Film Reviews by Alphaville

Another exhilarating instalment in the MI franchise. The characters are likeable, the plot is mind-bendingly complex, the screeds of exposition that interleave set-pieces are hysterical and Christopher McQuarrie directs all this with absolute command. But it’s those set-pieces that define MI and Fallout certainly delivers, with Tom Cruise doing incredible stunts the old-fashioned way without cgi. Among other highlights there are great chases around Paris and a terrific climax in the mountains of New Zealand (standing in for Kashmir). MI fans will not be disappointed.

Another instalment of the franchise that dumbed sci-fi down to the level of a children’s video game. It opens with the same old space battle to John Williams’ excruciating bombastic score, but what else did you expect? As in the previous instalment, the only character with any charisma, although he has little to do, is Ben the Baddie (Adam Driver). Ade Edmondson appears briefly but it’s a missed opportunity. If only he was playing his Vivien character from The Young Ones, come to wreak havoc and add some interest to affairs. At a grinding 146 minutes, this is for mindless drones only.

This is a slight story filmed as a comedy, reduced to school-play level by the terrible OTT acting. On the plus side, lauded director Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers) can certainly film landscape and light. The outdoor scenes are set in the Rainbow Mountains of Zhangye and are absolutely glorious. Even if you’re not a fan of the Coen Brothers’ more prosaic original, this Chinese version of Blood Simple is worth a look to see a masterclass on how to film figures in a landscape. Shame it has little else going for it.

You can imagine the pitch: Scream meets Groundhog Day. It’s a good pitch, but the high school vibe dumbs it down to a puerile level full of annoying teenagers. Our heroine gets murdered over and over again, but the thrills aren’t thrilling and the resolution’s unbelievable. And guess what? She learns life lessons along the way.

Still, it’s well-paced, with odd flashes of humour that work, and makes an agreeable time-passer. Among several Extras, the DVD has a darker alternative ending that is much better than the one in the released film.

Detective Ko’s in a fix. He’s killed a guy in a hit-and-run accident and driven off with the body in the boot. Fortunately his mother has just died and there’s space in the coffin… And that’s just the beginning of his troubles. Who was this guy? In a plot that constantly wrong-foots the viewer, Ko’s life soon spirals out of control. The bleakly humorous situations he finds himself in add to the tension. With a bit more subtlety – if our hero was a bit more convincing and we could believe he was really in peril – this could have been an edge-of-seat thriller. It remains an above-average action adventure that builds to an exciting climax.

Another gorgeous hand-drawn animation from Studio Ghibli, this time from a Dutch director (Michael Dudok de Wit) who understands the medium as Miyazaki did. You’ll never be satisfied with computer-based animation again. It’s about a man shipwrecked on a desert island. Don’t worry that the title makes it seem like a children’s film. The turtle makes only a brief appearance and is merely a plot catalyst. The film is full of adult themes and moving moments, but AVOID THE TELL-ALL TRAILER, which ridiculously condenses the whole 77-minute story into 2 minutes and spoils the several story twists. Why do they do that?

The sets are wonderfully scenic and colourful, with an exceptional quality of light rarely seen in animation. The director also stretches the medium to its fullest, using all kinds of pseudo-camera angles and shots that would not be possible in live-action. In short, it’s a stunning cinematic watch. The DVD also has a fascinating feature that shows the

The Rock takes on baddies in a burning supertall Hong Kong skyscraper and it’s film-making by numbers, complete with Mandarin-speaking co-stars for the lucrative Chinese market. It’s that cynical. The action scenes are so derivative they’re boring. On more than one occasion our muscled hero’s left hanging high above the abyss by his fingertips. Will he manage to pull himself up? Guess. He has to jump huge gaps. Will he manage? Guess. He has a wife and two children running around screaming. Will he save them? Guess.

It’s so predictable it’s laughable instead of thrilling. He even talks to himself to let us know what he’s up to. Danish actor Roland Moller makes an insipid chief baddie and sub-baddie Pablo Schreiber, so effective in Den of Thieves, gets bumped off too early. Expect lots of scenes of cgi flames and crowds at the foot of the skyscraper craning their necks upwards. Will they clap and cheer? Guess. The half-hour of extras on the DVD is more interesting.

