Film Reviews by Alphaville

In this documentary-style slice of American underclass life, a single mother living in a cheap motel lets her feral brats run wild. Cue lots of shouting and screaming, and that’s not just the kids. There’s probably a message but you won’t want to hang around long enough to find out. OTT American reviewers praised the film for the performances of the children. Let’s hope they were indeed acting, although the Making Of feature on the DVD hardly endears them. Don’t be fooled by the sugar-coated trailer, which adopts a child innocence approach. You’d run from these people in real life. Ditto on screen.

Well-written, well-directed hard-bitten cops and robbers movie channelling the spirit of Michal Mann’s Heat, against which it loses nothing in comparison. Gerard Butler is in convincing form as the take-no-prisoners lead cop up against equally tough ex-Marine thief Pablo Schreiber. Gritty and immersive, supported by a perfectly judged insistent score, this is an intense, intelligent and involving movie. The cast spent two months at training boot-camp prior to shooting and it shows. You believe these guys. No dumb heroics here. This looks real.

The plot builds to a tense final act and gripping climax, with a fascinating dénouement it would be a spoiler to give away. It’s writer Christian Gudegast’s first film as director and he’s in total command of tone, cast and camera. Avoid the trailer and go with the flow. Den of Thieves nails it.

Even the DVD Extras deserve a mention. There’s a fun feature on boot camp and an excellent director’s commentary in which Gudegast, among other topics, explains how some of the shots were achieved. Take the brilliant opening shot: a seamless transition from helicopter to drone to Russian arm (look it up on YouTube).

Exquisitely directed, thrilling, thoughtful Western set in the 1890s. Indian-hating officer Christian Bale has to escort old Cheyenne enemy Wes Studi, now a dying man after several years in prison, and his family back to his Montana homeland. They’re joined by Rosamund Pike, whose family has been killed by Comanches in a riveting opening sequence. Who are the hostiles? It’s complicated. Comanches and Cheyennes also hate each other, and there are some bad white men around too.

There are some tense scenes as we become increasingly involved with the disparate group and their journey. Bale’s character especially is a fine construction, balancing a justified hatred for ‘savages’ with great tenderness. Despite this, and plenty of action scenes, the tone is surprisingly elegiac, encompassing a journey in spirit as well as in time and space.

The beautiful Western landscape allows room for all of these complex themes to develop. Don’t expect the usual Western clchés. The plot constantly surprises and is impossible to predict, as is the edge-of-seat climax. Writer/director Scott Cooper’s Hostiles is one of the most multi-layered and exciting Westerns to hit the big screen in a long time. It will stay with you.

20 years after Jumanji and 13 after Zathura, this third related film maintains and even surpasses the standard of the first two in what is becoming an entertaining if intermittent franchise. This time our heroes are trapped in a jungle game for an irresistible adventure set against a backdrop of picturesque Hawaiian scenery. If you liked Romancing the Stone you’ll love this.

As game avatars, a high school nerd becomes The Rock, his jock friend becomes weakling Kevin Hart, a demure girl becomes badass Karen Gillan and The selfie-obsessed class hot girl becomes Jack Black. All have fun with their game strengths and weaknesses. One of The Rock’s strengths, for instance, is his smoulder, while one of Kevin Hart’s weaknesses is cake, which makes him explode (they all have three lives).

The quartet have to band together for an Indiana Jones-type adventure and it’s fun all the way. The Rock plays winningly against type. Karen Gillan kicks ass. Jack Black has a blast teaching Karen Gillan how to flirt and discovering his penis. Even Kevin Hart isn’t irritating for once. Director Jake Kasdan has fashioned a real crowd-pleaser that’s impossible not to like, and for true film fans there’s also a raft of extras on the DVD.

In this likeable James Bond spoof (a sequel to OSS 117: Lost in Cairo), Jean Dujardin returns as the suave but hapless 1960s French secret agent. This time he’s chasing Nazis in Brazil and getting entangled with Chinese hitmen and hippy love-ins. He’s even more innocently sexist and racist than in his first outing, delivering laughably non-pc remarks with engaging charm and panache. Add in some scenic location work and this is an entertaining confection. Funniest scene: an hilariously slow chase in a hospital, in which Dujardin staggers after his Nazi foe at snail’s pace, both of them injured and carrying drips.

If you’re expecting a rip-off of the knowing Austin Powers films, forget it. This is more of an homage to Dean Martin’s Matt Helm spy spoofs of the 1960s. There’s even a Dino song over the opening titles. Film buffs will find much else to enjoy too, including a climax that spoofs Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

In the grand tradition of British film comedy, this is more TV fare than cinema fare. Julian Barratt is a likeable lead as an ageing Hoff-type actor who was once the star of a popular detective series and still thinks he has what it takes. There are some humorous situations but the TV vibe keeps dragging it down. Verbal comedy on the big screen requires more direction than plonking a camera down in front of a performance. Nevertheless, this is better than most Britcoms. After a bland first half, some much-needed action adds zest to proceedings and the film becomes unexpectedly watchable.

A grim-faced John Cusack spends the entire film staring at screens after his AI invention Kronos has annihilated most of the human race. Meanwhile a teenage couple wander around a Czech forest looking for a fabled Utopia called Aurora. These scenes were shot in 2013. Cusack’s scenes were shot years later, which is why he never leaves his dark screen room and doesn’t interact with anyone.

There are a bunch of special effects to begin with as mankind is annihilated, but the bulk of the film is Young Adult melodrama. It all adds up to no more than a studenty low-low-budget bore. If you’ve been fooled and enticed by the effects-heavy trailer, you might want to ask for your money back.

