Film Reviews by Alphaville

For 2 hours this MI instalment trundles along disappointingly. The half-hour pre-credits sequence (yes half an hour) is simply boring, with a drawn-out old-hat submarine sequence, a ho-hum random shoot-out in a random desert and a committee meeting talkathon. The risible plot involves the world being taken over by AI (The Entity) and the search for a magical key that will somehow save us all (Part 1 ends before we know).

It’s beyond nonsense, but we wouldn’t care as long as the stunts are exciting. They’re not. The main set-piece is a by-the-numbers car chase in Rome – a sort-of poor man’s Italian Job. As for all the exposition about what’s going on… just get on with it. Meanwhile the staccato score that tries to make every beat exciting simply underlines how unexciting it is.

But then we have a half-hour action climax that just about saves the whole film. It’s unfortunate that the best bits are shown in the trailer and even during the opening titles sequence, but Tom’s motorbike jump off an Austrian mountain onto a train that’s about to crash is just about worth the wait.

This tedious Christopher Nolan talkie about the life of the physicist is a real disappointment and a long haul. For three hours the confused plotting zips around all over his life and all over the place, never settling on one scene long enough for any drama to develop. Even worse, the endless meetings are mostly concerned with the audience-boring political implications of his early communist leanings. It doesn’t help that star Cillian Murphy has only one expression and half-whispers his lines in a monotone.

The hours drag by with scene after scene of assorted suits politicking in assorted corridors and boardrooms. After nearly two hours there’s some brief tension when the first atom bomb is tested (to an annoying score of what sounds like scraping violins), but it’s soon back to the politicking. By the end (if you last that long) it’s just words, words, words. Whatever happened to “show don’t tell”? The script was based on a book and would probably have made a better play if not for the huge cast of interchangeable characters. Such a disappointment given Nolan’s track record.

Another great Daniel Auteuil film based on one of Marcel Pagnol’s early 20th-century Provence tales. This is the sequel to ‘Marius’ but you don’t need to have seen that because Marius left to go to sea at the end of it, leaving love Fanny alone and pining. Any description of the day-to-day events and tribulations that beset her would sound boring, yet the various confrontations among the characters are absolutely riveting. It’s a film to lose yourself in.

Reverential, by-the-numbers biopic, but what else do you expect with such an iconic figure? Okay if you like cockpit shots, as in the overlong opening sequence of plane testing. The moon landing is well-realised, but it takes sooo long to get there and even that is intercut with family flashbacks.

Remade less interestingly in English as The Tourist, this absorbing French mystery thriller set on glorious riviera locations is a joy to watch. It could do with more stand-out thrills and flatters to deceive with an unconvincing ending, but it’s eminently watchable for the duration, full of intrigue and colour.

An interesting film but lacking in drama. It’s slow-paced with too many repetitive scenes of men in grey suits talking in monotones in colourless rooms. The narrative stalls in places and the unconvincing ending comes out of nowhere. But the well-presented premise, together with occasional striking scenes, will certainly keep you watching.

Well, whadya know? Despite other reviews on this site (check IMDB), this is one teen film worth catching. It takes 30 minutes to get going, the music soundtrack is awful and it’s not as good as the Swedish original (Den Osynlige), but… Our hero’s body has been left for dead, hidden in a forest. His spirit, invisible to everyone onscreen, roams free to try to inform someone before he dies. The mechanics of his attempts to affect people are fascinating, even if some of them are puzzling, and it’s beautifully directed. Single-take shots, hand-held shots, the colour scheme – all have their place, as discussed on the director’s unusually revealing DVD commentary. Sure, it’s no masterpiece, but even in its failings film buffs will find it an unexpected treat.

Two men meet – one a bank robber, the other a retired schoolteacher – and discover that each envies the other’s life. That’s about it, really. This 2002 film was well received at the time, but it would have made a better play than a movie. It has nowhere to go and basically just marks time.

In this 2003 French drama the spark has gone out of the marriage of Fanny Ardant and Gérard Depardieu and Gérard is having affairs. So Fanny pays prostitute Emanuelle Béart to seduce him and report back in explicit – very explicit – detail. It’s an enthralling erotic drama as only the French can make: thought-provoking, gloriously free of moralising, full of romantic melancholy and with mysterious Hitchcockian overtones. You’ll want to know what happens.

NB Misleading title. We follow Tuppence Middleton as she recovers her memory after a fire. There’s a twist plot point after half an hour, but not enough to save the film. It’s just not a very interesting tale and this underwhelming treatment adds nothing to it. Even at 86 minutes it drags. Some scenes seem contrived simply to show Tuppence topless.

The first half-hour is a spectacular futuristic special effects battle between some people and some other people. It’s a visual spectacle, but what the heck is it all about? After that we have another 2½ hours mostly of politicking and Chinese propaganda, with poor acting and a pseudo-science plot that makes no sense. Hard to care, hard to sit through.

Fascinating to see Gerard and Isabelle before they became big stars, but the film itself is a mess that does them no service. You may need to check the DVD sleeve notes to find out what’s going on. Scenes lack focus, acting and dialogue are poor and the director just doesn’t seem to have a handle on it. A waste of all the talents involved.

After the wokist travesty of Pride and Prejudice, at least this over-hyped Greta Gerwig kids’ movie is an improvement. I know, it had to be. Still, let’s give it a charitable two stars instead of one. Unless you’re an uncritical young girl, it’s still surely a pain to sit through, with its embarrassingly simplistic brain-dead message shoved down our throats to a cheery muzak score (except for the obligatory plinky-plonk piano during the cringe-worthy maudlin bits). There’s so little going on here besides the bubblegum message that it has to run out of steam and does so with impressive tawdriness by filling screen-time with barrel-scraping musical numbers.

“Just tell me what you want, what you really really want.” You might as well listen to the Spice Girls as watch this movie. That would save time, have more intellectual heft and, hard to believe, be less annoying.

Manic sequel to the joyous original misfires completely. It aims to be madcap, but it lacks the surprise value of the original and the shouty, pantomime humour just grates.

Gritty, score-free, kitchen-sink rendering of a Mexican kidnap story. It even begins in a kitchen. It’s the kind of film that features over-long static takes of head-shots, whether talking or not talking. Any action usually takes place off camera while we watch someone react to it. Naturally it’s been championed by arthouses and shown at Cannes, but it’s achingly slow and dull.