modernmonstersdotnet Reviews

Suicide Squad (2016)

Stupid Squash

[2/10 · 23 September 2016]

Another example of a movie delivering the exact opposite that what its hype and teasers promised, Suicide Squad is the big 2016 summer letdown, a tent pole crashing under its own weight and an absolute bore. It's like watching a train wreck, only it's a toy train carrying action figures instead of characters, like watching the paint dry only it's pale beige, like watching an hourglass measuring the sad fashion you have elected to waste away two hours of your life. Two hours later you will have gained absolutely nothing and you will wish for ten minutes of quality time with the makers of this beached whale, carrying Harley Quinn's baseball bat. But you won't get them.

This thing gives the term "mindless entertainment" a whole new meaning, considering it's neither one nor the other. It's far from mindless, as you can hear throughout the wheels of a declining industry churning to please an audience already saturated by superheroes antics (genius idea: bring in Will Smith!), and not entertaining in the slightest because should have they conceive a torture device for Guantanamo, it would look, sound and feel more or less exactly like this one, in a loop.

What does it say about Hollywood when a movie high concept, "bunch of villains sent against an even worst foe" is treated so cowardly that the result plays like the loosely connected cinematic sequences of a PC game? With most of its avatars on pause, most of them provided with the bare schematics of a character which make eunuchs and no-lifers of them all, with no antagonist to speak of but a fashion model and no threat whatsoever to their little, desperate, insectile life, you bet you understand what it says: here's you garbage flick of the week, morons; see it in the theater because downloading is evil.

Viola Davies, unable to be bad even she tried real hard (what she does here with her mouth full) carries around a thick top secret portfolio of coloured-by-numbers villains her dream is to assemble in an anti Justice League, because she didn't have the opportunity to come up with the Justice League idea in the first place. Fortunately for her, a scientist from the Tara Reid school of Like, Serious Archeology mistakes an ancient clay bottle for a can of pop and frees The Enchantress, a goth chick with severe hygiene issues whose brother trapped in the next bottle have like, a mean God complex. Together they wanna build a McGuffin to rule the world and enslave the human race, so it's time to kick them in the butt real good. Superman is gone, Batman is having a sabbatical, so the next best thing is to flank Willsmith with a quartet of mildly deranged goons, controlled by an explosive device implanted in… oh whatever.

Willsmith was arrested (not branded, natch) by Batman, as was the case for Margotrobbie, so movie can enter the Batman canon as a "Whatever happened to them?" memorial programme. Willsmith is on board with the dual objective to long for his adorable daughter (fortunately not played by his own) and utter the title at some point. Yes, they also did that. Even Batman v. Superman didn't have Bruce Wayne say "I'll be damned, is this the dawn of justice?", right? Right? He's also a sniper who can't miss. Nobody does is better, makes me feel sad for the rest. And they are quite a sad bunch.

So, from memory: a mutant Cindy Lauper who only wanna have fun, a pyrokinetic latino, a crocodile man providing infra-bass, an Aussie with a boomerang (too bad he didn't bring a didgeridoo), a Japanese with a katana (same remark about a koto) team up with Willsmith in order to defeat the Enchantress' budding reign of terror, under the mild maintenance of a war veteran called Flag. Yep, how's that for super heroism? Oh, and there is also this guy who almost misses the chopper, crosses the screen and dies. Really scrapping the bottom of the barrel with this one, Viola. One wonders how many such losers were in your thick portfolio of Evil.

Anyway, helicopters are repeatedly taken down, not unlike frappucinos are gulped at your nearest Starbuck's, the super ordinary dreams of super heroes are revealed by the Enchantress, whose heart is not in it (there, see what just one did? Lol). She nevertheless has the best scene when she accomplishes her transformation and instantly revert to Fashion Week catwalking, Cara Delavinge's background.

Is one missing something? What? The Joker? One doesn't know what you are talking about. The Joker is not in this movie.

The Neon Demon (2016)

Beauty Stab

[6/10 · 23 September 2016]

Nicolas Winding Refn doesn't know fashion, he doesn't care about fashion, but most importantly, he doesn't feel fashion. That's why he's copycatting Guy Bourdin in the rare occasions it is given screen time. But of course fashion is the least of The Neon Demon's concern. The closer but most elusive domain to cinema, fashion is a mighty beast to tame, and the list is long of directors trying to use it, either as satire or backdrop. Count this movie as another ill-advised foray into the carnivorous industry of youth, beauty, and the predatory behaviours it entails. Oh it's beautiful to look at, and too clever by half. But it's a ridiculous movie all the same.

There are a lot of questions to be asked about where Refn's love for genre will take him at the expense of a coherent cinema. "Do you mind if I use you for that?" is a key phrase, said by a photographer to a model towards the end of the movie. This is definitely a question Refn should have asked Dario Argento before committing his feverish dream about the loss of innocence to film. To be honest, no one has ripped off Argento more shamelessly and unsuccessfully than Argento himself, and before the Suspiria remake hits the theaters next year, The Neon Demon might be the next best thing to the original. But as it the case with fashion, one will argue that Refn doesn't get Argento either. He knows the notes but does not sing the tune; once again, it is not what interests him here. So, what does? Christianism, apparently, as was the case with Only God Forgives. It makes sense: after the Old Testament comes the New.

For some reason everything seems to be happening in bathrooms/toilets, at least the three best scenes. They play like a Christian allegory. The first one, in a dark club, has the Three Mothers (cleverly?) presented in reverse order, and the Mother of Tears, the most dangerous of all, has Jesse (Elle Fanning perfect as a preraphaelite nymph with porcelain skin), lured her out of her comfort zone and orally dissected by her two sisters, the Mother of Darkness, a top model who proudly lists her cosmetic procedures, and the Mother of Sighs, never the It girl to begin with and therefore on passive-aggressive auto-pilot. This is as much temptation as it is a Holy Spirit visitation.

The second scene has Jesse meeting an unfortunate candidate for a runway show after she smashed the ladies room mirror. Jesse attempts to comfort her but is scorned for it. She cuts her hand on the broken glass. What follows is as sudden as it is ghoulish, a communion of sorts which emphasizes what is barbaric, vampiric, in the idea of drinking someone's blood as a religious rite. In the audition scene itself, starting as the Malcolm McLaren video for Madam Butterfly, the way Refn uses sound is very clever: the models walk, and you can hear their shoes creaking on the white floor of the studio. The designer never looks up. When Jesse walks, there is no such noise pollution, so he has to look up, and she's cast.

The third bathroom scene is the shocking one, with an apocalyptic blue pattern on the walls and the body horror you might have heard about. It is another hint at communion, in a potent mix of glossy styling and gore. It might also be the most ridiculous way a director as gifted as Refn can take this idea across to his viewers. The scene has to be seen, and can't be unseen; it is both gross and weirdly disincarnate. The Neon Demon is not sadistic, not even voyeuristic. It makes an earnest attempt at figuring out what it is to be the most beautiful girl in the world, and guesses rightfully that she has to be punished for all the love and lust she inspires. It's too bad the movie wasn't shot in Japan as initially intended. Los Angeles is the wrong Petri dish to grow these alien life forms, reduced to one designer, one photographer and one make up artist (Jena Malone, poised even in the movie's most incongruous foray into exploitation).

There is a thin line between using a genre form for such an aloof purpose and having the rubber, once stretched too far, snapping back in your face. The Neon Demon describes our iconisation of beauty as a pagan cannibalistic cult based on the debasement and consumption of virgins all too willing to sacrifice themselves to the titular demon, a vaginal pentacle devouring them whole at the end of a runway. The virgin thinks she gets a chance at becoming a Holy Trinity of herself, but instead of making her whole the demon slices her up, pixellating flesh and soul alike. There is definitely something Christian in that but, like barocco churches, there is so much imagery at work that it's all to easy to get lost in looking and missing the point.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

What's Sup?

[3/10 · 23 September 2016]

What's Sup?

The problem with DC Comics compared to, say, Marvel is that their superheroes are mutually exclusive. Bringing them together is therefore a difficult task, to say the least. It just doesn't work in this instance. Also, DC is very late in the convergence business, when the other team, for all its on screen sins, has developed most of the Avengers characters into their own franchise, allowing for a passable team spirit with occasional bouts of dialogue brilliance. Nothing of the sort here.

The movie, already bloated at 150′, also exists in a 180′ minutes "full" version, the deleted scenes giving some screen cred to some of it most baffling scenes but doing nothing to improve pace or character development. If Zach Snyder remains gifted with this rarest of quality in action movie directing, i.e. spatial consciousness, allowing the audience to follow who is fighting who, where and sometimes even why, his writing crew, who already presided over Man of Steel and the Christopher Nolan- helmed Batman trilogy, attempts at mixing oil and water and trips until it crashes under the weight of their portentous project.

For a movie opposing an omnipotent flying boy scout and a sociopath multibillionnaire with all sorts of vehicles at his disposal, Batman v Superman is shockingly pedestrian. Worse, it respects road lights and zebra crossings. So, what is the heck happening in two and a half hours?

After we are treated to the umpteenth version of the scene in which Master Bruce is saved by a Batnado, he grows up into Bat Affleck (doing his best Christian Bale impersonation and appearing smug in the process), who fills Gotham's prison with criminals he brands with red iron, meaning "certain death" at the end of their fellow convicts. Not only this is an idiotic idea, but it subverts the League of Justice purpose by reintroducing death penalty through the back door, while the State looks the other way. Hollywood, you are going on a dangerous limb.

