HUSTLE

Stars: Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah, Juancho Hernangómez, Ben Foster, Kenny Smith, Anthony Edwards, Jordan Hull, Maria Botto, Ainhoa Pillet, Raul Castillo, Jaleel White, Heidi Gardner and Robert Duvall.
Writers: Will Fetters and Taylor Materne.
Director: Jeremiah Zagar

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Adam Sandler finds a winning balance between his ‘comedy sports guy’ bit and the dramatic leading man potential he displayed in Uncut Gems with his new Netflix movie, Hustle. He plays ageing NBA talent scout Stan Sugarman, a 30-year veteran of chasing leads to sign basketball’s next big thing. His mentor, Philadelphia 76ers owner Rex Merrick (the legend Robert Duvall) ups him to assistant coach for his dedicated service, but when ownership shifts to his son, Vin (Ben Foster), old conflicts see Stan punted back into the scouting game with the added pressure of finding that championship-winning rookie every club yearns for.

Stan may have found his next NBA great in the housing projects of Spain - a natural talent called Bo Cruz (Juancho Hernangómez, real-life Utah Jazz recruit and a member of the Spanish national team). He’s a true wild card, with a history and temper to match, But together, and with a little help from a cast drafted from the NBA ranks and featuring names like Seth Curry, Trae Young and Jordan Clarkson - Stan and Bo can build a partnership that ought to take them to the top of the toughest basketball league in the world.

Director Jeremiah Zagar and his writers Taylor Materne and Will Fetters do exactly what they need to do to turn the standard sports drama template into the crowd pleaser they deliver. Take a coupla of down-on-their luck outsiders, have them set goals for themselves that’ll make them strive to be better and punch out an ending that ensures they deliver above and beyond their new self-belief.

Zagar and his ace cinematographer Zak Mulligan give the game play some super immersive energy, while support players like Queen Latifah as Stan’s super-supportive wife and ex-SNL player Heidi Gardner as the more likable Merrick offspring bring the right pitch.

But it’s all about Sandler, who’s in every scene and who flushes out depth and character in his shuffling, shrugging Sugarman like he was born into the part; there’s both Walter Matthau’s exasperation with life and Jack Lemmon’s understated desperation in Sandler’s performance. Oscar loves this sort of performance - the clown who finds a place in the real world (think Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society or Good Morning Vietnam). Sandler pulls up just shy of riffing on Burgess Meredith’s classic trainer archetype ‘Mickey’ in the Rocky films, but the temptation must have been strong (they are shooting on the streets of Philly, after all!) 

While the narrative has that faint whiff of “seen-it-before”-ness about it, Hustle fits in alongside such hoop classics as Hoosiers (1986) and Coach Carter (2005) as simply structured stories that find their vibrancy in fresh perspectives, honest emotions, great performances and boundless energy.

JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION

Stars: Chris Pratt, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Bryce Dallas Howard, Isabella Sermon, Jeff Goldblum, Campbell Scott, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Dichen Lachman and Justice Jesse Smith.
Writers: Colin Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael; from a story by Derek Connelly and Colin Trevorrow; based on characters created by Michael Crichton.
Director: Colin Trevorrow

Rating: ★ ½

Aside from a fleeting diversion to the Bering Sea, where a deep sea monster balances out the oceanic life ledger by sinking a fishing trawler, the sixth Jurassic franchise film opens in a faux 4:3 ratio. This allows for a montage of evening news clips and CNN types talking about how hard it’s become to live with dinosaurs since they integrated themselves into human society, a promise of things to come that we glimpsed at the end of 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (who names these films??). 

The audience, rightfully expecting an opening that sets hearts pounding from frame 1 (like what Steven Spielberg did with some ferns and a bunch of guys in hi-vis helmets, back in ‘93), is instead napalmed with information concerning the industrialization of genetic science and the government agency controlling the increasingly dangerous problem and blah, blah, blah. It is a clumsy, crappy opening to a summer blockbuster, but it sure sets the tone for the 150 minutes to follow.

