Mute, Marshall, and Thor: Ragnarok: Your week in film (February 26-March 4)

Muted reception: Duncan Jones' latest has been met with critical hostility

The best and worst of this week's UK home entertainment releases on DVD, Blu-ray and digital. All the films mentioned are available to buy, rent and/or stream now, unless otherwise stated.

Ratings guide: WWWW - Wonderful  WWW - Worthwhile  WW - Watchable  W - Woeful

Mute (Netflix) WW has been eviscerated by critics (it's currently at 10% on Rotten Tomatoes), but Duncan Jones' fourth feature (after Moon, Source Code and Warcraft: The Beginning) is a far stranger and more interesting piece of work than it's being given credit for. Granted, its subject matter and setting are a little too familiar, but, somehow, the film's faults and off-kilter vibe ultimately work in its favour. It's a bit of a head scratcher and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that.

Leo (Alexander Skarsgård), a mute barman brought up Amish back home in the States, searches for his missing girlfriend Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh) in a cyber-punky future Berlin. During his quest, he butts heads with a variety of ne'er do wells, including a pair of Brit goons (Noel Clarke and Robert Kazinsky), local gangster Maksim (Gilbert Owuor), a hostile sex worker (an unrecognisable Robert Sheehan), and two rogue surgeons, Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) and Duck (Justin Theroux). Cactus – channelling MASH's Hawkeye Pierce at one point, complete with scrubs and a martini glass – is desperate to get himself and young daughter, Josie, out of Berlin, but can only do so once Maksim comes through with phony IDs. As it turns out, Cactus – a nasty piece of work effectively essayed by Rudd – is every bit as crucial to the narrative as Leo, their stories dovetailing nicely.

Apparently inspired by his late father David Bowie's seminal '70s 'Berlin period' (Low, "Heroes", and Lodger), Mute borrows from lots of other sources too, especially Blade Runner, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, and Luc Besson's The Fifth Element. But this is one neon-noir detective story that, despite taking visual cues from elsewhere, manages to just about hang on to its own identity. Jones gives us plenty of world building, some of which is successful (communism seems to have made a comeback, or perhaps never been vanquished, in this version of Berlin), some of it less so (the weird sex robots are astoundingly unerotic, like someone has just stuck some dildos onto a couple of old Doctor Who monsters). It also takes place in the same universe as Jones' debut feature Moon, which means Sam Rockwell's character(s) pops up on TV screens now and again, although, it has to be said, to no great purpose.

There's a lot going on – perhaps too much – but all the characters are interesting in some way, even Clarke and Kazinsky's laddish yobs. You feel for Leo – an innocent who progressively becomes rather less so, and are initially drawn to Cactus's anti-heroic ways, before realising his roguishness actually hides an infinitely darker side. Jones handles the mystery element well, keeping his cards close to his chest, and introducing one or two red herrings as Leo's search for the missing Naadirah deepens.

Originally mooted to be Jones' first film, and 16 years in the making, the director has talked about how Mute explores "aspects of parenthood", and it does that impressively. It's dedicated to Bowie and Jones' former nanny, Marion Skene, but neither of the characters we see here as kids are treated well. Young Leo's religious parents refuse to allow him an operation, which would restore his ability to speak, while Josie is dragged from pillar to post by Cactus. Maybe what it's really about is finding the strength to forgive your parents and guardians their imperfections. And, God knows, there are a few on display here. 

The quiet man: Alexander Skarsgård stars as Leo in Mute

After the interminable and patchy Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 (congratulations on killing off your best character, dummies), I was just about ready to give up on Marvel superhero movies. I wouldn't say Thor: Ragnarok (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WWW entirely restored my enthusiasm (it took Black Panther to do that), but Taika Waititi's film certainly put a big smile on my face.

This third – and easily best – instalment of the Thunder God's adventures sees death goddess Hela (Cate Blanchett) launch a decidedly hostile takeover of Asgard, with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) ending up cast out into the void, eventually coming to rest on a planet ruled by bad guy du jour, the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum), who puts him to work fighting in a gladiatorial arena. As luck would have it, Thor's evil(ish) step-brother Loki (Tom Hiddlestone) is also on hand, as is old Avengers buddy the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). They team up with boozy warrior woman Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), with a view to escaping the Grandmaster's clutches and heading back to Asgard to deal with Hela and her minions. 

