FILM REVIEW: SAVING MR. BANKS

Nearly fifty years after it hit the big-screen, Mary Poppins remains a charming throwback to a simpler age of family entertainment - not without some irony and clever wit, but never too sassy or mean in its depiction of a  a magical nanny and the effect she has on a London household.

However much less was widely known about the creator of the book that inspired the film. P L Travers fought long and hard against Walt Disney's efforts to bring her book to the screen. She feared he would turn a darker and edgier tale of a dysfunctional family and a magical stranger into a sickly-sweet and commercial vehicle for his emerging empire. Saving Mr. Banks looks at the way the elderly and acerbic Travers was courted by Disney, to the extent he flew her out to America to meet her face to face and encourage her to work with lyricists and musicians he had employed. It would not be an easy negotiation and even to her death, Travers was said to have many regrets about the process.

The new film, with Emma Thompson taking the role of Travers and Tom Hanks essaying Walt Disney is said to chart those difficult waters and it does so with a witty script and some bravura performances. Travers - real name Helen Lyndon Goff - was born in the dying days of the 1800s in Australia and her childhood was a difficult one, though a time when she was encouraged by her father to channel the power of her imagination. The film plays out both in the early days of the 1900s and in the early 60s with the adult Travers. The earlier period is the most compelling, with the latter played with a lighter touch.

Hwoever it is impossible to ignore (and, indeed, it would be remiss to not make note of) a certain conflict of interest behind a film ABOUT a conflict of interest, when the company behind the film was created by one of the major players being featured.  Yes, it's something of a Mickey Mouse moral minefield for Disney to be the company releasing a film where they depict their own founder as a kindly old man trying to find a way to bring a beloved childhood icon to the screen and trying to win over a difficult writer determined for him to fail.

There is, without doubt, more than a pinch of salt to be taken with this spoonful of sugar-coating to history. But such historical accuracy aside, the film is well put together and shines an interesting, illuminating focus on Travers' childhood and the elements of triumph and tragedy that would lead her to create a character that flew in to save a family not unlike her own.  Anyone confused by the 'Mr Banks' of the title and his key role in proceedings will have all revealed as the story unfolds.

Thompson, of course, has form. She brought two big-screen adventures of her own creation 'Nanny McPhee' to the screen, the character clearly being a sister-act-in-spirit to the famous Ms. Poppins. There's obviously an attraction to the themes here, though Thompson denies it was quite that straight-forward a choice to take the role - she simply liked the material and the opportunity to be untactful.

" I just let out my inner-prickly pear. I basically was my true self, difficult and cantankerous - I only hide that for effect. I just let it all hang out! I've got to tell you, it was such a relief to be rude without any repercussions whatsoever. Can you imagine it? 'I don't want to go to your fucking press conference...' or 'I don't want to go to your birthday party, because I got bored of you years ago....' If you could just come out with these things and she did, she just said what she meant. I do that sometimes and get into terrible trouble. That was what was so great. My husband pointed out to me this morning, 'It's interesting that you created a magical nanny and now you are playing someone who has created a magical nanny, so do you suppose that behind every magical nanny is a cantankerous old bat?' Maybe it is an alter ego and someone you wish you could be...' I certainly wish I could be like that. With Walt and the mouse and Pam and her nanny, these are characters that have been created out of the soul of that person when that person was very vulnerable. I think that is what gives them their power and their staying power," Thompson explains when i see her after a London screening. "She said that she didn't invent Mary Poppins, she just arrived - most writers of genius would say the same thing. Of course, they are not going to arrive unless you sit at the writing table with your pen - that is the discipline - if you do that then it is like Field of Dreams and it will come. Sometimes it comes in a form that will survive any number of cultural interpretations and re-interpretations. That is what is so interesting about this movie as it is about two cultures coming together and clashing over this one iconic creation..."

"Everyone my age is going, 'Oh, there are no roles for women...' and then one of the best roles that I have ever played comes sailing along thanks to my extraordinary friend Kelly Marcel," she continues. "It was one of those scripts where you read the first page and go, 'I am in, yes, I will do it. You don't have to pay me.' They did, they insisted - they paid me in chocolate and stuffed toys..."

Beautifully photographed, nicely paced and with a strong ensemble cast that includes fine turns from the likes of Hanks, Farrell, Annie Buckley in scene-stealing form as 'Ginty'/the young Travers, this is a stylish outing that will charm and enthrall. It has real charm and real pathos and whether some of the cornerstone moments are true or not, if you take it as a childhood lost and found, then Saving Mr Banks might still laugh all the way there.

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FILM REVIEW: PAIN & GAIN

Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is a bodybuilder living in Miami and aching for his slice of 'the American dream'. He works hard, but is mystified why life hasn't given him the riches that some of his customers at the local bodybuilding club seem to relish. Attending self-help groups and promotions he is encouraged to seize the day and make the most of every opportunity. Unfortunately the seizing also carries across to kidnapping one of his clients, local gangland boss Victor Kershaw (Monk's Tony Shaloub), torturing him and extorting money from his family. With the help and hinderance of fellow bodybuilder Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) and a born-again ex-convict Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), their plan to get rich quick stumbles, falters and ends up in farce and violence - pursued by the Mob, the police and reluctant investigator Ed Dubois (Ed Harris)...

I was asked recently why I hate Michael Bay, so I should probably take this opportunity to clarify that I have absolutely nothing against him as a person or director. I’ve enjoyed some of his movies and we even have mutual friends. However I will admit that I’ve had some trouble with his recent cinematic output. For me... the Transformers movies just felt they were being handled more and more in the wrong way – that a children’s toy had been taken and quickly turned into a film franchise that seemed to be worshiping at the altar of streamlined bodywork – both human and mechanical.   Amid the requisite explosions and robot-on-robot slugfests, the cameras lingered on breasts and butts as much as they did on gear-sticks. The story that Megan Fox auditioned for her original role by coming over to Bay’s house and washing his car seems utterly believable and told you everything about the 'adult' concept on show.  One shudders in horror with what Bay would have done with the Weebles.

My reply to the charge of Bay-hating was that he was fine at action if that’s ALL you wanted but I simply wished he’d do the kind of ‘R/18’movies that he clearly wanted to make rather than turning other supposedly all-ages films into them – that left to his own creations he could create ninety minutes of all-out action, over-the-top antics. After all, he’d previously brought us the likes of The Rock and Armageddon, perfectly acceptable over-the-top nonsense that was absolutely great for the summer season without terminally numbing the brain cells.

Watching Bay’s latest Pain & Gain is an abject lesson in being careful what you wish for because frankly  - even  though devoid of any sci-fi elements - it makes Transformers: Dark of the Moon look like it was robbed of an Academy Award for Best Picture Ever.

If this is Bay without restraint – and I think we should agree from the start that it is – then what he’s managed to bring to the screen is an incoherent, rambling mess. It begins in such a way that you think you might be in for a clever satire along the lines of Shane Black’s vastly superior Kiss-Kiss-Bang-Bang and it’s a good half hour before that little voice in the back of your head starts to yell that it’s nothing of the sort. No, perhaps this is a film that doesn’t expect to be taken seriously - it is, after all, based on a real-life event and a group of bizarrely inept petty criminals -  but neither is it a movie with anything to say… except perhaps ’Anyone remember when Dwayne Johnson was actually getting great roles and didn’t have a physique that makes him look like a deformed Hulk?’ (Seriously, check out the poster for 2004’s Walking Tall and compare to recent releases- it's frightening…)

Like a Hunter S Thompson cocktail of LSD and steroids, this is an OD'd ode to excessive ambition and rank stupidity with the excuse that it’s telling the unlikely true story of a group of people who excelled at both. That may well be true - and truth can be stranger than fiction - but Bay has taken the likes of Wahlberg, Johnson, Mackie along with Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris and Peter Stormare and wasted their collective talents - giving them nothing to work with but pure caricature, abject farce, blatant misogyny and ever-decreasing logic. It feels like a vanity project written large and even those worshiping at the altar of the perfect physique are likely to feel they've been given a raw deal.

