The Electric State

Set in an alternative version of the 1990s in which people can stand to wear gigantic, yellow VR-style headsets for longer than fifteen minutes, Anthony and Joe Russo's The Electric State takes the dour, dystopian artwork of Simon Stålenhag then batters it into an all-American, Amblin-presenting shape. The ruined and rotting bodies of towering mechs are translated here into a menagerie of walking-talking merchandise; literally Disney's AA puppets, crowding the screen and demanding respect from their blubbery masters. Our path through this robot revolution is Millie Bobby Brown's orphaned delinquent and a grinning, childlike droid that claims to be channelling the thoughts and feelings of her sadly departed brother. In this sense Electric State, all three hundred million dollars of it, feels very much like something that Steven Spielberg, toiling in the dwindling years of the twentieth century, briefly considered before passing on. 

Electric State then as a project that hasn't quite jived with Spielberg's sensibilities and is therefore not exciting enough for him to dedicate any serious amount of time to. Handed off to an underling and stamped with an Executive Producer endorsement for its trouble. The Russo brothers, very gamely in fact, contribute to this overall sense of thwarted thrills by failing to invest their film with any of the awe or wonder that might elevate this subsurface scattered Pinocchio. Similarly, the scene-setting that opens the film (in which fragile, flesh men attack automated servants of every shape and size) might dimly recall Mahiro Maeda's The Second Renaissance shorts from The Animatrix but Electric State is not nearly so delightfully bloodthirsty. The Russo's film, presumably desperate to ensure a follow-up feature, cannot resist undermining any sense of danger or consequence mere seconds after they have been suggested. Armies of puppeteered mechanoids blast holes through cutesy relics of post-war Americana and Chris Pratt strains to transplant his Guardians of the Galaxy man-child into another franchise but this film's abiding images all revolve around Giancarlo Esposito's interlaced face blaring out of a pistol-packing android that crosses George Lucas' tin-men with Lee Van Cleef.

Judas Priest - Breaking the Law

CoryaYo - Stretchyomiiind

DC Extended Universe by Alexye

Endless Withdrawal - Together

Emmanuelle

Despite the halting, even lifeless rhythms of the finished film, co-writer (with Rebecca Zlotowski) and director Audrey Diwan's contribution to the Emmanuelle saga does feel significant, at least in terms of adding one or two layers of complication to a character typically premised on a youthful enthusiasm. Noémie Merlant's Emmanuelle is no longer a trophy wife eager to please an indifferent husband by exploring her sexuality. She is a little older, maritally unentangled and enjoying a successful career swanning around high-end getaways with a tape measure. This particular job also offering the ever-present opportunity to jet around and mechanically seduce the men that Emmanuelle shares first-class seating with. Similarly, the anonymity and access provided by her role as a quality controller for a pernickety hotel chain allows her to slip in and out of a series of luxurious settings. 

Emmanuelle can taste affluence then but is unable to truly linger. Unmoored from any specific interpersonal relationship, other than a corporate voice that demands she engineer faults where none exist, Emmanuelle slips into a routine that is unfulfilled or even alienated. Caged within Hong Kong's lavish St. Regis hotel, ran by Naomi Watts in little more than a cameo, Emmanuelle rattles around, picking at the other residents and finding little real satisfaction. Unfortunately, since this listlessness accounts for the lion's share of Emmanuelle's runtime, Diwan's film is similarly numb. Developments inside these walls are diverting rather than intriguing; the sex that Emmanuelle kills time with perfunctory rather than exciting. Luckily, Emmanuelle is eventually given reason to leave her temporary base and venture out onto the streets of the city-state. Diwan's film is suddenly frantic: Laurent Tangy's camera darting around the statuesque and striking Merlant, appraising this underdressed woman as she suddenly explodes into life in cramped quarters. 

Blur - Y'All Doomed

Madonna by Matías Bergara

MF Eistee - Zander

Casshern

Director-cinematographer-editor (not to mention co-writer) Kazuaki Kiriya's Casshern is an odd and not entirely enjoyable duck. The film's pacing is glacial, with the overwhelming majority of Casshern given over to solemn but not particularly insightful sermons about the horrors of empire. The front-end of the piece is therefore filled with scenes in which the emotionless instruments of a Soviet-presenting war machine gather to declare their slogans at each other. The acting that takes place on this film's bluescreen backlot is often unduly theatrical in how it communicates its ideas: figures wrap themselves in flags then blast their rhetoric directly at their imaginary audience. The effect is chilly and austere rather than involving. Yusuke Iseya's augmented title character, at least in this theatrical cut, is absent for nearly the entire first hour of the film as well. We do see a few, brief inserts regarding his human life though: Tetsuya as a young man, hell bent on frustrating his father's scholastic ambitions for him, as well as black and white nightmares that depict the young conscript shooting civilians before he is himself killed by a booby trap. 

