Weekend Watch: Black Bag, The Electric State
Top notch spies and rebellious electronics
Image Credit: Focus Features
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, where I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Michael Fassbender spies hard and the Russo brothers wrangle robots. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite, Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite and Blue Sky: @jammerwhite.bsky.social
In the notebook where I scribble the notes about the films I’m seeing to review, I will sometimes put a star next to a title I was particularly impressed by and want to remember as a potential entry for my favourite movies of the year list.
For the first time in 2025, a film scored that cherished accolade that I’m sure director Steven Soderbergh is thrilled about.
Black Bag –– the director’s second film this year so far –– is certainly one of the best I’ve seen so far.
Soderbergh’s new offering, which also his latest collaboration with screenwriter David Koepp, focuses on legendary intelligence agents George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and his beloved wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). When she is suspected of betraying the nation, George faces the ultimate test –– loyalty to his marriage or his country.
If it were just both Koepp and Soderbergh at the top of their respective games –– the script crackles with life and the visual style is so icy cool, recalling the director’s work on movies such as The Limey –– and scored with jazzy precision by David Holmes, who worked on Out Of Sight and the Ocean’s films, that it would probably be enough.
But the cast clearly came to play, with the likes of Fassbender, Blanchett and Tom Burke (playing scruffy fellow intelligence agent Freddie Smalls) all putting in superb performances that sizzle on screen. If this lot aren’t in contention for Best Ensemble at the next Screen Actors Guild Awards, something is very off.
Don’t go expecting a slam-bang action movie, though; this is a smart, talky thriller that’s more John le Carré than it is James Bond. The tension is palpable and will keep you on edge, and the final showdown around a table was more exciting than some of the overwrought CGI set pieces I’ve seen in recent times.
Go and see this one in theaters –– it deserves your custom and it’ll reward it.
Black Bag is in UK and US cinemas now.
Image Credit: Netflix
Since working on the giant Avengers movies for Marvel, filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo haven’t really hit the same heights. The likes of Cherry and The Gray Man, both released via streaming services, failed to grab much positive attention from critics or audiences (though the latter was watched enough to show up on Netflix’s charts).
But making two of the most successful movies of all time (not to mention their other, respected MCU entries such as Captain America: Civil War) buys an awful lot of creative capital, and they’ve also now been handed a big budget for their latest, The Electric State. Originally developed at Universal, the movie shifted to Netflix under the directors’ deal with the company.
The result is something that might certainly have benefitted from being on a big screen, but in terms of its story, never quite justifies all the effort that has gone into it.
The Electric State, adapted from Simon Stålenhag’s artful graphic novel by regular Russo collaborators Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely is the alt-1990s-set story of Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), an orphaned teenager navigating life in a society where sentient robots resembling cartoons and mascots, who once served peacefully among humans, now live in exile following a failed uprising.
Everything Michelle thinks she knows about the world is upended one night when she’s visited by Cosmo, a sweet, mysterious robot who appears to be controlled by Christopher (Woody Norman) –– Michelle’s genius younger brother whom she thought was dead. Determined to find the beloved sibling she thought she had lost, Michelle sets out across the American southwest with Cosmo, and soon finds herself reluctantly joining forces with Keats (Chris Pratt), a low-rent smuggler, and his wisecracking robot sidekick, Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie).
Naturally, there’s more to the story than this, and of course there are sinister forces at work, particularly when it comes to what happened with Christopher. Stanley Tucci is the big villain here, an Elon Musk-style tech visionary who has a grand idea for an interconnected link between all of humanity, and little care for who he tramples in the process of making it happen.
On the heroes’ side, there are the various robots they encounter along the way, mostly comical examples of promotional or industrial machines, and many boasting famous vocal talents including Brian Cox, Jenny Slate, Woody Harrelson and Hank Azaria.
The crowded cast means that the returns are increasingly diminishing –– not every quippy piece of comic relief works.
And for a film that aspires to Spielberg-levels of meditation on the relationship between humanity and its creations, the feel is more that of a movie assembled from other pieces of better films, even down to its score, with Alan Silvestri seemingly having rooted through the offcuts bin created while working on Avengers: Endgame.
There’s certainly one or two moments that work, and the visual effects are superb, but the heart is often underpowered here.
Still, if you’re disappointed with this, comfort yourself with the fact that they’ve been lured back to Avengers duty for the foreseeable future…
The Electric State is on Netflix now.