Even as a beer-and-pizza outing, Pain & Gain feels disappointingly self-indulgent and testosterone-driven to a fault. This is one bloated outing that Gym won’t fix.

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FILM REVIEW: THE WAY WAY BACK...

Though he loves his divorced mother Pam (Toni Colette) dearly, fourteen year old Duncan (Liam James) would rather have spent the summer with his father than be dragged along with her and the new man in her life Trent (Steve Carell) to an east-coast beach house where they are to spend the season.  Trent is the kind of person who possibly  thinks he’s encouraging Duncan when he asks the boy how he’d rate himself on a scale of 1 to 10 and when Duncan replies with a ‘6’, Trent says he thinks Duncan would only be a ‘3’). Yes, the audience already hates him.

Quickly realising he’s in danger of being side-lined while all the adults party and relax, Duncan explores further afield and comes across a nearby water theme-park run by the laid-back Owen (Sam Rockwell) who decides to take pity on the lonely kid and also take advantage of his trusting nature as the weather improves.

Not wanting to upset his emotionally-vulnerable mother, Duncan avoids more problems with Trent, but while spending more time at the water-park, with Owen ultimately improves his confidence, it won’t solve all his problems and sooner or later there’s going to be a confrontation and some home truths for everyone…

I mean it as nothing less than the highest compliment that there is something utterly and wonderfully  timeless about The Way Way Back. With only the slightest change to a few lines of dialogue or the fashions on show, this is a coming-of-age story that would be just as home in the 1960s or 1980s as it is today.

Often, family dramas and teenage awkwardness can be boring on screen, either being too heavy and knowing for escapist entertainment or being so slight and frivolous that there is an immediate case of boring familiarity.  But it is thanks to an ensemble cast at the top of their game (including relative newcomer Liam James in the lead role, Steve Carell and Alison Janney – both playing against type - and a great, nuanced  Toni Colette) with the crisp, non-cynical direction of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash that The Way Way Back works on so many levels. It has enough bittersweet nostalgia to make a connection with the adult audience and enough sense of empathy to attract the younger demographic.  The characters aren’t the archetypes one might initially suspect and there’s a steely strength beneath the more comfortable furnishings.

Sam Rockwell, already a dab hand at wacky sidekicks, reins in his performance just enough to be anarchic and entertaining in equal measures, making theme-park owner Owen simultaneously irritating yet endearing in what could have been a one-note role.

But with all the talent on show here – and not a single role in the entire film is wasted – it’s still Liam James  that holds it all together, his Duncan trying to walk the line between keeping the peace and raging against his new  lot… and the young actor selling every moment.  It’s the sort of film that is so solidly paced that you’ll be entertained for the duration: cringing, laughing, frowning and - when the denouement comes - quietly cheering into your popcorn.

With nary an alien, explosion or superhero in sight, this is a superb alternative to much of the summer fare. The sort of film that could well turn into outsider Oscar-bait come the end of the year, it is one of those unexpected gentle but pointed, poignant treats that should benefit from excellent word-of-mouth as it continues to roll-out in more and more US cinemas and enters the UK multiplexes this coming week...

10/10

The Way Way Back (12a) is released by Twentieth Century Fox on 28th August

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FILM REVIEW: WE'RE THE MILLERS

David Clark ( Jason Sudeikis) is a small-time drug dealer who earns a nice sideline in spending money by dealing grass to his neighbours and friends. But when he helps one of the teenage neighbours, Kenny (Will Poulter) is stopping a gang robing erstwhile street urchin Casey (Emma Roberts), he's then robbed himself of all his recent drug money - leaving him massively in debt to pathologically goofy druglord Brad Gurdlinger (Ed Helms).

Brad says he'll wipe out David's debt completely if he'll go to Mexico and collect a smidgen of dope he needs transported across the border. Well aware that he'll look incredibly suspect if he went alone, David comes up with a plan of disguise... he'll take his family with him. Only David doesn't have a family, so Kenny, Casey and his antagonistic neighbour and part-time stripper Rose O'Reilly (Jennifer Aniston) will have to do. Each promised a share of the profits, will this faux family be able to fool the authorities - and even more importantly not get themselves killed by criminals or each other in the process?

There’s something slightly unsettling about watching the news-story of two women facing half a lifetime of imprisonment in the darkest hellhole in Peru for allegedly trying to smuggle drugs …and then going to the cinema for a supposedly-riotous comedy about drug-smuggling. Yes, We’re the Millers tries to have its layer cake and eat it with a central character who – we’re reassured - usually only deals in small amounts of recreational grass and would never, ever sell to kids (because that would be wrong). Yet from the opening credits forwards this is a movie that already knows that it’s walking a fine line... and not one it does that gracefully.

The cast here are amiable enough,  cherry-picked from hit tv shows and comedy outings that mainstream America will recognise and with the addition of the UK’s Will Poulter – who at least is getting some diverse  and diverting work since he debuted back in Son of Rambow.

But the real problem here is not any amoral concept, but simply that there’s far too little decent material - and the few genuine chuckles there are, are stretched over a loose running time that needs to lose almost half an hour to keep things tight. The plot lurches off-road like the ‘family’s’ RV,  journeying between one film-extending contrivance and the next. Despite the supposedly dodgy language and situations that garnered it an adult ‘R’ rating in the US (and a ‘15’ in the UK), there’s less to offend here than an average episode of South Park, nor anything as clever.  Like the party drunk or the office joker, it’s rude and profane and cheeky and silly and amusing in small doses - but it almost feels like a much safer, mainstream comedy that has added the risqué material as a marketing move. It’s like a dated National Lampoon’s Vacation movie remastered for the 21st century, but still feeling tired - with more bongs than Big Ben and less boobs than promised.

And yes, there is also little doubt that a major marketing initiative revolves around the fact that at one point Jennifer Aniston strips down to underwear, gets soaking wet and performing a strip-tease and pole-dance. That alone was probably the pitch that got the movie green-lighted, but while it might stir your loins, the two minutes of bump and grind probably won’t make up for the lack of momentum.

Its box-office number in the US have been much better than people expected (possibly down to the lack of competition) but will probably do even better when it hits DVD.  An amiable, but over-long, all very predictable spliff-riff  that does for sanitising drug-running what Pretty Woman did (arguably better) for prostitution, it'll hit a particular niche well enough, but the drug-mules-as-asses tale won't prove that memorable once you leave the cinema.

7/10

We're the Millers (15)  is released by Warner Bros. on 23rd August

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FILM REVIEW: BLACKFISH

In 2010  a Sea-World trainer named Dawn Brancheau was killed during a presentation at the entertainment park. She was dragged under the water by Tillikum, a massive Orca who had been one of the Florida park's star attractions.The park's response was to say that the drowning was a tragic accident, possibly down to a something unusual scaring the whale or perhaps even some miscalculation by Brancheau herself.

Within a few days the shocked media reports had largely moved on, there would eventually be new audiences in the park every day, new trainers to replace Dawn and more immediate news-stories to fill the column inches and air-time.

The problem was that a later autopsy noted that  Brancheau didn't merely slip and drown due to the actions of her charge. She was effectively scalped, her jaw fractured and dislocated bones in the rest of her body. This wasn't a mere slip and a bang of the head made more serious by an over-eager animal, this was an attack. What's more, this wasn't the first tragic incident at Sea World, nor the first to be dismissed as an 'unavoidable freak accident'. In fact, the more one looked at the reports the park had issued - or not issued - the more it became clear that there was a broader context. Just how had Sea World and its partners treated Tillikum and the other whales, what training and assistance had the trainers been given and how fast had bucks been passed at the time of this and other tragedies?

