TL;DR – A psychiatrist uses hypnosis to take control of women who look like his late wife. A drivel of a film lacking any substance.

Review (warning: spoilers)

Hypnotic opens with a female security guard being asked over the intercom by some male security guard to go ahead and do her rounds and he will come and cover the desk. It is late in the evening and the place is largely empty. The desk has a single monitor with CCTV coverage of various areas of the building. The camera then shifts to inside the building to an office with the name ‘Andrea B’ on the glass door and a woman peeks through the blinds from within. The woman is Andrea Bowen (Stephanie Cudmore), she’s scared and nervous as she makes a call to a Detective Wade Rollins (Dulé Hill) from the Portland PD and leaves a message saying she believes ‘he’ is still watching him. With eyes, red-rimmed and tearful, she walks to the elevator which takes her down from the 18th floor to ground, as the numbers count down, she receives a phone call from ‘Unknown Caller’ and thinks it is the detective.

Cue strange man’s voice who says, “Andrea, this is how the world ends.” The elevator stops suddenly, Andrea starts screaming as the walls of the elevator start closing in… literally. Trapped in a vice, the scene fades as Andrea is crushed.

Without having read anything about this film, given this opening scene and movie title, I’m guessing there’s a psychopathic psychiatrist who uses hypnosis on his patients and when using a key word or sentence such as “this is how the world ends”, triggers the patient to mentally believe they will die even if part of their brain says, “I’m in an elevator and elevator walls do not suddenly start moving in to crush me like a garbage compactor”.

We now meet Jenn Tompson (Kate Siegel) who arrives at a party with a pot plant that has seen better days. At the front door, she is greeted by her friend, Gina Kelman (Lucie Guest), and Jenn confesses she bought a bottle of wine to bring to the party but already drank it and instead brought a plant that she now notices is dead. Gina doesn’t care about the plant and says she tried calling her to tell her ‘Brian’ is here. Jenn’s expression is all you need to know that her and Brian were once a thing but they are now not a thing anymore. Jenn decides to brave the party anyway and asks for a glass of wine. Clearly, alcohol being the only thing getting her through life at this moment.

During the party Jenn is introduced by Gina to Dr Collin Meade (Jason O’Mara). Gina speaks glowingly of the assistance and therapy Collin has given her and attributes her recent promotion up the career ladder to him. For all the alcohol consumed, Jenn is still astute enough to say to Collin that she didn’t know that therapists could hang out with their patients. To which, Collin replies bashfully that he follows the rules 99% of the time then lowers it to 95%, which gets a giggle out of Jenn.

She excuses herself when she sees Brian (Jaime M. Callica) and ends up in a four-way conversation with him, Gina and Gina’s husband, Scotty (Luc Roderique). Collin inserts himself into the conversation by asking what Jenn does and discovers she is a software engineer like Brian. We also find out that Brian has a severe sesame seed allergy requiring an epi-pen to be carried around with him. I’m already guessing Brian is not going to make it to the end of the film and will consume sesame seed unknowingly with no epi-pen in sight. Collin leaves his business card for Jenn before the party ends.

Sessions ensue involving hypnotherapy and three months pass with Jenn turning her life around. She invites Brian over for dinner (at the suggestion of the good doctor). To prepare, she is at a grocery store when she receives a phone call from an ‘Unknown Caller’ and she freezes. She then awakens sitting down in her house with dinner laid out on the table, she doesn’t remember any of this (and has lost a passage of time) and hears someone choking in the bathroom. Sure enough, it’s Brian having an allergic reaction. She manages to find an epi-pen and calls the ambulance, but Brian ends up in a coma (so, I was close, he doesn’t die but almost).

The rest of the film follows the path of psychological thrillers where Jenn tries to figure out what is happening to her, and the good doctor espouses ‘therapy’ that talks about not letting fear win and allowing her to trust him when we know he is said psychopath. It’s a by-the-numbers affair which delivers style over substance and thus falls short of any thrills.

I cannot stress strongly enough that this film takes great liberties surrounding what it portrays as ‘therapy’. The idea of just being happy and not letting fear win is not something any proper psychiatrist would seek to instil in their patient. Part of who we are is feeling the spectrum of emotions that comes from being human and that includes happiness, joy, sadness and fear. Suffice to say, however, that even if I turn my mind off and treat the idea of hypnosis as mind-control purely as a story mechanic designed to bring tension, it still falls flat. That Collin uses hypnosis to control women who look like his late wife is both contrived and cliché. Any attempt at twists or shocks failing miserably due to a plot that has nothing going for it.

Hypnotic is truly a boring affair.

1 out of 10

TL;DR – Officially the last trial by combat held in France. The judicial duel between Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris was triggered when Carrogues’s wife, Marguerite, claimed that Le Gris raped her. The winner was said to be the one who told the truth (through God’s will making him victorious), the other condemned to death.

