TMW#19: Wolf Man, A Complete Unknown, Here and Back in Action reviewed
This week's major movie releases rated, plus more weekend watching recommendations and Friday trailer club
Hello film fans,
*As we were finishing up this edition of The Movie Wingman, we were terribly saddened to learn that genius auteur David Lynch has died. We will be paying tribute to the legendary filmmaker next week.*
We’re barely halfway through January and it’s already a monster week for new releases. At the cinema, Leigh Whannell unleashes the Wolf Man, his belated follow-up to 2020 gem The Invisible Man; Timmy guns for awards glory with Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown; and Forrest Gump trio Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Robert Zemeckis reunite for the epoch-spanning experimental drama Here. While on streaming Cameron Diaz returns to screens with espionage action comedy Back in Action. Read our verdicts on that mammoth lot below, and let us know what you’re watching this weekend in the comments below.
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We’ll be back on Tuesday, as always, with further film chatter. Until then clicky-click those like and re-stack buttons or, better yet, why not recommend The Movie Wingman to a film-loving pal? It’s the guaranteed easiest way to convince someone you have impeccable taste. See you next week.
Jordan (Matt and Matthew)
Wolf Man
15, in cinemas now
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Reality bites? That’s one way to glibly label the contemporary sci-fi spin that director/co-writer Leigh Whannell puts on the werewolf mythos in Wolf Man. While it’s not quite as effective as Whannell’s previous re-engineering of a Universal horror classic, The Invisible Man, there’s much to enjoy in this tense, inventive revival.
Where The Invisible Man hid the classic villain in a story of an abusive gaslighting relationship, Wolf Man transforms a parenting story using recognisable lycan-tropes. Do the limits parents go to protect their kids do more harm than good? That’s explored on a surface level, first in the prologue - during which Blake Lovell (played as a kid by Milo Cawthorne) is schooled in deer hunting by his military-minded pa (Sam Jaeger) - and later when grown-up Blake (Christopher Abbott) tries to keep daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) safe in the urban jungle, while his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) throws herself into her journalism career.
Whannell does a decent job of establishing the tense family dynamics alongside the updated werewolf folklore. An opening title card informs of the ‘hills fever’ that’s been troubling the Oregon woods around the Lovell farmstead. It’s alternatively known as ‘face of the wolf’, and in the armrest-clenching opening, father and son go from hunters to quarry, seeking refuge in a deer blind from an unseen creature on the prowl.
In the present day, when news arrives that Blake’s father has finally been declared legally dead, the family of three leave their San Francisco home for a break at the farm they’ve inherited. It doesn’t take supernatural abilities to predict things aren’t going to go well before they get lost, pick up an edgy local, and swerve off road to avoid… something. That something slashes Blake’s arm before they reach the sanctuary of the farmhouse, where they’ll find the nightmare’s only just beginning.
As the relatively slow-burn transformation takes hold, it becomes obvious that one of the shrewdest moves on Whannell’s part is to cast great actors, with both Abbott and Garner keeping things grounded when there’s considerable risk of silliness. They also believably sell the horror of the body-transformation element from both sides of the experience (there’s DNA of The Fly spliced in). In a couple of neat touches, Whannell offers perspective flips between Charlotte and Blake, and he also goes all in on the sound design. The reveal behind a rumbling coming from an upstairs bedroom is a corker.
A couple of set pieces feel indebted to Spielberg’s Jurassic movies (you might as well pilfer from the best…), including a truck-in-tree escape, and on the whole the film’s at its most seat-edge taut in the first two-thirds. The werewolf design suits the film’s approach but it won’t go down as one of the greats, and the big emotional swings in the final act don’t quite land, perhaps because they’ve been so clearly signposted. And once you’re released from its grasp, it’s easy to rip much of the plot to shreds. Still, it’s a fun Friday-night fright-flick, and far from a howler. Kudos to Whannell for trying something different with such a well-worn formula. (Matt Maytum)
In short: It’s not quite The Invisible Man, but it makes a decent fist (paw?) of reinventing the werewolf movie.
Stay for the end credits? There aren’t any post-credits scenes to sink your teeth into.
