Dwayne is fast, Charlize is furious...Vin's just dull.

Dwayne Johnson and the F&F crew

The definition of a movie star, according to William Goldman, is someone whose name can fill in the blank in the following sentence. ‘Hey, let’s throw the kids in the car and go to the movies the new ‘blank’ film opens today’. There is no doubt that these days Dwayne Johnson’s name fits comfortably into that sentence.

The former WWE titan known as The Rock may have the least starry name ever but he’s a huge attraction and, more important, he knows what is required of him. To put it bluntly, he is a brand and he knows it. Therefore, he will do all he can to promote his brand values. Johnson is an enormously likable screen presence with a huge amount of charisma; his star power glows at a pretty high wattage and audiences love him for it. Importantly, while he is also doing all of this, he has no qualms about sending himself up as in last year’s Central Intelligence. He gives the impression of being the luckiest guy alive and having the time of his life.

It’s no coincidence that the addition of Johnson to the moribund Fast and Furious franchise in its fifth outing rebooted it into the box office behemoth it has become. Throwing Jason Statham into the mix for the following movie only added to the success.

Now we have Fast and Furious 8 which, like all the other titles in the franchise, has had a meticulously orchestrated publicity campaign. That’s why it was so surprising, towards the end of shooting, to see a Twitter storm surround Johnson who criticised one of his other stars – later identified as Vin Diesel – on social media. The nub and the gist of the argument was that Johnson and the rest of the cast were doing all the heavy lifting while Diesel was behaving like, to quote Johnson, ‘a candy ass’. It was a shock to see one star criticise another, but especially in the light of Johnson’s good guy persona.

Although Diesel has his name above the door in this franchise, the star dynamic is becoming increasingly lop-sided. If you want to judge the merits of their relative careers look at their box offices; Johnson is a guaranteed hit maker whereas Diesel can’t open a picture unless he’s in a fast car. In fact, I rather suspect in his case, the car’s the star.

Diesel has been in all but one of the F&F movies but he is increasingly the weak link. While Johnson, Statham, and the rest of the crew look like they are having the time of their lives Diesel comes off like Eeyore with a V8.

Everyone else is playing panto and Vin looks like he’s trying to play Hamlet. This would be okay if he wasn’t such a monotonously dull actor. You know he is emoting because he either SHOUTS VERY LOUDLY or mumbles very quietly. He has all the charm and personality of a house brick. It falls to Diesel to go on about the values of family and deliver the endless eulogies to the late Paul Walker which have become a disturbing trope of this series. Meanwhile everyone else has fun.

It’s no coincidence surely that buzz-killing Vin is shunted off screen early doors. Guest villain Charlize Theron, as a super hacker, turns him against the crew thanks to a bit of emotional blackmail. That means he does his stuff solo while the rest create mayhem, effectively turning him into a guest star in his own franchise.

The plot, such as it is, involves Theron stealing some nuclear missiles and the sub they come in which, if nothing else, gives rise to the most flat-out absurd chase sequence as the F&F crew and their souped-up vehicles are pursued by the aforementioned submarine across the frozen wastes.

As a set piece it works well, as does a New York chase sequence which will make you very suspicious of your car if it has an auto drive function. The most fun however comes in a final nod to John Woo and Hard Boiled in which Statham, complete with a baby in a baby-carrier, creates havoc on Theron’s spy plane.

Then of course Diesel has to come back and suck the life out of everything. Him aside Fast and Furious 8 is a fun movie; there are neat guest spots from Theron and Kurt Russell, Helen Mirren does her Pat Butcher impression, and newcomer Scott Eastwood looks uncannily like his father in his younger days. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

The only concern about the end of the film – apart from the fact that the plot is left completely unresolved, is the fear that Dwayne Johnson may not be back for the next one. Hopefully this is no more than a cunning ruse otherwise we are left with emo-Vin which doesn’t bear thinking about.

Kong's the king of the swingers....the jungle VIP

Guess who?

The first thing to be clear about is that the Kong of Skull Island is not the King Kong we know and love. This is not the Merian C. Cooper King Kong of 1933, or even, the Dino De Laurentiis King Kong of 1976, or even Peter Jackson’s interminable King Kong of 2005.

This is Kaiju Kong; a character firmly rooted in the Japanese monster universe of King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). Its closest cinematic relative is the 2014 version of Godzilla which shares a unifying myth about the atomic bomb tests in the Pacific in the 1950s, namely that they weren’t testing weapons they were trying to kill something.

As such it has none of the tropes of those earlier movies but director Jordan Vogt-Roberts is smart enough to reference them. The opening sound effects echo the climax of the 1933 version, there is a nod to Kong’s adolescent lust for Fay Wray, and of course he goes mano a mano with as many dinosaurs as you can shake a stick at. And, I must confess, I found it great fun.

The late Richard Schickel, who sadly died recently, was my gatekeeper to the world of film criticism. I devoured his stuff in Time magazine and there is one phrase of his in particular which sticks in my mind. He was discussing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and he said at one point something to the effect that you can’t blame a theme park for not being a cathedral. And he was right; Temple of Doom was what it was and Kong: Skull Island is what it is.

