Film Review: Isle of Dogs

"I Used To Sleep On A Lamb's Wool Beanbag Next To An Electric Space Heater. That's My Territory, I'm An "Indoor" Dog..."

Whether you feel the back catalogue of Wes Anderson falls too heavily on the kooky spectrum at times, there is no doubting that the stylish cinematic sensibility which springs to mind whenever you think of the likes of The Grand Budapest Hotel or Moonrise Kingdom is undoubtedly one stamped with a seal which paints the American as a contemporary, modern example of someone willing to expand and explore the vast array of horizons possible on film. Following on from his use of stop-motion animation on 2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson once again utilises the format on Isle of Dogs, a surreal, comedy caper set in a dystopian near-future city in Japan, one ruled by the tyrannical Mayor Kobayashi who resorts to signing an executive order which immediately orders the evacuation of the ever-expanding populous of dogs onto "Trash Island" due to an outbreak of "dog fever". With an extensive and highly impressive voice cast, Isle of Dogs is on the one hand an incredibly successful animated exercise, with the flawless and detailed approach to the creation of the movie plain to see from the outset, but with a one-card trick holding up its' central narrative, Anderson's latest is entertaining, but far from utterly captivating. 

Whilst accents and language utilised within the confines of successful comedic features isn't wholly original and has been used many times before, most predominantly in last year's The Death of Stalin which of course featured Jason Isaacs donning a Yorkshire accent for his depiction of Georgy Zhukov, Anderson's celebrity shopping list of a voice cast resorts to an entertaining game of "guess who" as the film progresses, with Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Edward Norton (Birdman) and Bill Murray (The Jungle Book) the immediate trio of recognisable dulcet tones as the leading pack of the movie who come across Koyu Rankin's Atari Kobayashi, the young Mayor's aid, who travels to Trash Island in order to locate his lost dog, "Spots". With most of the film laying focus on the superb animation, the movie does unfortunately suffer from a sense of being a joke strung out too long, and whilst the pace of the movie is nicely balanced, with the narrative moving back and forth in both time periods and locations in a Scorsese-esque edited fashion, Isle of Dogs does come the end of it, feel quite flat and all too focused on surface rather than depth, but with a cute, barking-mad feel to it and the fact that nobody can turn down a fluffy haired canine, Anderson's movie works to a solid, not spectacular, degree. 

Overall Score: 6/10

Film Review: Ready Player One

"This Isn't Just A Game. I'm Talking About Actual Life And Death Stuff..."

With The Post earlier this year garnering a wide flurry of Oscar nominations and a critical consensus which boarded on the side of rousing positivity, a return to form for director Steven Spielberg after the yawn-inducing mediocrity of The BFG was welcomed with open arms, and with only three months since its' release here in the UK, Spielberg returns once again to the movie-fold with Ready Player One, a cinematic adaptation of Ernest Cline's 2011 science fiction adventure novel of the same name. Projected in 3D for its' preview screening release, Spielberg's latest primarily focuses on Tye Sheridan's (X-Men: Apocalypse) Wade Watts, a slum-stricken teen who uses the environment of the OASIS, a virtual reality gaming platform created by Mark Rylance's (Dunkirk) recently deceased James Halliday, to both escape his daily slumber and more importantly, to join many others in the hunt for three "Easter Eggs" left within the game by Halliday before his death which give the finder both riches beyond belief and the key to control of the entire OASIS itself. With pop culture references galore and an upbeat, heroic sensibility, Spielberg's latest undeniably should work in the hands of a filmmaker renowned for popcorn delights, but with a brain scorching over-reliance on digital effects and a screenplay both absent of emotion and effective engagement, Ready Player One doesn't work as a whole and is merely saved by individual elements which make it passable rather than thoroughly entertaining. 

