Film Reviews by Alphaville

This Italian production about Siberian gangsters after WW2 harks back to those awful spaghetti westerns that followed in the wake of a Fistful of Dollars. John Malkovich hams it up as criminal grandfather with a laughable heavy accent. As for the film, it’s simply terrible. Slapdash amateur film-making.

Totally predictable WW! drama, with noble working-class squaddies and idiot pompous generals. Our heroes have to dig a tunnel under the German lines. Will there be a tunnel collapse? What do you think? Dialogue is filled out with banter and voiceovers of letters written home. For most of its length it’s surprisingly unexciting for a war film, but it does break out towards the end. The awful trailer gives the whole game away anyway.

Not that it’s a bad film. It’s based on a true story and is well-meaning, well-mounted, well acted and sedately directed. It comes across as a high-end Sunday evening TV drama.

In this bog-standard superhero fare, another bunch of comic book ‘meta-humans’ fight another bunch of super-baddies to a random selection of pop songs. Perhaps one of the most boring of the whole genre. Not a single original idea or iota of intelligence in the whole by-the-numbers waste of screen time. Not even worth watching for the cgi fight scenes, which are an over-edited mess.

Semi-autobiographical film abut students at a Paris film school. All the trappings of a Nouvelle Vague film but none of the joie de vivre and all filmed in dull natural light with a static camera. The students mooch around, smoking, drinking and talking nonsense, like moody teenagers who think they know everything. Unless you’re interested in discussions about the nature of film, it’s as boring as the characters. And if you are interested in the subject matter, it’s annoying as well as boring. All hit films are rip-offs made for money, says one of the director’s mouthpieces. Film should recreate real life, says another. No room here for the flights of imagination on which cinema can take us. This is director JP Civeyrac’s 12th film and the first to get a British distribution. It may well be his last.

Director Jung-bum Lee wanted to make a humane action-packed gangster film and has come up with a surprising and enthralling winner that’s all heart.

The plot revolves around the relationship between our floppy-haired animé-type hero and a young girl who befriends him then becomes a victim of child trafficking. Little do the villains know that, behind the one eye that isn’t covered by his fringe, our hero has special forces skills. The villains too are a diverse and interesting bunch, especially Mr. charismatic English-speaking guy, who has some action-packed run-ins with the hero.

It’s hard to pin down why this film is so appealing but, even if (when) you sometimes can’t follow what’s going on or who’s who, it’s magnetic. There’s one startling scene, where the hero jumps out of a high window onto the street, that’s difficult to see how it’s done (watch the excellent DVD Xtras). An unexpected wallow of a movie.

A detective deals with a ‘creepy’ neighbour and investigates an old case. After a startling opening this becomes a more pedestrian mystery drama before exploding into action again towards the end. It’s overlong and too sedate for much of its length, with characters behaving in an unbelievable way. Only an undercurrent of serial-killer tension maintains interest until the plot picks up again. It may remind you of Audition.

When it breaks out in its last hour, it’s certainly dark and, as the title suggests, creepy, but again the characters’ behaviour never rings true, making gruesome scenes seem more ridiculous than involving. Nevertheless, dark and interesting.

Ignore the negative reviews and settle down to be captivated. If you don’t thrill to this, you don’t get film. This is a real MOVIE and M. Knight Shyamalan’s best since The Sixth Sense. Even if it didn’t have such a fascinating theme, it’s a pleasure to spend a couple of hours on a gorgeous Dominican Republic beach, beautifully filmed with dazzling camerawork, for which Knight credits Kurasawa. The idea is that the camera remains independent of the action and only captures it obliquely ‘by chance’ (see DVD Xtras). Hard to visualise, but it really works. Film is a visual medium and this is a feast for the eyes.

Unlike many writer/directors, Shyamalan also knows how to tell a good story that remains intriguing right up to the very end. You’ll probably know from the awful title, DVD blurb, trailer etc that it’s about a beach that ages you fast, so plot development is rapid and ensures there’s never a dull moment. Imagine Summer Holiday as a sci-fi thriller, a mystery, a morality tale, a family drama and with elements of horror all rolled into one.

