Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)


Andy Serkis becomes the Ape Caesar in a triumphal marriage of performance and special effects

Director: Matt Reeves

Cast: Andy Serkis (Caesar), Toby Kebbell (Koba), Jason Clarke (Malcolm), Gary Oldman (Dreyfus), Keri Russell (Ellie), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Alexander), Kirk Acevedo (Carver), Judy Greer (Cornelia), Terry Notary (Rocket), Karin Konoval (Maurice)

In 2011, Rise of the Planet of the Apes was another attempt to relaunch the money-spinning ape vs. human franchise. Unlike Tim Burton’s disastrous 2001 effort, it took a stance that felt truly unique. Sure, it still felt the need to reference back to the original film in places, but it was a terrific piece of story-telling. Anticipation was high for this sequel – and it met those expectations.

Ten years after the outbreak of a virus that has decimated the human race, the apes have built their own community in the forests near San Francisco, led by Caesar (Andy Serkis). A human party, led by Malcolm (Jason Clarke), enters the forest looking to restart a hydroelectric dam to supply power to the human’s San Francisco community. As the two communities collide, Caesar and Malcolm must work out a truce, despite the doubts of human leader Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) and Caesar’s lieutenant, former lab-chimp Koba (Toby Kebbell).

Dawn is an intelligent and visceral piece of film-making, which enrichens the first film in the series, as well as offering a surprisingly deep analysis of human (and ape) nature. Marry this  up with some quite astonishing special effects, and staggering work from the actors creating the apes through motion capture, and you have a hugely rich science fiction film that helps to cement this trilogy as the finest version of the Apes story so far. It’s also damn good fun.

Even more than the first film, Dawn places apes front-and-centre. The film is book-ended with close up shots of Caesar’s eyes, the determination and resolve in them springing from very different causes. The questioning of the nature of humanity revolves around Caesar – the leader balancing the urge to protect his own people against a willingness to support the needs of his people’s only potential threat. Caesar is the most humanitarian character– yet his determination to view other apes as does himself prevents him from seeing Koba’s treachery. It’s his own generosity that is his Achilles heel.

Andy Serkis, the Master of Motion Capture, has mastered this art like few other actors, but his performance as Caesar is his triumph. The degree of emotion he is able to communicate is astounding, while his physicality is extraordinary – it’s a perfect marriage of ape traits and human characteristics. It’s a triumph as well of special effects, but you quickly forget this and embrace the character you are watching. Serkis gives Caesar a deep hinterland of warmth and emotion, a desperation to protect what he has built, touched with a hint of blindness to the reactions his dismissal of Koba’s concerns will have on someone so damaged.

What’s interesting is that, although the film swings heavily in favour of the Apes, it’s the humans who become the victims of aggression, and the humans who are the most open (or desperate) to negotiation and co-operation. A simpler film would have turned Gary Oldman’s Dreyfus into a despotic counterpart to the traumatised Koba. Instead, Dreyfus proves surprisingly open to negotiation, demonstrates great affection for his followers, weeps ecstatically over finally being able to turn his tablet back on and look at photos of his family and only resorts to drastic measures after the human colony seems doomed.

The villain of the piece is Koba (remarkable work from Toby Kebbell). The film, though offering many indicators of Koba’s ruthless lack of regard for any life but his own, gives us reasons (even though these are sometimes stated directly for his feelings and the trauma that lie underneath them. The film doesn’t short change us on Koba’s obvious bravery in battle or his ability to inspire troops. Koba’s inability to adjust his thinking (unlike any other character in the film) leads to the violence. Just as Caesar’s urge to see all apes as meeting his own standards allows violence to grow around him, so Koba’s urge to judge all humans by the standards he has given them leads him to sacrifice countless ape lives in a bloody attack.

These themes of divided loyalty and the damage our own urges (for both good and evil) play out in a cracking storyline, packed to the rafters with action, shot with a confidence and skill by Matt Reeves. Despite being a film that always feels about larger themes, it wears this rather lightly, and offers more than enough popcorn thrills to please any Ape action fan. Koba’s assault on the human stronghold is both grippingly exciting, but also unbearably tense – the film embraces the grim sacrifice and slaughter of war. The final confrontation between Caesar and Koba is shot with a giddying, vertigo-inducing sharpness.

The ape effects are, it goes without saying, extraordinary. These are expressive, living, breathing characters – a brilliant meeting of some wonderful acting and brilliant special effects. Could you imagine a few years ago a film being anchored by a special effect ape played by motion capture? You quickly forget that they are not ‘real’ and accept them as genuine characters. Even more so than Rise, Caesar and the apes are front-of-centre and this is Caesar’s story. Serkis is of course a huge part of this – his influence and dedication to the motion capture and ape portrayal is superb.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a terrific and thought provoking epic film, one that deepens, darkens and enriches the previous film and leaves an audience with not only a lot to consider but also highly thrilled. Unlike the previous film it doesn’t shoe-horn in weak references to earlier films, but concentrates on telling a terrific and character-led story. It’s another terrific entry into a series that feels like it could become one of the great science fiction trilogies.

Ivanhoe (1952)


Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor (no relation) fighting for Good Old England

Director: Richard Thorpe

Cast: Robert Taylor (Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe), Elizabeth Taylor (Rebecca), Joan Fontaine (Rowena), George Sanders (Sir Brian De Bois-Guilbert), Guy Rolfe (Prince John), Emlyn Williams (Wamba), Robert Douglas (Sir Hugh De Bracy), Finlay Currie (Sir Cedric of Ivanhoe), Felix Aylmer (Isaac of York), Norman Wooland (King Richard), Basil Sydney (Waldemar Fitzurse), Harold Warrender (Robin Hood)

Adapted (very loosely) from Sir Walter Scott’s novel, Ivanhoe was another instalment in Hollywood’s battle to drag people away from their new-fangled TV sets. This rivalry meant technicolour spectacles like this were the most valued animals in a studio’s stable, which probably explains why Ivanhoe was the MGM film nominated for Best Picture in 1952, while The Bad and the Beautiful (which set a record for most Oscar wins for a film not nominated for Best Picture) and, almost unbelievably, Singin’ In the Rain were overlooked.

Noble knight Ivanhoe (Robert Taylor) finds Richard the Lionheart (Norman Wooland) locked up in Austria. Returning to England, he looks to raise funds to rescue the King – mostly by putting the gentle squeeze on Jewish banker Isaac of York (Felix Aylmer) while flirting with his daughter Rebecca (Elizabeth Taylor). He must also reconcile with his father (Finlay Currie) and his sweetheart Rowena (Joan Fontaine), and prevent wicked Prince John (Guy Rolfe) and his sidekick Sir Brian (George Sanders) from taking control of the Kingdom.