With an obvious social commentary regarding the nature and impact of modern technology, Spielberg's movie mixes the subversive ideas within Cronenberg's Existenz and Videodrome with a obvious love for the science fiction genre in its' eye-watering levels of on-screen references, levels which makes The Cabin in the Woods look like a passing fling with its' respective horror genre, but too a staggering amount which by the half-way point does become overly tacky and cheap. With an entire segment dedicated to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the set-piece is a real bottle spinner in regards to how one might respond, with my own personal obsession with Kubrick's masterpiece resulting in a subverted distaste to seeing our on-screen heroes quickly pop through the Overlook Hotel, music cues and all, and instead making me think how I would rather be watching The Shining instead. With Ready Player One a movie which Spielberg himself has coined as the most difficult movie he's worked on since Saving Private Ryan due to the staggering levels of visual effects, the CGI battle scenes really aren't worth the time, particularly in a final act which boarders on George Lucas style dullness and a complete lack of character engagement when at least eighty percent of the film is spent inside the OASIS itself with digitally designed "avatars". With Ben Mendelsohn once again resigned to Rogue One style typecasting as the film's one-note central antagonist and a ear-scraping level of exposition heavy dialogue, Ready Player One certainly has more negative aspects than positive, and for a director who time and time again has proven that giant gargantuan science fiction spectacle is part and parcel of his day job, Spielberg's latest annoyingly doesn't hit the heavy heights we are all very much used to.

Overall Score: 4/10

Film Review: Pacific Rim Uprising

"This Is The Way The World Ends..."

With Guillermo del Toro joyously arriving home earlier this month with a couple of Academy Awards in his back pocket for The Shape of Water, his latest rousing critical success is brought somewhat back down to earth with the release of Pacific Rim Uprising, a sequel to del Toro's 2013 ridiculously silly action gargantuan which in all fairness, is more painfully cheesy than entertaining, and a film which brings to mind the middling rough patch the Mexican seemingly went through before this year's resounding return to form. Swapping the director's chair for a producing role however, the job of taking hold of the unnecessary sequel falls to Steven S. DeKnight of Daredevil Season One fame, undeniably the strongest Marvel/Netflix release to date, whose big-screen debut features John Boyega (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) as Jake Pentecost, son of the legendary General Stacker Pentecost as portrayed by Idris Elba (Thor: Ragnarok) in the first film, who swaps his life of thieving and black market dealings for a return to the fold in line with the Jaeger program after a fresh threat arises from the destructive, otherworldly Kaiju. With awful dialogue, a woeful lack of emotional investment and endless, mind-numbing overblown action set pieces, Uprising is unsurprisingly utter tosh, and even when some of the characters at times threaten to make the film more interesting than it should be, it's plain to see that the main function of DeKnight's cinematic debut is of course, solely monetary.

Whilst the first feature was just straightforward, unadulterated nonsense with an added layer of awfulness due to Charlie Hunnam's vacuous leading character, the performances of both Idris Elba and Rinko Kikuchi meant that the film was at least likeable to a certain degree, and with the latter one of the more interesting returning characters added to the fold once again, her particular narrative strand within Uprising is systemic to the problems of the film. Far too many times are new and returning characters given so little to do in terms of engaging character development that when the film does eventually heed to the wishes of its' true and fundamental natures in the form of CGI-engulfed action sequences, not one audience member actually really cares who does what and who makes it out alive. With it becoming patently clear that any movie touched by the woeful "talent" of both Charlie Day (Fist Fight) and Scott Eastwood (Suicide Squad) is destined to be labelled as god-awful, Uprising does at least benefit from a committed, cockney-fuelled performance from the ever-charismatic Boyega and a runtime which improves on the staggeringly long length of its' predecessor, but with a concluding act which makes Man of Steel look like a Woody Allen movie and a jarring post-credits sequence which makes you roll your eyes in utter condemnation of the movie's future possibilities, Uprising doesn't totally suck, it's just the type of movie you watch with a blank expression and let it leave your consciousness as soon as its' over. If you stay awake that is.

Overall Score: 4/10

Film Review: Unsane

"He's Here. Or Maybe, It's All In My Head..."

