This year’s lively blockbuster season began in April with Ryan Coogler’s mighty Sinners and has shown little sign of calming down. The latest Mission: Impossible delivered more hair-rising Tom Cruise hijinks while both Brad Pitt’s high-octane racing romp F1 The Movie and Danny Boyle’s wild horror hit 28 Years Later have been box office smashes.  With talented action director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) leading an accomplished cast including Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali, there was justifiable excitement that Jurassic World Rebirth would keep the roaring successes coming.

Rebirth picks things up after humans were forced to co-exist with escaped dinosaurs following the events of 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion. It’s only been a few short years but most people are bored by the terrible lizards that are now part of their day-to-day lives. Not untrustworthy big pharma rep Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) though, who wants covert-ops specialist Zora Bennett (Johansson) to hunt down dinosaurs living on a tropical Caribbean island and harvest their blood in exchange for $10 million.

The pair assemble a motley crew that includes Bennet’s old military pal Duncan Kincaid (Ali) and paleontologist Doctor Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) before heading to the dangerous Ile Saint-Huber.  The island used to hold a dinosaur research facility so there’s a bunch of gnarly, mutated species living there. Krebs reckons each beast holds the secret to creating important drugs that will save countless lives and hopefully boost the profits of his firm, ParkerGenix.

The fact each blood sample has to be extracted from the three biggest dinosaur species (one each from the sea, air and land) is challenging enough but Jurassic World Rebirth really step up a gear when the team diverts from their mission to check out a distress signal. Turns out there’s a family stranded at sea after a violent clash with a dinosaur who could really do with some help.

Whether this seventh film in the Jurassic… franchise is actually necessary is moot. It’s like watching a Scream film. If you’re into them, they’re always fun. Even a bad one is still a good laugh. And, sure enough, there are some spectacular sequences of monster peril across Ile Saint-Hubert. After the tepid first act and a merely decent middle, the final stretch is truly nail-biting and put together with the kind of panache we expect from Edwards, whose last film The Creator deserved to be far more widely seen than it was.

Double-Oscar-winner Ali and Johansson are typically reliable, even if they probably know the material is beneath their considerable skill set. The juiciest role belongs to sleazebag corporate scumbag Krebs, who is played deliciously by Friend.

Action and acting, then, all good. Unfortunately – and bizarrely, given screenwriter David Koepp co-wrote the original Jurassic Park among other great blockbusters – the dialogue throughout Jurassic World Rebirth is very patchy, as if his first draft script made it to the screen. Maybe the shoot was rushed, maybe the sign-off process wasn’t as tightly managed as these things should be, but it makes the entire film feel slightly odd. It’s a shame as this downgrades a very entertaining film to an average one.

The post ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ review: toothless reboot fails to recapture the magic appeared first on NME.

The best science fiction – and M3GAN was always more than a straightforward horror – is ahead of its time. Released in 2023, the killer doll flick was as much about chuckles as chills, sending up modern malaise (kids being raised by screens, the oncoming threat of AI) with a cheery penchant for relieving characters of their body parts. AI has since swiftly mutated from an advancement on the horizon to a regular feature of everyday life, proving just how prescient the concept was.

• READ MORE: Making ‘M3GAN’: inside the creation of horror’s viral new villain

M3GAN centred on Gemma (Girls’ Allison Williams), a workaholic toy developer suddenly placed in sole custody of her grief-stricken niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). A far better inventor than carer, she saw this as a chance to test out her latest project, the Model 3 Generative Android AKA M3GAN. This eerily lifelike AI doll – portrayed by Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis – entertained and protected whichever child it was brought for. Even if you haven’t seen the film, you probably don’t need telling that this didn’t quite work out as planned.

The movie was obviously Child’s Play for the TikTok generation and the sassy doll’s unexpected dance moves duly went viral, turning her into something of a queer icon. As a result, the movie upgraded its $12million budget into more than $180million at the box office, so this sequel was as inevitable as a new iPhone. Back in the hot seat, director Gerard Johnstone dials up the campiness and action, but tones down the horror even further.

A military defence contractor has seemingly used M3GAN’S coding to create AMELIA (Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android), a robotic weapon of mass destruction played by Ivanna Sakhno. Except – uh-oh – AMELIA’s gone AWOL in search of a revolutionary artificial intelligence that’s been locked in a secret location for decades. If she can harness it, this will spell disaster on an epic scale. So M3GAN, who was always more an antihero than outright villain, has been warily rebooted to try and save the day.

