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

Book of Love - Boy

Companion

Does it strike anybody else as notable that Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, both top-billed 80s stars, have a son who may have followed his parents into showbiz but has specifically carved out a niche for himself as the premier choice when filmmakers are casting unkind or outright manipulative boyfriends? Quaid junior then unexpectedly happy to build his career out of being the disappointing, unreliable component in onscreen relationships rather than, say, the intensely masculine, experimental aviators essayed by his father or the energetic stability characteristic of his mother's girls next door. Regardless of this pleasant counter-programming, Jack Quaid is on fine, dipshitting form in writer-director Drew Hancock's Companion, a film that has been done no favours whatsoever by an ad campaign that couldn't wait to tell you way too much about the true nature of Sophie Thatcher's worryingly malleable Iris. 

Dressed in sixties pastels and grinning nervously, Iris is an intruder from a completely different universe, one that has been erected upon meet-cute scaffolding rather than the commodified human interaction experienced by the other, money-grubbing thirtysomethings cozying up to Rupert Friend's shady (and, they presume, rip-off-able) Russian businessman. Compared to everybody else in Companion's simmering pan, she's an innocent. A person who, by design, is unable to offer up much beyond passive, plastic obedience. Her one tell that she might possess an unexplored knack for defiance is her voice: she speaks with the same lilting murmur as Juliette Lewis, an actress who spent the 1990s playing a variety of difficult, even homicidal women. Unexpectedly timely, given that the entire data apparatus of the richest country on the planet has recently been given over to similarly vindictive young white men, Companion is a ninety minute worry about what it is to be trapped at somebody's else's beck and call; to experience only fleeting hints of real agency before your emotions and aspirations are packed away, lest they upset the people controlling your sliders. 

Imprints - Theme // Woods

Mixmaster by Kiron Fan

Motohiro Kawashima - Urban Jungle

Hard Truths

Even setting aside Marianne Jean-Baptiste's superb performance as Pansy, an anxious agoraphobic who struggles to halt the invective that streams from her mouth, writer-director Mike Leigh's Hard Truths does a fantastic job of simulating the feeling of being trapped in a familial relationship with such a damaged and damaging person. There are, therefore, obvious and enjoyable lulls in which Pansy is just elsewhere. Characters such as David Webber's Curtley or Tuwaine Barrett's Moses, Pansy's husband and twentysomething son, are seen to be almost flourishing outside of their grey, sinkhole household. These brief reprieves from the criticism being blasted their way offer us tiny insight into each of these men but, as well, the audience needs and is given even more opportunity to get a feel for the lives that are lived in Pansy's absence. We spend a few minutes here and there with her nieces Kayla and Aleisha (Ani Nelson and Sophia Brown), the pair a younger and much more psychologically healthy reflection of Pansy and her patient, saintly sister Chantelle, played by Michele Austin. 

Although there are a few mild notes of disquiet in Kayla and Aleisha's relationship, any evasiveness we're able to pick up on very obviously hasn't curdled into the strident bitterness of Pansy. The pair are close enough to make time for each other away from stricter family obligations; supportive enough to enquire after the work stresses that have clearly been the subject of a previous conversation. Of course, Hard Truths isn't about this cohesive sororal relationships, it's all about Pansy. Initially, Leigh's film is grimly humorous, with Jean-Baptiste creating arguments and aggro out of thin air everywhere she goes. At least one of her targets is even more aggressive than she is: a supermarket car park roamer who interrupts a meditative moment to demand that Pansy make space for his clapped-out car. Pansy is indiscriminate though. Her tireless bark quickly becomes punishing and oppressive, especially when directed at those unwilling or unable to mount some kind of defence. Pansy sucks all of the oxygen out of every room she enters; her mere presence a dangling and wearying threat. Finally though there is a feeling of dismay: for all her faults, Pansy is herself trapped. A person fully in the grip of something that cannot be dispelled, no matter how many loved ones she badgers or belittles. 