Talking to several ex SeaWorld employees, looking at the facilities the park used and the changing nature of its corporate stance on key issues, Blackfish begins piecing together over two decades of what appears to be contradictory and sometimes damning evidence that various issues were never fully revealed or investigated. At its heart is the key issue of corporate greed and whether you can ever contain sea-faring creatures in 'storage' areas little bigger than a swimming pool and trot them out for daily shows with the promise of food.... and expect that something won't go wrong if an animal fights back.

Documentaries are always difficult things to evaluate - no project or director will ever be completely objective, whatever their subject. The task becomes even more problematic when a documentary starts out from a place where it clearly and unapologetically has an agenda to highlight something it believes is morally wrong - to actively present a case, created by its chosen selection of evidence. However well presented, however erudite the commentary or the power of its imagery, it's like listening to one side of a debate and there will always be (or should be) the voice in the back of your head yearning to hear the reasons/excuses/counter-arguments from the other side.

It is true that for 95% of its running time Blackfish really only presents one side of the argument against the practices of the Sea World marine parks and their systematic treatment of its performing whales. However what it does show does indeed raise some serious ethical and professional concerns about not only the treatment that specific whales endured but in the way that certain events - including the death of several trainers -was spun to the media with glaring misinformation.

To be fair to the makes of Blackfish, the lack of Sea World representation may not have been the film-makers' choice - it is claimed the organisation was approached and refused to co-operate in providing anyone of note to refute the documentary's claims. Instead, it waited until the last minute to issue a dismissive statement as the film debuted, decrying the theatrical release. It read:

Blackfish’ is billed as a documentary, but instead of a fair and balanced treatment of a complex subject, the film is inaccurate and misleading and, regrettably, exploits a tragedy that remains a source of deep pain for Dawn Brancheau’s family, friends and colleagues...

To promote its bias that killer whales should not be maintained in a zoological setting, the film paints a distorted picture that withholds from viewers key facts about SeaWorld – among them, that SeaWorld is one of the world’s most respected zoological institutions, that SeaWorld rescues, rehabilitates and returns to the wild hundreds of wild animals every year, and that SeaWorld commits millions of dollars annually to conservation and scientific research. Perhaps most important, the film fails to mention SeaWorld’s commitment to the safety of its team members and guests and to the care and welfare of its animals, as demonstrated by the company’s continual refinement and improvement to its killer whale facilities, equipment and procedures both before and after the death of Dawn Brancheau.

Which you have to admit is interesting in at least two respects.  One, it demonstrably fails to really fully address the key accusations at the heart of the film (merely suggesting that as well as bad things, it does good things too) and secondly it makes you wonder why Sea World didn't take the chance to take part in a film where it could immediately give its stance and version of events. If it feels badly done-by and wants to enhance its reputation, then it will surely need more than a predicatble press release that wreaks of the corporate-speak that Blackfish already decries.

The kind of film that deserves to be seen and scrutinised, one suspects this release will ultimately have more success on the festival circuit or on a tv showing - it simply isn't the feel-good outing that many multiplex punters will plump for.  It may not present an entire picture and the other side deserves to be heard, but the one it paints demands attention and has certainly put this reviewer off going back to SeaWorld until those urgent answers are forthcoming.

8/10

Blackfish is distributed by Dogwoof and is out 26th July.

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FILM REVIEW: THE BLING RING

From October 2008 to August 2009, the houses of Hollywood's rich and infamous socialites were the 'victims' of a string of burglaries. It turned out that this wasn't a script treatment for a Sex and the City spin-off, but a group of bored teenagers who worked out when the stars were partying and noted how easy it was to enter the homes of the celebrities they adored.

Hardly criminal masterminds, the group posted pictures of themselves on facebook and twitter and generally boasted about their exploits,  so it wasn't a huge surprise when they were tracked down and arrested - ironically becoming (albeit briefly) as big a media circus as the stars they followed.

This being in the same zip-code as Rodeo Drive, jail-time was only slightly less certain than a book deal and movie pitch.

The problem with The Bling Ring is that it uses that age-old excuse and fallback position of movies that any failures are not its own but the nature of the subject. Thus, you supposedly can't complain that a film about the petty exploits of boring, vacuous, materialistic adolescent girls ultimately has all the depth of a Paris Hilton sponsored puddle.

Except I can - and I'm going to.

...because The Bling Ring is exactly that: ninety pointless minutes of following a group of girls whose main attribute is that their designer-brand knock-off brains have amazingly made the intuitive leap that while celebrities are out partying at night-clubs, tracked by paparazzi, their mansions are empty and often left naively unprotected. As a result we trail them from house to house, club to club and facebook status  to tweeted photograph like some cut-price scavenger hunt of excess.

The crime here is not that Paris Hilton's wardrobe, which looks like Liberace redecorated Narnia, has been pilfered, but that Sophia Coppola has utterly wasted the opportunity to do anything interesting with what COULD have been a goldmine of irony.

Yes, there are the briefest moments where real opportunities shine through. When being interviewed about her arrest, Emma Watson's Nikki blinks Bambi-like at the camera professing that she's treating this as a learning experience and hopes to help the needy in Africa... but we don't know if this is demonstrating the stupidity of the sticky-fingered felon or the smarter girl once again playing dumb to get what she wants. And, frankly, we don't really care.

Instead of gently rolling her eyes, Coppola should really have furrowed her brow and spent more time looking through the lens to dissect her subject-matter. How are the over-privileged allowed to get away with crimes? Why is the media so interested in the banal? Who's being most manipulated - the girls, the 'celebs', the media, or - heaven help us - the audience? By the time the credits roll, we've learned nothing about our cast of characters nor even attempted to scratch the surface. Flimsier than a faux Jimmy-Choo boot-strap, nothing holds together.

The film's conclusion that 'the girls simply didn't know better but isn't that, y'know, like totally kinda wacky and ironic to the max?' is the sort of conclusion that leads one to ask not why the girls did the crime, but why anyone spent the time making a film about it? If it's such a first-world crime and so little is offered in explanation, then isn't there some paint drying elsewhere that would make a finer subject? Wouldn't a documentary have been better?

With this and a horribly-misjudged appearance in This is the End, it's obvious that Harry Potter's Emma Watson is trying to distance herself from her days at Hogwarts. But on the strength of these choices, her agent needs to tread firmer ground and Coppola - usually more reliable - needs to find her feet again.

4/10

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FILM REVIEW: BEFORE MIDNIGHT

Deep beneath this crusty, weathered exterior beats the heart of a romantic. Somewhere in that heart, beneath the pile of accrued blockbusters, thrillers, zombie infestations and CGI outings is a space specially reserved for the small independent productions that somehow strike a particular chord at a particular time in a particular way – the things that defy marketing gimmicks because they simply and unexpectedly breathe perfectly without any of the bells and whistles.

In recent years, this rare and elite chamber has held the likes of Once,  or 500 days of Summer but back in 1994 it resonated to Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise.

The film showed how Ethan Hawke’s travelling American ‘Jesse’ meets French girl Celine (Julie Delpy) on a train going through Vienna and how, with twelve hours to spare before connections, they make their own connection - exploring the streets of the city together, learning as much as they can about each other and a little about themselves.

On paper, it was less than a one-line pitch of the ultimate walking-and-talking variety that even Aaron Sorkin might have thought was too wordy, but on screen in perfectly captured the kind of encounter that poets live for and of which young people dream. By the time that Jesse and Celine part ways, promising to find each other again at the Eiffel Tower in six months’ time, you don’t really need to know whether they did. The realist says they didn’t but retained the perfect memory of a brief encounter, the optimist says they reunited and lived happily ever after. Either way pays homage to the hostage heart.
In short, it was the film in a universe of opportunistic fast-buckery that cried out for a sequel NOT to be made. You can’t go home again, even if it’s a home cinema.

So when a sequel, Before Sunset, did transpire, I avoided it like the plague. A little like the subject-matter itself, I quietly decided that it was better to keep the memory intact… that even with Delpy, Hawke and Linklater returning, that I’d always have Vienna.

