TMW #65: M3GAN 2.0, Clueless and Subway reviewed
Plus, the week's biggest trailers
In this week’s review round-up we’ve got a r3charg3d M3GAN plus two iconic re-releases, Luc Besson’s Subway and teen-com classic Clueless. Plus we’ve saved you a google with links to the latest trailers. Enjoy, and don’t forget to like/comment/Cher (sorry).
M3GAN 2.0
15, in cinemas now
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Rather than simply retreading the first film’s beats, returning director Gerard Johnstone follows the Terminator 2: Judgment Day template with M3GAN 2.0 - retooling the murderously overprotective AI doll as an ally against an even more dangerous robotic menace. Co-writing with original screenwriter Akela Cooper, Johnstone shrewdly leans even further into outright comedy with this enjoyably campy sequel.
It starts more ominously, with a covert military mission taking place near the Iranian-Turkish border - awkward timing considering real-world events, though there’s no real political substance to the setting or the mission. Instead it’s a showcase for what M3GAN-esque technology can do in a black-ops context. US military contractors with morals so loose they could work for RoboCop’s Omnicorp have sent a prototype A.M.E.L.I.A. (autonomous military engagement something-or-other) out into the field, though before you can say “Skynet becomes self-aware” she’s gone rogue and is pursuing her own objectives.
Meanwhile, following the events of the 2022 film, Gemma (Allison Williams) has moved on from the world of high-tech toys, and is now a vocal anti-AI campaigner and a parenting author who uses her platform to advocate for reduced screentime for kids. She’s still the guardian of her orphaned niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), and is dating another anti-AI activist, Christian (Aristotle Athari). But with the FBI getting wise to A.M.E.L.I.A.’s chaos, Gemma has to reluctantly reteam with M3GAN, whose consciousness has been hanging on in a number of smart-home devices.
Despite the timely anti-AI rhetoric, M3GAN 2.0 has no truck with reality. That the billionaire investor who’s interested in Gemma’s super-powered exo-skeleton tech is played by Jemaine Clement should give you some idea of the register the film is operating in. It barely qualifies as a horror; it’s more of a comedic sci-fi thriller, where the most gruesome moments happen out of frame. In classic sequel style, it goes bigger by every metric, throwing in car chases, shoot-outs, advanced weaponry and a rebooted and retooled M3GAN herself, who gets a bit of an upgrade when it’s time to step out of the ether and inhabit a body again.
It lags a little at a full two hours (20 mins longer than the snappy first), especially as the plot is on such predictable rails - no prizes for guessing who’s behind the A.M.E.L.I.A.’s shenanigans, and there are various pieces of kit that come into play that may as well have been supplied by Chekhov Industries - but there’s plenty to enjoy throughout. There are several genuine lols, some neatly staged action scenes, and pleasing practical effects. Ivanna Sakhno impresses as the expressionless killbot, while the rest of the cast are in on the knowing tone. If, as is the case for all tech products, we continue to get new iterations of M3GAN at regular intervals, on the evidence here there’s plenty of life in the doll yet. (Matt Maytum)
IN SHORT: If not exactly an upgrade, this fun, often hilarious sequel is a slick new addition to the product line.
STAY FOR THE END CREDITS? There’s no bonus scene tagged on here.
SEAGAL SEGUE: Cady’s Steven Seagal fandom (via her aikido lessons) leads to a couple of choice gags.
Clueless
12/12A, in cinemas now/streaming on Disney+
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
We must be having a Twin Peaks experience… back in cinemas in 4K, Amy Heckerling’s teen-com is now a ripe old 30??? Well, what-ever. Cast aside the antenna brick phones, none-more-’95 soundtrack (Coolio, Supergrass, Counting Crows) and references you’ll need to explain to the kids (from Mel Gibson’s Hamlet to Cindy Crawford’s Buns of Steel), and Clueless still looks as ageless as present-day Paul Rudd (here making his big-screen debut). The most quotable mid-90s movie this side of Pulp Fiction (Betty, Baldwin, granola breath, boink-fest…), it’s a teen-movie touchstone whose influence is readily detectable in Mean Girls, Netflix’s Never Have I Ever and perhaps even the pastel satire of Barbie. Led with pep and charm by Alicia Silverstone’s lovelorn, popularity-obsessed Cher, the characters are persistently, slyly mocked - for their entitlement, their real-world naivety, their nose jobs - but always with an undertow of affection. Loosely but skilfully transposing Emma to contemporary Beverly Hills, it’s the sweetest, sharpest take on Jane Austen’s ‘unlikeable’ heroine - and waaaay more fun than 1995’s other ‘kids in America’ portrait, Larry Clark’s Kids. (Matthew Leyland)
ALICIA-LESS: Though Silverstone didn’t appear in the 1996-99 Clueless TV series, several other cast members did, including Stacey Dash (Dionne) and Donald Faison (Murray). Meanwhile, Rudd, Breckin Meyer and the late Brittany Murphy all made cameos, albeit as new characters.