Director Colin Trevorrow, once thought the man to forge a new path for all things JP, then segues his already convoluted narrative into, of all things, a big bug movie; genetically mutated locusts, as large and disgusting as house cats, are destroying crops all across America, except those planted by ‘Big Farmer’ conglom BioSyn, a Monsanto-like corporation with designs on global food sector domination. It’s an early bit of stupid plotting (how long before investigators establish that link?), but is by no means the most egregious, indicating Trevorrow and co-writer Emily Carmichael are happy to jettison logic in favour of maintaining momentum.

The problem that faces the writing pair, however, is the number of characters they are going to have to juggle to keep us invested in if they want to see out the film’s hook - uniting the key cast members from both iterations of the Jurassic film eras in a trilogy-encapsulating final chapter. Paleobotanist Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) is called upon to bust open the bug conspiracy, providing an entry point for OG everyman hero Alan Grant (Sam Neill). Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) has let his ethical firewall slide in the intervening years; he’s now consulting for CEO Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott, a fitting physical appropriation for the original “Dodgson!”, Cameron Thor), allowing Ellie and Alan passage into the villainous hi-tech BioSyn lair.

Of the Jurassic World ensemble, we are reunited with dino-whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt, bringing his patented ‘ironic blandness’ in spades) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), now guardians for mopey teen DNA fleshpod, Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). They live in the woods, sharing the wilderness, often uncomfortably with raptor heroine ‘Blue,’ who has ‘found a way’ to have a calf, called ‘Beta’. When kidnappers take Beta (for her black market value) and Maisie (for her bridging DNA strands), Owen and Claire enlist the aid of JW#1 callback Barry Sembene (Omar Sy), now a French undercover agent, to get them access to Malta's thriving, illegal underground dinosaur marketplace.

Is anyone still reading this? Because it’s exhausting to recall and boring to write, and I still haven’t got to DeWanda Wise’s tough-talking mercenary pilot Kayla Watts; Mamoudou Athie’s naive corporate shill, Ramsay Cole; Dichen Lachman’s cold-hearted black marketeer Soyona Santos, whose chilly, OTT glamour seems more suited to Bond villainy; or an insufferably mopey B.D. Wong, returning to the fold as original JP geneticist, Dr Henry Wu. Worse still, the script allows each support player feeble and time-consuming character arcs and earnest dialogue; at one point, I turned to my equally-dejected movie mate and said, “I wish everyone in this film would just shut up!” 

It is at this juncture that you have every right to ask, “Uh, we are going to have some dinosaurs…in your…in your dinosaur movie review? Hello?”, given that it was exactly the question I whispered to myself as the mighty beasts of prehistory found themselves being shunted into the background of their own film series. New species turn up, including an impressive beast called Giganotosaurus (“The biggest carnivore that ever lived,” says Dr Grant, in one of many ‘Golly Gee!’ dog-whistle moments for the franchise-primed target audience), but Trevorrow mostly just drops them into the path of our heroes, who dodge them with scant regard for their status as ‘alpha predators’. 

This seemingly endless parade of hoops through which to jump is a built-in reference to the plot machinations of the series that demands our heroes travel from point A to point B, dino-dodging the whole time. But even in the much-maligned Jurassic Park III (finally casting off its ‘Worst of the Franchise’ tag), the protagonist’s trek held some degree of menace, some ‘imminent threat’ element that provided an often very basic but undeniable tension and sense of adventure. That never manifests in Jurassic World: Dominion, a bloated 2½ hour plod that is unforgivably dull and irreconcilably misjudged.

CHARLI XCX: ALONE TOGETHER

Featuring: Charli XCX, Huck Kwong, Twiggy Rowley, Sam Pringle and Matthew Laughery.
Directors: Bradley Bell and Pablo Jones-Soler

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

With her chart topper ‘Boom Clap’ paving the way, pop songstress Charli XCX was forging the kind of cultural superstardom and creative freedom to which artists aspire, when the COVID pandemic hit hard. Alone Together is a chronicle of how lockdown forced her to reassess the essence of her creativity, fragility of her mental health and relationship with her fanbase.