However with the screening of a third film, Before Midnight, scheduled for an event I was to attend, it seemed that I had no choice but to bring myself up to date. The older, slightly more cynical me picked up a DVD of ‘Sunset’ and primed myself to be disappointed.  Fortunately despite (like the couple) being older and more buffeted by time, there was still much to like. The conversations might seem a bit pretentious, but like those very few people you meet in life and do not see for years and then pick up as if you haven’t missed a beat, the film walks a deft line between that optimistic and realistic boulevard. Told in almost real time, the couple meet again at a Parisian book-signing and cram the past decade of their lives into a cup of coffee in a café and a stroll through the back-streets of Paris and the banks of the Seine. Maybe it was the touch of realism that bordered the magic or simply the Parisian locations, including Shakespeare and Company, for which I have my own fond memories, but by the time the credits rolled again, I was glad to have seen it. Linklater leaves us on an only slightly less ambiguous promise of what may come next, but I’d have been happy to leave it there.

But so to ‘Midnight’…

This new chapter is less about the ambiguous romantic nature of our star-crossed couple and more about the realities that come after romance. Celine and Jesse are now firmly a couple with twin daughters and coming to the end of an almost idealistic summer at a writer’s retreat in Greece. But as their time to leave draws near and Jesse waves goodbye to his son who has visited from America, there’s an assessment not just of what they have, but of what they gave up for each other.

Once again this is a walking/talking movie and your mileage may vary accordingly as to how much that entertains. In truth this is a film for those who have already invested in the couple – who have grown up charting their story and possibly observing parallels to real life.

The script, by Linklater and his two main stars, is free-flowing, partly improvised and sometimes over-analytical as it contemplates it’s own sun-tanned navel. But there is the home-truth that romance - particularly the long-distance kind - has changed. Comparing themselves to another young couple, Jesse and Celine note that if they were to meet today, their story wouldn’t have progressed the same way, that they’d be facebooking, skypeing and able to have electronic facetime… but that while physical separation can be overcome, the expectations of younger couples is to enjoy the moment and not necessarily even look for the life-long happy marriage.

Given that I’ve also spent time on Greek islands, the backdrop once again resonates for me and while I came out of the screening still wondering if I’d have preferred to leave the couple on the banks of the Seine, I didn’t feel spoiled by our latest peak into their lives.

Nicely observed if occasionally self-indulgent, the film neatly simply charts the ebb and flow. The dialogue may have us taking sides towards the end, feeling almost like a stage-play (and is it sexist to say I sided with Jesse rather than Celine's point of view towards the end?)  Perhaps, though, this is where we should leave them for a few more decades at least – not taking them or ourselves for granted, but also without scrutinising every facet until the original ethereal  magic is gone...

9/10

BEFORE MIDNIGHT (15)
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy
Director: Richard Linklater
Running time: 109 minutes
Released by: Sony Pictures
Out: Now

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FILM REVIEW: STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

When the still young and overly impulsive Captain Kirk (Pine) breaks the Prime Directive to save Spock (Quinto) from an exploding volcano  Vulcanology taken to extreme? - he finds himself demoted and reassigned. However when London is attacked by a suicide bomber at the behest of an enigmatic figure calling himself 'John Harrison', it becomes clear someone has an agenda against Star Fleet. Kirk is selected to track down Harrison who has fled into Klingon space and kill him. But when Kirk finally confronts the fugitive it quickly transpires there's more going on than meets the eye and he has just placed himself and his crew in the line of some very dangerous fire...

Star Trek Into Darkness is a tricky creature to review  - largely because it feels like two potentially decent films folded together to make one that doesn't become the sum of its parts. And the more you examine those parts, the more the cracks begin to show.

It is a film that on an immediate level barrels along as a solid romp, with engaging one-liners, big explosions, solid performances and giving the audience a fair amount of bang for its buck. There's musing on the nature of friendship, loyalty, death, sacrifice and responsibility. You may remember such weighty issues from previous Trek outings such as... plucking this at random, the Wrath of Khan.   As two hours of sci-fi adventure you could do a lot worse.

The casting is good. Pine's Kirk is as engaging as in the previous outing and Quinto's Spock is better than anyone could ever have originally predicted - though the brief inclusion of Leonard Nimoy's original once again feels opportunistic, unnecessary and distracting. Simon Pegg's Scotty gets more to do and ironically comes across as the most morally-centred of the characters as he spots the Enterprise's mission to explore being compromised by the desire to overtly-weaponise the starship. The likes of Weller (as Admiral Marcus) and Greenwood (as Pike) provide able support and the production values are strong. On a technical level there's much to enjoy for the running-time..

But Into Darkness is also the kind of film where you admire the view but can't help eventually noticing that you had to stand on the shoulders of giants to get there. Rather than carve its own niche, it cherry-picks some of Trek's most iconic moments and ticks them off a list, presuming that referencing them alone will carry the same specific gravity as the original. Yes, it tweaks and rearranges them somewhat - sometimes quite inventively and with a degree of gloss and style - but for all the shiny streamlining there's a distinct feeling of  what I've come to refer to as 'Nostalgebra' - essentially the hook of excellent box-office potential being linked not to the new product itself but the warmer memory of the original.

Ultimately, Into Darkness doesn't have the courage of its convictions. What begins as a mixture of both the fun vibe of the original series and a growing darkness (hence the title) about the nature of terrorism and military agendas, it decides to jettison both and merely become a compromised generic actioner before the final credits roll. Cumberbatch's 'Harrison' begins by dripping deliciously confident menace with ever sentence he utters... and eventually turns into just another generic cinema thug; Alice Eve's Marcus is a brilliant scientist conflicted daughter of a hawkish Admiral, but hey, we're halfway through the piece now so let's have her strip down to her (admittedly lovely) underwear, in public no less, for no discernable reason.  It's as if someone looked at an early version and literally said, '...yeah, we really need to dumb this down...'.

For better or worse, Abrams' Trek universe is led by the visual not the plot. Words give way to lip-service and imagination to basic imagery and though he's given us far better human characters to populate the adventure than Michael Bay's empty Transformers franchise ever did, he builds up his cast only to have them overshadowed by scale and a fetish for lens-flares that is verging on the blindingly pathological.

Like a synthesised remix of a classic accoustic song or anthem, older fans may well feel their childhood has been strip-mined for contemporary convenience and younger audience members won't get the gravity of some of the set-pieces that was intended. Like Pike tells Kirk "There is greatness in you, but not an ounce of humility..."

But ultimately, somewhere in the middle is the shiny demographic that will still make Trek a massive hit. One can only hope that the inevitable Trek 3 - probably without J J Abrams who is off to a different galaxy far, far away - will boldy go where no voyage has gone before, rather than staying so close to all the old familiar places and merely rearranging the furniture...

7/10

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FILM REVIEW: OBLIVION

OBLIVION (12A)
Starring: Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Running time: 126 minutes
Released by: Universal Pictures
Out: Now

Jack (Cruise) and Julia (Riseborough) are apparently the last two humans left alive on the surface of Planet Earth. Mankind won a war with an alien race, but the cost was a heavily irradiated planet unsuitable for long-term life. They are coming to the end of their allotted mission of maintaining the flying drones and power stations that are set to keep the ragtag survivors of the invasion at bay. In two short weeks, Jack and Julia will be winging their way off to Titan to join the rest of humanity.

Julia is more eager than Jack. The former is a by-the-book operator anxious to leave and despairing at the more impulsive Jack who plays looser with the rules and takes more chances. Jack also asks more questions and can’t deny an innate yearning within him to stay on his home planet, whatever its condition. He’s also having recurring visions of himself and another woman (not Julia) on top of a pre-apocalyptic Empire State Building. He doesn’t know who it is – the mission requires a full memory-wipe so that both operatives are committed to the larger mission – but she haunts his sleeping moments.

