DEADPOOL

(Tim Miller, 2016)

Odd how many superhero movies forget to be fun. They’re so busy being important and earth-shattering and awesome that they forget the central joy of the genre; it is fun. Well, not Deadpool. Deadpool strains every sinew in order to keep the audience entertained throughout. Generally that’s through humour, with a string of groan-inducing gags and one-liners mixed into all the slapstick and pop-culture references. And of course the post-modern fourth wall breaking, a long-time feature of the character’s comic book appearances. This Deadpool, played charmingly by Ryan Reynolds, knows he is in a superhero movie, stops to talk to the audience, acknowledges genre conventions and alludes to budgetary constraints and Reynolds’ own checkered career.  Some of this works really well (the audience I saw Deadpool with audibly enjoyed the movie more than any movie I have seen in a long time) and sometimes it doesn’t. The plot is a slight thing, mostly told in mid-fight scene flashback by Deadpool himself, aka Wade Wilson, a mercenary who has just fallen in love with his prostitute soulmate Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Desperate, he volunteers for experimental procedure controlled by Ajax (Ed Skrein) and Angel Dust (Gina Carano), bestowed with the ability to feel no pain and super strength respectively.

This procedure will activate his latent mutant gene, but only after a series of grisly tortures. In the aftermath, Wilson is hideously ugly but also virtually unkillable, with a Wolverine-style healing factor to add to his pre-existing skill with gun and sword. He also has a score to settle with Ajax, which he does by killing his way through a series of underlings.

Set in a corner of the X-Men universe (but also featuring a big visual wink to the Marvel Universe), Deadpool also brings in Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, if only to allow its hero to poke fun at their team and attitudes. But then this is a character who works best when he has somebody to talk to and bounce off, and his scenes with them are among the best in the film.

The action scenes are fine and there are a lot of them, and if the script is frequently crude, a little too broad and unfunny, well Reynolds has the comic chops and timing to sell it anyway. Crucially it nails a tone. It doesn’t quite feel like any other film in the superhero genre, certainly not like any of the films which have parodied the genre in the past. Its violence and post-modern sensibility make it a different beast, as does its surprisingly sincere love story and seedy little setting.

Oh yeah: and it’s fun.

TROPIC THUNDER

(Ben Stiller, 2008)

This uber-comedy tries to all things as once, and just about succeeds. It is a Hollywood satire, mocking actorly pretension (brilliantly through Downey Jr's Russell Crowe skit, Kirk Lazarus, so deep in character he doesn't know who he is anymore), Executive arrogance (Tom Cruise having a great time riffing on Harvey Weinstein), agent desperation and obliviousness (Matthew McConaughey just on the verge of the McConnanaisance), and various stripes of movie star awfulness (Jack Black going cold turkey in the jungle, Ben Stiller trying to become a "serious" actor, Brandon T Jackson obsessing over his "Booty Sweat" branding), "visionary" British theatre directors (Steve Coogan) and generally just destroying cinema excess by almost personifying it. The opening sequence - after a series of genuinely hilarious and note perfect fake trailers - is a massive, epic battle in the Vietnamese jungle, parodying Platoon and other Vietnam movie cliches and culminating in an immense explosion.
Stiller seems to be telling us just how ridiculous Hollywood movies are, how obscene the expense and the spectacle, then going to ridiculous expense in order to deliver outrageous spectacle. The story picks up near the end of the shoot of a hugely ambitious and expensive Viet-epic called Tropic Thunder, based on the memoir by grizzled, hook-handed vet Nick Nolte. Fading action star Tuck Speedman (Stiller) leads the cast, supported by Downey, Jack Black's gross-out comedian, Jackson's crossover rapper, and Jay Baruchel as the lucky character actor given a small supporting part. But the director (Coogan) is over his head and unable to corral his cast of egos, and after a disastrous scene loses millions, he drags the principals out into the jungle to shoot guerrilla-style, and is promptly blown up by a mine, leaving the squabbling actors trekking through the jungle, pursued by armed drug militia and unsure of what is real and what is not.
Part of why Tropic Thunder works so well is because Stiller has gone to such lengths to make sure it looks, sounds and moves like one of the spectacles it so mercilessly mocks. Shot beautifully by John Toll and scored by Theodore Shapiro, it is only the script - alternately razor-sharp and full of deadpan stupidity - and the brilliant performances which make it clear it can be both broad and subtle by turns. The climax features a huge gun battle, jungle buildings exploding in huge orange fireballs, while also highlighting Downey Jr having a literal meltdown, shedding character personas like old lizard skins.
It is magnificently quotable - "Never go full retard" is just the start of it, and each of the main actors has at least one great or hilarious moment, exploring their characters many issues and insecurities.
It's one of the great comedies of the last decade, and it rewards multiple viewings.