The Terminator 2-inspired plot is actually quite a bit more convoluted than that, and only grows more twisting as the movie progresses. Flight Of The Conchords’ Jemaine Clement clearly relishes his role as a kinky tech bro, while Williams sensitively conveys Gemma’s development into a caring parent who’s forged a real relationship with Cady. M3GAN 2.0 cleverly channels our collective anxiety about being replaced by robots and is packed with killer quotes: “Hold onto your vaginas!” the titular doll yells upon kicking a sports car into hyper-speed, a line fans will no doubt repeat to each other whenever they get behind the wheel. A running gag involving the Kate Bush song ‘This Woman’s Work’ is also laugh-out-loud funny.

In fact, for a good third of its runtime, the second instalment in the franchise is actually an advancement on its predecessor. Alas, M3GAN 2.0 ultimately spirals out of its creators’ control, with the plot becoming all but incomprehensible and betraying its own squiffy logic. Through it all, though, the movie never loses its sense of humour or love for its characters. Ironically for a film about AI-powered killer dolls, M3GAN 2.0 has lot of heart.

The post ‘M3GAN 2.0’ review: camp robo-horror sequel is a downgrade appeared first on NME.

In many ways, Formula One is ripe for the Hollywood blockbuster treatment. It’s a high-stakes, hyper-glamorous world where the fastest man wins – most of the time, anyway. It’s also more popular than ever thanks to the hit Netflix documentary series Formula One: Drive To Survive.

• READ MORE: Damson Idris on his massive “feel-good” summer blockbuster ‘F1® The Movie’

But in other ways, this supremely technical motorsport poses a challenge to screenwriters. Just how gripping – pun intended – can you make a team debate about tyre types?

Made alongside Formula One’s governing body with Lewis Hamilton as a producer, F1 The Movie is obviously a fabulous advert for the sport – how many films have a registered trademark symbol in their title? The current crop of drivers all appear as themselves, mainly as superstar extras in bustling pit and paddock scenes, and F1 legend Toto Wolff gets to deliver a couple of impish lines. His acting is actually pretty good.

But F1 The Movie also works as a blockbuster popcorn flick in the mold of Top Gun: Maverick. That’s no surprise really, given that it reunites that film’s director, Joseph Kosinski, with its producer Jerry Bruckheimer and co-writer Ehren Kruger.

Here, Kruger’s screenplay requires a hefty suspension of disbelief. After three decades away, daredevil driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is coaxed back by his old teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), who’s now running flagging F1 team Apex Grand Prix (APXGP).

At 61, Pitt is 18 years older than the current most senior F1 driver (43-year-old Fernando Alonso) but he’s still athletic enough to pull off a racing suit. As Hamilton noted when his casting was announced: “Brad looks like he’s aging backwards.”

Sonny is a wily outsider with no time for press conferences and photo opps, while his new teammate Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) is a talented rookie trying to build a personal brand. In fairness, this isn’t a bad idea given that real-life F1 driver Lando Norris is now marketable enough to have his own energy drink.

This film really is an old-school crowd-pleaser, so it’s no spoiler to reveal that the two men’s initial frostiness melts into mutual respect. And as the team’s technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) transforms their “shitbox” car into a “combat” vehicle, APXGP no longer look like also-rans – they might even have a shot at winning.  Along the way, Condon delivers fifth-gear work in a third-gear role as Kate also succumbs to Sonny’s crafty charms.

Though the nine races that the film careers through are a couple too many, the team’s bumpy progress is gripping. Soundtracked by a scorching score from Hans Zimmer, who previously composed music for another Formula One movie, 2013’s Rush, the racing sequences are consistently thrilling. Obviously Pitt and Idris aren’t competing in real F1 races, but they did drive modified Formula Two vehicles on actual grand prix circuits. You can really feel the G-force.

The film’s souped-up denouement at the Abu Dhabi grand prix is utterly ludicrous, but by this point, F1 The Movie has built up enough goodwill to get away with it. Buckle up and enjoy the ride, safe in the knowledge that the tyre talk never gets too overwhelming.

The post ‘F1 The Movie’ review: Brad Pitt puts ‘Top Gun’ on wheels appeared first on NME.

Anyone who watched Hannah Montana or her meta Black Mirror episode will know, Miley Cyrus has undeniable acting chops. She also relishes a big swing, so a 55-minute musical film accompanying her ninth studio album – a sprawling progressive pop LP also called ‘Something Beautiful’ – is an exciting prospect.