Clairo - Terrapin

The Dismasters - Small Time Hustler

Starscream by Casper Pham

Endless Withdrawal - We Don't Have to Talk About It

Dog Man

Writer-director Peter Hastings' Dog Man, based on a deliberately primitive comic-within-a-comic from Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series, comes on like Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop but (explicitly, this time) for children. Officer Knight and Greg the Dog are the law in a marzipan city that is constantly under threat from Pete Davidson's aimlessly evil ginger cat Petey. After coming a cropper during a bomb defusal, thanks in part to Greg the Dog's colour blindness, what's left of Knight and his canine friend is sown together to create the mute but energetic title character. Although the primary dramatic knot in Dog Man belongs to Petey and his clone kitten Li'l Petey, as they slowly undo the despairing self-image that has been passed down to them by an indifferent parent, Hasting's film doesn't shy away from suggesting the horror experienced by the chimeric Dog Man, even if such interludes are largely played for laughs. As well as echoing Omni Consumer Product's fragrant disregard for bodily autonomy, Hastings' Dog Man movie also steers its subject back to their former residence, to mourn a failed relationship and recall the happier times both components of this new composite identity experienced in a now hollowed-out household. In that respect Dog Man wields the same kind of power as a vintage The Simpsons episode: this is homage deployed with an intent that goes beyond just absurdist reproduction, managing to retain some, prickly remnant of real human sentiment. 

Solid Snake (Hurt) by Hungry Clicker

RÔDEZ - Shell

mdvsn - rpm

Wolf Man

Morose and taciturn even before anybody gets themselves swiped by a hirsute trapper, director Leigh Whannell's Wolf Man, co-written with Corbett Tuck, pays special attention to the diminishing mental faculties of a person who is slowly transforming into an animal against their will. After an aggravated window smasher sinks their talons into his forearm, Christopher Abbott's Blake, the unemployed father in a family slowly running aground, mottles then begins gnawing on himself. This autophagia apparently a welcome distraction from the thundering household insects and blaring, featureless family members that slowly become the totality of this would-be werewolf's sensory experience. Although tense in terms of moment-to-moment conflict on the back end, the biggest problem with Whannell's latest is that the film's disinclination to communicate is felt even in the piece's earliest chapters, long before we are given any inkling of the gasping, crouching terror to come. 

Blake and his wife Charlotte, played by Julia Garner, are the barest sketch of a couple growing apart from each other. Any connection felt between them is more down to physical proximity and their very obvious role as parents rather than any speech or situation that might offer insight into their (seemingly rather shallow) marital discord. Blake, Charlotte, and their daughter Ginger, all feel artificially estranged from one other, as if all of their contradictions and complications have been cruelly snipped away. They are all exhausted and defeated before we ever get a chance to know them. Yes, Whannell's Wolf Man has scaffolding that loudly proclaims generational trauma to be their underlining thesis but Blake barely blows his top before his voice is taken away from him. Similarly, the film contextualises its nail-popping transformation in terms of an aching terminal illness, but then never spares a moment to sit with the effect this expedited decay is having on Blake's powerless loved ones. Sadly, the kind of familial implosion that Wolf Man reaches for is only really felt when it's clear that something genuinely precious is being lost. 

Madara 1000 - _04

Logan by AZOINAB

Tyler, The Creator - Puppet

90sFlav - Step Up

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera comes on like a jaundiced Eurothriller spin-off of the The Fast and The Furious franchise, a heist film packed with command rooms, superfluous computer-generated car stunts and hip-hop adjacent actors being positioned as world-class cat burglars. Pantera then the much more gently paced side mission in which Gerard Butler's extremely divorced policeman travels to Nice and cosies up to O'Shea Jackson Jr's diamond thief, eventually becoming something of a collaborator then confidant. A holiday romance told exclusively in varying shades of amber, essentially. Although writer-director Christian Gudegast's sequel may be prone to the same overplotting seen in Vin Diesel's drag racing saga, comfortably saddling itself with a pair of twists that add very little except further complication, but the specific way this well-worn story is told is just different enough to be entertaining. Following some photostat complications that place Jackson and Butler in the same Riviera neighbourhood, Pantera enjoys a pleasant Americans abroad middle-act in which the cop and the criminal bond over their shared otherness in this setting. They drop ecstasy, get into fist-fights with jealous heavies then debrief over kebabs and cans of Stella Artois. The robbery that follows is refreshingly low tech as well, repudiating high-tech gadgetry to concentrate on the Melvillian delight of stocky men clambering up giant hooks or huddling up beneath massive plexiglass shields to avoid the ever present glare of CCTV. 