Review (warning: spoilers)

Based on the book of the same name written by Eric Jager, The Last Duel depicts the harsh and ruthless time of medieval France when war raged constantly between the French and English. The story centres on three individuals. Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), his wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver).

Jean and Jacques are friends who have fought together in many battles, but their friendship becomes strained when Jacques earns the favour of Count Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck). Jacques starts earning land and riches over Jean even though both have bled for their country and fought bravely. When Jean marries Marguerite, he was meant to receive a rich piece of land as part of her dowry, but instead Jacques seizes the land as payment of tax owed to the Count. The Count, in turn, having his financial affairs sorted by Jacques, gifts this land to Jacques.

When Jean attempts to sue the Count for the land he deems rightfully his, the King throws out the lawsuit. Adding insult to injury, the Count then appoints Jacques the captaincy of a fort that has been held and run for generations by Jean’s family.

After a period of time, Jean and Jacques attempt to bury the hatchet but the truce is temporary as it becomes clear that Jacques has eyes for Jean’s wife, Marguerite. When Jean leaves for a campaign to fight in Scotland, and Jean’s mother and her servants depart for the day, Marguerite finds herself alone in the castle. Jacques visits and tricks her into letting him in. He confesses his love for her and believes that Marguerite feels the same, but when she tells him to leave and he does not, she attempts to flee to her bedroom to lock the door. Jacques chases her down and rapes her.

When Jean returns from his campaign, Marguerite tells her what happened leading to Jean challenging Jacques to a duel even though he denies having raped Marguerite. The accusations are presented to the King who sanctions that duel and leaving it to God to show who is in the right.

Director Ridley Scott delivers an impactful film that captures the brutality of medieval times and how men held the power and the women were largely powerless. There are many strengths to the film. When I watched it in the cinema, the sound immediately grabbed me; every galloping horse, clashing sword, battle cry, and dying soldier reverberated through my entire body. The choreography was stunning as scenes were shot in both France and Ireland, and the dirt roads and castles made me feel how hard life would have been during that time. The costumes, both male and female, are elaborate, and the way knights are suited up in armour is captured in pain staking detail.

All these audio and visual elements are combined in a story told in three chapters. Chapter one is told from the perspective of Jean, chapter two from Jacques, and chapter three from Marguerite. Scenes are replayed in each chapter with both subtle and striking differences. These differences bring significant impact on how the viewer is presented the events leading up to the last duel.

Ridley Scott and company depict the truth as being Marguerite’s chapter. However, I have read that historians have long debated the innocence and guilt (and truth) of all three of these individuals.

Regardless, the final trial by combat had me shaking in my chair as both fighters (who were once friends) bloodied each other before the King’s audience and Marguerite who is standing alone in a wooden tower, chained to the floor, watching with heart in mouth. Marguerite did not know until too late that if her husband loses the duel then it would be viewed that God declared Jacques as telling the truth and that she lied about being raped. The penalty for her would be being tortured and burned at the stake.

Having read nothing about the historical events, I had no idea who would triumph. However, given the way the film unfolds, and it is the events of chapter three that is shown as the truth, I was relieved when Jean comes away triumphant and Marguerite is released from her chains and allowed to reunite with her husband. There is interesting ambiguity as the camera focuses on Marguerite as she rides silently several paces back from her husband who basks in his triumph and is being mobbed by the masses. It is an expression that speaks of how women were treated at that time, an expression that shows the crime of rape takes a backseat to a knight’s honour, and how women are cast in shadow, fit only to give birth to heirs.

Overall the film is engrossing. The only thing that I struggled with was the casting. More specifically, the casting of Matt Damon as Jean de Carrouges. The rest of the cast are excellent, especially Comer and Driver. However, while Damon puts everything into his performance, I was not convinced. His speech and accent were mixed at best, and I felt the role would have been better suited with another actor (dare I say, an actual French actor or an actor who can speak French may have been a better fit? Tahar Rahim comes to mind). Still I enjoyed The Last Duel and the fact I want to pick up the book and read it says a lot to how effective the film is.

8.5 out of 10

TL;DR – Soldiers from the future travel 30 years back in time seeking to recruit the help of humanity to fight against aliens. Dan, ex-military soldier come scientist, is drafted to take the perilous journey into the future. There he discovers his daughter, grown-up and also a scientist. Together can they come up with a way to stop the aliens killing every last human being on earth?

Review (warning: spoilers)

Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) drives home while talking on the phone for what appears to be an interview for some science job in a lab. He mentions he has leadership experience from doing military tours and running two combat missions in Iraq. He is in the final round and desperately wants to be chosen even if it means missing out on watching the game with his daughter and abandoning his wife to a house full of guests because they are hosting a Christmas party. It is December 2022 but there will be no early presents for Dan as the selection panel informs him that they have gone with someone else. Dan takes out his disappointment on a rubbish bin knocking it over.