Central to her life beyond her public persona in a way that only the most devoted fans can be, Charli’s ardent disciples are known as The Angels, a vast network of loyalists, many with strong ties to the global LGBTIQ+ community. When the performer decided that her time spent in lockdown was going to be used to create a new collection of songs, she reached out via social media and drew directly from their devotion and understanding. In some terrific sequences, she interacts with followers to improve lyrics, create artwork and ultimately launch her ‘COVID project’ album, How I’m Feeling Now.

The ‘fly on the wall’ music doco is not a new genre, but the format has had to address and adapt to the nature of modern fandom. In the past, it was sufficient to glimpse some backstage drama, maybe see the boyfriend / girlfriend providing support; think Bring on the Night, about the making of Sting’s Dream of The Blue Turtle album; the star and her dancers in Madonna: Truth or Dare; more recently, the insight provided in Katy Perry: Part of Me and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.

Charli XCX: Alone Together is not just for fans, but about them. It addresses them in their language - via mobile screens, Zoom cameras, text messages. The singer constructs her album from her home base, sending elements to management and producers only after her fans have been consulted. In doing so, she carries them, and them her, through periods of self-doubt, loneliness and anxiety. 

While there is an unavoidable degree of vanity in constructing a project like this, Charli reveals a refreshingly self-aware, largely vanity-free attitude towards herself and her celebrity. She is open about the burden of mental ill-health and the complex psychology that began forming as an adopted child. It is a revealing look at the life of an early 20-something star in an era when there is already so much insight into personal space of the rich and famous.    

Ultimately, Charli XCX: Alone Together is a celebration of voice when you feel like no one’s listening. In addition to the driven yet warm presence of the star herself, it is a film filled with everyday personalities that are uniquely individual. The strength they find in each other’s solitude, of being alone together, becomes essential to the pop starlet; she enjoys their adoration, but finds as much strength in them as they do in her.  

 

ARIEL PHENOMENON

This content was originally published on the Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival website.

Featuring: Dr. John E. Mack. Tim Leach, Emily Trim, Emma Kristiansen, Takudza Shawa, Nathaniel Coxall, Salma Siddick, Luke Neil, Robert Metcalf, Lisl Field, Lady Hwacha, Gunter Hofer and Cynthia Hind.
Writers: Christopher Seward and Randall Nickerson.
Director: Randall Nickerson.

Available to rent at the official Ariel Phenomenon website.  

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The most compelling case of extra-terrestrial interaction in recorded history is examined from an understated and deeply moving perspective in the investigative documentary feature, Ariel Phenomenon. By revisiting a fateful event that occured 28 years ago on the grounds of a Zimbabwean primary school, director Randall Nickerson not only re-examines with an acute sensitivity the most famous close encounter of the third kind of all time but also the impact on the lives and minds of those who were there.

On September 16 1994, the students of the Ariel School on the outskirts of the Ruwa township were witness to the arrival of an unidentifiable aircraft from which, it is claimed, humanoid beings emerged. Dozens of children aged between six and twelve witnessed associated phenomena in broad daylight - the descent and landing of the silver, saucer-and-dome shaped craft; intense displays of light and a deep humming noise; and, most astonishingly, the appearance and stealth abilities of the craft’s occupants.

Nickerson and co-writer Christopher Seward have exhaustingly compiled (and, given the excellent quality of the archival video content, likely remastered) the news footage of the incident, notably the work of BBC war correspondent, the late Tim Leach. The integrity and honesty of the young people who were present at the event is left in no doubt, and the production ensures their recollections are granted the respect that most figures in authority did not afford them at the time.

The key figure in the film’s narrative is Emily Trim, a middle-schooler at Ariel at the time of the encounter and now an adult struggling with the memories and emotions it conjures in her. Trim returns to Zimbabwe from her Canadian base, where she reconnects with teachers and fellow students and her catharsis is warmly defined and tracked through to its uplifting conclusion.

