Film Reviews by Alphaville

Who’d have thought another cold war submarine movie could have anything new to say or be so exciting? Watch A Wolf’s Call and believe. Interleaving tension with action, the plot unusually pits good guys against good guys, toying with audience emotions. Add to that a kind of hero we haven’t seen before – an Acoustic Warfare Analyst. This leads to some riveting stuff about sound recognition and a detective story in sound, on land as well as undersea.

Unfortunately the film is only available from Cinema Paradiso in the dubbed-for-dummies version of the original French, which somewhat diminishes its authenticity and realism, but it remains an exciting watch even in this format. WARNING: avoid the spoiler-filled trailer.

Astronaut Brad Pitt’s on his way to deep space via the moon, and the evocation of space travel, reminiscent of 2001, is fascinating to watch. He even flies to the moon on a Virgin commercial flight. Unfortunately the plot amounts to very little and winds down to a disappointing end. Add to that the ill-advised decision to have Brad regale us with whiny introspective thoughts in voiceover detracts from the immediacy of the visuals.

Despite this, Ad Astra is a four-star watch if only for its evocation of living and travelling in space. It’s a considered, meditative vision that gives a real sense of the emptiness of space and the solitariness of being there. To keep you on your toes, there are also bouts of exciting action when you least expect them. The destination may be disappointing, but the journey is captivating and beautifully evoked.

Imagine a typical period drama – classy, well-intentioned, flawlessly acted, staidly shot and utterly bland. Here’s another one. It will certainly hold interest for anyone fascinated by the Bloomsbury set, but the two lead characters never seem more than theatrical constructions whose see-sawing central relationship never grabs.

It grew out of a play by Eileen Atkins, who also wrote the screenplay, and it shows. Correspondence between characters, for example, is shown by having them read their letters out loud to camera, as they did on stage. Director Chanya Button also comes from a theatrical background and doesn’t have the cinematic imagination to translate her enthusiasm for Woolf (as evidenced by an interview on the DVD Extras) to the screen.

The film is made with such earnestness and sincerity by all concerned that it’s a shame to be negative but, judged as a film, everything about it screams Sunday night heritage television.

Six strangers come together for an escape room game that’s more lethal than they expected. It’s a premise that could be limited and stagey, but it turns out to deliver an action-packed, fun-filled thrillfest. The format enables the plot to move from room to room and keep things moving at a fast click as our protagonists try to figure out how to escape the life-threatening traps set in each.

It’s pacy and imaginative, with the characters back stories woven in skilfully. And it keeps it up right to the unexpected end. The one mistake is the opening, which unnecessarily attempts to grab the viewer’s attention by showing part of the climax (the bulk of the film is shown in flashback). This only diminishes the drama later on. As does the tell-all trailer. AVOID THE TRAILER.

Four friends are stuck in a cable car on New Year’s Eve. It’s a predictable tale filmed with little flair and with a terrible song on the soundtrack. There’s a token idiot who does stupid things to keep the meagre plot moving as the quartet try to extricate themselves. It’s filmed on the cheap so there’s little sense that they’re anywhere but in a studio. The heroine doesn’t even put her anorak hood up against the cold.

It’s silly and stupid but if you’re in the mood for such fare the Russian setting adds a bit of interest and it just about manages to remain watchable for its hour and a half. It’s even worse in the ludicrous US-dubbed version but why would anyone ever want to ruin a foreign film by watching a dubbed version?

A Chinese detective story with a difference. Sherlock Holmes has nothing on our two heroes as they face off against the bad guys. Confusing characters and plotting make it hard to get to grips with on occasion, but it’s worth the effort for the incidental delights. People are being shot but there are no bullets (and no, they’re not made of ice that then melts). One is killed in a locked room. Best of all – learn how to escape from the rope on which you’ve been hung.

The premise of the movie produces a one-joke plot that trundles along pleasantly enough without ever hitting any heights (except for a cameo near the end). It’s written by Richard Curtis so expect a typical romcom that you’ll find either charming or cringeworthy. Still, if it can introduce post-millennials to Beatles music, even on a one-man acoustic guitar, it’s to be applauded. For the same age group it also features busker Ed Sheeran, who turns out to be a good sport. The DVD Extras feature an arguably superior alternative ending with a twist and a commentary by writer Richard Curtis and director Danny Boyle.

Father and daughter are stuck in the crawl space beneath a Florida house in a hurricane and alligators are circling. From that simple premise the story develops into a tense, exciting, full-blown action movie. Director Alex Aja films with his usual style and relish on a Serbian set that stands in for Florida so well you’ll never spot the difference.

