Film Reviews by Alphaville

Animation in the Ghibli mode. Glorious landscapes but characters that lack nuance and a kindergarten plot. Sample dialogue: ‘We must take the keystone back and banish the worm’. So says a talking chair, referring to a giant worm that’s demolishing Japan. Shame. The landscapes are beautiful.

After the rollicking Part 1 of this French blockbuster, Part 2 is a disappointing sequel. For a start, unless you remember everything from Part 1, it’s hard to get a grip of. The action is also disappointing. Apart from a couple of hand-to-hand fights (not a patch on the Part 1 fights), Part 2 concentrates mostly on political intrigue. Protestants v Catholics, French v English… it’s hard to know or care who’s on which side. The musketeers themselves barely get any plot interest apart from their political affiliations, while Eve Green as Milady sems to have 9 lives. The ending leaves room for a Part 3, so let’s hope that has as much derring-do as Part 1.

What a disappointing sequel after the visual flair of the original. Sadly it’s one long bore, with a plot reduced to incorporating a warmist climate message to assuage wokist sensibilities. The cgi undersea shenanigans are no more than a whirl of pixels, having neither drama nor excitement. The only character with any arc or interest is baddie-turned-goodie Patrick Wilson, but with a script like this the actors stand no chance of adding any interest to affairs.

Dream Scenario is that rare beast – a visually interesting comedy... at least for half its length. It has a great surreal concept, a great look and startles from Frame 1, making it engrossing to watch as well as funny. But then it switches to less humorous satire, taking a welcome swipe at cancel cultuire but getting bogged down in uninteresting scenes. A boring meeting with social media nerds seems to go on forever. It gets bleaker as it progresses and eventually feels as though it has missed its targets, losing both its edge and its sense of humour.

A deadly boring film of slow, still, overlong shots, mostly in medium close-up, of people staring into space and occasionally talking. Not that they’re acting. We learn on the much more lively DVD Extras that director Aki Kaurismaki, a ‘living legend’ according to the DVD sleeve, told them not to act. You have to feel sorry for them. This travesty of a ‘film’ is so stilted that it’s embarrassing to watch, especially the occasional attempts at humour. The whole mishandled caboodle, short though it is, is mind-numbing to watch. The worst kind of arthouse cinema. Finnish compatriot Jalmari Helender should have a word in Aki’s ear. He’s promised never to make a film with two people arguing in a room (see Sisu).

This excruciating theatre-piece alienates from the start, with close-ups of talking heads making inane conversation to an irritating soundtrack. It then continues in the same annoying fashion for 2½ hours. Someone is dead. Accident or murder. The investigation is painstakingly talky and funereally slow, followed after an hour by a court case that is even more painstakingly talky and funereally slow. How this has garnered good reviews is unfathomable. Maybe it could have been interesting given something to watch rather than listen to, but the director can do nothing but shoot talking heads. The trailer adds music and fast cuts to make it look interesting. Don’t be fooled. This is just a filmed play that takes 2½ hours out of your life when you could be more usefully employed watching paint dry.

A surreal fantasy beautifully directed, quirkily shot and scored, opulently staged, funny, grotesque, raucous, outrageous and defiantly anti-snowflake (eat you heart out, Barbie), this is a scintillating riposte to the bland TV-fare that often passes for film these days. Weird and wonderful, with outrageous sex scenes and gorgeous set designs of a surreal Lisbon, Paris… all luxuriating in deep-focus detail that makes it a feast for the eye. Just watch it.

Based on the first disk (the first three episodes), and especially if you’re a Next Generation fan, this is a disaster. Picard is no longer a dynamic leader. He acts and sounds old as he whispers his lines. Perhaps not surprising given Patrick Stewart’s age. Most of the time he drinks tea and worries about the harvest on the French farm to which he’s retired. It’s a low-key talkathon with no plot or character interest and barely any action. Space? Forget it. I was soon on FF. Maybe it improves with disk 2, but I won’t be finding out. From what I hear, both Season 1 and 2 are rubbish but Season 3 at last gets going, with Jonathon Frakes back as Number 1 and director. So maybe I’ll give that a shot.

Thoroughly enjoyable (though unrelated) follow-up to the five-star Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes. In that brilliantly realised film the characters have to deal with seeing two minutes into the future. Here the characters are trapped in a time loop that keeps sending them back to the same spot they were in two minutes ago. On each loop they have only two minutes before reset to figure out a way forward. Cue lots of frantic running around as they rush to achieve something useful before reset. Beautifully shot in single-shot two-minute takes, the film also makes the most of one of the snowiest winters ever experienced in picturesque Kyoto. The disk also has a fascinating hour-long making-of feature in which director Junta Yamaguchi discusses the shoot and further possible sci-fi films. More please.

After a startling opening (the only one in the film), this immediately degenerates into a talkfest of annoying Australian teens glued to their phones. Hip hop soundtrack? Tick. They start to conjure up spirits, but it’s never scary or any more interesting than the job-lot characters. The plot goes nowhere and peters put. The end.

This impeccably realised film follows a bunch of cops as they investigate the murder of a teenage girl in a French alpine town. With masterful storytelling, interesting characters and an enigmatic soundtrack, it’s engrossing from Frame 1. Every scene moves the plot forward with no slack. As the investigation becomes increasingly fraught, along with the investigating cops, it becomes ever more involving and moving. A masterclass in its genre.

Horrible title for horrible film that unaccountably has some five-star-reviews on the DVD cover. Those critics should have their licences revoked. It’s a dire tale of three obnoxious, shouty, sweary, teenage girls smoking, boozing and clubbing their way through a beach holiday in Greece. The amateur, naturalistic filming makes it seem even worse. I tried to watch it, but after 15mins couldn’t stand their company any longer. The DVD describes the film as ‘vibrant’. ‘Sad’ would be nearer the mark.

After Les Valseuses, director Betrand Blier reunites with stars Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere for another refreshing blast against snowflake cinema. Still a riot decades after winning the Oscar for best foreign film in 1979. Gerard’s run out of ideas as to how to rouse his wife (Carole Laure) from her soporific demeanour. She spends all her time knitting topless. Perhaps sex with a different guy would help, so he ropes in a stranger in a restaurant (Patrick). If that still doesn’t work, perhaps a 13yo boy could provide the right impetus. Strap yourself in for an uproarious comedy that will have wokists tearing their hair out.

Here we go again. Yet another doggedly-filmed, dialogue-heavy, actorly product of the British film industry. It’s based on a true story and means well, so no wonder it was beloved of the arthouse circuit, which helps proliferate this kind of non-cinematic bore. Among real film lovers it sank without trace. As usual, better suited to the stage or TV.

A stylish, moody, downbeat, slow-paced film that’s interesting at first but eventually begins to drag along with its whining score. The characters’ actions make no sense and the director needs to ditch the overlong speechless close-ups for a tad more upbeat excitement to maintain interest.