Category: film

A couple of days after it reached town, I went to see the film adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel PROJECT HAIL MARY, directed by Lord & Miller and written by Drew Goddard. Goddard wrote the screenplay for the other Weir adaptation, THE MARTIAN, directed by Ridley Scott, in which Matt Damon once again has to be expensively rescued from something. (Someone once calculated that, in total, it would have cost some $900 billion to rescue Matt Damon from shit all those times.) Weir wrote another novel after THE MARTIAN, entitled ARTEMIS, which didn’t seem to be as well-received. And so it seems he went back to the good well for PROJECT HAIL MARY, which is about another brilliant guy abandoned in space.

Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spaceship eleven light years from Earth with no memory of how he got there or why. Most of his memory comes back during the first act.

Ryland Grace was once a molecular biologist, but, after a poorly received paper on how alien life wouldn’t necessarily need water, he quit and become a middle-school teacher. In that role, he has to explain to kids how the discovery of star-eating cells discovered on the sun means they’ll all be dead in thirty years. And that’s when the head of an international project to save the world shows up at his school to draft him, having read his paper.

The cells are all over our region of the galaxy – aside from one star eleven light years away. Once they discover those cells output a huge amount of energy, there’s only one option left – use them to power a mission to that star, find out why that star is uninfected, and send the cure home on small probes. And there’s only enough main-mission fuel for a one way trip.

Not long after Ryland Grace gets there, he discovers he’s not actually alone – there’s an alien spacecraft nearby, from another infected star. It too only has one occupant. First contact, at the end of the world – for two worlds.

I don’t want to go the spoiler route – even though the book has been out for years and the film is an extremely faithful adaptation – so everything I’ve just said is in fact in the first act. It’s a big, long, packed film.

THE MARTIAN is, of course, competence porn in a Heinlein style. There’s some of that to HAIL MARY the novel, but this time it is undercut by the revelations about past events, and that’s maintained in the film. Also maintained, however, is one of my favourite things about the book – two smart beings in first contact solving mutually intelligible speech in a matter of weeks. It works very enjoyably on screen, and they even throw in a new joke or two.

One of the oddnesses about the book is that Grace presents as a little autistic and asexual. There’s a brief mention of a college girlfriend called Linda, but only in terms of the fact that she brought a lot of untidy crap into his neat little apartment, which is in itself something of a signal. He’s not great at making connections. In the book, I got the sense that he was really only comfortable around kids. This may just be me, but I spent the book feeling like there was something off about Grace. The problem the film had to solve was, basically, that Grace was being played by Ryan Gosling. Drew Goddard’s main fix is two lines of dialogue, tying into an overall slight reframing of Grace as conflict-averse, still childlike but also playful and personable in a faintly awkward and insecure way that fits with Gosling. That fix is masterful in its wise simplicity.

There’s an angle on the film where it is, in fact, about a person having to grow all the way up.

Goddard’s solves for the adaptation are, in fact, all brilliant. It’s a gold standard class. Even when his fixes are additive, they are only mildly so, visually driven and smooth as silk.

The first five minutes, Grace waking up from his induced coma on the ship, are played for laughs, and that was smart too. In his book ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE, William Goldman talks about the first two or three pages of the script for HARPER. Paul Newman wakes up in the office he lives in, gets ready for the day, goes to make coffee – and the coffee can is empty. He looks in the bin. Sees old coffee grounds in there. Looks down at them with resignation. Puts them in the coffee machine. Finishes getting ready. Pours the coffee. And makes a face like he’s sucked piss off a nettle. Everyone laughs at the face Paul Newman makes. From that point on, you like him. Because we’ve all been there and we can’t help but laugh at the face he pulls. Same thing happens here. Those five minutes get us on Ryan Gosling’s side. It’s a hard science fiction film, the concepts will always be a bit complicated, but now we are going to stick with it because we are on that guy’s side.

It is beautifully shot. Even the frames in that opening funny scene are gorgeously done, eccentric and wonky and fun. The cutting is fantastic, veering from classical to juddering. The big set piece towards the end is almost psychedelic in its colouring. The set design is REALLY clever – at times it almost reminded me of the wonderful interiors in 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT. A particularly intelligent move was putting controls and screens on ALL the surfaces because the ship is designed to be operated in zero gravity. It is notable how many of the sets are physical. I’ve read that there’s next to no green-screen in this film, and I have to say, it felt like it. It feels like the last of the classically made physical-production big science fiction films.

