Screening Room

September 2, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature length film boasts his expected vibrant reds, strong female performances and a discourse on life/death; but in transposing his signature style to a chilly New York there’s a fresh austerity and overt Sirkian sensibility also at play. The result is a vibrant and life-affirming treat as well as a battle cry against climate change.

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Inspired by Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar explores our relationship to death (both personally and environmentally) via two old journalist friends who once painted the town red as magazine writers and who reconnect when author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) learns war reporter Martha (Tilda Swinton) is terminably ill. Suffering from stage 3 cervical cancer, no-nonsense Martha has tired of her gruelling treatments and is now at peace with the idea that she ‘deserves a good death’. Ingrid, by comparison, has just written a novel exploring her terror of dying, so when Martha asks her to be in ‘the room next door’ of a gorgeous rental house when she commits euthanasia, she’s both honoured and horrified.

Within a soaring melodrama score and colour-pop production design, Moore and Swinton discuss the pleasures of life (books, writing, birdsong, movies), shared experiences (John Tuturro plays the eco-warrior lover both women have shared) and the depletion of self caused by the ravages of illness. As Martha reaches her end, she looks back to her past – to the war experiences that have shaped her and the conception of the daughter she’s estranged from, told in flashbacks with a luminous Esther McGregor playing young Martha.
There are moments of great visual beauty as expected from an Almodóvar film; pink snowflakes drifting over a Manhattan skyline, Moore and Swinton lying side by side on pistachio-green and cherry-red sun loungers, the lush tones of an autumn garden. And in the hands of such accomplished actors, the emotional magnificence also gleams; Swinton reciting poetry and the dialogue to John Huston’s The Dead as a tear slips from her eye, the way Moore reacts to a closed red door. Though Swinton playing her own daughter may jar for some, it works in a film that champions the idea of leaving the world with the next generation in mind, and reminds us all to be grateful for the small wonders of everyday life. After watching this the world may look all the more vivid on leaving the dark of the theatre…

Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Room Next Door releases in cinemas later this year

WOLFS

September 1, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

When a married New York DA (Amy Ryan) finds herself in a sticky situation – a dead hook-up in a penthouse suite – she calls the number of a man whose function is clean-up jobs. As the body of the boy she’s picked up in the lobby lies among shattered glass after bedroom hijinks, the voice on the line assures her he’ll take care of her problem.

Enter George Clooney’s nameless lone wolf, an anonymous man with a body bag and a grumpy demeanour. ‘Nobody can do what I do,’ he insists. As he sets about his task, there’s a knock at the penthouse door: Brad Pitt’s fixer has also arrived. Dressed similarly and touting the same skill set, it seems Clooney’s not the only hitman in town – and now both of them are mixed up in a mess that reaches further than the luggage trolley of a high end hotel.

amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs

The whys and wherefores of plot are immaterial in a film that understands the main attraction is seeing real-life buddies zing off each other as two grouchy middle-aged mystery men forced to work together when a standard job takes an unexpected turn. Suffice to say, drugs, cartels, shootouts, gangster weddings and a dopey business student (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams) are involved as the duo try to unravel a conspiracy overnight and in the process discover a grudging respect for each other.

Written and directed by Jon Watts as an amiable Ocean’s II, the appeal of Wolfs is the built-in chemistry between Pitt and Clooney as they banter and bitch through Chinatown foot and car chases, Croatian dance routines, and an interrogation in a hideous rent-by-the-hour hotel room. Their overlapping chatter plays like jazz, the result of years of off-screen friendship and the experience to inhabit these roles effortlessly. Both actors have fun with their age, leaning into gags about bones cracking, needing Advil after some strenuous gunslinging and struggling to read pager messages without their glasses. Clooney’s car playlist is also a nice boomer dig; he listens to Sade’s Smooth Operator as he drives to a job.

It’s a tough gig for Abrams to steal any focus as the third wheel, a daffy teen who fancies a bit danger and ends up with the equivalent of a two killer dads (who might ice him but will also tell him to eat with his mouth closed), but he makes a lively impression – not least in a practical effect when he leaps over a moving car in tighty-whities and tube socks.

Clooney and Pitt clearly had a hoot making the film and the door is left open for more of the same if audiences also have a laugh. Abandon plot logic and Wolfs is daft fun with a rat pack vibe..