From early claustrophobic shocks in the crawl space the action opens out and ramps up to a rousing climax, with plenty of jumps and laughs along the way. It may not be a film that would ever trouble the Oscars, but what more do you want from a creature feature? The DVD also contains a fascinating 30min Making Of feature that shows how the hurricane and floods were achieved and what the actors had to go through for our vicarious pleasure.

What if an alien with superpowers turned out to be a sociopath? Aided by a chilling score, that’s the premise of this tense, thrilling film. Instead of the standard superfisticuffs and cgi flash bangs of the bland Marvel and Avengers franchises, this explores a 12yo extraterrestrial boy’s growing awareness that he’s special and can ‘take the world’. If the film has any genre it’s ‘scary thriller’, with horror overtones, and it really works.

As the boy’s powers grow, so does the danger in which everyone in the small town of Brightburn finds themselves. We know they shouldn’t mess with him, but they don’t know that, which adds to the growing sense of menace when they confront him over bad behaviour. We especially root for his well-drawn parents, who have no idea what they’re letting himself in for when they try to chastise him.

Brightburn is a ‘superhero’ film so refreshing to see that it deserves 4/5 stars both for aspiration and execution. As for the rousing climax… it cries out for a sequel.

Robert Pattinson’s stuck on a spacecraft with a crying baby. Doesn’t sound too promising and it is indeed a slow burn, poorly shot by art house doyenne Claire Denis, here making her first English-language film. After half an hour a voice-over tells us what Rob’s doing there ( so much for ‘show don’t tell’). You’ll probably know this much anyway from the promo material, so you can cut the first half-hour. Claustrophobic spacecraft scenes plod along, intercut with enigmatic bits of scenes back on earth and flashbacks about the crew.

Kudos to Pattinson for making some interesting film choices since Twilight, but they’ve been a mixed bunch. Slower even than the soporific Moon, High Life will bore most viewers outside the Emperor’s Clothes art house circuit. There’s less here than meets the eye, and there’s little for the eye in the first place. Congrats if you make it through to the end. Plus points? The Gravity-light score has its moments.

The DVD Extras feature a Q/A with Denis that is just as obscure and pointless.

Superior drama about two GIs pinned down in the desert by a sniper at the end of the 2007 war in Iraq. One’s shot in the open while the other takes refuge behind a crumbling wall. It develops into a battle of wits between him and the unseen sniper. How good can a minimalist single-location film be? Gripping when you put Doug Liman (director of The Bourne Ultimatum) behind the camera. On a raft of excellent DVD Xtras he explains how he sought inspiration from Lumet’s single-location Twelve Angry Men and how he structured the film in 10-minute sections to keep the surprises coming (DO NOT watch the tell-all trailer). And those sandstorms (filmed in the Mojave Desert) are real.

This third entry in the Fallen series is less spectacular than the first two because this time Gerard is on the run rather than fighting destruction and chaos. Apparently everyone involved wanted something different. Mistake. This lacks the dynamic of the first two films. Even worse is a different director (Ric Roman Waugh) who uses a hand-held camera to film too close-in on the action, which is then over-edited into a visual mess.

Things do improve as the film progresses, with some surprises along the way (as long as you avoid the trailer and tell-all reviews). And there is some satisfying action towards the end, if not on the scale of the first two superior films. It’s nearly all ruined again by a puerile end-credits coda, but for the most part Gerard holds the film together and it makes an enjoyable watch.

This dire film, shot on the cheap in Romania, is one of the most badly directed westerns you’ll ever Fast Forward through. Often composed in giant close-ups so that not even a whole face can be seen, and often with no score to make up for lack of drama, this is just awful. To say it’s made for tv would be to overpraise it.

Like most second-rate Hong Kong martial arts films, most of this is ridiculous and boring. What’s Michelle Yeoh doing playing an assassin called Drizzle in tosh like this? To mislead punters, the usually reliable John Woo is credited on the DVD cover as co-director, but in the film’s credits he’s listed only as producer. The plot is nonsense, the acting irrelevant and the arbitrary fight scenes shot too close-in and over-edited. The whole film is a mess.

A would-be creepy film about a guy who sees ghosts. Some excellent films of this nature have come out of Asia but this South Korean effort isn’t one of them. With nothing more than atmosphere to maintain interest, it’s slow, uninvolving and never delivers.