Film Reviews by Alphaville

On a period backwater Irish island called Craggy Island (sorry, Insherin Island), the best friend of nice-but-dim Father Dougal (sorry, a different nice-but-dim man) stops talking to him. Why? That forms the basis of the first half of this film’s underwhelming plot. Then, like a flip side to “Father Ted”, something grotesque but unbelievably silly happens to inject some much-needed dramatic tension into affairs. Unfortunately, it’s not funny enough to be a black comedy and the plot has nowhere to go after that.

That’s not to say there’s nothing to enjoy here. There’s some spicy dialogue and Martin Mcdonagh is an accomplished director who knows how to frame and film a shot. He keeps you watching, but there’s just not enough of interest going on to warrant a near 2hr run-time. Eventually it just peters out. Vastly over-praised by reviewers who’ve invented all sorts of deep meaning lurking beneath the surface, this is best viewed as Oirish whimsy.

The good? The real world of rural Japan is as beautifully rendered here as in any Ghibli animation. The bad? Our sad teenaged heroine gets lured into an online virtual world where her avatar becomes a glammed-up star singer. Not a great message. The childish online world of sparkling pixels, anodyne ballads and a misunderstood dragon that does martial arts (yep, it’s Beauty and the Beast) is one big bore. In all, a mixture of the good and the bad that had this reviewer’s finger poised over FF.

Shot in the Loire and on the Brittany coast, this is one of those French films that makes you feel as though you’ve been transported to the French countryside for a summer break. Channelling the spirit of Eric Rohmer, the title (in the original French: The Loves of Anais) says it all. Even though nothing of consequence happens, it’s warm-hearted, sweet, beguiling, erotic and even quite profound. A guile-less lead performance from Anais Demoustrier adds to its appeal. Why is it only the French who can make films like this? Warning: avoid reading spoiler CP reviews above and watching the trailer, which is a giveaway précis of the whole film.

Dry, clichéd, slow-paced biopic of Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights, with an equally dry clichéd score. Plinky-plonk piano? Tick. It might be better as undemanding Sunday night TV fare or even a radio play as the accent is on dialogue rather than the visual medium of film. If, like this viewer, you get bored watching talking heads, you’ll soon be reaching for FF.

Florence Pugh and Harry Styles live in an idealised 1950s desert community, Palm Springs style. He goes to work, she tends the home, Stepford Wives style. Something is obviously amiss and we follow Florence as she begins to question her existence. There may be nothing new here and it may not hold together in the cold light of day, but it’s immensely watchable.

It’s well-paced, gets creepier by the minute and builds to a rousing climax that even includes an exciting car chase in the desert. Unlike most actor/directors, who plonk the camera down in front of actors acting, Olivia Wilde knows how to shoot film. It won’t win any prizes but the journey, set in gorgeous Californian desert scenery, is a blast.

Ralph Fiennes is a fastidious tailor. He does fastidious tailoring things, shown in great detail. He falls for a young woman, tailors her fastidiously then treats her badly (fastidiously). That’s it, really. The end. All this to an incessant and incredibly irritating plinky-plonk piano score. Truffaut once made a film called Shoot the Pianist. I now know how he felt. To call this film measured (no pun intended) would be a gross understatement.

Charming, uplifting, heart-warming? Or facile, contrived, clichéd? Bland direction, competent acting, nice colours… lacking one iota of cinematic imagination. If you like cosy, easy-going, Sunday night TV drama, here’s another of which the British film industry seems to have an endless supply. The trailer will tell you all you need to know. If you wish the British film industry would up its game, watch and weep.

A bunch of contemptuous westerners have a party at a house in the Moroccan desert to celebrate a gay partnership. Two of them accidentally run over and kill a local boy on the way there. You’d run a mile to avoid these people, so watching them while away the time is excruciating. Although proficiently directed and with some cutting dialogue, there are virtually no character arcs and no-one here to care about. If it has any message it’s Brits bad, Berbers good. The end.

