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!)

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'!

Saw this at the Edinburgh International Film Festival which is a great place to see up-and-coming talent. Gerard Johnson's Odyssey is carefully staged... a first section with people talking over each other is (perhaps intentionally) annoying... so much so that when some music and visuals kick in it's like a warm bath, instant relief ... mirroring the protagonist's drug habit introduced at the same time (as well as creeping background segments of unease).

An Estate Manager, the protagonist, good at her job, owes a lot of people a lot of money. The action all occurs in a blood-soaked, beautifully filmed climax and you might think, what is there not to like? Odyssey (absolutely no relation to the Homeric classic) is well-constructed and scripted, but it's downfall is the over-long intro and a complete absence of any likeable characters.

The "Viking", a masterful Mr Fixit who appears only in the last third of the film, is exceptional characterisation, perfectly acted ... though by that time I was unfortunately a bit past caring...

Homer's Odyssey, its namesake, is the story of a skilled, good human being who goes through numerous trials to rise above his personal shortcomings and eventually triumph as the king of his country and his soul. Johnson's Odyssey is about a flawed, rather unlovable woman who increasingly goes downhill morally. It has so much to offer, yet at the end I felt the sum was rather less than the parts.