Lockout; The Bridge; The Stuff; The Hunt; Tangled; The Princess And The Frog

Lockout

Since the early days in the 80s soap Neighbours, Guy Pierce has had the good fortune to shine in roles as diverse as a drag queen, by the book detective, revenge fuelled amnesiac, inventor of the time machine, a king, a bomb disposal expert and an aged billionaire, but he’s rarely been called on to flex his chops as an action hero.

In Lockout, Pierce plays Marion Snow, the archetypal wise cracking anti-hero who is overwhelmingly world-weary and has seen it all before, numerous times.

Still, in this case the daughter of the president is being held on a maximum-security space station prison, where the detainees are on the loose, so Marion is forced to board the station, get the girl and get her out alive.

He has ulterior motives as he’s been framed for murder and the man who might have the evidence to save him is also on the station. 

Cue the usual wandering along space corridors punctuated by torrents of sardonic comments, snippets of violence, a damsel in distress and incompetence and betrayal by authority.

So far, so so, but Lockout also features the most scenery chewing ham you will ever have seen in your life, as the excellent Joseph Gilgun grasps the opportunity to play the baddie in both fists and tics and jumps his way around the set as unhinged murderer Hydell, clothed in scars, tattoos, a Mohawk, a thick Scottish accent and a dead, milky eye.

Peter Stormare echoes his performance of a menacing baddie with a debilitating weak spot from the Brothers Grimm, Vincent Regan is good as the leader of the cons Alex, whilst Maggie Grace has the thankless task of basically being the princess that needs rescuing.

This isn’t vastly different to the multitude of one cynical man army films that have hit the screens since the 80s, but some of the performances give it an edge, particularly if you’re already a fan of this kind of thing. A hoot!

The Bridge

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is a notorious suicide spot, with 19 jumping a year on average. Director Eric Steel shot footage of pedestrians over the course of 2004, inevitably capturing the moments that a number of people decided to jump.

His documentary combines this footage alongside interviews with friends and family of the jumpers, helping us get to know the people behind the statistics and try and understand the reasons behind their feelings.

It’s pretty harrowing in combining an insight into these people’s situations, albeit from the outside, along with showing us their final movements, some walking back and forth along the bridge for what seems like hours, some hesitating at the barrier, some returning after repeat visits.

Ultimately it serves as an example of the places people can get to in their lives where they see no way forward, though it’s disturbing when reading around the subject to find that a study from 1978 found that only 6% of 515 people prevented from jumping went on to kill themselves in other ways, and 87% of suicides live in the San Francisco Bay Area, so the signs point to the fact that many of these people wouldn’t kill themselves in other ways if the Bridge wasn’t an option, and these people are dying needlessly.

The Stuff

Another entry in the crappy straight to video style horror stable that tried its best to lure me in when I used to visits Blockbusters back in the 80s.

Finally getting round to watching it, I’m pleasantly surprised to find it’s a pretty whacky take on the classic alien body-takeover movie.

In this case miners hit a vein of white marshmallowy goop that tastes delicious, prompting the swift creation of a company to package it, market it and ship it out across America. Once it becomes a huge hit, the heads of the rival snack companies call in ex-federal agent David ‘Mo’ Rutherford for a bit of corporate espionage. Michael Moriarty plays Mo, and does a brilliant, drawling job of putting across an anti-hero whose motivations and intentions are hard to pin down.

Mo quickly discovers that The Stuff is an alien intelligence which takes over the minds of those that consume it, and his mission changes to the traditional saving the human race, along with help from a fast food celebrity ‘Chocolate Chip Charlie’, a plucky kid whose family have all turned, advertising executive Nicole and a mad, racist, self-styled general of a private army (played by Paul Sorvino).

The whole thing is tongue in cheek with excuses for having gun battles and explosions alongside mad ‘possessed’ acting, and ultimately the energy on display won me over. 

The Stuff genuinely feels like an attempt to have a lot of fun within the straight to video horror genre, rather than being a cynical money spinner, and the shonky special effects from the time before CGI only add to the charm.

The Hunt

Mads Mikkelsen stars as a primary school teacher wrongly accused of abuse and ostracised by the town.

Detailing the breakdown in relationships with former friends, the film is a starkly observed study of how rumours can quickly destroy a life without the burden of proof, and Mikkelsen is fantastic as a man stubbornly trying to carry on as normally as possible, confident in his innocence.

While much of what happens is predictable to an extent, there’s enough threat on offer from his fellow townsfolk that you’re not sure how the story will go, and indeed the end leaves things open with many relationships mended but underlying resentment still seeping in the cracks.

Tangled

Disney’s take on the Rapunzel fairytale makes for an enjoyable knockabout comedy.

In this adaptation Rapunzel was kidnapped as a baby by a witch, who now pretends to be her mother, because her hair has rejuvenating properties.

On her 18^th birthday when the witch is out, the tower prison is invaded by the bandit Flynn who is on the run, and thus begins a hearty adventure involving a stubborn horse, bandits with hearts of gold and a fair amount of slapstick.

Inevitably Rapunzel is restored to her rightful royal place, gets the guy and the witch pops her clogs, happily ever after etc., but the journey is an amusing one and it’s quite fun to spend time in the company of these characters.

Not a Disney classic but certainly one of the better of the more recent non-Pixar efforts.

The Princess and the Frog

Very much in keeping with Disney’s middle era, the Princess and the Frog is a transplanting of the classic fairytale to 1920’s New Orleans, cueing a focus on food, music and voodoo.

The first Disney film to return to traditional animation techniques since 2004’s Home on the Range, this is an old school musical fairytale with a heavy New Orleans influence on the tunes.

As the saying goes, the devil has the best tunes, and that’s true of this film, with the better songs, scenes and characters related to the world of voodoo and the recurring antagonist, Dr. Facilier.

Tiana, our heroine, is the first African American Disney princess, but her character is rather damp and earnest, dreaming of opening the restaurant her late father always wanted, only ending up with her prince due to the twists of the story rather than her own grand designs.

As Disney films go it’s certainly watchable, but it won’t be joining a list that you’ll be happy to sit and watch with your kids over and over again, except maybe if you skip forward to the best tunes.