Top-notch action thriller from director Antoine Fuqua and star Denzel Washington. To begin with the film has a wonderfully underplayed atmosphere as ex-agency man Denzel works in a DIY store and spends his evenings reading books. Fuqua’s fluid camerawork and the lush score add to the appealing laid-back ambience. Then baddies appear, including one brutal Russian baddie so well-played by Marton Csokas that you can’t wait for him and Denzel to square off. Denzel has hidden skills, you see. You don’t want to mess with either of these guys. Cue great action rising to a rousing climax. Followed by an equally absorbing sequel.

Tom goes fast on a motorbike and in a plane, has a quip for every occasion and causes Americans to flap their hands in the air and whoop. Okay, so you’re not meant to take it seriously, but must it be so overbearingly contrived and predictable? If you haven’t gagged by the end, wait till Lady Gagga (an in-joke?) warbles her end-credits ditty.

I thought of giving it an extra star for the technicalities of filming (see DVD Extras), but no, what’s on screen is just too eye-rollingly awful. Three scriptwriters had a go at it to no avail and director Joseph Kosinski drains it of any residual interest unless you thrill to close-ups of men in cockpits. Surely only forgiving fans of the Cruise-man can get anything out of this.

Two women get stuck on a 2,000ft-high tower and you’ll want to keep watching to see if they can get down. It’s so brilliantly filmed that you’ll swear the tower exists, even though a 60ft tower was the max that was used during filming. It’s also shot outside, in the desert, to give it extra authenticity. As a two-hander (mostly), you’d think the situation would pall, but these women are resourceful and the plot keeps moving.

There are a couple of downsides. Any climber will tell you that some of the rope work is dodgy and one of the women is initially an irritating vlogger for whom everything is cool or sick. Fortunately she soon drops this persona. All in all, a great example of how to make a low-budget film look good and really work.

This is awful. It’s acted like a school play, with everyone told to read their lines with perfect diction and pronounce every syllable at the expense of emotional expression. Meanwhile the intolerable score underscores every beat, like in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Despite impeccable sets, not a single frame is believable. Just watch the trailer.

Food moves in stop-motion, a piano makes cocktails, there’s a miniaturised man in a mouse costume... I guess it’s supposed to be surreal, instead of which it just looks childishly pointless and silly. The plot plays second fiddle and you’ll soon find the visuals so annoying that it seems irrelevant anyway. In any case, it’s a boy-meets-girl story with boring characters filmed as though by an amateur, often far too close-up with only partial heads in frame. Good luck if you get very far with this one.

After his two excellent and disturbing films Get Out and Us, Jordan Peele comes a serious cropper with his third, which he delusionally seems to think is ‘a flying saucer horror film’. As for the blurb about it being a ‘complex social thriller’, whoever wrote that must think the emperor wore clothes. Nope is simply laughably bad B-movie sci-fi of the kind that might have been made in the 50s. Even that would be okay if it wasn’t so boring.

Daniel Kaluuya (from Get Out) is a horse wrangler for Hollywood when strange things start happening on his backcountry ranch. For a while there are hopes the film may get as creepy as Peele’s first two, but instead it just gets sillier and sillier. Even worse, it remains mundane and tedious, with an undercooked screenplay and a rag-bag of characters that lack believability. Daniel’s character has little to do except stand around looking at the sky or sit on his horse, while his overactive sister is a real pain (even more so in the excruciating gag reel on the DVD).

If you stick with it, it will only be out of sheer bemusement as the 'flying saucer' and people’s reaction to it become ever more ridiculous. An unfortunate 1-star film with an extra star for some well-shot Western scenery.

Beautifully written, acted and directed, this intense thriller doesn’t waste a scene as it immerses you in the search for two missing girls in rural Pennsylvania. There are suspects and father Hugh Jackman isn‘t going to play by the rules no matter what frazzled cop Jake Gyllenhaal tells him. Does the title refer to the girls, the suspects or Hugh and Jake? It’s brutal, disturbing, exciting and packed full of engrossing scenes.