Film Reviews by WS

This is what might be termed an "experience" film - one to watch on the big screen if at all so you can be enthralled by the superb cinematography and historical atmosphere while overlooking the fact that narratively, it's a mess.

The idea of a mass outbreak of schoolgirls stumbling, fainting and convulsing for no apparent reason may not be completely preposterous - I heard of something similar in the 1990s called the Toronto Blessing. But the annoying thing is that in hinting at explanations for the outbreak it seems to nudge the viewer first towards one interpretation, then another. Mass psychosomatic illness brought on by unresolved grief? Extreme suggestibility? Something to do with hormones? Supernatural forces, such as in the scene when the students' watches all stop? Attention-seeking behaviour? I don't think a mystery drama necessarily has to tie up all the loose ends or spoon-feed solutions to audience, but flirting with different explanations in this way without any real resolution feels capricious, glib and dishonest.

The use of seemingly meaningful imagery is fine on the level of art for art's sake, but does it really move the story along or give us more insight into the characters? For instance, there's the repeated shot of the tree by the lake where the girls congregate. This is presumably meant to indicate that the girls are in touch with the forces of nature, which makes them . . . what? Stronger? More vulnerable to whatever it is that's making them faint all them time? Or just more female?

If that's not enough, in the last ten minutes we get a jarringly abrupt change of focus from teen group-bonding to familial dysfunction - almost if they’d decided at the last moment to turn it into a '60s version of Mike Leigh’s “Secrets and Lies”!

Premature death and bereavement, under-age sex, mother-daughter resentment, the individual versus group identity, mental illness . . . it couldn't be more overstuffed with ideas and issues if it tried. The film-makers evidently had plenty of ideas but apparently lacked the time, money or self-discipline to bring them to maturity, and the end result feels like an awkward mish-mash of social realism and fantasy.

Delivers all the awe and visual splendour you'd expect in a big-budget space exploration movie, from the astounding extra-terrestrial landscapes to the haunting scenes of farmers struggling to defend themselves against dust storms amid the cornfields of the Mid West. I liked the ship's robot helper, TARS, and was pleased that they had designed something new and unexpected instead of resorting to an R2D2 knock-off or a man in a tin suit.

There were things, however, that detracted from my enjoyment of this film. Firstly, some aspects of the background to the story didn't make sense. We learn that America has reverted to an agrarian economy as a result of an ecological and economic catastrophe. I found it puzzling, then, that people in this post-apocalyptic environment still have mod cons like microwave ovens, dishwashers and laptops, wear quartz watches, drive combine harvesters, and so on.

Secondly, there could have been more explanation of the science. Some elements that seemed preposterous at the time - that a planet orbiting a black hole can experience daylight, or that someone could enter said black hole without being annihilated - are, I've since discovered, theoretically possible in some circumstances. Christopher Nolan engaged the services of a scientific consultant in the making of Interstellar so he must have been satisfied that the science was rigorous, but we, the viewer, are simply expected to take these things on trust.

As for the cast and performances . . . whilst Matthew McConaughey is superb, Anne Hathaway seemed stiff and awkward and had a disconcerting tendency to smile inappropriately while delivering her lines.

Some of the dialogue was a bit corny (and I don't mean when the characters were talking about corn!) - but you don't expect completely naturalistic speech in a Christopher Nolan film anyway, so I didn't find this too bothersome.

Altogether, an intelligent film of great beauty and distinctiveness, never dull despite its 3-hour running time, but not flawless.

There's certainly dramatic potential in the storey of this ill-matched couple in an unfamiliar country. Katherine is captivated by Italy and is open to new experiences even though she finds some aspects of Italian culture eerie and discomforting. Her husband Alex is a philistine bon viveur who loves wine, good food and beautiful women, but affects to find Italy insufferably boring. He cultivates a brusque, cynical attitude which barely conceals a deep insecurity, especially a terror of being alone.

The development of the plot and characters, it has to be said, is flaky. Early on, the Joyces remark on how this is the first time they've really been alone together since they were married - but how is this possible when they have no children or live-in relatives? They talk about their floundering marriage in a surprisingly casual and dispassionate way, and in successive scenes in the first half they alternate between frigidity and affection for no apparent reason. The George Sanders character is evidently a man of means but lacks the bombast and swagger you would expect in a member of the old moneyed elite or a self-made businessman - he comes across as just too reserved and middle-class. Ingrid Bergman, despite her accent lurching between Stockholm and the Home Counties, brings greater subtlety and conviction to her role.

So how can I justify 4 stars? Partly the gorgeous photography and locations. There's the beautiful tree-lined avenues, the Neapolitan street scenes, the fumaroles and lapilli plains on the slopes of Vesuvius, the catacombs - which work partly on the level of pure spectacle, but also often symbolically, although the symbolism is never blatant or over-wrought. Reminders of sex and death are death are everywhere, whether it's the nude Hercules and limbless Venus in the museum, the skulls in the crypt, or the bodies of ancient Pompeiians being excavated from their volcanic mausoleum. Faced with the precariousness of human existence, the couple are compelled to re-evaluate their own lives and relationship.

