Film Reviews by Alphaville

It’s always good to see a mainstream genre film trying something different, and this is certainly different, with scenes of operatic intensity filmed in ‘phantasmagorical’ colour (or ‘abstract expressionism’ as the DVD Extras has it). Unfortunately the fact that it received a 4min standing ovation at Cannes says more about arthouse critics than the quality of the film. It’s sheer OTT nonsense. For every good thing about it (the opening King Crimson track, the colour palette, the synth score) there’s a bad thing (the awful title, the stylised acting, the glacial pacing).

In a companion piece to Color out of Space, Nicholas Cage is enjoying family life in the Pacific North-west forest (actually Belgium) when their idyllic existence is shattered by a band of clichéd cultish weirdos. Cue Nick going on one of his customary revenge killing sprees. It’s slow-paced, overlong, full of ridiculous cod-serious dialogue and shot mainly in sleep-inducing darkness. Fans of gore may wish to fast forward much of the build-up… not that the climax tries to do anything other than shock with grotesque visuals. It’s different enough to be worth a punt if you’ve got the stomach for it, but it could have been so much more.

I wanted to like it more. I really did. It’s a technically brilliant tour de force as we Steadicam around in the footsteps of two WW1 soldiers. The main problem is the film’s USP: everything happens in real-time as a pretend-single shot. As a result, plodding around with our two soldiers, in whom we have no emotional investment, soon drags. To add interest you can fast-forward to make them walk faster and you’ll miss nothing except time-filling banter. To add further interest, try to spot the joins in the supposedly single shot.

Following a well-executed plane crash, things pick up in the second hour with the occasional stirring scene, including a night chase through a burning town. But the film is always dragged back down to the mundane by the necessity to avoid an edit or change of viewpoint. Don’t expect any sweeping aerial shots or arresting changes of scene or tone here. As in other single-shot films (Russian Ark, Birdman), the technique is deliberately limiting, prone to longueurs (if only in getting an actor from point A to point B) and relentlessly viewer-unfriendly. Sure, it’s technically brilliant and expertly choreographed, but the whole is considerably less than the sum of its stand-out parts.

Boring, poorly shot, mostly score-free, documentary-style Columbian film – the kind praised by ridiculous arthouse critics before being rubbished by any discerning movie lover. It begins as a right-old mish-mash of scenes of teenage rebels playing soldiers in the wilds. If you stick with it, which is unlikely, it ends up in the jungle, where they continue mucking about.

The Making Of doc on the DVD shows that the director had all the equipment and resources needed to make a good film, but the amateurish end-result looks like a student’s first attempt.

If you like this kind of guff, you’ll like this kind of guff. Others will find it a painful watch and soon wish they were far far away in a distant galaxy. As in previous instalments baddie Adam Driver is the only interesting character. And let’s hope this truly is the last we’ll see of the whole franchise so that we’ll never again have to listen to John Williams’ relentlessly awful bombastic brain-numbing muzak. Director J J Abrams once showed promise, so let’s hope he can now move on to more interesting fare.

Animal hunter Cage, as hammy as ever, is on his way from Brazil to the States with a cargo of wild animals for zoos. And guess what? There’s a captured serial killer on board – a ridiculously gurning Kevin Durand. He’s being extradited, but naturally he gets loose and so do the animals. The film’s USP are the cgi wild animals, but we see little of them (to save money?). Basically it’s just another boring film about a killer in an enclosed space and is mostly filled with scenes of people prowling around the boat looking for Gurning Kevin. Fast-forward fare from start to finish.

A belated sequel to The Shining, an over-rated and tedious film that was most notable for Kubrick making his lead actor overact and giving his lead actress a nervous breakdown. Doctor Sleep is a similarly overlong film with an initially tedious scattergun plot that takes a whole hour to come together. Boy Danny from the original film has now grown up into Ewan McGregor (given little to do) and we’re introduced to a mystical group called the True Knot, who elongate their lives by inhaling ‘steam’ (the breath of murdered children). Presumably we’re not meant to laugh at child murder, but it’s difficult to take this nonsense seriously.