Resurrected, thanks to his father's pioneering research into inhuman cruelty, the artificial person that eventually takes the name Casshern finds himself, intermittently, fending off the waves of advancing, automated armies that encircle this expanding fiefdom. Technologically speaking, Kiriya's Casshern - adapted from Tatsuo Yoshida's mid-70s, child friendly animated television series - seems a reaction to the digital set-work and computer-generated set-pieces seen in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, specifically the moments in which George Lucas completely abandoned staid set-ups featuring human actors, giving the film over to two toy factions blasting away at each other during a sandstorm. Two decades removed from this deliberate unreal approximation of Middle Eastern conflict, and given that similar sequences in modern blockbusters have somehow evolved into perfunctory noise, the blaring falseness of ILM's black blizzard becomes entertaining in of itself. Lucas, unburdened from the human performers he had no interest in directing, was able to lose himself inside his very own polygonal pandemonium. Kiriya is similarly unleashed, applying the eye-catching collage of his Hikaru Utada music videos to this (much more modestly budgeted) visual effects drenched polemic. 

Casshern keys into a similar sense of superimposed overabundance as the Star Wars prequels then, jamming every inch of the screen with incongruous, obviously synthetic accentuation and charmingly primitive mechanical figures. Kiriya arguably even goes a step further than his spotless inspiration by cross-pollinating his special effects plates with the filthy figures seen in Polish science fiction films, specifically the blood and shit-smeared cosmonauts from Andrzej Żuławski's On the Silver Globe. Regardless of advances in grimy spacesuits, it does seem notable that Kiriya and storyboarder Shinji Higuchi, in their thrilling (and, in fairness, fleeting) depiction of man on robot destruction, are communicating the same reaction to Lucas' simulated armies as Cartoon Network wunderkind Genndy Tartakovsky. The second season of the Star Wars: Clone Wars shorts dedicated an entire three-minute episode to a fondly remembered interlude in which Mace Windu's Jedi Master pulverised battalions of action figures with his bare fists. Almost simultaneously, and on the other side of the planet, Japanese theatres were projecting the edge of Yusuke Iseya's human hand cleaving its way through another army of bulbous robots.

Momma - I Want You (Fever)

Anakin by Matías Bergara

Massive Attack v Mad Professor - Radiation Ruling the Nation (Protection)

Baby Assassins: Nice Days

Freed from the black hole pull of their two-seater couch, Saori Izawa's Mahiro and Akari Takaishi's Chisato have taken a trip to the beach, specifically the subtropical city of Miyazaki. In Baby Assassins: Nice Days the murderous duo take in the sights, daydream about sampling local delicacies and find themselves double-booked for a hit. Rival button man Fuyumura, played by Shin Kamen Rider's sweaty, filthy Sosuke Ikematsu, isn't affiliated with the same mob union as Mahiro and Chisato, he's a freelancer with vague ties to arms dealing co-operatives ran by mean old men. The danger that this scab represents is political as well as physical then, his continued existence an insult to this setting's highly structured departments of youthful contract killers. As with the previous film, Baby Assassins 2 Babies, Nice Days is confident enough to let the girls take a back seat, with Fuyumura's perspective rationed out to us as Mahiro flicks through his diary-cum-serial killer scrapbook. Like the Baby Assassins, Fuyumura feels basically nothing about the people he eliminates. He catalogues them, talking about each experience as a repetitive step in creating a complete, working sense of self. The flashback crimes we see are often amateur and cumbersome in execution, with Fuyumura straining against the limitations of his body to snuff out his targets. A fluency obviously emerged though and, at least when this film begins, he's a more than credible threat to both of our leads. The damage this character represents goes a little deeper than beautifully fluent counter-striking though. Mahiro, simultaneously the more physically accomplished and socially awkward of the Baby Assassin pair, senses something of herself in this tome; a path she hasn't had to walk, thanks to her anxiety dispelling partnership with Chisato. 

Fugazi - Waiting Room

manny. - snr.