Bless, this film looks quite dated now. The bright primary colours of the costumes are endearingly sweet, with our heroes dressed in capes and tights with all the delight of primary school children in a play. You need to tune into its simplicity – failing to do so means you’ll struggle to watch the final battle scenes as characters go toe-to-toe with all-too-obviously bouncy rubber swords (at one point, a sword literally bends and snaps back into place after a strong blow). The film is crammed with fights, jousts, sieges and battles – there is precious little room for plot, dialogue or character, but at least you get a maelstrom of action (even if it rarely makes much sense).

At the centre of it all is Robert Taylor as Ivanhoe. As in his other roles, Taylor is as stiff and lifeless as a board, while his transatlantic vowels clang with even more painful obviousness amongst the cut-glass and ‘ever-so-’umble’ accents from the cast of jobbing British actors. Taylor squares his jaw and does his best with the derring-do – although, as per usual, he makes Ivanhoe such a dull person, you can hardly raise the slightest interest in him. Inexplicably every woman in the film (i.e. both of them) are head-over-heels in love with him.

But then all the heroes in this film are stick-in-the-muds. Harold Warrender is the most arrogant, least fun Robin Hood you’ll ever see. Finlay Currie gives swagger as Ivanhoe’s father, but is basically a pompous windbag. Emlyn Williams as comic relief “Wampa” is so tiresome you’ll breathe a sigh of relief when he burns to death in a fire. Joan Fontaine is so saintly opposite the balsawood Taylor that you find it unlikely that we will ever hear the pitter-patter of little Ivanhoes.

The bright spots are the villains. Guy Rolfe has huge fun as a moustachio-twirling, scheming Prince John. George Sanders gets the most out of Ivanhoe’s rival Sir Brian (can you think of any other film with a villain called Brian?), although the part (and the film) is far beneath him.

Brian is of course infatuated with the Jewish Rebecca (played with a radiant charisma by a very young Elizabeth Taylor). If the film has any claim to being a more than just a gaudy knight’s tale, it’s in its treatment of its Jewish characters and careful exploration of anti-Semitism in medieval England. Taylor and Felix Aylmer (as her father) give sensitive performances as put-upon, civilised people, ill-used by those around them and expected to lend support at the drop of a hat. Ivanhoe’s assumptions that they (a) have tonnes of money and (b) will feel duty-bound to help Richard are met with a quiet regret and a pointed comment that Richard’s own anti-Semitism track-record is hardly that good. Later Rebecca is placed on trial, her Jewishness central to accusations of sorcery. Persecution is an underlying theme of the film – and although it ends with all right as rain, the threat of it throughout much of the action makes the film feel more substantial than it is.

The main problem is it’s not made with any inspiration. Thorpe is a mediocre director, and the editing flashes through some parts of the story almost too fast to follow what’s happening. The ending suffers in particular from this economy: suddenly we cut from Brian and Ivanhoe fighting to the death, to Richard arriving with an army of knights, Brian being killed largely off-camera, a quick dying speech from him, then Richard announcing everything is fine in the kingdom. It’s all so sudden, it feels like they just ran out of film so needed to wrap it up quickly.

Still, Ivanhoe is fairly good fun despite all of this. It doesn’t require any concentration – and is hardly a minor-classic, let alone any other form of classic – and it has some truly hit-and-miss performing, but it barrels along ago. It may be workmanlike in the extreme, but its bright primary colours mean there’s always something to look at.

You Only Live Twice (1967)


I feel Connery’s attitude to the film comes across well in this image…

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Sean Connery (James Bond), Akiko Wakabayashi (Aki), Mie Hama (Kissy Suzuki), Tetsurō Tamba (Tiger Tanaka), Teru Shimada (Mr. Osato), Karin Dor (Helga Brandt/No. 11), Donald Pleasence (Ernst Stavro Blofeld), Bernard Lee (M), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Charles Gray (Dikko Henderson)

James Bond films: always fun, even when not that good. You Only Live Twice is probably the prime example. For many, many reasons, it isn’t actually very good but still remains strangely enjoyable just because, well hell, it’s Bond. 

Anyway YOLT revolves around naughty super villains SPECTRE nabbing US and USSR space missions, hoping to provoke a nuclear war between the two superpowers. Apparently they will profit handsomely from this – but how they see that happening in a nuclear wasteland isn’t clear. Anyway, James Bond (Sean Connery) fakes his own death and heads to Japan to investigate. Events peddle around Japan for ages, giving filmgoers the chance for some vicarious sight-seeing, before culminating in an all-out attack by Bond and a gang of ninjas on the hollowed-out volcano base of SPECTRE chief Blofield (Donald Pleasance).

YOLT is the moment Bond started to head full tilt towards the Moore-era of overblown, fantasy silliness. The plot is total bobbins (despite being repeated in The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker etc.) with both Russians and the US naturally continuing to suspect each other, even when each side loses a spacecraft (though I did like the fact that the actual astronauts together in captivity are shown to have far more in common than not). There is no logical reason for them to behave like this, even at the heart of the Cold War.

There is plenty of other nonsense here. Bond’s death is faked early doors for no reason (only the hopeless SPECTRE is in any way fooled). Bond meanders around Japan with even less subtlety than usual, with a series of clashes, fights and chases that make little real narrative sense at all. Later, again for no reason, (and almost unbelievable to watch today) he disguises himself as a Japanese man (PC alert ahoy, as Bond cuts his hair with a bowl and tans his skin. At least he doesn’t tape his eyelids back…). He also finds a kindred spirit in Tiger Tanaka, both of them treating a host of female servants as a shopping list for rumpy-pumpy.

As per many Bond films, the franchise clambers on top of a current fashion to feel hip and cool (but actually manages to feel fusty and stuffy). This time it’s the samurai craze, as Bond joins a sword-swinging, ninja training school. Yes, you read that right. But of course Bond also needs to get married before the attack: again why? His wife is of course offed seconds later, and Connery just about manages to look put out at this coitus interruptus (more on Connery later…)

SPECTRE themselves are hilariously incompetent. They are hoodwinked like children by Bond’s ludicrous faked death. They practically signpost their location by bumping off anyone who gets within about five miles of the place. Later, poor Blofield not only carefully talks Bond through the self-destruct button for his rocket, he also lets Bond take back his clearly gadget-concealing smoking case, blows away two sidekicks (one right in front of Bond) rather than eliminate Bond himself, then caps it all with sending the base itself to kingdom come. SPECTRE’s agents are equally useless, with Brandt too attracted to Bond to finish him off (and then deciding to tie him up in a plane, detonate a grenade in it and then parachute out to leave the plane to crash with Bond in it – needless to say Bond lands the plane with ease).

