Let’s start with the good; Batman Ninja looks gorgeous. The smoother CGI and cel animation threw me for a loop because I’m still used to some of the herky-jerky action of the old hand-drawn ones, but the colours are vivid, the movements look cool and smooth and the transitions are creative. I watched it with its original Japanese audio and I had no qualms with the voice acting or the translated subtitles, but note there is a completely different set of subtitles to go with the English audio.

Film, New ReleasesJason ChenMay 23, 2018batman, ninja, batman ninja, japan, feudal, anime, afro samurai, samurai, warner bros, animation, takashi okazaki, movie, video, review, cinema, filmComment

REVIEW: 'You Were Never Really Here' commands you to stay

The problem with a lot of crime films is that they often feel the need to explain multiple backstories to their viewers before going for the pay-off moment, rather than dropping them in to the middle of a crisis and saying, “here, figure it out.” There’s no big build-up here; you see things as Joe sees it, and a lot of it doesn’t make sense right away. Joe’s PTSD is as much a character of its own as Joe, and it’s often manifested through quick cuts to Joe suffocating himself with plastic bags or silently drowning in water

REVIEW: 'Avengers: Infinity War' puts death on pause, but not without spectacle

This is why it doesn’t make any sense to fixate on who lives and dies in Avengers: Infinity War (this review certainly won’t). The odds on who survives the titular battle have been argued over for years online, with armchair critics trying to guess the exit points of series regulars like Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) or Captain America (Chris Evans) based on vaguely defined employment contracts that every fan seems to know about without having actually read.

REVIEW: 'Pacific Rim Uprising' and how it stagnates a franchise

The story is pretty predictable after that: the drone Jaegers fail big time and the kaiju return with the biggest kaiju ever and Jake and Nate have to learn how to put aside their differences and save the world as a team. It’s a near rip-off of the plot of the first film, where two characters who start off disliking each other end up being perfect for each other, and in fact, if Pacific Rim: Uprising was a romcom it could actually work.

REVIEW: ‘Isle of Dogs’ trades Wes Anderson’s coziness for scrappiness

It’s the relationship between Atari, Chief and Spots that really fuels the film. Anderson and his team punctuate the movie with intense close-ups of both the dogs and Atari, deep in thought, tears coming to their eyes as they think about the beings they care about.

REVIEW: 'Ready Player One' beats the game by scrubbing away the grime

So what was Spielberg and his team to do? Arguably, there are two routes: engage with Wade’s freaky behaviour and lay his flaws bare, or trim out the objectionable stuff and make a piece of entertainment. Spielberg and screenwriter Zak Penn, perhaps unsurprisingly, go with the latter. So was this the right move, or a missed opportunity to drag Cline’s problematic ideas into the light?

REVIEW: 'A Wrinkle in Time'? More like give me back my time.

Visually, A Wrinkle in Time can be pretty exciting – just like how Disney managed to inject a kaleidoscope of colours and eye candy for Alice in Wonderland… but does it work here? I’m not sure it does; the colourful overtones don’t match L’Engle’s weirdly dark book.

REVIEW: 'Annihilation' (or what Alex Garland is trying to do to my mind)

The problem with a lot of modern horror-thriller sci-fi films is that it’s quite obvious which characters will survive and which ones won’t. I think, over the decades, plot twists that seemed original are much more commonplace now, but Annihilation avoids most of that by telling the audience the result of the expedition in its very first scenes. Self-destruction is briefly mentioned in a line of dialogue but it’s a pervasive theme throughout the entire film, and one of its strengths is showing how each character deals with death and pain and how they ultimately choose to end their fight.

REVIEW: ‘Mute’ is a plodding, unfocused spiritual sequel

Sadly, despite the potential, what Jones delivers with Mute is a classic example of a passion project that should have stayed on the page. The film is admirably small-scale, when a lot of futuristic science fiction aims to make big statements about humanity. But taking a narrow, Black Mirror approach to the story can’t save it from an emotionally distant main character or a repetitive, fractured plot. At times, you can almost feel Jones waffling over what to include in his story: more of Alexander Skarsgård gazing listlessly at reused sets from Blade Runner 2049, or more of Paul Rudd’s obnoxious mustache.

Film, New ReleasesRobert SnowFebruary 28, 2018mute, 2018, thriller, sci-fi, mystery, alexander skarsgard, sam rockwell, moon, duncan jones, paul rudd, justin theroux, berlin, futuristic, noir, review, movies, cinema, film, netflixComment

REVIEW: ‘Black Panther’ is a carefully wrought political film…plus superheroes

It turns out that this shouldn’t be a surprise. The form of representation offered by Ryan Coogler’s new film is a powerful one. Even though the Black Panther character isn’t the first black superhero to lead his own film, Marvel’s latest outing makes some new and important strides in how it handles race in this genre. Most visibly, it puts a comparatively huge cast of black actors in all the central roles, something that is still rare in films of this size. And narratively, the status of black and African people - including the competing ideas on how to improve it - is deeply woven into the story. It doesn’t feel painted-on, as socio-political issues too often are in superhero films (even in the Marvel universe – I’m looking at you, The Winter Soldier).

REVIEW: ‘The Cloverfield Paradox’ is an astonishingly silly bundle of loose ends

Such is the fate of The Cloverfield Paradox, a stunningly well-cast sci-fi based on a Black List script, which seems to have undergone so much re-tooling, at every stage of production, that it barely resembles a completed film. There are plenty of ideas on display here (literally: the film crams in quantum entanglement, meeting your doppelganger, outer-space espionage, an energy crisis, mind-controlling worms, and more). But most of the concepts are hurriedly introduced and then abandoned, leaving behind an experience that feels like a generic mashup of every sci-fi release from the past thirty years.

REVIEW: 'Bright' is a slipshod fantasy thriller trying to play politics

How disappointing, then, to see Landis so casually rip up his rulebook to make a quick buck in league with Netflix, the hottest brand in entertainment. The result is Bright: a loud, incomprehensible and utterly tone-deaf action thriller with an admirably bonkers – though ludicrously heavy-handed - concept.

Film, New ReleasesRobert SnowDecember 23, 2017bright, film, movie, cinema, netflix, orcs, elves, dragons, police, cop, will smith, joel edgerton, noomi rapace, 2017, review, criticism, thriller, racismComment

REVIEW: ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ is a first step into a larger world

How satisfying, then, to see the follow-up to The Force Awakens deliver on that promise. The Last Jedi proves that the franchise is a lot more flexible than some may have expected. Oddly enough, one of its most significant themes is failure: last-ditch plans go awry, searches for information end up fruitless, and characters give up their faith. Events don’t follow a familiar path. All of a sudden, one of the most straightforward (and lucrative) film franchises in history becomes challenging to interpret. And it’s one of the most exciting things the series has done in years.

REVIEW: ‘The Shape of Water’ is a gorgeous and mature Cold War fairy tale

Del Toro isn’t taking the risk for shock value. He wants to stage an adult relationship, and explore what it really looks like for two outcasts, even ones from different (or fantastical) species, to fall in love. In an age when historically marginalized people are slowly finding it easier to express themselves and be comfortable in their own skins, The Shape of Water feels incredibly timely - even though it’s set decades in the past.

REVIEW: ‘Justice League’ is an aggressively bland union of DC’s heroes

Set against the rage-inducing structure, annoying performances and embarrassing scripting of Batman v Superman, Justice League initially feels like a major step forward from its predecessor. At the very least, the new film has some internal logic and the ability to sustain a train of thought about a character or a plot point. But this is a limp improvement – being mostly functional doesn’t create a lot of thrills.

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