Superman, The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Materialists

 

When the best parts of a film involve a dog, there is not much else to say. I didn't know the cast except for the baddie Lex Luther- the English actor Nicholas Hoult. Obviously. Rachel Brosnahan as Lois was very good and there were some decently long conversations with Clark Kent. But you know what you will get with director James Gunn. and it's not the script. I only went in the absence of anything worthwhile at The Rex. Kim Newman in Sight and Sound Magazine said it "isn't ashamed of it'scomic book origins and whimsical inventiveness". Even Mark Kermode said it was OK. 

And who opens the film but one Mark Gatiss speaking in an awful American accent. There was just enough story and dialogue to make  The Fantastic Four: First Steps a passable trip to the cinema. There is fairly interesting interplay between the four and, would you know, yet another English actor as the baddie. Ralph Ineson is Galactus but you never would have guessed. Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm was probably the classiest actor on show, the others were pretty ordinary. I didn't think that Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) was at all fantastic. He only seemed to go into his stretching mode once (thank goodness) and that was a disaster. The fact that Sue Storm has a baby early on, well that was very different!

At last. The previous two summer blockbusters were just filling in the gap before more sensible movies arrived. And here was one from writer/director Celine Song whose earlier film Past Lives was one of my favourite films two years ago. (See post 27th September 2023). Materialists is basically a three hander, on the face of it a simple relationship story. Should she choose the attractive and personable rich man, or her ex, a struggling actor who has never really got over their split. But of course the film goes much deeper than that. 

Dakota Johnson was excellent as Lucy, a successful high quality matchmaker at an impossibly substantial organisation. (It just seemed all too glamorous?) Chris Evans has never been better as her loser ex boyfriend John. So when Lucy gets together with Harry, the rich brother of one of her successful matches played by Pedro Pascal, she's made for life. But what elevates the movie is the plot, the screenplay and, of course, the sets and scenery of Manhattan. Oh yes, and an amazing soundtrack with original music by Daniel Pemberton and a few classic songs including Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline. Danced to at a wedding, obviously. Then there is a final scene over the credits at the end, shot from a security camera high up at City Hall in the Manhattan Marriage Bureau, as couples wait to be married. Amazing.

In this week's Sunday Times, Tom Shone, surprisingly, devoted a whole page to this film. In his four star review he calls it "crisp, sharp and seductive". IndieWire calls it an "anti-romcom". Then Adam Nayman in September's Sight and Sound Magazine was not so kind, calling it "drained and bloodless" where the "complications and psychology are class-based". But we just do not get enough original dramas to see at the cinema these days. And this was certainly one. Thank heavens directors like Celine Song get to make films that get a cinema release.