• READ MORE: Miley Cyrus – ‘Something Beautiful’ review: the post-genre popstar pulls off another big swing

It’s billed as a “one-of-a-kind pop opera fuelled by fantasy”, which Cyrus has called her “way of touring” without putting her body and damaged vocal cords through the rigours of a nightly arena show. So, given that 2014’s bonkers but brilliant ‘Bangerz Tour’ featured Cyrus riding an oversized hot dog and a giant inflatable replica of her dead dog, Something Beautiful should be appealingly surreal, right?

Erm, wrong. It’s essentially a compendium of 11 glossy music videos with no interlinking plot or dialogue besides the album’s spoken word parts. Indeed, five of them have already been released on YouTube as self-contained clips. Cyrus co-wrote and directed it with Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter, both of whom worked on visuals from her last album 2023’s ‘Endless Summer Vacation’. The Bixenman-directed ‘Flowers‘ video, which shows Cyrus owning her yoga-honed physicality in an enviable LA pad, isn’t massively dissimilar to some of the visuals here.

Every track from the ‘Something Beautiful’ album gets an accompanying clip: some are highly stylised performance pieces; others have Cyrus vamping against vaguely showbizzy backdrops like a Hollywood studio lot. The cinematography by seasoned Harmony Korine collaborator Benoît Debie is stunning even when the imagery is humdrum: Cyrus performs the widescreen ballad ‘Golden Burning Sun’ on the back of a motorbike while a wind machine tousles her hair, a video concept that might have felt cutting edge in 1981.

Fortunately the whole endeavour is speckled with camp. Cyrus sings ‘Walk Of Fame’ while strutting down the actual Hollywood walk of fame: a literal interpretation of the lyrics, but a fun one. It’s surely no accident that she chooses to roll around on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star given her romantic history with his son, The White Lotus actor Patrick – whatever could this mean, Miley? Equally entertaining is the ‘Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved’ clip, in which supermodel Naomi Campbell pops up as a kind of hyper-glamorous life coach. When she instructs Cyrus to “pose”, the singer doesn’t let the side down.

Campbell’s cameo does draws attention to the fact that Something Beautiful is a little over-reliant on Cyrus’s charisma and ability to hold a close-up. Appearances from Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard and Cyrus’ musician boyfriend Maxx Morando, the only other credited cast members, are frustratingly brief. Watching the project as a whole is a bit like arriving at pre-drinks to find that someone has queued up 11 slightly same-y Miley Cyrus tracks in a row. Hardcore fans will be entranced; more casual admirers might want to wait until they all end up on YouTube.

Miley Cyrus’ ‘Something Beautiful’ comes to select UK cinemas for one night only on June 27

The post ‘Something Beautiful’ review: confusing megamix of Miley Cyrus music videos appeared first on NME.

You probably saw it doing the rounds on social media during the pandemic: that haunting clip of Cillian Murphy, in his hospital scrubs, looking bewildered at an abandoned Westminster Bridge and the empty city that lay beyond. The iconic scene from 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle’s classic 2002 horror/sci-fi movie about an infection that turns unlucky victims into flesh-eaters (they’re not technically zombies, OK?), took on a different hue during the desolate days of lockdown, but it was always packed with meaning.

Arriving in the aftermath of 9/11, the film channelled anxiety about the frightening new world we found ourselves in. “You think they’re almighty, but suddenly cities felt fearful,” Boyle recently reflected in an interview with The Sunday Times.

Boyle eschewed the bigger budget ($15m as opposed to $8m) 2007 follow-up 28 Weeks Later, as did original writer Alex Garland. Both are back for this belated follow-up – the first of a mooted new trilogy – which was made for a brain-bursting $75m and reimagines the entire concept in a manner that is extravagantly bold, imaginative and brilliantly bizarre. There’s almost nothing like it; for a comparative movie that flips an existing franchise on its head after two instalments, you’d have to look at 1992’s Evil Dead sequel Army Of Darkness, which played a similar aesthetic for laughs.

After the events of the previous film, the virus has been beaten back from mainland Europe and contained to Britain (remember when the rest of the world called the UK “Plague Island” in the first year of COVID?) Some – ahem – 28 years later, the action opens on a self-contained north-eastern island of survivors that’s regressed to medieval times, with bows and arrows and folkloric tales of the infected mainland, which must occasionally be accessed via a causeway during heroic smash-and-grabs for supplies.