But these final days will not go well. First Jack witnesses a space-pod crashing to Earth on the edge of the radiation-zone. The pod contains several members of what appears to be a sixty-year-old NAS space-mission, but the drones destroy all but one pod before Jack can stop them. Inside the last pod… the woman of his dreams and one who has a very interesting story to tell. A story that will have Jack questioning the role of his superiors in his current predicament…

And that's not even mentioning the fact that Jack and Julia may not be the last humans at all... a group of people claiming to be survivors of the holocaust emerge like morlocks from the buried city, led by a steam-punk'd Morgan Freeman and a story of his own.  Now Jack's in real trouble...

If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery than there can be little doubt that Oblivion could win an Olympic Gold outright.  Despite what is an undeniably amazing result of a visual-effects department at the top of their game - creating an antiseptic haven and bleak future world below that feel fully realised at every turn - it is also hard to imagine a film that so shamelessly brings out a back-catalogue of science-fiction milestones and proceeds to joyfully  borrow, plunder, steal or homage (your mileage may vary) them at pace.

Like a deft piece of smooth corporate espionage, this is a movie that feels simultaneously like a wonderful shiny toy but somehow without the joy of the original treasure itself. It might well be a tribute to the likes of Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough , Olga Kurylenko  and supporting turns from Morgan Freeman and Melissa Leo that for the most part, the audience is along for the ride, dazzled by the tone and texture of the piece and ignoring that growing voice in the back of the collective head that says “Didn’t they do this in Independence Day?’, ‘I liked the ORIGINAL Total Recall, but..?’,  ‘Doesn’t this feel a little like Planet of the Apes’ and ‘A sunglass-wearing Cruise in an aircraft AND on a bike… should I start humming ‘Highway to the Danger Zone’ now or later?”.

And that’s just a few of the many, MANY obvious touchstones…

It’s also always a warning sign when a film feels it needs to start with a good ten minute monologue of its back-story to bring the audience up to speed on its setting - something that could well have been avoided with a tweak to the story structure and the fact that much of that history is addressed again  later in the picture. Equally the memory-wipe element is something of an absurd plot-device that serves no logical purpose except to muddy the waters and confuse the participants.

Ultimately a glossy and well-visualised outing - with A-List actors bringing a satisfactory  level of action - Oblivion is perfectly passable, but highly-derivative cinema that will have you joining Cruise in a sense of deja-vu long before the credits roll.  The actual journey, though, is executed well enough to retread such familiar elements once… but won’t stand up to repeat viewing thereafter.

3/5

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FILM REVIEW: ROBOT & FRANK

ROBOT & FRANK (12A)
Starring: Frank Langella, James Marsden, Liv Tyler, Susan Sarandon
Director: Jake Schreier
Running time: 89 minutes
Released by: Momentum Pictures
Out: 8th March.

There used to be a time when you couldn't enter a cinema or multiplex without tripping over films positively salivating over the teenage demographic. That's still relatively true, however one can't but notice the likes of several recent films that have un-apologetically aimed at the older audience. Last year's  The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was a mature ensemble delight and we've recently had Song for Marion, the Oscar-nominated Amour - none of which will take nearly as much money as Die Hard, but are infinitely better.

Now we're given the charming story of Robot & Frank, which one might argue also falls into the science-fiction category - but only in the pure sense that small drops of fantasy sometimes go a long way to flavouring what are actually parables about everyday life.

Set around two decades in the future, Langella is Frank, an irascible octogenarian who likes living alone in his rural home, partly through his own choice. Unlike the new owners of a nearby library building that is soon to be torn down, down-sized and turned into a download, he cares little for the 'modern' conveniences that put pragmatism in the way of capable old-school charm.  But like the books that will soon be gone, the world has less and less time for him. His daughter Madison ( Liv Tyler) is off travelling the world, philanthropically helping the less fortunate and hugging trees. His son Hunter (James Marsden) is a busy businessman with a more fast-lane lifestyle. Both of Frank's kids love him from afar as he keeps them at a tolerant arms length. However both have begun to notice that their father is becoming forgetful, disorientated and whether he wants help or not, he may be getting to the point where he needs it. So Hunter makes what he knows will be an unwelcome compromise and turns up with a new companion for Frank...'Robot', a small mechanical 'man' who can help around the house and keep Frank on the straight and narrow. Naturally, this doesn't meet with Frank's approval but he has little choice - it's this or a nursing home. But if Robot is going to prove himself REALLY useful, then Frank decides hell utilise all the benefits that his new companion has to offer - including its analytical mind. After all, why shouldn't a retired cat-burglar use this new tool for one last job? Or maybe two?

This bittersweet story of friendship, relationships and subversion is an absolute delight for most of its running time.  A subtle tale that puts the 'AI' in a reversed Driving Miss Daisy-esque outing, it is both grounded in reality by the core of its subject-matter, but given wings by a whimsical script and excellent performances - giving it a touch of tempered wish-fulfillment as well as genuine pathos.

Robot is infused with a tolerant 'personality', but one that never strays into a too-human variety or Short Circuit/C3PO territory. Though wonderfully voiced by Peter Sarsgaard and excellently performed by Rachael Ma, there's no denying this is an artificial construct, in many ways no more 'alive' than an expensive Christmas toy and only one step removed from the Japanese advancements you see on today's science-programs. Yet it's place in Frank's life seems all too human and there's a real delight in its modern logic being subverted into becoming a sidekick to Frank's dubious plans.

Langella has always been a great actor raising even minor roles to greater heights and here he gets to play an understated role but one for which he immediately gets under the skin - a man who's had a colourful life and afraid of losing those pigments too soon. Susan Sarandon, as Jennifer, the woman who runs the soon-to-be-downsized library is also excellent, especially as her character's involvement develops towards the end of the film.   Jeremy Sisto as the trying-to-be-tolerant local cop and Jeremy Strong as Frank's almost begging-to-be-burgled, vapid hipster-yuppy neighbour are also fun.

With many films, you can guess the 'third act' or see the preceding story ruined by a bad ending. The nice thing about the film is that there are some genuine surprises to be had along the way and that though you begin to enjoy the 'caper' side of the story as much as the various relationships and friendships that permeate the tale, you're not sure how you want it all to end. Frank is a wonderfully weathered underdog for whom you can't help rooting throughout, but equally his children's concerns are honest, well-intentioned and valid. The question is not so much what will happen, but what IS the best outcome?

A story of mechanics and melancholia, fate and fickleness, this is the anti-Terminator. It may not be flawless  - some may consider it lightweight, though I'd argue it's got more weight than expected -  but it is also quite charming, different and for a film about the passing of time, ironically somewhat perfectly-timed to echo past its compact 89 minute running length...

9/10

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FILM REVIEW: SAFE HAVEN

SAFE HAVEN (12A)
Starring:Julliane Hough, Josh Duhamel, David Lyons and Cobie Smulders
Director: Lasse Hallstrom
Running time: 115 minutes
Released by: Momentum Pictures
Out: 1st February.

Erin (Juilliane Hough)  is on the run, blood - literally - on her hands, her belongings in a small bag, her meagre life-savings in her purse and a weathered police detective Kevin Tierney (David Lyons) hot on her trail. Escaping from the wind-swept, rainy city streets she takes the midnight bus going anywhere...

During a pit-stop in North Carolina, she impulsively leaves the bus behind at the small North Carolina fishing town of Southport. This is the kind of community where everyone knows everyone else's business, but avoiding too many questions she changes her name to 'Katie', manages to get hired by the local cafe and meets Alex (Transformers' Josh Duhamel) the young, widowed father who runs the local fishing store while caring for his children Josh and Lexy. There's a clear attraction there, but Erin/Katie is no mood to put down too many roots and Josh hasn't been on the dating scene since his wife's death. Cue coy glances. Romance is, of course, inevitable, but so is the fact that Detective Tierney isn't about to give up and is soon closing in. With the truth bound to come out, can Erin escape her past or will she lose everything again?