Shyamalan’s ambition is so massive that, if anything, too much is crammed in, which perhaps leaves some holes for nit-picking critics to carp at afterwards. But his accomplishment is equally massive. Consider this: what would it be like to be fully grown at the age of 6?

There are few films these days that keep you glued to the screen every second of the way. This is one of them. Excellent set of DVD Xtras too.

Something evil lurks in the woods. Cue our hero and heroine to wander into them and meet a silly bad man. Even a good director would have trouble with such a hoary old plot (written by director Ben himself). If you’ve seen a Wheatley film before, you’ll know how long drawn-out they can be. This is no different. Surely even die-hard horror fans will hit the FF key before long.

Surprisingly boring silly comedy adventure that plays like the kids’ theme park ride from which it originated, complete with cgi running of jungle rapids. Dwayne Johnson hams it up. Emily Blunt is miscast for light comedy. And there’s a pantomime villain. All played out to incessant bombastic orchestral muzak. Director Jaume Collet-Serra has made some good films in the past but he won’t want this on his cv.

This never-dating 2008 action thriller pits a charismatic cop against the sympathetic kidnapper of a 5yo girl. The cop is tormented by a car chase that ended badly while the partially-sighted kidnapper is doing the job for money for his paraplegic wife (equally sympathetic). Your loyalties may sometimes even switch to the baddie, despite the fact he’s going to kill the little girl.

Director Dante Lam films with a restless camera and boundless energy. A bit too much shaky-cam to begin with, but it soon settles down into engrossing visuals. The plot is brilliantly put together and only reveals its full complexity in an ending you’ll never guess. The action sequences, on foot or in cars, are exciting. The dramatic scenes in-between are not the usual fillers but emotional rollercoasters that drive the plot forward. All-in-all, one of the best Hong Kong actioners of all time.

Ordinary Joe turns out to be not so ordinary when he’s burgled. A different take on the ‘one man fights back’ genre, with a nice line in black humour and a counterpoint easy-listening soundtrack. The action scenes are brutally realistic and escalate to a deliberately OTT climax in order to have, as the director puts it, a fun finish. Unless you’re immune to Tom-and-Jerry violence, this is great stuff. Plus a great set of DVD bonus features.

After the terrific original film, second-time around this just seems like silly games-playing. The characters are cardboard and the set-ups are drawn-out and unimaginative. Attempts to instil excitement by having he characters shout “Hurry!” and “Come on” soon become wearing. The whole enterprise feels like a second-rate rip-off.

It opens with a car crash followed by a cloying family scene. Yep, it’s the same old story. There’s a new mission afoot, but Vin doesn’t want to do it. Who’d have thought? But wait a minute – drum roll – he’s changed his mind! What a relief, otherwise there’d be no No. 9.

With plot and dialogue as pathetic as ever, FF through it all and cut to the car chases. The first is the best. Bog-standard crashes and explosions of course, but it’s filmed in Thailand with some sweeping drone shots and even a new stunt. Yay! The second chase is set in a mythical Hollywood version of Edinburgh that will at least amuse anyone who knows the city. The third and final chase is filmed in Georgia and is a real anti-climax. Everything in this film is by-the-numbers, but cut to the chases and you might grab half-an-hour of stupid fun.

It’s 20,000 years ago. Our hero is tossed off a cliff by a bison onto an unreachable ledge and is left to perish in the wilderness. Avoid the tell-all trailer. Avoid spoiler reviews. You don’t need to know any more to get the most out of it as one amazing scene follows another. It’s both a thing of beauty and an exciting thriller. A film to wallow in.

Body-swap comedy horror with all the usual tropes is given a twist by swapping a high-school girl with a serial killer. The 10min pre-credit sequence is a pointless gross-out bore and the plot takes a while to get going, but in the second half there’s fun to be had watching Vince Vaughn play a teenage girl.