Entering the house dejected, and in no mood for partying, it is his daughter, Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), who comforts him by saying she wants to be the best like he is the best at science. He then tells her daughter that to be the best you have to say, “I will do what nobody else is willing to do.”

The game on television is a World Cup soccer game, and it is at this moment that everything changes as (play ominous background music) a portal opens in the middle of the field and a bunch of soldiers emerge. Lieutenant Hart (Jasmine Matthews) taps into the stadium speakers (using some sort of advanced sci-fi tech) and announces to everyone at the stadium and all the viewers watching the game around the world that they are from the future. Thirty years to be exact. She announces that she comes from a future where humans are fighting a war against aliens called Whitespikes and they are losing. She has come back in time to recruit people to take back to fight the war and concludes, “You are our last hope”.

Thus, the introduction to Tomorrow War completes. Soldiers in 2022-23 start making the jump into the future but the casualties are high and most do not make it back. This leads to two things: 1) the global announcement for a worldwide draft involving civilians that will be sent to fight the future war and 2) rise of anti-war protests across the globe.

Dan is found teaching biology in high school and all his students have lost hope. They do not see the point in going to school and learning if they all wind up dead in thirty years time. Dan says there is still hope, but it will require scientists to come up with a solution and to continue to innovate to find a way to defeat the aliens.

He is then called to a building where he undergoes tests for conscription. By shoving his arm into a device that scans his DNA and shows his future, he is told that he will die in seven years time. You find out later that to avoid some sort of time travel paradox, people who go that far into the future are already dead and those from the future who travel to the past are not already born (thus avoiding the situation of oneself meeting oneself in another time). The machine then fuses a metal band, that reminded me of those gladiator wrist bands, to his arm that allows the government to track him wherever he is and perform the portal jump (he is also informed that any attempt to tamper with the band or evade the draft will result in his imprisonment or his spouse or his dependent of legal age taking his place). Happy days…

Things do not go as planned when he makes the jump into the future along with an army of other civilians-turned-soldiers. Dan manages to survive the jump out of sheer luck along with a small group of others and is contacted by Colonel Muri Forester (Yvonne Strahovski) over comms. Yes, little Muri is now all grown up and a Colonel battling the Whitespikes though Dan does not know this yet. Muri orders Dan and his makeshift group of soldiers on a rescue mission to save a group of scientists and retrieve a dozen vials of some sort of blue liquid. Suffice to say, by the time, Dan and his crew find the scientists they are not alive, but he does manage to get the dozen vials.

The action sequences are pretty impressive and the Whitespikes are suitably monster-like and ruthless. Where the film struggles is the idea of civilians who receive little to no combat training are thrown into the future against aliens that are very good at killing. Why the government and the people from the future think that throwing more humans into the meat grinder is a good idea is beyond me. But plot hole aside, and with the body count rising exponentially, Dan manages to survive his first encounter with the Whitespikes and meets Colonel Muri.

The emotional pull in the film is meant to be between father and daughter. A now adult Muri, tells her father that by the time she turns twelve, he separates from her mother, then at fourteen he files for divorce and then on her sixteenth, he was in a car accident and died in hospital. This revelation is met with confusion and disbelief. Dan is adamant he would never leave her and her mother. That is pretty much all that gets revealed. Muri does not explain why he leaves the family other than to indicate that he was never happy. The inference is that he was driven more by his career but never achieved success in this space and thus Muri and her mother suffered as a result.

Queue more alien swarms, big explosions and endless gunfire. The rest of the film has Muri coming up with a toxin that can wipe out the Whitespikes and when she succeeds she tells Dan he needs to go back in time with the toxin and mass produce the stuff. Dan says he will but will come back to this future to wipe out the Whitespikes and save her, but the good Colonel Muri is swarmed by aliens as he teleports back to his own time.

The helicopter views of the alien swarms are impressive. The closer quarter fight scenes between Dan and company and the Whitespikes are more mixed; some sequences are well done such as when they capture the “mother” alien, other sequences like when they are trying to escape from the Whitespikes is not so effective because watching civilians act like soldiers beggars belief. The film is not helped by the premise that the entire world in 2022 agrees to send as many people as they can into the future to fight a war they do not know actually happens. Governments suddenly all get along and unite to send soldiers (and then later civilians) into the future war. This happens as a series of news clips in a space of a couple of minutes at the beginning, so you have to suspend all belief in quick time because the director thinks you are not interested in any exposition, and you just want to see aliens being blown up and humans having their bodies dismembered.

Sadly, action does not equal plot.

6 out of 10