Black Country, New Road - Besties

Orlok by Matías Bergara

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies - Cruisin' with Mr. Scratch

Vandroid - Escape Grid (ALEX Remix)

Kraven the Hunter

There are two moments in director JC Chandor's Kraven the Hunter where it seems like the filmmakers might be on to something. The first arrives during a lengthy car chase in which Aaron Taylor-Johnson's oligarch offspring gives chase, on foot, pursuing a vehicle containing his kidnapped kid brother. Unable to batter his way through the bulletproof glass that encases his quarry, Kraven - who enjoys superhuman strength thanks to a run-in with a supernatural lion who bled into the wounds it scored into his body as well as a mystical concoction that completely re-worked his DNA - sinks his fingers into the weatherproof seal that surrounds the car door and begins pulling. Now, Kraven doesn't quite manage to gain entry at this point in the proceedings but this application of his animalistic super-strength to something other than a badly puppeteered, computer generated figure is momentarily appealing. 

The film's other highlight is even briefer but no less concerned with the meeting between the human body and an object that appears either unmoving or outright impervious. It occurs during the third-act when Kraven finds himself the subject in a hunt on his home turf: a big game sanctuary that contains the pre-fab igloo where Kraven stores his various knives. Unfortunately for the anonymous goon catapulted towards a knot of roots and blades, after stumbling upon a trip-wire trap, this intersection is not one predicated on an invulnerable flesh. The heavy folds inwards then apart, utterly pulverised by the incredible amount of overkill that has been deployed to neutralise the threat he, previously, represented. And that's it. Everything else about this Spider-Man spin-off is flat and rote, the film completely unwilling to engage with the suicidal superiority displayed by the source character in his most celebrated tale or the strange self-regard that Taylor-Johnson relentlessly broadcasts. This Kraven the Hunter doesn't even have the common decency to pummel its audience into submission with a dance-rock soundtrack. 

The Prodigy - Firestarter (Empirion Mix)

Team Clockw0rk (Sentinel // Doctor Doom // Strider Hiryu) by David Liu

Madara 1000 - _01 // 🤖🤖🤖 19

The Outlaws

Ma Dong-seok's Detective Ma may not pack a .44 Magnum or have a sleek Italian firearm holstered under his armpit but he does enjoy instant access to something equally as potent: his enormous, frying pan mitts. Previously, when reviewing his underwhelming Netflix vehicle Badland Hunters, comparisons were drawn between Ma Dong-seok and a heavyweight boxer. Really though, especially when compared to the much slighter, even weaselly criminals roaming the mean streets of Seoul, Ma's atypical bulk (presumably cultivated when the star was an amateur arm wrestler) is closer to that of a pro-wrestler, specifically an 80s All-Japan superstar. Like, say, a Toshiaki Kawada, Ma may have a round, pleasant babyface but his expertise when transmitting pain is studied and adept. In some of the film's most crucial moments we can see Detective Ma weighing up just how hard he needs to go when restraining his quarry. Is it enough to have control of a criminal's arm while he thrashes around on the floor? Or does Ma need to snap a wrist then drag that squealing man around to make him submit? Director Kang Yun-seong's The Outlaws is the first in the pulled-from-the-headlines Roundup series, an opening instalment quickly followed by (to date) three further entries. Outlaws is a lightly xenophobic (not to mention overwhelmingly pro-cop) tale of invading Chinese criminals who upset the balance of a working class neighbourhood with their boundless enthusiasm for knife crime and extortion. Really though Ma's swaggering detective is the main attraction: a brawny friend-to-children who scams superiors and local lawbreakers alike for the snack money that has enabled him to build a body so massive that, and this is repeatedly stressed, he simply cannot reach around the complete circumference of his bicep. 

Takako Mamiya - Mayonakano Joke

Zero by Hungry Clicker

Mobb Deep - Up North Trip // Shook Ones, Pt. II

X: The Movie

What does a person wear if their bodies are possessed of supernatural abilities that allow them to dart up and down delicately painted skyscrapers or conjure enormous, lapping flames out of thin air? In writer-director Rintaro's X: The Movie, the answer is, essentially, whatever they want. Rather than pull on coloured spandex or create some other kind of on-brand iridescent costume, a character like Karen Kasumi, voiced by Mami Koyama, simply walks around in the clothes she feels comfortable wearing. In this case black lingerie and a pink robe de chambre. Many of the characters in X take a similar approach to their presentation, projecting the archetypes that both exemplify their position in society and belie their importance to an unfolding apocalypse. Hideyuki Tanaka's Aoki is a stable salaryman, and so he dresses in a smart but increasingly distressed two piece suit. Similarly, Emi Shinohara's Arashi and Yukana Nogami's Yuzuriha remain in their school uniforms. Whereas an American superhero might feel the need to compartmentalise or obfuscate the part of themselves that wields incredible powers, in Rintaro's film their Japanese counterparts don't have the energy for that kind of pantomime. They are knowing props in a cosmological shake-up that cannot be averted, only experienced. 