As an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel (The Notebook, Dear John, The Lucky One and other titles that should come with a box of tissues and a health warning for diabetics) Safe Haven is a film as riddled with romance-novel cliches as the latest Die Hard is ridden with errant bullets - and to the same extent will find favour or mockery depending on your cinematic taste. This is the kind of film where an ingenue fugitive can ride a bus for several days and sleep under a pier and yet still emerge looking like the fresh-faced poster-girl for a shampoo commercial and skin-care products; the kind of story where no-one needs a national security number or references and where you can rent a spacious luxury cabin on the contents of your hurriedly-grabbed purse. In this seaside idyll, populated by beautiful people and cute ankle-biters for whom the 1950s wants visiting rights, we spend vast amounts of time watching awkward people deciding whether to awkwardly flirt with each other as they awkwardly overcome artificial obstacles and the insistence that the film should be stretched to nearly two hours. Inter-cut with this are the trials and tribulations of her pursuer with mounting clues that the original crime is not as clear-cut as we thought (or, y'know, didn't).

Okay, cynicism aside, Safe Haven is a perfectly acceptable if undemanding entry in a genre which seems to demand the same Sparks formula over and over again - a Mills & Boon fantasy for the negative-equity generation - and those who want their romance fix will find enough to mainline themselves into oblivion.

The undeniably beautiful cinematography, positively glowing cast and make-up department create the 'haven' of the title and one can't dispute that as escape-plans go, Erin's bolthole is a pretty heavenly backdrop. As a thriller it wants to be The Fugitive of date-movies, but ends up more akin to the Dawson's Creek of revenge sagas, moving from the potential thrill-of-the-chase to the travails of the heart whenever it possibly can, lingering more on batting eyelashes and chaste looks than plot logic. It does give us a couple of plot-twists that you may see coming depending on your expectations and knowledge of the genre - one of which is convenient but interesting and the other one that I smugly worked out just before it's reveal at the end, but still feels worthy of an Olympic eye-rolling medal. You either go with it or don't...

Released in the UK several weeks after St. Valentine's Day, for which it must have been bio-engineered, Safe Haven is just that, a competent but by-the-numbers effort from director Lasse Hallestrom and his picturesque cast... an  inoffensive drama that never feels like it will inflict any more serious peril than a paper-cut or broken heart on its faithful. A souffle of cliche, but an escapist angel delight, go in knowing what to expect and you'll get what is says on the tin. However for the more discerning... justice proves to be bland.

7/10

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FILM REVIEW: CLOUD ATLAS

CLOUD ATLAS (15)
Starring:Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Jim Sturgess, Susan Sarandon, Doona Bae
Director: The Wachowskis, Tom Tykwer
Running time: 172 minutes
Released by: Warner Bros.
Out: 22nd February

In his gladatorial outing Russell Crowe says that what we do '...echoes in eternity'. In Robin of Sherwood it was said 'Nothing is ever forgotten...' Such are the broad themes of  Cloud Atlas, likely to be the most ambitious films to hit cinemas this year.

From a galleon sailing the high seas of the 1800s, to a love that dare not speak its name - except through music -  in the 1930s.... to a potential 'china syndrome' in 1970s San Francisco to an OAP revolt in contemporary London... on to a future Seoul and then to a post-apocalyptic island.... Cloud Atlas takes a range of characters and timescapes and weaves a story which illustrates the ideas of cause and effect; how little events have massive consequences and how lives separated by centuries can resonate and determine the fate of millions.

Adapted for the big-screen from David Mitchell's acclaimed novel, it was tempting to think this was a karma-crash waiting to happen. Cloud Atlas was a complex book that shouldn't work as a film. Its scope was too big, its canvas too varied. It merged so many forms, had so many disparate threads and narratives that any self-respecting pundit could only come to the conclusion beforehand that the best case scenario would be to avoid outright critical derision and that it simply wouldn't find an audience outside the festival circuit.

And yet, subjectively flawed though a project of this scope may almost inevitably be, it must otherwise be considered a triumph on so many other levels... not least because it's been a long time since I saw a film of quite this sense of  sheer, unapologetic ambition. Too many films mistake the word 'epic' as shorthand for something big and loud and yet Cloud Atlas truly fits the description. Its creative vision, cinematic style, expansive - but not sterile - CGI all come together to produce a film that genuinely feels as if every frame has been considered.

The mixture of genres on show - everything from futuristic sci-fi and period drama, to farce and tragedy - may frustrate audiences looking for an easy formulaic pigeon-hole to unspool before their eyes and certainly the film doesn't always feel entirely even-keeled, but this is a movie that very much IS the sum of its parts and all those parts seem excellently executed individually and weaved together well. Each time-period, from which we jump back and forth, is lovingly realised. The future Neu Seoul is perhaps the best metropolis since Blade Runner and provides a backdrop for some of the film's biggest kinetic action moments.

Casting its diverse actors in a multitude of different parts reinforces the idea of the same souls moving through time and experiences towards something more. But it does run the risk that audiences will be lifted out of an immersive experience as they play 'I-spy'. Some of those performances work better than others, but the cast is clearly relishing the opportunity to stretch themselves. That's helped and hindered by prosthetics of different qualities, but for the main part it's a tribute to the efforts involved that you probably won't catch every actor in every role they appear in.  In an uniquely expansive ensemble piece, it's probably Hugh Grant who makes the most of shaking off the stereotype: safe to say he wouldn't have been most people's idea of a post-holocaust Orc-like cannibal.

The Wachowskis made the Matrix trilogy a landmark in special-effects but also one that felt devoid of any real soul under its pseud-religious imagery. Here, the siblings and co-director Tom Tykwer give us something just as dazzling but has a beating human heart at its centre.   Sure, the criticisms will be that it's too long, too complex and too diverse for a modern audience, that it meanders where others hurl themsleves forward. If so, that ultimately says more about the way that contemporary viewers are often spoon-fed formula and bland product designed only to sell merchandise. Any flaws aside - and it's clear it's wide remit won't suit everyone - it is impossible not to marvel at the ambition shown here, ambition which largely pays off on both a visual and emotional level.

It's Love, Actually meets Blade Runner by way of a handful of other separate genre movies that the film tilts towards and even outright homages at times... and it's worth every second.  This may be sprawling and truly 'epic', but it is like no other movie you'll see this year and also a quite stunning piece of film-making that deserves to be supported and rewarded.

10/10

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COMMENT: ACTION STARS - DAZED OF FUTURE PASSED...

We've deliberately held off reviewing The Last Stand, Bullet to the Head and A Good Day to Die Hard individually as it seemed much more interesting to contrast and compare the almost simultaneous return of three action icons to the screen. Once upon a time they were the public faces of Planet Hollywood, now within a month of each other, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis are all at the local multiplex and, in different ways, trying to recapture the action demographic.

Bullet to the Head takes the ignorance is bliss route, seeking to convince us that absolutely no time has passed since the 1980s when Stallone was at his prime. It takes the approach that the central character may be older and more weathered, but essentially he's capable of doing anything he could before.

It's a buddy picture of sorts that matches Jimmy 'Bobo' Bonomo (Stallone) with Taylor Kwon (Korean actor Sung Kang)  - the former an assassin, the latter a cop, who have both lost partners and are seeking revenge on a common enemy. The plot proceeds as you might suspect, with distrust and pragmatism fighting for supremacy. In truth you might expect better from the director Walter Hill - the man behind The Warriors, 48 Hrs and The Long Riders, here very much on auto-pilot and delivering the basics.  Ex Conan and Stargate-Atlantis star Jason Momoa provides the muscle they must both face to do so.

Even if the face and gait are heavier, it's fair to point out that Stallone still looks like a man who could take you down with one punch and the physical one-on-one scenes are well-choreographed set-pieces that drip with blood and sweat. What lets him down here is the retro-feel f the script, one that is based on a French graphic-novel but feels as if it has been sat ready to be made by any passing action star in two decades. Intentional or not, it's SO formulaic that it positively aches with familiarity  and provides no real surprises.  There's adequate support from the like of Christian Slater and Sarah Shahi but they are cookie-cutter characters asked to do nothing but fulfill basic plot points. It's like putting on a pair of old slippers that feel familiar but are barely held together.

