As it turns out, the slashed-to-the-hip Versace dress with which Jennifer Lawrence provoked controversy (synthetic or otherwise) on a freezing London rooftop was an accurate barometer of what to expect from Red Sparrow.
Breathing through an oxygen mask with a busted diaphragm and rib after shooting a single scene in mother!, Jennifer Lawrence had rarely suffered more for her art. Nor have we.
Despite being kitted out with a full-scale intergalactic spaceship and all known computerised effects, Passengers is essentially a two-hander for its stars Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. Or you could maybe stretch that to a two-and-a-half-hander, if you include Michael Sheen's oily and obsequious bar-tending android.
Perhaps it's part of director Morten (The Imitation Game) Tyldum's point that even if you're surrounded by the most lavish futuristic technology, space is still an infinite and soulless wasteland of nothingness, into which all human life might easily vanish without trace. The set-up is that Jim Preston (Pratt) is one of 5,000 passengers aboard the good ship Avalon (which resembles an enormous gyroscope whirling through space, pictured below). The passengers and 250-odd crew members are all slumbering in hibernation pods as the Avalon takes them to a new colony planet called Homestead 2. Earth, we gather from the smiley, airbrushed promotional videos broadcast by the Homestead corporation, has become overcrowded, overpriced and overrated. Why not take the journey of a lifetime to a new future on a brand new planet?
Preston, an engineer proud of his practical skills, has decided this could be just what he needed. However, when the Avalon is damaged by a meteorite, this causes Preston's sleeping pod to open and wake him up. Imagine his dismay when he finds that instead of making planet-fall at Homestead 2, he's still 90 years away from his destination. And there's no way of putting himself back to sleep again.
The first chunk of the film depicts his efforts to come to terms with his predicament, as he vainly tries to break into the high-security flight deck to wake the sleeping crew or call earth for help. Writer Jon Spaihts has some fun satirising the familiar predicament of the frustrated customer trying to get sense out of a computerised helpline – he manages to send a message to earth, but then a recorded voice informs him he'll have to wait 25 years for a reply, and by the way that call just cost $60,000. Further humiliation awaits in the fully automated dining-room, where Jim's budget-price ticket only entitles him to bog-standard coffee (not the blueberry java or the Guatemalan latte) and a breakfast which resembles a dollop of stale cement.
Though he diverts himself with space-walks and jitterbugging with holographic dancers in the recreation area, the prospect of spending solitary decades watching the universe slide past weighs crushingly upon him. Things obviously look up when Jim's solitude is banished by the arrival of Aurora Lane (Lawrence), a writer from New York who thinks travelling to Homestead 2 and back would provide great material for a book. Not only is she a higher-class traveller with access to a superior range of comestibles, but she's... well, she's Jennifer Lawrence, equipped with a refreshingly feisty attitude as well as an eye-catching range of svelte sports and swimwear (pictured below, Michael Sheen and Chris Pratt).
But there's a huge twist in the tale, which I daren't reveal (though you can find out about it on the net if you must). Suffice to say that to Jim's physical predicament is added a weighty moral conundrum, which colours the subsequent course of his interminable journey and bends the outcome in ways not all reviewers have been happy with. I would only add that it's never wise to confide too fully in an android (let's hope this isn't Michael Sheen's final role, as he back-pedals frantically from that unfortunate interview where he apparently said he was quitting acting to join the struggle against fascism). This isn't 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even The Martian, but it's an entertaining movie offering some chewy food for thought.
It's getting mighty crowded in the superhero lounge. After the underwhelming Batman v Superman and the overwhelming Captain America: Civil War, here's the X-Men posse back on the warpath, once again under the bombastic helmsmanship of Bryan Singer.