Subway
15, on 4K UHD 23 June
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Luc Besson’s 1985 triple-César-winning hit gets a spotless 4K upgrade - all the better to show off the razzle-dazzle that made it a poster boy for the style-over-substance Cinéma du look movement. Following Christopher Lambert’s thief Fred as he leads cops and mobsters a merry dance around the Paris Métro, it plays like a Godard caper funded by MTV. The plot wanders as aimlessly as a befuddled tourist searching for the right branch of the Northern Line, but there’s typically something visually and/or sonically stimulating going on, from the opener stunner of a car chase to the impromptu rock gig-slash-Breathless homage that closes the show. Surrounded by a motley mix of bodybuilders, rollerskating purse-snatchers, lawmen nicknamed Batman and Robin and nameless compulsive drummers (Besson regular Jean Reno), Lambert projects an air of impish maverick cool (while rocking a spiky bleach-blonde ‘do that’s as quintessentially 1985 as Live Aid). Though it’s tycoon’s wife Isabella Adjani who most memorably articulates the film’s theme of casting off societal shackles when she tells a dinner party to go eff itself. (Matthew Leyland)
DEEPER UNDERGROUND The three-disc Steelbook release offers the film in both 4K and Blu-ray, and new interviews with various talent, including rollerskating actor John-Hughes Anglade - who’s also at the helm of the centrepiece, a feature-length Making Of from 1985.
Trailer Club
Alert! Alert! One month before it hits cinemas, here’s our final pre-release look at Marvel’s first family (2025 edition). Time clearly moves fast in this corner of the MCU: in the previous trailer, Sue announced her pregnancy; in this one… well, you’ll see. Otherwise, the biggest reveal is the rockiest beard since a legendary fighter named Balboa got match-fit in the Russian wilderness. While your eyes pop at that, your ears will be dazzled by a full blast of Michael Giacchino’s main theme; here’s hoping the movie itself ends up playing on repeat in our heads too. (ML)
The Climb duo Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin once again write and star in Splitsville, a comedy about infidelity and open marriages that also features Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona…
Yorgos Lanthimos joins force with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons for another curio - a conspiracy obsessive believes a CEO is an alien in Bugonia…
There’s something very, very wrong - not to mention creepy AF - going on in the second trailer for missing-children chiller Weapons…
One year on from the opener, it’s time for more masks-attack horror with The Strangers Chapter Two…
Two years after its festival debut, ‘the biggest unrated film of all time’ has a release date. Mark your calendars in green goo (or any other handy noxious substance) for the August 29 return of The Toxic Avenger…
Derek Cianfrance directs (an awards-targeting?) Channing Tatum as an escaped con who hides out in the roof of a Toys “R” Us in stranger-than-fiction crime dramedy, Roofman…
Superman gets super-passionate (not like that) in this latest quickie preview of the imminent DC reboot-buster (that works, right?)…
Ron Howard’s latest is loosely based on the true story of some settlers who left behind the civilization they knew in 1920s Germany in the hopes of starting afresh in the untainted natural paradise of the Galápagos Islands. You don’t need a PhD in Lord of the Flies to guess what happens next, as a couple of couples (Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Brühl and Sydney Sweeney) and a hedonistic socialite (Ana de Armas) succumb to chaos in what’s presumably a microcosm of society. The starry thriller debuted to mixed reviews at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, but this teases promises an atmospheric cocktail of assorted varieties of tension. (MM)
On the Wingman office stereo…
We’ll never pass up any excuse to induct the Wingman Jrs into the joy of Dad Rock, and F1® The Movie - reviewed last week - provided the inspiration to get this classic blasting on the car stereo.