Things do pick up in the second hour when the cast divides into goodies and baddies and there are some watchable altercations, including even an old-fashioned gun battle, but it doesn’t last. The final tedious half-hour is more concerned with re-living scenes from The Shining that serving the plot, resulting in a groan-worthy damp squib of an ending.

Here’s the plot, such as it is, based on the childhood of director Alfonso Cuaron: a maid goes about her business, looking after a well-off family in 1970s Mexico City. That’s it. A glorified but mundane soap opera. Even worse, it’s filmed as a documentary-style fly-on-the-wall piece. We observe the characters rather than engage with them.

And yet… Cuaron films in coruscating black and white with such astonishing depth of field that his shots are amazing to look at. Never has there been so much going on in a frame since Citizen Kane. Most films focus on one thing and leave the rest of the frame out of focus. In Roma everything is in focus, enabling the viewer’s eye to rove around it at will. There’s a scene in a packed cinema, shot from the back stalls, looking to the screen past lovers in the foreground, that is simply beautiful. When Orson Welles adopted the same technique (although often using split screen to obtain the effect) it was breathtaking. Roma has that same ground-breaking feel about it.

If only there was something to engage the emotions or the intellect, this would be a masterpiece. Instead, it will have you aching for something, anything to happen. The trailer makers realise this by tempting you with a montage of short scenes choreographed to Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky. Be advised that the film itself is nothing like this. It’s full of long static takes, with none of the movement Cuaron used so effectively in Children of Men, and it’s sadly lacking in anything even remotely resembling a rousing soundtrack. There is much to admire in Roma, but many viewers will find it one long bore.

A remarkable comedy thriller set in and around a big house that is everything Knives Are Out wishes it could be. Newly-wed Samara Weaving discovers on her wedding night that she’s married into a family of “psycho-killers” and they’re out to get her before dawn with an assortment of weapons they barely know how to use. Funny? You bet. One of them even has to look up how to use his crossbow on Youtube.

It’s not easy to walk the tightrope between fun and thrills, but this film finds the perfect mix, with each adding to the other. Together with great dialogue, Weaving’s naturalistic performance grounds the film in a way that cleverly heightens the increasing mayhem. With a cracking pace and directorial flair, there’s never a dull moment. Okay, so it’s a genre film with no pretensions to emotional or philosophical depth, but judged purely as a film this well deserves it’s four stars. Watch out for that rusty nail!

Stagey melodrama set mostly in a single room and on the eponymous beach. Numerous irritating flashbacks explain what led up to the present but add nothing to the non-action. Scored by a string quartet that adds to the theatricality. There’s a brief emotional coda but it comes far too late to do anything but show what most of the film lacks.

Why watch this film? The ridiculous trailer tells the whole story and shows all the best bits without the boring talkie stuff. Although touted as sci-fi this is really a would-be globe-trotting action thriller in the Bourne mould. Its USP (hardly a spoiler) is that agency hit man Will Smith is on the run from his younger cloned self. Talking heads on the DVD Xtras are proud to have created the best-ever digital human, but the effects don’t always work and the action scenes would have been better with an actual adversary than with a digital version of our hero. Instead of getting involved in a scene you’re more likely to play ‘spot the join’.

Director Ang Lee was lured by the premise and tries to inject some existential subtext into affairs, but this just falls flat and slows down the pace. The best set-piece is a terrific parkour-type chase in Cartagena near the beginning. After that it degenerates and ends in a generic shoot-em-up finale. Quite a disappointment from Ang Lee, but worth watching for the good bits.

A solid modern take on the old-school war film that many people will unfairly dismiss as a politically incorrect boys’ gung-ho movie. This is so determinedly authentic even the corny scenes are true. What screenwriter in his right mind would make his hero a gum-chewing pilot called Dick Best? But he actually existed, as did all the main characters and all the plotlines. The moving finale shows you the real people that the film portrays.

Much of the Pacific War is now forgotten or unknown to a younger generation. It deserves to be better remembered… Pearl Harbour, the Coral Sea, the daring Doolittle Raid… This film shows what a fascinating and bloody battle arena it was. Shame on those who denigrate it for its depiction of heroism.

