Film Reviews by Alphaville

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.

Most of this film is set inside a 1943 war plane that is being attacked by a ‘monstrous’ gremlin. That’s the plot. Unfortunately the gremlin is likely to cause more laughs than terror. The first half-hour is even more constricted, being set inside a hatch inside the plane, with most of the dialogue happening off-screen.

There’s a short final scene outside, but even that is confined, so don’t be fooled by the misleadingly expansive trailer. This isn’t a film, it’s a radio play. Close your eyes and most of the time you’ll miss nothing. At 72mins before the end-credits roll, the makers obviously soon ran out of ideas.

Eastern western set in rural China in 1914, complete with lone hero and Morricone-style score. The amateurish acting may put some viewers off, but you don’t watch a Benny Chan actioner, with fight choreography by Sammo Hung, for social realism. It’s not Chan’s best, but it’s more brutal than you might expect, with some spirited confrontations and a climax that pulls out all the stops.

The first half is a warm wallow in small-town Americana with some of the snappiest dialogue you’ve ever heard on film. The best lines are given to Mckenna Grace and her pal Logan Kim – kids who are not the usual Hollywood brats but intelligent and funny. The adults have some witty lines too. It’s fun until, this being part of the Ghostbusters franchise, it develops into a silly cgi-fest. There’s also a mawkish ending that pays homage to the original film and completely skews the essence of the first half.

In the present day 18yo Ellie goes to London full of longing for the 60s vibe, but she’s a troubled soul. This is a film that lures you in with its 60s enthusiasm then straps you in for a wild journey in and out of the 60s, complete with 60s soundtrack. The less you know about the plot the better, so (as usual) try to avoid the trailer and spoiler reviews such as the CP one. Directed by Edgar Wright with some terrific visual effects and choreography and with the same verve he brought to films such as Hot Fuzz.

Do check out the trailer first. This is staid dramatic Sundance fare for those who like watching actors delve deeply into their characters while the ‘acclaimed’ director has little idea about what to do with a camera except point it at them. Touted as a ‘taut thriller’, this bickering family so-called-drama may instead help you drift off to sleep.

If you’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned shoot-em-up, this is one of the best of recent years. Turncoat fixer Frank Grillo gets himself locked up in a desert jail for safety and hitman Gerard Butler gets himself locked up in the same jail in order to kill him. Despite over-ripe initial dialogue and a preposterous denouement, the bulk of the movie has twists and action too spare, with standout turns from resilient cop Alexis Louder and psychopathic hitman Chad Coleman.

Most of the action takes place in the restricted space of the jail but never seems claustrophobic. Director Joe Carnahan, making his best film since The Grey, fills his characters with so much punch and shoots scenes with so much energy that it fairly rattles along.