Silly Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) resolves to take his 12-year-old son, Spike (Alfie Williams), on a coming-of-age mission to said mainland – much to the disapproval of matriarch Isla (Jodie Comer), who’s all but bedbound with a mystery illness. Once they reach this strange land, it transpires that the infected have mutated into a triumvirate of horror: as well as the familiar running zombies – sorry, flesheaters – there are enormous, gelatinous deadies that flop around like decomposing Jelly Babies. Much more frightening are the super-charged Alphas, swaggering super-zombies who look down on those pesky arrows as if they’re mere toothpicks.

If it sounds like Boyle and Garland have been smoking some super-strength Cali weed in the writers’ room, you’ve heard nothing yet. Just wait until Ralph Fiennes is covered in iodine, philosophising about life and death and making modern art out of human remains.

While 28 Weeks Later explored post-7/7 paranoia, this post-Brexit successor seems to be as much about the insanity of isolationism as it is the bewildering madness of COVID. With an elegiac soundtrack courtesy of Young Fathers, it’s at turns funny, horrifying and even profound. The movie was filmed back-to-back with the first sequel in the new trilogy, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is due early next year; the existence of the third depends on their success. Get to the cinema and make sure it happens – we don’t care if you run, flop or swagger.

The post ‘28 Years Later’ review: brilliantly bizarre sequel turns the franchise on its (decapitated) head appeared first on NME.

Despite a nondescript title that sounds like a budget wine, this twisty thriller certainly looked promising. Its screenplay was written by Brad Ingelsby, the writer-creator of HBO’s brilliant crime miniseries Mare Of Easttown, and the casting screams prestige – Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney playing a mother and daughter whose fraught relationship is tested even further when small-time drug dealer Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson) shows up demanding money. Yes please.

When we meet Kate Garrett (Moore), she’s struggling to move on after the death of her wife Patty (Kristina Valada-Viars), with whom she ran an equine farm in rural Pennsylvania. In a low moment, she tells old friend Jessie (Killing Eve‘s Fiona Shaw) that she wouldn’t get out of bed if it weren’t for the horses. A scene in which the two women get drunk on wine and dance to Robyn‘s ‘Dancing On My Own’ hints at a film with richer characterisation and a little more levity that sadly never materialises.

Kate is land-rich but cash-poor, so she has to ask her exasperated ex-husband Richard (Kyle McLachlan) for money to fix her barn. Richard still has feelings for Kate even though she broke up their family, but also blames her for enabling their daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney), a troubled junkie who’s in and out of rehab. In fairness, he has a point. When Claire gets home after a major bender and says she’s accidentally killed her sketchy boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan), Kate steps in to clean up her mess.

In fact, she takes it upon herself to find the dead body and dump it in the local lake. She also gives Jackie, who knows about Claire’s association with Ryan, her last $10,000 to get him off their backs. At this point, Echo Valley really piles on the plot twists and requires a pretty hefty suspension of disbelief to get to the end.

Director Michael Pearce, who previously made 2021’s decent crime thriller Encounter starring Riz Ahmed, keeps the pace brisk but never really punches up the source material. An artless shot of Kate staring at a ceiling crack – one Patty was promising to fix before her death – is a clumsy reminder of her unresolved grief. Moore and Sweeney both turn in solid performances, but it seems a shame to pair these firecracker actresses without letting them produce real emotional sparks.

The final twist is clever and unexpected enough to feel satisfying, even if you’ve suspected all along that Moore’s character must be wilier than she lets on. But because this workmanlike movie never truly makes you care about its characters, some of the shock value is lost. Like a bargain bottle of plonk, Echo Valley has some of the right top notes, but is let down by its lack of depth. It’s certainly not good enough to share with a friend.

The post ‘Echo Valley’ review: even Sydney Sweeney and Julianne Moore can’t save this hollow thriller appeared first on NME.

“From the world of John Wick” says Ballerina’s title preface. Just in case the ultra-violence, sightings of Keanu Reeves and obligatory trip to the Continental Hotel didn’t give it away. After four films following the bruising adventures of Reeves’ vengeful hitman John Wick, it’s time to take the female perspective. Ana De Armas plays Eve Macarro, a deadly killer who wants revenge on those who killed her father when he tried to hide her from a life of blood-soaked assassinations.

This being a John Wick movie, there are more rules, regulations and made-up mythology than there are bullet casings on the floor. Rescued by Ian McShane’s Continental manager Winston Scott, Eve is raised by the Ruska Roma, who train her as a ballerina at their academy cum headquarters under the watchful eye of The Director (Angelica Huston). The theatre life is not for her, however, as her killer instinct sharpens. Before long, she’s learning how to beat down opponents twice her size. “Fight like a girl,” she’s told, which usually means aim for the nether regions.