"Look what they make you give," as Clive Owen's dying assassin puts it in The Bourne Identity, and the way that success is as much a matter of taking the blows and dragging yourself to your feet again as it is about inspiration or even perspiration is part of the message of Joy. It's based on the real-life story of Joy Mangano, inventor of the self-wringing Miracle Mop, and not the least of the film's accomplishments is the way it manages to turn the QVC shopping channel into a cockpit of high drama.
Fortune, as a rule, does not favour Part Threes. Hollywood history is replete with sequels that outstrip their predecessors, but second sequels have an altogether patchier track record – for every Return of the King, there are five Spider-Man 3s.
If you make a film about logging, you better be sure the audience can see the wood for the trees. When Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper lead a cast, usually they can do no wrong. Alas, where Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle offered wit, surprise and characters to root for, such qualities are in meagre supply in Serena. Timber!
Frankly, the idea of a female superhero flying solo at the front of a modern movie is becoming a bit of a joke. Despite there being a Wonder Woman film in the pipeline, that this relies on the success of "Batman vs. Superman" (both of whom have had their fair share of reboots) is disheartening. But going into an X-Men film there’s always the hope of both sexes having gripping storylines - a trend we’ve also seen play out in Captain America: The Winter Soldier - so step forward Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique. In a film that’s all about righting past wrongs you can't do much better than casting an Oscar-winner with a multimillion-dollar franchise under her belt right at the centre of your movie.
If the 60s-set X-Men: First Class was Mystique’s coming-of-age, then its sequel Days of Future Past (which sees Bryan Singer return to the helm) is her reckoning, with the chance for a peaceful future resting in her hands. When Mystique is given the chance to undo a destructive decision, thanks to the power of time travel, she is once again forced to wrangle with her beliefs and allegiances.
We meet Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen), who are firm friends in the near future, just as a vast swarm of sentinels approaches their hiding place. They come up with a last ditch attempt to save the world by sending Wolverine's consciousness (Wolverine is played once again by Hugh Jackman, who never seems to age) back to his 70s body, in a Back to the Future / Terminator 2: Judgement Day type mash-up. It's the era of the Nixon administration, with the president playing a key role here and, before you look it up, no Nixon is not played by Steven Van Zandt from the E Street Band (aka Silvio in The Sopranos) in prosthetics - it's actually Mark Camacho.
Of course Wolverine needs some help so he is tasked with assembling some old friends: a younger Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) who is constantly high on junk - well, a serum that allows him to walk but strips him of his telepathic power - and the soon-to-be Magneto, Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender, pictured above right) who has been imprisoned deep below The Pentagon, accused of assassination. And so, we are taken on a prison break mission with the addition of young whippersnapper Quicksilver (Evan Peters from American Horror Story) whose super-speed power is introduced in one of the most inspired and fun moments of the film. It's a comic slow-mo scene that plays out to Jim Croce’s "Time in a Bottle" and works just perfectly.
The fallout from the revolution plays nicely into the 70s setting, with many of the mutants in personal turmoil and suffering from raw wounds. Charles and Erik are at a stale-mate, sparring with one another over the sadness and regret of fallen comrades, which fits in perfectly with the film's Vietnam War backdrop. Fassbender and McAvoy excel at delivering bitter blows and heightened emotions, yet still manage to keep a twinkle in their eye when delivering fan service.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is convoluted and some of it doesn’t make sense but it’s a complete blast from start to finish thanks to a fine cast, good sense of humour and Fassbender spouting James Brown lyrics at random.
It's surely among the most grotesque factoids in the history of Hollywood that despite being nominated for 10 Oscars, American Hustle won a grand total of none. Its big mistakes were presumably being too entertaining and failing to concern itself with a historic social issue. My own theory is that the cast was just too good - the flick boasted five potential gong-winners, and perhaps it was beyond the capabilities of the Academy to choose wisely between them.
