One Cut of the Dead

One Cut of the Dead is a 2017 horror/comedy directed by Shinichiro Ueda. It follows the cast and crew of a zombie movie whose shoot in a WWII military facility is interrupted by a real zombie outbreak. Its biggest marketing point is a 37-minute opening shot, filmed in a single take, but its most ambitious efforts don't become apparent until well after the first cut.

One Cut of the Dead might be the smartest film I've ever seen, and it's an incredible exercise in setup and punchline.

Without that 37-minute shot, there's not much chance One Cut would have made a big enough name for itself on the festival circuit for a UK Blu release, and that headline is certainly what drew me to watching it. But I was expecting something truly special from that opening 37 minutes, and I grew quite disappointed as it wore on.

Like most things in filmmaking, everything I know about "oners" comes from Tony Zhao. Using the background and foreground to keep a long shot interesting, how the camera movements give each scene a clear structure - One Cut does none of these things.

Its camera is constantly in motion, failing to properly give focus to characters or events. The actors stumble awkwardly over lines, seemingly improvising sections of dialogue; a couple of times the director character breaks the fourth wall in a way that the other actors seem to ignore. The camera work is haphazard, with an escalating number of crash-zooms towards the finale, where we spend over two minutes zooming in and out on the lead actress screaming while we hear a fight between two other actors off-screen. There's a "crane" shot at the end that looks like the cameraman is climbing a ladder instead of using an actual crane.

It's a slapdash, amateurish affair that can't really live up to either its own ambition or the marketing hype - and that's entirely the point, because One Cut of the Dead has the most impressive re-contextualisation of previously-held knowledge of any film I've ever seen.

To say more would spoil it, and you deserve to see the whole thing yourself.

Just trust me when I say that it is absolutely worth sitting through that sometimes-questionable opening oner.

Rose Tico is the best character in Star Wars

Warning: Spoilers for The Last Jedi

Ghost of a Shell

Possibly controversial opinion: there has never been a truly great version of Ghost in the Shell.

Even Masamune Shirow's original 1989 manga is uneven, lurching from philosophy to comedy to body horror to tedious politicking to pornography at its author's whims. Mamoru Oshii's 1995 anime feature stripped back the humour (and sex) to present a more thematically coherent story, but lost a lot of the characters' humanity along the way. Stand Alone Complex is an uneasy mix of both, bringing back the comic relief Tachikoma robots (Fuchikoma in the manga) but still too serious for its own good. Innocence, Oshii's 2004 sequel to his own film, is immensely tedious.

The upcoming live-action Hollywood adaptation does not appear to be shaping up "great".

The visual style, half-heartedly copied from various parts of the anime and manga universes, doesn't inspire confidence. The Major's thermoptic camouflage nudity is imported from Oshii, but the live-action film hasn't fully committed to its source, or brought any of its own ideas to the table. It's replaced a quick, brutal demonstration of Section 9's tactics and efficiency with a slo-mo gun ballet setpiece that's not been fashionable since the Matrix sequels. The Major stark waking silhouette against the skyline has been converted to an indistinct, oppressive grey. The production design generally echoes the anime film's grimy future Hong Kong setting, but it's all so clean and shiny. What the hell have they done with Batou's eyes?

The most obvious shortcoming from the recently-released trailer is the plot. "How do I know I really exist when even my brain is artificial?" has been unceremoniously dumped for a "stolen past" storyline whose conclusion I'm expecting to be as unexciting as it will be predictable.

Plus, why in the hell is Aramaki shooting people? The man's a bureaucrat, a politician - more spymaster than police chief. His strength lies in outsmarting criminals and his superiors, not firepower. Maybe this is just a sign that the film is leaving behind its cerebral roots for a more mass-market action film - which just begs the question: why bother licensing the title at all, if you're going to throw everything else out?

(And none of this even starts to address the whitewashed elephant in the room.)

One trailer isn't much to go on, to be fair. Maybe they've just done a bad job with this one; it wouldn't be the first film to misrepresent itself in its marketing. But I'm not getting a good vibe off this thing.

Doctor Strange

The fundamental problem with Doctor Strange is that it's not about anything.

Marvel's latest Cinematic Universe hero bears some surface-level similarities to their first: 2008's Iron Man also starred a wealthy genius with a predilection for stylish facial hair, whose ego was challenged by an unexpected set of circumstances that challenged their existing view of the world and their place in it. But while Tony Stark's wake-up call was entirely of his own making - a result of years, if not decades, of indifference to the people who bought his company's weapons - Stephen Strange is thrust into his new reality entirely accidentally.