A one-off superhero movie with adult depth, featuring an immortal superhero (Hugh Jackman) who wants to die. Excellent action sequences, including a fight on a speeding Japanese bullet train that brings back fond memories of the first Mission Impossible movie. Added to this is an unexpectedly moving love story, mainly thanks to the warmth of the performance of Tao Okanato as the woman Jackman must protect.

Unfortunately it all goes pear-shaped at the end, with the usual juvenile cgi-heavy climax and a terrible post-credits coda that brings the wolverine back into the X-men franchise. Without that and the unnecessary superhero powers, this could have been a superior dark action romance.

There’s nothing new in this second entry in the children’s Jurassic World franchise. People run from dinosaurs firstly on an island and finally in the villain’s underground lair, with a climax filmed in poor light.

Same dinosaurs, same people in peril just managing to escape gaping jaws, same bombastic orchestral score. There’s an adventurous girl for the kiddies to identify with but no drama for adults. Even the new ’Indoraptor’ is just another angry dino with different claws and teeth. Guess how every single baddie (every one a man) gets his comeuppance. Much more interesting is the raft of other features on the DVD, including star Chris Pratt practising his moves, interviewing the crew and playing it for laughs.

Lara Croft goes in search of her father, who has disappeared looking for a mythical queen buried on a Pacific island. It’s based on a video game but it’s nevertheless a good hook on which to base an action adventure. Without reaching any heights, it has some good jungle locations and action set pieces, and with Alicia Vikander as our heroine and Roar Uthaug (of Cold Prey fame) directing, it’s more grounded and realistic than the previous Angelina Jolie attempt. While being watchable throughout, it needs a bit more oomph and imagination to raise it above the ordinary, especially at the climax inside the cavernous royal tomb.

If you like stunts, there are a couple of good ones here: a skateboard escape at the beginning and a motorbike chase on water half-way through. As for the remainder, it’s the usual Vin Diesel macho sexist rot.

Prolific director Takashi Miike used to make interesting films, but he appears to have run out of steam. This one, based on a long-running manga, is as silly and bloodthirsty as ever, seemingly in an attempt to outdo the body count in 13 Assassins. Basically it’s a series of stylised samurai-type sword fights interspersed with boring static dialogue scenes.

The only novelty here is that our charisma-free hero can’t die because sacred bloodworms keep repairing his body. Yeah, right. He’s also cursed with an annoying shouty girl for company. The fights are bog-standard and there’s no drama abut the outcome, no matter how many posturing foes he has to cut down. The DVD has an English commentary that adds useful material, but the film hardly deserves it.

A vlogging mom (Anna Kendrick) befriends another who disappears. Kendrick is thankfully a bit less irritating than usual, but her limited emotional range and mugging to camera remain an acquired taste. After an hour or so the mystery deepens, but the lightweight tone, as Woody Allen has found out before, robs the plot of any drama. The ho-hum sub-Gone-Girl resolution fails to convince and is eventually played for laughs, with lots of shots of Kendrick vlogging to camera. The alternative ending on the DVD even develops into nauseating musical theatre.

You may well feel short-changed, especially if you’ve been enticed by the brilliant British trailer, which plays mostly without dialogue to an evocative Coeur de Lion song. The song, which isn’t in the film, adds an air of darkness and sophistication that’s at total odds with the film itself. Listen to the album instead.

A creature feature with The Rock facing off against giant animals sounds like fun, but it’s only in the final half-hour that the film begins to live up to its title. The first hour is full of irrelevant dialogue and techno-speak as the characters explain themselves to each other. There’s even another big boring cgi gorilla (enough already). As if the filmmakers realise something more is required, they insert a ho-hum plane crash in an attempt to liven things up, but that’s hardly what we want form a Rampage movie.

Things pick up in the third act when the gorilla, together with a giant wolf and alligator, lay waste to Chicago. With some good aerial shots of the destruction, this is more like it. Shame it took so long to get there.

Real adult sci-fi is thin on the ground these days, the space having been taken over by juvenile superhero films, so it’s good to see a film that’s so full of ideas in concept, plot and set design. Constantly surprising, with a dark strain of humour, it grabs you from its start to its whirl of a climax.

Reviewers who place the film in the action-horror genre, not helped by the abysmal spoilerful trailer, should be ignored. All you need to know is that Logan Marshall-Green, “not man, not machine” as it says on the DVD cover, is out for revenge. With a subtext of free will v determinism, this is a superior piece of sci-fi that’s both intellectually and emotionally satisfying. It’s also an exciting action-packed ride.