But the confusion and sense of abandonment that she and her childhood friends experienced whenever they expressed their realities of that day has scarred them. One experiencer reveals to the camera that after all these years, she has still not told her husband of her Ariel encounter; some are speaking out for the first time in decades for Nickerson’s cameras. In its depiction of how the events of September 16 unfolded, Ariel Phenomenon segues into a potent study of how corrosive to one’s spirit the denial of truth can be.

It is a theme carried over into those that tried to show their support for the Ariel kids. Leach saw his standing within the hallowed halls of ‘The Beeb’ deteriorate as he took his account of the visitation to the highest levels to get it told. The other key figure in the documentary is Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Dr John E. Mack, the Harvard academic who interviewed the schoolchildren and openly declared that their version of events were to be believed. Despite his credentials, Mack would become persona non grata amongst the tenured professors when his case studies in alien abduction and its associated psychology got swept into pop culture status and the university discredited him publicly.

In a media landscape where dime-a-dozen ‘Are we alone?’-type pseudo-docos litter the streaming channels, Ariel Phenomenon appears positively barebones in its frank presentation of evidence and emotions. Nickerson forgoes such B-grade standards as ominous narration or laptop CGI, instead relying upon the memories and voices of those who were there. 

Having crowdfunded the project and undertaken to self distribute his film, Randall Nickerson has fought the long battle to bring the story of the Ariel kids-turned-adults to the screen, and his investment in the truth of both their experience and subsequent struggles is profound. Its thrilling retelling of a complex sociological event aside, the finest achievement of Ariel Phenomenon is the platform that it provides those burdened by a truth kept secret to recount openly the moments that changed their lives forever.

AMBULANCE

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Keir O'Donnell. Jackson White, Olivia Stambouliah, Moses Ingram, Colin Woodell and A Martinez.
Writers: Chris Fedak, Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen
Director: Michael Bay

Rating: ★ ★ ½

Compared to the action monoliths for which he’s famous, in-your-face noisemakers like Armageddon, Pearl Harbour and the Transformers film, Michael Bay’s Ambulance is his version of an arthouse chamber drama. At its core is the story of three people, confined and needing to understand each other in order to survive.

And that is how he establishes his narrative over the course of a terrific first hour. Returned soldier and dedicated family man Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is in dire financial need; his wife, balancing a newborn son on her hip the whole film, has an uninsurable disease and Will can’t secure steady work. As a last resort, he reaches out to his adopted brother, Daniel (Jake Gyllenhaal), who promises to help out if Will also does him a favour - be the fourth man in a bank robbery crew that promises a $32million payday.

These early scenes smartly establish character traits, motivations, personalities. The heist goes off the rails in a spectacular sequence that rivals Michael Mann’s downtown LA shoot-out in Heat for visual immersion and sound design. In a final act of desperation, Danny commands an EMT vehicle as a getaway car, complete with tough-gal paramedic Cam (Eisa Gonzalez, the film’s biggest plus) and bleeding-out cop Zac (Jackson White).

And then things get stupid. Instead of tightening the screws on his three leads, Bay goes big and broad in his pursuit of his Bay-hem brand. The movie spins off into idiotic Fast-&-Furious terrain when Danny calls in his Mexican Gang caricature mates, who happen to have a muscle-car with a gattling gun they’re willing to part with. All these empty action calories and Bay’s tendency to double- then-triple down on the faintest whiff of anything emotional blows the run time out to over 2 hours, which proves grotesquely self-indulgent.

The cracking first hour will be enough to carry most action heads through to the end, but Bay’s fleeting interest in his human scenery is dispiriting. After 30 years making empty-vessel spectacles, the tiresome, shallow grind that Ambulance becomes suggests Bay’s detractors - those that claim he’s never been particularly interested in his characters unless they’re holding a gun or a steering wheel - are probably spot-on. 

THE LOST CITY

Stars: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Oscar Nuñez, Patti Harrison, Bowen Yang and Brad Pitt.
Writers: Oren Uziel, Dana Fox and Adam Nee
Directors: Aaron Nee and Adam Nee

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

There is something so refreshing in watching true movie stars give their bigscreen charisma room to breathe, and Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum take some very deep breaths in the jungle adventure, The Lost City.