The State acts in the opposite way in Metropolis, where Superman's proclivity to bring home his Kriptonian buddies for urbicide and countless civilian casualties comes under scrutiny. A "Kentucky junior senator" (Holly Hunter) wants him to answer to a federal commission and be harnessed for the greater good, to which Sup (Henri Cavill, gloomy) reacts by sulking. No doubt she's a democrat and she wants more State intrusion into the American people's constitutional rights.

Under the pretense of caring for collateral victims – an interesting idea in itself, if possibly quite boring in its 'The State vs. Superman" execution – the movie succumbs to its own hubris, shared in equal measures by its producers and its characters. Lois Lane (Amy Adams, bland) has never been so stupid – she interviews yet another African warlord (why are they popping out in every blockbuster this year?) and her first question is "Are you a terrorist?". Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg, interestingly mannered) is obviously deranged but no one seems to mind. At some point he mates with General Zod's corpse in a red pool and gives birth to "an abomination" called Doomsday, which could be doing an internship from any Kaiju next door, since it's just a mass of pixels, unkillable until it's killed.

So the Gotham Bat, as they call him, and Superman fight for a while, kryptonite kriptonite kriptonite, Batman knocks Superman out with a bathroom sink. Appear briefly The Flash (unnamed) and Aquaman (Jason Momoa). Also, Wonder Woman (Gad Gadot, sleek) comes to the big boys' rescue, allowing a "Bruce, I am your brother" moment who does not only feel embarrassing but the mark of writers at the end of their tethers, unable to elevate the material to its God-like ambitions.

What else? There is a lot of tuning, Bruce Wayne sporting a bat logo on his civilian car and Superman his logo on the coffin he's beyond the shadow of a doubt not buried in. Lois Lane dies but not, as required by her character. The Army nukes Doomsday, misses and the charge – apparently a mild one – falls on an "inhabited" island in the middle of the bay separating Metropolis from Gotham (asking all sorts of questions about why an encounter between Supie and Bat Boy didn't occur before and cautiously not answering any of them). There is a bit of King Kong, a bit of Tarzan and whatnot. Best of all, there is Jeremy Irons as Alfred the Butler, a considerable step up from Sir Michael Caine.

Oh also, there is what one prefers to think is a touch of meta humour, by courtesy of a open jar of urine labeled "Granny's Peach Tea". As a metaphor for inspiration, it works rather well. Come on, get back to the writing table already. It's already absurd with two and a half superheroes, how could it possibly be better with five?

Elvis & Nixon (2016)

One O'Clock, Two O'Clock, White House Rock

[6/10 · 23 September 2016]

In December 1970, the most popular rock n'roller on the planet decided that the American way of life was going down the drain and blamed the Beatles, drugs and the Black Panthers. He hand-delivered to the White House a letter to the President of the United States, asking to be sworn a Federal Agent at Large to help fight this trifecta undercover and it promptly happened thanks to a quick call to the FBI director. If for you this elevator pitch is pushing the envelope too far, think twice: it actually happened and there are pictures to prove it, which actually are the most requested documents for consultation in the whole US National Archives. The head of FBI was J. Edgar Hoover. The President was Richard Nixon. The third man was the King, Elvis Presley, and he had a super power: the Autograph.

One doesn't need to scrap one's head for too long to figure out what interested the writers (Joey, himself an Elvis impersonator, and Hanala Segal) in such a subject. An odd couple so incongruous that they could as well come from different planets, the comedy of fame clashing with the comedy of politics, the utter ridiculousness of both sides' agenda (gaining in appeal and humanity while "not giving a f*** about the youth vote" for one, "infiltrating the Rolling Stones or maybe The Grateful Dead" for the other), all make for a meaty subject matter which could have, in less capable hands, be all sting and sarcasm. But they are fond of their characters and chose to tap their humanity instead of their delusions of grandeur, and humour, omnipresent in their movie, is always sympathetic, if loaded with a healthy dose of irony. The poster offers "the meeting of two of the greatest recording artists in history", which is quite succulent.

The first third of the movie deals with the impossibility of the meeting, the second with its difficulty and the third with the meeting itself. Meeting the Commander in Chief is no given even for Presley: "We do not expect any royalty today", answers Nixon's adviser when informed the King is at the door. A couple of autographs to the right kids and the promise of a photo shoot later, he's in. What was supposed to be a five minutes meet and greet lasts much more as the two men discover themselves closer than they thought. Ingenuously, what brings them together after a first round of pissing contest is childhood and self-doubt.

Presley (Michael Shannon, not even close to the rockabilly cherub Elvis still was in 70, but impressively conveying his charisma and his innate sadness) is an icon, maybe the most loved man in America. His feral years are well behind him though, and he has lost touch with who he is, or was, enshrined as he is in clothes, jewelry and adoration. He only trusts his two oldest friends, Jerry and Sonny (Alex Pettyfer and Johnny Knoxville, good at playing the rock and the roll, respectively). The two scenes where his vulnerability shows are great; without them Elvis would be some kind of Yoda, imbued with so much self-confidence and poise that it would be difficult to respond to him in any other way than worship. When he meets Nixon and finds a level ground with him, he's a kid for a while, then regain his composure and departs quite curtly. It is a perilous exercise of tightrope and it works.

Kevin Spacey is wonderful as Nixon. It's almost scary, a short while after watching him as President Underwood in House of Cards, to see him inhabiting the Oval Office in such a completely different fashion. The two men have nothing in common, Nixon's cynicism being routed in his hate for what the "genetic lottery" has attributed him. "I'm not looking like a Kennedy", he says in a moment which is both acerbic and surprisingly fragile. Never Underwood would have these thoughts, or those mimics, including this infectious jubilation when Presley calls him "a cool cat", much to the dismay of his two advisers, Chapin (Evan Peters, too juvenile for the role) and Krogh (Colin Hanks, perfect). The fact that the screenplay takes the trouble of building fully fleshed characters in both camps is highly commendable.

One has some reservations about the film but they are of the minor kind. The karate scene (which Shannon judged "in poor taste") might be ill advised, even though Spacey suddenly unleashes an animosity that is both scary and poignant. The Watergate foreshadowing of the parking meeting is a bit on your face. Budget limitations show at times. But in any scene Elvis is in, there is always a reaction from passers-by, and those "Oh my God!" moments are not only fun to watch but the mark of attention to detail. And for our devoted followers, there's even a "What's in the box" moment. What's not to like?

Money Monster (2016)

Occupy The Screen

[5/10 · 23 September 2016]

If not a stylist in the slightest, Jodie Foster is a very smart lady and a capable director with a keen flair for tone. Both funny and utterly pessimistic, Money Monster brings welcome memories of (admittedly better) movies like Network, and there are much worse associations than this one. Presenting the alliance of computer trading and cable television as a weapon of mass destruction, of value as well as lives, Mrs Foster packs up a convincing case, if not escaping all traps of such a complex subject having to be laid out and resolved in 138 minutes, which by the way breeze by as if they were 98, one of the best possible compliments for a movie in our age of bloated freak shows.

The Ibis corporation took a plunge of 800 M$ after a "glitch" affected its high-speed trading, this mere weeks after Lee Gates, star anchor of the Money Monster cable program, has deemed its share safer than any life insurance policy. Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell), one of the 99%, having lost everything, breaks in the TV studio, takes Gates hostage, put an explosive vest on him and asks for answers. They prove difficult to get, as Ibis' CEO has vanished. Gates can only rely on himself, and on Patty Fenn, the studio director (Julia Roberts).

It is not useless to underline that the ibis is the animal form of the Egyptian God of Knowledge, due to its ability to make the difference between drinkable and corrupt water, a form of wisdom which all concerned are deprived of, intoxicated as they are with the promise of money acquired faster than the speed of light, thanks to inscrutable algorithms in a world shrunk to a few stock exchange places. Greed, once heralded as good, is still the same, though, and for lack of a better word, greed is a bulimic monster that cannot be satiated.

There is a measure of squeamishness in having close friends Clooney and Roberts sharing top billing. Both are consummate professionals, but it is hard not to think once or twice during Money Monster that they are not stretching their acting chops to a dangerous extent in it. Clooney is his usual jerk with a heart of gold and easy empathy to his fellow humans, whatever disturbed they are, and Roberts is her trademark strong woman whose inner vulnerability allow her to act noble instead of curt. They make the show, however, since the other actors are something of a white noise, except Emily Meade as Molly, the hostage taker's girlfriend, who is brought on the air to mollify him and has one excellent, enraged scene.

Money Monster wears its ideas on its sleeve, but they are treated without naivety. On one hand Mrs Foster is obviously sympathetic to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement and clearly thinks that unregulated finance is the enemy. If something catastrophic occurs, blame it on computer programming, on Europe, on the ways of the world. Never blame yourself for your mistakes regarding others as long as you make a load out of them. Last time one checked, this was the 21st century definition of capitalism, a battle of financial kaijus eradicating industrial sectors or countries alike. On the other hand, her movie is pessimistic as hell regarding the ability of the common man to make any change to this current state of affairs. There are a couple of chilling moments towards the end of the movie, one an enthusiastic flash mob marching in support of Kyle Budwell, only to vanish like a flock of sheep as a gun is fired, the other the immediate loss of interest for whatever the same had to say when his fate is sealed. Case closed, let's have a commercial break. "What kind of program will we have tomorrow?" ask Lee Gates to Penny, whom Drama Day has obviously brought together (again).

