Recent releases: Supergirl, Re-Creation, The Death of Robin Hood, Jackass: Best & Last, Lollipop, Evil Dead Burn, Little Brother

Time for anoth­er trip down the back­roads by the rivers of my memory and see if I can recall how I felt watch­ing these fea­tures that hit cinemas (and Netflix in one case) in June this year. Luckily, in many cases I have the evid­ence of my own ears to rely on, as they were reviewed for one RNZ show or another.

After the ami­able DC rebound that was James Gunn’s Superman it was dis­ap­point­ing to dis­cov­er that the imme­di­ate big screen follow-up, Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl, was such a stumble. While Gunn’s film was upbeat and col­our­ful – a con­scious throw­back to the unim­peach­able good­ness of Christopher Reeve’s ver­sion – Supergirl was back to the con­flic­ted reluct­ance to take on the respons­ib­il­ity that has char­ac­ter­ised so many super­hero characterisations.

Australian Milly Alcock (who first came to my atten­tion in the excel­lent Tim Minchin com­edy series Upright) plays Kara Zor-El, cous­in of David Corenswet’s Kal-El, inex­plic­able fel­low sur­viv­or of the destruc­tion of the plan­et Krypton. While he was dis­patched as a baby, Kara trav­elled to us as a teen­ager (I guess, who knows how many actu­al Krypton years she had lived through) and she main­tains some of that teen­age rebel­li­ous­ness and alienation.

She’s also old enough to be able to booze on some plan­ets, a fact she takes advant­age of on long off-Earth bend­ers feel­ing sorry for herself.

Against her will – it always seems to be against their will, does­n’t it? – she becomes involved in a people-trafficking (ali­en traf­fick­ing?) plot when she meets Eve Ridley’s Ruthye whose par­ents have been murdered by a gang of ruth(ye)less out­laws called Brigands whose dress sense seems to have been inspired by old VHS tapes of Mad Max.

Into a neon-lit Blade Runner-esque city, they go. Kara is look­ing for an anti­dote to the pois­on the Brigands have giv­en her dog Krypto and Ruthye wants revenge. Everything about the pic­ture seems to have been inspired by some older, bet­ter film and pro­du­cer Gunn has tried to sprinkle some of his trade­mark humor­ous pix­ie dust in order to light­en things up a bit mak­ing for some ton­al con­fu­sion. Especially hor­rif­ic moments are just passed over by a film that’s reluct­ant to engage prop­erly with any of the ideas it has had.

Celebrated Irish dir­ect­or Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot among many oth­ers) has been obsessed by the notori­ous case of the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier for years but he’s far from alone in that. His five-part doc­u­ment­ary series, Murder at the Cottage, is just one of a dozen exam­in­a­tions (and re-examinations) of the case that have been filmed, writ­ten and recor­ded since Sophie’s body was dis­covered out­side her Cork hol­i­day home nearly 30 years ago.

In Re-creation, Sheridan angrily returns to the sub­ject and his frus­tra­tion about it has promp­ted a fas­cin­at­ing approach. Prime sus­pect in the murder, Ian Bailey, was nev­er tried for the crime in Ireland and was even­tu­ally found guilty in absen­tia by French author­it­ies in 2019 – that’s a thing they can do, appar­ently. Sheridan’s film ima­gines how an Irish jury – includ­ing a jur­or played by him­self – might have argued about the case had it ever come to that.

The pro­voca­tions go back and forth with one female jur­or in par­tic­u­lar (Vicky Krieps) hold­ing out against the pre­vail­ing wind. It’s a fas­cin­at­ing exer­cise made all the more fas­cin­at­ing by not know­ing the first thing about the case. I ima­gine that Irish view­ers, drawn once more to the Toscan true crime well, might be less enthralled.

The Robin Hood legend gets a dark twist from Pig dir­ect­or Michael Sarnovski with the help of a haunted-looking Hugh Jackman. Badly injured fight­ing a battle he was reluct­ant to get roped in on¹, Robin recu­per­ates anonym­ously in an island pri­ory run by Jodie Comer.

There he dis­cov­ers that a) he quite likes the idea of a quiet retire­ment help­ing out around the place and b) you can­’t escape your past. The title of the film is in one sense about the explod­ing of the “steal from the rich and give to the poor” myth but also a giant spoiler.

The first quarter is so viol­ent I thought I would­n’t man­age the whole thing but once it has you pay­ing atten­tion, it settles down to a well-acted and atmo­spher­ic drama.

I was nev­er a huge fan of the kind of humi­li­at­ing antics that the Jackass fran­chise spe­cial­ised in but, as I said to Perlina Lau in my Culture 101 review, when I was a cinema own­er I really loved the money that they made.