Bullock, who looks absolutely stunning in a way she hasn’t exploited in many of her films, plays Loretta Sage, a bestselling romance novelist who’s just about had enough of her own vacuous airport reading. She’s ready to kill off her franchise staples, including ‘Dash’, her broad-chested, blonde adonis hero brought to life by cover model Alan (Channing Tatum). Not what Alan wants to hear, with his shirtless public appearances being his primary source of income.

But in Loretta’s latest pulp writings are clues to a hidden city and jewelled headdress that don’t go unnoticed by scumbag billionaire Abigail Fairfax (a very funny Daniel Radcliffe). Abigail kidnaps Loretta, assuming she’ll guide him to the buried treasure, and setting in motion a rescue attempt by Alan that borders on buffoonish.

When chemistry is strained and the material is weak, these sort of romps look and feel like Dwayne Johnston and Emily Blunt in Jungle Cruise, but in the hands of a gifted comedienne like Bullock and a goofball hunk like Tatum, The Lost City occasionally feels like the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner classic-of-its-kind, Romancing the Stone. When our leads aren’t on screen, and the story has to be moved along, the very thin and silly veneer of a plot becomes obvious, but as a means by which to get to the next Bullock/Tatum giggly bits, it’ll do.

Of added benefit is Brad Pitt in an extended cameo as an ex military black-op who is called upon to lead the snivelling Alan in the early stages of the rescue mission. Pitt riffs on his own physical assets with as much energy as Channing Tatum, and while it’s all very broad schtick, it is also very funny.

MORBIUS

Stars: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Jared Harris, Adria Arjona, Al Madrigal, Tyrese Gibson and Michael Keaton.
Writers: Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless; based on the comic by Roy Thomas.
Director: Daniel Espinosa

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Despite the long hours that Sony Pictures have spent pumping life into the veins of their Marvel properties, the resulting films - whether box office behemoths like the Spiderman franchise or murky gunk like Venom - have, of late, been pretty crappy. It means that to non-comic types like your critic, the notion of having to first watch then conjure a few hundred words about Sony’s latest second-tier MCU anti-hero…well, I have hair to wash, too..

Wasting away in the grips of a degenerative blood disorder, Michael Morbius is driven to find a cure not just to relieve his own suffering, but to better the life of his friend, Lucien, aka ‘Milo’. They first form a bond as bed-bound boys under Dr Emil Nikols (Jared Harris), and remain chums into pained adulthood, where Morbius (a skeletal Jared Leto) becomes a Nobel prize-refusing researcher and Milo (played with menace, even when being nice, by Matt Smith) a couch-bound invalid.

It is the contention of Dr Morbius that vampire blood may hold regenerative properties and so, in a ship moored in international waters and alongside his loyal colleague Dr Bancroft (Adria Arjona), he instigates an experiment upon himself. And it works…kind of. The downside being that it transforms the doctor into a hunky vampire whose blood lust must be refreshed every few hours. Milo wants in on the new drug, but Morbius won’t allow his friend to suffer through the horrible side effects for a few hours of pain-free life. But Milo has his own ideas…

The most interesting aspects of director Daniel Espinosa’s film mirror those of David Cronenberg’s 1986 classic, The Fly. Vampirism as a form of body horror, the loss of one’s own physicality with an outcome that harms both the afflicted and those they love, gives Morbius a subtextual hook that adds to one’s investment in the good doctor’s moral journey. You have to search for it at times, given there’s not a lot of narrative meat on the Morbius bone, but the doctor’s connection to both Bancroft and Milo while still coming to grips with his new lethal self brings with it a compulsive watchability.  

Of course, it’s a comic-book trope as old as comic-books; while being questioned by Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal, playing the two dumbest detectives in film history, a blood-craving Michael scowls, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry,” a pointed reference to the Bruce Banner/Hulk mythology from which Morbius is drawn. Jared Leto does as much with the duality of the character as asked of him, committing to make-up prosthetics and stepping aside for his CGI stand-in when required.