Ending up in memes and tweets like most things do whenever they start nowadays, Money Monster sums up in a rather tight bundle a sizable portion of what is going wrong in our wretched century, bringing short attention span disorder in the realm of terminal illness. We don't have enough memory to process everything happening at the speed it is happening. Our short bursts of indignation are followed by long bouts of complacency. If money has always been the root of evil, it is now a very modern and capable monster indeed.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

Saga Africa

[5/10 · 23 September 2016]

This summer's best superhero movie this side of Deadpool, The Legend of Tarzan (hereafter: Tarzan) carries on the torch of a legend in the first of the only two ways possible: dead-on seriousness or camp revisiting. Not that camp doesn't work, mind you, but the writers of the movie have a collective brain severely missing from our other movie of the week, Suicide Squad, and are therefore able to choose their side instead of desperately aiming at the middle of the road. Yes, Tarzan aspires to tragedy, an ambition somehow undermined by the fact that its villain is King Leopold II of Belgium, an unlikely foe if there was ever one, but it takes these aspirations seriously and delivers the goods in a dreamy, campy, obsolete way. It's a superhero movie with a conscience, albeit an easy one, it being Mother Nature herself. But she takes a dire toll on who's going against Her.

So. starting like King Kong with Congolese ninjas making a fool of the Belgian army, Tarzan establishes Djimon Honsoon as the Leppard King who holds a grudge again Tarzan, and that way an unholy alliance is forged with evil Christopher Waltz (when will he stop to cash it in as a Raider of the Lost Ark evil nazi?), since King Leopold II's coffers are empty and he needs the Opar diamonds the Leppard tribe happenstance to detain. The fact that the tribe is readily letting go of a immense treasure to allow the tribe chief to revenge his son before most certainly being either massacred or enslaved is glossed over with the help of some noble words and the fact that Djimon Honsoun looks fantastic in leopard skin and a loin cloth.

Tarzan is bored in England, desultorily visiting the Prime Minister in the company of his black sidekick (Samuel L. Jackson, who else?). Better get used to Tarzan getting bored, or looking mildly annoyed: those are the two expressions Alexander Skargaard allows his character to sport, letting his spectacular eight-pack do the acting. One would be forgiven to muse on the fact that Lord Greystoke being some kind of a UN ambassador and a diplomatic/black ops weapon of sorts, his stomach muscles shouldn't be his only set of skills, but the movie, in the best tradition of the action genre, recognise that with great abs come great responsibilities, so Tarzan is back to the jungle to fight the Belgian colonial Empire, slavery and the cowardly assassination of African fauna. And he brings Jane along, since she's pregnant and a strong spirit.

The jungle, see, "consumes everything but never the strong", or, in that particular instance, the well connected. Tarzan and Jane are on their best William & Kate behaviour when back to Congo, copious flashbacks exposing their back story, sniffing meet-cute included, and his dysfunctional relationship with his Mangani brother ("Mangani" being the 21st politically correct for "ape" or "gorilla"). It becomes pretty obvious on the course of the movie than Tarzan is quite lousy at fighting, since he loses against lost tribes, gorillas, and even Belgians. But the thing with Tarzan is he has powerful friends, as demonstrated in the final showdown which is all that one wanna see is such an adventure flick: a tea party interrupted by herds of gnous, an elephant stampede and some African finest including lions and crocodiles. For the effectiveness and the elegance of this scene alone, the movie is worth seeing: man is hopeless and not to be trusted, it's Nature who saves the day rebelling, a lesson learned through hardship and repeated abuse.

Tarzan, as the title indicates, is a legend, an abstraction, an article of faith. Far from defeating the evil Belgian regime he acts as a catalyst from a rejection deep rooted in abuse, crime and callousness. The movie manages not to trip on itself denouncing the exploitation of the Mother Continent by greedy foreign powers, and he does so using the traditional elements of this kind of epic quest: there is a boat and a train that have to be stopped along highlights of the Gabonese rain forest (standing for Congo). There is a "civilised" diner scene establishing the power dynamics between the bad guy and the kind woman, each standing for conflicting ideals. There is a Houdini number, group jumps into the abyss, and a bondage party turned genocide. All that and more. One suspects that should one have seen this movie at 10 years old, it would have become an instant favourite; quite some years down the line, it nevertheless looks great and feels decent, two crucial qualities that most recent super hero train wrecks would be unable to reclaim for themselves. Viewing advised.

Jason Bourne (I) (2016)

The Bourne Paternity

[7/10 · 23 September 2016]

Whatever bias had the prophets of decline who wrote bad reviews of this movie, or whatever movie they might have seen instead, they were wrong. When had been a quadrilogy that consistently good? The Bourne Identity reinvented a genre, The Bourne Supremacy relegated James Bond in the English Heritage theme park he so deservingly belongs to, The Bourne Ultimatum cemented the Bourne action franchise as the best and most earnest ever. Jason Bourne completes the cycle but is a different movie altogether: there is nothing to prove anymore, yet the character unflinchingly, unsmilingly played by Matt Damon is missing a crucial part of his own existence. He got the How, the When and the Who. What he has left to do is to understand the Why. Would this Why only be a filial quest, it would be a run-of-the-mill American story. But this time around, the backdrop of Jason Bourne's formidable action scenes is societal. Chaotic. And this chaos is impeccably filmed by Paul Greengrass.

Jason Bourne is the genie nobody can force back into the bottle, whatever charm or violence is used against him, not before he understand what's going on. He's "pulled out of retirement" by Niki Parsons (Julia Stiles, aging gracefully), that is, if taking part in a fight club on the Armenian/Greek border is your idea of retirement. Bourne needs violence, he is violence, bubbling under Matt Damon's preppy charm. Anyone behaving like that has a death wish, and this fourth opus is by far the darkest and meanest of the franchise. The action scene in Athens starts during a protest against the IMF and Greece's creditors on Syntagma Square and after twenty breathless minutes it ends on affliction. Bourne's death wish once again turns against what he holds dearest: deflecting death is a reflex for him, or rather to the killing machine the CIA has trained him to be.

A brief sequence reunites Bourne and Berlin (one could almost see the "Welcome Back Jason" banners) on the Alexanderplatz, during another protest, before he's off to London for another gripping action scene. Four parallel courses of action take place simultaneously, and following them is effortless. Spatial logic is respected, instant decisions are made for better or worse and one can relate to each of them. The sequence is a model of suspense and clarity. It includes another chassé-croisé with the new girl on the CIA block (Alicia Vikander, icy), on whom her boss (Tommy Lee Jones, what else to say?) is pulling rank. Tommy Lee Jones is the only one who smiles during the movie, and this smile is of the professional courtesy kind. It's scary and rather horrid.

By that point in the movie one was struck how much the language of espionage emulates the dialect of finance. There are assets, insurance policies, accounts to be closed. Jason Bourne is the human factor, the spanner in the works of a monstrous machine churning profitability at the global scope. Jason Bourne is that good old Schumpeter, creatively destroying everything on his way. He gets back to the USA, where the final showdown has to take place. You know what they say, "what happens in Vegas remains in Vegas"? Well, there was no better place to end this franchise. Gambling, mad money, secrecy, with the contemporary seasoning of an IT mogul being treated like a rock star during a business convention turned assassination attempt. Jason Bourne has an idea or two behind its phenomenal action, not far of those treated in Money Monster, as bitter as it is relentless (weirdly, both movies have Icelandic hackers).

The mandatory car chase is mayhem on The Strip, a massive car pile-up ending in the desecration of the Riviera casino. The brutality of the scene exceeds its vicious Moscow companion piece in The Bourne Supremacy. By understanding the Why, Bourne has gotten rid of his death wish, but he's still a merciless instrument of retribution and death. A last, ill- advised attempt is made to bring the elite killer back into the CIA's lap. But he's no longer that, he's just him by then.

One saw some positive reviews modulating their praise by "Please, no more!". Of course there won't be more Bourne. The man has ridden alone in the sunset like the lonesome cowboy he is. But please, pretty please, more of that stuff, for this is the right one.

Bastille Day (2016)

B-Day

[6/10 · 23 September 2016]

Yes, it's formulaic, an odd couple of underdogs facing a vast conspiracy, the lonely American saving France. Yes its marketing in this country was severely hampered by the mad truck terrorist attack in Nice on July the 14th, which in ricochet delayed screening in some other countries. It should have been a hit in UK, considering the portrait it paints of contemporary Paris, a city only a few inches above Baghdad in terms of safety, riddled as it is by larceny, fundamentalism, riots and corruption. Oh, and naked women in the streets. Bastille Day nevertheless achieves quite a good deal in the packed, dense, urban thriller genre.

The setup goes like follows: a terrorist group intends to plunge Paris into chaos by manipulating traditional and electronic media. Their first strike is to have a mule dropping a bomb at the headquarters of the "French Nationalist Party", but the girl gets cold feet when the building is not empty as expected. Her bag with the bomb inside is stolen by a pickpocket (Richard Madden), who discards it in a trash can, killing four people and making him the prime suspect in the process. As the pickpocket is a US citizen, the Paris branch of the CIA tasks free electron Sean Briar (Idriss Elba) to find him before the French Police does, in an increasingly tense situation as the terrorists follow up with their plan, triggering a city-wide state of unrest.

Bastille Day's screenplay is not bad, including three twists that can hardly considered as novel but serve a logical progression of the intrigue. The third twist actually resonates in our time and age; it is the third time in a row that street protest is connected to mad finance, as was the case in Money Monster and Jason Bourne, even though in this case the latter is not the cause of the former. The three main characters (including José Garcia as the Head of French Intelligence) are competently written and well acted. But what Bastille Day has that places him a notch above other thrillers in the same vein is the force of nature also known at Idriss Elba.