Capcom Cup 11 by 哀ScReaM

A.L. West - Rabbitbrush 2

Presence

Unusually, for this genre of thriller, there's very little attempt to invoke supernatural malevolence in Steven Soderbergh's Presence. David Koepp' screenplay, not to mention Soderbergh's camera, defy the rhythms and reveals typically associated with big screen phantasms to concentrate on a spectre that is, largely, passive but still ever-present. This ghost is observational, our free-floating perspective on these lives, able to drift around the cavernous household and nose into pertinent conversations. Presence's spook, lingering on the edge of human perception, seems to be most comfortable crouching in the wardrobe of Callina Liang's Chloe, the youngest and least appreciated child in the Payne family. Quickly, Chloe picks up on their unseen companion, believing it to be some fragment of a recently departed friend: another depressive teenage girl who was also rumoured to be experimenting with drugs. Since we are privy to all of this phantom's coming and goings - and not just those picked up upon by paranormally attuned cast members - we are able to note the less consequential ways in which this viewpoint expresses itself, be that tidying up notebooks in the bedroom it seems anchored to or literally looking down upon Lucy Liu's Rebecca as she ignores her floundering children to hurriedly empty her inbox of incriminating emails. Although this strange consciousness is thoroughly described by the film's conclusion, there are enough clues scattered throughout the piece to suggest something trapped but penitent; an emotional sensation that his persisted in these walls, hoping to connect itself to a vessel that can then enact real physical change. 

Horsegirl - Switch Over

Long-Haul by Kiron Fan

MIKE - Artist of the Century

Flight RIsk

Sandwiched between two heavily computer-orchestrated sequences, that impart nothing other than a revolting sense of unreality, sits the meat of Flight Risk, a lightly twisted tale of frustrated extradition. Mel Gibson's latest makes an excretable first impression, even with the disgraced director's name deliberately elided from any ad campaign that preceded the film. Instantly we're hammered with a succession of collapsed digital imagery, from a motel exterior so stylistically overwrought and disconnected from the tone of the piece that it prompts laughter, to a badly composited telephoto appraisal of a landing strip. Worse still, Topher Grace's mob accountant is written to be funny but, sadly, with the objective of pleasing an audience who find the prospect of a grown man being unable to attend to his own toiletry duties the height of comedy. 

Eventually we're trapped in a creaking Cessna, pointed directly at a snowy mountain range, with Michelle Dockery's US Marshal and Mark Wahlberg's snarling pilot bickering over the controls. Dockery, when given centre stage in the latter half of Flight Risk, brings a beleaguered likability with her that accentuates the nightmarish task of having to keep a light aircraft from nosediving. Wahlberg's drooling belligerent is the highlight though, although largely for his increasingly pained and contorted face as well as the ways in which his florid description of sexual violence seem so completely at odds with a film that otherwise feels like a bottle episode in a long-running TV serial. Completely unrecognisable as the work of a director that previously delivered Apocalypto, fans of Gibson's fixation on self-flagellation may like to note that far more attention is paid to the ruinous damage that Wahlberg's balding maniac gleefully inflicts upon himself than any of the bodily trauma otherwise deployed to vanquish this pest. 

New Order - Blue Monday 88

The Dinobots by Geoff Senior and Josh Burcham

Edelways - Summer Breeze

Edelways · Summer Breeze

Captain America: Brave New World

Instantly a relic of a bygone era, thanks to the despotic churn of Washington politics, Captain America: Brave New World not only features a president who has managed to win his seat thanks to tenuous connections to in-world celebrities (in this instance, The Avengers) but a commander-in-chief who takes his responsibilities as a steward for the world's sole superpower seriously whilst also suffering enormous pain when estranged from his child. Pure fantasy in other words. Dogged by reshoot rumours, as well as whispers regarding the curmudgeonly nature of actor Harrison Ford, Brave New World arrives as a pretty great illustration of how older stars are, seemingly, far better armed to advocate for themselves and their own personal star persona. 

As President Thunderbolt Ross, Ford enjoys a layer of expertise and attention that is absolutely not extended to his counterpart, Anthony Mackie's Captain America. Mackie makes do with a re-heated character incline that traps his airborne superhero inside further doubts regarding his suitability for such an incredible role. There is very little personal dimension given to any of his actions (certainly nothing romantic or sexual), beyond him thanklessly performing a series of tasks that facilitate pleasant outcomes for third-parties. And that's really it. Presumably, Disney have decided that a black actor at the forefront of one of their most prestigious properties is a difficult enough sell in today's socio-political landscape and that providing him with any interiority, other than the firmly held worry that he cannot possibly measure up to his white predecessor, would therefore be a step too far. 