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Wolfs releases in cinemas 20 Sept before transferring to Apple TV+

Screening Room

THE ORDER

August 31, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Justin Kurzel adds to his cinematic rebel poems with another gorgeously-lensed look at a real-life disruptor and his skewed ideals. After tackling outliers in The True History Of The Kelly Gang and Nitrum, the director turns his attention to Bob Mathews, an eighties white power leader whose rhetoric in Reagan-era America threatened to metastasize to civil unrest and polarisation. Like his previous historical films, Kurtzel’s latest boasts a disquieting pertinence to current events and cultural leaders…

justin kurzel, jude law, nicholas hoult, tye sheridan, the order

Focusing on Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) as he tries to build a white supremacy army in 1983-4 via bank robberies, bombings and assassinations as well as the broken FBI agent, Terry Husk (Jude Law) tracking him, The Order shows two men who are only divided by the law in their obsessions. The radical offspring of a hate-preacher, Mathews is charismatic, unfaithful and blinkered in his pursuit of an Aryan America as he recruits and seduces. His wife and mistress are secondary to the excitement he feels carrying out his six-step to domination, his bank robberies (thrillingly executed in nail-biting interludes) a high. Husk is damaged goods – a chain-smoking, gum chewing blunt instrument with a drink problem, he’s survived an incident in New York and has transferred to the quiet of Idaho in the hopes of ‘putting back the pieces’. His wife and children are secondary to his quarry, silently admonishing via unanswered phone calls he makes as he digs into white power in the state. When the local nous of a deputy sheriff (Tye Sheridan) links a couple of leads, Husk realises he has a bigger case on his hands and brings in a bureau former colleague to start a manhunt. As the film toggles between Mathews and Husk, it becomes a cat-and-mouse thriller – with Mathews getting sloppy and Husk getting (literally) messy as old injuries plague him.

It’s a retro presentation; the eighties production design, costumes and lensing recalling numerous previous examples of the genre. And that’s no bad thing. Law’s Husk is straight from the Popeye Doyle school of big swings and delicious to watch, even his constant gum-chewing informs his characterisation. Sheridan is the heart of the picture providing an emotional moment that hurts, and Hoult nails the blue-eyed fanaticism of a man who may tell his mates to stop burning crosses but can’t see the inevitability of his actions. Jed Kurzel’s thrumming score soars as high as the camera, swooping above stunning Idaho and Washington state vistas to show the beauty of the country Mathews is fighting so hard to control.

End credit notes tell us that the text used by Mathews has been utilised repeatedly since by far-right groups as a blueprint for their activities – including the most recent storming of the Capitol. It’s a stark reminder that though this picture plays like a slice of vintage filmmaking, the beliefs at the centre of the story are very much still relevant. As an audience, Kurzel asks us which side of the ideological line we choose to stand on. Powerful stuff.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Order releases in cinemas later this year

Screening Room

BABYGIRL

August 31, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Halina Reijn’s erotic drama has caused a stir at Venice thanks to its frank, female-gaze portrayal of desire and the nuances of power. Though it shares some similarities with Secretary, Fatal Attraction and even Fifty Shades Of Grey, Babygirl is buzzy because it unflinchingly explores the ‘orgasm gap’ between men and women, and paints a picture of a complex, contradictory middle-aged woman’s lust without anyone’s bunny being boiled.

Nicole Kidman stars as tech CEO Romy who has it all together: a loving theatre director husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas), two lovely daughters, two sprawling houses (a Manhattan apartment and a country mansion), the respect of her colleagues and pots of money. A glass ceiling breaker and ballbuster, Romy has no problem asking for what she wants in boardrooms or cosmetic clinics but struggles to do so in bed. Opening on her climaxing astride her spouse, Romy sneaks off to another room post-copulation to masturbate over Daddy kink porn. There, in the darkness, on the floor, her feral orgasm is different and real compared to the performance she has put on for her partner. What Romy presents to her family and the world is very different to what she wants, and even then she’s not entirely sure what that is. Which is why new intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson) intrigues and shocks her when he seems to instinctively sense exactly what she might need. A bold, self-assured young man who can control a raging dog in the street and tells her ‘I think you like to be told what to do’, Samuel whispers ‘good girl’ to her in a restaurant when she glugs a full glass of milk that he sends over to her table.

