Film Review - Ghostbusters: Afterlife (12A)

 Maybe it's the Apocalypse. 

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the fourth film in the Ghostbusters franchise, and the most satisfying episode to build on the 1984 original. That's not to say it's perfect, and let's be candid here, none of them are - not even the first one. But it does achieve a lot that a sequel should, particularly the kind that show up decades down the line with an audience of fans pining for nostalgia.

The Spengler family, mother and grandchildren of late Ghostbuster Egon Spengler, relocate to the rural town of Summerville, having inherited his farmhouse, a gaunt and decrepit pile in the mode of the Bates home from Psycho. While teenage Trevor (Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard) staves off boredom at the local fast-food restaurant, his introverted kid sister Phoebe feeds her science nerdiness by exploring her grandfather's later life paranormal obsessions, while making a psychic connection of her own in her new home. Meanwhile earth tremors and other portents of apocalyptic doom are a-brewing in Summerville, and, frankly there's no one to call. That's unless Phoebe, Trevor, and some new friends learn how to use the proton packs in Egon's secret basement, and get his cranky old Cadillac running.

Here's the truth about me and Ghostbusters - in terms of 1984, I was always more a Gremlins guy. I enjoyed the original film, with the ensemble dynamic and all Bill Murray's wisecracks, Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, the hearse-mobile and the Ray Parker Jnr. theme song, but as Netflix's recent The Movies That Made Us documentary reminded us, the underlying mythology is slapdash and pretty thin. Ghostbusters II reworked all the first film's plot beats without adding much that was new, while 2016's all-girl reboot was more of the same, only with weaker jokes. (It also triggered a load of culture war bullshit, but set that aside - the movie simply wasn't original or funny enough to stand up.) Afterlife, however, gets a few basic things right, that help it stand out as properly worthwhile.

Directed and co-written by Jason Reitman, son of Ghostbusters '84 director Ivan, it gets out of NYC, transferring all the supernatural malarky to a magnificently shot Oklahoma landscape. At its centre it puts a likeable young cast, with Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd as Mom and a ghostbuster fanboy science teacher respectively, giving it a family drama vibe in place of the been-there done-that urban workplace comedy. The tropes established in the first film are drawn out gradually, emerging from under the surface of what appears to be a whole other film, while a new batch of relationships are established. In addition that familial connection between lead protagonist Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Egon (Harold Ramis being the one original buster no longer with us), carries real emotional weight. It's more than just business as usual, and that in itself is refreshing.

Where the film suffers drags in momentum, and dialogue between the leads that often fails to spark. Grace is a likeable lead, and newcomer Logan Kim is a real audience-pleaser as her new friend Podcast, but there's nothing in the screenplay to compensate for the interplay of the original gang. Rudd is an amiable presence as ever, and the source of some neat '80s callback jokes, but neither he nor anyone else is given the level of acerbic wit granted to Bill Murray back in the day. The movie's mid-section is pretty lifeless (pun not intended) as a result. Thankfully the proceedings gain speed along with the Caddy, as the plot gears up for its climax - aided by developments that should delight all true Ghostbusters aficionados, while stirring the emotions of relative GB agnostics like me. New spins are found on old visual gags, and teases regarding the classic film are delivered upon in satisfying fashion. Best of all comedy legend Ramis gets his due in an unexpected but 100% appropriate fashion.

Ghostbusters is for the fans - the real ones - and its liberal scattering of Easter eggs, along with its final-act celebratory twists (still allowing its young new heroes to shine), provides it with purpose and heart. It's not brilliant, but it is its own beast, and it's sufficiently fun to remind us why the '84 ghostbusting squad are remembered with such fondness. (For all that it's not as good as Gremlins. Just saying.)

Gut Reaction: First act - intrigued. Second act - bit sleepy. Final act - invested again, and more heart-warmed than I'd expected. So that's okay.

Memorable Moment: Marshmallow mayhem (where they were definitely referencing Gremlins!).

Ed's Verdict: 6/10. Ghostbusters: Afterlife really misses the punchy script-writing of Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis, but it plays its nostalgia cards well, and is worth the experience. Now it's time to lay the franchise to rest. 

Film Review - Spencer (12)

 It seems that they're circling just me. Not you, just me.