This listlessness that has been applied to Sam Wilson is compounded by a style of action that leans so heavily on incredible displays of invulnerability that the audience has to be repeatedly coaxed and reassured with asides about magical super-soldier equipment that has been gifted to Wilson by Wakanda. There are deeper layers of disconnection though: Mackie's Cap is a human bird, able to whizz around sixth generation fighter jets without experiencing any of the intense nauseas that usually enact themselves upon our fragile bodies. That may be fine in a Summer cross-over (or their big screen equivalent) when this Captain America is one voice in an enormous chorus of zipping digital bodies but jarring in a piece that otherwise strains to frame itself as some version of a political thriller. Strangely enough Carl Lumbly's Isaiah Bradley, the forgotten Korean war era super soldier, enjoys a more considered framing when he finds himself cornered. 

Bradley, already a comparatively complicated approach to the idea that there have been multiple, successive Captain Americas (thanks to his trepidation when engaging with the rulers of his home country) gets to play a thoughtless The Manchurian Candidate-style assassin within an inciting incident then, almost immediately, the much older, frailer man that he actually is when he snaps back to reality as the full power of the state descends upon him. Of course, this compromised human perspective is immediately tidied away from Sam Wilson's wider adventure, lest it confuse the action figure roil. According to the misfiring The Falcon and The Winter Soldier TV mini-series, Bradley spent decades in prison being experimented upon by, essentially, Nazis. His return to unjust incarceration should feel a little more heartbreaking then than the temporary time out depicted here. Which brings us back to Harrison Ford. 

Ford's President Ross feels largely out of step with the rest of his film, as if the actor is delivering the performance he prefers to give rather than what was specifically, structurally, on the page. The way he's talked about within the piece - his abruptness or his alarming swings in temper - do not match up with what Ford is actually doing. Even away from scenes that depict extremely unconvincing statecraft (in decades gone by the studios financing these projects would fork out so hotshot political drama writers could take passes at these screenplays, injecting some hint of credibility into them), Ross is a man enacting personal change on a titanic scale. Not just to steward the country he's been elected to lead but as a way to attract the favour of the daughter he has pushed away. Ross has human failings then. Naked, emotional needs further complicated by a body that isn't up to the task of shouldering such relentless physical stress. 

Ford, as his character teeters on the edge of giving into his explosive anger, does something that really only Michael B. Jordan in Black Panther has managed to do: he seizes control of the camera. He is no longer a passive, observed player within a hastily blocked superhero feature. The tidal wave of emotions that his President Ross is experiencing actually enact themselves upon the frame. Aboard a battleship that was itself very nearly breached, the screen begins to tip to one side as Ross seethes through another of his episodes. Director Julius Onah and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau's film literally upends, standing almost vertical to sink into some unseen abyss while the biggest star in the piece claws at his throat, gasping for air. The transformations experienced by Ross in Brave New World are becoming unexpectedly exciting. 

Although pre-release material couldn't wait to trumpet the debut of a new Hulk, the circumstances of the monster's arrival are communicated in dramatically apprehensive terms, rather than just another excuse for a climactic special effects riot. The involuntary anxieties enacting themselves upon the failing Ross recall the shaking tremors experienced by his television ancestor: Bill Bixby's lonely David Banner from CBS' The Incredible Hulk. Another older man utterly appalled at what could become of him. Our familiarity with Mark Ruffalo's increasingly tame and psychologically well-adjusted Hulk, not to mention the demands of always escalating digital filmmaking, have completely dulled one of the core appeals of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's original comic character: an educated person who cannot contain an awful, uncontrollable violence within themselves. 

Perhaps then, with this in mind, Captain America: Brave New World's climax plays differently outside of its birthplace? Presumably we, as viewers, are supposed to be struck aghast that The White House is aflame during the finale; withered by helicopter gunfire and trampled beneath the feet of a boiling, blood-red ogre? However, and this is largely thanks to Ford's uncooperative portrayal of a Thunderbolt Ross who is essentially Jack Ryan with angina, it is actually supremely satisfying to see an American head-of-state rendered in this way: a thoughtless monster who has completely given in to the bilious rages that bubble inside him. Excusing this Hulk's recently extinguished political career, it's supremely entertaining to watch a creature that instantly sets to tearing down facile, faux-Grecian architecture with its bare, bleeding hands. Borderline therapeutic even, given the lopsided reality we're all currently being battered through. 

Kendrick Lamar - i

Doodles by Amilcar Pinna

System96 - Linear