The terrific volcano set

The volcano base, however, is a triumph of production design – it’s staggering to think that everything you see on screen was built for real. It’s huge and iconic – and the battle scene between the aforementioned ninjas and SPECTRE goons that fills the final act of the film is hugely exciting, despite almost every single thing making virtually no sense. Incidentally the final battle’s structure is lifted almost completely for a similar sequence in The Spy Who Loved Me.

The problem is that everything else leading up to this feels like all involved are going through the motions – as if there wasn’t really anything fresh left to do or say in the Bond-verse. Need a glamourous location. Never been to Japan have we? Need some scuffles – not sure we‘ve done a roof top fight in long shot, let’s chuck that in. How about we kill Bond off for a few seconds – yeah never done that before. A super gadget needed? Bring on suitcase-assembled helicopter, Little Nellie. The final reveal of Blofeld is fun, but when you come back to watching the film you realise he’s as bland and identikit as Largo or Dr No – a pompous windbag who fucks everything up.

Stumbling through all this is a clearly bored Sean Connery. By this time, Connery was sick of the part (“I’ve always hated that damned James Bond, I’d like to kill him” he was to later say), and money was the only thing tempting him back. Connery coasts through the whole movie with the air of a man who would rather be anywhere else. There is no sparkle at all, just a weary going through the paces. He can barely raise a smirk, let alone a glimmer of interest in the events around him.

Bond turns Japanese. No they really did do this.

It’s the atmosphere of the whole film. Roald Dahl (yes that Roald Dahl) did the script – but he felt the book was pretty awful (one of Fleming’s duller efforts) so spiced it up with some new content. Problem was the suits basically demanded a certain quota of set pieces and a certain number of Bond girls. Trying to deviate from this template too much was far too difficult a challenge. Lewis Gilbert’s direction is professional but pretty uninspired: it sums up the whole movie.

Most of the acting is pretty non-descript. Donald Pleasance at least deserves some credit for making Blofield’s appearance iconic and for doing a nice line of whispering menace. Charles Gray is pretty good fun as a camp British contact (“That’s stirred, not shaken. Is that right?”) – though SPECTRE (true to form) confirm all his suspicions by knocking him off after less than minute or two on screen. Everyone else blends into one.

So, anyway, YOLT is really nothing special – a tired entry into a tired franchise, with an all too obviously disillusioned star and action beats that largely feel like retreads of things we’ve seen before (done better) in the series. But yet, but yet… Somehow enough of the old Bond magic keeps you watching. Sure Connery is indifferent and the action more a travelogue than a thriller – but the final sequence is exciting, Blofeld (for all his ineptitude) makes a decent enough villain, and while no-one really gets het-up about it, the stakes do feel fairly high. Stretches of the film are dull – but others work very well. You may only watch twice, but it will be fun enough.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)


Spider-Man retreats in full flight from the shocking explosion of this film behind him

Director: Marc Webb

Cast: Andrew Garfield (Peter Parker/Spider-Man), Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy), Jamie Foxx (Max Dillon/Electro), Dane DeHaan (Harry Osborn/Green Goblin), Colm Feore (Donald Menken), Felicity Jones (Felicia Hardy), Paul Giamatti (Aleksei Sytsevich/Rhino), Sally Field (Aunt May), Campbell Scott (Richard Parker), Embeth Davidtz (Mary Parker), Marton Csorkas (Dr Kafka), Chris Cooper (Norman Osborn)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was set to launch a Spider-Manfranchise that “would last a THOUSAND YEARS!!!”. It didn’t. In fact this bloated, poorly constructed, overlong mess killed those plans stone dead. It says a lot that a film which took $709 million worldwide is considered a flop. But the reaction to the film was so mehthat there was no desire to see any further films about this Spider-Man. On every count the film is a catastrophic failure.

Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is enjoying the life of a super-hero, while struggling to maintain his relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) due to his guilt over her father’s death. That sentence, by the way, demonstrates how schizophrenic this film’s tone is: a hero who loves life and simultaneously is plagued with guilt? He’s also obsessed by finding out what happened to his parents (killed off in a superfluous pre-credits flashback, setting up a mystery the film loses all interest in). At the same time, he must take on obsessive loner fan Max turned supervillain Electro (Jamie Foxx), and old friend Harry Osborn turned supervillain Green Goblin (Dane DeHaan).

After a so-so remake of Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man, Sony seemingly decided to skip Spider-Man 2 and jump straight to a remake of the reviled Spider-Man 3. Many of that film’s disastrous mistakes are made again: romantic tension that never feels real, action sequences that feel like trailers and, worst of all, stuffing the film to the gills with villains (at least four characters can lay claim to being major primary or secondary antagonists). It also makes its own mistakes, chucking in endless references to a dull, confusing ‘mystery’ around Peter’s parents (that will never now be resolved).

On top of all that, there is something so nakedly grasping about Amazing Spider-Man 2 it’s almost impossible to love. It’s such a greedy film that almost every conversation and stray camera shot tries to set-up potential future movies (the low point being a camera pan down a room full of devices that will become the weapons of future baddies). The plot gets constantly drifts down side alleys as it frantically tries to establish enough plots for the studio to keep churning out films over the next five years. This also means it goes on forever without any real sense of impetus developing in the story.  The action is so nakedly shot with an eye on the trailer, that nearly each fight is literally shot with a crowd of people watching behind barriers, cheering events on.

Whatever happened to the trick of making a successful franchise being to make a good movie? Imagine a film focused on a single villain plotline, and played that off against a relationship drama (something like, say, Spider-Man 2). That might have been something worth seeing, that might have made you think “well I enjoyed that, I wouldn’t mind seeing another one”. But this film is little more than an extended trailer for films to come – it’s as soulless and empty as a piece of marketing puff.

Any ‘emotional’ moments are placed so blatantly as filler between the action that they carry no resonance. Does anyone give a toss if Gwen Stacy goes to London or not? Was anyone actually moved at all when she (spoiler!) dies at the end? For all of Spider-Man 3’s faults, at least when Harry Osborn went bad it resonated, as audiences had seen his and Peter’s relationship play out over two films. Here Harry is introduced, the next scene he and Peter openly say they are best friends, then they barely spend any further time together before Harry’s “shocking” volte-face. If the film can’t be bothered to spend any time earning it, why should I spend any time investing in it?

Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker has his fans, but I’ve found him (in both films) an insufferable, cocky prick. Garfield is a very good actor, but his direction to play Parker as a young buck completely fails. His wisecracking persona works as Spider-Man, but falls flat as Peter, who never seems particularly sweet, relatable or endearing in a way Tobey Maguire managed so well. The parental plotline doesn’t help here either: having spent the first film not really giving a toss about the death of Uncle Ben, here he outright obsesses over his parents in a way that just doesn’t ring true, particularly as it carries with it an implicit rejection of Aunt May. His borderline controlling/stalkerish behaviour with Gwen Stacy is also pretty hard to stomach (he spends half the film telling her what to do, the other half either following her or openly stating he will never let her go – okay weirdo…)

It’s quite damning that despite all this, Garfield (and to be fair, Emma Stone) is the best thing in this lifeless pile of stodge. Jamie Foxx is so hilariously miscast as Electro it skewers the whole movie (surely part of the reason why he is in it so little). Foxx can’t resist showing the audience all the time that he (the actor) is far smarter, cooler and popular than the character – his contempt for the role drips off the screen. DeHaan overacts wildly as Harry, bested only by Giamatti’s cartoonish overblown shouting. Field cashes her cheque with professionalism as Aunt May.

People aren’t stupid. They can tell when they are being ripped off. And they can tell when a studio flings bangs and bucks at the screen with no heart and soul behind them, when a film’s been made by people who want to fleece fanboys, rather than create something that speaks to their love of the material. It’s the problem with both of these Garfield Spider-Man films (and to a certain extent Raimi’s last one). They are soulless, dead films made by committees. They listen to all the worst cries of the fans and then try to give them everything at once. They end up giving them nothing. Which is what this film is: a big, empty pile of nothing.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016)


The Legend of Tarzan: The King of the Jungle takes on the MCU style. And loses.

Director: David Yates

Cast: Alexander Skarsgård (Tarzan/John Clayton III), Margot Robbie (Jane Porter Clayton), Samuel L. Jackson (George Washington Williams), Christoph Waltz (Captain Leon Rom), Djimon Hounsou (Chief Mbonga), Jim Broadbent (Lord Salisbury), Simon Russell Beale (Mr Frum)

Every so often you seriously wonder what the point of a film was. Are movie studios so desperate for a franchise that literally anything that has any kind of name recognition is considered a money-spinning franchise in the waiting? Welcome to the latest feeble attempt to jumpstart an epic franchise: the first (and surely last entry) in the Tarzan-verse.

In the late 1880s, the Belgians are carrying out terrible acts in Africa, spearheaded by ruthless Captain Leon Rom (a painting-by-numbers Christoph Waltz). To get hold of diamonds held by an H Rider Haggard gang of natives, he needs to lure Lord John Clayton III (better known as the legendary Tarzan) back into the jungle. But John (Alexander Skarsgård) has tried to put his life as the King of the Jungle behind him (for reasons never really made clear) and only once his wife Jane (Margot Robbie) is put at risk does he begin to reclaim what he has lost.

Was there any real demand for a Tarzan movie? Perhaps even more to the point, was there any audience for one? Since, I imagine, today most people only  on-screen Tarzan viewing experience was watching the Disney animated version, it’s hard to understand who the makers of this film imagined was going to engage with a confused, clichéd movie part dull origins story, intercut with a “rediscovering your roots” plot. And that’s the first of the major errors the film makes.

So determined is the film not to jump straight in with the context of who Tarzan is, that it keeps dribbling away from the actual plot to cram in small (confusing) moments establishing who his parents were, how he met Jane, how they left Africa etc. etc. etc. This stuff is far more interesting than any of the tiresome diamonds / kidnapped wife / White Man Saving Africa nonsense in the main plot, making all the “main” action feel like a sidetrack; not to mention that you’re several flashbacks in before you have any idea how Tarzan has ended up as a stuffed-shirt sitting in a clichéd London, slurping tea with his little finger extended, rather than swinging from vines in the jungle.

The film assumes a level of Tarzan-legend knowledge in its audience I sincerely doubt most viewers had, and the lag while you wait to catch up through the flashbacks is frustrating. The final product is a confused mess with no clear vision about what film it actually wanted to be. If it film wants to deal with the legend, why not just do that – and if it wants to introduce the origins, why doesn’t it just do that? Instead it’s neither one thing nor the other.

Mixed in with some feeble, faux superhero heroics is some clumsy post-colonial criticism of the Belgians’ terrible Congo record, but it goes nowhere in particular. A week on from watching it, I can’t remember what it was about at all. Stuff sort of happens, and there is a vague idea Tarzan is trying to save the Congo, but the film never kicks into gear. Events happen without any real narrative thrust – our heroes and villains literally meander down a river towards no-where in particular. It doesn’t help that almost every narrative beat in the film is completely predictable – this is the epitome of safe, uninspired film-making and storytelling, as if everything has been carefully honed in focus groups and committees.

A large part of the problem is Skarsgård’s lifeless performance in the lead role. Clearly bulging muscles and decent features were all the part really required, because there’s nothing in the way of character. He’s supposed to be a man who has lost touch with his past, confused and ashamed about his background. The film is building towards his emotional acceptance that his gorilla mother was his true mother. It’s a viable, if not especially original, plot – but it falls flat, simply because Skarsgård just isn’t interesting enough. His stilted performance conveys no inner pain or turmoil. Who cares who his mother was? Skarsgård doesn’t seem to, and neither did I.

It doesn’t help that all the rest of the actors (I mean all of them) are more interesting, eye catching presences. Jackson and Waltz are such seasoned pros they invest their paper-thin characters with their own charisma, though each of them could do what they are asked to here standing on their heads. Margot Robbie is actually rather radiant as Jane – even though she is never much more than a (defiant) damsel-in-distress.

The Legend of Tarzan is, at best, okay. It’s desperate to turn Tarzan into some sort of all-action superman, a competitor for the Marvel universe. But it focuses so much on trying to fill out the backstory and beef up the action that it fails to make a film with any characters in it we really care about. Instead this is the blandest, B-movie cornpuff you are likely to see and so instantly forgettable you’ll barely remember each scene as you watch it. It’s enjoyable enough but totally unsurprising, uninspired and fundamentally totally forgettable.

Mission: Impossible III (2006)


Tom Cruise and Kerri Russell take on a truly challenging assignment in Mission: Impossible III

Director: JJ Abrams

Cast: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Owen Davian), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell), Billy Crudup (John Musgrave), Michelle Monaghan (Julia Meade), Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Declan Gormley), Maggie Q (Zhen Lei), Keri Russell (Lindsay Farris), Simon Pegg (Benji Dunn), Eddie Marsan (Brownaway), Laurence Fishbourne (Theodore Brassel)

If there is one thing Tom Cruise does better than anyone in the movies, its run. Man, can that guy run well on camera. It’s not as easy as you’d think – watch people run in real life, and they probably look galumphing and awkward. But Tom looks as sleek as a gazelle. Every stride stresses his authority and unflappable coolness. I mention it because Tom does a lot of running in this film. The dénouement is basically him running over a mile and half, nearly in real time, a lot of it one long shot. 