Ragnarok sets off at a cracking pace, contains an endless supply of sharp one-liners, and boasts eye-popping visuals that look like they've leapt straight out of the pages of the Thor comic-books (the good ones by Jack Kirby and Walt Simonson). The comedic tone fits the material perfectly and the cast is terrific, but the whole thing is probably stolen by an hilarious rock monster, called Korg, voiced by Waititi himself. The director serves up a final half-hour that is thrilling, heartbreaking and entirely satisfying. Less positively, the decision to split the story into two separate strands (Hela in one, Grandmaster in the other) means there isn't quite as much Blanchett as I'd have liked, and just occasionally the need to cram as many gags in as possible wears a bit thin, particularly in the scenes featuring just Thor and Hulk. That said, this is one of Marvel's better movies, and I shall certainly look forward to seeing Valkyrie and Korg again. 

Rok and a hard place: Thunder God Thor fights evil on two fronts

On the subject of Marvel superheroes, fans of the company's latest blockbuster, Black Panther, will surely be interested in seeing that film's star, Chadwick Boseman, in a very different but equally heroic role. In Marshall (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WW½, Boseman plays the titular – and very real – Thurgood Marshall, a celebrated NAACP lawyer, who went on to become the first African-American Supreme Court Justice.

Reginald Hudlin's film – set in the early 1940s – focuses on one of the cases that made Marshall's reputation, in which a black chauffeur (Sterling K Brown) is accused of raping the wife (Kate Hudson) of his employer. The Judge (James Cromwell) in the case refuses to allow Marshall to defend his client (because he's from "out of state"), so a reluctant local attorney, Sam Friedman (Josh Gad), is drafted in instead. The only problem is that Friedman – an insurance lawyer by trade – has no experience of defending such cases and has to be heavily coached by his NAACP counterpart.

It's good to see the talented Gad finally getting meatier roles, after slumming it in the likes of Pixels and The Wedding Ringer, earlier in his film career. He's great here as a decent Jewish family man, torn between doing the right thing and really not wanting the aggravation he knows the rape case will bring to his door. The way Hudlin develops the friendship between Friedman and Marshall is especially satisfying, and the film makes a point of drawing specific parallels between the prejudice shown to those of the Jewish faith and people of colour in the US at the time. Dan Stevens (who also appeared with Gad in Beauty And The Beast) is perfectly loathsome as a prosecution lawyer, who will stop at nothing to achieve victory, while Boseman continues his march to superstardom with a winning turn as a complicated man.

Marshall – who travelled the country defending African-Americans who could not afford legal representation – is, in many ways, just as ruthless as Stevens' character, the film even suggesting he sometimes put the NAACP's agenda ahead of what was necessarily best for his clients. As Friedman tells him,"You just sweep through town, stirring up all kinds of ugliness, then move right on. No one will ever even remember you were here."

Hudlin evinces its '40s setting subtly and convincingly but, if the film has a shortcoming, it's that it all feels a little too familiar and predictable. Even if you've never heard of Thurgood Marshall, after the first five minutes you have a pretty good idea how this is going to end up, and what kind of scenes are going to play out. And although having Friedman defend Marshall's client is an unusual twist on the usual courtroom drama proceedings, it robs us of seeing the titular character in action, which, because the film is supposedly about him, seems an odd decision. Over the course of a glittering career, Marshall took up many cases – including several in the Supreme Court, segregation in public schools famously being one of them – and I don't understand why one of these couldn't have been the focus of the movie instead. Maybe they're saving it for a sequel...

Marshall law: Boseman is in fine form as the famous US lawyer

Finally, a film I first mentioned here back in October, after seeing it at the London Film Festival. Norwegian director Joachim Trier's Thelma (DVD, Blu-ray, and Mubi) WWWW, is a supernatural coming-of-age story with shades of Brian De Palma's Carrie.

It sees the titular character, played by Eili Harboe, leaving her devoutly religious parents for university in Oslo, where she meets and falls in love with Anja (Kaya Wilkins). But the onset of a series of debilitating seizures threatens to end Thelma's new life of freedom, especially when they lead her to manifest strange and terrifying psychic powers.

This is no mere super-powered CG fest, as Trier (Louder Than Bombs) focuses as much on Thelma's angst and awkwardness at growing up and coming out as he does on her burgeoning – and possibly malign – abilities. Like Mute, it's a film that directly addresses parent/child relationships, in this case how a repressed upbringing can spectacularly and permanently screw someone up. It's a haunting, occasionally horrific, piece of work and I really can't recommend it enough.

