Chris_Docker

Remember that feeling when you saw the first Terminator movie? Or the stand-off between Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill? That maybe indicates just how far my jaw dropped watching Redux Redux at a festival screening.

Irene (Michaela McManus) and Mia (Stella Marcus) are such feisty characters they'd blow their own feet off rather than work as a team. Irene is a hardened fighter, killing on a regular basis to avenge a brutal kidnap, sickening torture and grisly murder of her daughter. Mia (also Irene's daughter's age) is on a risk-everything, nothing-to-lose learning curve that catapults her into combat or compact with the older woman.

The solidly used plot device that thrusts them together is the multiverse - parallel versions of reality with occasional differences - plus a heavy-metal, grungy-chic lump of hardware in Irene's pick-up truck to jump between parallels.

Revenge that will stop at nothing is complicated by the gruesome resourcefulness of psycho-kidnapper Neville and the pervy designs of some hardware maintenance techs. At what point can merciless revenge and self-preservation cave in to some sense of humanity?

The multiverse idea works as metaphor (as with all the best sci-fi). We all make life-decisions at points in the present, often based on how we 'perceive' reality. My takeaway from Redux Redux is this: Have you found a 'version' of 'reality' that works for you? If you have, stick with it. It might not come back. (And see Redux Redux in festivals or cinemas while you can!)

If you squeezed the stomach-churning scenes from Trainspotting into 15 minutes with a massive dose of hallucinogenic drugs and transported the characters (now gay) into a world of S&M dungeons digging inside Grindr to deal with excessively sleazy personal baggage while searching for true love then you might get an idea of Sleazy Tiger.

Man meets date in a pub, struggles with best intentions/temptations. (Saying much else about the plot would give it away.)

To get this lurid (with depths of what to most people, gay or not, would be unspeakably gross) and without any actual genitalia on display, is quite an achievement. The editing is so fast and precise, the rapid succession of scenes so expertly designed, the sheer grossness so overwhelming while still being cinematic, all of it draws my admiration. The worst I can say about it is that it is not to my taste, but it's a laudable effort of film-making - and did I mention it's funny? In fact the humour saves it from being almost downright offensive, but it is one hell of a ride for a 15 minutes short.

It would be a bit strong to call Materialists a 'modern Pride and Prejudice' - but there's a deeply inhaled whiff of that old contest between marrying for love or marrying for money. The film doesn't solve it (the ending can be guessed early on and is what the audience will want rather than any objective analysis). What it does do though is entertain thoroughly for a couple of hours and provide a clever enough dialogue for most of that to raise it above the standard rom-com.

Dakota Johnson plays Lucy Mason, a dating exec, matchmaking for New York's finest (a.k.a. Rich and good-looking). Two men, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, both want to date her, and both exuding best intentions and deep sincerity. Personally I don't think Lucy should take either of them if this were the real world, but it's not, it's a beautiful, magical Manhattan merry-go-round of lovers-for-life and wannabes. Throw in some dancing and it could almost be a fine romance for Fred and Ginger.

I'm pleased it didn't have any dancing: it manages to keep its feet on the ground long enough to relate to - if only for those at a distance of earning less than a couple of million a year - which also means that for anyone without half of Wall Street in the bank the small element of fantasy can be considered entirely justifiable!

Celine Song has made a second hit (after the beautifully crafted Past Lives) with just enough candour to make us question ourselves without intruding with a virtue-signalling message. We can ask ourselves what does love consist of, and does love conquer all, or we can just go with the flow.

Materialists is not a "classic" in the sense of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's or Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman: but the cast do the script proud and make it a thoroughly enjoyable. Don't go and see it if you are desperate for love, have just joined a dating app, are uncomfortable with your own attractiveness or inclined to take romcoms too seriously: but as a night out with a partner that you love it's worth the price of admission, or even just with a friend who likes dissecting the issues over coffee afterwards. I hope that is a reasonably helpful balance of 'materialism'!