Mickey 17

Answering the question of how to follow 2019’s Parasite, a critical darling that won four Oscars, including best film and international film, and the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Bong Joon Ho has wisely chosen to pivot in a different direction; a sci-fi anti-fascist satire, Mickey 17 plays to the director’s strengths as a crowd-pleaser with a social conscience. In debt, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), takes a job on a newly colonised planet where he is to be an expendable, and will be ‘reprinted’ every time he dies completing a perilous task. Problems ensue when an 18th Mickey is printed while the 17th iteration is still alive, having miraculously survived his latest suicide mission. Although often broad in tone, and filled with outsized supporting performances from the likes of Mark Ruffalo and Toni Colette, the film’s pro-environment stance and message of tolerance has never seemed more urgent.