A wrecking ball with a golden heart, Elba bludgeons into the story like the unstoppable force he so convincingly embodies. In a Vertigo-inspired, vertigo-inducing roof top chase as in more intimate scenes in which he conveys credible menace as well as the occasional sparkle of humour, he's impossible to doubt, impossible to resist. He even manages to fool French policemen into thinking he's one of them by piping "Oui, je arrive". So cute. He's also very affable to ordinary people he come across during his investigation, most of them African French in suburbs or the Barbès area. The fact that Elba is black himself allows him a connection which cleverly bridges the cultural gap his American origin could entail (he tells the fable he's a refugee from Belize, only to tersely state later on that he was born in Connecticut). But it is his sweetness which gets him through his investigation pitfalls, that and of course and the brute force he's able to summon at will. "Pinky pumps?" offers the pickpocket when they close a deal, and Elba's reaction makes that extraordinary desirable, even though you're quite sure he would tear up your little finger without blinking.

Yes there are some "This is Paris, vin rouge, Louis Vuitton" dialogue, no the prime suspect never shaves his beard even though his picture is on every screen, yes the final confrontation is a bit of a letdown. But for his Anonymous, typically contemporary sacrifice during the National Reserve bravura scene, and some delectable use of the French vernacular ("Abrutis de merde!" being a personal favourite), Bastille Day is quite good. The lingering question, however, remains why make this kind of fiction in the first place if a brush with crude reality makes you chicken out of its release? How long will politically correct circumnavigate violence, when it had so abrasively eroded race, sex, work and ethics? The answer to that question, if there is one, certainly doesn't lie with Bastille Day, but one is grateful to the movie to ask it, even involuntarily.

Showgirls (1995)

Snow White Does Las Vegas

[7/10 · 23 September 2016]

The fact that Showgirls is back in theaters speaks volumes about reevaluation, and as far as prep talks go it says a lot about media hype and the burning of idols, too. That movie would be a cautionary tale if anything of the sort still existed; as such, it nevertheless takes part in a conversation about Short Attention Span Disorder that no one is able to follow, and that's the irony of it.

Irony is not exactly foreign to Paul Verhoeven, as demonstrated by Robocop, Starship Troopers (is it the best bad movie ever, or is it the worst good movie, the jury will ever be out) or even Basic Instinct. The man is one of the few European directors to have left his mark on Hollywood at the end of the 20th century, directing big budgets blockbusters which were hot topics at the time, mainly for their violence but also for their sexuality (remember that particular piece of the True Crotch?) But, but, violence is good, violence is fun, and sex is not. Sex is evil, well, women sex is. The female sex in general. Hoes and witches, all of'em, ya know.

By switching focus from violence to sex, Verhoeven spoke the unspeakable and committed a cardinal sin. Backlash was swift, the same ones who enjoyed Total Recall (Violence + Comedy) and Basic Instinct (Violence + Sex) rejecting with puritan horror Showgirls (Sex + Comedy). What the hell was he thinking, desecrating Las Vegas, the Wedding Meccah? Focussing on strip clubs and tacky shows, when there is so much to gamble about, what Ocean's Eleven, a perfectly apt American movie made by a less controversial European director, made six years later?

But what about the movie itself, you think? Well, think of it as an adult version of Snow White and forget about the Seven Dwarfs. If you can't, you have a fetish and you are very much welcome, but you have a problem with the film. So: Snow White, the Evil Queen, and Prince Charming. Las Vegas is the mirror on the wall, the bad guy who says to the Queen (Gina Gershon, one of the most carnivorous actresses who ever were) that there is a fairer of them all. Snow White (Elisabeth Berkeley, not a great thespian by any mean but the quintessence of bimbo, and as such an inspired casting) does what Zach Snyder's limp Sucker Punch was unable to show: she dances like hell, thank you very much, and when she does it is impossible not to watch (the impossibility of the male gaze not to stare at beauty being our fetish of the week).

Showgirls is a great movie, but it's the Versace in a row of Prada. It's tacky, expensive and camp, yet smart as a whip and, at the end of the day, surprisingly human for all the caricature involved. Its backstage scenes are as superiorly filmed as its show scenes are flatly vulgar, all organised confusion and petty revenge when no natural empathy is involved. And a lot of empathy there is at work here. For all its bare breasts, implied sex and titillation, Showgirls is at its core a feminine movie, its men helpless or unable to touch (Kyle McLachlan, miscast but not as Prince Charming). It's Grrrl power two years before Spice World. It's a shame to the Razzie Awards, which Verhoeven was the first director to attend to collect his. Irony, see, is a tightrope, but if you get to the other side the same ones who derided you will clap, given time. And balance.

Also, writer Joe Eszterhaz was at its best with this one. "They wanna f*** Hope. This is a classy joint". This is screwball for the millennium. A perfect companion to Wall Street (1987), except that one got an Oscar even though it is much inferior, Showgirls is like its "Goddess" heroin, ambitious as hell and how f*** does it know the moves to get there (this one pool sex scene with Prince Charming a cyborg terror one). But when a drag queen becomes the closest she has to a mother, Nomi is genuinely happy to see her again. "Full of s***", sings the fat lady. Irony, yes?

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Three's À Crowd

[3/10 · 23 September 2016]

Three's A Crowd

If three's the charm in real life, it is more of a curse at the movies. Just think: The Godfather, Star Wars, Spiderman, The Lord of the Rings, Batman, Iron Man, the first X-Men trilogy… the list goes on forever. And now completes the second X-Men trilogy. Crammed to the brim with lesser supers coloring by numbers various anecdotal vignettes, that thing is a panicked attempt at closure as much as it is an exercise in frustration. The patient fan will weather its foolish writing and mediocre CGI; the occasional spectator might feel more than a little bored by the stiff, uncharismatic portrayal of characters much better deployed in Brian Synger's two original movies, the irony being that he's back in the director's seat.

The pre-title sequence brings us back in Egypt, the country where they are quite lousy at anything but building pyramids. Wizard En Sabah Nur is venerated like a God but the heresy successfully aborts his transition from one body to another, a process requiring magic, sun and a very ineffectual crew. One perused comments on the movie deploring that a God was too powerful an antagonist for the X-Men, and one would like to suggest that someone who can be defeated by a few blocks of stone and desert sand is not exactly of divine essence, but whatever. Apocalypse, as he's fortunately not called during the movie, is buried in limbo until his expected, well, resurgence.

After a weird credit sequence jumping to the end of the 20th century by way of Jesus Christ, Mona Lisa and a subway train, the film proceeds to character exposition, so here we go meeting Nightcrawler (looking as German as the Taj Mahal), Angel, Cyclop, Havoc, Jean Grey, Yadda, Yadda, and Yadda. Most of them gloomily assemble at the Xavier School for Creepy Mutants, then En Sabah Nur is released and apocalypse ensues until he is defeated quite the same way than the first time around, another clue that either Gods have short memory or that the guy is just an old mutant well past his prime.

While most of the movie is puzzling to say the least, some key points of the screenplay are indeed apocalyptic for their awkwardness. Consider the fact that an explosion in Egypt is felt in Poland, that the Auschwitz concentration camp, still in shambles in the 80s when it was already a museum in the 50s, is destroyed by an Egyptian "God" spending half his time debating good and evil when he's by essence beyond both, or the inept Wolverine cameo. But most of all, try to wrap your head around the fact that En Sabah Nur enables his Four Horsemen (AGAIN?) to defeat him by tuning them like quads; or that Jean Grey, who's presented by Xavier as having "the most powerful spirit in the galaxy" is played by Sophie Turner (Games of Thrones' Sansa). Let's take a moment to let that sink.

If Miss Turner has proved something with Games of Thrones, it's her ability to wear ludicrous costumes, and that ability is well used here. But you know you have a problem when she's written as the most powerful spirit of anything, let alone the galaxy. As most of the new class, she has the charisma of a kitchen appliance. You plug her in, she acts, you hear nothing but a monotone buzzing. Storm is the same but worse. Psylocke, who escapes at the end, better should not be the villain next time because she has the screen presence of a puppet finger.

One quite likes the X-Men, much better actually that the Avengers' ragtag posse of a smug cyborg, a Nordic God, a Jeckyll & Hyde brute, a vintage Republican soldier and a Russian assassin. Their powers are more focused and the Professor Xavier / Magneto rivalry adds a layer of character complexity to their story. But alas, not this time. Better watch again the two first movie: if two is company, three's a crowd.

The Best Offer (2013)

True Fake

[7/10 · 23 September 2016]

The best this movie has to offer is Geoffrey Rush, giving a subtly layered performance and elevating an otherwise classic (and classy) heist material to the heights of tragedy – and redemption. At the beginning, Virgil Oldman is seen as a cold fish, an auctioneer at the peak of his worldwide reputation. His refined eye can't be fooled as he scrutinises works of art he manipulates with gloved hands, gloves of which he has dozens of pairs meticulously aligned in a special cabinet. He does not even take them off when he dines at his favourite restaurant, where he has his table and his monogrammed tableware. He is, at his core, disgusted by other people and refuses to touch them or their possessions.

But Virgil has a secret: for years, he has been under-evaluating arcane paintings of great value, expertising them as forgeries on which his partner in crime and failed painter Billy (Donald Sutherland, succulent as usual) successfully bids at auctions. Billy gets a cut of the profit and Virgil hangs his loots in his secret vault, where he can gaze at them in solitude. From the size of the vault and the number of paintings, one can say that this stunt has been lasting for quite some years.

Claire Ibbetson, a mysterious woman (isn't there always one?) calls Virgil and ask him for an evaluation of a big collection of furniture and paintings. Reluctant at first, he finally agrees to meet her but she misses their first appointment, then another. He finally gets to see the collection but not its owner whom, her servant informs him, nobody has seen for twelve years as she suffers from agoraphobia and only leaves her panic room when everyone else has left the villa. She seems to be quite the bipolar recluse, with violent mood swings which only amplify his curiosity.