JJ Abrams came to Mission: Impossible off the back of his successful TV series, Alias, in which Jennifer Garner’s undercover agent takes on a variety of disguises, working in a team, on a series of missions to get impossible-to-obtain artefacts against terrific odds. JJ Abrams carries the formula that worked so well in that series straight into this one.

The whole film plays out like an Alias movie. It even uses that series regular gambit of an opening scene throwing us dramatically into the story before flashing back “72 hours earlier”. Just like Alias, we have our lead trying to make a relationship work without saying what they do for a living, a family feeling in the team’s relationship, a geeky tech guy with a heart of gold, double and triple agents, glamourous locations – it’s everything an Alias fan could want, with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt essentially Sydney Bristow in all but name. This also brings out the best in Cruise, who looks like a man born again in the role.

Mission: Impossible: III is truly delightful, big-screen fun, rebirthing the series and placing team interplay firmly back at the centre, setting the tone and template the next two films have followed. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is in semi-retirement, training agents and planning to marry Julia (Michelle Monaghan). However when his young protégée Lindsay Faris (Keri Russell) is captured while investigating sinister arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Hunt sets out to rescue her – and finds himself up to his neck in shady and dangerous goings-on.

Every action scene in the film is brilliantly entertaining (the mid-film drone assault is wind-it-back-and-watch-again exciting.). Of course, Cruise takes more than his fair share of the juicy moments – including a crazy jump off the roof of a Hong Kong building that has to be seen to be believed – but Abrams makes this a team movie in the way neither of the two previous films had been. Each member brings crucial skills to the table, and has moments to shine. Pegg takes the stand-out role of a witty, nerdy tech back at the base (sure enough his role was expanded later), but each feels an essential part of the story.

It also helps that the film has a terrific baddie to bounce off – the series has not had a better villain than Hoffman’s ice cold arms dealer. Sure Davian is pretty much a part Hoffman could play standing on his head – but he’s got just the right balance of rage and ruthless intellect.

If you want to see a single example of why this film works, take a look at that opening scene. Who could resist a film that opens with a scene as masterfully directed as this, sizzling with tension and ending with a smash cut to black over a gun shot and into the opening score? Hoffman and Cruise are excellent (Hoffman’s ice-cold control providing a great contrast to Cruise, who runs the gamut of defiant, furious, faux-reasonable, desperate and pleading), but it sets out the huge stakes for the film, it keeps us nervily waiting for the film to catch-up with what we’ve seen, and it tells us how vitally important what Davian wants is to him – and how desperate Hunt is to protect Julia.

Abrams has a perfect understanding of dramatic construction.  Everything in the film is carefully established and set-up, so we always understand the dangers and the threats. MI3 also uses its macguffin extremely well. What do we learn about “the Rabbit’s Foot”, the possession of which is of such vital importance? It’s small enough to fit in a suitcase, it’s stored in a round glass tube, it’s got a biohazard label and it’s worth millions. That’s it, but it doesn’t matter: Abrams establishes the most important thing – it’s dangerous and Davian wants it more than anything. Everything spins out from that with smooth efficiency.

The pace never lets up, but the characters and their relationships are never left behind. In particular Monaghan and Cruise’s relationship is skilfully established in surprisingly few scenes, and something we end up really rooting for. Abrams never goes overboard – the film is stuffed with action and excitement but never feels bloated or indulgent: the final confrontation is particularly effective because it is fairly small scale and is focused on the Hunts’ relationship.

Mission: Impossible 3 is one of the most joyful entries in a film franchise that deserves a lot of kudos for (by and large) focusing on plot, story and character alongside action sequences that have a feeling of tangible reality about them. It’s not completely perfect – a shock reveal about a turncoat in the IMF is hardly a surprise, considering the small number of candidates and the actors playing them – but it’s about as close as you can get to an endless enjoyable fairground ride.

Wild at Heart (1990)


Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage in the hideously empty Wild at Heart

Director: David Lynch

Cast: Nicolas Cage (Sailor Ripley), Laura Dern (Lula Pace Fortune), Diane Ladd (Marietta Fortune), Harry Dean Stanton (Johnnie Farragut), J.E. Freeman (Marcello Santos), W. Morgan Sheppard (Mr Reindeer), Willem Dafoe (Bobby Peru), Crispin Glover (Dell), Isabella Rossellini (Perdita Durango), Sherilyn Fenn (Car Accident Girl), Sheryl Lee (Good Witch)

David Lynch is an eccentric film director. I think that is a fair comment. At his best, he combines his “view askew” look at the world with genuine comedy and pathos. At other times, his films disappear down a self-reverential rabbit-hole that seems designed to frustrate and alienate the viewer. Wild at Heart is the latter type of movie.

Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) is released from prison after his self-defence response to a knife-wielding man at a party turns into a homicidal fury. The knifeman may (or may not) have been hired by Marietta (Diane Ladd), mother to Sailor’s “girl” Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern, Ladd’s real life daughter) a woman with a sexually troubled background of abuse, who is in the middle of a sexual awakening. Together they go on a road trip to – well just kinda to get away I guess.

I’ve got to confess I really hated this movie. I only stuck with it to the end, because (a) it wasn’t that long and (b) I wanted to have actually watched the whole thing before I laid into it in this review. This film is the absolute worst elements of Lynchian oddness and gore mixed with pop-culture references to the 1930s through to the 1950s.

In fact it’s a film that is so totally obsessed with these two things that there is literally no room in it for any real plot or emotion. Instead it’s full of pointless, smug and irritating visual and audio quotes from Elvis to The Wizard of Oz, and empty characters played by showboating actors giving massive performances under ostentatious make-up, all to hide the fact that the film (for all its bombast) is a shallow as a puddle. It’s a horrible piece of intellectual fakery, that pretends to be about deep profound themes about love and death but tells us nothing about them. In the end it gets more delight from Dafoe blowing his head off with a shotgun than it does from anything to do with its so-called themes.

Lynch piles on the violence for the sake of it, all in the name of parodying the aggression that lies under his apple-pie surface Americana. This worked in Blue Velvetbecause the contrast was so great, and the characters (for all their larger-than-life qualities) felt real. Here, everything feels artificial. A constant visual image of fire and flames runs through the story – it’s a reference back to the murder (it’s not a surprise to say) of Lula’s father (burnt alive on the orders of his wife it turns out). This adds nothing at all to our understanding of anything – particularly since Marietta is the most obviously corrupt and hypocritical character from the start, drawing attention in such a ham fisted way to her past misdeeds, and the impact of them, hardly seems necessary.