MEAN GIRLS

(Mark Waters, 2004)

Mean Girls does something extremely difficult with seeming ease. It manages to be witty, subversive and self-aware without ever compromising on how well it works as a teen comedy. This is largely down to a terrific script by Tina Fey, but Waters' fleet direction and a brilliant cast do more than their share too.
Inspired by a non-fiction book on female social groups in High School and the damaging effects they can have, Fey's story follows the arrival of Cady Harron (Lindsay Lohan) to a pretty identikit movie High School in Illinois. She is quickly taken under the wing of a pair of outcasts, extravagantly camp Damian and sharp-tongued goth Janice (Lizzy Caplan) who sardonically run through the cliques dominating the school, centred around "the Plastics", a trio of glamorous, popular, bitchy girls led by Regina George (Rachel McAdams). After Regina befriends Cady, she hurts her by stealing a boy she likes. Cady's mission then is to infiltrate the Plastics and destroy them from the inside. But, in classic undercover cop movie fashion, while acting the part of a Plastic, Cady starts to actually become one, and it's hard to know where she ends and the Plastic begins.
The plotting is deft in the main storyline, and the characters register powerfully - McAdams make Regina a terrifyingly real little power-monger, while Lohan nicely plays Cady's corruption by the superficiality of the girls lives. But most of the gags - just as in Fey's great TV show, 30 Rock - are in the margins. Sight gags, throwaway lines, little character details: they mount up to give Mean Girls a density most high school comedies cannot approach.
This combination of genuine hilariousness and the truthful skewering of teen archetypes have made Mean Girls a modern classic. It's a shame that Waters has never done anything anywhere near as good, but also a tribute to the quality of Fey's script (she's also brilliant as Cady's geeky, concerned Maths teacher).

GONE GIRL

(David Fincher, 2014)

Something in the caustic, blistering satire of Gillian Flynn's novel is beautifully suited to Fincher's gifts; this film is slick and dark and funny and utterly entertaining and something about it feels effortless.
It has a pleasing ambivalence about each of its characters - Affleck nicely plays his protagonist, Nick Dunne, as variously a schmuck, a cheat, a bore, and a smug yuppie. The structure means that we partly see him through the eyes of the titular girl, his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike), as she recounts their meet-cute and perfect courtship in her diary, and partly as he suffers through the aftermath of her disappearance, when he is demonised by the media and becomes hunted and paranoid. As such, he is sympathetic - Affleck remains a charming presence - but is believably flawed and human. Amy is similarly complex, and Pike doesn't shy away from portraying her spoiled little rich girl vanity alongside her wit and intelligence. The supporting cast is just as richly populated with nuance and authentic tics - Carrie Coon and Kim Dickens play perhaps the two strongest characters as, respectively, Nick's twin sister and the detective working the case, both of whom seem cynical about everything the world throws at them.
Fincher textures the whole thing with that beautiful darkness he can sprinkle throughout a film. Here it is suburbia that is depicted with a clinical detachment, its dark corners illuminated by his camera, and the final act reveals this film as a devastating and hilarious critique of modern marriage, slickly hidden inside a twisty thriller, and drolly entertaining throughout.

SNOWPIERCER

(Bong Joon-Ho, 2013)

This is the kind of action filmmaking that reminds you of just how good action filmmaking can be. Set onboard an immense high-tech train circling the planet after a man-made ice age kills all life on earth, Bong's adaptation of the French comic le Transperceneige is a darkly satirical epic, filled with ideas, beautiful spectacle, and awesome action scenes.
The train is an obviously allegorical creation. Travelling the world for seventeen years, it houses the wealthy in the front while the poor masses live in cramped misery at the back. They eat jellylike protein bars and bow down before the guns of the guards, and live with tales of failed revolts in the past. Curtis (Chris Evans) has different ideas. Supported by Edgar (Jamie Bell) and advised by Gilliam (John Hurt),  he plots to storm the gates separating the tail of the train from the crucial middle sections, where he will release Namgoong Mimsu (Song Kang-ho) who designed the gates. After that the plan is to work their way through the many carriages until they can take the engine and overthrow the mysterious Wilford (Ed Harris). Standing in their way are dozens of armed and ruthless guards, led by Mason (Tilda Swinton).
Bong films this story using lots of tight closeups of grim, shadowed faces, and manages to communicate just how claustrophobic life on the train might be without it ever feeling overly confined. In fact, the action sequences - beautifully shot and brutally visceral - are expansive and even lyrical at times. There is an understanding of just what works in genre cinema on display here; in the dynamics of the conflicts, in the reversals and surprises in each action scene, in the cutting and compositional choices. The cast play characters who reveal themselves in short bursts of dialogue. Evans is growing as a lead and convinces absolutely here, and the mix of acting styles represented by his clash with Swinton and Song does a good job of expressing the mix of lifestyles aboard the train.
The issues it touches upon - global warming, sustainability, the class system, even civic responsibility - are implicit in the narrative, but despite a running time over two hours it never feels overlong. Instead it throws new ideas at the screen in more or less every scene, particularly once Evans and his dwindling band reach the forward sections of the train and the excess of the lifestyles of Wilford's followers is revealed.
In common with much Korean cinema, there is wild tonal variation here, with shifts from humour to melodrama to ultraviolence occurring within seconds, but it always works, partly because the setting is so consistently textured and the characters so emotionally grounded.
In its ambition and its confidence it is admirable. In the execution of its action scenes, it is exhilarating.