Said curiosity is heightened again when he finds a piece of machinery in the villa's basement. After being expertised by a genius mechanics with whom he's in regular contact, the fragment reveals to be part of a 18th century automaton built by Vaucanson (he of the mechanical duck fame), which value if completed would be inestimable. A game of cat and mouse starts between the auctioneer and the potential seller, to whom he hides his discovery. He spies on her and finally see her 50′ after the film started, and talk to her only well into the second hour.

Time and again he returns to the villa, grabbing here and there pieces of the automaton, which builds in parallel with the tension between the elusive Claire and himself. His initial mistrust is mollified by her constant yo-yoing between fear and attraction. They quarrel like lovers well before becoming so. Anything and its contrary, under a constant suspicion of treachery and betrayal. Scopophilia plays an important role in their relationship; he buys her couture dresses and jewels, in the hope she will get better and can get rid of her phobia and join him for a trip abroad.

One won't be so cruel as to spoil the ending of a movie, which is predictable but elegantly put together, with the help of a paralysed midget gifted with eidetic memory. Virgil loses some, wins some and, at the time of the majestic last scene in a Prague restaurant, is a changed man. Meticulously filmed, well played by all involved and benefiting from an Ennio Morricone score, The Best Offer is a quiet thriller, almost perfect but for a few inconsistencies, fortunately appearing early enough in the picture not to impair the final momentum. There is always something authentic in a forgery, and everything can be faked but what one is feeling towards oneself. Whatever the distance self-inflicted between one and the rest of the world, one remains part of it, for better or for worse. A brilliant machine with a telltale heart, The Best Offer deserves its title.

Under the Skin (I) (2013)

Siren Song

[8/10 · 23 September 2016]

One doesn't know if it took Jonathan Glazer nine months to complete Birth, his previous movie, but it is a pity that it took him nine years to finally release Under the Skin. The man is truly gifted. The complete antithesis of Independence Day and its bombastic clones, the movie treats alien invasion as the intimate drama of its unnamed heroin, splendidly interpreted by Scarlett Johanson, who seems to be unable to be bad in anything for quite some time now.

She drives a white van in concentric circles around Glasgow, stopping to ask directions to lonely men she lures into empty houses with the promise of sex. She is very good at small talk and they are unable to refuse her siren song and looks. As tedious and repetitive her routine is, following her is all but boring. She's often filmed behind the wheel with the empty passenger seat at her side, her concentration never breaking while she scans the street in search for her next target. As was the case with the prolonged close up of Nicole Kidman's face listening to concert music in Birth, Johanson expresses an impressive range of micro-emotions without being emoting. She's literally hypnotic.

Once in the empty house, she progressively disrobes in a seemingly infinite dark space and the men follow her before disappearing in the most intriguing way. Under the Skin uses CGI in the cleverest way possible, not adding non-existing sets but subtracting any set, a smart choice for both an alien creature lost in space and her human preys. Three such scenes are shown in the movie, progressively revealing what is the trade she's plying, the object of her quest, the function she fills. And that function is ghoulish.

A mysterious accomplice on a motorcycle helps her disposing of evidence, most strikingly in a scene requiring extraordinary guts to put on screen as it involves a young man disfigured by neurofibromatosis, the illness that affected John Merrick (The Elephant Man). That encounter is treated with incredible flair, as shocking as it is delicate. The way the episode ends is devastating and the woman starts feeling the strangest thing: reluctance to fulfill her search-and-destroy mission. She meets a good Samaritan and experience a series of weird events, being repelled by chocolate cake, not getting TV comedy or seemingly discovering her own shoulder blades. A creeping sense of sadness unfolds, furtively balanced by funny moments, counterpoints to her own dissonant tune.The sudden revelation of her true nature is both brutal and minimal in its violence, but it carries a lingering echo, as disturbing as it is unforgettable.

Checking IMDb made one aware that Under the Skin's original score won an outstanding 20 awards across the globe. The music, based on venomous strings reminiscent of snake charming, impressively blends into the soundscape designed for the movie, alternatively emphasising parts of it while muffling others. It is also interesting to learn that Scarlett Johanson won a prize for Best Naked / Seduction scene awarded by a feminine critic jury. She is a gorgeous woman and seems unwilling to remain fully clothed for very long in spite of Scotland's rigorous climate, but it says more about the gullibility of lonely men being offered a lift by an unknown woman than it plays bare breasts as exploitation. Aliens, see, have understood a thing or two about what it means to be a human male.

Il Divo (2008)

Truth Is The End Of The World

[9/10 · 23 September 2016]

Splendidly visual, Il Divo is anything but a biopic of Giulio Andreotti, an austere and prominent Italian politician, 25 times minister and 7 times Prime Minister between 1964 and 1989. It is more of a portrait, fragmented and elusive as they best portraits are; it also offers an unique view on politics and murder during the bonfire of vanities that were Italian politics at the near end of the 20th century.

The only creature that can live long and prosper in a bonfire is a salamander, and that's precisely what Andreotti (Toni Sorvillo, extraordinary) looks and acts like. Devoid of any visible emotions save for his hand motions, translated to Fanny Ardant in a transient role by his devoted secretary, the Presidente (of the Council, not the Republic, and that's the problem) "doesn't succumb to lesser vices" but ice cream. He doesn't drink anything but water, he doesn't smoke, he is not cheating on his wife Livia (Anna Bonaiuto, first seen being bored during the blueprint for the bunga-bunga parties to come, during which the Finance ministry makes a fool of himself). Prone to migraines, he toasts with aspirin and read gialli in the Senate. He is as opaque as opaque can be before it gets dark.

Andreotti is by all means a survivor and a loner, a condition emphasised by his constant crossing of gigantic halls of power, in which no one or nothing can come in his way but a Persian cat with vairon eyes. He is opinionated to the point of brilliance, once telling Pope John XXIII "Pardon me Your Holiness but you do not know anything about the Vatican". He has a dry sense of humour, the mere shadow of a smile touching Sorvillo's lips when he's asked the question "Have you ever danced?", to which he answers "All my life, Madam."

His entourage, presented one by one at the movie beginning, is a clique of rather shady Christian Democrats, including a cardinal nicknamed "His Healthiness". When they congregate at Andreotti's, his secretary announce them by saying "Storm clouds are gathering", an excellent definition of what is happening. They plot their next moves, wishing but failing to have the Prime Minister elected President. They exchange jokes about past Popes. Andreotti hardly smiles. In a scene stupendous for the banality with which it suggests the growing chasm between him and his wive, they just hold hands watching TV, switching from a news program to a variety show. He doesn't look at her, lost in thought; she looks at his profile for a long while, searching for the smallest trace of the man she once married. She does not find anything.

Last part of Il Divo deals with Andreotti's trials and tribulations. The trial of the century opens, based on his presumed links with Mafia boss Toto Riina (Enzo Rai, scary as hell). We know the two met because the event was shown earlier in the movie. Still, Andreotti is so convincing in his denial that one doubts what he just witnessed. Was it magical realism, like the scene in which a skateboard incongruously rolls through the Senate hallway, or was it history? It's impossible to say. Andreotti is an extra-terrestrial, a very cautious turtle carrying on him the weight of political decades, and you can feel every gram of it leadening, but never weakening his stance. The movie is a f***ing masterpiece.

Occhi di cristallo (2004)

Hello Dolly

[6/10 · 23 September 2016]

Everything has been said and written about the giallo sub-genre, initiated by Mario Bava at the end of the 60s, polished to near perfection by Dario Argento in the 70s while generating countless attempts at this specific kind of thriller, most of them Italian. It is generally admitted that the last great giallo was Argento's 1987 Opera, with purists discarding it in favour of 1982 Tenebre, as it is bitterly regretted that the Italian master's production since then was a sad slide into the morass of self copycatting, resulting in movies varying from disappointing (Nonhasonno, Il Sindrome di Stendhal) to terrible (Trauma, Giallo), deprived of any of the visual brilliance his earlier work displayed.

Various attempts have been made at revamping the giallo form for contemporary film-goers, most of them ludicrous (German Masks, French Amer, to name but two). To this day, none can even remotely pass for a good giallo, the formula having been preempted by serial killers in the 90s and enshrined in amber ever since. It is therefore a very pleasant surprise to discover Eros Puglieli's movie, who achieves a lot by virtue of a rather good screenplay, solid actors, an interesting choice of music and a visual parti-pris which mostly works in spite of a few weaknesses.

Inspector Amaldi (Luigi Lo Cascio, a little know but intense actor) is a conflicted man and a talented police officer with a background in criminal psychology. He was victim of a gruesome experience in his youth and finds himself confronted to a twisted killer with a keen interest in taxidermy, a niche discipline that he pushes a bit too far for the well-being of a sizable portion of the cast. Meeting a good looking student complaining about a stalker, he has to dig deep into his abilities and emotions to find the killer before he finds her.

All the codes of giallo are respected in an otherwise contemporary feature: a vicious killer with a traumatic past killing his victims with sharp weapons and collecting trophies; coded enigmas announcing the next murder; obvious red herrings; a scary antique doll loaded with sexual implications; an oppressive soundtrack; "improbable when you eliminate the impossible" killer identity. Even the mandatory killer-falling-to his- death is delivered, in a rather satisfying scene. It could be said in fact that the only non-giallo component is a tight screenplay, as the genre is known to be prone to plot holes the size of a wound by ax.