The alien Rocky, an actual physical puppet by all accounts, moves like a drunken cat. It sees by echolocation and Lord & Miller do flashes of Rocky-vision in ways that remind you they directed the Spider-Verse films. One wonderful touch is that Rocky has “tattoos,” incisions on his rocky form. Every element feels considered.

The big reversal in PROJECT HAIL MARY comes at about the point it did in THE MARTIAN, and broadly has the same effect – it stops the film’s momentum dead, and it has to spin up again. In THE MARTIAN, it spins back up successfully. Not so much here, because it comes after the big effects-heavy set-piece – a set-up you probably shouldn’t think about too hard – and for me the film kind of crept to the end after that. Your mileage will likely vary. You can’t fault Goddard for sticking to the novel’s structure, but the loss of energy is real.

It’s a good film. Like the book, it’s clever, and the filmmakers get a real ride out of it, with a decent number of laughs. (If you read the book, you will be pleased to know that “fist my bump” made it into the film.) I’m still surprised it was released in March, as I think it has summer film written all over it. But nobody’s going to be sad about a big smart well-made blockbuster brightening the spring.

It’s fun. You won’t regret seeing it at all. If you’re a writer, read the book and then watch the film and study Goddard’s choices – you will learn some things. And Lord & Miller and Drew Goddard will get to make anything they fucking want to after this because after this weekend it will have made $160 million in the US alone, the best even opening for a non-franchise film in a March frame. Rough rule of thumb – the studio gets half of domestic box office and a third of foreign. HAIL MARY cost something over 200 mil, I believe. It will earn out in the next few weeks, as it’s only going to drop 42% in the US this weekend.

Bad news: there is already talk of a sequel.

Not out on physical media yet, because it’s on Prime Video (UK) (US+)

(Originally written on my newsletter, 29 March 2026)

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Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, best known for his dark and distinctive works of feature filmmaking, has died. He was 70. 

Tarr’s death was announced this morning on Hungary’s national news agency MTI by filmmaker Bence Fliegauf on behalf of Tarr’s family. The European Film Academy also shared news of Tarr’s death this afternoon in an email. The Academy said Tarr died “after a long and serious illness.”

• BELA TARR: A Curzon Collection
• Morning Computer: Dead Time
• Satantango Box

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I conceived of the recent CONCLAVE as a kind of classical filmmaking that doesn’t really happen much any more. And now here’s NUREMBERG.

Hermann Goring and the rest of the surviving Nazi leadership are on trial at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. You know the story. Army psychiatrist Doug Kelley is charged with keeping them alive until the trial, and forms a particular bond with Goring.

The performances are interesting. Russell Crowe as Goring is twinkling and avuncular. Rami Malek as Kelley is quick and a little twitchy. At the top of the film, Kelley is shown Goring’s stash of “heart pills”, pops and crunches one, proclaims them to be codeine and smiles “I’m a fan.” Goring and Kelley are both showy egomaniacs, is the thing – but Goring has achieved something in his life and Kelley, in his mid thirties and already starting to show grey hair (Malek is actually 44), hasn’t. Michael Shannon, as Justice Jackson, the man who pressed for trials rather than summary execution and achieved this by blackmailing Pope Pius, finds a sort of man-out-of-time Lincolnesque gravitas while also being hobbled by ego and wants. Richard E Grant does a stately turn, and Steven Pacey from BLAKES 7 in my childhood shows up as George Marshall.

There’s a nice set of double bookends to the film, and a message-y coda that feels a little bit nailed on but is nonetheless handily done. It’s generally a solid, well-written piece of work, almost a chamber piece – I suspect there are barely more than a dozen speaking roles. Crowe and Malek have to carry the majority of the film, and they’re very watchable: two vain, insidious charmers: but only one is comfortable in his own skin.

Seen via the WGA FYC app.