THE LEGO MOVIE

(Phil Lord, Chris Miller, 2014)

The Lego Movie is the most satisfying kids film since the period a few years ago when Pixar was still reliably great. It manages to be hilarious, bitingly satirical, exciting, thought-provoking, epic and consistently visually inventive throughout. Considering it's based on the brick construction system toys, that is an impressive feat.
Writer-directors Lord and Miller see the potential in the property to craft an ambitious, energetically tangential story which is full of references to other movies, in-jokes, post-modern gags and lots of nods to the adults in the audience.
At heart, its a remake of the Matrix, with its "chosen one" story focused on Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt), a construction worker who is happy to conform, and ardent in his desire to be just like everyone else. He follows the "instructions", a book informing residents exactly how to live (buy overpriced coffee, listen to popular music - "Everything Is Awesome" is a horrific earworm after a single viewing of this film). These brief scenes are a dazzlingly paced, brilliantly funny satire on conformity and consumerism, and they quickly give way to a brilliant action scene after Emmet stumbles across a mysterious artefact which bonds to his body, is questioned and one the verge of execution at the hands of Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) before he is rescued by Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a "master builder" who can create lego vehicles in seconds.
She explains the plot to him (in a scene which typically, cheerfully thumbs its nose at the very idea of such expository scenes): President Business (Will Ferrell) is set on destroying the Universe with his ultimate weapon, the Kangle (a tube of glue) which can only be stopped with the artefact stuck to Emmet's back. With Bad Cop on their trail, Emmet, Wyldstyle and her boyfirend Batman (hilariously characterised as a bit of a jockish dick, in love with his own dark and mysterious image and beautifully voiced by Will Arnett) jump across zones in this odd Lego Universe, from the Old West to "Middle Zealand" to Cloud Cuckoo Land, meeting a collection of recognisable pop culture characters and lego figures along the way.
From there it only gets more ambitious and epic, until a final act revelation which recontextualises and deepens everything we have seen suggests that this is actually that rarest thing; a transcendent kids film.
Besides that it is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, fantastically exciting, and truly beautiful in its inventive use of the possibilities of the lego-verse.

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

(Martin Scorsese, 2013)

