Film Reviews by Alphaville

Intense, moody film with a dark colour palette and a relentless downbeat score. It won’t be for everyone. For the patience-testing first 15 minutes we follow our hero as he does nothing of interest, then he sees his doppelganger and their lives become intertwined. The trailer tells you the whole plot anyway – what little there is of it. It could be the basis for a good thriller, but the emphasis here is on mood with lots of slow, meaningful looks. It desperately needs more oomph.

It’s hard to believe how poorly made this French film is, especially with Luc Besson involved. Everything about it – plot, acting, direction, editing – is a mess. It’s about 7 young nonentities who climb buildings and ignore the law. The cops are ridiculously Keystone and can’t catch them. The camerawork and editing are all over the place. And if you’re thinking the parkour stunts will at least be worth watching, forget it. The action is minimal and the stunts are fudged by judicious edits. If you want to see a thrilling parkour film watch Tracers or District 13.

A riot of a movie in which the set-up is little more than an excuse for some imaginative cgi action sequences set to a blistering rock score. If you love the music, you’ll want to watch this more than once. The pre-titles opening sequence alone, set to The Eurythmics ‘Sweet Dreams’ is a beautifully-shot little film in its own right. As is the first set-piece in which our heroine has to fight giant Japanese warriors, set to a crunching version of Bjork’s ‘Army of Me’. No more spoilers. The in-between talkie scenes add mystery but are really only filling a gap till the next cgi extravaganza. As usual, director Zack Snyder films beautifully. He’s obviously having fun and it’s infectious.

Pedestrian film-making with a static camera robs the film of any interest. What remains is a series of talkie tableaux with lots of close-ups of Mads Mikkelsen being his usual inexpressive self. One for the undiscerning arthouse crowd only.

Seriously under-appreciated intelligent apocalyptic thriller not helped by the giveaway trailer and picture at the head of this CP page. Can it be possible to predict the future? The puzzle at the film’s heart, where a girl’s predictions of disasters seem to be coming true, gives the script real narrative drive. Startling set pieces are interwoven with more moving and contemplative moments. Nicholas Cage nay-sayers won’t like it, but his restrained performance here works. Above all, director Alex Proyas seems intuitively to know exactly what to do with the camera to make every scene visually interesting. Examples? See how he puts the camera on the floor to film Cage prowling around his room. Marvel at the long single take of the amazing first set-piece. Ignore the nay-sayers. This is a proper movie. Wallow.

Can’t understand the good reviews for this disappointing prequel in the franchise. In this one the now-familiar alien creatures invade New York. Nice apocalyptic set design but not much else. Our hero and heroine, pointlessly lumbered with a cat, try to get away. Fortunately it turns out the creatures can’t hear footsteps this time around. The two dull leads have little to say or do except cower quietly. It doesn’t help that much of the film is shot in darkness or dark spaces, so that we can barely see their faces. With many scenes of nothing much happening at all, the edit even resorts to standard jump cuts of pouncing creatures to keep the audience awake. There’s so little going on that, even at 90+ minutes, it seems far too long. The first film was excellent, the second okay… and it’s best to stop now.

Forgettable plot, so just sit back and let the kinetic action wash over you. Great parkour chases filmed with verve and a snip at 90 minutes. Great bunch of DVD Extras too.

A disappointing sequel all round. Scattergun plot and comic-book characters filmed with an overactive wobbly camera. Worst of all, the brilliant parkour stunts of the original have been mostly replaced by martial arts fisticuffs in which the baddies attack our hero one by one so he can beat them off one by one.

The titular bus is a nuclear-powered, articulated double-decker, so big that it even has a pool and bowling alley and makes its first appearance on screen to 2001 music. Our hero is a down-on-his-luck driver who’s reputed to have eaten all his passengers when he was the only survivor of a previous wilderness bus catastrophe (he says he only ate a single foot). Now, at the wheel on a non-stop trip from New York to Denver, he has to deal with all manner of problems, including an on-board bomb, a love affair and a motley busload of crew and characters. My own favourite is the lounge piano guy who keeps smiling and playing no matter how bad things get. The convincing cliff-edge finale in the Rocky Mountains even outdoes The Italian Job. The movie plays with the tropes of all kinds of films, not just disaster. Film buffs will love it.

The phrase ‘revisionist Western’ usually makes the heart sink and this amateurish, miserabilist bore, lauded at Cannes, is no exception. Set in Chile in 1901, the landscape looks great… when you can see it. Much of the film is shot in the dark. No drama or driving plot, mumbled conversations that hold no interest, endless silences featuring meaningful looks… You get the idea. Downbeat and dour.

The crime-caper/love story plot is little more than serviceable, but the movie stands or falls by its parkour stunts and these deliver in spades. Executed without wires, even by plucky star Taylor Lautner, and filmed in-camera without special effects to a rocking electronic score, this is jaw-dropping stuff.

Sad to see septuagenarian Pierce Brosnan acting his age as an old-time hitman and, as directed by septuagenarian Phillip Noyce, the film has a similar slo-mo feel to it. Even sadder is seeing nonagenarian James Caan in one of his last roles. No amount of jaunty muzak on the soundtrack can disguise a sad, tired film from first frame to last.

Jaunty music, banter and flashbangs can’t disguise the emptiness of the script. The bulk of the film is filler separating unimaginative set pieces at beginning and end. The first is a standard car chase, the second a climactic damp squip confrontation with an underwhelming ghost.

Apart from a few stunts, it’s hard to care. The quickfire, superficial dialogue probably looked good on paper, but in front of the camera it just makes the characters look like actors instead of vice versa. Consequently both the rom lacks credibility and the com is excruciating. Add a threadbare plot, overlong talkie scenes and a terrible teeny pop soundtrack and you’re soon longing for something to get interested in. The background stuntman scenario probably gave the project its greenlight, and there are some good pratfalls here, but when it all ends up in boring superhero-type flashbangs it seems like a wasted opportunity.

For most of its run-time this low-budget piece of tosh has four people stuck in an Irish forest cabin being watched by unseen creatures. It’s basically a drama-free stage-play with added foliage. How did it ever get the green light? Could it be coincidence that the director is M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter and slumming it in the lead role is Dakota Fanning?