Sightseers; Wreck It Ralph; Jack Reacher; Sixteen Candles; My Brother The Devil; Prometheus

Sightseers

Coming in between Kill List and A Field In England, Ben Wheatley’s murderous love letter to English eccentricity and camping holidays shares a certain tone with his other films.

More black comedy than horror, Sightseers still offers a fair helping of gore as sociopath Chris (Steve Oram) takes girlfriend Tina (Alice Lowe) on a tour of England’s lesser-known camping spots which mainly involves killing off people who get on his nerves.

The supporting characters are nicely observed, with Tina’s overbearing mum and the middle-class couple they meet on their journey being stand-outs, but the main cast is great, with Lowe perfect as a slightly naïve shut-in thrilled to be shown the world by the confident Chris, portrayed by Oram as a loner with particularly strong ideas about camping and plastics.

It’s not just the dark tone that’s shared with the director’s other films, with a visual style that often has a dreamlike, ethereal quality, no doubt thanks to the director of photography who has worked with Wheatley on all his films, Laurie Rose.

It’s hard to imagine a film so English to its core taking off elsewhere, but hopefully it will find an audience away from the curtain-twitchers of middle England over time.

                           

Wreck It Ralph

It has to be said I had high hopes for this. An animated film set in and around retro video games? Excite!

As it is Wreck It Ralph has a lot of attention to detail and not a few little fan pleasing elements to spot, but the story only ranks as okay.

Ralph is the baddy of a hit retro game in a Donkey Kong style, and is fed up of living in a dump and getting no recognition of making the game a success after the game characters come to life in their arcade, once the gamers go home (in a Toy Story style).

After finding little help in a game villain’s self-help group (oddly including Street Fighter’s Zangief) he sets off into other games to try and get his own medal.

However, if you aren’t back in your game before the arcade re-opens, you run the risk of your game cabinet being shut down as faulty, so when Ralph sneaks into Hero’s Duty (a generic first person shooter aping everything from Call of Duty to Metroid), steals a medal and then ends up in the kart racer Sugar Rush, he’s putting his own game in danger.

Aside: there’s a myth going round the arcade about a character called Turbo who, upset at his game’s fall from favour, invaded another and caused both to be shut down.

Whilst in Sugar Rush Ralph meets Vanelope who’s a glitch, a character others shun as dangerous (due to said glitching) but who wants to race and become a selectable character in her own right.

Thus Ralph learns that helping friends is more important than helping himself, etc.

The visuals are great, lots of neat little cameos including everyone from Sonic to Bowser and Pacman to Q*Bert, but the obvious love that has been poured into the film doesn’t save it from being a little flimsy plot wise.

It’s diverting and no doubt colourful and eventful enough to keep most kids going, but no classic.

Jack Reacher

Functional and workmanlike as it is, Jack Reacher nevertheless has some charm, as any film which presents a man as capable, decisive and knowledgeable always will to some.

Reacher is an ex-army investigator who has gone off-grid, but finds himself in a city after an ex-soldier he had investigated in war time is accused as a suspect of a random sniping attack.

Whilst he has no love for the man, Reacher sets about an investigation, and after a botched attempt to throw him off the case he is even more resolved.

Tired of society and impatient of rules and regulations, Reacher is dogged, determined and dangerous, easily defending himself when attacked but also capable of bringing the fight to his enemies when necessary. Basically a pitch-perfect fantasy of individual power and freedom, Jack Reacher is designed to appeal to the American male, and is scraping the outside edge of being just another one-man-army trope from the 80s, but what with the whole investigative/detective angle in order to root out conspiracy, it has a little more going for it.

Werner Herzog pops up as a bizarrely threatening ex-con of the Russian penal system, with scars to match, but seems to have been drafted in mainly for his voice, and was presumably happy to pick up the check to fund his next run of documentaries.

Cruise is Cruise, ever the heroic cypher keen to be flattered, but he does a fairly decent job of fitting the role rather than have it fit to him.

Sixteen Candles

Famous for his 80s teen movies, John Hughes is responsible for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Weird Science and Some Kind Of Wonderful.

I’d heard good things about Sixteen Candles but had not had the opportunity to catch it until recently.

Hughes’ directorial debut in 1984, but 6th screenwriting credit, Sixteen Candles comes across as an early prototype of the ‘gross out’ teen comedies of the late 90s and new millennium, which were arguably just updates of 80s teen flicks.

Sam is glum as her family have forgotten her 16th birthday due to her sister’s impending wedding (this idea of being forgotten and overshadowed will recur in what is arguably Hughes' biggest hit, Home Alone). 

Through the course of a day at school she shows herself to be slightly more oddball than the high school mainstream, but also not off-puttingly different, and moons after the school’s handsome jock whilst simultaneously avoiding the advances of short, geeky Ted. There’s a high school dance and a house party, and by the end of the movie our heroine learns what’s important and has a high school teen version of happily ever after.

Aside from the formulaic template that so many films would copy afterward, some elements of Sixteen Candles struck me as bizarre. The grandparent’s exchange student Long Duk Dong strikes me as plainly racist, what with the oriental gong strikes that accompany anyone saying his name, and there are also some other problematic tones of sexual assault as the hunky Jake tires of his drunken, cheerleader type girlfriend, and basically offers her unconscious form to Ted to do whatever he wants with as long as Ted drives her home for him.

It’s easy to see how many people hold this in a special place in their hearts, as it clearly started a long tradition of broad comedy films about over privileged American teens, but it seems like the formula has been much improved on in the years since, if not perfected.

My Brother The Devil

A slightly new take on the recent run of London underworld films that focus on the urban youth and their part in the drug trade (rather than the semi-idolised gangster/geezer genre).

In this instance two brothers are the sons of Egyptian immigrants living on an East London estate. The eldest, Rashid, is already heavily involved in drug gangs, while the younger Mo is a schoolboy, but anxious to join with the bigger boys he sees on the estate and with his brother. After an encounter between gangs leaves Rashid’s best friend dead, he seeks to distance himself from his old lifestyle even while Mo starts to get involved.

The references to Islam and homosexuality mark out the difference in approach to most of the urban gang kids films that have come out in the last couple of decades, and it’s refreshing to see a depiction of UK urban Muslims that has nothing to do with terrorism, instead dealing with the pressures and temptations of any groups living on the poor fringes of the UK’s urban centres.