Worth remembering: Ryan Gosling was once attached to the lead role, but it’s easy to imagine his star power overwhelming a low-key take.
A Complete Unknown
15, in cinemas now
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
James Mangold’s (exceedingly loose) 60s trilogy started strong with 2019’s Oscar-winning Le Mans ‘66 before crumbling like an old relic with Dial of Destiny, but now gets back on track with this solid - if occasionally stolid - Bob Dylan biopic. It’s adapted from Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric!, whose very title may be a spoiler for those less familiar with the guitar hero’s rise to fame and attendant quest for artistic freedom. Dylanologists, meanwhile, might not learn much new from the film’s unswervingly linear, Wikipedia-ish arc, but will surely appreciate the reverence afforded the music - and lead Timothée Chalamet’s commitment to playing live. The star’s performance is also marked by a refusal to file down any rough edges; conceited and careless with people’s hearts, young Bob is, as creative collaborator-slash-lover Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) puts it, “kind of an asshole”. (Contrasting Dylan’s surly cool are warm turns from Elle Fanning as girlfriend Sylvie and Edward Norton, attaining Hanks-level avuncular affability as mentor Pete Seeger.) If A Complete Unknown doesn’t quite get behind the iconic, seemingly glued-on sunglasses, it has a sure handle on the changing times; when we reach the inevitable restaging of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, it’s hard not to feel rocked by Dylan’s decision. (Matthew Leyland)
About a Boyd: A Complete Unknown also completes a James Mangold trilogy for actor Boyd Holbrook (here playing Johnny Cash), who previously starred in the director’s Logan and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Back in Action
On Netflix now
⭐⭐☆☆☆
As that sly, meta title suggests, this Netflix action-comedy is a comeback vehicle for Cameron Diaz, over a decade since her last starring role in 2014’s Sex Tape. It’s just about the only noteworthy aspect of an otherwise flimsy spy caper. Covering curiously similar ground to 2023 Mark Wahlberg movie The Family Plan, Back in Action stars Cameron D and Jamie Foxx as husband and wife spies who escape a life of espionage to raise a family, until 15 years later their cover is blown and they’re forced to go on the run, kids in tow. As a spy movie, it’s about as lightweight and low-stakes as they come. There’s the daft technobabble MacGuffin, the blindingly obvious second-act-twist-villain reveal and the meddling MI6 suit (Andrew Scott, completely wasted) – perfect for a game of cliché bingo. Glenn Close pops up as a former SIS operative with a British accent riper than an Stygian banana. Director Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses) is primarily known for his comedies and makes at least one sound decision – casting Jamie Demetriou as a useless wannabe spy, and the toy boy partner of Close’s character(!); he steals every scene he’s in. But if this is the best Hollywood can do for Diaz, she’d be better off staying retired. (Jordan Farley)
Absolute Car-nage: Despite the prevalence of choppily edited fights and green-screen-heavy setpieces, Back in Action’s vehicular stunt team deserves a nod for slipping in a few impressive crashes, including a gnarly freeway flip, and a convincing chase around London’s South Bank.
Here
12A, in cinemas now
⭐⭐☆☆☆
The Forrest Gump team of Robert Zemeckis (director), Eric Roth (writer), Tom Hanks and Robin Wright reunite for another time-spanning American history story. Adapted from Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel, Here can’t be faulted for its ambition. The unique approach to a generational story is told from one fixed camera point, which for the most part shows the family living room of Richard Young (Hanks), who lives there most of his life, with wife Margaret (Wright) eventually moving in. But the non-linear narrative also takes in previous and future inhabitants, going as far back as prehistoric times. As well as being jumbled in sequence, occasionally a different timezone will appear tiled over the main image. It’s a flashy trick, and at times you marvel at the planning that will have gone into it. And the de-aging effects, while still slightly uncanny, are a demonstration of the leaps and bounds this kind of tech is making. But at the heart, the core story is sappy and slight, and the addition of the historical interludes makes it feel more like a museum piece than a movie. (Matt Maytum)
Most random sub-plot: The invention of the La-Z-boy recliner gets more screentime than it really warrants.
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