Don't pay too much attention to the shaky initial chase: the rest of the movie is much better filmed, with some inspired moments like a conversation between two characters cleverly filmed through a variety of visual obstacles. Evidently, the murder set pieces are what draws one to a giallo in the first place; without being overly gory they nevertheless reach a decent level of nastiness. Yellow is definitely an Italian colour. Lol

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Same Player Shoots Again

[3/10 · 23 September 2016]

Hollywood must be psychic: this is the second week in a row that London gets destroyed, this time by Singapore and Dubai debris, in a thinly veiled metaphor for alien migrants. Also, Independence Day: Resurgence (henceforth Resurgence) acts as a cautionary tale about the dangers of having a woman elected President of the United States, while devaluing the office so much that any four star general can be sworn into it by happenstance. It is good that 20 years have passed since the original movie became the highest grossing blockbuster of 1996: the State of the Union has changed quite a bit in a generation, and the sequel brings those changes under a magnifying lense.

In 1996, the aliens stroke the United States, perceiving the land of the free / home of the brave as the world's thinking head and powerful shoulders. If Washington fell, their victory was a sure bet. Former jet pilot POTUS led the counter-offensive of a ragtag skeleton crew and USA, therefore humankind, prevailed in spite of being unprepared and vastly overpowered technologically. So, what happens in 2016?

The world stands united under a US and vaguely Chinese leadership and has established a space defense system based on alien technology (basically a very slow blue laser which takes forever to charge after it blasts). The aliens will come back sooner or later, but surely not on the very anniversary of their first strike, implicating that the American calendar rule the Universe? Well, of course they appear right on time: it goes with the territory…

Some kind of an eight ball appears out of a worm hole and is promptly shot over the moon. Madam POTUS, as the party girl she remains, decides to delay the examination of the crashed spacecraft until "after the celebration", one of her many poor decisions before she gets annihilated with her whole administration, conveniently assembled in one place. But David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum, hardly changed in 20 years) thinks differently; he join forces with a suit (Nicolas Wright, also writer of the thing and unable to provide himself with any character consistency), an old flame (Charlotte Gainsbourg, in her ill-advised big budget debut) and an African warlord (Deobia Oparei, don't ask) to examine the alien spacecraft, doubtlessly full of goodies.

"What are we looking for?" asks someone, to be answered "I hope we'll know when we see it." What they don't see at first is the 3000 miles long alien spaceship gamely hiding behind the moon. This time, they are prepared, see. The mother ship has an motherf***er of an EMP which crashes all satellites, an anti-gravitational pulse which sends the Burq-El-Arab on a collision course with the Tower Bridge, and lands over the Atlantic ("Which part? All of them!"), missing the White House by an inch.

And so it's back full circle to the first movie but bigger, louder and, mercifully, shorter. The dynastic system being firmly established, we have President Whitmore's (Bill Pullman, shaving his beard to commit the ultimate sacrifice) daughter Patricia, herself a jet pilot with intuitive knowledge of alien fighters command system; Will Smith's son (not Will Smith's son, praise the Lord), himself a jet pilot, etc. etc. etc. Patricia's boyfriend's Jake (Liam Hemsworth) is here for the ride with sidekick What's-His-Name. Jeff's Goldblum's father shows up too, bringing the kids to what is essentially a family reunion compromised by poorly educated neighbours, aka evil alien harvesters refueling their motherfucking ship with Earth's molten motherfucking core.

The script oscillates between destruction and attempts at witty banter. Very few characters die but when they do they do so nobly. The promise of yet another sequel is shamelessly made, since a new treasure trove of technology has been unlocked for humanity to "kick some alien ass", rejoices mad gay scientist Dr. Brakish Okun (Brent Spiner, easily the best character around), seemingly unaffected by the death of his long time partner. By contrast, the war lord has a considerable effect on the suit. Go figure.

Transposing in the interstellar realm the US inability to win a war on Earth then deal with its aftermath, Resurgence's long awaited "killer idea" of a sequel basically boils down to reheating the first movie with some Star Wars (the Dark Star) and some Alien (the Queen and her hive) added in the mix. To say that it doesn't break any new ground would be stating the obvious. "It's getting real real" underlines a savvy jet pilot, when on the contrary it has never felt so unreal, devoid of any original idea, feeling, or purpose. See you, aliens.

Now You See Me 2 (2016)

Stick It In Your Eye

[3/10 · 23 September 2016]

If in the first installment of this derogatory franchise money was magic, in this one magic is a farce. Trying hard to figure out practical explanations for his crew of illusionists' CGI tricks, panting writer Ed Solomon tinkers with various form of comedy, from a Rube Goldberg self- decapitation to slapstick to witty banter, the rest of the writing team being in charge of "character development", or rather the illusion thereof.

Back are our Five Horsemen, even though the only female character has changed. Details. Please have a round of applause for Mr Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo, playing Mark Ruffalo), Mr Wilder (James Franco, very good at smiling charmingly), Mr McKinney (Woody "Ham" Harrelson), Miss Lula, who doesn't have a name since she's a woman (Lizzy Caplan, as perky and quirky as Isla Fisher was, well, neither the one nor the other), and Mr Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg, easily the best of the lot as he manages to infuse some measure of vicious cipher into his performance). And of course our super duper magical team of sociopaths would not come back without their pet peeves: Mr Bradley (Morgan Freeman, in charge of the 'An eye for an eye" voice-over because he has a soothing voice), Mr Tressler (Sir Michael Caine, cashing his check), and some new flesh: Mr Li, who doesn't have a first name since he's Chinese (Jay Chou, who might have the best line of dialogue translating what grandmother said in Cantonese), and Mr Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe, good at cult lines like "Tadam!" or "Splash!").

What does it say about a movie when the name of nine actors are above the title, among them two Oscar winners and three nominees? One thing: cash machine. In the first movie, the Four Horsemen, under the shady guidance of the fifth, were actually performing some grand illusions which Mr Bradley debunked, in order to rob heartless insurance magnate Mr. Tressler. In this one, they debunk their own tricks in order to perform a heist. If you have kept your childhood fascination for prestidigitation, disappearing bunnies and appearing doves, avoid this film at all cost: it must be the most depressing backstage visit you will ever have.

So, what happens this time, are you asking? Mr Mabry has invented the movie's McGuffin, a program which is alluded to sometimes as a chip, sometimes as a card and as a stick the rest of the time. He proudly shows a PowerPoint presentation about it in Macau, where the Horsemen are teleported by way of a swirling pizza box and a debris chute. You don't wanna know. He's a genius, see, and therefore is insufferable and childish, the only way Hollywood knows to write geniuses to pander to the short attention span of its audience. Also, he looks and sounds high.

Said stick is the reason why an endlessly protracted scene involving an ace of spades will test your patience, not to mention the disbelief you had to check at the door. It is also responsible for Mr McKinney to have a twin brother, resulting in Woody Harrelson trying to out-ham himself. Those scenes are a pain to watch. It also brings together father and son Mr. Tessler and Mr Mabry and frankly, the very concept of Sir Michael Caine fathering Daniel Radcliffe is terrifying, if a good example of poetic justice. Damn stick.

Unable to give any character any motivation that is not rooted in family bonds, unable to stage any violence out of the proverbial "nobody gets hurts" box, unable not to picture Asians full of wisdom and – AWESOME! – able to speak English, unable to even film Macau or London, you can't expect NYSM2 to know anything about pattern recognition or magic, even though it tries to bullshit you it does. If by the first hour you have not guessed who will be revealed as head of The Eye in the next movie, you deserve to see it next year. If you do, one guesses you will muse which one is best, pulling a head out of an eye or a hat out of a rabbit.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

Bleebeedee Blup

[2/10 · 21 September 2016]

Bleebeedee bleebeedeeshtoingblip, I am a baseball with a soup bowl on it, clingbleepbleebeedukshtoomp. My master is a resourceful human female with a argumentative and poorly coordinated black sidekick. Kluk. She lives in a dangerous environment where everything is blown up to pieces all the time. I find myself being a target for villains of the First Order, so she is too. Didoodidoodidoowizzz.

After yet something else explodes she meets Mr Han Solo. He also has a sidekick, Mr Chewbacca, who resents to always be bottom. Me would have though that with such a name Mr Solo would have prefer using his own hand to topping a furry creature. Widooyoobeepboodiblurp?

The bad guys are everywhere. They are in the walls! They have scary dialogue like "Oversee preparation. Yes Supreme Leader!". Bloogy bool? It's confusing, Kilo, Mr Solo's son, is with the Supreme Leader, human family being such an enigma… Bedooglorgle, didooglurpshtoing, or as Mr Chewbacca would put it succintly, "Grooooooar!".

Me don't get either the human urge to go to taverns where they ingest barely cooked weird food, like they do in fantasy series with dragons and many banquets. Gluckeewoodoolidoopop! Everything looks dirty, but the storm troopers' white armour is always spotless.

Didoodidoodidoobleepdoolooloobleep, a planet just has been destroyed. Mr Solo likes to try Mr Chewbacca's toys. Me is confused. An now there is a woman, Mrs Organa, with other droids. She apparently mothered Kilo, but that was a long time ago so she should have lost weight by now. Bleebeedeeblup?

The black sidekick is ogling a pilot who lets him keep his jacket because "it suits you". I can't understand humans. Bleeeeeep bleeeeeep bleeeeeeep.

Auto-destruction programme initiated.

Bleebeedee boooooooom.

After one explosion woke one up, one was drawn to the conclusion that one has slept during the rest of the bleedepeblup.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

It Could Be Better But Not By Much

[8/10 · 21 September 2016]

With a title bound to leave you out in the cold, begging to be let in to experiment immortal love, this Jim Jarmush movie is not exactly the easiest beast in the zoo. It captures a moment in the story, or the absence thereof, of Eve (SWINTON!) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston), her only love and creation. She lives secluded in Tangiers like a Jane Bowles character, he's a recluse musician collecting guitars in Detroit. They are both vampires and survive on a strictly no-kill diet with the help of catering "French doctors".