Romy is a strong, powerful woman who loves her husband, but she’s also a product of her commune upbringing, horny and looking for validation of some of her darker fantasies. Both personas coexist, the spectrum of sexual need explored as the CEO and the intern embark on a push-pull affair tinged with BDSM but is also vulnerable, protective, needy, greedy, bashful and silly. Romy may kneel to lick a sweet from Samuel’s hand or milk from a saucer at his feet, but she will also cling to him as they sway to George Michael’s Father Figure and cuddle like family in a hotel suite bed. When he gives her her first non-masturbatory orgasm the growl she lets out into a grubby carpet is one of liberation and discovery.

The traditional assumption in this kind of cinematic trajectory is that someone will lose their life (literally or figuratively), that danger is associated with such unfettered hunger. But Reijn confounds expectation by metering out no punishment. Rather the protagonists discover something of themselves and use their individual power to move forward – whether that’s the ambitious exec assistant Esme (Talk To Me’s Sophie Wilde), a collaborative Jacob or Romy herself. The only person getting shafted in this tale is a predatory exec who tries to leverage his power for sex. As Samuel says at one point to another character; ‘that’s an outdated view of sexuality’.

Modern, sex-positive and optimistic, Babygirl is sure to prompt post-credit discussion and possibly even small revolutions in marital beds.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Babygirl will release in cinemas later this year

Screening Room

DISCLAIMER

August 30, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Alfonso Cuarón’s dark seven-part thriller exploring victim blaming, the madonna/whore complex and the toxicity of trauma gives audiences a warning straight off the bat that they should question what they see. As feted documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) receives another award to add to her collection, the host of the ceremony touches on narrative and form and warns that they can be used for manipulation. Narrative and form are certainly used to skewed and smart effect in this elegant adap of Renée Knight’s 2015 bestseller as three stories are interwoven across decades.

cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón

In one strand we follow Catherine Ravenscroft as she receives a parcel from an unknown source containing a book that seems to unravel carefully held secrets from her past. The story at the heart of the novel sends her spiralling, impacting her marriage to stuffy lawyer Robert (Sasha Baron Cohen) and estranging her even more from her 25-year-old wastrel son, Nick (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Meanwhile Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline pulling off a perfect befuddled Englishman in the vein of Jim Broadbent) is mourning the loss of his son two decades previously, as well as his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) more recently. Bereft, Stephen has nothing to live for but embittered revenge. And in a third story, horny inter-railing teen Jonathan (Louis Partridge) can’t keep his eyes off a beautiful young mother (Leila George) on an Italian beach. Grief, betrayal and brutality are bound for all the characters – but the how and why is disquietingly spun across the episodes to a gut-punch denouement that will make audiences question their own assumptions, gender bias and acceptance of narrative. The truth at the heart of this bleak tale is something that is lost repeatedly in the retelling of it, depending on who is crafting the story and what information (or lack of it) they are working with.

It would be churlish to provide any more narrative detail – the pleasure really is in the unpackaging of it – but this onion-layered story of perspective is delivered beautifully by Cuarón as writer/director, and his cast. Blanchett is a known powerhouse but she is immense here; by turns frantic, self-absorbed, rageful and ultimately incandescent as a woman being judged. George as a younger version of Catherine is a revelation in a star-making turn as both a vamp and a victim. She and Partridge generate serious heat in explicit scenes that cleverly make viewers complicit in judgement, while Kline and Manville create a blindsiding and heartbreaking portrait of grief that is hard to see past. Each of their narratives twist and turn to a barnstorming final episode that will likely prompt audience introspection about personal and public perception, society and social media’s hurry to punish without due diligence and the way we castigate women for being sexual beings. Knowing what we know at the end might also inform repeat viewing to understand the clues that were there for us to see – if only we weren’t so blinkered. A masterful binge watch that asks pertinent and uncomfortable questions.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ on 11 October

Screening Room

MARIA

August 30, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Pablo Larraín’s latest portrait of a woman struggling under a media lens (completing the triptych with Jackie and Spencer) is his most linear and conventional approach to teasing out the pain, trauma and self doubt intrinsic to being a famous female figure in the 20th century – but it’s also his most emotionally resonant. That’s perhaps because Angelina Jolie, as opera diva Maria Callas, brings her own life experience of press obsession to the role in a performance that will certainly be in the awards conversation.

angelina jolie, kodi smit-mcphee, maria, pablo larraín, pierfrancesco favino, valeria golino, hollywood authentic

