Film Reviews by Alphaville

Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon are really really annoying as loud-mouthed buddies involved in spy stuff. They shout, babble and scream ‘humorously’. Painful to listen to and painful to watch.

This retread of the first Matrix film begins intriguingly with Keanu as a games-programmer who made the original trilogy, but this is merely a pretext for him to undergo the same plotline as the first film (unplugging from the matrix, meeting Morpheus, fighting Smith etc.). It’s full of talking heads swapping exposition and meaningless pseudo-babble. Someone tells Keanu, for instance, that Morpheus is ‘an algorithmic reflection of two forces that helped you become you.’ Yeah, right.

Keanu himself, looking as tired and disinterested as the viewer, sleepwalks through the film in a whisper. Surprisingly, the action is equally dull, simply repeating fisticuffs and shootings from the previous movies. There are even plentiful flashbacks to the earlier films as if to show us how much better they were. Who would have thought that a Matrix film could be so boring that you want to FF it?

How not to make a film: point the camera at someone and have them talk. Greta Gerwig seems drawn to such efforts. This so-called comedy thinks it’s cool. It isn’t. It thinks it’s funny. It isn’t. It tries hard, but the harder it tries the more desperately unfunny it becomes. It’s embarrassing to watch, so don’t.

What’s the point of this inferior remake? Every set-piece is worse than the original, from the opening fight scenes to the dance-hall meeting of Tony and Maria and the final rumble. Jerome Robbins choreography is sorely missed. The score lacks punch. As for the characters… the leads lack the charisma of George Chakiris, the athleticism of Russ Tamblyn and the screen magnetism of Natalie Wood, while the Tony character seems even more soft than ever. Even the colour is less striking.

Spielberg has his camera prowl around the action but fails to capture the drama in the way that Robert Wise’s more dynamic camerawork did. What’s left is little more than an earnest student musical that will send you back to the original to check that, yes, it really was that much better.

Johnnie To’s 2001 killer v killer movie suffers from comic-book characterisation and plot, but it’s still a stylish and attention-grabbing film. Technically, To’s camera is constantly on the move so there’s always something good to look at and he’s a master of crane shots that add extra flair to the action stunts. The stunts themselves seem to have been done by the actors themselves, including jumping off balconies (see illuminating Making Of feature on DVD). The scene where Any Lau is trapped between platform and speeding underground train actually seems to have been done for real. Add a score that puts a moody take on affairs and you have a film that, even when it makes no sense, is constantly watchable.

Nominated for 11 Césars, this is the kind of adventurous, imaginative, witty, romantic French comedy/drama Hollywood could never make. A company uses sets and actors to enable people to re-enact the past. You know you’re in for a ride in the opening few scenes, when a staid 18th-century banquet is interrupted by murderous gun-toting gangsters. You don’t need to know any more. Just get on board and let the plot and multiple characters take you when and where they will. It has heart, it has bite and it positively sparkles with energy.

Slow, deliberate, understated 70min French ‘film’ with long silences, long static shots of nothing in particular, naturalistic dialogue about nothing in particular. And no score to add any emotion (the trailer cheats by adding an emotional score that’s not in the film). The DVD sleeve calls it a ‘masterwork’. Joke. The director has no idea how to make a film. Check out the interview with her on the Xtras. All she talks about is the concept.

It’s about two 8yo girls (played by twins) who meet in the woods. There’s a message somewhere in here about loss, but who cares when it would be more interesting to watch paint dry. Perhaps you’re meant to close your eyes and just listen. If so, make it a radio play. Except you’d need to cut those silent longueurs. Which would reduce the run-time to less than half-an hour. You could also cut the numerous filler scenes of the girl brushing her hair or teeth, the father shaving, the mother doing a crossword, the girls making pancakes etc. In fact get a real screenwriter to rewrite the whole film, give it to a real film director, get in a composer and start from scratch. Never has 70 minutes seemed so long.

The DVD blurb promises a movie that’s “ruthlessly realistic” and “visceral”. What a joke. This is a pantomime gangster movie with melodramatic acting and blood that’s chucked on like red paint. Together with scattergun plot and direction and little action, you’ll soon be reaching for the off button. Even the trailer will make you laugh.

A 118-year-old man looks back on the twists and turns of his life. It’s about roads taken and not taken and we see all of the alternate life paths in a non-linear fashion. On the Making Of featurette star Jared Leto owns up to counting 12 possible lives. Director Jaco van Dormael likens them to Russian dolls. The man’s memories are confused and so will you be. This might have been okay if what’s on screen is interesting. Unfortunately it isn’t. The characters bore and the constant time and plot switches annoy.