Prometheus

A big disappointment on my first viewing, I nevertheless felt that Prometheus deserved a revisit.

The flaws are the same - many of the characters lack character, including Logan Marshall-Green and Noomi Rapace as the leads. Noomi’s Elizabeth is unconvincing in her hazy faith represented in having a cross, and her emotional breakdown at the mention of her father seems unusual with Logan’s Charlie seeing as it’s implied that they have a fairly established relationship, this is unlikely to be old ground between them.

Charlie himself seems very odd when resorting to the bottle after they find their would-be creators dead, feeling more like a method of opening him up to David’s exploitation, where there was no obvious reason David couldn’t have been able to be more devious with a fully sober Charlie.

Whilst an air of mystery is appreciated, there’s nothing close to indicating an explanation as to why the ‘seeding’ aliens who spread their DNA on Earth were stockpiling a substance which destroys them at a genetic level and drastically increases the evolution of other organisms, in order to deliver it to Earth. Nor is there any hint as to why the alien they find alive, for all his technology and knowledge, would feel the need to just bludgeon everyone to death. It could be a result of what David said to him, but it’s unlikely that David would risk his own termination.

The actions of Sean Harris’ be-mohawked Fifield make little sense in the context of his role as geologist and mapper of the structure they explore. It’s he who is shown to know how to use the mapping technology, and even his bumbling biologist partner Millburn (Rafe Spall) is able to give captain Janek (Idris Elba) their precise location at one point, but somehow they get lost in the structure on the way out. This despite the rest of the team becoming more spooked than them by what they find and desperately rush out in advance of a storm - they seem to find their way out with ease.

Additionally, despite being a trained biologist Millburn seems quite happy to play nice with a newly discovered alien organism which looks and acts like a smooth white cobra with a lamprey mouth - sure signs of a predator or at least carnivore.

The fate of Fifield is a massive let down in terms of sci-fi cliché - he returns to the ship in some sort of undead/rabid form and proceeds to kill his crewmates with vast strength, seemingly with no other aim or goal, implying that he has become altered by the goo or the organisms and taken over, able to navigate back to the ship but not have much intelligence beyond that.

Less plot/character related but perhaps more idiotic: when the alien ship crashes back to the surface and rolls, Elizabeth and Charlize Theron’s Meredith Vickers both run from it in a straight line. The obvious plan would be to run at a 90 degree angle out of this path, further emphasised by Elizabeth’s quick roll out of the way after she trips and falls. I mean seriously, this is Looney Tunes stuff.

It’s not all a complete loss, however.

The design of the ship and structures is beautiful,but mainly Michael Fassbender's performance as the android David is pretty much a strong enough reason to watch the whole film, despite all it's faults. Every interaction, whether it be with other characters, plot-points or just the set, is laden with the feeling that his intelligence is something 'other', he is experiencing and thinking about things in a way that isn't human.

Deeply flawed, but some wonder there.

Bicycle Thieves; Never Let Me Go; Little Big Soldier; The Grapes Of Wrath; Oz The Great And Powerful; Black Pond

Bicycle Thieves

Essentially the blueprint for the social realism films that would become more and more popular after the Second World War, the film focuses on the desperate attempts of Antonio to find a job in 1948’s post-war Rome. His only means of getting one is his ownership of a bicycle, which secures his employment putting up posters around the city, but on his first day his bike is snatched and he fails to catch the thief. The next day he sets out with some friends and his son Bruno on a journey that takes him all over Rome.

The location shooting is very evocative in a way that seems like it would be impossible to replicate these days, with touches like the wise woman and the mob surrounding Antonio when he locates the thief all feeling like local people rather than actors.

The ending is something of a gut punch, the general good will towards Antonio and the mainly gentle nature of the film (securing it a ‘U’ rating) lulling you into expecting a happy ending, but the end serves as another signifier that this is a forerunner for the harsh social realist movement to come.

Never Let Me Go

I’d heard that the big twist of the tale hits right toward the end, only for the film to explain early on that the school of children are being raised specifically as organ donors.

So, central character Kathy narrates the story of the love triangle including herself, Ruth and Tommy, as they grow up in their odd little 50s style private boarding school in the 70s, then in a little cottage provided for them in the 80s and then onto the end of their adulthood in the 90s.

The sets are evocative, the acting from all three leads - Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield - is great, and the film builds a convincing portrait of an alternate England where breeding/cloning (the details aren’t specified) people to be used as organ donors for the sick is agreed on in the 50s, a sort of skewed version of the NHS, and becomes a part of life, uncomfortable and unnerving for some but in most respects normal. Few protests or outcrying, just a part of society like vivisection or the meat industry.

Rather than focus on the administrational or medical aspects as many dramas would, the whole film centers on the character’s relationships and how they unfold, choices and mistakes made and regrets lived with, albeit shortly.

Even the quietly horrific revelation that the kids were the last of a humane experiment before the decision was made to basically factory farm donors is delivered in the context of the impact on our character’s relationship, and in this way the film feels a lot more realistic and grounded than it may otherwise have done, were the story to focus on the process rather than people.

On the other hand, the story of people making the wrong choices in love with little time to make amends is a universal one and no more affecting because of the organ doning aspect.

A decent film but not revelatory.

Little Big Soldier

Little Big Soldier is a breath of fresh air after Jackie Chan’s later 90s/early 2000s career. The tail-end of his shallow action comedies contained some awful duds, and this combined with his advancing age no doubt led to the decision to pursue some meatier acting roles rather than the usual action fests he’s known for, starting with New Police Story in 2004 and leading to films like the immigrant crime drama of 2009’s Shinjuku Incident and 2011’s historical Chinese Revolutionary epic, 1911.

Little Big Soldier however manages to go back to his action/comedy mid-career period with success.

Chan plays an old soldier in ancient China, the sole survivor of a large battle besides an enemy general whom he captures, with plans to return home for a reward of a peaceful farming life.

Obstacles on the path make for an eventful journey as this slapstick filled buddy-ish comedy plays out, with Jackie a likeable lead, more knowing than his usual bumbling apologists and less arrogant than the cheeky fighting masters of his youth.

