Review Category: Movie

At STARBURST, we have all the time in the world for indie filmmakers who pour blood, sweat, and tears to get their projects off the ground (not so much for nepo babies for whom it is enough to yell, “Daaaaad! Can you be in my moooovie? It’s about the Troubleeees! I’ll write you three heart-wrenching monologues!”). That being said, The Creeps walks the edge between “atrocious” and “ever heard of eyelines?”

Presented as an homage to the most obvious Eighties movies (Back to the Future, Die Hard, and above all, Gremlins), the film hangs a lot of references on the flimsiest of plots: Zach (Chris Cavalier), a nerdy American teen on holiday at a Finnish ski resort, wants to reinvent himself as a party animal and a ladies’ man. His plans hit a snag when demons from another dimension enter this one, adopting the form of snowmen (they know how big Frozen is here).

The critters have a taste for mayhem and bad one-liners and Zach doesn’t have a prayer against them. Luckily, he finds allies in the girl of his dreams, a local outcast, and the star of his favorite movie (Christopher Lambert as himself).

Listen, we can forgive the shoddy CGI and the faux Alan Silvestri score, but the plot is devoid of imagination and basic continuity, and the shoehorned Eighties references are painful to watch. In addition to Lambert, there are two deep-cut cameos likely lost on anybody born after 1985.

If there’s a positive about The Creeps, it’s that director Marko Mäkilaakso demonstrates a lot of enthusiasm throughout (creativity is a bridge too far). There has to be something there to convince Christopher Lambert to abandon his semi-retirement for a couple of days to roast himself.

THE CREEPS is available now on digital platforms.

After 2019’s brilliant Knives Out and 2022’s flashier follow-up Glass Onion comes a third mystery from the team of writer-director Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig’s genius detective Benoit Blanc.

But before Blanc arrives to steal every scene, Wake Up Dead Man’s focus is on the young priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor, taking the title of hottest screen priest from Andrew Scott, who’s standing right there). After an altercation with a rude deacon, Duplenticy is transferred to a small-town church in upstate New York. Here, he’s second-in-command to ‘Monsignor’ Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a priest who sees himself as a messianic figure but whose aggressive sermons incite division among his congregation. The more compassionate and progressive-minded Duplenticity falls into conflict with Wicks, and so when the inevitable murder occurs, all suspicious fingers point his way. Enter Benoit Blanc.

What follows is, as we’ve come to expect from Knives Out movies, a cracking murder mystery that, despite the series’ longest running time yet at 144 minutes, keeps us on the edge of our seats trying to get one step ahead of the next twist. If there’s any flaw in the plotting, it’s that some of the suspects are lacking in screen time, with A-list cast members including Andrew Scott and Cailee Spaeny underused, which affects our ability to guess whodunnit. But the joy isn’t so much in whodunnit but in how they dunnit, and the puzzle pieces come together very satisfyingly.

As we’ve also come to expect, it’s thoroughly fun too, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments – Daniel Craig’s clearly having a lot of fun, particularly when Blanc’s passion for musical theatre is revealed. But it’s a darker movie than what’s come before; moody, angry, and worn out with the world. Like the Agatha Christie novels that inspired them were full of topical social critique for their times, the Knives Out movies have always been unforgiving in their portrayals of Trump-era America. This time, not only do Wicks’ divisive sermons bring to mind many notable figures with similar cults of personality, but the twist of the knife is in the sad depiction of the various ways this has radicalised the members of the community; the recently divorced Dr Nat (Jeremy Renner) has been pushed into increasing misogyny, and Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack) is a young and hopeless wannabe politician who wants to be “the golden boy of the GOP” – frankly, we were surprised that the Netflix bigwigs let Johnson get away with the satire being this direct.

And then there’s the exploration of religion in modern society. The ever-logical Blanc declares himself a “proud heretic” and doesn’t hide his distaste at Wicks’ role as part of a long history of preachers spreading hate rather than love, but Duplenticity offers a strong counter-blow, defining his faith as a form of storytelling which provides hope to those who need it. This argument plays out across the film, and feels like a thoughtful development from Johnson, whose The Last Jedi posited the argument that we should move on from old stories when they don’t serve us any more. Like that controversial Star Wars instalment, Wake Up Dead Man ultimately leaves us with a message that despite all the darkness, there is hope – and gives us a rollicking good time at the movies on the way there.

WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY is in UK cinemas now and comes to Netflix on December 12th.

Natasha (Polly Maberly) is a fast-talking, busy estate agent manager (motto: live and let live) whose upwardly mobile image hides a coke habit and spiralling debts. Unfortunately, she owes a great deal of money to a lot of people, including some shady characters. They offer her one way to clear her account – to hide someone they’ve kidnapped. She sees only one way out of her predicament… to find The Viking (Mikael Persbrandt).

Directed and co-written (with Austin Collings) by Gerard Johnson, Odyssey is an anxiety-inducing, bleak drama that spirals into an orgy of violence. Maberly is remarkable as a completely unlikeable character who’s so self-absorbed that she deserves an apocalyptic downfall, but it’s just as satisfying when that doesn’t come and she (and The Viking) take things into their own hands.