Squint at the screen long enough and Arnold Schwarzenegger's aging sheriff in The Last Stand could be Clint Eastwood and the film's script makes no secret of that similarity. This somewhat bespoke vehicle is built for a veteran with a certain legacy to give it backbone.

Arnie is Ray Owens, the sheriff of a town on the US-Mexico border; happy with the quiet life after a long career that saw too many fatalities along the way. Now he writes parking tickets and shoots the breeze with the locals. That all changes when it becomes clear that there's something strange going on near the narrow county-line chasm that separates the two countries and the news that a notorious criminal, Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega)  has broken out of police custody and is heading in that direction. There seems little that the sheriff, his skeleton staff and enthusiastic locals can do to stall the fugitive - especially as said bad guy is well armed and backed by a small army of mercenaries -  but honour demands they try and soon we're in the middle of a contemporary western.

The story may be familiar, but there's a solid balance of humour and drama to pull this off. While one might expect Schwarzenegger to fall back on old cliches, he positively embraces the aching bones and weathered face and makes them part of the performance. This isn't a guy who is trying to be the action icon he was, but to convince us there's still some chapters left in his playbook.  To a large extent it works, entertaining the viewer enough that they'll overlook the formula and just enjoy the romp.

A Good Day to Die Hard takes the big-blockbuster franchise approach and suffers the predictable fate, facing the law of diminishing returns - scraping together aspects of previous installments, squeezing them into a dirty vest and hoping that audiences will presume it's just an overlong a music video with an AK-47 soundtrack.

To be blunt, this feels undeniably lazy, an uninspiring, unimaginative film that doesn't require a suspension of disbelief so much as an attention-span of about five minutes and the ability to leap plot-holes that would put Prometheus to shame The first Die Hard might not have been the height of realism, but if feels like a documentary compared to the outright macho-silliness on show here. Gone is the brave underdog taking on a gang of bad guys we met in the 1980s, here comes the indestructible super-hero who literally  jumps off buildings in a single bound and manages to flip the bird to helicopters as he plummets to the ground unscathed (watch closely, I'm not kidding). None of which would matter if only its star didn't look so unimpressed himself.

The ironic thing is that when he's committed, Willis can be a good, convincing actor and a solid leading man... and his age hasn't changed that perception - merely his film choices.  But whether it's the leaden, illogical script, the video-game mentality, the shallow direction by John Moore (Max Payne) or just an innate apathy, here Willis does the absolute minimum to get through the film -  grimacing, frowning, pontificating on fatherhood and bonding with his estranged son in the way that only a cold brewski and a high-calibre weapon can manage. Ridiculous levels of property damage ensue and take us from central Moscow to a certain infamous nuclear reactor in the space of  a few minutes and geography-ignoring  limited running-time. Here we find the kind of cinematic radiation where some ned to wear protective suits, the McClanes wear plaid and one minion runs around with a bare tattoo'ed chest. Yes, it's THAT stupid.

(On a local angle, the high point is perhaps noting that the first face we see on screen here is actually ex-Look North presenter and now mainstay BBC anchor Sophie Raworth, solemnly giving the exposition and global set-up for the Russian trial that frames the early part of the film...sadly, it's all downhill from there)

So, on points and possibly against expectations, it seems to be Schwarzenegger that emerges through the testosterone haze as the front-runner. Both Stallone and Willis are too tied to the past to be moving forward, grasping at old demographics and denying the passage of time while the 'Austrian Oak' seeks to branch out and bring his existing fan-base with him to new horizons.

These action stars may or may not be considered 'old dogs' by some, but the 'new tricks' have never been more needed.

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FILM REVIEW: HITCHCOCK

HITCHCOCK (15)
Starring: Sir Anthony Hopkins, Dame Helen Mirren,Scarlett Johansson,Toni Collette
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Running time: 98 minutes
Released by: Fox Searchlight
Out: 8th February

Film director Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) is looking for a film that will excite him. He has a strong, if difficult reputation, one that often puts him in opposition to the studios for whom he works - providing some major hits but also running up the bills. So when he settles on a adaptation of Robert Bloch's novel Psycho, it will not be a smooth adventure. Few see it as a viable project and certainly not one that audiences will expect. The voluminous auteur disagrees and is willing to put everything on the line. His wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) is her own subtle powerhouse, never needing the spotlight, but willing to support her husband's endeavours as well as stand-up to him as needed. Soon the question is not whether Psycho will even get finished, but whether this latest project will test their friendship, marriage and trust to breaking point.

There's a real problem with doing ANY sort of biopic with how much you say, how much you don't and how much you merely surmise. Even in the most compelling stories there will be a need to compact, prioritise and form a structure into which an audience will be drawn. So, in many ways, all films (perhaps even documentaries as well), are - in part - works of fiction or a sequence of overly selective truths.

Hitchcock isn't, by any means, an impartial look at the famous film director. It is, to use that oft-offered multi-purpose phrase ' a dramatisation' of real events, offering its take, reasoning and slant on a key period in his life . From the opening moments, where Hitchcock himself addresses the audience,  this feels like a story that the director would tell if he was reluctantly strong-armed to pen it himself. It doesn't, in any way, paint him as an angel - often he's clearly his own worst enemy and the victim of his own paranoia (both personally and professionally) - but the eventual feel of the piece is a troubled man, weak to his own vices and happy to manipulate those around him in the name of art, but ultimately a gruff, driven man with an undercurrent of decency. We see a misunderstood peccadillo'd genius and his underestimated wife rather than a lecherous bully and would-be philanderer with his overly-patient spouse.

To that end, while the drama itself is perfectly watchable as a story about relationships and populated by a strong cast, there's a consistent feeling of it being synpathetic fiction. Hopkins, smothered in prosthetics, gives a performance in which he's playing Hitchcock, not being Hitchcock. Mirren fares better, bringing her unique air of impatient authority to Alma - but this is also helped by the very fact that most people will not have a clear picture of her before seeing the film, really there's no comparison available.  Scarlett Johansson  is fine as his star Janet Leigh - trying to get ready for the infamous bloody shower scene at the Bates Motel -  but limited by the script, which is also a problem for Jessica Biel as Vera Miles.

It's interesting to see the battle to get Psycho made - modern audiences likely to be unaware that Hitchcock risked going bankrupt in his efforts to get the film made by a studio that was worried his star was on the wane and that the horror/thriller subject-matter wouldn't be suitable for big financial success. Again, Hitchcock is the under-dog we're told to cheer for at the same time as we're supposed to be frustrated by his acidic bark.

A decent, inoffensive mainstream film, with some inventive scenes and funny moments but one that comes out in the wake of the far superior and more biting  HBO film 'The Girl' (with Toby Jones in the Hitchcock role, Imelda Staunton as Alma and Sienna Miller as a harassed Tippi Hedren), it will be interesting to see the impact the film has at the box-office. One suspects, despite the cinematic cast, it may attract an older and more niche audience familiar with cinematic history but may resonate less with younger demographic or those, ironically, seeking something like Hitchcock's own work rather than this behind-the-scenes social drama. .

7/10

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FILM REVIEW: I GIVE IT A YEAR

I GIVE IT A YEAR  (15)
Starring: Rafe Spall, Rose Byrne, Simon Baker, Anna Faris, Minnie Driver, Jason Flemyng, Stephen Merchant
Director: Dan Mazer
Running time: 97 minutes
Released by: StudioCanal
Out: 8th February

Josh (Spall) and Nat (Byrne) meet, fall in love and quickly decide to get married. Their friends raise a few eyebrows, mutter about 'rushing into things' but are generally supportive and always happy to attend a good party.  Can this blessed union work out?

Nine months on... and perhaps the couple should have listened. They're now at marriage-guidance and trying to work out whether to stay together or not. Into Nat's high-end life-style comes a slick American client Guy (Baker) and Josh reconnects with old-flame and environmental activist Chloe (Faris). Are Nat and Josh with the right people or do they need to call it a day?