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Sean Penn’s performance is an inventive and ambitious display of physical acting. Tewana Taylor and Chase Infiniti work really really hard. Leonardo DiCaprio experiments with ageing badly, to good effect. The film just didn’t work for me. Too long, no attack, god knows where the budget went, three jokes – and, for something inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s VINELAND, it has very little of Pynchon’s gleeful mad energy. There’s a logical break towards the end that threw me out of the film, but, honestly, it didn’t really hold my attention well after the first half hour anyway.

One suspects that on paper it all had a headlong madcap drive to it, but it didn’t survive shooting and indulgent editing. There are a handful of stunning shots, the three jokes are fun jokes, an escape scene on rooftops that’s nicely done and concluded, but this does not seem to be the Paul Thomas Anderson who once had full control of his material and did not waste a minute.

I came away from it feeling like it didn’t commit to the Pynchon, or to a tone – it’s obviously very well made (though I personally didn’t enjoy the score), it’s just kind of flat and slack when it seemed to me to be asking to be fast and lunatic and breathless – one battle after another, in fact.

I really wanted to like it, but it just wasn’t enough of anything.

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BUGONIA has gotten roasted in reviews, I’ve heard. I avoided all the reviews, and haven’t seen SAVE THE GREEN PLANET, which this is apparently based on, and went in cold. I haven’t even seen any of the director’s recent films.

I really liked BUGONIA. Writer Will Tracy is a clever bastard. Jesse Plemon’s opening voiceover, talking about pollination, tells you so much about the character in these lines- “It’s like sex. But cleaner. And nobody gets hurt.” That is fucking excellent writing.

Jesse Plemons is Teddy, small town conspiracy theorist, and he and his neurodivergent Don enact the abduction of the CEO of the company he works for because he knows she’s an alien trying to destroy Earth.

People will tell you it’s a comedy. It is not.

The actor playing Don, by the way, Aidan Delbis (who self identifies as autistic), is a bit of a genius – when Teddy tells Don he’s not allowed to jerk off any more he does this thing with his hand and his face that is just brilliant.

But this is Plemons’ show. Early on there’s a scene by firelight where Plemons seems to turn into Brad Dourif, and in fact Dourif’s turn in WISE BLOOD isn’t the worst comparison. The guy who entered public consciousness as “Meth Damon” on BREAKING BAD has become one of America’s best actors. Emma Stone is fine, of course, but it’s his film from top to bottom.

I also note a small role for an unrecognisable Alicia Silverstone, who probably never imagined she’d have to say the words “your slob cunt mom” in front of a camera.

There are a few laughs. More than in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, which is now being rebranded as a comedy for awards season. But BUGONIA opened on Halloween here for a reason. It’s a horror film. A desperately sad one.

I’m sure it’s a straight adaptation from the original and all that, but, as I say, I came to the film cold.

The budget is all spent on its magnificently weird and chilling final fifteen minutes, which has scenes in it that are totally unexpected. (And I very much appreciated some of the design choices)

And the structure is circular. Again, that clever bastard Will Tracy, who wrote THE MENU, which may give you a clue to how this film feels and lands: a chamber piece. I liked THE MENU. This shares that film’s craft.

BUGONIA is bugfuck and I liked it.

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Impeccably well made, cleverly written, some wonderful performances. But.

It’s a story about a nuclear weapon launched from an unknown location and everything that happens in the 18 minutes of its flight. Those 18 minutes are retold three times from the perspectives of different characters. Sometimes we hear those characters as voices in one part and then see them speak those words in another part, in an overlapping structure that is clever but also starts to suck some of the air out of the piece.

Rebecca Ferguson’s signature weird chill of edgy professionalism denotes the first part. Tracy Letts is cast as the Curtis LeMay bomb-‘em general – but Letts is, as ever, so sympathetic and likeable that it lights the role differently. Jared Harris does a nice soft cameo. Idris Elba, as intelligent and creatively curious as any actor working, portrays a president essentially forced to relive George W Bush being told about 9/11 during a visit to a school, while possessed with Obama-like caution and hesitancy. Which makes him either the best or worst person to be put in the position of having to press the big red button.

But. We never find out what happens. And, with all the warm interpersonal and occasionally slightly soapy stuff, this is more THE DAY AFTER than THREADS. It outlines the worst case scenario, and, while it does what it set out to do, I can’t help but feel like it was missing some real hardness and real commitment to the bit. Which is unfair. That ending was a brave creative choice and I admire that, But it does feel like a softer, more conventional work than it could have been.