Jackass: Best and Last is sup­posedly the gang’s swan song and I was moved by the por­trait of male friend­ship – unable to express their deeply felt love for each oth­er without sim­ul­tan­eously wrap­ping their naked bod­ies in cling film and drink­ing a bottle of laxative.

Despite their years of big screen suc­cess, this sort of thing now belongs on the YouTubes and the TikToks where I don’t have to pro­fes­sion­ally engage with it any longer.

Remember the name Posy Sterling, folks. It’s her per­form­ance that makes the gritty social com­ment drama Lollipop worth watching. 

Writer-director Daisy-May Hudson based the story on her own fam­ily’s exper­i­ence of home­less­ness in East London and she wisely chooses to nev­er let the cam­era stray from Sterling’s face for long.

She plays a single moth­er, recently incar­cer­ated for (what we pre­sume is) some­thing minor. Upon release, she dis­cov­ers the com­plex nest of rules mean that get­ting her chil­dren back from state care is vir­tu­ally impossible. She can­’t get a big enough flat from the coun­cil if she does­n’t actu­ally have the kids and she can­’t get the kids back if she does­n’t have some­where to care for them.

I can­’t recall any men in this film. Everyone is female. The land­lord, the foster mum, the best friend, the social work­er, the “com­puter says no” coun­cil hous­ing work­er and the law­yer and the judge at her hear­ing. This is a world where women are try­ing against all the odds to make a sys­tem work – a sys­tem that they had no say in the design of.

One of the things that people don’t I think really appre­ci­ate about the film review­ing gig is that it’s a cre­at­ive act in itself. It’s an act of ima­gin­a­tion and one of the great acts of ima­gin­a­tion, the ima­gin­at­ive leaps that I have to make when I’m talk­ing about some­thing like Evil Dead Burn, is that I have to ima­gine that I am the kind of per­son that really enjoys these films. You know, to try and do it justice.

So with­in these self-imposed lim­it­a­tions, let me say that I really appre­ci­ated all the craft and com­mit­ment on dis­play. Shot in New Zealand and post-produced in France, Evil Dead Burn shows how far our artis­ans and facil­it­ies have come since pro­du­cer Rob Tapert came here to make Hercules and Xena in the 90s. Like Ireland sub­bing for New Mexico in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy earli­er this year, any­where really can be any­where else these days.

But that’s about all I’ve got because I just could­n’t get behind the nas­ti­ness of so many aspects of this film. The first Evil Dead film (1981) was known for the com­bin­a­tion of vis­cera and humour – a com­bin­a­tion I often enjoy – but this 6^th instal­ment has a dis­tinct lack of laughs. Just the blood.

Another ton­al conun­drum can be found in the Netflix com­edy Little Brother. Somewhere along the line we decided that com­ed­ies for grown-ups had to be full of innu­endo, off-colour ref­er­ences (what comedi­ans back in the day would call ‘blue’) and end­less foul lan­guage. I know I sound like a prude about this sort of thing but in the case of Little Brother, its core actu­ally quite good-hearted but the trap­pings mean I can­’t give it a wide recommendation. 

John Cena plays a suc­cess­ful real estate agent who is about to become a real­ity TV star hop­ing that this will finally earn the respect of his bil­lion­aire broth­er (Christopher Meloni). Into this heightened envir­on­ment comes Marcus (Eric André), a loose can­non who was once in a ‘Big Brother’ pro­gramme with Cena when they were teenagers.

I once described Cena as “an inflat­able Matt Damon doll that’s had a few too many kids jump on the foot-pump” but he’s now one of the more reli­able stars around and – evid­ently – an all-around mensch. I espe­cially like him when he’s in this mode, play­ing the frus­trated straight man, insec­ure but still try­ing to puff him­self up. A little Eric André goes a long way, though.

Even con­sid­er­ing all of the messi­ness and the bad taste, the film’s fun­da­ment­al decency² had me wip­ing away a single tear at the end.

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Further listening

Here’s that Jackass Best and Last Culture 101 seg­ment from 5 July (which also fea­tured Lollipop and Little Brother).

I reviewed Supergirl from Sydney for RNZ Nights (along with One Hundred Years of Solitude and some British pan­el game shows).

Re-creation was one of the fea­tures on anoth­er Culture 101 seg­ment (along with Disclosure Day and Scary Movie 6.)

The Death of Robin Hood was the cinema fea­ture of my 19 June Nights seg­ment (also fea­tur­ing Aztec Batman on HBO Max and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on YouTube).

Finally, Culture 101 from 19 July (includ­ing The Invite and Islands which I need to write up here soon).

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1. That’s a call­back to Supergirl from earli­er on, in case you had­n’t noticed. ↩︎
2. Or sen­ti­ment­al­ity. ↩︎