Carrie-d away: Thelma owes a debt to De Palma's horror classic

Film of the week: Thelma

What I will be watching this week: Snowmageddon permitting, it'll be Red Sparrow and Lady Bird.

I've written a few words about Bedknobs and Broomsticks for Film Inquiry's feature on sentimental childhood favourites. Check it out here.

Due to deadlines elsewhere, there won't be a new column next week, but I will probably pop by to post something Oscars-related after Sunday's ceremony.

This week's Top 10 DVDs/Blu-rays (movies only)
1. Geostorm
2. The Snowman
3. Blade Runner 2049*
4. The Ninjago Lego Movie
5. Kingsman: The Golden Circle
6. My Little Pony: The Movie
7. Happy Death Day*
8. Victoria And Abdul
9. Brimstone
10. Dunkirk*

* = Recommended

My favourite films of 2017: #30-21

Top gun: Brie Larson fights for survival in Ben Wheatley's Free Fire

30. Neruda
Director: Pablo Larrain  UK release date: 7 April
Off-kilter but visually sumptuous biopic of the famous Chilean poet, Nobel Prize winner and communist. Luis Gnecco's titular lead becomes a fugitive in his own country during the 1940s as he is pursued by Gael García Bernal's disturbed policeman. Larrain (Jackie) takes all sorts of liberties with real events, while his portrayal of Neruda is enjoyably unflattering.

29. Dunkirk
Director: Christopher Nolan  UK release date: 21 July
Nolan expertly utilises three different timelines (a week, a day and an hour) to tell the story of the famous WWII evacuation in an artistically bold and emotionally potent way. Aided and abetted by Hans Zimmer's frantic score, this is immersive, inventive filmmaking to take the breath away. Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance supply the actorly gravitas.

28. It Comes At Night
Director: Trey Edward Shults  UK release date: 7 July
Krisha director Shults turns up the paranoia to 11 in this post-apocalyptic thriller-cum-horror, grabbing you hard by the lapels in its first few minutes and refusing to let go until its haunting closing shot around an hour and an half later. A great cast - including Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, and Riley Keough - are the icing on the cake.

27. Free Fire
Director: Ben Wheatley  UK release date: 31 March
It turns out a 90-minute shoot-out in a filthy warehouse between two gangs of inept criminals is a hell of a lot better on the big screen than it sounds on paper. Michael Smiley, Sharlto Copley, Brie Larson, and Armie Hammer are all on top form in a violent and riotously funny piece of work that doesn't owe quite as much to Reservoir Dogs as you'd imagine.

26. Land Of Mine
Director: Martin Zandvliet  UK release date: 4 August
Fact-based drama about young German POWS forced to clear thousands of land mines from Danish beaches after WWII. Roland Møller is the sadistic sergeant charged with completing the task - whatever the cost to his prisoners. An under-appreciated gem that powerfully explores notions of human decency and forgiveness.

25. The Age Of Shadows
Director: Kim Jee-woon  UK release date: 24 March
I Saw The Devil director Kim's blistering period piece set in Japanese-occupied Korea centres on members of the resistance and a cop (played by Song Kang-ho) with divided loyalties. It's breathless, it's brutal, it's sumptuous to look at - it also happens to be one of the year's richest and most rewarding action films.

24. Thelma
Director: Joachim Trier  UK release date: 3 November
A supernatural "coming out" story with shades of Carrie about a young university student, played by Eili Harboe, with terrifying psychic powers. This is far from a super-powered CG fest, though, as Trier (Louder Than Bombs) focuses as much on Thelma's burgeoning sexuality, and repudiation of her strict religious upbringing, as he does on her abilities.

23. In Between
Director: Maysaloun Hamoud  UK release date: 22 September
Hungarian-born Hamoud's directorial debut is a compelling story of three Palestinian women living together in Tel Aviv, and torn between embracing modernity and the more conservative diktats of their families' culture. Mouna Hawa as Leila is a revelation, while the friendships are beautifully explored and believable. The final shot is perfect.

22. Silence
Director: Martin Scorsese  UK release date: 1 January
Based on Shûsaku Endô's novel, Silence sees two Catholic missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) searching for their lost mentor (Liam Neeson) in 17th Century Japan, at a time of great religious persecution. Bloated, self-important and old-fashioned? Maybe, but nobody does heavyweight epic with quite as much pizzazz as the Goodfellas director.