The ending scene makes for an odd tonal shift which could easily be read as overwrought Cantonese sentiment, but really is part of a whole that has slightly more to it than the usual crowd pleaser.

The Grapes of Wrath

Poor Tom Joad.

After release from prison on parole, after the killing of a man at a dancehall in self-defence, Tom returns home to find his family has moved on. In the Oklahoma of the Depression sharecropper families are being turfed out by landlords to be replaced by tractors, and everyone is travelling West in search of work and a new start.

Adapted from Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, Wrath had a quick turnaround, released into cinemas in 1940.

There is a whiff of innocence to the film that point to the wider audience this is perhaps intended for, though the anger at the dire economic straits of the working man and his lot make for a stark contrast against the hopeful musicals and upper-middle class worlds of the screwball comedies of the time, without the cynicism of the noir crime features.

The laden, shambling trucks ferrying Midwesterners to California, the hostility faced by the migrants and the idyllic nature of the government camp are evocative of a situation hard to imagine now, indeed after the relative success of the Second World War it’s easy to see how patriotism was used by the authorities to quell socialist rumblings that rose up during the Depression.

Oz the Great and Powerful

Sam Raimi by way of Tim Burton, this leans more towards the CGI heavy Alice in Wonderland adaptation rather than the family-friendly nightmare of Return to Oz, let alone the classic original film.

Franco plays a lying sleazebag small-time travelling circus conjurer, who while trying to escape a cuckolded strongman in a hot air balloon is caught by a tornado and whisked off to Oz.

The wicked witch is making Oz suffer, but the prophecy of a great wizard saving the day gives Oscar Diggs (Oz the Great and Powerful) something to aspire to.

So off he goes on a journey to kill the wicked witch, but learns about the value of friends along the way.

The effects are bland in all their spectacle and the story feels like generic family fantasy, with lots of nods and winks to the original film that help remind you how slight this feels in comparison.

Black Pond

Black Pond, black comedy, though more a comedy of manners than one for belly laughs.

Tom meets Blake whilst walking the dog. Though odd, Tom finds him friendly enough and invites him home. His wife Sophie is unnerved at first by the introduction of a stranger, though she warms to him and soon he stays for dinner, and then for the night as he is afraid of the dark.

The next day Blake’s off at dawn, and before long Tom finds him in the woods, with the dog dead from drowning in the Black Pond that is central to Blake’s story of a man losing his wife to drowning.

Tom and Sophie’s two daughters Katie and Jess live in London along with a friend, Tim, who is in unrequited love with the both of them, and after the dog dies they come back home for an impromptu funeral.

Mixed in with documentary type talking head interviews retelling the fallout from the events of the film, as well as the odd therapy sessions attended by Tim as he deals with the aftermath.

The film maintains an odd tone throughout, with tension present but not unbearable, the comedy elements are gentle rather than hysterical and the darker parts are sympathetic rather than ghoulish.

A dream sequence in particular stands out as a fresh take on an age-old cinematic trope, managing to try things in bold new ways whilst still being immediately identifiable.

Not entirely successful but a fresh look at that most English of comedies, that of the awkwardness and inhibition choking interpersonal relationships.

Outlander; Hunger Games: Catching Fire; Brave; The Thin Blue Line; Cloud Atlas; Habit; Zero Dark Thirty; The Age of Stupid

Outlander

A little like the 13th Warrior, but instead of a Spanish Knight fighting alongside the Vikings, it’s a spaceman, fighting with them against an alien beastie.
As action B-pictures go it’s fairly entertaining stuff with enjoyably ropey CGI and a nice mix of action and suspense horror stuff with the hunty-stalky alien creature, but mainly it’s brainless fare with Ron Perlman being one of a few highlights.
Throwaway fluff.

Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The sequel to smash-hit adaptation of the Hunger Games, Catching Fire picks up where the first left off, with Katniss and Peeta now living in the victor’s village in District 12. Despite winning they soon find that the game never ends, and that they can look forward to a future of PR visits and events in the other districts for the benefit of the ruling capital.

In the course of these travels, Katniss comes to realise that there is trouble in the districts with many fostering opposition to the status quo, seeing her as a figurehead to a different way of life, but President Snow is keenly aware of this and quickly takes the opportunity to curb the chances of this proto-rebellion - the next Hunger Games will feature the current victors.

In the background Katniss is struggling between the affection she has for Gale, and something new that may be developing between her and Peeta, but the meat of the film focuses on the game itself and the strategies and alliances formed as a number of victors work to keep Katniss alive even as a group of the more bloodthirsty entrants work to end the lives of everyone else.

The game itself feels like a video game in many ways with elements revolving around timing and levels, but some of the personalities involved help to keep the drama from being alienating, with most of Katniss’ allies having some sort of personality despite the combat/survival setting.

Catching Fire suits the original well but ends on too much of a broken cliffhanger, rather than coming to a natural end which leaves you wanting more, it feels like a much longer film cut too early - in a book it would feel like a chapter ending a paragraph before the end.

Jennifer Lawrence is great again as Katniss, though rather than the character being a good example of a female lead being as capable as men, it seems like the roles of resourceful and determined Katniss have just been reversed with the relatively useless and helpless Peeta, who is hopelessly in love with Katniss while from her side relationships are more complicated. The only thing lacking in Peeta from the classic damsel in distress role is the screaming.

Brave

Brave tells the usual tale of a princess chafing against fate - she loves archery but is destined to be trussed up in a dress and married off for the good of the kingdom.
After accidentally cursing her mother and turning her into a bear, she has to set out and find the witch responsible before sunrise the next day, avoiding her father and facing a legendary bear in an ancient ruin.

Whilst the plot is slight with many elements borrowed from other Disney tales, and characters such as the larger than life Scottish king seemingly copied from How To Train Your Dragon’s Viking chief, the refreshing element here is that Brave’s journey is her own, there is no peripheral love interest or prince as a goal, neither does she reject arranged marriage because she wants to choose who to love, males simply don’t feature as what’s important to her beyond her father and brothers. It took a long time to get here from the swooning beauty of Snow White with seven half men protecting her and a prince to look forward to, but Brave feels like the first female animated film lead without a love story as the main or a sub-plot.
The animation is fine, there aren’t many jokes to speak of besides the attempt at hitting that Scrat/minion/Madagascar penguin sweet spot with Brave’s triplet brothers, transformed into bear cubs and forever in trouble, so the film isn’t going to be worrying the likes of Pixar’s first best work, but as family entertainment it is enjoyable.