I will watch it again.

Worth reading NUCLEAR WAR: A SCENARIO in conjunction with this.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE is on Netflix.

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In SUCCESSION, Logan Roy and many of those around him were functional people,even capable of physical violence and disappearing bodies and crimes.

SUCCESSION, on one level, is Lear’s kingdom not outliving him, conquered by a prince of Scandinavia while Lear’s children squabble and fail.

MOUNTAINHEAD, written and directed by Jesse Armstrong – which has more of his time on THE THICK OF IT in it than his SUCCESSION, I think – is the story of people who are not functional in the physical space. People who plan to cheat death but can’t boil an egg.

There’s a nasty hint of Steve Jobs in Steve Carell’s ageing venture capitalist Randall – “Dark Money Gandalf” – grappling with relevance and cancer (Jobs is infamously said to have tried to treat his rare cancer with acupuncture and juices, exerting “magical thinking” on the tumour). He’s on his way to a regular retreat/bro-party with three other tech overlords, two of whom are billionaires like him, and the party’s host, who’s “only” worth $500 million, so the others call him Soup Kitchen. One of these billionaires has unrolled unguarded generative AI on his Twitter-like service Traam.

(Traam – tram – trolley – trolley problem)

(There’s a real company called Traam that makes bullet-resistant glass, and another that makes skis. Mountainhead is what Soup Kitchen names his grim mansion on the side of a snow-covered mountain.)

The AI rollout has lead to a global deluge of sophisticated deepfakes that’s lit off riots all over the planet. The four tech kings sit in their mountain hideaway watching the world burn. And, after a while, they realise this is opportunity.

The music is a little too SUCCESSION-y, if that makes sense? It acts as a signal that it’s a Jesse Armstrong post-SUCCESSION joint, which probably makes sense – MOUNTAINHEAD, shot in a month, is very much a proof of concept for “Jesse Armstrong, director.”

The plot has an elegant line with a nice turn – it’s not about the future of the world, it’s really about Randall and his fear – but that gets obscured in the last quarter or so by the cringe. These are financially and technologically incredibly consequential people who are wildly ineffectual physical human beings. They think they’re early Roman emperors who are comfortable with the sword, but, no, they’re gits in gilets. They can only kill by inaction.

Think of it as a short story. Don’t treat it as the next big statement by the guy who created SUCCESSION. It’s a fun miniature between big works. And it operates very well in that framework. There are also some funny lines – but not as many as you’d expect. Armstrong is shifting position. The next thing should be really interesting.

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Based on the entertaining short read by Robert Harris, and feeling very faithful to that slight book, I found CONCLAVE a perfectly pleasant way to spend a couple of hours, in a very specific way.

When I was a kid, the Sunday afternoon film on tv was a thing. It would usually be a light drama – maybe a war film with Kenneth More or John Mills, maybe a John Wayne film, a Western, Charlton Heston in a period film, in my memory almost always some kind of historical piece. Well-made films that didn’t ask for a lot more than your attention. Involving but not deeply challenging, sober and adult without any jagged edges to it.

My first thought on finishing it, oddly, was TWISTERS. A solidly-carpentered piece with two ridiculously charming leads, about place, people, passion and service under big skies. Great Sunday afternoon movie, and the sort of foursquare American flick that doesn’t seem to get made much anymore. CONCLAVE – which was apparently made for 20 million dollars – got me the same way. Nobody makes this kind of film any more.

CONCLAVE is almost a portfolio piece for the director Edward Berger – it’s beautifully composed, there’s a montage of cardinals towards the top of the film that feels strongly European, Isabella Rossellini has never been better, Fiennes is the sort of sober and contained English actor you’d find in a Sunday afternoon film, Tucci and Lithgow are always a joy to watch, and there are some fantastic shots. In fact, it’s worth a second watch just to look at the way Berger and his cinematographer build those shots.

CONCLAVE is more of a piece of art than it needed to be, and I love that. I also enjoyed that it felt like the kind of film they don’t make any more.

CONCLAVE (UK) (US+)

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