The film is full of signs of man’s inhumanity – the brutal shootings, the torture of Harry Dean Stanton’s luckless PI (toned down considerably from the original cut), Sailor’s brutal murder at the start, a road accident peopled with twisted bodies – but it’s all so bloody obvious. We get it David, the world is bad and people suck. Just because you’ve shot this with some tricky angles and carry it across with a tongue-in-cheek delight at your own naughtiness doesn’t make this a masterpiece. It just highlights the shallow emptiness you are peddling as art.

The rampant self-indulgence spreads to the actors. You’d think Cage would be perfect for Lynch right? Wrong. His hideously self-conscious performance of overt oddity here just makes his performance all the more unbearable. Diane Ladd gives the sort of performance many call brave, but is really just about shouting and smearing lipstick all over her face. By the time Willem Dafoe turns up with ludicrous teeth, ripping into the scenery, you’ve lost all patience. The only person who emerges with any credit is Laura Dern, who at least invests her characters with some level of humanity and sweetness. Everyone else (everyone!) is a stock cartoon drawing.

But even Dern is cursed with Lynch’s awful sexual abuse sub-plot, which is genuinely offensive in its trite shallowness and in its suggestion that having sex with your uncle as a young teenager will turn you into a real goer later in life. Did he really deal with the same themes with such sensitivity in Twin Peaks? As for the so-called romantic happy ending – it’s unearned in any way by the film, which has treated the subject with scorn. The film’s dark wit isn’t even particularly funny – everything is so dialed up to eleven, that all the comic beats get smothered in over acting or over stylised dialogue and action.

Wild at Heart won a flipping Palme d’Or (to be fair the announcement was booed). But don’t be fooled. This is a film pretending an intellectual depth it never gets anywhere near to achieving. It’s a horrible, pathetic, cruel and empty film that thinks it’s a satire on the dark heart that lies at America’s soul. It’s not. It’s just a cartooney, self-important lecture which mistakes oddity and eccentricity for heart. Lynch is a talent for sure, but here his talents are sorely misdirected into indulgent, childish emptiness and faux profundity. Don’t watch it.

Time Bandits (1981)


Time travelling roguery in Time Bandits 

Director: Terry Gilliam

Cast: Craig Warnock (Kevin), David Rappaport (Randall), Kenny Baker (Fidgit), Malcolm Dixon (Strutter), Mike Edmonds (Og), Jack Purvis (Wally), Tiny Ross (Vermin), John Cleese (Robin Hood), Sean Connery (Agamemnon), Shelley Duvall (Pansy), Katherine Helmond (Mrs Ogre), Ian Holm (Napoleon), Michael Palin (Vincent), Ralph Richardson (Supreme Being), Peter Vaughan (Winston), David Warner (Evil), Jim Broadbent (Compere)

After leaving Monty Python, each Python went their own way. Terry Gilliam had been the slightly odd one, the eccentric animator who played the weirdos at the edge of the frame. Time Bandits would be pivotal in repositioning him as an ambitious, visionary director with a striking visual sense. It would also allow him (and co-writer Michael Palin) to create a fairytale fable with something for all ages, a film about a child’s view of the world which adults could embrace.

Kevin (Craig Warnock) is a dreamer, a young kid adrift in his parent’s materialistic world. Until one night a gang of dwarves calling themselves “Time Bandits” emerge out of his bedroom cupboard. They have a map that allows them to travel through time and use it to commit crimes and then escape to different centuries. Kevin joins them in their adventures, but none of them know they have attracted the attention of the Evil Genius (David Warner) who wants to use the map to escape his prison and recreate the world in his own image.

I still remember watching this film when I was younger and really enjoying (I must have watched it dozens of times). I have to say it holds up extremely well. Sure Craig Warnock isn’t the most inspired child actor of all time, but he has a wide eyed innocence and enthusiasm that anchors the film really well. Gilliam’s direction is brilliantly good – wild and inventive, like a punk-rock fairytale. The dwarfs make an inspired grouping, each embracing the once-in-a-lifetime chance of playing leading roles.

The main reason for the film’s success is Gilliam. His work is extraordinarily detailed and imaginative, while his visual sense makes shots that cost hundreds of pounds look like millions. Huge swathes of the film are shot with a low-angle lens that allows us to see everything from the perspective of our heroes, and also makes each of these larger-than-life events seem even more awe-inspiring. The design of the film is extraordinary, with striking images confronting you at every turn, either a recreation of events or the bizarre visuals of the “time of wonder”.

And those visuals are outstanding. Can you think of any other film where a knight on horseback bursts out of a bedroom cupboard, charges around the room in medium shot, and then gallops off through a field that has suddenly replaced the bedroom wall? How about an ogre who lives on a ship that is then revealed to be a hat for a giant who lives underwater? Evil’s Fortress is a swaggeringly brilliant triumph of production design, while his goat skulled, tall, hooded monsters must surely have been playing in JK Rowling’s mind when she came up with the Dementors.

The design also echoes the possibility that this is all a child’s fantasy. A careful look at Kevin’s bedroom shows pictures of everything we encounter. The final confrontation with Evil takes place on a set clearly inspired by the Lego bricks, chess board and toys that litter Kevin’s bedroom. 

The playful tone is also reflected in its lampooning of the “adult” world of technology for its dull materialism: Kevin’s parents watch a bullying gameshow (compered by a demonic Jim Broadbent) while sitting on armchairs still in their plastic wrapping. Evil’s obsessions all revolve around lasers and the microchip.

Away from all this, the film has a simple structure. It’s basically a series of really rather fun historical sketches, linked together by an engaging fantasy narrative. These scenes attracted guest star performers, all of whom excel (though it is odd to see them get top billing – Cleese is on screen for about three minutes, but gets top-billing!). 

The guest stars are terrific – Holm is hilarious as a chippy, height-obsessed Napoleon; Cleese very funny as a visiting-Royal-inspired Robin Hood, treating all around him with condescension; Ralph Richardson brings an absent-minded imperiousness and dry wit to his role as God; Connery sprinkles a touch of movie-star bravado as a kindly, gentle Agamemnon (the uncommented on joke being the movie’s ideal father figure is most famous for sacrificing his daughter…). 

If any performer high-jacks the film it’s David Warner as a dry-witted, viciously ego-maniacal Evil Being, getting most of the best lines. A sequence where he obliterates several underlings for minor transgressions hums with dark humour (and punchlines with the accidental obliteration of another minion off screen, met with a sheepish “Sorry”). On top of that, Warner brings just the right level of sinister child’s-nightmareish quality to the role, helped by a striking costume design that makes him look the love-child of a crocodile and a car engine.