The Thin Blue Line

Errol Morris’ 1988 documentary convincingly makes the case that Randall Adams was wrongly convicted of the murder of a police officer, due to the fact that prime suspect David Ray Harris was too young at the time of the killing to be given the death penalty.
Using a mixture of archival footage, reconstruction and interviews, the scene is set, certain elements are covered over and again from a number of perspectives and the picture is built of what most likely happened and why, and the detail presented is likely down to Morris’ past as a private detective.

Adams was freed in 1989 but due to the way in which the case was dismissed he received no money for 12 years of wrongful imprisonment, and passed away in 2010.
Harris was executed in 2004 for a separate murder.

Cloud Atlas

Said to be an unfilmable book, Cloud Atlas certainly makes for a slightly complicated blockbuster with its multiple plot strands set at various points in time, from 1850s Empire and slavery to a far-future of an Earth which has lost touch with off-world colonies after some catastrophe.
Many of the actors who crop up in each story arc appear again and again with the use of prosthetics, sometimes cleverly but often in a jarring manner, especially during the sequences set in a future Seoul where a number of Western actors have basically been given slanty eyes in a seemingly clumsy way, especially when they act alongside Korean actress Doona Bae who makes them look a bit like mutants.
Each strand feels complete in and of itself, though firmly set in the expected genre settings - the 1849 Pacific voyage is a slice of the likes of Master and Commander; the strand of Frobisher and Sixmith is awash with the repression and manners of pre-war homophobic Britain; the thriller in which Halle Berry’s journalist tries to expose a conspiracy behind a new nuclear power plant has the classic 70s grime of the conspiracy thrillers of that time; the dark, rainy, neon vision of Neo-Seoul in a time of clones and a high-tech police state takes the template of the post-Bladerunner dystopian sci-fi.
Despite the success in distinguishing between each of these disparate elements whilst simultaneously dropping clues as to how events and characters are connected through time, each part feels like just another entry into its own particular genre.
As the whole is no more than the sum of its parts, it’s hard to say whether Cloud Atlas is a failure, or a success simply for attempting and mainly succeeding in putting so many elements on screen at once, without really dropping the ball. Can you champion the okay?

In any case it’s too long and it would probably have been better served as a TV series.

Habit

This 1995 indie vampire feature gains much from the New York City setting - with just one year in office Mayor Guiliani hadn’t put in place the tactics to reduce crime and arguably sterilise much of the city. The settings of dingy streets of warehouses and apartments, basement nightclubs and abandoned boats helps give the film a neo-gothic air.
Pleasingly for a modern-day vampire flick, the main character Sam (played by writer/director Larry Fessenden) isn’t in thrall to vampirism and indeed the term isn’t voiced until later in the movie. As Sam negotiates a tendency toward alcoholism and the breakdown of a relationship, he gets involved with a mystery woman who has some odd appetites.
Not as philosophically ponderous as The Addiction, as self-consciously gory as Near Dark or as emptily stylish as The Hunger, Habit is a neat entry into modern day vampire films that keeps much of the supernatural aspects off-screen and unspoken.
It has the feel of a proper low-budget feature with snatched shoots on location and an unknown but talented cast, echoing the aimless 20s New York youth vibe that would strike such a chord in the likes of Lena Dunham’s Girls and Greta Gerwig’s Frances Ha two decades later.

Zero Dark Thirty

So, Zero Dark Thirty is a film in which you already know where it’s going and what happened at the end. This doesn’t mean that the film should be a pointless exercise, after all in recent years we have had the likes of United 93 and Argo, which either by using taut direction or artistic license have managed to make know outcomes fraught and exciting.
However, Zero Dark Thirty somehow misses this opportunity, working a bit more like a CIA based police-procedural as Jessica Chastain’s Agent Maya hunts down leads and roots out information over years in order to track down and kill Osama Bin Laden.
Cue lots of shouting as various agents argue about this or that theory or process, the odd bit of torture and then an extended special forces sequence as a bunch of ripped blokes get dropped onto Osama’s hiding place wearing ridiculous looking night vision goggles and then kill a bunch of people until they have their target.

You’ve seen the like before, though not usually based on real events. Sequences of intelligence agency people shouting at each other are no more engaging than similar parts of the Bourne films, and the climactic extra-judicial hunt and execution sequence offers little. No doubt it was meticulously researched but it feels a little redundant after the fact, it doesn’t have the entertainment factor of numerous special forces based action films and there are no unanswered questions to speculate on.

Competently put together, Zero Dark Thirty is certainly atmospheric and gives a feel for what it was like to be agents trying to find out information on possible attacks and prevent them, using whatever means they think they can get away with, but overall it just didn’t do it for me.

The Age of Stupid

Whilst the content of this withering accusative documentary sent from a likely future will be familiar to any who keep tabs on the state of the global environment, it’s still sobering to see such a collection of news footage weaved around six stories, hammering home the evidence for our effect on the environment and its possible outcome, with a marked increase in extreme weather occurring even before the film’s release in 2009.

The late Pete Postlethwaite adds a weathered authority to his tired damning of the past, reporting from a cultural arc in 2055 after the seas have risen and resource wars have lain waste to much of humanity.

Ultimately I found the story of the oilman the most affecting - a resident of New Orleans who was one of the many who helped rescue the stranded by boat, he says that given the chance again he would still choose to be an engineer prospecting for oil, a substance which he sees as a wonderful resource which enables us to do so much. Though his caution that we are using far too much of it far too quickly is the voice of reason too often drowned out by the shouting down of both sides.

It will be interesting to see how things develop globally, and how late governments will come round to the idea of sustainable resources - will it be from popular demand or economic necessity?
Meanwhile weather records continue to be broken on a regular basis and the global economic meltdown that began a year before the film’s release continues to ravage most nations, leading to ever more conservative governments in bed with the vested interests keen on pushing for oil.

Depressing.

