Riley Keough

Good news: Steven Soderbergh's well-publicised retirement from directing only lasted about four years. He's back with this lively, relentlessly enjoyable caper that feels like a mash-up between his Ocean's Eleven and Magic Mike movies. Using America's economic situation as a launching point (without any political message), he spins a loose-limbed adventure with a gang of endearingly scruffy characters. If this is your cup of tea, it's a proper guilty pleasure.

In West Virginia, the Logan family has had a string of very bad luck, leaving Jimmy (Channing Tatum) with a dodgy knee and his younger brother Clyde (Adam Driver) with a missing arm. Their sister Mellie (Riley Keough) has so far escaped injury, so Jimmy hatches a plan to change their fortunes by robbing the Charlotte Nascar race course, which he knows inside and out because he's just been sacked from his job there. They need the help of explosives expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), who's in jail. So in addition to an elaborate heist, they must also plan a prison break. They also bring in Joe's nerdy gamer brothers (Jack Quaid and Brian Gleeson).

Frankly, all of these people are such misfits that no one would ever suspect them of being capable of carrying out such a complicated plan. And that's the point: it's easy to underestimate people who seem uneducated. This gives the cast plenty to play with. Tatum and particularly Driver are terrific at the centre, with their hang-dog expressions and understated skill sets. Keough gets to play the one person in the story with brains, and has a great time rampaging through each scene. But the movie is stolen by Craig, who goes wildly against type as the hilariously nutty Joe. In one classic scene, he barely contains his exasperation while explaining how to make a bomb out of gummy bears.

Continue reading: Logan Lucky Review

This sharply original horror film not only approaches its premise from an unexpected angle, but it creates characters who add a psychological depth that makes the film far more involving than expected. And scarier too. Writer-director Trey Edward Shults is doing a lot more than just frightening the audience with an enigmatic post-apocalyptic story, he's also provoking thought with some seriously intriguing subtext.

It's set in an isolated farmhouse that's been boarded-up to fend off the chaos outside, where a grisly disease has swept across America, killing everyone who contracts it. After his father-in-law (David Pendleton) dies from the illness, Paul (Joel Edgerton) is desperately trying to protect his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and 17-year-old son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). So when a stranger, Will (Christopher Abbott), turns up, he reacts harshly. But Will tells him that he's only looking for supplies to help his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and their young son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner). Hesitantly, Paul and Sarah bring this family into their home. But the layers of mistrust grow between them, always with the added tinge of terror that one of them might be infected with this extremely contagious disease.

The story is told through Travis' eyes, as he watches and listens to the unsettling paranoia creeping up around him. This includes his freaky nightly dreams, followed by roaming alone though the pitch-black house. All of the actors are terrific at capturing the earthier edges of their characters, with moments of humour and compassion contrasting against their darker suspicions. Harrison adeptly provides the audience with an entry point into this situation, while Edgerton anchors the movie as a man so consumed by his fear that he's not quite in control of his actions. Everyone tries to talk some sense, but for him this only makes them less trustworthy. Each of the actors stirs some suggestive ambiguity into his or her performance, making the audience wonder as well.

Continue reading: It Comes At Night Review

British filmmaker Andrea Arnold follows her acclaimed arthouse hits Fish Tank and Wuthering Heights with a road trip across the American West. It's stunningly photographed by Robbie Ryan with a vivid sense of light, skin and expansive landscapes. And it's acted with an offhanded honesty by its young cast. But there's no real plot to speak of, and as the film unfolds over nearly three hours, it becomes naggingly clear that there isn't much of a point.

It centres on Star (Sasha Lane), an 18-year-old from Texas who is fed up with her miserable life caring for her younger siblings while her mother parties in local bars and her boyfriend acts like a caveman. So she runs off and joins the present-day equivalent of the circus: a travelling group of hard-partying teens selling magazines door-to-door. Their jaded leader Krystal (Riley Keough) doesn't care about the alcohol, sex and drugs as long as she's making money. And as Star settles in, she develops a crush on Jake (Shia LaBeouf), the guy training her on the job. As they move from town to town, Star has a series of small adventures that turn nasty, and could go much worse at any moment.

This potential danger is the only real tension in the film, although Star is oblivious to the fact that she continually puts herself in perilous situations. She learns nothing through all of these experiences, which is very frustrating for a movie audience to watch. This is a very simple young woman whose only dream is to get a trailer of her own and fill it with babies. Like all of these kids, she is living for the moment without any sense of responsibility or direction. This is a knowing comment on a generation raised in the longest recession in human history, but it leaves the movie feeling like it's spinning its wheels.

Continue reading: American Honey Review

Leave it to a veteran to show the young sparks how to do it: it's been 30 years since George Miller last visited his post-apocalyptic hero Max Rockatansky, and now he's back with the best-staged action thriller of the year, a blockbuster that dares to have meaningful themes and complex characters. He also recreates Mad Max as a kind of James Bond franchise with a story that sits alongside the earlier films, not before or after, and an actor who brings a new energy to the role.

In a desert wasteland where people trade water and oil to survive, Max (Tom Hardy) is a loner haunted by the death of his family. Then he's captured by a gang from the Citadel, a towering rock city run by the tyrant Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who has positioned himself as a god who keeps his enslaved people on a short leash. On a mission to collect oil, Joe's top imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) veers her war-rig off into the desert. So Joe sends a gang after her. Leading the charge is the gung-ho Nux (Nicholas Hoult), who uses Max, strapped to his car like a grille ornament, as a blood-bag to supply energy. But after a series of clashes involving three other gangs of desert marauders, Max and Nux end up on board Furiosa's rig, in which she is hoping to smuggle Joe's five young wives to safety.

The plot itself is fairly blunt, which means that the film requires very little dialogue (Max doesn't speak at all for the first 45 minutes, mainly because his houth is actually bolted shut). Even so, Miller fills every shot with telling details that strengthen the characters and provide insight into what they are doing, building more intriguing relationships with suspicious glances than most filmmakers do with endless conversation.

Continue reading: Mad Max: Fury Road Review