Written by Spencer scribe Steven Knight, Maria follows a 53-year-old Callas in the last week of her life in 1977 Paris, wrestling her artistic and romantic demons as her diet-ravaged body fails. An imperious, self-confessed ‘tiger’ who has weathered scandal (her affair with Aristotle Onassis), and criticism (from her mother and the media), Callas pops pills and sees visions from her life as her faithful butler (Pierfrancesco Favino) and housekeeper (Alba Rohrwacher) watch on. Split into four distinct acts, Callas explores the guilt, shame, pride, triumph and sadness that has coloured her career from being a shy girl in Athens singing for German officers for cash to the feted beauty ‘La Callas’ who has lost her magnificent voice. Hooked on sedatives, Maria invites a film crew into her life to document her last interview led by Kodi Smit-McPhee (pulling double duty at the Venice Film Festival on this and Disclaimer). ‘Is the film crew real?’ Maria’s butler asks doubtfully, gently, as he dutifully heaves her grand piano around her apartment on her daily whim. Maria is, at this stage, a glacial, imposing primadonna experiencing hallucinations who claims that ‘there is no life away from the stage’ yet tells a fan of the pain – both mental and physical – of performing. Taking her last bow, she crafts an emotional autobiography of sorts, a ‘human song’ of her life.

Knight carefully plots a path that allows opera buffs to enjoy parallels between Callas’ life and her roles while also informing the uninitiated of the key beats of the star’s career – taking in other famous faces including Onassis, Marilyn Monroe and JFK. In a pleasing full-circle moment with Jackie, Callas and Kennedy have a breakfast table conversation about love that elegantly illustrates the commodifying of famous women and Maria’s sharp wit that netted her a reputation as ‘difficult’.

Beautifully filmed and costumed, Maria is as operatic as any of the arias sung during the runtime and the supporting artists are a delight (Valeria Golino shines in a key moment as Callas’ sister who suggests that her sibling closes the door on the pain of letting music so destructively into her life), but the main event in every way is Jolie. The way she inhabits any space, moves with the elegance of a cat and talks in Callas’ precise, cool diction is mesmerising. And when she sings – the older Maria moments are mostly her own voice while the younger Callas is the diva’s real vocal – the emotion, drama and effort she brings to the music is genuinely impressive. Jolie trained for months to inhabit Callas and the results recall the lived-in performance of Cate Blanchett in Tar – a Volpi cup winner at the festival and gong magnet throughout the year. Jolie will likely be on the same trajectory.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Maria will release on Netflix later this year

Screening Room

ALIEN: ROMULUS

August 9, 2024

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM

Much like Disney + show The Mandalorian immerses you back into the Star Wars universe, so Alien: Romulus is a film that deep dives you into the world that began with Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror masterpiece Alien. Directed by Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe), this takes place between the events of Alien and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens, as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation deal with the fallout of the creature that wreaked havoc in the Nostromo ship, killing all but warrant officer Ellen Ripley in Scott’s original movie.

Here, Álvarez selects a young cast as his leads, led by Priscilla star Cailee Spaeny, who plays Rain, a young woman entombed in W-Y’s Jackson Star’s Mining Colony. With her is Andy (Industry’s David Jonsson), an android she treats as her brother. Rescued by Rain’s father, Andy’s only directive is to keep Rain safe. But things change when youngsters Tyler (Archie Renaux), his sister Kay (Isabela Merced) and fellow renegades Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Navarro (Aileen Wu) approach Rain with a plan to escape the colony.

isabela merced, cailee spaeny, archie renaux, fede alvarez, alien: romulus

Desperate to jet off to a faraway planet, the gang can only do it with the help of some cryogenic pods that will put them to sleep for the 9-year journey. Fortunately, a nearby derelict space station that’s just been found has the requisite equipment. But it just so happens that this giant vessel, with its bays named ‘Romulus’ and ‘Remus’, is overrun with facehuggers – the skittery, spider-like blighters that use humans as incubators to give birth to the Aliens. Soon, this heist becomes a terrifying matter of survival.
Álvarez doesn’t just offer up another tale of extraterrestrials devouring their prey, although there is plenty of that, including one spellbinding scene involving gravity and the creatures’ acid blood. Instead, the script expands on the universe first conjured by Dan O’Bannon in his script for the original Alien, notably exploring the ruthless machinations of “the company”, who will go to any lengths to research these creatures – the so-called “perfect organism”.

