Blame (2017)

Strong performances and characterisation carry a competent composition of high school tropes with a too-tidy ending.

Rating: Good.

Dave Made A Maze (2017)

A really cool concept brimming with great ideas and amazing production design, but it boils down to 72 minutes of actual content and even that feels too long because there's no real story or structure here, the performances, dialogue and characters are all shaky and any humour that doesn't come directly from the production design falls flat. It's a typical pitfall for zero-budget debut features, but one that some (Evil Dead, say) overcome and this one doesn't. This really needed a Wright/Pegg or Rogen/Goldberg punch up.

Rating: Cool but empty.

Licorice Pizza (2021)

I haven't really liked a PTA film since Magnolia, after which he got into this affected 'everything's really slow and boring and stilted so it must be art' phase. This one is just a 15 year old and 25 year old drifting through a series of barely connected events, all the while hovering on the edge of fucking (literally at one point, the boy holds his hand just above the woman's breast as she sleeps). Nothing particularly interesting or exciting or funny or touching happens.

Rating: Dull.

Tenet (2020)

The first Nolan movie I've ever had trouble following. It just doesn't make the most of its premise or make things clear enough about who's doing what and why. I was really enjoying having to work to keep up with it right up to the point where you see two Branaghs in that room with the window then I just couldn't keep track (even though I'd spotted certain set-ups from much earlier immediately). For the last 40 mins or so I had pretty much tuned out.

Rating: too complicated, not cool enough.

Clerks 3 (2022)

SPOILERS BELOW

Not J&SB Reboot bad, but still in his new mode of 50% lazy callbacks and 50% trying to make the audience cry. The two modes clash a lot and it's not even that funny or well written.

Oh, and he makes a dig at the 'rat' shot from The Departed, a shitty take from shitty-era Simpsons thoughtlessly repeated by idiots online and lazily stolen here, and the happy ending is that the day is saved by crypto profits. Blech.

Rating: Pretty bad.

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

Enjoyable no-nonsense thriller, with a bunch of good actors giving clenched-jaw performances and some solid action, but there's a bit too much going on and it never really gets out of third gear. Instead of 'grim hitmen vs survivalists' or 'grim hitmen vs firewatcher', it's both of those and fire and a lightning storm, and the threads never quite coalesce into a climactic whole. Plus everything feels fairly contrived - the endangered kid is on his way to his uncle who is not only a sheriff but also a survivalist and then runs into not just a firewatcher but a firewatcher who is dealing with the trauma of not having saved some endangered kids the year before, but she can't just let hi use her radio because it just got struck by lightning an hour ago.

Rating: Solid but a little messy.

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

Looks gorgeous, strong central performances, inventive and very engaging, though it does kind of peter out in the last section - the stories are a lot stronger than the framing narrative.

Review: Very good.