These champions have therefore accepted their place in these proceedings without protest. The heroes and villains of X meet their ends as they are then, proudly blasting holes in each other while dressed in their civvies. Preceded by CLAMP (an all-female collective consisting of writer Nanase Ohkawa, as well as artists Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi)'s unfinished manga and followed by a twenty-four episode television series, this X is incredibly truncated in its storytelling. We are instantly at this story's conclusion and all drafted parties must scramble to keep up. Given this expedience, there's a palpable sense of impatience, or even callousness, in how enthusiastically these super-beings are pruned. This effect is only amplified by CLAMP's beatific character designs: teenagers with flowing hair and enormous eyes would seem to be a better fit for the more romantic end of the anime spectrum, as opposed to the eviscerations depicted here. This enjoyable sort of dissonance carries over into how some of these characters are portrayed, particularly Ken Narita's Fuma, a subordinate (or subordinated) player who eagerly embraces his role as a sword-wielding Antichrist. Fuma's backstory is paper thin, the childhood playmate of Tomokazu Seki's Kamui, the teenage wunderkind that the film's various factions battle to win favour with. Fuma's place in the story is that of a cosmic counterbalance, a tuned-up shade for Kamui to duel atop a collapsing radio tower. 

Quite why Fuma is so quick to accept such a despondent, bloodthirsty calling is something of a mystery, especially since the weapon he will use to confront his pal must be drawn from his sister Kotori's dying body. Our only real insight into whatever thoughts or feelings bubble inside a tight-lipped Fuma is a repeated snippet of dialogue, a lingering memory of an innocent promise made in childhood. Kamui, presumably prepared from birth to assume the role of planetary saviour, promises to protect this beloved brother and sister. Fuma counters by saying if Kamui can keep Kotori safe, he will then act as his friend's shield. Does it chafe Fuma to be considered lesser then? The assumption that he will need his friend to defend him seems to sting this young man. Perhaps Fuma is also jealous that his sister is so clearly in love with Kamui? Certainly, Fuma's envy does not seem to be specifically incestuous in nature, given that he happily casts Kotori aside to assume a state of violent equality with Kamui. Perhaps he views her as his property then, for him to do with as he pleases? The presumption then is that the energies that Fuma wields are separate from any specific feelings regarding Kotori. They are instead a demand to be noticed or feared by those who would presume to think of him as someone who needs to be sheltered. Although reserved before his activation by Atsuko Takahata's Kanoe (who looks very much like Vampire Hunter D illustrator Yoshitaka Amano interpreting Elvira), the aloofness and placidity that Fuma projects actually conceals a person desperate to be as powerful and pivotal as the boy who has stolen his sister away from him. 

In the Nursery - Hallucinations? (Dream World Mix)

Octopunch by Paul Jon Milne

Leafy - UFO

Doechii - Denial is a River

Venom: The Last Dance

Venom: The Last Dance represents filmmaking as a rolling, observable contract negotiation. As with many other superhero sequels, although there is still money to be mined from this slime saga the most valuable parties to the property, in this case Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy doing a funny voice, have either come to the end of their original deal or are otherwise desperate to go off and do something else. As such Last Dance strains to accommodate a dishevelled and disengaged-looking lead actor, who has scored himself a story credit alongside writer-director Kelly Marcel, while erecting some sort of scaffolding that can be returned to later, should Venom 3 buck the trend of recent Sony branded Marvel sinkholes. So, somewhere in a pitch black pocket universe, the symbiote progenitor plots alongside ravenous horrors that can be instantly transmitted anywhere in space and time. Knull, as played by Andy Serkis, is a belatedly deployed Thanos figure for this drain-circling spin-off cycle that, quite apparently, was being cued up to battle the likes of Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter before their feature debuts went down in flames. Elsewhere there's Hardy's Eddie Brock who, having been rudely deposited in an alternative reality pending a cross-over event in Venom: Let There Be Carnage, finds himself just as impolitely dumped back in his original realm, having never actually teamed up with anybody. All of which is to say that Venom 3 runs in circles to put out fires started elsewhere, all while struggling to make space for Juno Temple's one-dimensional scientist and, in Hardy's Brock, a principle character who seems to be exiting their own franchise. 

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