Cruella

The ultimate Disneyfied superhero movie, Craig Gillespie's CRUELLA (2021), cleverly and winningly blends campy 1960s' Batman/ Batgirl action with 1980s' pop-video aesthetics, as post-modern anti-heroine outwits murderously wicked fashionista Baroness. This prequel delivers Emma (Stone) vs. Emma (Thompson) adding 'Emma Peel' (m appeal) that wittily folds meta-verse aspects of Avengers (both the spy-fi TV show and Marvel's team) into the urban mythology started by Stephen Herek's 101 Dalmatians (1996), and Kevin Lima's weak sequel 102 Dalmatians (2000), but I was not a fan of either live-action movie, despite the genuine screen presence of Glenn Close, as de Vil. 

'Orphaned' Estella is the vengefully ambitious outsider who breaks into an ultra-competitive class-driven puppy-love fantasy world, where posh couture meets punk rag-trade. Greedy sneers and shaggy-dog stories of injustice mix panto hysterics and street-wise grifting. Its somewhat charmingly neo-Dickensian comedy of London is sometimes incompetently spotty, but spots are clearly essential here. From withering contempt for dysfunctional family-baggage and snobby secrets, to poetic inheritance closure, perhaps this medley of comic-book themes and shreds of prefab surrealistic subgenre shouldn't work but, happily, it really does. Rejection of any puns would be so petty. I wonder how this might play on a double-bill with Davd Frankel's The Devil Wears Prada (2006)? 

David Lynch

David Lynch (1946 - 2025)

Like many other US film-makers, Lynch was a director who peaked early. After the experimental artistry on his debut feature ERASERHEAD (1977), Lynch’s work on THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980) proved that he could make a commercial bio-pic drama within the studio system. Epic space opera DUNE (1984) was initially thought a failure, but it’s a masterpiece of sci-fi horror that daringly combines generic styles and textures from Star Wars and Alien, into a darkly surrealistic, magnificently cinematic, cosmic fairy-tale... one that a genre-thieving George Lucas had clearly wished his shiny franchise-starter to be. The strangeness of science fiction and bio-horror themes in DUNE eclipsed nearly all previous space movies, including Fred Wilcox’s classic FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956).

Lynch became widely and rather wildly celebrated for his almost unique oeuvre of Americana, following DUNE. But various later pictures, especially the modern noir mysteries, focused largely on how so many American dreams became nightmares, with little difference between an uncanny noon daylight and moonless nocturnal scenes. Eerie might have been Lynch’s middle-name, and his sublime visions were extraordinary... but (for me, anyway) he never manages to produce anything that was a match for, or superior to, DUNE.

The only Lynch film I’d not seen, before today, was David’s own Disney adventure THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999), a melancholic, slow-drive road-movie that quickly evoked marvellous nostalgia for me, with my fond childhood memory of riding a red toy pedal-tractor up and down a back lane (access for garages), especially when he’s overtaken by racing cyclists. It’s based on a true story about WW2 veteran Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth, his final film), driving a 1960s’ lawn-mower engine, 240 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin. There’s a super-cool whimsy about its 'western' style trek, despite the obvious character-study source material, and Lynch’s profound loyalty to exploring American truth. 

Dune TV

Always thought bad-SF on TV was better than none at all. I also prefer weaker SF to average or even good non-genre stuff. Franchise drama DUNE: PROPHECY looks like usually poor sci-fi when presenting a civilisation seemingly unchanged for the next 10,000 years. Technology upgrades and/or any societal advancement, should push cultures towards stability, not stagnation. This epic prequel to DUNE movies is apparently aimed at anti-Gilead viewers who might like dystopian, or plainly dysfunctional, worlds but often support a matriarchal regime, instead of a more typical patriarchy-centred futurism.

Seeming positive, despite variously sinister sisterly ambitions, and mind-games, stars Emily Watson and Olivia Williams play rival ‘HarkonneNuns’, Valya and Tula. Travis Fimmel (VIKINGS) embodies a survivalist warrior - in royal service of sadly weak-willed Emperor (Mark Strong), frequently guided by savvy diplomacy of his wife Natalya (Jodhi May). Despite smart gadgets and techno toys quite clearly in evidence, history notes that machine wars led to formal rejection of any robots as overlords, while super-soldier Hart demos deadly pyrokinetic powers, and claims leadership of new Imperial shock-troops as his unjust reward. While Landsraad houses seethe with sundry family plots, the Bene Gesserit sisterhood forms with greater legacy of their witchy agenda. Above all, before you can say melange or mentat… the frequent symbolic imagery appears, including eye and mouth, portal and pit, signalling tragic horrors for this dark-space opera where tears, like spice, ‘must flow’.