The film is photographed in a claustrophobic fashion by Korsshan Schlauer, using wide lenses to give a curvature to the image and occasional vignetting, highlighting the constantly fretting Natasha. The camera is almost constantly moving in the style of a fly-on-the-wall documentary. When we first see Natasha in her work environment (following a rather nasty tooth extraction), it could easily be an Office-style spoof, as there’s plenty of humour in the first act to counter her mounting problems. This soon dissipates as the situation gets grimmer.

Odyssey is a bleak, unnerving experience that showcases a breed of person who prioritises money and themselves, and damn everyone else. It’s not an easy watch, and the climax won’t satisfy everyone, but it’s well-made and compelling.

ODYSSEY is available on Blu-ray and DVD from December 8th and on digital platforms from December 22nd.

Wicked: For Good is, in many respects, standard Universal fare. It’s glossy, overproduced, and ripe with franchise potential Disney will exploit, a partially defanged adaptation of source material that cut deeper and hit harder. Thankfully, though, it’s also an absolute blast.

If Wicked: Part One was Cynthia Erivo’s movie, then Wicked: For Good belongs to Ariana Grande. She’s a fun, funny, and utterly magnetic Glinda, juggling the character’s darkness and levity with a grace of which she hadn’t previously shown herself capable. Erivo is, of course, excellent, but it’s Grande who gets the most substantial material. More importantly, Glinda and Elphaba’s friendship resonates almost entirely because of Grande; she’s so earnest, so authentic about how her character grows as a human being that it’s difficult to imagine anyone else in the part.

It’s been five years since Elphaba stole the Grimmerie and vanished from society, giving Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) and the Wizard (a silver-tongued Jeff Goldblum) ample time to turn the people of Oz against her. Glinda and her fiancée, Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), have reluctantly become cogs in Morrible’s propaganda machine, each of them using their status to find Elphaba before literally anyone else does.

Both Elphaba and Glinda are grappling with the shoulds their toxic society imposes upon them. For Elphaba, the should is external; the general public believes she should turn herself in to Morrible, that she shouldn’t be green, and that she should just die already. For Glinda, it’s all about looking inward. A flashback shows young Glinda struggling to cast spells at her birthday party, eventually fooling her friends but realising she isn’t gifted the way she wants to be. This pampered phantom haunts her throughout the film, forcing her to bring who she is closer to who she wants to be.

Wicked: For Good isn’t a masterpiece by any stretch, but it doesn’t need to be. Its aspirations start and stop at being fun, funny, touching, accessible, and musically engaging, and it achieves all of those things with ease. Hopefully, it ages as well as the play has.

WICKED: FOR GOOD is out now. 

 

With the second part of his smash hit Broadway adaptation, director Jon M. Chu faces an unenviable task – bringing to life the half of the show that doesn’t have Defying Gravity in it. This he does while also extending the story by over an hour. Still, last year’s Wicked proved that stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo have the chops to carry whatever shiz producers might conjure up in extending a self-contained story into almost 300 minutes of movie.

Picking up where Part One left off (and by this film’s logic, shouldn’t that have been called Wicked: Defying Gravity?), For Good finds Elphaba (Erivo) alone and on the run. Glinda (Grande) is now working with the state, under the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). No longer dancing through life, Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) is a reluctant military man, just as reluctantly engaged to Glinda. As she makes a last-ditch attempt to reconcile rebellious Elfie with the Wiz, the pair’s differences finally reach breaking point, forcing the plot of The Wizard of Oz to happen.

For Good doesn’t exactly repudiate the widely-held belief that Wicked is all downhill after the interval. It’s a darker, more dour film, both tonally and visually. Everything which didn’t work in the first film (flat cinematography, shonky CGI animals) is back, but now the songs aren’t as good and everyone’s miserable. Heavy hitters No Good Deed, As Long as You’re Mine and, of course, For Good will get the blood pumping and tears flowing, but the same can’t be said for the rest. Two new songs prolong the runtime, but stand out like a sore green thumb.

Likewise, with the more serious tone, some of the tin-eared supporting performances are harder to excuse. Yeoh fails to up her game in any meaningful way, while the toxic relationship of Nessarose (Marissa Bode) and Boq (Ethan Slater) grates, and barely flows from the first film. Goldblum is… well, he’s Jeff Goldblum, and his performance is perfectly attuned to the film he’s in.

The real issue is the Wizard of Oz-ness of it all. Clumsily integrated, incohesive and straining logic, Dorothy’s arrival in Oz tramples all over everything the first half built, forcing its inhabitants to partake in veritable acts of lunacy just to make it fit. People do things just because that’s what they did in the musical, even if it doesn’t make sense for their film counterparts to do so. The story’s excess padding would feel justified if it helped justify these baffling character decisions, but all it really does is shoehorn in an extra Oscar-bait song for Ariana Grande.

And why not? She deserves it. Between them, Erivo and Grande make it work. When either party is onscreen, the weird-looking VFX and baffling character motivations don’t seem to matter so much anymore. Apart they’re magnetic; together, they’re electrifying. There won’t be a dry eye in the house by the time they launch into the film’s titular tune – even if it doesn’t necessarily feel earned.