Blackfish; Argo; Summer Wars; Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; This Is 40

Blackfish

Which concerns the instances of deaths and injury caused by killer whales in captivity.

Lots of talking heads, a mixture of ex-trainers and employees and scientists, what is amazing is the amount of footage available. Whilst the incidents that took place and were captured on camera by visitors are understandably available, there are numerous instances of out-of-hours training sessions and the attacks that happened at those times, and it’s quite hard to work out how the film makers got hold of this footage as I would have assumed it would have been owned by SeaWorld.

The instances of orca interaction are engaging, and the enthusiasm of the neurologist claiming that their emotions are more advanced than ours, due to having parts of the brain that we don’t, build up in such a way that when you see footage like the orca capturing for Sealand in the 70s it is pretty upsetting.

By the end of the film there’s little doubt that keeping these or any whales in captivity is wrong, not just for the animals themselves but for the people working with them.

Argo

As it’s based on a true story, it’s hard to know whether the more clichéd aspects actually happened, but some of Argo certainly feels a bit too much like other thrillers. The 6 people at the heart of the story, stuck in Iran during the revolution and in hiding, are only sparsely sketched with just Scoot McNairy as Joe Stafford given some meat as ‘the cynical one’ who immediately dismisses the escape plan as doomed and likely to get them killed. Surprise surprise, as Joe is ultimately the one to make their cover work and succeeds in getting them that last step towards home.

Other elements equivalent to the bomb countdown turn out to be fabricated - the last minute interrogation by revolutionary forces was made up, as was the jeep and police chase on the runway. However, these worked well to inflate the tension and kept your heart pounding, despite knowing the outcome in much the same way that United 91 worked so well even though you know what happens in the end.

Affleck plays it pretty light for him, no shouting or tub thumping or rousing monologues, quite often he seems dejected and defeated even before things go wrong, so it’s pretty much Affleck doing subtle. But it does help it feel more real, rather than the shooty-fighty secret agent films we’re used to, and the supporting cast do a good job of bringing their real-life characters to life, with the likes of Alan Arkin, John Goodman and Bryan Cranston all putting in a good turn.

Despite the twisting of some elements of the story, Affleck manages to avoid the vilifying of the Iranians without making the revolutionaries’ actions seem reasonable.

Not as good as the Oscar would suggest, but definitely worth a watch.

Summer Wars

Bravura Japanese anime film with a dizzying plot that basically boils down to: an AI invades Oz, an all-pervasive ultra-advanced social network which most of the world now depends on to function. The AI messes up everything from water to traffic to satellite systems, leaving a maths genius boy and an extended family that can trace their family tree back centuries to save the virtual world.

A schoolgirl invites a nerdy boy, working as a part-time Oz coder, to do a job for her in the country. The job is to pretend to be her fiancé for her great-grandmother’s 90th birthday party, the head of a large extended family living at a large house with roots going back over 500 years. One night he gets an anonymous maths puzzle, which he stays awake to solve. The next morning he finds that Oz has gone haywire with many accounts cannibalised by an AI and infrastructure melting down, and he is being touted as the scapegoat on TV.

Visually dense, Summer Wars has a huge amount going on, both in the CGI visuals in the virtual world of Oz and those of the more traditional setting of the Sanada Clan’s family home.

The huge cast of family members introduced illustrates how director Mamoru Hosoda (of the acclaimed The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) expects the audience to keep up, rather than kowtowing to them, and ultimately it makes for a satisfying tale despite the inevitable real-world consequences that are introduced to give the drama a little more immediacy towards the finale.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Boonmee is ailing. He travels to the honey farm that he owns,  and is visited by his family, including his dead wife and disappeared son in spirit monkey form.

The film feels very much like a tone poem or something a bit ethereal like that. Lots of sitting for intermittent chat, journeys through lush jungle, aspects of past lives such as the princess whose beauty fades but finds comfort in the form of a water deity in the shape of a fish who pleasures her in a jungle pond.

Glimpses of the red-eyed, thick haired monkey spirits who Boonmee’s son has joined.

A moment in a hotel room where Boonmee’s sister talks with her daughter, and her son arrives, trying to decide whether to continue being a monk.

It’s hard to put a finger on what is going on, besides Boonmee making peace and saying his goodbyes, but the world painted in the film is evocative and a pleasure to be in if you’re in the right mood.

This Is 40

Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd return to the roles they played in Knocked Up, as Debbie and Pete who are now struggling with the onset of middle age whilst feeling far from grown up.

The theme of extended adolescence has been around a long time now, particularly in the comedies director Apatow has been involved with, but Rudd and Mann make for good company despite their character’s whining, and Apatow’s daughters Maude and Iris again reprise their roles as the couple’s daughters and both are charming.

Chris O’Dowd, Lena Dunham, Johnathan Lithgow, Jason Segel and Megan Fox all crop up at some point to round out the cast, and though the incidents in the plot are fairly predictable and generic the players manage to keep you onside despite the over long running time.

Definitely an enjoyable film rather than a triumph, This Is 40 has a relatively low belly-laugh ratio due to all the griping and soul-searching, but to be honest I would watch Rudd in almost anything. 

Total Recall (2012); Killing Them Softly; 5 Broken Cameras; Silver Lining Playbook; The Monster Squad

Total Recall (2012)

In yet another case of the unnecessary remakes, Colin Farrell stars in the Arnie role of this reworking of the adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story.

The bare bones of the plot are the same, with factory worker Doug Quaid yearning for something missing, opting to visit the Rekall company who implant exciting false memories into you, and uncovering his status as an undercover agent.

However, rather than the previous set up of rebellion on the Mars colony, this time around Mars is a single reference, instead Earth has been devastated by chemical warfare leaving only the United Federation of Britain and the Colony (Australia) habitable, built up into 2000AD style Mega Cities. Connecting the two is the Fall, a drilled hole straight through the Earth’s core, with a transport that runs in between, altering its gravity half way through.

The set up is the familiar dystopia of the oppressed and oppressors, with the Colony here supplying hard labour to the UFB though the set design doesn’t distinguish a great deal between which is which. Blade Runner-esque is the order of the day with lots of rainy, neon-lit night and thousands of levels of buildings connected by hover car motorways.