UK Blu-ray, 14 April.

Better Angels

This 2019 movie is the best version of Charlie’s Angels, so far. It’s a supremely charming combination of topical sci-fi adventure (about broadcast electricity), plus engagingly witty action-comedy that cleverly, and very skilfully, avoids all the silly parody, or the often dumbly contrived jokes, that marred previous cinema efforts in this franchise. But still maintains levels of good humour now inventively centred on the characters, instead of merely spoofy caricatures for its crime-busting trio. 

It’s also the first ANGELS scenario to be written and directed by a woman, so this distinctly benefits from socially-aware actresses keen to ‘make a difference’ here with roundly feminist attitudes. The result delivers plenty of great fun with freshly stylish pragmatism. This is not only an admittedly-laudable, and next-generation, project that’s aimed at creating or reframing positive role-models. It shrugs off nearly all the faults of earlier gleefully-daft cinema versions and re-imagines the TV show’s basic format.

Elizabeth Banks, who also co-stars here as a key BOSSley ‘lieutenant’ (other ‘Bosleys’ are played by Djimon Hounsou, and Patrick Stewart), directs this re-fashioned media property so that her upgraded movie sequel is more than simply an updated expression of this usually awkwardly-flawed property (see 2011’s merely average TV remake). Newly developed for international scale, it’s an inventive attempt at re-branding all inherent qualities of the small-screen 1976 original’s cheesecake formula, viably re-vamped to be in tune with post-modern ‘sisterhood’ concerns. 

It’s probably better appreciated if you’ve not actually seen Kristen Stewart before in her five-movie TWILIGHT saga. With all of that career baggage left behind, she makes quirky rebel Sabina an honestly likeable heiress-turned-heroine, at first clashing, and then chiming well enough, with ex-MI6 spy Jane (Ella Balinski), so they’re in synch for the dance-floor choreography. Meanwhile, in lively ‘Candide’ style, the new-girl techie Elena (Naomi Scott, POWER RANGERS), offers effective intro-POV angles for any uninitiated viewers on these Angels gone global.

Imaginarium

While Tideland and The Brothers Grimm (both 2005) were somewhat flawed genre pictures, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (2009), is a surprisingly delightful compendium of themes and imagery from the auteur’s back catalogue, especially his loose trilogy of Time Bandits (1981), Brazil (1985), and The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988), plus The Fisher King (1991). 

As the head of a strong cast, Christopher Plummer is excellent as tiredly immortal Dr Parnassus who presides over a ‘magic mirror’ portal to whimsically animated realms of subconscious thought, both touchstone anchor and escapist release, to the fabulous primacy of ‘story’ which “sustains the universe” for all humanity. Disrupting its soul-grinding routine, the initially-amnesic ‘victim’ of a lynch–mob, Tony (Heath Ledger’s final bow, though the character’s played in dreamscape appearances by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell), revitalises a rundown carnival caravan - from the appealing charm of ye olde travelling sideshow to the slick freshness of post-modern street-theatre.

Trouble looms for Parnassus’ troupe when he’s reminded that repayment is due soon for his Faustian pact with Nick (Tom Waits), and so his daughter, ‘scrumpy’ Valentina (elfish model, Lily Cole - ‘Lettuce’ in Sally Potter’s Rage) is forfeit on her 16th birthday. There are fantastical Monty Python-ish wonderland visions beyond a stage facade, song ‘n’ dancing numbers, building structures or unrealities fall apart like crooked schemes unravelling, for topsy–turvy surrealism wherein the devil ‘walks’ on clouds and London police wrestle drunken bystanders to passivity, while (un-)lucky souls return to Earth from ‘acid’-trips of blissful exuberance, and gambling for a secret prize of redemption is worth a sacrifice or two.

“Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all immediately.” Please give generously, though - if you enjoyed the show. Gilliam may well have become a sentimental old fool - still believing, passionately, that the grandest of all possible dreams are simple romantic ones, even if they have no guarantee of a happy ending - but, Imaginarium... is a fairy-tale journey that’s worth taking, repeatedly. As an auteur’s medley, this sorely needed to be more than sum of its parts... And so it is!