Even Ant-Man had Scott Lang's choices drag him into the story - he's an active participant, and it has the added subplot about what a person can be willing to do - or sacrifice - for their family. But Stephen Strange is just a spectator.

The car crash that ruins his hands is arguably his fault, but a momentary distraction when driving doesn't illustrate any kind of major character flaw or inner conflict that Strange has to overcome. It doesn't turn out to have been an unintended side-effect (or deliberate outcome) of any other characters' actions. It's just a meaningless, random event.

Strange also has nothing to do with Kaecilius' plans - in fact, it feels like no other character does. We're given the sketch of backstory (a history shared with Kung Fu Panda's Tai Lung), but there's no plan to stop him. The Ancient One doesn't even seem particularly bothered about looking for Kaecilius - she just replaces the librarian and moves on. There isn't even any indication that the three Sanctums have had their defences bolstered. Kaecilius is just left to his own devices until Stephen Strange stumbles - again, accidentally - into his way, and manages to deus ex pallium his way out of the confrontation.

The plot clips along at a JJ Abrams-esque pace, hoping we don't notice. It's all forward momentum and no breathing room - but there's never a sense of how much time has passed between scenes. When Strange stumbles into Christine's ER, there's no telling whether it's been years, months or just a couple weeks since they last saw each other. How long has he spent learning the mystic arts? No film has ever needed a training montage more than Doctor Strange.

Benedict Cumberbatch is at his Cumberbatchiest as Stephen Strange, and despite his Dr Gregory House accent even manages to find the time to act in a couple of scenes. Tilda Swinton somehow knocks her role out of the park, saved from her character's lack of depth by some great dialogue - a crutch which, sadly, isn't afforded to Mads Mikkelsen or Chiwetel Ejiofor. These are two of the most charming, talented actors on the planet, relegated to cardboard cutouts with barely a motivation between them; that they manage to turn in memorable performances at all is a testament to their abilities.

The visuals vary wildly; I'm not a fan of the acid-trip design of the "Dark Dimension" (not to be confused with Thor 2's Dark World), but there's no denying it's a unique look for the MCU so far. But scene geography is almost always disastrously muddied by the camera during fights - and that's even before they start messing around with Euclidean space. The kaleidoscope effect that twists reality would have a lot more impact if it was a location we had the measure of, but there's never a chance to get your bearings before the fighting breaks out. (This isn't helped by the television-esque way everything is shot; there's a lot of mid-closeup during dialogue with a single character on screen, which limits your view of the rooms they're in.)

I've been trying to figure out where Doctor Strange sits in my MCU rankings, but I can't place it. I almost convinced myself that it's better than The Dark World, but at least that had Loki and ended with that great dimension-hopping final battle.

It's probably better than Iron Man 2.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Calling this movie "a mess" could be seen as charitable, and certainly I'm a softer landing for the film's charms than a lot of people would be. I thoroughly enjoy a lot of The Lonely Island's previous output - both on and off SNL - and Andy Samberg's turn in Brooklyn 99 has won him a lot of good will in my book.

But the mockumentary style employed by the group's first movie foray doesn't feel used properly. Aside from inviting comparisons to This Is Spinal Tap - which will inevitably not work in Popstar's favour - it's implemented in a way that feels inconsistent, with no clear rules about where this documentary crew is supposed to be filming from. That said, the documentary style is justified by the insert interviews, with real musicians commenting on the career and music of the fictional Conner4Real, which offer some of the best gags in the film.

The music, too, is a mixed bag, but unlike their SNL and album tracks these songs are supposed to be bad. My favourite track, Finest Girl (Bin Laden Song), is borderline-offensive on the scale of Team America, but Popstar lacks the political position to give it teeth (for better or worse). Most of the songs get less than a verse and chorus to make their point - the only other song to make it into the film as more than a jingle is the deeply uncomfortable Equal Rights, though again its obvious textual shortcomings are excused by being a fake song by a fake artist making a point about homophobia.

The film's biggest stumbling block, however, is its lack of a clear point. Sure, it stumbles into a moral lesson for Conner by the end, but lacks a proper buildup. Conner's personality is at turns naive and childish, clear-headed and pragmatic, or entitled and overconfident - seemingly in whatever combination best suits the punchline to the scene in question. Taken individually, most of the sketches that make up the film are great, but they don't gel together and undermine some of the later scenes where we need to believe that Conner is an insulated narcissist for the emotional punches to land.

Even as a Lonely Island and Adam Samberg fan, I'm not sure I could recommend this film. It's the kind of entertaining curiosity I'd suggest catching on TV if you stumble across it, but it's unlikely it will ever end up on a regular ITV2 rotation.