horrific scenes in any movie ever", according to Screenprism.com.

"Actual bullets are hitting actual animals, and we watch them die completely pointless deaths," writes Nolan Moore.

"Cinematically speaking, it’s a punch-in-the-gut scene that proves humans are brutal, ugly monsters."

It's a make-or-break section of the film for many audience members (there was one walkout in the screening I attended, and many averted eyes) but it's part of Wake In Fright's visceral power. This is one of the last rings of hell for Grant, and he descends into it with a mixture of glee, disgust, self-loathing and relief.

While much of the credit for Wake In Fright's disturbing brilliance goes to Kotcheff and cinematographer Brian West, kudos must go to their willing cast. In the lead role, looking like Peter O'Toole circa Lawrence Of Arabia, Bond gives the best big screen performance of his short career (he died aged 55). He imbues Grant with the right mix of snobbery and naivety at the start, yet makes his downfall utterly believable.

"Actually I ordered the tofu salad."

Pleasence, a man who famously never turned down a role, is the scene-stealer though. Given top billing because he'd previously battled Bond, he plays Doc, who is both the town doctor and the town drunk (the latter descriptor goes largely unnoticed, such is the nature of the 'Yabba's relationship with booze). Pleasence's Aussie accent is predominantly good, and he gives the role a great amount of nuance. Kay, who was dating Kotcheff at the time, is also noteworthy in the only "major" female role in the film.

On a side note, if Wake In Fright hadn't been mythologised, lost, rediscovered, and an actual bona fide classic, it could have ended up as an Australian cinema trivia question for containing the final performance of Aussie acting legend Chips Rafferty (who insisted on sinking real pints of beer in every take - roughly 30 pints a day) and the debut performance of Aussie acting legend Jack Thompson.

Plenty of other articles have been written about how Wake In Fright was lost and found, and you can find that story in the hyperlinks or the video below. It's a fascinating tale, but the thing that makes it most interesting is how its rediscovery saw the film return from its time away as a feted hero of Australian cinema - the complete opposite of its reputation on debut.

The film's unflattering take on the Aussie male saw it bomb in its homeland on release. It went to Cannes in '71 alongside Walkabout, and little did Australia know but the French film festival was witnessing the birth of the Australian New Wave. It screened for over half a year in France, but back home it was ignored by audiences. It tanked in the US as well where it was released under the ambiguous title Outback.

But some people - important people - took notice. Bruce Beresford, Fred Schepisi, and Peter Weir - directors who helped usher in the new era of Aussie cinema which Wake In Fright and Walkabout inadvertently kicked off - were paying attention. The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, The Devil's Playground, and The Cars That Ate Paris all followed soon after.

But also paying attention, particularly in that Cannes screening in 1971, was Martin Scorsese. Scorsese reportedly whooped with excitement throughout the film. A rookie director himself at the time, Scorsese never forgot the raw power of Wake In Fright. It not only influenced him, but he was able to return the favour and help bring the once-lost masterpiece back into the light (as discussed in the video below).

Wake In Fright is one of the greatest Australian films of all time because it was brave enough to do something no Aussie film had done before (and only a few have done since). It was able to get beneath this country's skin and stare into a dark heart that was hidden beneath the ochre dust and boozy bonhomie. It found a masculine menace everyone knew was there but no one dared mention.

A producer later told Kotcheff "that film’s got a tremendous wallop - no Australian could have made that film". They were right.

Further reading: 
Check out this incredible three part long-read on the film written by Peter Galvin for SBS. It's far better than my review, but I wasn't going to tell you that at the start now was I?

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three

Red Sparrow

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Francis Lawrence.

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeremy Irons, Ciaran Hinds, Douglas Hodge.

Don't you hate it when someone comes to a party wearing the same thing as you?

Remember movies in the '80s, with their unnecessary sex scenes, overly brutal violence, and Russian bad guys?

Red Sparrow is a throwback to that era, albeit with a modern sensibility and a less gratuitous approach to its harder-edged moments, which are all there for a reason. And that reason is to tell a gripping spy story that will have you shifting uncomfortably in your seat. Consider that as much a recommendation as it is a warning.

Red Sparrow is the story of Dominika Egorova (Lawrence), a Russian ballerina who suffers a career-ending injury and is coerced into becoming a specialised secret agent at the behest of her powerful uncle (Schoenaerts). She is quickly trained as a "sparrow" - a kind of master manipulator/femme fatale - and set against CIA agent Nate Nash (Edgerton) to uncover his contact inside the Russian government. But what is she really up to?

The film works because of the strength of its story, which is delivered in an unflashy but captivating manner. Despite its two-hour-and-twenty-minute run time, it maintains a steady pace and never outstays its welcome, which is largely due to the way its narrative unfolds, dealing out its mysteries and answers with great care. By the time you reach the second act's end, you may know where it's heading but you'll still be in the dark about how it's going to get there.

It also helps that Lawrence is magnetic and believable in the lead role. A lesser actress would have sunk this role and, in turn, the film by ramping up the melodrama or by making Dominika too soft or too hard. Red Sparrow's success is dependent on how much you buy into Dominika's evolution, and how much you are willing to barrack for her, which takes an excellent mix of vulnerability and power that Lawrence nails, much like she did in The Hunger Games. Edgerton is also good in what is not your typical spy role, and the scenes with he and Lawrence are a highlight (even the matter-of-fact sex scenes).

But the thing that makes this film oddly memorable is also the thing that makes it such an uncomfortable watch. The sex, the nudity, the torture, the violence - they all stick in the mind because of the unflinching nature of their delivery. While you'll be pondering the twists and turns of the plot after the credits have rolled, you'll also be left with some uneraseable images.

As a spy film, Red Sparrow is refreshing for its lack of gadgets and shoot-outs, and for offering some adult material. This is a world away from your Missions Impossible, your Bonds and Bournes, and your Kingsmen. In that sense, this is much more like a Tinker, Tailor in that it's a psychological espionage thriller as opposed to an explosion-fest peppered with car chases.

This is another interesting choice from Lawrence, who obviously deeply trusts her similarly named director (he did the final three Hunger Games). Red Sparrow is effective and interesting, and though it may leave some feeling cold, there's no denying the visceral nature of its material and the unfussed way it delivers its gripping spy story.