This set confusion runs through most of the movie, as despite the mash up of languages and culture there are anomalies with accent where American seems universal and English rare, despite the UFB status as world leaders.

As well as this the whole idea of political upheaval doesn’t make sense. In the original there are defined differences between Mars and Earth, being different planets, but here the difference is ambiguous. Usually the richer part would live of the work or resources of the rest, but in this world of advanced technology encompassing a traversable bore hole through the Earth’s crust, a large automated robot police force/army and ubiquitous hover-cars, it’s hard to understand how resources are limited.

Still, Colin’s Quaid finds himself going through Arnie’s paces, fighting with what he thought was his wife (Kate Beckinsale in Sharon Stone’s role) and trying to reach the resistance to find out who he really is.

There’s lots of chase and fight related action, and neat little snippets of tech such as mobile phones implanted into the hand and bringing up a vid screen on any glass surface, but on the whole the film feels like empty flash, lacking the coherence of the original, let alone building on it.

Initially I thought Farrell would be okay compared to Arnie’s bug-eyed, gurning attempt at acting, but in retrospect Arnie’s cartoon character persona suits the ideas much better than Farrell’s anonymous, muted angst.

Beckinsale’s UFB agent and Jennifer Beale as Quade’s anchor to his old self do well in roles that require more fighting than looking pretty, but can’t elevate the film any more than Farrell, and Brian Cranston hasn’t chosen well for his post-Breaking Bad film debut as the evil leader of the UFB.

It will be interesting to see when Hollywood will decide to stop cannibalising itself, or are we stuck in this blockbuster & sequel cycle for another 30 years?

Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly yearns so hard to be a 70s film it hurts.

The wasteland sets of old crumbling buildings, sweaty card dens and battered cars along with the timeless wardrobe really give it a sense of place, with only the odd instance of a mobile phone or somesuch to pull you back to the future.

That and the constant glimpses of the Obama/McCain election campaign via TV and radio broadcasts and mentions of the ‘recession’ and ‘current economic climate’. Whilst many films attempt at a subtle introduction of subtext, KTS pretty much bludgeons the viewer with its references.

However, despite the bungled message, this is a beautifully shot film using lots of stylistic tricks to elevate the grubby setting of the story, concerning useless losers sticking up a card game and getting whacked - moments such as one of the junkies lost in a high, or a slow motion drive-by/car crash at night, seen from multiple angles.

Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn are brilliant as the losers, Ray Liotta is a slightly more vulnerable version of his usual roles, Gandolfini’s good as the repulsive hitman brought in by Brad Pitt’s fixer and Richard Jenkins is great casting as the administrative middle man for a corporate mob.

Pitt is as charismatic as ever but this isn’t his best performance, instead offering a nastier version of Ocean 11’s Rusty along with his usual schtick - the knowledgeable, worldly type. His own get-up hints at an even earlier time in cinema with his leather jacket and slicked back hair, a hangover of the 60s in a 70s film set in 2008.

Director Andrew Dominik’s previous feature was The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and it seems he’s learning with Killing Them Softly, keeping an element of the more ponderous, painterly moments of the former, but upping the pace and keeping to a genre running time.

Pitt’s last line is obviously meant to be the summary to the whole thing “America isn’t a country, it’s a business…” but the film yearns to be more important than it is - and yet, despite not being as good as it hopes to be, it’s still a decent film that doesn’t outstay its welcome and classier version than the usual mob/hitman flicks that are regularly turned out, with some great performances and lovely camerawork.

5 Broken Cameras

In 2005, Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat bought his first video camera to film his fourth son. He then ended up recording the conflict between his home, the West Bank village of Bil’In, and the encroaching Israeli settlements, taking over much of the village’s land and the villagers’ livelihood.

The 5 broken cameras of the title are the cameras broken during the course of recording the village’s protest at the settlements, cameras which record the beating, tear-gassing and shooting of peaceful protestors by Israeli forces, of olive trees burnt by settlers in the night and of raids on the village to arrest children.

Throughout the course of this documentary it’s clear that there will have been some editing decisions made to highlight certain events in a certain way, but increasingly as the film unfolds it’s hard to imagine any context that would allow the Israeli army’s actions to make sense, culminating in the death of one of the village’s key protestors and Emad’s friend, a man you come to know in a small way during the film and then who you watch shot dead.

It’s hard to watch the film without feeling outrage, and it’s hard to imagine being in the same position without retaliating with violence, so it’s a testament to the patience of the villagers and their supporters that they manage to keep it relatively peaceful.

Silver Lining Playbook

Both Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper are brilliant in bringing their characters to life, unpredictable and inappropriate, a strain on their families but ultimately trying to get better. Even with the trite plot tropes of the gambling all-or-nothing ultimatum and the challenge/competition finale, Silver Lining Playbook still manages to feel fresh.

Not only the leads but DeNiro as Cooper’s father turns in a brilliant role, the first for a long time that feels more about the performance than the pay, and Jacki Weaver, excellent in Animal Kingdom, matches him for the quality of performance. Even Chris Tucker manages to channel his usual screechy offering into a part that plays to all of his strengths, the fast talking energy and good-natured face that doesn’t seem capable of threat.

Excellent camerawork, jittery camera full of quick edits, but the framing gives you the feel of the shambolic inner world of the bipolar sufferer rather than the usual quick cutting of an action-packed blockbuster.

After the excellent The Fighter, it seems that director David O. Russell is excelling at coaxing spectacular performances from his cast.

The Monster Squad

Another of the video-shop tempters, I never got round to watching the Monster Squad in the 80s.

Perfectly aimed at it’s demographic, it focuses on a group of pre-teen outsiders who gang together as the Monster Squad, and hone their knowledge of the classic monsters - how to defeat werewolves and vampires for example.

It just so happens that after a failed attempt by Van Helsing to stop Dracula decades earlier, Drac gets himself and Frankenstein’s monster flown out in crates, only to be dropped over small town America after being discovered by the pilot.

In town a man turns into a werewolf, a swamp creature appears and a mummy escapes from the museum, leading to a perfect storm of 80s updated Universal classic monsters for the kids to face off against.