A resourceful Spaeny is a marvellous alternative to Sigourney Weaver, who played Ripley across the first four Alien movies. But alongside her, the cast is fresh and exciting, particularly Jonsson, who plays Andy superbly (going from timid to something more sinister). Visually, the film neatly captures the worn-down look of the Alien films, thanks to production designer Naaman Marshall, while Benjamin Wallfisch’s throbbing score is propulsive. The best blockbuster this summer, Alien: Romulus is also the best Alien movie in nearly forty years.

Alien: Romulus is in cinemas now

Screening Room

BORDERLANDS

August 9, 2024

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM

From Queen Elizabeth I to Bob Dylan in his electric era to The Lord of the Rings’ ethereal Galadriel, two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett can do no wrong. And so she proves again in Eli Roth’s Borderlands, a rambunctious adaptation of the popular videogame series from Gearbox Software.

It’s not often that the chameleon-like Australian star graces blockbusters, although she was glorious as a Russian villain in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Hela in Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok. Here, guns at the ready, she’s Lilith, the red-haired anti-heroine at the heart of this madcap sci-fi that owes a lot of its energy to another MCU title, Guardians of the Galaxy.

Ariana Greenblatt, Borderlands, Cate Blanchett, Edgar Ramírez, Eli Roth, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart

Set in a decaying futuristic far-away world, Lilith is a lone wolf bounty hunter who gets hired by Atlas (Édgar Ramírez), the head of a sophisticated weapons company, to find his daughter. Affectionately known as Tiny Tina (Barbie’s Ariana Greenblatt), this girl has been kidnapped by one of his own men, Roland (Kevin Hart).

After a little arm-twisting, Lilith jets off to the dilapidated Pandora, a planet she knows from her own murky past, where she soon locates her target. Trouble is, Tina doesn’t want to go home – what with her father desperate to use her to help locate something only known as The Vault.

With Lilith, Tina and Roland joining forces, they’re accompanied by a robot named Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) and the musclebound Krieg (Creed II’s Florian Muneanu), as they progress through Pandora. Much in the way a gamer might pick their way through levels, there are keys to collect and puzzles to solve.

Director Roth (Hostel, Thanksgiving) and his team do a fine job of recreating Pandora in all its grimness, a planet that is over-populated by marauding psychos and creatures known as Threshers. There’s even an appearance by Jamie Lee Curtis as a scientist who lends a helping hand, as this ragtag group look to survive this hot toxic mess.

Along the way, there are some exhilarating action scenes – not least one race through Pandora’s rocky roads that puts a new definition on the phrase ‘monster truck’. Intriguingly, comic star Hart plays it straight as the hardcore action hero, something he pulls off with aplomb, while Greenblatt has a field day as the explosive, dynamite-chucking Tiny Tina. Best of all, Blanchett is on fire as Lilith – yet another killer role to add to her considerable collection.

Borderlands is in cinemas now

Screening Room

DÌDI

August 2, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

In 2008 Fremont, teen Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) is living his summer before he starts high school in a liminal space; vacillating between friendship groups, loathing/loving his older sister, desperate/terrified to have his first kiss, rejecting his heritage but ultimately comforted by it. As he negotiates his world via MySpace, his flip phone and house parties, Chris tries on identities. He’s ‘Dìdi’ at home to his mother and grandma, ‘Wang Wang’ who ‘Wu-tangs’ his spliffs to his bros, a boy who likes chick-flicks to the object of his affection, ‘Asian Chris’ to a skate group he attempts to befriend as a videographer and all manner of hateful names to his screaming sis who’s about to leave home for college. All he really wants from his summer is for his mum to stop being ‘so Asian’ and his crush, Madi (Mahaela Park), to be his girl. But inopportune erections, friendship wipeouts and drunkenness are going to cause acute embarrassment and failure…

dìdi, izaac wang, joan chen, sean wang, shirley chen — Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / Talking Fish Pictures LLC © 2024 All Rights Reserved.

Developed by writer/director Sean Wang as part of the Sundance Institute film programme and winner of the audience award at this year’s festival, Dìdi is a semi-autobiographical confection loaded with equal parts nostalgia and cringe. Based on Wang’s own upbringing (his real-life grandmother plays Dìdi’s), it’s a study of teenage awkwardness through a lens of compassion that evokes comparisons with Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. But it’s also a film that explores the immigrant experience in America via Chris’ interactions with his mom (played with beautiful subtly by Joan Chen). A woman bringing her children up alone with a judgey mother-in-law and broken dreams of her own, Mrs Wang reacts to everyday racism where Chris does not, eats her Big Mac with a knife and fork despite his admonishments and delivers a heartfelt, tender affirmation of him at his lowest point that recalls the tear-inducing speech from father to son in Call Me By Your Name. In this way, Wang’s film absolutely sings to those who will recognise the signifiers of Chris’ specific time and place (Livestrong wristbands, indigo braces, AOL, watching Superbad at pool parties) but will also chime with parents who have endured the cruelties of bratty teens in any era. Equally, the visceral feeling of self-consciousness and angst as an adolescent is one that is (painfully) universal.