While the film won’t upgrade the property from that second-tier comic realm alongside the likes of Venom (or, for DC fans, Swamp Thing or The Shadow), there is a layered psychology to Morbius which may be further drawn out in future (and better) iterations. It is almost a shame that Morbius is tied to the Marvel universe at all, given that the inclusion brings with it franchise expectations that don't serve the character’s key traits at all.

THE BAD GUYS

Featuring the voices of: Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Awkwafina, Anthony Ramos, Craig Robinson, Zazie Beetz, Richard Ayoade, Alex Borstein and Lilly Singh.
Writers: Etan Coen, with Yoni Brenner; based on the books by Aaron Blabey.
Director: Pierre Perifel

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Introducing his film at the Sydney premiere of The Bad Guys, the Australian actor-turned-author Aaron Blabey, upon whose 15-issue graphic novel series director Pierre Perifel’s animated romp is based, recounted the tale of his journey into the studio jungle of La-La Land pitching his animal-centric crime story. “Every studio said, ‘No’”, said Blabey, “until Dreamworks got it, and I couldn’t be happier.”

And ‘happy’ he has every right to be because, despite an occasionally patchy history in the field of animation (Shark Tale, anyone?), Dreamworks Animation has captured the anarchic glee, character chemistry and old-school narrative skill of Blabey’s bestselling books. Perifel brings a decidedly non-Hollywood animation style to the story of five friends leaning into the preconceptions of them as nature’s criminal element, but it is a style that allows for dazzling flourishes of colour and action, delivering an older-skewing family pic the likes of which we haven’t seen since Brad Bird’s 2004 classic, The Incredibles.

The film opens on that staple of the crime genre, ‘the diner scene’, maybe referencing the start of Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs (but…in a kid’s movie?!?). Slick career crim Wolf (Sam Rockwell) and safe-cracker street hood Snake (Marc Maron, doing brilliant voice work) are riffing on the highs-and-lows of birthdays, before sauntering over the road to a bank and rolling the joint. A wild car chase ensues, during which we meet the gang - computer guru Tarantula, aka ‘Webs’ (Awkwafina); blubbery master-of-disguise, Shark (Craig Robinson, earning the film’s biggest laughs); and, twitchy tough-guy Pirahna (Anthony Ramos).

A Clooney-esque package of smug egotism, Wolf is triggered into action when the new governor, upwardly-mobile fox Diane (Zazie Beetz) insults him and his crew on local TV. Wolf sets his sights on the ultimate heist - the pilfering of a bejewelled trinket during a gala in honour of guinea pig philanthropist, Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade) - only to have it backfire. Soon, the whole ‘honour amongst thieves’ creed is being challenged and the friends are faced with the intellectual might of a true criminal mastermind.

Adults familiar with the high-stakes crime genre will draw more from The Bad Guys than their kids; the under-12s might have a bit of trouble registering the double-crosses and underworld machinations in Etan Cohen’s screenplay. But that certainly won’t detract from their overall enjoyment, so thrilling are the action set pieces and lovingly rendered are the characters. The film becomes increasingly loony (cue the army of mind-controlled hamsters with glowing eyes!) while losing none of its smarts. It’s the perfect franchise kickstarter and the best Dreamworks cartoon since forever.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2

Stars: Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Shemar Moore, Adam Pally and Lee Majdoub.
Featuring the voices of: Ben Scwartz, Idris Elba and Collen O'Shanussy.
Writers: Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Whittington
Director: Jeff Fowler

Rating: ★ ★ ½

It’s been a scant 23 months since the Sonic the Hedgehog movie came out. Who can forget the whirlwind of fan disgust when the first glimpse of the speedy blue Eulipotyphla (not ‘rodent’, as I learnt today) hit the web, forcing a hasty redesign, and the subsequent whirlwind of fan glee when the film turned out to be pretty good. On the back of a well-told tale of family values and good-vs-evil and a cartoonishly villainous turn by Jim Carrey, rediscovering his ‘Ace Ventura’ wackiness, Sonic The Hedgehog took $320million worldwide - a legit blockbuster, considering COVID cut it’s run short in some territories.