Returning from a self-imposed early retirement last year with the rather entertaining Logan Lucky after a four year hiatus, director Steven Soderbergh returns once again to the cinematic fold with Unsane, a delightfully kooky psychological thriller starring The Crown's Claire Foy as the equally wacky named Sawyer Valentini who is forced into mental despair from a stalker whom she believes has followed her into the confines of a mental institution which is seen to be holding her illegally against her will. Whilst comparisons to the standout genre examples when it comes to the notion of asylums and the mentally ill are wholly inevitable, Soderbergh's latest undoubtedly revels in a familiar B-movie sensibility prevalent in films of a similar ilk, with the likes of The Ninth Configuration, Shutter Island and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the main ball-park areas the film can be aligned against, but with the added hysteria caused by the threat of Valentini's stalker figure, Unsane is closer to Patrick Brice's 2014 independent chiller, Creep, more than anything else, with the narrative's uncertain ambiguity resulting in a sense of not truly foreseeing where the film ultimately is heading.  

Shot from start to finish by use of an Apple iPhone 7 Plus and the FiLMiC Pro application which allows video to be stored in 4K, Unsane bears more of a tonal similarity to that of a found footage horror, and whilst at times the cinematography is radically subversive and riotously unconventional, the wider ratio aspect and grainy image does aid the claustrophobic nature felt by Foy's Valentini, particularly with continuous Sergio Leone style close-ups and the jolty movement of the picture whenever the camera follows her character in a deliberate attempt to mimic the continuous threat of being watched. With Side Effects in Soderbergh's back catalogue, the Hitchcock-esque thriller type is something in which the American is more than capable at portraying, and whilst Unsane does conform to the more wacky end of the genre spectrum, there is no denying that Soderbergh is arguably at his best when offering more of a challenging, unconventional set-up. Whilst at times the many ludicrous plot holes and questionable narrative choices do weaken the final product as a whole, Unsane is a thoroughly enjoyably and viciously wild cult piece which is gelled together by a Claire Foy on cracking form, and with a concluding act which is genuinely freakish and oddly unsettling, Soderbergh's second return is another rousing, off-beat success. 

Overall Score: 8/10

Film Review: Mary Magdalene

"Are We So Different From Men You Must Teach Us Different Things..."

With 2016's Lion a solid and warm-hearted Oscar nominated directorial debut for Australian filmmaker, Garth Davis, expectations remained high for a cinematic second coming, no pun intended, and with the Easter holiday's swiftly approaching, a time in which kids devour chocolate coated eggs with less and less of an understanding each year regarding its' figurative meaning, the release of Mary Magdalene seems naturally apt. Featuring Rooney Mara (A Ghost Story) as the titular follower of Jesus Christ, whose religious and historical actions tend to primarily focus on her bearing witness to the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion by the hands of the Roman Empire, Davis' movie unfortunately conforms to the curse of the follow-up album by being a body of work much weaker than its' predecessor, a staggeringly dull and uninspiring let-down which works much more effectively as a medicinal cure for insomniacs rather than a religious spiritual mediation, and whilst I am all for movies which opt for a slow and ponderous sensibility over choppily edited spectacle in the ilk of Blade Runner 2049 and Mara's own strangely hypnotically strange, A Ghost Story, a film famous for a ten minute continuous shot of a character eating pie, Mary Magdalene is unfortunately an example of a film which uses the strategy and fails miserably. 

With an underwritten screenplay which seems to have been typefaced onto the back of a postage stamp, the lack of real adventure or push results in the on-screen transfer from paper to film one which is tortuously painful to endure, with the film lacking both a simple element of life and a substantial capacity for the audience to not only believe that any of the characters are believable but more importantly, interesting enough to care for. With Joaquin Phoenix (Her) cast as the prophetic figure of Jesus, his whispering tone and shaggy-dog hair demeanour results in a performance which manages to come across as the lovechild of Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending and Phoenix himself in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, and whilst Phoenix normally manages to pull off decent performances regardless of the overall quality of the movie, his performance is poorly directed and staggeringly dull. With two hours of film to burn through, Davis' movie just doesn't offer up a sizeable reason for why it exists in the first place, and even with a slightly interesting concluding contemplation, Mary Magdalene is the cinematic equivalent of a Tesco saver Easter egg; unequivocally bland. 

Overall Score: 3/10

Film Review: Tomb Raider

"You Messed With The Wrong Family..."

