Alexander Larman

Full marks to whoever tweeted, after watching the trailer for the dire new version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, that, "I’m sorry but Dakota Johnson has the face of someone who knows what an iPhone is." In that pithy phrase, the failings of Carrie Cracknell’s film are laid bare immediately. Johnson, despite the utter dreadfulness of the Fifty Shades films that launched her to fame, is a talented and likable actress, but she is also contemporary in a way that many of her peers are. You can dress her in all the crinolines and bonnets and Regency finery in the world, but she still looks like a California resident from 2022 cosplaying, rather than an inhabitant of early nineteenth-century Britain. But Johnson is not the only problem with Persuasion.

The career of the New Zealand director, writer and actor Taika Waititi is beginning to resemble an especially demented fairground attraction. An Oscar winner for his screenplay for Jojo Rabbit, a Nazi-themed black comedy that will make people fight in bars over perceptions of its quality (or lack thereof), he has since gone and taken the Marvel dollar. Unlike so many of his fellow Marvel directors, however, Waititi has fought to keep his work personal and distinctive. In the case of 2017’s riotous Thor: Ragnarok, this worked superbly well. Despite his working as a director-for-hire with no screenwriting credit, it was a hilarious and hugely entertaining space adventure that remembered to be fun, unlike so many other Marvel pictures.

At the beginning of the forgettable comedy Austin Powers in Goldmember, there is a selection of starry cameos, including Tom Cruise as an idealized version of Powers and Kevin Spacey hamming it up to high heaven as an alternate Dr. Evil. The film was made two decades ago, when Cruise was probably the biggest star in Hollywood, and when Spacey, a double Oscar winner for his roles in The Usual Suspects and American Beauty, was the leading character actor of his generation, both onscreen and onstage. Today, Cruise is as successful as he has ever been, with his latest film, Top Gun: Maverick, attracting rave reviews and stellar box office earnings. It has been a far different story for Spacey.

Baz Luhrmann’s latest exercise in excess, a new biopic of Elvis Presley, called simply Elvis, opens across American theaters this weekend. As ever with Luhrmann, it’s a mixture of sensory-popping provocation, cartoonish performances (Tom Hanks’s Colonel Tom Parker is written and played as if he’s walked out of a Snidely Whiplash short), an eclectic soundtrack and, once the sturm und drang settles, a surprisingly conventional account of a decidedly unconventional man. Played with chutzpah and charisma by Austin Butler in what must be a star-making performance, Luhrmann’s Elvis is less the bloated, drug-addicted behemoth of latter days than a youthful, hip-swivellin’, groin-thrustin’ icon.

The third — and apparently final, if rumors are to be believed — Jurassic Park film arrived in American theaters last weekend. Entitled Jurassic World: Dominion, one of those meaningless names that looks good on a poster, it was released to critical scorn: “the last time dinosaurs were subjected to a disaster this bad, an asteroid was involved” was a typical comment. Although Dominion opened to a mighty $145 million at the box office, terrible word of mouth is likely to see the gross plummet before very long. This is very much not a Top Gun: Maverick situation, where the most unlikely people have found themselves raving about a brilliant film. This is a bad, generic summer blockbuster, and it will be forgotten in due course, like all bad, generic summer blockbusters.

Recently, Kate Bush went to the top of the iTunes charts — yes, such a thing does still exist — with her 1985 single "Running Up That Hill." It’s an excellent song, one of her finest works, but the reason for its somewhat unexpected resurgence in popularity is because it was prominently featured in the fourth and penultimate season of Stranger Things. It's testament to the show’s continued popularity that its consistent, even ruthless channeling of Eighties nostalgia can lead to unexpected knock-on effects.

Ricky Gervais has caused a stir. This is not, perhaps, the least expected thing you could hear about the sixty-year-old British comedian, but his new Netflix show, SuperNature, has attracted an unusual amount of opprobrium for what people have perceived as anti-trans jokes. In the show, Gervais makes a distinction between “the old-fashioned women, the ones with wombs” and “the new women... with beards and cocks.” He calls upon the latter to “lose the cock,” and the audience laughs along with him hysterically.

The Cannes Film Festival remains the most glamorous and famous gathering of the movie industry in the world. High-profile, black-tie premieres attended by some of the best-known actors jostle alongside the more disreputable commercial market. Films on sale this year include My Neighbor Adolf, about the unlikely friendship that is struck up between a Holocaust survivor and a mysterious man who may or may not be Adolf Hitler. But back in the main festival, everything is going entirely to plan. Apparently. There has not been a “normal” Cannes Film Festival since 2019. The 2020 edition was canceled, and the 2021 event took place in reduced and rather glum circumstances in July. But now Cannes is back, back, back, bébé!