Blame Goodfellas. That more-or-less universally adored 1990 film was a comeback of sorts for Martin Scorsese, and it remains perhaps his most ostentatiously "directed" work; with its use of slow motion, freeze-frames and its reverse dolly zooms, it positively begs an audience to notice the hand of the filmmaker throughout. No wonder it's been so very influential (films from Blow to Boogie Nights to Mesrine and American Hustle all ape Goodfellas to various degrees) - it is one of those films that makes the director look like the main man.
That hadn't been quite the case prior to that in Scorsese's career. His films had always looked good, always featured dazzling sequences, showcasing his talent as a visual stylist, but never before had they been quite so joyously excessive. Since the huge critical and commercial success of Goodfellas, Scorsese revisits that style every couple of films and adapts it slightly for others. It has become his style, in effect. The shame of this is that it now seems self-parodic, or as one critic has put it, "Scor-cese" (as in journalese). A sort of hackneyed visual idiolect.
The Wolf of Wall Street is possibly the purest expression of that style imaginable.
A wicked, hilarious, epic black comedy following the rise and fall of Wall Street stockbroker turned fraudster Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), the rambling, episodic storyline allows Scorsese to show us many of his tricks. The plot - filled as it is with an incredible amount of sequences of sex, drugs and general debauchery - allows for this, with the narrative asking that various altered states need to be interpreted somehow.
Like Goodfellas, it's largely told in flashback, narrated by a self-aware protagonist who actually talks directly to the audience, breaks off explaining things because they don't really matter, and generally glories in the twists and turns of his own story. That story is rich in supporting characters, most obviously embodied by Jonah Hill as Jordan's right-hand man, Donny, and Margot Robbie as his beautiful second wife, Naomi. As Jordan's activities become more lucrative and less legal, his habits swell until he is seemingly constantly enjoying either drugs or prostitutes (often both). Perhaps the standout sequence is a long quallude high which plays out like brilliant slapstick comedy.
This is probably Scorsese's funniest film. The silly debate over whether or not the director intends us to admire these people ignores the fact that they - and their babylonian excesses - are funny whether or not you admire them. That begins with Matthew McConaughey, whose cameo role as Jordan's mentor revolves around a standout sequence where he openly snorts coke over lunch in a restaurant, then begins a chest-beating anthem to Wall Street after revealing the secret con of the entire system to the younger man. Also hilarious is Rob Reiner as Jordan's father.
They are balanced somewhat by Kyle Chandler, somehow creating a layered individual out of an underwritten FBI agent who becomes Jordan's nemesis.
It is only with his arrival that the film really acquires a plot, as Jordan desperately seeks to cover his back and hide his money before the government catch up to him.
There are many dazzling scenes here - Scorsese is still a master, after all - but it is massively overlong, numbingly repetitive and strangely empty (which is perhaps the point, admittedly).
DiCaprio holds it together well, despite several of his co-stars walking away with their every scene, and  despite a seemingly random selection of tunes on the soundtrack (once a definite Scorsese specialty), this is genuinely, roundly entertaining throughout.
But from a master given this sort of canvas to work on, is that really enough?

THE GREAT BEAUTY

(Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)

Sorrentino finally hits his stride with The Great Beauty after a string of dazzling oddities and beautiful misfires. His talent has never been in doubt and each of his previous films is worthwhile, but here, for the first time, he feels like a mature artist, the energy and chutzpah of his style tamed and directed so that it services his subject matter.
That subject matter appears to be Rome itself, though the city is more like one of the film's main characters. The principle is Jep (Sorrentino muse Toni Servillo), a 65 year old socialite and writer who drifts around Rome's upper-class parties and events, unruffled by all the debauchery, hypocrisy and idiocy he witnesses. Instead Jep seems amused by it all, keeping a group of friends around him but somehow always a solitary figure.
The real subject is the change that comes over Jep soon after his birthday; he begins to reminisce, he wonders at lost opportunities and past mistakes. Death is on his personal horizon, and Sorrentino plays with this theme in ways both subtle and obvious; there is plentiful Catholic imagery (Jep lives in a building between a Convent and the Colisseum) and a fine extended set-piece at a funeral.
There are many set-pieces. This is an episodic tale, following Jep through his days and nights and occasionally meandering off to follow a supporting character for a scene or two before circling back to the brilliant Servillo, who always suggests the intelligence and soulfulness of his character.
That soulfulness is crucial, for it informs the film as well as the lead. The Great Beauty, as a Sorrentino film, is filled with breathtaking camera moves and excessive sequences (the early party scene, though brilliantly put together, goes on a minute or so too long). Many scenes unfold without dialogue, and this director is so good at that - he cuts these scenes to music with such virtuosity it seems only a matter of time before he makes a musical - that they are all pure pleasure.
But like his other work, such ostentatious style can feel exhausting. This is where The Great Beauty excels. From early on Sorrentino allows a little melancholy into his film.
It bursts into colour when the widower of Jep's first love comes to tell him that she has died, and the two old men weep together in a stairwell. From then on Jep is a little lost, and memories, dreams and reveries (he imagines the ocean in his bedroom ceiling) mingle with the many surreal sights thrown up by his social life, a mixture of sadness, satire and wry amusement informing it all. That sadness brings with it soul, a sense of longing that seems even present in the many slow beautiful crawls across Rome at sunset and down its streets after dark.
In a film seemingly deliberately referring to La Dolce Vita, such unexpected sadness is bracing, and in fact it makes some scenes in the later stages extremely moving. But balancing that is always Sorrentino's scathing portraits of members of the Church, the Intellectual elite, showbiz types and fading nobility - this is a portrayal of Berlusconi's Italy with some real savagery in it.
It is also one of the great Rome films, and one of the best Italian films of recent years.