There are few genres out there that divide audiences more than rom-coms. Somewhat flippantly (and wrongly)  labelled 'chick-flicks' they are tricky-beasts - varying in quality but often, by necessity, playing a well-trodden formula to a knowing demographic. Judged individually, as they should be, each entry probably relies more on the chosen cast  than the originality of plot.

So perhaps we should at least applaud the fact that the makers of I Give it a Year approached the 'romantic comedy' from a different perspective, tracing not a 'growing love affair' but a possible 'falling-out of love affair' as their template.

"Yeah, I sort of wanted to do something that was a reaction to the traditional route of British romantic comedies and they all felt very familiar," director Dan Mather (writer of Borat, Bruno, Ali G etc)  told us at a recent screening of the film. " Every script I ever did it was like, ‘Can’t you just make it more of a romcom? Just make it a bit more traditional and a bit more nice’. And I thought it would be nice to have my cake and eat it in a certain way and do an anti-rom-com but one that didn’t feel too sort of bitter and cruel compared to my bitter, cruel personality..."

Sadly this reversed-Richard-Curtis-esque endeavour must have sounded more original on paper than the result, because what we see is not the 'anti-rom-com' as advertised, but  something that isn't hard enough for the cynic, not emotive enough for the romantic and not consistently funny enough for the laughter-seeker..

It's hard to put a finger on exactly why it doesn't come together. The cast are proven performers giving it their all. The script has some moments that should work and some of the situations should be innately sympathetic, but somehow, something goes horribly wrong in the mix and ultimately the whole package is delivered with such a massive lack of subtlety that it often feels like you're being hit over the head with an awkwardly updated 70s sitcom rather than having your humerus tickled. The result isn't irony, it's ambivalence... we don't care enough about anyone. It's not 'bad', it just veers from crude to corny with as much lack of certainty and conviction as the couple at the heart of the story.

A prime example is the Best Man's speech delivered by Stephen Merchant's Danny. The speech goes on far too long and what's meant to be an obliviously tactless character simply becomes moronic, mean and bullying to the extent that  - as the film goes on - we're not laughing with him or at him, but aching to punch the character in his smug little face. If this was on television, this alone would have you reaching for the remote-control.

Perhaps the direction (it's hard not to feel Mazer's cynicism about love seeping through the celluloid) or simple miscasting IS to blame because this is a film that somehow makes Anna Faris look dowdy, The Mentalist's Simon Baker seem bland and Rafe Spall act like Hugh Grant on a coffee-bender. Despite the odd moments of  fun, they've all been SO much better elsewhere...but here they mostly fail to convince. (Ironically, supporting players Minnie Driver and Jason Flemyng probably get the superior zingers in their much more limited screen-time...)

For a film that's supposed to be about finding your soul-mate, this all feels like a fleeting fumble rather than destiny and the film ends up missing that essential ingredient needed - heart. I Give it a Year is simply not the sum of its disparate parts. I'd give it a miss.

6/10

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FILM REVIEW: FLIGHT

FLIGHT (15)
Starring: Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, Bruce Greenwood, John Goodman
Director: Bob Zemeckis
Running time: 138 minutes
Released by: Paramount Pictures
Out:1st February


William 'Whip' Whitaker (Denzel Washington), wakes up in a hotel room, reaches over a naked woman to finish one of many bottles of beer, sniffs a line of cocaine and heads off to the day-job... as pilot for a major air-line.  Secretly indulging in a couple more mini-bottles of whiskey before take-off, Whitaker assures his nervous and suspicious co-pilot that he and everything will be fine.

Everything... as it turns out, will NOT be fine as the plane ultimately hits the kind of turbulence that keeps you awake at night - especially if you're on the plane experiencing it. With what appears to be a major systems failure, the plane begins to plummet to the ground. There seems to be no chance of saving the aircraft or its passengers from certain death. However Whitaker has one desperate last-chance idea and executes a maneuver that will be talked about for years to come.  While his actions save all but two members of his crew, the scrutiny that comes with the resulting investigation into the downing of the plane brings an unwelcome spotlight on Whitaker's possible excesses. Those around him seek to shield him from the suspicions that follow, but while 'Whip' is a hero to many, he may also be his own worst enemy...

On its release in the US in November, the film got some rave reviews - critics employing  more 'soaring' and 'flying high' metaphors than you could shake a plane at and proclaiming that award nominations were simply a formality. Which leaves me a bit baffled, as, after enduring Flight's two-hour-plus running time, I came out thinking that when Denzel Washington can spectacularly save a plane full of passengers but not a motion picture, there's something very much amiss.

The problems are two-fold. Firstly, the secret of good drama - as someone very old and very wise once told me - is that you start small and build. You should build up to having the audience on the edge of their seat. Flight, on the other hand, downs a double-snifter and decides to START massively and then merely circle in a slowly descending holding-pattern of despair and pity until it's not only the Jack Daniels that's on the rocks. Secondly, this seems to be a film suffering not from alcoholism but split personality. It begins as an action film, becomes a character study of dependency, convinces you it may segue into a bittersweet romance and then decides it wants to be a comedy. It veers so suddenly and drastically from one to the other that the word 'turbulence' doesn't do it justice. Attach that to a distinct lack of actual story momentum and we're not watching a big-screen plane-crash, we're watching a cinematic car-crash.

Now... none of this should indicate that Denzel Washington isn't a solid actor. He has proven time and time again that if you give him a good role, he can make it a great performance. There are moments in Flight where he shines and if the film was marketed as a 'flawed hero's battle with the bottle' rather than a 'thriller' (which it clearly is not, or at least not in the way the kinetic trailer sought to convince us) then at least we'd be prepared to judge it on the correct merits. Washington plays a (sometimes) functioning drunk with aplomb, but we've signed up for that advertised thriller not a pro-celebrity AA-meeting... and after over an hour of passive-aggressive (and aggressive-aggressive) self-sabotage and ballistic benders, it's hard to feel much sympathy for a guy SO continuously bent on self-destruction and unable to take the help offered. Academy award voters clearly disagree - Washington got the nomination as predicted.

The supporting cast, good in their own right, wander in from those aforementioned disparate genres. Kelly Reilly (Me and Orson Welles, Sherlock Holmes, A for Andromeda) is great as Nicole, an ingenue addict trying to get her abused life back on track and helped and hampered by Whitaker in equal measure. Don Cheadle is an ever-pragmatic lawyer trying to keep Whitaker from being his own worst enemy and the often under-rated Bruce Greenwood ably supports as the company executive wanting to stand by his friend. John Goodman wanders in, presumes everyone's filming a slapstick Big Lebowski sequel, dispenses narcotics, cracks some jokes and leaves.

The film is directed by Rob Zemeckis, better known for his work on the likes of the Back to the Future franchise, Forrest Gump and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and who has stayed in a more producing role over much of the last decade. It's a change of pace for him and it's good to see him back centre-stage.  But, frustratingly, there's a far superior film within Flight trying to get out. The best moments are the original crash-sequence (quite as breath-taking and audacious as you're ever likely to see on screen) and then a much quieter scene in a hospital stairway when a recovering Whitaker meets Nicole and a cancer-patient, played by a scene-stealing and unusually gaunt James Badge Dale ( The Pacific, 24 and the forthcoming Iron Man 3) for a circumspect ciggie. Either scene could have been spun out and maximised to make a compelling film of its own and yet both are ultimately wasted as we go in search of  actually getting wasted, another beverage from the mini-bar and into territory that the likes of Ken Loach and Peter Madden could mine much more brutally.

Flight is a well-intentioned film with a solid cast and moments of class and inspiration that you WANT to like because of the first-class talent involved, but it's also one filled with so much relentless self-loathing and moral ambivalence that the audience are merely likely to roll their eyes, assume the crash position and brace for the credits.

Like the plane itself, Flight is shiny and full of baggage, but ultimately it's also off-course and desperately in need of a better rudder to guide it home...

6/10

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