It’s a bit short on nuanced character and sophisticated motivation. On the other hand, it is about a 200-foot ape so what were you expecting. There is a place for everything in the cinematic universe, Moonlight is your cathedral and an exquisite one it is, but Skull Island is definitely a theme park and a thrilling one at that.

Vogt-Roberts does a remarkable job for someone making their feature debut. Within three minutes we have met Kong, within 25 minutes Kong has destroyed an entire troop of air cavalry in spectacular fashion. Contrast this with Jackson’s version where, an hour into the movie we are still in New York; one reason why I always think of this film as ‘Show me the monkey’. You must give the people what they paid for and this is exactly what this movie does.

The plot is rudimentary. Set in 1973 a Special Forces unit from Vietnam led by Samuel L. Jackson, is tasked with escorting scientists led by John Goodman to a mysterious island which has recently been discovered in the South Pacific. Don’t ask why, trust me it’s not important.

And we can throw into the mix feisty photojournalist Brie Larsson and enigmatic SAS man Tom Hiddleston.

The film is not subtle and neither are the scientists. They drop bombs to take seismic readings and within moments not only are they facing up to Kong, but also the creepy lizardy dinosaur things which inhabit the island. In this version, Kong is the good guy, the only one who can save the islanders from these monsters, a fact vouchsafed by John C. Reilly as a World War 2 survivor and best thing in the picture. Kong is also used to deliver a little eco-subtext about species diversity.

As I said, no one is coming to this film for the script or the performances although it must be said the latter make the best of the former thanks to some proper grown-up actors like Jackson, Goodman and Reilly. What they want are monsters and lots of them and the film delivers; there’s Kong, the lizardy things, giant spiders, an enormous gnu-like creature and there are also ants that make a noise like birds. We never see those although I desperately wanted to; obviously, a creature too far for the FX team.

The film is relentless, the effects and the production values are marvellous, and the action is non-stop and if you are twelve years old you will think you have died and gone to heaven. I was about twelve when I saw the 1933 version for the first time and that’s pretty much how I felt.

But Vogt-Roberts is a smart director. He knows this is a generic movie so he uses the genre tropes to inform it; there are bits here from Apocalypse Now, Predator, Platoon, and the King Kong legend too. There’s even, remarkably, a musical turn from Dame Vera Lynn.

I know Kong: Skull Island is not a classic piece of cinema. It’s not a cathedral, it’s a theme park but it’s an exciting one. And Kong’s next outing is against Godzilla in 2020.

*Gets comfy. Reaches for popcorn.­­

Logan's last run is a homer

Dafne Keen (l) and Hugh Jackman

Despite its near-futuristic setting, the super powers, and the mutants Logan is essentially a Western. Just in case we don’t get the point George Stevens’ classic 1953 film Shane is referenced at a couple of key moments. Shane, for those of you who haven’t seen it, is about a gunman with a mysterious past who arrives to save a bunch of homesteaders from the depredations of nasty landowners.

I can certainly see some of that in this film but in terms of Western tropes I felt it struck more of a chord in comparison to Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), and not just because of the grizzled Hugh Jackman’s resemblance to Eastwood. In Josey Wales, Eastwood is a former soldier who has lost everything he loves when his family is murdered. He joins a group of settlers, becomes their de facto guardian angel, and in the process rediscovers his sense of family.

Anyway, whichever it is, these are both classic Westerns and in its way Logan is a classic superhero movie. Much of this is because there’s not a cape or a Lycra onesie in sight; this is a plain clothes superhero film.

It is set in 2029, a time when there are no more mutants and Charles Xavier and his X-Men have been discredited after the mysterious ‘Westchester incident’ in which 700 people and most of the X-Men were killed. Xavier (Patrick Stewart) is now in his nineties, living in isolation and cared for by the mutant tracker Caliban (Stephen Merchant) and Logan himself.

This is very much a superhero in decline story. If The X-Men were a new pantheon of gods and heroes then this is very definitely the twilight of the gods. The aged Xavier is barely in control of his psychic powers – he has seizures which devastatingly impact everyone around him – while Logan’s mutant healing power is waning thanks to the prolonged toxic effect of his adamantium endo-skeleton.

However when a young girl, Laura, (Dafne Keen) arrives looking for their protection, Xavier convinces Logan that they have a responsibility to look after her. She is one of a generation of new child mutants who are effectively being weaponised buy a powerful quasi-governmental corporation.

There is a definite end of an era feel to Logan and director James Mangold and writer Scott Frank convey that sense of one last gunfight. Mangold and Frank are proper, grown-up, film makers and they understand the importance of motivation, stakes, and character development in engaging and audience. This is a well-written and impressively set up piece of action movie-making.

Although they do contribute to some brutally effective action sequences – this film deserves its ‘15’ rating – Logan’s powers are secondary. This is essentially a character-driven film; it defines the relationship between the surrogate father Xavier and the prodigal Logan and gives both actors some lovely moments.

The Wolverine series has always stood slightly outside X-Men continuity, although this one does hark back slightly to X-2 (2003). Logan is a very satisfying and handsomely mounted conclusion to the trilogy and, if they choose to, will also usher in a whole new franchise.