Film Reviews by Alphaville

Originally conceived as an album by pop group Sparks, this has been turned into an experimental 140-minute musical/opera in which every line is sung. It’s pretentious self-indulgent claptrap. Take the opening, which has the main characters wandering along a street singing ‘And now we start’ endlessly. Elsewhere bystanders form a Greek chorus.

It’s about a love affair between a bad comedian and an opera singer. You’ll laugh when Simon Heilberg sits at a piano singing ‘I’m an accompanist’. You’ll laugh even more when stars Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard regale us with ‘We love each other so much’. Even more so when their child turns out to be a puppet. Enough already!

Director Leos Carax seems to have been responsible for getting the project off the ground. Someone should have had a word in his ear. Don’t be fooled by a well-edited trailer full of dramatic music. In the film itself scenes go on forever and music and lyrics are pure doggerel. For 140 minutes.

It’s the in-yer-face approach to war movies, using hand-held shaky-cam to put you in the heart of the action as interchangeable American soldiers swap sweary banter while fighting off the Taliban in Afghanistan. All this, together with a lack of plot, is alienating. If it stopped after one hour it would be a one-star film, but the second hour of battle ramps up viewer engagement. Director Rod Lurie, with the aid of drones, comes up with some stunning five-star single-shot camera work and we become more involved in the plight of the outnumbered soldiers.

It’s based on a true story of the Americans’ most decorated battle of the war and the real soldiers involved testify to the film’s authenticity. This makes it hard to find fault but, judged purely as a film, its whole is less then some of its parts and it won’t be for everyone. To prove you don’t need shaky-cam to capture visceral action, see the similar but superior 12 Strong.

Involving war film in which Chris Hemsworth leads a team of Special Forces on horseback against Al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan. You could call it a War Western, but it’s no gung-ho actioner full of stereotypes bandying ropey dialogue. Based on a true story, with engaging characters and realistic dialogue, it’s one of the most intelligent war films of recent years. It feels authentic yet plays like an old-fashioned crowd-pleasing adventure movie. The making-of feature, which includes interviews with the equally charismatic real soldiers, shows how authentic it is.

Poorly directed, drama-free story with a downbeat score about two brothers on opposite sides of the law. With only a few brief sub-Sweeney action scenes, this is a drag from start to finish.

Fascinating Groundhog Day set-up loses traction as it progresses, getting lost in talky corporate and political satire, but you’ll want to stay with it to see how it pans out.

Low-key but involving drama about an ordinary mid-West Joe (Matt Damon) travelling to Marseille to prove his imprisoned daughter innocent of murder. Grounded in character and place, there’s no action and no set-pieces, but it’s is so well-plotted and efficiently directed that it keeps you invested from start to finish.

In fact the murder plot is less interesting than Matt’s growing relationship with the mother and young daughter with whom he stays in Marseille. This is beautifully handled.

If anything detracts, it’s the plot’s insistence on going its own idiosyncratic way, whether the audience cares or not. This is brave, but whether it’s successful or foolhardy, only you can judge.

Note to reviewers: please don’t give endings away.

It’s a Marvel movie so expectations are low… and met. First a few good points: the cgi’s good, the martial arts fights are silly but efficient and there’s a good set-piece featuring a runaway bus in San Francisco. Unfortunately the characters are cardboard cut-outs, the threadbare plot is merely a device to get from one fight to another and there’s no sense of drama at all. Half-way through we’re even introduced to cartoon animals and dragons. Tom and Jerry fights were more exciting.

It may keep undemanding kids amused for a while, but others may soon be reaching for the FF button. On the plus side, it will at least prompt a new admiration for all those crazy Hong Kong kung fu films that may now not seem so bad after all.

Great set-up, great set-design in a future-flooded Miami and moody atmosphere keep things interesting until it becomes obvious that there’s nothing going on here but a dull, relentlessly downbeat film noir. There’s even a world-weary voiceover to help you doze off.

One story told three ways by each of the protagonists, but Rashomon it isn’t. The first telling is all scene-setting, pompous score, horse-riding and in-yer-face medieval fighting with spurting cgi blood. The second and third retellings are little differentiated and the stilted dialogue soon becomes wearing.

This is the sort of tale that needs an Anthony Mann with his knack for shooting epic landscapes with figures. The final duel is not a patch on the one in ‘El Cid’. Director Ridley Scott suddenly switches to hand-held shaky-cam like in some two-bit action movie. And we don’t even care who wins.

Liam’s back in his world-weary action-man guise, on the run from both good cops and bad cops, and if that’s your bag this film won’t let you down. He looks and sounds a tad old for the part, but suspend disbelief, have fun spotting the stunt man and enjoy the fights and car chases. It could do with more dynamic direction and a more exiting climax, but it has a well-crafted plot that, unusually, features two bad cops who have their own set of problems, caught between Liam and the good cops. Note: only 86mins long, not the 99mins specified on the DVD sleeve.

Disappointing Mike Leigh film. A drawing-room drama full of period detail and lots of acting. If you like that sort of thing you might appreciate the period set design and actorly atmosphere. If you stick with it you might even learn something about the artist, although the emphasis on interior sets hardly does justice to his outdoor paintings. Others won’t make it far before hitting FF.

Bum-numbing drama about a Korean family moving to Arkansas in the 1980s to make a go of farming. It’s supposed to capture the ‘immigrant experience’, but it’s too dated for that and hardly universal. It’s plugged as ‘tender and sweeping’, but it’s hardly that either. Perhaps it worked as a book, but it needed a more cinematic approach to turn it into a good film. The end-result of the transfer to screen is uneventful, undramatic and unmemorable.

Despite a lack of thrills and cinematic flourishes, this over-sedate film works because of a pacy screenplay that keeps you watching to see what happens. There are even a few (too few) compelling scenes in the third act. It’s a good film but more dramatic camerawork and score would have done wonders for it. The problem with director Dominic Cooke, who made the stagey On Chesil Beach, is that he films as though he’s making a TV drama. For once it’s safe to watch the trailer, which unlike the CP critic review does not give the game away.

This gobsmackingly awful film is so disastrously bad you wonder why no-one realised during its making. Bad choices all around put the whole enterprise beyond mockery. Comic book characters include a weasel-man and a shark-man and naturally it ends with a cgi fight against a stupid monster. Plot, dialogue and set-pieces are so lame it’s hard to pick out one good scene. Equally hard to fathom is how it thinks it’s cool, with miserable attempts at humour to a jaunty soundtrack and (naturally) a terrible sweary rap ditty over the end credits. Warner Brothers, what’s happened to you?

Epic historical saga has all the twists and turns of a thriller. Even the occasional mis-step adds to the excitement. Artist Goya (Stellan Skarsgard) spends the movie trying to negotiate the contrasting threats of the Spanish Inquisition and the Napoleonic Wars. But the heart of the movie lies with Javier Bardem (initially a priest) and Natalie Portman (Goya’s model) and their devastating journeys through the years. It’s a rollercoaster of a film that will keep you glued to see what happens next and will stay with you afterwards.