An old-school caper about a hitman (Samuel L. Jackson) and his bodyguard (Ryan Reynolds). Cue gunfights with baddies who can’t shoot straight, sub-Tarantino banter, a high swearword count and even a clichéd funky soundtrack. Worse than a rerun of a poor Starsky and Hutch episode.

With commendably little backstory we’re straight into the action as a teenage girl’s parents are shot and she’s on the run with a bodyguard. But it soon turns into a clichéd character-driven bore of a film with a pointless title. The girl is played by yet another bland young American actress and Sam Worthington is scarcely any better as the bodyguard bogged down with ‘issues’. The scenes between them lack both realism and interest. Baddies are regularly dispatched but they barely register and it soon becomes hard to care. One bonus for Line of Duty fans: Martin Compston turns up as a dispassionate assassin.

This is an hour-long picture-book documentary about mountains and the people who venture on them. We’re spared the standard TV close-ups of flora and fauna in favour of sweeping landscapes and daredevils doing their thing (e.g. rock climbing and base-jumping), which produces some exciting aerial images.

There are some filler sections (praying Himalayan Buddhists, a monochrome history of Everest etc.), but the main problem is the soundtrack. The film begins with an orchestra tuning up. It’s a collaborative exercise with the filmmaker, you see (the film premiered with a live orchestra). We are consequently subjected to an hour of clichéd classical music to accompany the pictures. Even worse is the horrendously portentous narration. Random sample: ‘Many who travel to mountain tops are half in love with themselves, half in love with oblivion.’ Pur-lease.

Nevertheless there are many arresting images, so turn down the sound, put your own music on, fast forward the dull bits and wallow in the mountains for a while.

Provocative thriller about a young black man visiting his white girlfriend’s family. Although her parents are ostensibly accommodating, their relationship with their black maid and gardener somehow seems off-kilter. It’s all very intriguing and it soon becomes apparent that there’s something very odd going on, with a tense Rosemary’s Baby vibe. The less you know the better as it builds to a wild ride of a climax.

WARNING: Do NOT watch the awful trailer, which gives every single piece of the puzzle away.

Writer-director Jordan Peele was determined that his hero would be smart and not act stupidly like in so many thrillers of this type. He doesn’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call the police, for instance. This adds to his appeal and draws us into his predicament even more. The film gives us much to ponder about race relations too, which adds to its heft.

An in-yer-face tour-de-force of extreme hand-held close-ups that soon becomes too wearing to watch. The plot concerns two brothers, one of them mentally handicapped, who botch a bank robbery. You don’t want to spend time with such despicable characters. The dialogue is atrocious. The direction is amateurish. Pitched as a thriller, it’s anything but. Much of it is a visual mess. It plays like an experimental film by a student who needs more mentoring.

Robert Pattinson is a charismatic actor who makes some interesting film choices, but even he can’t hold this one together.

The usual bunch of Marvel cartoon characters exchange banter, muck around with CGI effects and dispatch zillions of computer-generated baddies. The drama-free plot is no more than a peg on which to hang all the computer-manufactured fights. There’s one long fight between Thor and the Hulk that has less fun, drama and reality than a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The climax is a cliché in itself, with each superhero’s fight scene intercut with the others to eke out the unsurprising result of each.

The dialogue is so abysmal it makes you cringe. It took no less than three writers to come up with clichés such as ‘Choose your next words carefully.’ It would be poor comedic fare even for a Dave original. Jeff Goldblum’s ‘hilarious’ clown-like character is so embarrassing you want to look away.

All this is accompanied by the usual bombastic orchestral score, shown up for its dreariness by two uses of Led Zep’s Immigrant Song, which briefly add some much-needed zest to a couple of fight scenes.

Despite some unbelievably OTT American reviews (see Rotten Tomatoes), Thor: Ragnarok is nothing more than typical unimaginative Marvel fare. If this is the future of blockbusters and film criticism, mainstream cinema is in dire straits.

A team of superhumans has to stop a supervillain and his clone army laying waste to Moscow in this Russian reply to Marvel films. In its favour it’s not a Marvel film, it uses some interesting locations (e.g. the dry Lake Aral) and the baddie has some nifty spider-like killing machines. But, as with Marvel films, the characters are cyphers and the plentiful cgi action soon becomes repetitive. At a lean 87 minutes, at least it doesn’t outstay its welcome, but it’s all a bit rushed, scattergun and inconsequential.

It tries so hard to be hip that there’s nothing here to grasp on to beyond the superficial surface, and that soon bores. Set in Berlin in Soviet times, its cardboard characters are obviously straight out of the pages of a comic book. It takes all the elements of Kingsman and turns them into turgid drama, lacking in humour, action, plot and interest.

MI6 agents Charlize Theron (permanently sour-faced and smoking) and James McAvoy (miscast) beat up sundry Russians. Yawn. To make matters worse, it’s all presented in flashback and regularly interrupted by a debrief in the present that further slows pace and viewer involvement.

And then… after sitting through such lifeless fare for more than an hour, the film bursts briefly into life with one of the most cinematic fight scenes you’ve ever seen. Shot as a single take, it begins in an apartment building and becomes increasingly incredible. Given the astounding choreography and camerawork, it’s no surprise to learn that director David Leitch is a former action director, and this seems to be the main scene he was interested in when making the movie. On the DVD there’s a fascinating extra called ‘Anatomy of a Fight Scene’ that no film buff should miss.

It’s such a shame that the rest of the movie is such a downer, but two stars for that one amazing take.