Sweet and salty in equal measure, Wang’s expertly curated time-capsule serves as a poignant reminder to parents and children alike that everyone of every generation is simply trying their best to grow into their own approximation of a decent adult. And that that journey is a life-long one.

Dìdi is in cinemas now

Screening Room

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

July 26, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have been playing social media frenemies since their characters met in 2009’s X-Men Origins so it was only ever a matter of time before the duo did their faux sniping and trash-talking on the big screen. Obviously, since X-Men, Deadpool and Wolverine have been through the wringer, both narratively and corporately – with the ‘Merc With The Mouth’ staging a rebirth driven by Reynolds and Wolverine popping his clogs in James Mangold’s elegant send-off Logan in 2017. Now, Deadpool’s shepherd, Reynolds, is going to assume audiences rocking up for a third instalment of R-rated humour and violence will be up to speed in Disney’s takeover of Fox, comic book lore and the personal lives of its stars – ‘I’m telling Blake’ he says of his real-life wife, and makes cracks about Jackman’s divorce. Like Deadpool himself, this mash-up is fast, loose and takes no prisoners.

deadpool & wolverine, emma corrin, hugh jackman, ryan reynolds, shawn levy, hollywood authentic — © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and 2024 MARVEL. Jay Maidment

So where do we find Wade Wilson this time around? In a pre-title sequence that sets the tone, Deadpool is digging up Wolverine’s grave, breaking the fourth wall and swearing up a storm when he only finds his adamantium skeleton. This soon leads to bloody hell and an explanation; in an exposition-heavy flashback (which Deadpool naturally acknowledges) we discover that the TVA (seen most prominently in the Loki TV series) are messing with timelines again, forcing Deadpool to try to set the universe right by hopping the multiverse and interacting with variants in each dimension. That means multiple versions of Wolverine (all grumpy and soused), Deadpool (Dogpool, Lady Deadpool and more) and alt-universe superheroes cameoed by famous faces. At the heart of the matter is the timeline junkyard, ‘the void’, presided over by Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova – a baddie with links to Charles Xavier, the ability to stick fingers into brains and a kick-ass wardrobe. Unwillingly, Wolverine must accompany Deadpool on a journey that takes in forgotten superheroes, self sacrifice, ironic needledrops, slo-mo team-ups and a lot of dick jokes to find peace.

Though the uninitiated might struggle to get every in-joke zinger and easter egg, Marvel fans will enjoy the ride, perhaps obeying Deadpool when he instructs them to use their ‘special sock’ for some of the frenetic action set pieces. No spoilers, but the cameos are genuinely thrilling callbacks, a fight in a minivan is a cracker (complete with a Greatest Showman hat-tip), Matthew Macfadyen is Tom Wambsgan-witheringly excellent as a TVA suit, the chemistry between Reynolds and Jackman genuinely heartwarming and the end credits BTS and EPK footage a true nostalgia hit. And though there’s numerous digs about Jackman coming out of Wolvie-retirement, the gravitas and soul he brings to proceedings is the true heart of the piece and warrants the grave robbing. (Of course, any tear in the eye is dissipated by Deadpool criticising an oiled up, topless Jackman for getting out his ‘greasy tits’.)

Juvenile, daft, irreverent and sentimental, Deadpool is a messy riot. As the boy themselves say; ‘Let’s f***ing go!’

Deadpool & Wolverine is in cinemas now

Screening Room

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR

September 2, 2024

Screening Room

WOLFS

September 1, 2024

Screening Room

THE ORDER

August 31, 2024

Screening Room

BABYGIRL

August 31, 2024

Screening Room

DISCLAIMER

August 30, 2024

Screening Room

MARIA

August 30, 2024

Screening Room

ALIEN: ROMULUS

August 9, 2024

Screening Room

BORDERLANDS

August 9, 2024

Screening Room

DÌDI

August 2, 2024

Screening Room

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

July 26, 2024

All photographs by Greg Williams

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