Film Reviews by Alphaville

The latest thriller from M. Night Shyamalan is as tense as that opening scene in Inglorious Basterds. Most of it takes place in a cabin in the woods where a male couple and their adopted daughter are forced to make a kinda Sophie’s Choice: either one of them kills one of the others or mankind ends. It sounds preposterous, but so was The Sixth Sense and that worked. And we do get to see convincing apocalyptic scenes such as planes falling out of the sky.

The family are given this choice by a quartet of (very strange) strangers that burst in on them, but it’s not a home invasion movie as the incomers are not bad guys – they’re in as much peril as the family and have come to help them make the necessary choice. It’s hard to take the premise seriously and there’s no way it can lead to a satisfying climax, but it does hold the attention throughout with some tense and exciting action scenes.

You’ll know what this is about so it’s relief when the killer girl doll finally makes an appearance about a quarter-way through. Until then we’re stuck with its creator Allison Williams, who is one of those American actresses who speaks with an annoying vocal fry (frog voice). Fortunately things improve when the doll turns out to be a mixture of live action and animatronics that really works. You can guess where the plot’s going but the predictable climax doesn’t disappoint. (although the spoiler trailer does its best to ruin it by showing the best bits). The DVD offers two options: theatrical release or uncategorised, but disappointingly the only extra material the latter has are a few f-words that some snowflake must have objected to.

Yet another snooze-fest drops off the seemingly endless conveyer belt of British dramas that lack even a scintilla of visual imagination. It’s the kind of film that’s advertised by the lead actor’s brilliant/unforgettable/remarkable (choose your own adjective) performance. Just plonk the camera in front of him/her and hey, we have a film. This one’s full of long, drawn-out, static conversations that drain it of any interest, whatever the subject matter. Naturally it has been nominated for awards, which is probably one reason why nothing improves in the British film “industry”.

Always good to see a new Western being made these days, with wide New Mexico vistas and bad guys out to kill good guys. Unfortunately, and not for the first time, pedestrian direction from Walter Hill sucks the drama out of every scene. He shoots too close in, on one face or another, swivelling the camera around to mimic action. Most of the characters don’t work, especially the confused female lead around whom the story unfolds. It plays like one of those 1960s low-budget Italian Westerns, but with barely even a score to add some excitement to affairs. Compare with a much better new Western: The Old Way.

Superior plane-in-peril movie, both in the air and on the ground, given realism and heft by Gerard Butler’s authoritative performance and Jean-Francois Richet’s assured direction. Nothing ground-breaking here, but it has everything you want in an action thriller. Taut, tense and action-packed. There’s one brilliant hand-to hand fight scene filmed in one long single take, not dismembered into meaningless visual snippets as is commonplace these days. There’s also a great set of DVD Extras that go some way to explaining why this film really works. For best results try to avoid watching the trailer and reading the DVD sleeve notes and other reviews that unforgivably give away the whole plot.

The first half-hour consists solely of people sitting around having an erudite discussion about classical music, shot with a static camera. It mighty be of interest to patient music students. If you get through that there are still two hours to go as one longueur follows another. This would be more suitable as a play on stage or radio. It’s not a film. It’s an anti-film.

Must have been watching a different film from other reviewers. The blurb promises a ‘breath-taking’ origins story about a ‘young boy’ with ‘extraordinary powers’. It isn’t. It’s a plodding drama about a female psychologist who tries to help a man who can make things burn. He’s a sad, sullen victim throughout and much of the script is little more than a two-hander. Occasional simple cgi effects add nothing of interest. Perhaps a bigger budget and a more dynamic director could have done something more with the material, but what’s on screen, despite some nice fjord scenery, is a damp squib.

A cosmonaut returns to earth with an alien lifeform inside him. In an isolated installation in Kazakhstan our heroine doctor struggles to save him, herself and everyone else. Director Egor Abramenko keeps the direction tight and focussed, relying more on tension than Hollywood-style cgi set pieces. The creature itself is very effective, prompting some gruesome sequences more befitting a horror film. And the icing on the cake is a beautiful twist dénouement (no spoilers) that’s impossible to see coming.

Forget the “colour-blind” casting. This pantomime version of Dicken’s book has the cast ham it up like amateur actors in a student fringe production. Really? Do we need this? What’s the point? Director Armando Iannucci just doesn’t get film. He should stick to TV satire.

Beautifully orchestrated, engaging, warm-hearted and amusing film about the 1969 music festival. The plot, based on real people, follows local farmer’s boy Elliot as he becomes increasingly drawn into the hippie ethos of love and peace. Instead of featuring any musical acts, director Ang Lee focusses on the experience of being there and sublimely manages to capture the feel-good spirit of the times.

This two-hander set in an empty theatre has actress Emmanuelle Siegner auditioning for a part in director Mathieu Amalric’s adaptation of the Sader-Masoch (SM) book of the title. It’s a necessarily dialogue-heavy piece about the power-play between the two. Director Roman Polanski does more than most would be able to with his camera to keep it interesting in such a restricted space, but it remains little more than a curiosity piece.

This bloated, indulgent mess of a film about the early days of Hollywood begins with a chaotic pre-titles sequence that goes on and on and on for so long (a whole half-hour!) that you’re willing it to end. Enough already. We get it. Move on. It’s so repetitive it may well alienate you for the next 2½ hours… not that you’re likely to last that long anyway. It’s shot in a tiresome overexcited-student-trying-too-hard kind of way that never overcomes the emptiness of the content, with barely any character among the ensemble cast of caricatures to care about. Not even Brad Pitt, normally a reliable chooser of roles, can salvage anything worthwhile here. Hint: even if you watch this out of curiosity, best keep the remote within arms’ reach.

This is like one of those old Ealing films that turn up to fill a gap in the schedule on afternoon TV. At least you know what you’re getting. Even the title gives away the plot. It’s warm-hearted, cosy, completely predictable, completely dull and, despite the title, completely devoid of cinematic imagination.

If you’ve not seen the first two films in the trilogy you’ll have a job picking up the plot. If you have seen either of the first two films, you won’t be watching this anyway. It’s slow, it’s talky and it’s hammily acted. Even if you ignore all the boring political intrigue, the swordfight scenes are repetitive and undramatic. Despite all the jumping around and screaming, they just go on and on. Not that you’d care who wins anyway.

They really must be running out of plots. A black ball brings teenagers back from the dead and makes them kill people in order to earn points and become alive again. Yes, really, a black ball. There’s one good action scene on a subway train, but the bulk of the 155min run time (not the 79min noted on the DVD sleeve) is a boring talkathon.