Spencer is the new film from Pablo Larrain, the Chilean director who's made an international name for himself by telling stories of iconic 20th century female figures. In his 2016 film Jackie, Natalie Portman portrayed tragic Jackie Kennedy in the hours and days directly following the assassination of her husband President John F. Kennedy. This time it's Kirstin Stewart, aka her from all the Twilight films, in the role of Diana, Princess of Wales, the one-time Diana Spencer. If you think The Crown has a monopoly on what can interestingly be said about Diana's time as a member of the British Royal Family, think again...

The story - described at the film's beginning as 'A Fable Based on a True Tragedy' - takes place in December 1991, as the Royals congregate at the Sandringham Estate to celebrate the festive season. There's a military-style operation in progress by staff to run the place, and Prince Charles is chiefly preoccupied with preparing elder son William for the Boxing Day grouse shoot. But for Diana, sweeping up the drive alone in her convertible, it promises to be a three-day endurance test. Ten years into her marriage with Charles, she's the object of perpetual media scrutiny, painfully aware that there's a third party in the marriage, and stifled to the point of suffocation. Christmas with the relatives has never seemed such a grim prospect.

It's useful to know going in that Larrain's film is a kind of dark-edged fantasy, rather than one purporting to show what might really have happened to its protagonist. Like Jackie, this is a psychological portrait of a women in extremis, but it's significantly more abstract than the 2016 film; the other royals have a cold and mostly background presence like they're a permanent tableau, the precision with which food is prepared and served is nothing short of oppressive, and Timothy Spall's senior attendant is more a portent of doom than a three-dimensional character. Add to that a series of visions that link Diana with another oppressed royal of old, and the story becomes a Christmas nightmare as unsettling as any Ebenezer Scrooge ever had.

With a grand European hotel doubling at Sandringham, the locations look truly sumptuous, and Larrain shoots them on your actual old-school film rather than digitally, often in soft-focus, like a twee period romance. Thing is, it's not a romance. It's an oppressive drama concerning the fraying of a trapped woman's psyche, and the festive trappings only make the atmosphere more cloyingly oppressive. With Diana so much on her own, hand-held cameras frequently in her face, it's a study in loneliness and paranoia. The film finds numerous ways of getting us inside the protagonist's head, none more effective than the soundscape - headed up by a superb but frequently grating original score by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. Whether the melancholy of classical strings or the discord of abstract jazz, it puts you in the headspace of someone who just wants to scream and rip curtains and run the length of the Christmas dinner table. String quartets and church organs swell so loud that you want to take them out with an axe.

At the heart of it all is Stewart's performance, already lauded with talk of Oscar nominations. Such talk is earned. Like her Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson, Steward has come a long way since the sexy-vampire days, and she's nothing short of astonishing here. It's one thing to capture the voice and mannerisms of a media icon with technical precision (which she does). It's quite another to convey inner turmoil and fragility convincingly, when the close-up scrutiny of the camera allows for no fakery whatsoever. As Diana the Princess, and as an ordinary human in extraordinary circumstances and at a low ebb, she's never short of 100% convincing. Other performances impress - Poldark's Jack Farthing gets to show some humanity as Charles, while Sally Hawkins and the normally edgy Sean Harris are both good as empathetic members of the royal staff - but this is Stewart's show like Jackie belonged to Portman, and she nails it to the Sandringham floorboards.

For all its virtues - which include all the superior production and costume design you'd imagine - Spencer is not a Friday evening popcorn watch. Go in expecting the conventional drama of The Crown, and you'll end up like the elderly lady at my screening who turned to her friend during closing credits and said, 'Well that was a bit strange.' It is strange, and frustrating, and deliberately slow-paced. It's also genuinely troubling, and not just because of how it deals with the more self-destructive elements of the troubled Princess. But it's also beautiful, terrifically crafted, and deeply empathetic towards its damaged subject - a woman who just wants to be herself again. 

Gut Reaction: The Friday factor meant this took its time to reel me in - but it ultimately made me care about Diana Spencer, almost grind my teeth, and at one point actively flinch.

Memorable Moment: An eccentric but touching party game with Wills and Harry.

Ed's Verdict: 9/10. Spencer is art - not the dull, fusty kind, but something much more imaginative and subversive. It's terrific, personal filmmaking, and Kirsten Stewart delivers one of the performances of the year.

