The New Mutants 6/10 on IMDB

www.imdb.com/title/tt4682266

Not the movie I’d expected.

This is a confined horror movie with Marvel TV undercurrents. Way better than I’d anticipated.

With a handful of cast members, a limited stage, and some brilliant and weak acting this would be a great pilot for a Netflix series.

As it is there are some tricky parts what with supernatural aspects of mutantism like alternate realities, scary demons, and some poltergeist-like manifestations.

Nonetheless, the simplicity of the setup and the youth of the characters combined with the uneasy ‘Essex Corporation’ angles make this a credible and engaging movie.

Sure, you know it’s going to work out OK in the end. But that ‘OK’ is still pretty SNAFU. And the journey to it is better than many ‘horror’ movies I’ve seen and avoided comment on.

I hope this turns into a series of movies that lets the characters have some further rights of passage and achieve something like heroic status.

Worth watching if you like superhero movies but want more suffering and character exploration.

Tenet 4/10 tedious macho BS

www.imdb.com/title/tt6723592

Tenet was my first cinema visit since ‘onward’ back in March. I wish I’d stayed home.

If you want guns, violence, explosions, and sub-Bond macho bullshit then this is the film for you. It even has Kenneth Branagh playing a cookie-cutter Russian oligarch villain intent on destroying the world.

‘Temporal pincer manoeuvre’ is a phrase you might hear at least as often as ‘tenet’ in the movie. Just a reminder that this is a high-concept thriller where ‘you need to think beyond 3 dimensions’. Nah, it is a trite mashup of familiar ideas thrown into a blender and poured onto the screen pretending to be a Jackson pollock.

At one point such a ‘temporal pincer manoeuvre’ has a 10 minute countdown to its explosive conclusion. If time for the characters runs at the speed it seemed to for me as a viewer then that might be the longest 10 minutes of their lives. They will welcome the end.

The airport heist is perhaps one of the neatest scenes. Though it does go on a bit in its preparation, execution, and repetition. Some of its staging couldn’t be less obvious if there’d been neon signs pointing out the future ‘twist’. If you’ve never seen a movie or TV thriller before then prepare for a surprise.

The car chase heist is perhaps the most tedious action piece. It all seemed very familiar. Almost a shame that the flow of time here prevented characters from making Matrix-like exclamations of “déjà vu”.

It’s not without merit. It is an action movie. And an action-packed one. But for all that it lacks so much. Things like convincing dialog, credible characters, any real sense of purpose, or just something more than a weak premise and characters backed up by guns, explosions, violence, and more macho BS.