They hide well, those low-profile vampires, only betrayed by the odd turn of phrase or an out of period detail that only specialists would notice. Their sources of supply are dwindling down, because time has not stopped for the rest of the world and finding clean blood becomes more and more difficult. Drinking human being have simply become too much of a risk, as one of the character will, unfortunately for everyone involved, experience.

Eve is strong and has faith on eternity. She shares jokes about the good ol'days with Christopher (John Hurt) her best (only?) friend, and they laugh as if those moments four centuries ago were yesterday. They savour blood in small liquor glasses, a delicate ritual with a rush so strong it slows down everything in a brilliant series of ecstatic close ups. This movie takes its vampirism seriously, the drinking of blood more communion than consumption, more celebration than desecration. It starts spinning on embroidered djellabas and priceless mandolins and it never stops swirling, like dervishes, life and death entwined, forever and ever.

Adam is more of a tortured soul. He's sick of depending on "zombis", human vassals, to be fed. He has a secret art project commissioned, one small object made of the toughest African wood possible. Eve senses something is wrong and flies to Detroit, from one city in decay to another. He plays guitar and she dances, the high priestess of an intimate cult. "You missed all the fun in the Middle Ages", she tells him. Their lovemaking is reminiscent of l'amour courtois with its taking off the glove and symbolic undressing. They sleep in total darkness, in love like in death.

It takes its time and unfolds rapturously, a trip to the Jack White's house now and some urban exploration in a decrepit movie theater then. Blood lollipops and poison mushrooms. "I suppose it could be worse, but not by much" says Adam. So evidently it becomes much worse.

Ava (Mia Wasikowska) Eve's younger sister, reappears, even though an unfortunate incident in Paris drew them apart 87 years earlier. Eve is welcoming, Adam is annoyed by the selfish and greedy girl. They go out in a club where Adam's unreleased music is playing. Mia drinks a zombi and falls sick "What did you expect, he's from the music industry", Adams hilariously observes.

Blood rarefies. They fly back to Tangiers only to discover the French doctor has been peddling bad stuff to Christopher. His death scene is a delicate balancing act between drama, tenderness, and the offhand revelation of his true identity. It reminds one of the painting La Mort de Murat and it is lovely made. Lovely, lovely, but oh so sad.

It ends with two brilliant scenes, one in a cabaret with a commanding Arab songstress and one outside at night, Eve and Adam watching a young couple making out, obviously hot for each other. In both scenes, the dialogue is brilliant but one has already quoted too much.

Only Lovers Left Alive is one of the three great vampire movies of this young century, together with Let The Right One In and Byzantium. It is the trippiest of the three and it has to be watched or you'll wander in endless darkness, wondering what immortal love feels like.

The VVitch: A New-England Folktale (2015)

Woulst Thou Like To Live Deliciously?

[6/10 · 21 September 2016]

The Witch is an ambitious movie, it's dialogue all in Olde English, yet it does not bring home the proverbial bacon. It is nevertheless driven by a vision, it is pretty well made and puts on the radar some awesomely gifted child actors. Set in 17th century New England, it deploys the drama of a community confronted with a brave new world, left to the devices of their puritan roots to make sense of it, and eventually conquer it. Problem is, some collateral damage is unavoidable.

Meet the Family, it does not have a name; they are an allegory of whatever can go wrong when America, land of the free, home of the brave, retracts into a witch hunt. McCarthy, neo-cons, whatever will happen next. Father (Ralph Ineson, whose gravelly voice is a third of the pleasure watching this movie), is banished from his community because he's too much of an integrist, even though he's a loving husband and father. He, his wife (Kate Dickie) and their five children are left to "conquer this wilderness" during an hostile season.

Things quickly unravel from there, in a weird mix of The White Ribbon and Barry Lyndon, with some John Constable painting and a dash of Caravaggio being poured in the mix. Tomasin, the titular witch, anoints herself so to get rid of her younger siblings' annoyance and it uncoils a death trap fueled by ignorance, superstition and bigotry.

Various animals intervene as God's will, or the Devil's. There is an evil hare, an even more evil raven, a hapless dog, and Black Phillip, a goat with a mellifluous voice, or so hear poor Tomasin, the unlikely heroin of the piece (Anya Taylor-Joy, wonderful). Then it goes like a country song, losing the last born, the harvest, the trust of your beloved ones, the horse, the wife, more children, your life.

Everything is blamed on possibly evil, menstruating Tomasin, including the death of her brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw, nothing short of astonishing), who meets the witch, maybe, in a spooky scene with awful consequences. Everyone dies in retribution from animals associated with the Devil, but Mother, so mad by now she attempts at strangling Tomasin. "You reek of Evil", she yells at who was her beloved daughter a few days prior.

One won't say how it ends. More ethnology than witchcraft, more puritan hysteria in the vein of The Crucible or The Devils than, say, Ouija 2, The Witch is a meticulously planned, meticulously filmed object of not so much fascination. It is quite good though, and its acting is superlative. Viewing advised.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

Manslaughterfield Park

[6/10 · 21 September 2016]

Jane Austen and zombis, an absurd mash-up? Think twice: the exiguity of an estate, the difficulty to find someone not already smitten/bitten, the iron rule of survival in the hostile environment of a meat market, social or visceral… Seth Grahame-Smith's 2009 concept novel of the same name was killing to be clever and very successful, so a movie adaptation was to be expected. It is unfortunate that it took seven years to bring it on screen, overfed as we are in 2016 by all things zombi.

It would be both herculean and meaningless to cross-reference Pride+Prejudice+Zombis with both its original sources or any or all of the previous Jane Austen adaptations, including, yes, The Bridget Jones' Diary. No plot recap is necessary anyway: Elisabeth Bennet, elder of a sorority of five girls when the estate is bequested to a male heir, Parson Collins, Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley, both wealthy bachelors, are as familiar to most as Frankenstein and his creature. If it entices some of its audience to read Jane Austen, hell, this movie is no The Walking Dead. Perspective is all.

So, what about this particular piece of work? The trailer made one expecting the worst, a bodice-ripping Sucker Punch with zombi attacks as the alpha and the omega of the movie. Fortunately, it is much better than that. But no action movie this is. Successful at conversation pieces but quite lame at zombi mayhem, one suspects the movie achieves the exact opposite that it was aiming at: a clever adaptation of a classic by virtue of good dialogue instead of an doomsday invasion, its zombis more catalytic than apocalyptic. Lines like "It must have have cost a fortune to clean the zombi blood from this marble" are pitch perfect; recitation of Jane Austen's lines during Shaolin training feels forced.

Some scenes are unintentionally hilarious, like the five sisters massacring a whole zombi hamlet with not a drop of blood staining their white ball gloves, or Mr Darcy tending at the topiary by moonlight, not once but twice. Some are just really well written, like Elisabeth Bennett (Lily James) laughing at an hideous painting or Parson Collins (Matt Jones) small talk during a quadrille. As is most unfortunately usual, the third act is a mess, almost but not saved by a final scene who says it all: fighting was useless from the get-go, see, and the movie has no qualms admitting it is. Is it irony or shamelessness, one wonders.

"I was in the middle before knowing I has started", states one of the original novel's most famous line. In this instance, one was in the middle when one hoped it ended. Too long at 1:47, Pride+Prejudice+Zombis is nevertheless much better than expected from its undead genre. One is fervently awaiting more of the same, like Henry James' The Golden Cup of Blood or Charles Dicken's Our Mutual Fiend.

Fed Up (2014)

School Food Is Good Food

[5/10 · 21 September 2016]

A trailer for the collapse of the United States under its own obesity during the first half of the 21st century, Fed Up is a nightmare. Produced and voiced over by Katie Couric, this documentary is serious investigative work, crammed with interviews of politicians (including Bill Clinton), a few representatives of the food industry, scientists and obese teenagers who sure are the most distraught of the lot, considering they are the victims of a deeply sick system who has conditioned them to crave for sugar since they were toddlers. Feeling like a dystopian movie? Look no further, the future is happening right now.

Four facts will help you measure up what's at stake here:

Sugar is eight times as addictive as cocaine. There are for the first time in history more obese people than starving people on the planet. After intense lobbying from Schwan, a corporation producing 70% of industrial pizza consumed in the US, it was made official in 2012 that pizza was indeed a vegetable. 51% of the US population is either obese or TOFI 'Thin Outside, Fat Inside", meaning they present the same metabolic symptoms than obese people, namely diabetes and an excessive fat ratio. What happened to the tobacco industry at the end of the 20th century might be a glimmer of hope for those who revolt at the idea of their children being enslaved by the Sugar Lobby to eat always more; if nothing is done 95% of the US population will be overweight in the space of a generation. And it won't stop here, as the middle East and North Africa face the same problem.

"In truth I had no idea what the truth was", concludes one of the obese teenagers, demonstrating how solipsistic is a system in which a government subsidises an industry while launching programmes to lessen the impact said industry has on public health. These acrobatics have lasted for the last 40 years, and it's a matter of time before the balls come tumbling down. Scarier than any horror movie, Fed Up makes one want to rage against the machine. But no one was fat in The Matrix, right?

Gods of Egypt (2016)

Keeping Up With The Kardashians

[3/10 · 21 September 2016]

In movies there are the good, the bad and the ugly. This one takes the cake of the latter, eats it, digests it, evacuates it and proudly shows off the result on screen. In other words, it's crap.