With Angelina Jolie and co. all the way back in 2001 showing how not to make a half decent video game adaptation with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, a movie perhaps best remembered for featuring a pre-martini'd Daniel Craig in his youthful glory and the most annoying supporting character ever in the form of Noah Taylor's I.T addicted Brit, here we are seventeen years later bearing witness to yet another cinematic franchise reboot with Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina) taking over the reigns as the titular wall climbing heroine. Based upon the similarly titled 2013 video game from developers Square Enix, a game of which I can confess to playing from beginning to end and thoroughly enjoying, Tomb Raider, directed by Roar Uthaug (The Wave) follows the more robust and hunter-gatherer motif of the rebooted game series, utilising a much younger and innocent Croft as she develops her skills and understanding of the mystical forces of nature in a Casino Royale styled coming-of-age fashion, and whilst the movie does remain loyal to its' foundations with some interesting ideas and a dedicated leading lady, Uthaug's movie is still slightly under par of something which should have been much more entertaining. 

With Vikander adding a staggering amount of muscle in preparation for the role, her physical demeanour and willingness to at least look the part lands kudos points on her as an individual, and whilst the Swede is an undeniably likeable leading star, her approach to the role of Lara Croft is somewhat undermined by a screenplay which tends to verge on the edge of slumbering dullness, particularly in its' first half when we move from the urban wasteland of contemporary London through to the mysterious island of Yamatai via a stop-off in a thieve-ridden Hong Kong. Where the movie does eventually pick up the pace is in Croft's discovery of the island she so dearly seeks in order to answer questions regarding her father's disappearance, an area which formed the basis of the 2013 video game, and a location which introduces both Walton Goggins (The Hateful Eight) as the underwritten primary antagonist and Dominic West's (The Wire) hermit-esque and poorly wigged father figure whose narrative arc does seem relatively cliched. Concluding with a poorly managed "twist" which comes across as the definition of shark jumping, Tomb Raider is a somewhat mediocre blockbuster adventure and one which suffers primarily from a tendency for action over substance, but with Vikander an enjoyable leading presence with a kick-ass sensibility, the latest video game adaptation just about crosses the line. 

Overall Score: 5/10

Film Review: Annihilation

"It's Not Destroying. It's Making Something New..."

Wowing audiences and critics alike in the past with screenplays for works of brilliance including 28 Days Later, Dredd, albeit unaccredited, and of course his masterful directorial debut in the form of 2015's Ex Machina, the breath of fresh air which is Britain's own, Alex Garland, returns this week with Annihilation, yet another hotly anticipated release which uses Netflix as its' chosen distributor in the UK after somehow failing to secure a deal for a nationwide cinematic release. Whilst Ex Machina was essentially a low-key, claustrophobic comment on the notion of artificial intelligence which always settled for brains over brass idiocy, going against the ilk and financial safety net of many contemporary sci-fi blockbusters, Garland's latest expands the film-making horizons of which genuinely interesting science fiction can be explored, a movie which although at times seems to not entirely piece together as smoothly as one would ultimately like, powerfully blends thought provoking notions of unidentified alien contact with nightmarish surrealist terror which both takes cues and evolves on from classic genre pieces of which the movie undeniably takes reference from. 

Based upon Jeff VanderMeer's 2014 novel of the same name, the first entry within the well received "Southern Reach Trilogy", Garland's movie focuses on Natalie Portman's, Lena, a former soldier turned biologist who after the mysterious year long absence of Oscar Isaac's (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) husband figure and current serving member of the U.S Army, Kane, embarks on a high risk expedition into the unknown phenomenon known as only as the "Shimmer" in order to find both an explanation behind its' origins and answers regarding Kane's sudden disappearance. Teaming up with Jennifer Jason Leigh's (The Hateful Eight) Dr. Ventress, a straight-faced terminally ill psychologist who takes lead of the group, and Tessa Thompson's (Thor: Ragnarok) somewhat timid and "damaged" physicist, Josie, among others, Annihilation explores a mode of discovery as we venture into the ambiguous "Shimmer" with Portman's Lena taking point as the audiences access into the surrealist undertakings our heroine witnesses through her journey into the unknown. With an opening thirty minutes which leans heavy on background details regarding Kane and Lena's unfaithful relationship and the apocalyptic nature of the "Shimmer" itself, the remaining runtime hands forth a narrative which keeps the audience on edge, forever guessing the threat which ultimately will be discovered as the cards reveal themselves come a Under the Skin inspired final act. 