With two years of pandemic-impacted box office revenue to catch up on, Paramount Pictures rushed into production on this sequel to their last pre-plague hit. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 reunites all the major creatives, including director Jeff Fowler, Carrey as megalomaniac Dr Robotnik, Ben Schwartz voice-acting Sonic, James Marsden as the human element, and all below-the-line effects talent that brought Sonic to life the first time around.

New characters in the adaptation mix are Tails, the ‘flying fox’ (Collen O'Shanussy) who was glimpsed at the end of the first film and who lands in Sonic’s hometown of Green Hills Montana, just as things are about to turn dangerous for our spiky hero. In a pre-credit sequence set on the Mushroom Planet, the banished Robotnik aligns with red-hued tough guy Knuckles the Echidna (Idris Elba) to get back to Earth, promising to deliver Sonic while fiendishly scheming to purloin the all-powerful Green Emerald and see out his plans for world domination.

There’s a lot in there that fans of the game, which debuted 31 years ago and has been a Sega cash-cow ever since, will recognise and appreciate, and Fowler and his writing team fill the screen with easter eggs to keep their attention. What they don’t fill the screen with is any of the charm or laughs that made the first film a happy diversion for non-gamers. Instead, Paramount have pushed their spiky teen hero into an MCU-style ‘end of the world’ effects extravaganza, banishing to the periphery all that was engaging about the first film in favour of rote heroics and tired CGI.

It is also runs an unforgivable 122 minutes, the length blown out by time wasted in a Serbian bar watching Sonic win a dance contest and a frantic and unfunny ‘Hawaiin wedding gone wrong’ set piece, featuring Natasha Rothwell as a shrill ‘African-American bridezilla’ caricature. Notably, neither sequence features Carrey, who is absent for long passages and/or called upon to play straight man to Knuckles, thereby robbing the film of its strongest comedic asset.

And poor Sonic, the cocky teenager occasionally called upon to be the plucky superhero, is dwarfed by the ill-fitting scale of his own movie, often all but disappearing amidst the mayhem. In the inevitable Sonic the Hedgehog 3, not so subtly hinted at in the final moments of #2, just give the franchise back to the simple charms of its titular hero.

ATTICA

Featuring: Clarence B. Jones, Lawrence Akil Killebrew, Alhajji Sharif, Al Victory, George Che Nieves, David Brosig and John Johnson.
Writer: Stanley Nelson
Directors: Traci Curry and Stanley Nelson

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

In upstate New York in 1971, the entire population of Attica Prison took control of the facility and held prison employees hostage, to protest the cruel, inhumane treatment they were receiving at the hands of a brutal penal system. The vast majority of prisoners were black or brown; all the correctional officers and administration were white. After five days of non-violent negotiation, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, with President Nixon’s blessing, ordered armed police battalions and sniper units to take back Attica Prison; of the 43 men who died, 33 were inmates, while 10 were correctional officers and prison employees.

In director Stanley Nelson’s retrospective analysis of the event, it becomes very clear race and politics were the underlying concerns of those in charge of solving the Attica Prison stand-off. 50 years of memories and muted facts are revisited in interviews with prisoners who survived the killings; the personalities of the incarcerated but educated men who tried to attain basic human rights for the prison population, only to be slain where the stood, are remembered. And the finger of blame for the murder of 43 men is pointed squarely at those in power, who unleashed a tired, angry, well-armed mob upon a courtyard of defenseless men.

The stories and images are shocking and violent. Nelson and co-director Traci Curry refuse to skimp on detail, be it in the lead-up to the prison uprising, the chronology of events over the five day shut-in, or the horrendous slaughter that brought the revolution to an end. Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary Feature, Attica further exposes the insidious racial underpinnings of American society and the true worth that politicians, then and now, place on the value of black and brown lives.