If the film deserves more than one star it’s for its brilliant cinematography, which makes the 45min Making Of featurette more interesting than the film itself. Van Dormael uses different camera set-ups and movements for different time lines, and some of his technique is worthy of a more satisfying film. There’s a scene where the camera follows Leto towards a mirror then continues through it to follow his reflection out of the room. Even after watching it several times on the Making Of, it’s still difficult to fathom how it was done.

Dormael is a great filmmaker but this is not a great film. He’s already made his wonderful and absorbing masterpiece about life in his 1991 film Toto The Hero. If you haven’t seen that, watch now.

A Russian flag-waver about resistance to Nazi Germany in Belorussia. Poorly acted and directed with nationalist zeal, it’s reminiscent of those old Russian films eulogising Stalin, full of earnest peasants filmed in close-up. Of sociological and historical interest perhaps, but a dreadful film.

At the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific a rig blows apart and Kristen Stewart and colleagues have to crawl through rubble from one dark set to another to survive. The characters are merely ciphers who swap banter in place of plot. Even Vincent Cassel, given little to do, can’t make this one interesting. Oh, and there are shadowy Alien-type underwater creatures around too.

It’s all very derivative, boring and very dark, with lots of noises off-screen (“What was that?”). At least no-one shouts “Go, go, go!”, which must be worth a star. Take bets on who will survive. The camera shakes to mimic explosions but that just makes it look cheap. The main interest lies in trying to make out exactly what’s going on in the darkness. “I can’t see sh*t” says one character. He’s not the only one. Did I mention it’s very dark?

Kingsman goes woke in this disappointing prequel full of anti-colonial and anti-war rhetoric. Prequel? Hardly. It’s like a perverse history lesson that has nothing to do with the first two films in the franchise. Instead the plot has a dull Ralph Fiennes sleep-walking his way through various incidents leading up to and during World War 1.

There’s even a bog-standard sequence about the horrors of trench warfare complete with Wilfrid Owen poem. In complete contrast, and even more misjudged, there’s a risible version of Rasputin’s famously drawn-out death presented as a sort-of Cossack dance. Another astounding misjudgement is an audience-alienating twist half-way through (beware reviews with spoilers). As for the main baddie, he’s nothing but a disgruntled Scotsman whose face we don’t even see until the end.

Matthew Vaughn again directs from his own story, so it’s real shame to find the franchise going so rapidly downhill. Only the climactic cliff-top fight captures the spirit of the original.

Dull po-faced treatment of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel. Director Denis Villeneuve makes far more of a hash of it than even David Lynch did with his 1984 version. If you thought Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 was dull, wait till you see this.

It’s such a ridiculous premise anyway, with giant sand worms and a spice that enables space travel. Star Wars was equally ridiculous, but at least that had some life. You’ll find very little action here, despite what the trailer tries hard to make you think. Most of the 140min screen time is spent in darkened interiors, where various earnest characters indulge in screeds of exposition. A sand worm makes only a brief appearance to lighten the spiel.

After 20mins of this guff you may well decide another 2hrs of it is best watched on FF in the hope of catching something interesting. Beware good reviews of this film that seem to be written by fans of the novel. The film’s last line? “This is only the beginning.” Indeed. It’s little more than a dull lengthy prologue to the sequel.

The DVD sleeve promises an ‘edge-of the-seat disaster thriller’. Whoever wrote that should be sacked. In a small town boring people go about their boring business. For a whole hour nothing happens. Then it rains and they go underground and the camera shakes to indicate a tornado off-screen. Then they emerge to sort through debris. The end. Even the trailer can’t make it look interesting. It’s foot-through-the-screen awful.

Another great actioner from director Benny Chan, re-uniting Donnie Yen and Nicholas Tse from the wonderful Dragon Tiger Gate. This time they’re on opposite sides of the law as cop (Donnie) goes after charismatic robber (Nick). It’s action-packed with visceral gunfights galore beautifully filmed by a prowling camera. Chan shoots with energy to spare, mixing aerial, crane and steadicam shots and capturing both the dramatic and the picturesque.

The final confrontation between the two leads, reminiscent of Heat and choreographed as usual by Donnie, is operatic in scale. It’s not in Dragon Tiger Gate’s league and will not be to everyone’s taste owing to some melodramatic acting, but it’s a spellbinding watch for anyone who loves the moving image. There’s also a moving tribute over the end-credits.