Aided by an uncertain, uncomfortable sensibility, a tonal cornerstone which is completely rife from beginning to end, Annihilation is at times genuinely unnerving in nature, with minimal use of jump-scare tactics and a tendency for a complete lack of resolution regarding particular plot threads resulting in a Blair Witch style behaviour pattern in which the audience builds up tension ready to be alleviated but is instead left stranding and unsure of what to expect next. With the movie at times resorting to handheld footage in order to explore the outcome of previous expeditions within the "Shimmer", the Blair Witch similarities are abundantly clear, whilst it comes not much of a stretch to see the likes of the monster effects of The Thing, the surreal science fiction beauty of Arrival and the nihilistic low-key apocalyptic themes of the little seen mind bending Coherence within the DNA of the piece too, and whilst at times dialogue does seem a tad on the nose and the special effects not exactly pitch perfect, a surprising weakness considering the Oscar winning work of Ex Machina, Garland's latest is a wonderful work of science fiction cinema, one which will please genre fans from the outset and one which too leaves a lasting impression like all the best experimental works of art do so well. 

Overall Score: 8/10

Film Review: Gringo

"Why Do I Always Get Screwed For Doing My Job...?"

Itching with a sense of Hollywood styled nepotism, director Nash Edgerton brings brother Joel (Red Sparrow), Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road) and Oxford's own, David Oyelowo (Selma) aboard for his directorial debut, Gringo, a kooky, wildly inconsistent crime caper based on a screenplay by both Anthony Tambakis and Matthew Stone which sees Oyelowo's white-collared Harold Soyinka caught between his sickeningly narcissistic bosses and the murderous ventures of the Mexican cartel as attempts to reconstruct his life based around cheating partners and financial ills by conning his way into a paycheck suitable enough to begin a new life. With the trailers somewhat misleading the movie's true intentions by presenting it as a full bodied comedy, Gringo instead is the type of movie which can't seem to make up its' mind as it grinds solemnly through a runtime which edges just under two hours, and whilst each of the cast members give it their all in attempting to breathe some sort of life into proceedings, Edgerton's movie just doesn't seem to leave any sort of meaningful impression and simply comes in via one ear and departs swiftly out of the other. 

Beginning by laying the foundations for the misfortunes which await Oyelowo's titular "Gringo" as he follows Theron and Edgerton's success craved business partners across the Mexican border in order to talk business regarding the sale of a marijuana-infused pill, Edgerton's movie takes time to really set sail, with a first half unsure of its' ultimate direction resulting in losing audience interest rather swiftly, and even as the action unfolds once we hit the the sunny sights of a gangland infested Mexico, Gringo doesn't at any time hit a steady stride in regards to what we as the audience are meant to be taking in and dissecting. A few chuckles aside, Gringo doesn't ultimately work as a comedy either and is a film better served being admired as a Guy Ritchie-esque double crossing caper, just without the freshness of a Lock, Stock... or the zesty absurdity of a Snatch, and with a thrown in penchant for unnecessary violence and crude stereotypes regarding one-dimensional Mexican citizens, Edgerton's movie is a strangely dull mixed bag of a movie. With the trio of front and centre stars all managing to come across somewhat watchable however, with Oyelowo's likeable luckless lead the obvious standout, Gringo isn't exactly poor, it's just badly managed, and for a cast this talented at the heart of it, Edgerton's debut could, and should have, been much, much sharper.  

Overall Score: 5/10

Film Review: The Outsider

"You Are Not Yakuza. You Are A Gaijin. An Outsider..."

