southdavid

I'd never seen "Men in Black 3" before, despite having been a reasonable fan of the first two films. My son was born around the same time so chances to go to the cinema at that point were few and far between. Because of that, I'd rather assumed that it wasn't going to be very good - particularly having seen the disappointing "Men In Black - International" subsequently. Actually, though it was at least the equal of the original two films.

Boris The Animal (Jermaine Clement) escapes from his prison on the Moon, swearing revenge on Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones). After escaping an encounter with K and J (Will Smith) Boris leaps back in time to 1969 and alters the timeline, killing a younger version of K. The only one who remembers K as a contemporary agent, J also travels back to 1969, arriving before Boris and teams up with the younger K (Josh Brolin) to save both himself and the future.

It's tempting to just write, if you liked "Men in Black" this is more and be done with it, but I think I can do better. It's another fun and reasonably funny action comedy. The whole dynamic is slightly different to what has been before, as Agent J is alone a little more than previously and his partnership is split over two versions of K. Tommy Lee Jones isn't in the film that much, but Brolin is a fine replacement and is ably portraying a younger version of the same character.

I liked the time travel aspect of the plot and enjoyed Michael Stuhlbarg character, with the ability to see all potential futures and his worries about whether a particular one is coming to fruition based on certain indicators.

I don't think that this was an amazing film that I'll come back to multiple times, but neither was it the disappointment I feared.

I haven't seen any of Sean Baker's other work even, to my shame, his highly regarded "The Florida Project". I was on annual leave though, and at a loose end so caught an afternoon performance of the film, based on nothing but the trailer that I'd seen a few times. I really loved it.

Anora (Mikey Madison) is a stripper at a New York club. She meets Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn) the young son of a Russian Oligarch and the pair begin a transactional relationship. On a weeklong trip to Las Vegas, Vanya asks Anora to marry him, which she eventually agrees too, as they have grown legitimately close over their time together. When news of the marriage reaches his parents though, they order his minder, Toros (Karren Karagulian) to being the process of annulment ahead of their arrival. Vanya though reacts badly to the news and flees the house. Anora, Toros and his henchmen Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) set out to find him.

In some ways, the trailers presented a very different film than the what the film actually is. It did suggest it might be quite sexually explicit and indeed it is, with quite a few sex and stripping scenes, certainly in the first half. I did think it might become more of a sad drama though, with thugs convincing, perhaps even physically, Anora to give up the marriage without a fuss. It's not really that though, it steers much closer to a comedy than I thought it would. The central hour certainly felt to me like a Coen brothers' comedy, though perhaps one with a slightly harder edge, as the four characters travel New York, desperately chasing down leads on where Vanya might be and getting into several unfortunate and sometimes bizarre circumstances.

Anchored by a truly wonderful performance from Madison, "Anora" is perhaps one of my most unexpectedly brilliant films of the year.

One of "Slow Horses" best features is that the seasons consist of just six episodes - which not only allows the stories to play out quickly and without padding, but also has allowed me to catch back up with all of it relatively fast. This third run, with another couple of guest stars, was another excellent season.

An operation in Istanbul sees agent Alison Dunn (Katherine Waterstone) dead and her lover, and fellow agent, Sean Donovan (Sope Dirisu) distraught. A year later, Donovan meets Standish (Saskia Reeves) at an AA meeting and, in the aftermath, kidnaps her. River (Jack Lowden) receives instructions to recover a file from MI5 headquarters, in one hour, or Standish will be killed. Close to achieving this seemingly impossible task and having made yet more enemies at Regents Park, Lamb (Gary Oldman) calls instructing him to stop.

"Gangs of London" star Sope Dirisu is the big get for the series and he's excellent as the Donovan, driven to do some questionable things to get to the bottom of Dunn's death. There is another level of ploy and counter ploy that sits above the plot of this one, though to go into it would be a bit too spoilery. "Agents of SHIELD" star Nick Blood appears in this run also and is welcome whenever he's on screen.

Again, the delight is mostly in the interactions between characters. Lamb talking to anyone remains great and this season really turns the combination of Shirley, played by Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Marcus, played by Kadiff Kirwan into a real double act. River again is a solo hero for most of the run, though there's some interesting partnering up with Louisa towards the end of the season - that I'd like to see continue.

Another great story, raced through in the tightest way possible that again delights on every episode.