Set between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4, Eve soon encounters Reeves’ Wick, who makes an appearance at the Ruska Roma’s HQ. She wants to know if he’s chosen a path to quit the life or not. “I’m working on it,” he says, grimly. But Eve is hellbent on taking out The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne, menacing), the man responsible for her papa’s demise. So the rule goes, this man’s gang of assassins, all living in a snowbound European town, don’t mess with The Director’s team and vice versa. But the minute Eve goes rogue all bets are off.

Directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld), Ballerina was first shot back in 2022, just months after De Armas proved her action credentials in James Bond movie No Time To Die. There have been rumours of extensive reshoots since, with the franchise’s godfather Chad Stahelski coming in to beef up the action scenes. If that’s true, you certainly can’t see the join. From an early fight in a neon-drenched club – the vibe is very refrigerator chic, with furniture ludicrously carved from ice – it all feels very John Wick.

The fights are as inventive as they are bone-shattering, with everything from ice skates to flame-throwers used as weapons, and De Armas coming on like a mistress of mayhem. There is, of course, a final appearance by the late Lance Reddick, as the New York Continental’s concierge Charon, and a nice turn by The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus as another killer who is trying to get his daughter out of harm’s way, echoing Eve’s own past.

While Reeves’ Wick is thankfully more than just a cameo, the big problem with Ballerina is its simply hard to care about Eve’s journey. De Armas, as athletic as she is, doesn’t boast the movie-star-cool that Reeves does (to be fair, few do). Like the 2023 Prime Video show The Continental – another “From the world of John Wick” spin-off – the mythology isn’t much without the main man central to the action. It’s just another slick-but-shallow ’beat-em-up. Well made, but instantly forgettable.

The post ‘Ballerina’ review: Ana De Armas leads fun but forgettable John Wick spin-off appeared first on NME.

“This place, it’s like trying to run on a sheet of ice,” says Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, stunned by the subterranean silence of the Paris Catacombs. “You have no idea how much time has passed up there, up above, and no time has passed below. It’s the same time, all the time, every time.”

• READ MORE: Queens Of The Stone Age interviewed: “I was trying to write my way out of my troubles”

He’s not wrong. So immersive is the California rockers’ starkly beautiful Thomas Rames-directed and Blogothèque-produced half-hour live film Alive In The Catacombs, that it’s easy to get lost – as you might while navigating the tunnels and ossuaries beneath the French capital. What’s more, this ain’t no standard stripped-back Live Lounge kinda affair. Homme and co are aided by a supporting cast of six million souls whose skulls line the walls.

As guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen puts it in the accompanying Alive In Paris And Before documentary (by QOTSA’s longtime visual collaborator Andreas Neumann), the band are not the main characters for once. They’re here to compliment and show deference to these people buried 20 metres underground in 1786.

A more ghostly reimagining of ‘Paper Machete’ leads the procession, before ‘Kalopsia’ rings all the more macabre. ‘Villains Of Circumstance’s attack on “life in pursuit of a nameless prey” seems all the more profound when literally staring death in the face. As the band rattle chains and wander the tunnels for ‘Suture Up Your Future’ and promise “when you say it’s dead and gone, yes, I know you’re wrong” on ‘I Never Came’, the beautiful and tender capture of this performance seems to humbly say, “you ain’t all that, we’ll all be bones eventually, but art is forever”.

Alive In The Catacombs may be powerful enough alone, but it hits differently when followed by Neumann’s companion doc. It’s explained that the grisly performance has been 20 years in the planning, though only came to fruition when Homme was at death’s door himself. Alive In Paris And Before begins with last summer’s European tour – including the story of Homme’s “medical emergency” and cancer battle (he’s since had the all-clear).

Bonding with his son and vowing to fight on, Homme pushes through yet another show and on to Paris. “I’m just thinking about Josh, my brother that I want to be OK and I want to be healthy,” says bassist Mikey Shuman in between takes. “I can hear the pain he’s in, and it fucking kills me”.

We can see it too. After this, the band would strike all dates from the diary for Homme’s surgery. First, though, they lay down something special – the songs speaking to the fragility of life and value of perseverance. As Homme simply puts it in his few words spoken between tracks: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

The post Queens Of The Stone Age – ‘Alive In The Catacombs’ review: moving and meditative concert doc appeared first on NME.