The leads of the film (Kevin and the bandits) are extremely well drawn by Palin’s script, each of them with sharply distinctive personalities. David Rappaport (allegedly incredibly unpopular with the others due to his haughty disregard for them) is perfect as the arrogant self-appointed leader, but Jack Purvis is a stand-out as the warmly brave Wally. More than a few commentators have pointed out that the Bandits all serve as representatives of the members of the Monty Python troop, which adds another level of fun watching the film.

Time Bandits is electric good fun. I have no doubt I might find more to criticise without the memory of enjoying it so much when I was younger. Some of the sketches work less well than others – the scene with the ogre doesn’t quite work, and the ending, twistedly funny as it is, does feel slightly abrupt is. But the film never outstays its welcome, and it’s put together with such glee and accomplishment that there is always a line or an image that sticks with you. It’s a dark fairytale for children of all ages – and making something the whole family can enjoy is really quite a feat. Palin and Gilliam would have put together a sensational series of Doctor Who.

The Duchess (2013)

Keira Knightley in lusciously filmed, but shallow The Duchess

Director: Saul Dibb

Cast: Keira Knightley (Lady Georgiana Devonshire), Ralph Fiennes (Duke of Devonshire), Hayley Atwell (Lady Bess Foster), Charlotte Rampling (Countess Georgina Spencer), Dominic Cooper (Earl Grey), Aidan McArdle (Richard Brinsley Sheridan), Simon McBurney (Charles James Fox)

My main memory of The Duchess is seeing the trailer while watching Mamma Mia in the cinema. The first shot was Keira Knightley’s face, met with an overwhelming groan from the female-dominated audience. There is something about Knightley that seems to get people’s goat.  If you’re one of those who struggle to warm to Knightley as a performer, this probably isn’t going to be the film that changes your mind.

In the late 18th century, Lady Georgiana (Keira Knightley) marries the absurdly wealthy, but older and duller, Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). She wants a meeting of minds. He just wants an heir. The marriage flounders – and gets worse when the Duke in turn starts an affair with Lady Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell), Georgiana’s closest friend. As her home-life becomes a menage-a-trois, with the Duke treating both women as wives (with their agreement) she begins to experience deeper feelings for the dashing Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), an ambitious politician.

So, first things first, Keira Knightley. She does a decent job. She’s pretty good. But, rather like Jonathan Rhys Meyers, it feels like her best is a 7/10 performance. She’s dedicated, she’s really striving here – but always feels like someone trying rather than truly natural and unforced. She brings Georgina’s glamour and does a decent work of her bewildered hurt, but she (and the film) don’t communicate her intelligence and political activism, so she never really develops as a character. You can’t really put your finger on her doing anything wrong as such, it’s just a performance where you always see the acting, and never feel the naturalism.

It’s particularly noticeable here as her two supports – Fiennes and Atwell – are such accomplished performers. In many ways, the film would have been improved with Atwell in the lead. As it is, as the third corner of the triangle, she has just the right mix of guilt, warmth and mercenary self-interest. In a terrific low-key performance, Fiennes manages to turn a character the film always wants to push into being a bullying villain into a man who feels alive, real and often understandable if not (whisper it) even rather sympathetic.

The film is desperate to turn Georgiana into a suffering victim, and to push Devonshire into the role of a domestic despot. But in fact, most of Devonshire’s actions are quite forward thinking: he adopts and cares for his bastard daughter (conceived pre-marriage), he saves Bess’ children and cares for them as his own, he condones a quiet affair from his wife, he treats her with the utmost public respect and allows her to spend time with her son by another man (although this is relegated to a caption at the end). The only problem is he clearly doesn’t love her, while he clearly does love Bess. Hardly able to believe he wasn’t as besotted with Georgiana as the film is, the film works overtime to try and turn someone a little dull, with some surprisingly generous views, into a monster.

In order to make it categorical who is “right” and who is “wrong”, the film chucks in a gratuitous marital rape scene that feels so out of character and over-the-top, it actually makes you step out of the film. Did it really happen? There’s no evidence of it, and it flies in the face of virtually every other action the Duke does in the film. It’s probably also in there to further contrast Georgiana’s joyless couplings with the Duke against her passionate rumpy-pumpy with Dominic Cooper’s Charles Grey (here re-imagined as a penniless adventurer and radical, rather than the son of an Earl) Like Knightley, Cooper has the glamour and dash for the high-class Mills and Boon plot the film is peddling, but fails to convey Grey’s intellect and political ideals.

The film has deliberate echoes of Princess Diana throughout – the crowded marriage, the glamourous outsider marrying into a great family, the sense that her dashing public image made him look like a dullard. And like much of the public reaction to Charles and Diana in real life, the film can’t compute why Devonshire didn’t love this public idol, overlooking the fact that they shared no interests and had nothing in common. Many of Georgiana’s negative aspects are downplayed to help this – the gambling addiction that left her bankrupt is no more than high spirits here.

Basically this is a film interested in style over substance, aiming to turn a fascinating story about a menage-a-trois into something very straightforward and traditional about a husband who treats his wife badly. Now the style is great – Rachel Portman’s score is brilliant, the photography luscious, the make-up and costumes gorgeous – but the substance often isn’t there. The idea of Georgiana’s celebrity is only briefly touched upon, and her intellect barely at all.

Not content with airbrushing out her less appealing characteristics, even her positive ones are done few favours by this candyfloss depiction of her life – one of the first women to take a prominent role in the British political scene, a published writer of novels and poems, and a famously charismatic social figure, here she is little more than a mannequin on which to hang elaborate period hairstyles and costumes, who talks about being a free-spirited intellectual without doing anything that corresponds with these interests.

It shoves in dramatic events which feel out of step with both the characters and the events to push the film towards being as straightforward as possible. Knightley does a decent job – and Fiennes is extremely good as the Duke – but it settles for being something safe and traditional rather than a really interesting look at the cultural moods of the time, or the complexities of the real people it claims to portray. It shares it’s subjects beauty, but reduces her to blandness.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)


The characters of Rogue One. I struggle to remember their Dingly-Dang sci-fi names.

Director: Gareth Edwards (Tony Gilroy)

Cast: Felicity Jones (Jyn Erso), Diego Luna (Cassian Andor), Ben Mendelsohn (Director Krennic), Donnie Yen (Chirrut Imwe), Mads Mikkelsen (Galen Erso), Alan Tudyk (K-2SO), Riz Ahmed (Bohdi Rook), Jiang Wen (Baze Malbus), Forest Whitaker (Saw Gerrera), Genevieve O’Reilly (Mon Mothma), Jimmy Smits (Bail Organa), Guy Henry (Grand Moff Tarkin), Alistair Petrie (General Draven)

When Disney got hold of the complete rights for Star Wars, they were motivated by one thing above all: making a shitload of cash. In that goal, they’ve been very, very successful. Rogue One fills out (pads out) the story of how the Rebels got hold of the Death Star plans, something the original film (correctly?) reckoned could be covered in a few lines of dialogue. Anyway, for complex, muddily explained reasons, the rebels needs Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), daughter of chief designer on the Death Star Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), to rescue a pilot from a rogue general to get a message from her father. Or something. Anyway, things eventually lead to a major space battle as our heroes try to steal the plans from a giant computer database.