With Bright, Mute and The Cloverfield Paradox a trio of big budget movies which have used Netflix as the chosen platform for their respective release over the course of the past six months or so, it's fair to say that so far, critical consensus has been, let's just say, less than positive for anything with the Netflix branding tainted on it, aside from the likes of Okja and Annihilation which have seemingly broken the bog awful standard set so thus far. Another week, another small screen offering however, with Netflix turning to Jared Leto this time in The Outsider, a generic, yet overly functional, crime thriller which utilises the much commentated approach of placing the American in the heart of post-war Japan as he rises up the ranks of the Yakuza after saving the life of Tadanobu Asano's (Silence) long-serving crime boss, Kiyoshi, in prison. With a nihilistic, unnerving tone and both underwritten characters and subplots, director Martin Zandvliet's approach to handling the inclusion of Leto's wandering military ghost figure, Nick Lowell, is not exactly justified, with the narrative more focused on handling a whistle stop tour of violent deeds and double crossing than ever coming up with a valid reason for his inclusion in a primarily Japanese cast, but with enough style to at least hold your attention whilst it works its' way from A to B, The Outsider is just about good enough to warrant two hours of your in-home small screen. 

 With attention obviously centred around the fundamental plot hole regarding whether a titular "outsider", or in the words of the Japanese themselves, a "gaijin", would ever be allowed into the strict ruling of the Yakuza traditions, the idea itself is one of interesting possibilities, but with a narrative starved of substance and an overripe, unnecessary violent streak, The Outsider is strangely unimaginative, utilising generic tropes of in-house familial power struggles to carve out a strangely tacked-on ending after we witness Leto's Nick progress from messy haired prisoner to sharply dressed gangster with added cheekbones. Whilst the performance of Leto himself is similar to attempting Ryan Gosling's performance in Drive without half the acting ability or talent, his fundamental dullness is entirely down to the writing, where although the primary focus of the movie is seemingly meant to infiltrate the ways of the Yakuza through the eyes of a Westernised psychopath, the audience is instead left with an empty vessel which violently acts out whenever he feels the audience may be starting to lose patience. Whilst The Outsider is undeniably messy therefore and full of ludicrous implausibilities, Martin Zandvliet's latest still managed to keep me interested however, and for a film which manages to have so many weaknesses and still hold me until the end, something somewhere ultimately worked. 

Overall Score: 6/10

Film Review: Game Night

"For The Next Hour You're Not Going To Know What's Real Or What's Fake..."

Part of the ensemble of writers behind the screenplay for Marvel's Spider-Man: Homecoming, film-making duo, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein return to directing with Game Night, a blackly comic mystery popcorn delight based on a script by the relatively unknown figure of Mark Perez, featuring Jason Bateman (The Gift) and Rachel McAdams (Spotlight) as the competitive married couple who are sucked into a night of outrageous antics with their weekly "game night" comrades by Kyle Chandler's (Manchester By The Sea) returning overzealous and annoyingly successful brother figure who promises the players a night of gaming unlike any before it. With laugh out loud gags from beginning to end and a joyous first time viewing in which the audience is pulled left, right and centre in regards to the many twists which come before them, Game Night is an American comedy which ultimately works much more effectively than your average US-based comic farce thanks to a tightly wound script and an ensemble cast who undeniably seem to be having as much fun as the fee paying customers come to observe, and even if the movie may not work as well on repeat viewings after its' concluding payoff, Daley and Goldstein's latest is still a resounding full house. 

With obvious narrative comparisons to David Fincher's 1997 mystery drama The Game, albeit with with a much more comical tone, Game Night manages to succeed in intertwining both the whodunit elements of its' narrative with the sickly black tone of its' sharp humour, with set pieces featuring amateur bullet hole surgery and the attempted deep clean of a blood soaked dog resulting in hysterical fits of giggles as you soak up the sheer absurdity which unfolds throughout a tightly packed 100 minutes runtime. With Bateman and McAdams leading the line of couples entrapped in the film's leading mystery, the chemistry between them is undeniably well measured, and even with my own personal reservations regarding the former's on-screen talents when it comes to comedy, their central relationship is crucial to the more out-there comedy elements which in lesser hands may have indeed folded under the silliness of it all. With Jesse Plemons (Hostiles) stealing the show as the woefully awkward next door neighbour and a fantastically designed post-movie credit sequence, Game Night is if anything, outstanding popcorn fun, and for an American comedy to hold my attention for its' entire runtime, that is a miracle within itself. 