Film Review - Last Night in Soho (18)

 Do you believe in ghosts?

Last Night in Soho is Edgar Wright's new film - a jagged thriller and surreal trip into horror-tinged darkness (with a psychic time-travel twist), that's a big departure for the man who brought us Shaun of the Dead and the other hilarious entries in his Cornetto Trilogy. It may not be the perfect film I wanted it to be, but it's still one of the most stylish and inventive movies to be held in the lockdown release queue.

Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace/Jojo Rabbit) plays Eloise, a sweet-natured girl from Cornwall, who travels to the big smoke of London to study at a prestigious fashion school. She brings with a love of 1960s culture gifted by her beloved grandmother, and a psychic gift passed on from her mother. Thus when she finds modern-day London less than friendly to blow-ins like herself, she starts connecting in her dreams with the Swinging Sixties version of the city - think young Cilla Black, Carnaby Street fashion and all the allure of Soho's nightlife. Her visions centre on Sandie (Anya Taylor Joy of Peaky Blinders and The Queen's Gambit popularity), as aspiring singer who seems to embody all the era's appeal. But the glamour of '60s Soho is a shallow veneer, and Eloise's preternatural explorations beneath its surface become steadily more disturbing. 

There's a reason why films like this one and Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver need to be prefaced with 'The new film by Edgar Wright'. The guy is one of the most imaginative and stylistically gifted writer-directors working in film today, so be it comic parody, crime thriller or psychological horror, it's never enough to talk about his films in conventional genre terms. This time, however, Wright has abandoned key trademarks, like smash cuts and rapid-fire dialogue, in favour or something much more straight-faced and brooding. His work is as visually arresting as ever, and as rich in detail; this time, however, it's all bent towards turning our heads with this bygone London's sexy shimmer, then taking us on an increasingly unsettling trip (pun absolutely intended) through its seedy underbelly. A flawless 360-degree pan of 1965 Soho Square is the epitome of all that excites, while garish red neon hints at the horrors to come. 

As Eloise, McKenzie shoulders a mainstream film for the first time, and she does a commendable job - embodying naive idealism and 'country mouse' vulnerability in London's present, before being both seduced and terrorised by its past. Taylor Joy takes another step up the ladder to greatness as Sandie, all poise and self-confidence, and never more than when she nails an a cappella version of Downtown to make Petula Clark proud. (That one can sing, dance, act, and play chess!) Sequences underscoring the girls' bizarre time-travelling connection deliver some of the most head-spinning virtuosity in the film. Matt Smith and Michael Ajao provide very different kinds of support to the girls, while the most notable members of the support cast all hail from the actual British cinema of the 1960s - Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham and the late, legendary Diana Rigg in a worthy final performance. 

Wright, you see, loves his cinema history, and stews the film in its influences - from the urban Brit dramas of the '60s to Dario Argento's original Suspiria (of which there's more than a little here) - while creating something totally the director's own. It's a delicious musical stew as well, with more classic '60s pop than you could cram into a two-disc vinyl compilation. All of that said, this film's Wrighty goodness doesn't stretch quite as far as I'd hoped. The hysteria that afflicts the final act of many horror films takes over here too, with the director's creativity undermined by tropes that are a bit cliche, and plot twists some of which make more sense than others. A heavy-handedness also shows in the screenplay, with the story's subtext spelt out a bit too plainly. (Yes, we get what you're saying, now just leave it be.) 

Here's the thing - an Edgar Wright film that falters in the final stretch still turns out to be more worth your time than a dozen other films that stay their intended course. This is a movie to revisit, with its ravishing art design, evocation of time and place and whirling cinematic ingenuity. It's steeped in atmosphere and tells a compelling tale - so even if the close doesn't match all that's gone before, it's still a film for the collection, and one that serves up some of the most memorable cinematic moments of the year. Wright's take on Swinging London demands a visit.

Gut Reaction: A bit of 'Please stick the landing' frustration, but largely advanced levels of enjoyment. 

Memorable Moment: Mirror girl. 

Ed's Verdict: 7/10. An overcooked ending detracts from but doesn't negate Last Night in Soho's advanced levels of creativity, or the originality of its premise. It's one to see, and a fascinating new direction for one of the greatest entertainers in film today.