Film Reviews by Alphaville

Two Brit and three Nazi airmen are shot down in Norway’s snowy wilderness and have to learn to live together in a mountain hut, where the bulk of the film takes place. You can predict how their relationship will develop from enmity to shared friendship in order to survive, which takes the edge off the plot. The two Brits are such caricatures (toffee-noised captain and working-class squaddie) that it’s hard not to side with the more well-drawn Nazis. It’s not a bad film, given heft by the setting, but it’s based on a true story and one wishes it was better.

Premise? A supernatural phone app tells you when you’re gonna die. Our heroine has two days to live and has to find a way to beat the app, but any move she makes to avoid her fate has ghouls come after her. It’s similar in concept to the Final Destination franchise with added horror overtones. If that’s your bag, this will keep you moderately amused.

If the title and trailer dupe you into thinking this is a fast-moving thriller you’re gonna be screaming at the screen. The original US title is Gypsy Moon. Book-ended by a few brief shootings, this is about a woman and a boy bonding on a road-trip while plinky-plonk piano music plays on the soundtrack. At the end the plinky-plonk gives way to an even more pathetic ballad. There’s also a whining dog along for the ride. If only they’d shot that as well...

It’s a shame to see Lena Headey reduced to playing the lead. And for changing the film’s title to suck in more viewers, the producers should be prosecuted for offences against the Trades Descriptions Act. This really is abysmal filmmaking.

Exciting heist and car-chase movie directed by Michael Bay at breakneck pace. His most hyperactive actioner yet. Its unrelenting pace and beautiful sweeping camerawork ensure you never take your eyes off the screen. And it’s all real. No cgi. No rapid edits to chop up the action into meaningless bits. The dizzying state-of the-art First Person View drone shots (see the DVD Extras) are like nothing we’ve seen on film before. A thumping score adds to the tension. It could even have done with a quiet spot here and there to give the audience a breather. Watch, wonder and… 130mins later… relax.

It’s reasonably interesting for c25mins as Jared Leto searches for a cure to his illness, then it goes all cgi silly as he gets the standard set of cgi superpowers (he’s stronger and can fly). From then on it’s by-the-numbers predictable as he indulges in fisticuffs with Matt Smith (a baddie with the same superpowers). It’s kiddy cartoon stuff with no depth of plot or character and a climax that’s an underwhelming fast-edited mish-mash of pixels. Good points? At 90mins, it’s shorter than other Marvel bores, so an extra star for not inflicting more on the viewer.

An American FBI expert is called in to help catch a serial killer in Taiwan. The macabre killings and Taoist connotations add little to a plodding police investigation that lacks excitement and thrills. An off-the-wall climax perks up interest, but by then it’s too late.

This must be the most ridiculous, ill-conceived and boring retelling of an Arthurian legend ever. Funereally paced, stylised and stilted, stagey and solemn, static and pompous, devoid of action and even sense, filmed mostly in darkness with half-lit faces peering at the camera or into the distance… This is the worst kind of arthouse anti-film, with all the life sucked out of it. What a waste.

Fast-moving, hard-boiled Hong Kong thriller about cops taking down a drug ring. Nothing new in the concept, but plot, characters, score and Johnnie To’s lively direction lift it way above ordinary. It sags a bit in the middle but soon builds again to a lengthy, high-octane, beautifully shot, climactic shootout that ranks as one of the best in the genre.

Another surreal period actioner on an epic scale from visionary director Tsui Hark. Described as a ‘mad’ genius’ by the crew, he treats us to some eye-popping stunts and set-pieces. From the huge canvas of the opening maritime scene onwards, it’s filmed with everything on screen in crystal-clear focus, like Citizen Kane, making it an overwhelming visual experience. Some of the set-pieces, such as the battle in the Black Sandstorm, are a breathtaking spectacle. The plot, about revolting eunuchs and a concubine on the run, is just a hook. The substance of the film is visual. This is what cinema was made for.

So why not five stars? A talky section in the middle, when various factions plot against each other, merely passes time. This is also the first Chinese film to be made in 3D. In the 2D DVD version, swords flying at the camera lose their impact. Still, fans of Tsui Hark’s brilliant Detective Dee movies will not be disappointed.

Maybe I was watching a different film to most reviewers. Kenneth Branagh has made some good films, but this vanity project about his own 9yo self amidst the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ of 1969 is a self-indulgent bore. The politics and shouty religiosity are a pain. The back streets of Belfast are as dreary a backdrop as you might expect. The child actors unfortunately lack subtlety. As for the score, if you don’t like a warbling Van Morrison you’ll have to turn the sound off. Good points? Nice monochrome lighting.

There’s a human story here if you can be bothered, but you can predict its substance even without seeing the film. All told, it’s the kind of earnest social-realist drama they used to show on TV in the 60s. This is not to minimise the plight of families at that time and place but (unlike most reviewers) to treat it as a FILM. Maybe something interesting happens near the end, but this reviewer had given up by then.

A silly, instantly forgettable Indiana Jones-type time-passer that has conmen Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg searching for lost treasure. If you can handle their painful improvised wise-cracking you’ll catch a few good action set-pieces along the way but little else. It’s the kind of film that ends with an awful pop song over the end-credits and a teaser for a possible sequel, but there are certainly even more infantile adventure films around.

The trailer guys had a brilliant idea. Given that there’s nothing in the film itself to grab the viewer, let’s fast-edit clips to a soundtrack of Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ to at least make it sound interesting. Now imagine that trailer drawn out to 128mins without a Bowie score and you have just another long tedious coming-of-age teenage romance set in the 1970s.

The choice of soundtrack songs is dreadful. Well done if you can even get past the cheesy opening meeting set to a vomit-inducing ditty. It’s the kind of film that might eventually find a slot as slow afternoon fare on some obscure TV channel. A ‘timeless story’ trumpets the DVD blurb. Ironically… if for some unfathomable reason you decide to stick with it… you’ll be checking the clock to see how much longer you have to endure it.

Simplistic sword and martial arts saga with the usual flashing swords and somersaulting through the air, far too unsophisticated for Western tastes. The climactic set-to between Hero and Invincible atop the Statue of Liberty is little more than a cartoon.

If you miss Eric Rohmer and/or are a fan of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, you’re in for a treat. Director Jacques Audiard name-checks both on a Q/A on the DVD. Based on a comic book, the simple plot revolves around the lives and sexual relationships of four intelligent and likeable characters who live on the edge of Paris. In British hands this would have been a downbeat wallow in social realism. In Audiard’s hands it’s an elegiac celebration of life and love filmed in sparkling monochrome, sexually explicit but never prurient ? a welcome and deliberate antidote to what Audiard sees as today’s prudish age. Good to know the spirit of Rohmer is still alive and kicking across the Channel.

If you’ve never seen one of Tsui Hark’s Detective Dee or Young Detective Dee period extravaganzas, why not start with the first, even if Rise of the Sea Dragon is perhaps even better. This is cinematic grandeur to the nth degree. An epic sense of scale, a riot of colour and luxurious set design, startling images, a racing plot, a dramatic score, spectacular wirework action set-pieces… all captured by arresting camerawork.

The plot? It begins with the building of a 66-yards-high Buddha, inside which a man bursts into flames from the inside out. A talking deer recommends Detective Dee look into it and he’s soon on the case with two uppity sidekicks. The result? An unmissable feast for the eyes.