The exquisitely eclectic David O. Russell is fast becoming the go-to director for Oscar hungry actors. His last two films, 2010's The Fighter and 2012's Silver Linings Playbook, garnered their respective casts an astonishing seven Academy Awards nominations between them, including three wins. His latest, American Hustle, combines key cast members from those two films, creating an awards monolith (the New York Film Critics Circle would agree - they named it Best Picture earlier this month). But if the cast might make it seem impossibly worthy, the best thing about American Hustle is that it's pure, unadulterated fun.
Set in 1978 and vaguely based on a true-life story (known as the Abscam scandal), American Hustle starts as it means to go on by mischievously drawing attention to one of its male character’s terrible hair. In this case it's (to use the film's own words) a "rather elaborate" comb-over, and we watch as Christian Bale's Irving Rosenfeld carefully and with endearing futility maintains the illusion. Irving and his girlfriend Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) are woozily-in-love con artists. With their art knock-offs and loans scam they blissfully put the romance into grifting (and, in a memorable sequence, dry cleaning) and, although Irving is married to another (Rosalyn - Jennifer Lawrence, pictured below), the lovers are making it work.
When Sydney, in the guise of the English Lady Edith, brings in new mark Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper - sporting a tight perm, achieved with teeny tiny rollers, as pictured below) he turns out to be an undercover FBI agent and, in exchange for immunity, he recruits both Sydney and Irving to bring in four bigger fish. Richie's ambition leads him to exploit the good intentions of the mayor of Camden, New Jersey - Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner, wearing his hair in a kind of bouffant wave) - who's looking to kick-start the Atlantic City economy. The bait is that old classic, a "fake sheikh" scheme. Richie's increasingly reckless machinations cause major ball-ache for his cautious boss Stoddard Thorsen (the marvellous Louis C.K.) along with an increasingly nervous Irving, and they watch helplessly as more politicians and eventually Mafiosi are drawn into the sting.
Eric Warren Singer's original script appeared on 2010's "Black List" of the best unproduced screenplays, under the considerably more provocative title of "American Bullshit" before being picked up by David O. Russell and reworked into a broader, more comedic style. When teamed with The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook it's intended as part of a three-film evolution following characters who are attempting to reinvent themselves and reverse their fortunes.
While the men in American Hustle are busy wearing spectacularly naff hair, the women steal the show. Lawrence is a riot as Irving's crass, unstable wife whose indiscretion threatens to bring the whole enterprise crashing down ("I thought you were mysterious”, Irving moans, "But mysterious just meant depressed"). She's got a personality as precarious as her swirling ice-cream sundae up-do and snags many of the film's funniest and most fabulous moments, including a vengeful sing-along and a run-in with a brilliantly described "science oven".
Lawrence is a doll and, for my money, she can have any supporting actress award she wants - but Adams is my pick here. Her Sydney is a complex creature: smart, vampy and, with her perma-plunging necklines, proudly sexual. Yet we also see that she's tortured by doubt and this vulnerability means that she's the most thinking, feeling thing about a film that deliberately and provocatively teeters on the brink of parody. And when you get them in a room together, wow. As Sydney emerges for a pivotal business meeting on the arm of Richie (from smoke no less!) she's met by the lipsticked snarl of Rosalyn - "I know who you are" she hisses. The atmosphere between these two extraordinary women crackles and spits like incendiary electrics.
It could be argued that American Hustle is almost too colourful, that it takes too many risks for perfection to be possible, and though it's certainly a thrill when he turns up, Robert De Niro's cameo doesn't quite pop the way it should. Likewise, both Lawrence and Renner - while doing great jobs - seem a little young for their respective parts. Oh, and the plot: well, the plot is as torturously tangled as Christmas lights. But ultimately it says phooey to such trifles, for this is a ballsy beast which, as the grand patriotic title suggests, elevates the caper movie and provides both meat and mania for its glittering cast. American Hustle combines old-fashioned entertainment and glamour with visual invention and a modern eye for absurdity (yep, those hairstyles again). Right at the last, we've found the most enjoyable film of the year.