Hard to believe all the mayhem and destruction we see (on land, sea, air and undersea) was done on a sound stage and in post-production, but the end result has an epic quality. You’ll believe you’re in the midst of it. Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day etc.) has long been adept at this kind of scale. The excellent DVD Xtras will make you realise what a labour of love this film was and make you want to watch it again with even greater appreciation.

Not nearly so much fun second time around. Our four avatars play different, less interesting, characters and fail to dredge up much humour with lifeless banter and stale action sequences. Confusingly, they also switch characters until you’re never quite sure who is who. Still, there’s some gorgeous desert and mountain scenery (NB no jungle this time around) and an occasional cgi set piece to keep you watching. Best bit: an imaginative set piece on a maze of swinging rope bridges above a chasm. The DVD also includes a vomit-inducing making-of doc that is nothing more than a hagiography to the film’s brilliance – always a desperate sign.

Alternative title: How to Ruin a Classic. It’s just awful. Where to begin? Writer/director Greta Gerwig wanted to make a film about the girls as adults and makes the disastrous mistake of interleaving past and present scenes. It begins near the end, then flashes back and forward, often confusingly, even for just a few seconds. So the film begins with a set of spoilers. For instance, we learn immediately that Jo has turned down Laurie, thereby removing all forward momentum from that storyline and making many of the historic scenes redundant. Newcomers to the story will wonder why sit through the rest of the film.

Equally bad, the plot and dialogue have been irredeemably tainted by a woke mind-set. Gerwig’s aim was ‘to give a more modern take on women’s choices and life’ (according to the DVD Xtras). This turns the film into a travesty of the book. The four girls are supposedly endeared to us by a number of giggly scenes but basically they’re mouthpieces for Gerwig’s feminist agenda. Listen to woke princess Emma Watson pontificating on the DVD Xtras and you’ll want to put your foot through the screen.

Given this, it’s no surprise that Gerwig can’t write for or direct men. Even Timothy Chalamet, so brilliant in Call Me By Your Name, can do little with the role of Laurie, while Louis Garrel as Jo’s Prof has no chance with the few scenes he’s allowed. All this renders the Amy/Laurie and Jo/Prof plots nonsensical.

The direction is pure cliché. The Jo/Laurie break-up should be an emotional highpoint, instead of which it’s so badly shot and stitched together that it plays like am-dram. The only imaginative shot Gerwig chooses is so out-of-place that the producers should have had a word with her – she has Jo speak to camera! Perhaps after Ladybird Gerwig was too untouchable. She even tags on a clunker of a new feminist ending.

Even the music score is woeful, ramming home every beat like in a superhero franchise. She runs… fast music. She’s ill… plinky-plonk piano.

What makes the end-result even worse is that it’s based on such brilliant source material. This reviewer loathes it with a passion. To see how it should be done, watch the 1994 version by Gillian Armstrong. And for a coming-of-age film that really hits home, watch the brilliant Mustang.

Seduced by the Oscar-winning hype, anyone hoping for another movie as riveting as Shoplifters will be disappointed. It’s engaging enough if you stick with it, but it’s over-ripe, long-winded and far too cumbersome for its 2hr run-time. A family of four ingratiate themselves as home helps into a wealthy family’s confidence. When things start to go wrong (after a whole hour) it descends into farce. No spoilers about the outcome, but by the end you probably won’t care what happens.

Bong Joon-Ho is a great director but this isn’t his best screenplay. If you also thought Snowpiercer, his one American movie, was a dud (not his fault), do yourself a favour and watch The Host or Memories of Murder.

The first half-hour plays like a sociological documentary about a backcountry Brazilian village… then a drone appears and soon the villagers are battling an attacking force. The promo material bills it as sci-fi but there’s no sci-fi in it – it’s a glorified political allegory.

It’s nowhere near the fun ride that some reviewers would have you think it is. It’s far too long in the build-up and the final confrontation is a damp squib. But its main fault is that there’s no emotional engagement with any of the characters so that we don’t care about their fate. And if you watch the tell-all trailer you’ll be even more disappointed. Nevertheless, and with an eclectic soundtrack, it’s probably different enough to make you keep watching.