Overall Score: 7/10

Film Review: Red Sparrow

"The Cold War Did Not End, It Merely Shattered Into A Thousand Pieces..."

Based upon the similarly titled 2013 novel by former Central Intelligence Agency agent, Jason Matthews, director Francis Lawrence reunites with long-term collaborator, Jennifer Lawrence (mother!), after their work together on the final three entries within Hunger Games film series with Red Sparrow, a sadistic spy thriller which attempts to blend the nihilistic approach of cold war paranoia with a Robert Ludlum-esque secret agent mystery narrative featuring Lawrence in the leading role as the Russian ballerina turned operative who is tasked with discovering a native mole who has been supplying the US with state secrets. With a lifeless, cold tone and a jaw-dropping exploitation sensibility which airs more on the side of advantageous leering regarding its' lead star than that of actual substance, Red Sparrow is a staggeringly misjudged and overly dull affair, one which although can be somewhat praised for attempting to present a more bolder and brutal by the numbers spy story, hashes it's early promise and comes across more as an overly disappointing affair with a, hold your breath, completely miscast leading lady. 

After sustaining an ill-fated injury which prematurely ends her career as a prestigious ballerina, Jennifer Lawrence's awfully accented Dominika Egorova turns to Matthias Schoenaerts' (The Danish Girl) Ivan Dimitrevich Egorov, her slimy, power hungry uncle who recruits her into the "Red Sparrow" programme and under the wing of Charlotte Rampling's (45 Years) Matron who attempts to teach her the ways of psychological, sexual and overly humiliating manipulation. With Lawrence being confined to direction which forces her to maintain a complete look of utter boredom and attempting to preserve a straight face during set pieces which give Fifty Shades of Grey a run for its' money, Red Sparrow suffers primarily from a key weakness regarding Lawrence's implausibility as a hard-edged Russian spy, and whilst her dodgy accent isn't the only one in the movie to induce sniggering fits of laughter, the film is made worse by being a key example of an obsession between director and leading star reaching astronomical levels, with the camera woozily ogling at the sight of its' leading star whenever she is forced to take off her clothes or engage in one of many terribly misjudged sexuality torture scenes. Whilst I am all for nudity and stylised violence when absolutely necessary, Lawrence's latest is one the most unnecessary gory examples of mainstream exploitation cinema I've seen in recent history, and when you through into the mix a yawn inducing underlying narrative about double-crossing agents and a resolution which is the definition of cop-out, Red Sparrow is indeed quite poor, even with a semi-decent Joel Edgerton attempting to save the day. 

Overall Score: 4/10

90th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress

Oscars 2018: Best Supporting Actress

Here we are at last with the final main Academy Awards category to gloss over before the ceremony takes place on the 4th of March, and following in the footsteps of its' predecessors, the Best Supporting Actress this year is yet another strongly contested battle between five stars who each are deserved of prestigious recognition. With Allison Janney my own personal tip for taking home the gong after her success at the BAFTA's for her hilarious role in I, Tonya, such a decision speaks more so from the head whilst the heart points in the direction of Leslie Manville for her absolutely brilliant and stunningly nuanced role in Paul Thomas Anderson's wickedly subversive, Phantom Thread, a movie which unfortunately may be completely overlooked in most of the categories in which it has nominations. Elsewhere, Laurie Metcalf and Octavia Spencer earn the plaudits for their brilliant performances in Lady Bird and The Shape of Water respectively, whilst Mary J. Blige completes the ticket for her role in the Netflix funded Mudbound, and whilst the likes of Sylvia Hoeks and Rosamund Pike could easily been nominated likewise for Blade Runner 2049 and Hostiles also, we conclude our Academy Award rundown with the final main points below...

Winner - Allison Janney (I, Tonya)

Personal Favourite - Leslie Manville (Phantom Thread)

Nomination Snub - Sylvia Hoeks (Blade Runner 2049)