Not only pilfering the Egyptian pantheon but unable to make anything of it, Gods of Egypt pictures its titular characters like temperamental imbeciles, almighty beings only able to settle their quarrels by way of bad one-liners and fisticuffs. They are helpless fools, a bit like the Windsors, but working out, and very tall. They also are modular and bleed gold.

In order of appearance, please meet Osiris (Bryan Brown) who's about to crown his son Horus (Nicolaj Coaster-Waldau) king, because that's what immortal gods do, in front of a large crowd of which we'll follow only two humans, Thief of Baghdad Bek and his girlfriend Zaya, "beauty of the Nile", according to the poster. Argh. Osiris' brother Set (not Seth, since Gerard Butler can't spell), until then relegated to the desert, crashes the party, kills his brother and enucleates Horus, whose all-seeing eyes do not prove very effective on that instance. Horus is not killed thanks to Hathor, the Goddess of Love.

We are treated to other divine cameos, like Ra, the God of Sun (poor Geoffrey Rush, slumming) driving a celestial pedalo in hot pursuit of Apophis, the Night Snake, or like Thoth, the God of Knowledge (Chadwick Boseman), who's black, gay and a comic relief as he lives amidst clones of himself. Oh, and he's God of Wisdom, since the writers have no knowledge whatsoever of their subject matter: the thief will save the day while Gods bicker at each other. He's the audience, see, the one we can identify with.

CGI is constant, allowing pyramids to grow like mushrooms. Egyptians can't build robust architecture but they are a very innovative people, inventing things like the umbrella or the elevator. Godly traps prove childishly easy to avoid. The Afterlife is crowded like a peak hour subway. It is, all in all, super easy to kill a God.

Dialogue is abysmal, from the Sphinx saying anything but "Bummer!" when his riddle is solved to anything regarding Hathor. "Ah, you are not so good, Goddess of Love" deserves to join another pantheon, the one of worst movie lines ever. She answers in kind "I am the Goddess of too much!". Well, rutabaga.

...And God Created Woman (1956)

Initiale BB (aka Being Boring)

[2/10 · 21 September 2016]

A parasitic form of life, women love nothing more than being slapped in the face. That's the idea behind Roger Vadim's first movie, which alternative title could be St Tropez… In the Beginning, a quainter than quaint piece, dated before being contemporary. It nevertheless drew massive crowds, and placed Brigitte Bardot's on orbit as THE French sex Goddess. To each his own.

Arguing that Vadim was more interested in playing God with women than in cinema undoubtedly has a point. His track record in womanizing is impressive. His writing and directing are far less stellar though, a curious case of zeitgeist marginally interfering with melodrama, present movie being the prefect case study.

The mother of Tropezian Tart, Juliette (BB) is a despicable tease and a sloth. She wants to be happy and makes everyone miserable in the process; she is a black hole of selfishness and stupidity. Far above her head when it comes to even wake up, she sow frustration and destruction wherever she goes, barefoot, under St Tropez's stupid, selfish sun. She's in love, but not quite, with one guy whose brother Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant, handsome in his prime) she will marry, precipitating a not very interesting chain of events including guns, a juke box, a torrid mambo scene and Curt Jurgens as the cosmopolitan vile seducer without whom the whole piece would play out like Marcel Pagnol.

Bardot is a complete cipher, reluctant to act as to be filmed. She either pouts in rebellion or pouts in lascivious oblivion of said rebellion. She's the French Megan Fox, at an antiquated time when a novelty actress career could last for more than three movies. Jurgens is straight out of an Eddie Constantine movie and Trintignant, still inexperienced, is by far the best of the lot.

Scenes abruptly fade to black after half hearted one-liners, leading to nothing but the oh-so-slow build-up of a presumably dramatic end but fear not, if you have the leisure of feeling involved between two yawns, nothing bad will happen and the status quo will prevail. "I would like to think of nothing", says Bardot, meaning herself, then she dances in front of a mirror since she only likes herself and not even that much. A couple of slaps later she's back in the marital bed; a sex Goddess indeed.

Vadim and Bardot kinda invented reality TV, And God Created Woman a precursor of Temptation in the Kardashian Island. Is that worth of your time 60 years later? Definitely not, according to Vadim, whose last movie was a remake of the same, featuring Rebecca de Mornay, the American Brigitte Bardot. Sigh.

The Veil (I) (2016)

Nightmare On Nail Street

[3/10 · 21 September 2016]

A grim answer to the question "What the heck happened to Jessica Alba?", The Veil starts with a blasphemous mass and ends with a crucifixion. Heavily relying on the Jim Jones' mass suicide with just a dash of the Manson family, it mixes classic cinematography with post-modern seasoning, found footage (please Lord, make it STOP!) and an unreliable narrator. Mix the whole in a Cabin in the Woods environment (after carefully expunging all said movie's cleverness and voilà, here's your bad movie of the week. You watch what is filmed of the characters; you watch what the characters film; you also watch a lot of the characters watching the movie they found. Call it meta if you wish. One calls it crap.

Sarah Hope, natch (Lili Rabe, of American Horror Story's fame, here given absolutely nothing to do) is the sole survivor of Heaven's Veil, a cult led by Jim Jacobs (Tomas Jane, hamming it up as if the world was really about to end). Maggie Price, natch (Jessica Alba) wants to shoot a documentary on the massacre, because her father, an FBI agent, committed suicide after such an horror happened on his watch. She has a crew, which bears no importance whatsoever since they will all die anyway. OK. Let's share a moment of non-nonsense approach now, shall we?

So: jump scares (at least 6), rocking chair, moth, whispering ghosts, scary doll, spiritualism seance, demonic mumbo-jumbo, torch lights running out of battery, no cellphone coverage. All checked. Everything that could possibly go wrong does so from the start, but the characters are real troopers, so they carry on. Also, they are dumb as dumb can be. Wait a minute, no cymbal-crashing monkey?

For some reason, there is ONE videotape, labeled "Experiment 23", and it's shitty as hell, but all the rest is shot in glorious Super 8 Cinemascope, immaculately edited, of course. What Experiment 23 shows makes no sense whatsoever to what will follow, but they all get hooked on it like a 20$ hooker on her first crack pipe. "We need to watch the rest of these films", someone says. NOOOOOO! RUUUUUUN!

Not to spoil much, but Jim Jacobs aims at retrieving the three nails of the Cross to acquire eternal life, a project absolutely as legit as ruling the world via the creation of a social network or creating new California property development land through an earthquake. Jesus was nailed to the Cross, so the spirit is nailed to the body, you know. Of course you do.

Embarrassed by so many references it would be pedantic and tedious to list them, movie pedestrianly proceeds to its bitter end. FBI has ESP. Sarah is not what she seems to be. Jessica Alba gets immortal the hard way. Now let's all have a quizz: why is that thing called The Veil? Oh, rutabaga.

London Has Fallen (2016)

Welcome To F***anistan

[5/10 · 21 September 2016]

It starts with a bang (very distinguishable India standing for the Philippines drone massacre) and after the mandatory "Two years later" card proceeds to a 40′ gleeful mayhem in which no less than six Heads of States are dispatched through a bloody carnage leaving the center of London eviscerated. After that it becomes a regular thriller for its remaining hour, albeit a violent one, its hero brutally played by Gerard Butler, not known for his lightness of touch. Accordingly, it starts and ends on very unpleasant notes. But let's separate the grain from the chaff first.

More deserving a deconstructing recap than an analytic review, London Has Fallen is competently made by Iranian-born Babak Najafi, after some shorts, two episodes of Banshee and two feature films, first of which he directed in Sweden. Its premise is clever, if not novel: after the British Prime Minister dies "mysteriously", leaders of the Free World congregate at the St Paul cathedral memorial service held for his State funeral. This is a nightmare scenario for logistics and security services alike. It's also about to become a nightmare, period.

To enjoy this movie, suspension of disbelief is of the essence. You will have to accept that the London police force has been infiltrated by the personal militia of a vengeful arm dealer mourning his daughter. You will have to take at face value that even the Royal Guard has been infiltrated. You will have to be fatalist about the fact the "the most protected event on Earth" therefore becomes a fish-in-a-barrel shooting party. Your reaction will probably be "Why don't they just blow up St Paul Cathedral once everyone is inside?". Well, I'll tell you why: it would be less fun.

The best moments of the movie are the Heads of State's dispatch. Apart from the President of the United States (Aaron Eckhart) and the Canadian Prime Minister, no one seems in a hurry to attend church. The German Chancellor (even more poorly dressed than Angela Merkel) is gazing at the changing of the Royal Guard, the French president procrastinates on a Riva Bella motorboat stationed on the Thames river, the Italian Prime Minister treats his 30yo mistress (one guesses) to a private visit of Westminster Abbey, while the Japanese Prime Minister is stuck in traffic with only one driver and no security.

After all are dead but POTUS, thanks to Butler, an exfiltration turns really bad, killing Angela Bassett in the process, which is inexcusable. The two last men standing will have to find a way to avoid that the president is decapitated online for the whole world to see, an exploit they achieve by killing dozens of terrorists and exchanging one-liners. "I was wondering when you would get out of the closet" says his Head of Security to the President. What are they, friends with benefits?

It ends with what seems to be an inflection in Hollywood policy about terrorism. It is unpalatable, to say the least, to show the US military in full knowledge there will be collateral civilian casualties to yet another drone strike, especially so when the Vice President ordering it is played by Morgan Freeman, aka God. No doubt it has, and will, happened. But that it appears as just retaliation in such a movie makes one wonders if the neo-cons who left the White House have found shelter in the Dream Factory.