THE CAMPAIGN

(Jay Roach, 2012)

It seems odd to attempt to mix political satire with the sort of broad absurdist wit with which Will Ferrell has made his name, but that is exactly what The Campaign tries to do.
In some ways, it's extremely successful; there are some big laughs here, though they mostly come from the absurdist humour. The political satire in The Campaign is broad and often blunt, but it is still a mostly likeable film. The leads - Ferrell as Congressman Cam Brady and Zach Galifianakis as Marty Huggins, his opponent in the race for a seat for a district in North Carolina - are both excellent here in different ways.
Ferrell gives another spin on his usual territory; Brady is one of his sexist, racist dinosaurs, oblivious to the fact that his outdated ideas on most things have no place in the modern world, while Huggins is an absolute oddball - camp, pedantic and incapable of opening doors. Their campaign is filled with outrageous stunts and tricks, most of it funded (in the films big play for savage satire) by Corporate money desperate to sell the district to the Chinese. Dylan McDermott is fun as the sharp slick spin doctor who turns Huggins' career around, but most of the best material comes on the off-beat:  the scene where Huggins encourages his family to lay all their sins on the table and is horrified by his boys escalating confessions of sexual and delinquent behaviour is a brilliant one, while Ferrell's campaign ads and speeches are beautifully hyper-sincere. Roach directs it all efficiently, and if it isn't outstanding,  at least it is occasionally funny.

REALITY

(Matteo Garrone, 2012)

One of the many things that really leaps out during Matteo Garrone's Reality is Alexandre Desplat's score. It swirls and twinkles away and generally sounds like it might have been composed for a film filled with magic and whimsy. It sounds like it belongs in a fairytale, and Garrone allows it enough prominence to make that obvious.
There is a fairytale aspect to this story - Luciano (Aniello Arena) follows a dream and for a brief instant his life seems full of possibility, transformed by a charge of glimmering glamour, acclaim from all who know him. But then, like many fairytales, a darkness enters the story, and slowly, finally overwhelms it.
The story centres on one mans obsession Italy's version of Big Brother. Luciano runs a Naples fish stall in an Italy which seems - just like the stereotypes suggest - to exist a few decades in the past, in a pre-digital world. He lives in a crumbling building and Naples is depicted as a sprawling mess of beautiful, ancient wrecks, old women in shift dresses shopping at markets and going to Mass.
In this world, Big Brother represents escape, Rome, show business, youth, fame, money. Luciano, at first shown as happy in his busy life and adored by his friends and family for his extrovert ways, is bullied into auditioning by his children.
But when he feels his audition might have been successful, something in him changes, and his relationship with the show and his own ambition twists inside him. When the show begins and he has not received a call from the producers, he becomes paranoid, feeling he is being watched by people from the television company who need to see if he is suitable.  He begins to alienate those around him; his family and friends.
Garrone shoots all this in a series of beautifully blocked, long, mobile takes, the camera orbiting Arena's amazing face as it takes in his world in all its vibrant colour. This obviously means the film pulses with verisimilitude, which gives this parable some sting. There is grit here, texture to the world Luciano inhabits, love and humour in a life which is nice, if far from perfect, before his obsession takes hold. The satire is never particularly sharp, but its does find its target, and turns painful before long. That this is an Italy in the grip of a financial crisis is never in doubt - these are people struggling for money, people hoping for an escape, and that makes Luciano's growing desperation all the more believable.
His televisual church is juxtaposed with Catholicism, and the somewhat ambiguous though disturbing ending feels just right. The cast are nicely naturalistic throughout, and Arena is particularly good; his open face is rivetingly watchable, registering his slow decline in his big, sad eyes.

STARSHIP TROOPERS

(Paul Verhoeven, 1997)

Verhoeven's strange genius - an ability to mix the pleasures of trash seamlessly with more highbrow subtexts - reaches perhaps it's high point with this rollicking adaptation of Robert A Heinlein's 1959 novel. Broad satire of military fascism, propaganda masquerading as media and totalitarianism slips in between the gloriously gratuitous ultraviolence and gore; and the whole thing is giddily comic and absurdly funny. The cast (Denise Richards being the most famous example) are mainly beautiful and wooden - crude satire even there - transforming the emotional moments into often hilarious melodrama, while the strident, martial tone and the rudimentary characterisation carries the whole thing along at a rigorous clip.
And yet, Verhoeven is a fine craftsman, and he ensures that the action beats all play well. They work on their own terms; thrillingly shot and edited and with a canny awareness of what makes such material successful, they allow this clever film to work on more than one level.
He would try a similar approach a few years later in a different, perhaps more complex genre with the now-legendary Showgirls, . But that didn't work out quite so well...