21. La La Land
Director: Damien Chazelle  UK release date: 13 January
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone can't sing or dance like Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds, but this musical love letter to old Hollywood, romance and jazz is utterly charming. The song and dance numbers are mostly terrific (especially the opener, Another Day Of Sun), and Chazelle serves up a bravura ending a million miles from the schmaltz-fest I was expecting.

**Up next: #20-11**

London Film Festival Despatch #3: The Shape Of Water, Downsizing, and Happy End

Chain reaction: The Shape Of Water is an unusual love story

Ratings guide:  WWWW - Wonderful  WWW - Worthwhile  WW - Watchable  W - Woeful

Watching Michael Shannon in The Shape Of Water WWWW makes you realise just how rare truly great screen villains have become. Shannon (Midnight Special) plays Strickland, the sadistic, candy-crunching, Bible-quoting head of a top-secret military research facility, who has captured an amphibious creature (Doug Jones) not entirely dissimilar to Hellboy's Abe Sapien or The Creature From The Black Lagoon. He tortures the poor beast with an electrified cattleprod, not because it holds information he requires or poses any particular threat, but rather because he enjoys inflicting pain upon something he considers an abomination. Strickland is a bastard's bastard, an unpleasant douchebag of epic proportions, and a real contrast to the parade of insipid CG-enhanced super-baddies we see trundled out in ever-greater numbers in blockbusters of all stripes. Finally, a villain you can love to hate again. The fact he'd be a shoo-in for a seat in Trump's cabinet is just a bonus.

Impressively, Shannon isn't the best thing about Guillermo Del Toro's early-'60s-set follow-up to the pretty but vacuous Crimson Peak. That honour belongs to Sally Hawkins, an actress who is truly at the height of her powers, as evidenced this year both here and in the underrated Maudie. Her character Elisa is a lonely mute, who works as a cleaner at the military facility where Strickland is holding what he refers to as "The Asset". Hawkins never speaks a word but the expressiveness of her face and body tells you everything you need to know. Sneaking into the room where the creature is kept, she makes contact, and they bond over hard-boiled eggs and big-band music, communicating via sign language. When Strickland announces the beast is to be vivisected, Elisa, plus neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins), work colleague Zelda (Octavia Spencer), and Robert (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Russian spy posing as a US scientist, resolve to help him escape. 

In many ways, The Shape Of Water is peak Del Toro, covering ground we've seen him tackle before, both stylistically and in terms of its subject matter. The usual eye-popping visuals and fairytale tone are both present and accounted for, as is a powerful sense of time and place, and the way he uses the fantastical as a metaphor to talk about real people and the imperfect world they inhabit. Like Pan's Labyrinth (2006) before it, this is a creature feature for grown-ups. The difference this time, though, is that Shape feels more urgently contemporary than his previous work. It might be set in the 1960s but this is a plea for tolerance and kindness in the here and now. It would be easy to view Elisa as a saintly figure but she isn't really - she's only doing what anyone with an ounce of decency should do: stand up to bullies, push back against hatred and intolerance, defend the rights of those unable to defend themselves. I really don't need to draw you a diagram of who and what the director is taking aim at here.

Is it perfect? No. There are plot holes (security at the facility is lax to the point of total implausibility), while Spencer is lumbered with the same "sassy big sister" role she seems to play in everything (will someone hurry up and cast her as a serial killer?). And there's one sequence when the director takes the fairytale whimsy just a little too far. These are tiny niggles, though, when set alongside everything Del Toro's spectacular, emotional film gets perfectly right. Not just his most impressive work since Pan's but perhaps second only to it on a list of his best films to date.

Making a splash: Del Toro is finally back to his best

Half an hour into sci-fi comedy Downsizing WWW, you're confident of where its heading. Norwegian scientists have found a way to shrink people to only a few inches in height and, in a bid to lessen the impact of overpopulation and increasingly scarce resources, the procedure has been rolled out to anyone who can afford it. Enter Matt Damon and Kristin Wiig, a typical middle-class couple, who decide to go through the process so they can enjoy the lifestyle they've always wanted. They plan to move to a miniaturised community, where their savings and assets mean they have enough to live on for the rest of their tiny lives. But then, around a quarter of the way in, Alexander Payne's film spins off at a tangent, turning, in just a few scenes, from a lighthearted comedy, built on smartly-delivered sight gags and impressive CGI, to an altogether darker satire. All is far from well in this tiny would-be panacea, with Payne (Nebraska) taking aim at consumerism, exploitation, the misuse of technology, and the seeming inevitability of climate-based disaster. Some of the points the film strives to make are a little ham-fisted and there are times it is easy to forget Damon and Co aren't all just living in a regular-sized world. But, for the most part, it's engaging, entertaining and nicely told, with the great Christoph Waltz and Inherent Vice's Hon Chau stealing the show in meaty supporting roles.