Having broken through as taciturn heartthrob Connell in hit series Normal People, Paul Mescal’s career has caught fire. Proving he has genuine range, the Irish actor excelled as a depressed dad in Aftersun and recently led swords-and-sandals blockbuster Gladiator 2 with a charismatic swagger. The History Of Sound sees him return to romance, in a beautiful period drama that’s as gorgeous as it is heartbreaking.

Making its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival, The History of Sound is about Lionel (Mescal), a gifted boy from rural Kentucky with perfect pitch and synaesthesia – meaning he sees music as colours. Set in 1917, our musical maestro is away studying in Boston where he hears David (Josh O’Connor) at a barroom piano, playing the same song he shared with his father as a child. The pair quickly bond over their passion for music, becoming fast friends then lovers.

It’s far from being happily ever after though. David is drafted to fight in World War One and Lionel reluctantly returns to Kentucky. While there, his beloved father dies. After the war, he reconnects with David who invites him on a trip around New England to document folk songs from small, remote communities using an early recording device that involves wax cylinders. The pair visit remarkable singers who weave songs of deep meaning, homespun poetry and powerful stories. Their secret love and countryside surroundings recall Brokeback Mountain in both setting and emotional impact.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Letterboxd (@letterboxd)

At the conclusion of the trip, the pair once again go their separate ways. After a stint in Rome, Lionel ends up conducting a choir in Oxford and falling for a well-to-do young woman. After his many letters to David go unanswered, he eventually returns home to America where several painful surprises are waiting for him.

Director Oliver Hermanus’ last film Living was a superb, deeply heartfelt remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic Ikiru. The rich, compassionate The History Of Sound, adapted for the screen by Ben Shattuck from his own short story, is similarly mesmerising.

Mescal and O’Connor deliver the acting goods and the tale is told briskly, while exquisite American roots music is threaded deftly throughout the soundtrack, adding a real depth to the lush, romantic environment. The History Of Sound also looks the part, with cinematographer Alexander Dynan’s close-ups of despairing faces and freezing countryside accentuating the longing and regret that hangs over the film. A deeply sad movie about thwarted love, The History of Sound is essential viewing.

The post ‘The History Of Sound’ review: Paul Mescal gets back to breaking hearts appeared first on NME.

A new Spike Lee joint is always cause for celebration, especially when he teams up with Denzel Washington. Highest 2 Lowest, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival this week, is their fifth collaboration together and has plenty of their usual sparkle. It’s a fun remake of great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller High And Low. Lee takes the classic kidnap plot and adds in the fizzying wordplay and NYC panache we’ve come to expect from a director who never misses a chance to big-up his beloved Big Apple.

Washington plays veteran rap mogul David King, the millionaire boss of record label Stackin’ Hits. King lives in a huge Brooklyn penthouse overlooking the East River and Manhattan with his beautiful wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and adult son Trey (Aubrey Joseph). Also in the mix is David’s godson Kyle (Elijah Christopher), the child of David’s old pal and chauffeur Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright). David is in the middle of a complex deal aiming to buy back the controlling interest in his label after making a bum deal a few years earlier. While he may have “the best ears in the business” and be the greatest in town at spotting rap talent, as we are often reminded over the 133 minute-runtime, some of his financial decisions are less tuned-in.

When Trey is seemingly kidnapped and the perpetrators demand a ransom of $17.5million (in large-denomination Swiss Francs so it will all fit in one backpack) from King, there’s understandable anguish and the NYPD are called in to help negotiate his safe release. However, it soon transpires the slick kidnapper has mistakenly snatched Kyle – but they still demand the same ransom. In order to get his grandson back unscathed, King is ordered on to the subway for the cash drop. The journey takes him through The Bronx amid a throng of New York Yankees fans and past a Puerto Rican parade, with Lee creating an energetic, engaging sequence. It’s a vibrant, noisy love letter to the people of New York that’s also the highlight of Highest 2 Lowest. However the rest of the film isn’t quite as exciting.

Alongside a strong performance from Washington and Wright’s edgy portrayal of a frustrated father, A$AP Rocky has an important part to play in the shenanigans, though he’s not quite as impressive here as he is in forthcoming comedy If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.

Highest 2 Lowest’s action moves with pace and the dialogue is full of the rhymes and hilarious street slang Lee typically peppers his films with. However, it doesn’t feel shot and cut with his usual vitality and it’s hard to shake the question of who exactly was crying out for this remake? Neither highest or lowest, this is a distinctly average offering – but even a so-so effort from Lee and Washington is probably worth your time.

The post ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ review: surprisingly average Spike Lee thriller appeared first on NME.