The squad consists of all the key skill sets - horror film geeks, a fat boy, a cool leather jacketed boy, a little girl - and the tone of the film is very light and fun-loving, a little at odds with the 15 rating earned by scenes like the werewolf being blown apart by a grenade, only to messily form together as it wasn’t a silver weapon. If the film were made today it would likely be a 12A, with its euphemisms such as ‘dork’ replacing any more grown up swearing.

Tom Noonan as Frankenstein's monster is the stand-out performance here, portraying the monster as a gentle giant in the vein of the James Whale adaptation, with less of the accidental killing.

Puppet Master; Ted; Moonrise Kingdom; Snow White and the Huntsman

Puppet Master

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I used to look forward to renting films. Quite often I’d trawl the aisles and see lots of juicy looking horror leering down at me, but would have to make do with what me or my friends could get or my family would let me get away with.

Often I’d discover crap but fun flicks, or even decent ones, the likes of The Gate, the Critters films and The People Under the Stairs spring to mind, but I never got round to things like Ghoulies and Puppet Master which spawned numerous sequels.

Puppet Master is very bad. The acting is very poor, the abandoned hotel setting is mainly anonymous and adds nothing to the tension or feel of the film, the POV sequences of heavy-breathing puppets shuffling about at floor-level don’t work and the bloody set pieces are relatively timid for 1989.

The stop-motion used for the puppets is a pleasant change to the CGI that would inevitably be used if this appeared today and there are a couple of inventive moments, a female doll pretending to be sexy (think Gremlins 2 - female gremlin) before vomiting out leeches, and the final sequence of the big baddie being mashed to bits stand out, but are hardly worth sitting through the whole film for.

Besides the general crapness I have a problem with the plot - the original puppet master who has found an ancient Egyptian method for breathing life into inanimate objects - he explicitly states that he’s hiding his puppets back in 1939 to prevent people with bad intentions from getting to them. But then why fashion a puppet with a drill bit for a head and one with a knife and hook for hands?

It’s a shame that it’s so hard to distinguish between crap but fun and just crap in the straight-to-video horror world, and that audience opinion is often wildly fragmented, but in this case it’s hard to see what people could think Puppet Master has going for it.

Ted

Despite Will Ferrell cornering the market for films about idiot man-children, the creators of Ted obviously felt they had their own unique selling point with Ted, a boy’s childhood friend brought to life and still around decades later, his foul mouth voiced by Family Guy’s Seth McFarlane, also Ted’s director.

Mark Whalberg plays the grown up boy John, whose wish comes true in the form of his teddy bear coming to life, and he’s proven his comedy capabilities numerous times but something about Ted feels very by-the-numbers.

A man who won’t accept responsibility, stuck in a crap job, hanging out with stupid friends, frustrating his more ambitious and grown-up girlfriend? In Clerks and Mallrats the hook was Kevin Smith’s dialogue, in Shaun of the Dead it was zombies and here it’s a real-life teddy bear.

Ted is at it’s worst when sticking to the formula (‘worst’ meaning ‘okay’) but it shines in the quick little asides it snipes at you from between the scenes that push the plot along, in much the same way as Family Guy does.

One proper scene that pretty much lives up to this is an extended messy party montage that comes about as the childhood hero of John and Ted, Flash Gordon’s Sam Jones, turns up to raise hell with them.

Mila Kunis is given the thankless task of basically being pretty and disappointed in the straight role as the girlfriend. Even though she’s given more to do than in most films of this type with her own plot thread, she still ends up playing the straight role to her creepy boss.

Not as funny as it hopes to be with lots of crass moments, but still providing the requisite laughs, Ted is worth a watch but I get the feeling Whalberg’s comedy chops still have a bit of stretch in them.

Moonrise Kingdom

If you’re familiar with Wes Anderson’s films so far, Moonrise Kingdom isn’t about to challenge your assumptions.

This time around the 50s/60s vibe found in his films is justified by the setting, that sense of place coming through from the sets, clothes and objects in the world, quirky pre-mass production items that have a personal feel.

Again the main characters come from the middle class academic neurotic template; here the leading kids are the same precocious, intellectual outsiders as Rushmore’s Max Fischer, clever and quirky but not really betraying emotions with their face. As with the rest of Anderson’s world the adults are barely capable of maintaining relationships, but the pre-teen couple at the centre of this story make the case for love.

The sets have the doll’s house tableaux quality found in most of Anderson’s films, even the outdoor scout camp is set up in an improbable line, all the better for a steady shot along, taking in all of the detail.

Moonrise Kingdom’s isolated island setting is perfect for Anderson’s carefully constructed world, and the cast are all well placed at bringing his characters to life, with the likes of Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand and Edward Norton bringing sympathy to characters who otherwise could have been unlikeable.

For those who aren’t already won over by Anderson’s quirky charms this film isn’t about to win over new converts, but existing fans it offers a little more warmth than some of the others.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Ultimately this is a throwaway, forgettable blockbuster by numbers. It would be unfair to criticise the film for being unoriginal, but the formula followed to present it is fairly pedestrian.

This time round Snow White joins a resistance movement with fighting dwarves after the huntsman frees her in the forest, and reluctantly joins her cause against the evil queen.

The effects work shines, with the black magic used by the witch a stand out (though not that of the magic mirror) and a neat hallucination scene (Snow falls on to some mushrooms in the forest and breathes their spores) that manages to be quite alarming within a 12 certificate confines. Additionally a sequence in an enchanted forest with a nature deity is like a Ghibli movie brought to life (albeit via CGI).

The effects success doesn’t end with the overt CGI additions - the photography of the dwarves surpasses anything done in Peter Jackson’s Tolkein adaptations, and each is a brilliant character in their own right unlike in the Hobbit, each fully fleshed out thanks to the acting prowess of Ian McShane, Toby Jones, Bob Hoskins, Eddy Marsan and Johnny Harris. The presence of these characters, and a decent turn by Charlize Theron as the evil queen, help to even out the blandness of Kristen Stewart’s Snow and Chris Helmsworth’s huntsman.

One particular oddity is Snow saying the protestant version of the Lord’s Prayer while still in captivity, despite no other mention of religion in this fantasy world of magic, trolls and fairies, besides a throwaway reference to heaven.

Not great but better than the likes of Burton’s Alice in Wonderland if you’re after that kind of female-led fantasy epic, good enough for a lazy watch.