Wicked: For Good struggles to recapture the magic of either the first half or the stage show it’s based on. It’s still a thoroughly enrapturing adaptation, but one can’t help but feel this return to Oz has come off the rails.

WICKED: FOR GOOD is out in UK cinemas now.

“In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for president, they run for their lives.”

Edgar Wright takes that line from Stephen King’s The Running Man and runs with it – at full sprint, grinning, bleeding, and jabbing us in the ribs the whole way. His version isn’t a remake so much as a reclamation, gleefully stripping away the 1987 film’s gold-spandex camp to reveal something grimier, angrier, and unnervingly familiar.

It’s pure Wright from the opening beat: camera moves that fizz with energy, razor-cut edits timed to the pounding soundtrack (and to the rhythm of our hero’s panic), and humour that teeters between laugh and scream. The result is both dystopian and absurd – Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face is literally printed on the currency – but Wright balances his trademark wit with genuine fury. This is a film about media manipulation, systemic cruelty, and the commodification of suffering, and it lands its punches hard.

The world he builds is grotesquely believable. Skyscrapers glint above slums; reality TV distracts the masses while megacorps own the news, the government, and probably the oxygen. The line between entertainment and exploitation has never been thinner. Even the editing mirrors the chaos – relentless yet somehow humane, breathless but never heartless. Wright toys with perception so thoroughly that both our protagonist, Ben Richards, and the audience soon question what’s real, what’s staged, and who to believe. It’s a paranoid fever dream that somehow coheres into something cathartic.

At its centre is Glen Powell, shedding his golden-boy sheen for something raw and riveting. As Richards — a working-class father forced into the state-sanctioned death game to buy medicine for his daughter — he’s all coiled rage and bruised tenderness, a man trapped in systems he can’t outpace. Powell plays him like a live wire, equal parts desperation and defiance, confirming what many suspected: he’s far more than a pretty face; he’s a shapeshifter.

Colman Domingo steals every scene as the game’s host, a smarmy, snake-charming cocktail of Caesar Flickerman and a Fox News anchor. Michael Cera gets a deliriously unhinged Home Alone-style sequence that injects manic comedy into the dread, and Lee Pace appears as a towering foil to Powell’s reluctant hero – to say more would spoil the fun, but suffice it to say he’s excellent.

The pacing never falters. Even the moments of calm hum with danger, every pause another chance for the system to close in. Wright weaponises paranoia, turning it into rhythm; the film’s meta-structure, where the rules of the game mirror the rules of storytelling, gives the whole thing a sly, self-aware snap. It’s as if the movie knows it’s being watched, and doesn’t quite trust us either.

If there’s a flaw, it’s that Wright sometimes can’t resist showing off, tipsy as he is on his own riotous energy. But honestly, that’s half the fun. The tonal lurches aren’t missteps, they’re pirouettes at full speed. After all, better a film that burns out in a sprint than one that politely paces itself to the finish line.

The Running Man is furious, funny, and frightening and, like the best works of film, it makes you laugh just long enough to realise you’re the punchline.

The Running Man releases in cinemas from November 12th. Watch the trailer here.

If director Dan Trachtenberg took a back-to-basics approach to the franchise with 2022’s Prey, then Predator: Badlands does the opposite of that. Skirting dangerously close to where they lost us with 2010’s Predators, this stand-alone prequel follows a tough yet out-of-their-depth badass struggling to survive on a remote planet – the most dangerous planet in the universe, to be precise. The difference this time? Dek (Dimitrius Koloamatangi) is a young Yautja, out to prove himself by hunting the biggest, baddest creature he can find.

While Trachtenberg could have coasted off the success of Prey, delivering another period Predator film (which the animated anthology Hunter of Killers did plenty of anyway), Badlands once again reinvents the wheel, in the franchise’s first Yautja-centric entry. It almost doesn’t need chirpy android Thia (Elle Fanning), although we’re glad she’s there. Giving the series its first buddy comedy is an inspired move, and Fanning is a delight as Dek’s blabbermouth companion. She and Dek have wonderful chemistry, and the story is a clever riff on Naru’s coming-of-age arc in the previous film. You’d never think a Predator could be particularly emotive, but Koloamatangi gives a tremendous performance as the firebrand Yautja, blending CGI and prosthetics in a way that looks and works far better than the trailers might have you believe.

Some of the more cutesy comic moments might rub the Predator faithful the wrong way (hey, at least its not 2018’s The Predator), but Trachtenberg and co-writer Patrick Aison are successful in blending this with big, bombastic action and surprisingly emotional character beats. Once again, they’re resist the urge to lean too hard into the “get to the choppa” schtick, but there are some intriguing connections to a wider universe which feel more organic to the plot than you might expect from the sixth, eighth or ninth (depending on where you count Alien crossovers and an animated tie-ins) entry in a long-running series.

A bold action film with charm, grace and a strong emotional throughline, Badlands is perhaps the most human Predator yet. Not bad, considering there’s not a single one in the whole film.

PREDATOR: BADLANDS is out in UK cinemas