Small wonder: Alexander Payne returns with Downsizing

If the humour in Michael Haneke's Happy End WWW were any blacker, they'd send miners underground to dig it up to burn as fuel. Set in Calais, it focuses on various members of the Laurent family, a wealthy but fractious bunch, which includes suicidal patriarch Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), businesswoman Anne (Isabelle Huppert), her philandering brother Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz), and disturbed son, Pierre (Franz Rogowski). When her mother is hospitalised, the group is joined by young Eve (Fantine Harduin), Thomas's daughter from a previous marriage, who may well be the most screwed up of the lot of them. Haneke lays out their trials and tribulations in a rather soapy way, but seems to have little empathy with these people, their bourgeois indulgences or self-inflicted woes. The fact the Amour director sets his film in Calais is very deliberate, as its port is the gathering place for many hundreds of asylum seekers desperate to make the crossing from France into the UK. What Haneke is keen to focus on is the obliviousness of France's moneyed classes to anyone's plight but their own. As a result, immigrants are practically invisible and silent in this film - but that speaks volumes about what he's trying to say. We glimpse them just twice - the second time towards the end as a sublime bit of farce unfolds at a glitzy wedding reception. Haneke's films are often quite chilly, alienating affairs (I'm thinking specifically of The Piano Teacher and Cache). However, the bleak but quite broad humour he brings to bear here makes Happy End one of his most accessible pieces of work. Critics have been sniffy, saying the director is going over ground he has covered before, but that's entirely forgivable when the results are this rewarding. 

F is for family: The Laurents battle their demons in Happy End

Finally, I want to mention a few movies I've reviewed for Film Inquiry (here and here) but that are simply too good not to devote some space to on this blog as well. Chief among them is You Were Never Really Here WWWW, Lynne Ramsay's punishing adaptation of Jonathan Ames's short story of the same name. mother! director Darren Aronofsky recently spoke about an idea he'd had for a Batman film and how he'd wanted Joaquin Phoenix to play the Dark Knight. That movie never happened but if Phoenix's beyond-intense performance here is anything to go by, he'd have been perfect for the role. The Inherent Vice actor is Joe, a Gulf War veteran turned hired muscle, who specialises in rescuing underage girls from sex traffickers. Armed only with a hardware-store hammer, he brutalises anyone who gets in his way, while wrestling with the mental and emotional consequences of a past and present steeped in such violence. Plot and action aren't what's important here, though, as director Ramsay (We Need To Talk About Kevin) focuses more on Joe's damaged psyche than anything else. It reminded me of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and I'm not sure there's any higher recommendation than that.

Hammer time: Joaquin Phoenix impresses as a disturbed Gulf War vet

Almost as essential is Norwegian director Joachim Trier's Thelma WWWW, a supernatural coming-of-age story with shades of Carrie. It sees the titular character, played by Eili Harboe, leaving her devoutly religious parents for university in Oslo, where she meets and falls in love with Anja (Kaya Wilkins). But the onset of a series of debilitating seizures threatens to end Thelma's new life of freedom, especially when they lead her to manifest strange and terrifying psychic powers. This is no mere super-powered CG fest, as Trier (Louder Than Bombs) focuses as much on Thelma's angst and awkwardness at growing up and coming out as he does on her burgeoning - and possibly malign - abilities. Last but certainly not least is Claire Denis's bleak romantic comedy, Let The Sun Shine In WWW, which features a sterling return to form from Juliette Binoche as a lovelorn Parisian artist. She has a string of suitors - including an awful banker and pretentious actor - and cries herself to sleep every night in frustration and torment at her inability to land someone truly special. Denis seems to take issue with the whole notion of romantic love and the idea of "finding the one", but such gratifying cynicism never undermines the empathy you feel for Binoche and her seemingly naïve, not to mention endless, quest.

What a Carrie on: Thelma develops terrifying psychic powers

My Top 10 new films of the festival...

1. 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute)

2. The Shape Of Water

3. You Were Never Really Here

4. Mudbound

5. Thelma

6. Brigsby Bear

7. Happy End

8. Redoubtable

9. Let The Sun Shine In

10. Good Time