Rogue One is hugely popular. You’ll go a long way before you meet someone willing to say a bad word about it. It’s been hailed as a far superior dip into the franchise ocean than JJ Abrams’ The Force Awakens. This is inexplicable to me. I genuinely can’t understand it. As far as I can tell, Rogue One is little more than a fair to middling action film, hugely reliant on ramming in as many references and easter eggs from previous films as it can, rather than actually doing anything new or unique with the franchise. 

For me it’s a sprawling, rather dull film with no depth or patience. The first hour is genuinely quite boring, with each over-designed location blending into the next. The whole film seems designed to require as little attention as possible: short scenes, planet to planet, each having little real impact on the next emotionally. The battles are designed and shot like things intended to be cut up into YouTube clips. No-one talks during the fights, we rarely learn anything about characters during the prolonged action – instead it’s a series of moments, straining at the leash to be cool, with personal sacrifices determined by plot requirements rather than by natural character growth. 

Watching parts of it you can enjoy the moments: a blind man taking out Stormtroopers, or Darth Vader cutting down rebels. But there is little to tie these moments together. Plot and characterisation are treated in the same chunked way – events grind to a halt so Mads Mikkelson can tell us what happens next, or Cassian can bluntly talk about how being a rebel is tough on the nerves. In the original Star Wars, plot, character and action were woven together so we learned about all three together. Here they are silos, with action the focus. It feels like a film made for YouTube, more interested in pop culture references with only the flimsiest story propping it up, designed to be spliced up online.

Darth Vader lets rip in a section that seems designed as a YouTube moment of the future

Now the lead character, Jyn Erso. I don’t understand this character. Who is she? What is it she actually wants? For the first hour or so of the film she makes no decisions at all, but does what a series of older male characters tell her to do. There is nothing in the film that allows us to get to know her. Her actions aren’t dictated by character, or even logic, she simply shuttles around the carousel of ever-changing planets whenever the plot needs her to, mouthing whatever sentiments the film needs in order to move on. The film needs her to be a disaffected criminal? She is. The film needs her to be a distraught daddy’s girl? There we go. The film needs her conversion into a rebel freedom fighter? Boom. What does she feel about this? What awakes her idealism, and converts her from criminal to self-sacrificing hero? Nobody knows, the film doesn’t care. It doesn’t help that Felicity Jones’ headgirlish primness is a total mismatch for a gritty, tough-as-nails fighter from the wrong-end-of-the-tracks.

There are many people in this film, but precious few characters. It’s quite damning that the person who makes the biggest impact isn’t a person at all but a robot – and K-2SO is basically a walking cynical punchline, a battle-ready C3PO. Diego Luna’s Cassian is so thinly sketched it’s hard to invest in him at all: the film has no interest in character development so we are bluntly told his characteristics in ham-fisted dialogue. He has a vague speech about how he’s Seen Bad Things, and that’s deemed sufficient to explain all his actions. The worst is Riz Ahmed’s pilot, whose motivations are so unaddressed he spits out some final words to supply his motivation just as he snuffs it. Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen are little more than a collection of cool sounding quirks – Blind One, and Blind One’s Friend. Can you even remember their names? 

On the plus side, Ben Mendelsohn is pretty good as an ambitious Imperial officer edging his way up the greasy pole – most of the more interesting dialogue scenes feature Death Star office politics. Mads Mikkelson mines every inch of humanity and compassion from his role. At the other end of the spectrum, an unrestrained Forest Whitaker lets rip as a plot mouthpiece, delivered in his most overripe manner. (There’s some kind of backstory to his relationship with Jyn, but the film never bothers to go into this, because that time is better spent with Whitaker spouting bland, faux-epic, lines like “Save the rebellion. Save the dream”, round mouthfuls of scenery.)

There has been a lot of discussion of the digital recreation of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin – I’ve no real moral problem with it (lord knows, a glance at his CV tells you Cushing would probably have loved to have been in this film), and Guy Henry does a pretty good vocal recreation of Cushing. It looks a little odd the more you watch it – it’s probably going to date the film quite badly in ten years time – with more than a hint of the “uncanny valley” in Tarkin’s face. It makes sense, though, including the character in the film – and at least we get some characterisation and motivation.

Edward’s visual ability allows him to film his toy collection in a way that at least feels a bit fresh, but it’s a film made by a fanboy, more interested in getting as many references from the past in than creating something new. Edwards rams in everything from Blue Milk to AT-ATs. Now there is a certain pleasure in spotting this stuff, don’t get me wrong. But will it reward future viewing? The final space battle sequence might as well be a child filming smashing his toys together.

My point is, remove all the vast amount of Star Wars ephemera from this, and what do you have left? Once you’ve exhausted the pleasure of seeing that bloke Obi-Wan cuts the arm off in the bar in the first film, or you’re no longer excited by admiring the recreation of the Rebels’ base, what is there left in the film for you to enjoy? Imagine this was a stand-alone story – what would really make you come back? It’s so shrunken and dependent on Star Wars that it stops almost exactly 5 minutes before Star Wars starts – and, I would argue, means the start of that film makes much less sense.

That’s the final problem – for all the talk of Star Wars being a huge universe, this film only stresses how small it is, how reliant it is on events that have already happened or spinning its plotlines off from references in other films. No matter where we go, the same people keep popping up, the same beats keep getting hit. The film is daring, I suppose, in killing off nearly the entire cast over the course of the film – but these characters have been so poorly developed that their deaths lack any impact. It’s a film overwhelmingly fascinated by surface and fan-wanking over the old films, than showing anything new. 

Now I know you could level some of these charges against The Force Awakens – but that was a film with engaging characters and fresh, enjoyable dialogue that introduced a few new concepts for the films to go forward with. Within moments of their first appearances, you knew what kind of person Rey was (bold, determined, wistful, searching) or Finn (conscience-stricken, inventive, desperate) – hell the dinky robot had more character than the cardboard cutouts here. The internet obsession with shipping Finn & Po shows how much these characters came alive. Can you imagine anyone spinning out theories of backstory or subtext about any of the people here? No, because they’re not people, they’re plot devices. 

If a truly inventive director had got hold of this material, we could have ended up with something that felt really fresh. Instead we have something that is basically juvenile and dim: front row seats at a child’s game that jumps from set-piece to set-piece with no interest in weaving them together. Possibly only the 6th best Star Wars film.