Despite its narrative flaws I felt motivated to watch the disc a second time and it's grown on me since.

The key players certainly deliver, especially Woody Harrelson as the mobster and Christopher Walken as the dog-kidnapper with a sinister past, but the Colin Farrell character - a borderline alcoholic writer struggling for inspiration - seemed bland and stereotyped, overshadowed by the other male leads, and nothing like as memorable as the suicidal hit-man Ray of In Bruges. Of the stories-within-stories, two of the three were quite weak (and there were only 3 not 7 as I was expecting) and were not really about psychopaths at all, just vengeful obsessives.

The action and situations often feel too much like an unironic mash-up of early Coen Brothers and Tarantino movies, although lacking their tautness and memorable dialogue. But this slightly clunky attempt at fusing genres - action, neo-noir, farce - does at least deliver a funny and macabre twist at the end.

Altogether it is moderately entertaining but if you've seen In Bruges, don't get your hopes up too high.

Father James is a compassionate, liberal-minded priest who, we learn, took ordination in later life after being widowed. Sadly, the parish in which he finds himself is one in which cynicism and duplicity abound. Many members of the community still attend Mass, but outside of church they are openly contemptuous of the priesthood and seem to take perverse satisfaction in antagonising him and trying to undermine his faith. One day in confession, a male parishioner recounts - in uncompromising detail - his experiences of childhood rape at the hands of a priest. The perpetrator is dead, but as a means of retribution against the Church he intends to kill Father James, who he instructs to meet him on the beach in a week's time.

Over the next few days, the Father goes about his parochial duties as normally as possible. Among the people he tries to help are a former banker whose opulent lifestyle has left him feeling hollow, a gauche sexually-frustrated young man who is contemplating joining the army, and, improbably, a teenage serial killer who claims to be seeking redemption.

The dramatic tension inherent in this simple idea is exploited to the maximum by J.M. McDonough and the cast. It is highly atmospheric, the camerawork consisting of mostly tightly composed shots, with close-ups of Brendan Gleeson's face at crucial moments in the story and occasional menacing aerial shots of the famous flat-topped mountain that overlooks the village, and without any intrusive music. We are kept guessing until very late the course of action that Father James will choose - flee, go to the police, passively accept his fate or even defend himself with a pistol he has unlawfully acquired. He is a conscientious man but flawed enough for us to relate to. Towards the end he struggles to maintain his dignity and sobriety in the face of his death sentence and the increasing hostility he faces from the community.

Some may find the eccentric characters and understated dark humour to be at odds with the grim subject matter, and I personally thought the hospital morgue scene with Teresa (Marie-Josee Croze) was misjudged - she seems far too calm and rational for someone who's just lost her family in a road accident.

But all in all I found this a very brave and original piece, and one of the most powerful films of the year.

A truly majestic viewing experience - especially if you're lucky enough, as I was, enough to catch a one-off big screen showing - thanks to gorgeous set design, expert use of light and shade, and the ingenious tracking shots giving the viewer a sense of involvement in the story.

Often labelled a "weepie", this hardly sums it up for me. Lisa's infatuation with the dissolute, womanising Stefan may be reprehensible but there's nothing maudlin about it. She is completely ruthless and single-minded about pursuing the object of her desire, at the expense of scandalising her mother and father in law, and later, catastrophically affecting the lives of other people around her.

During Lisa and Stefan's night together, we sense a growing intimacy between them and a feeling that perhaps they are meant to be together - but is it all an illusion? Stefan disappears from Lisa's life with no explanation. At a chance meeting 10 years on, he seems dejected, vulnerable and needy. Is Stefan really just a heartless Lothario who feigns affection when it suits him? Is he confused about what he wants from life? Does he even hate himself?

A few things have changed since the Fin de Siecle epoch that the film brings to life - typhus has been vanquished for a start - but I felt there was something oddly contemporary about the depiction of a rootless, ephemeral world in which trust and genuineness have gone out of the window.

You could fault it on plot development - in particular, it skates over how Lisa coped in the early years of being a single parent with no family support and before the Welfare State - and it might lose some of its impact on the small screen, but with these caveats I'm awarding it 5 stars.

Troll 2 has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made in the horror genre, so I pressed "play" with modest expectations. There are indeed many plot inconsistencies, it isn't even momentarily scary, and "shoddy" does even not begin to describe the effects and production values.

But for all this it is an entertaining and original story. I can't think of many other films where the main characters face strict vegetarians as their adversaries. This turns out to be one of the monsters' key vulnerabilities as they loathe even contact with blood and will engage in hand-to-hand combat only as a last resort. Joshua's deceased grandpa appears to him now and again to advise him on how to protect his family from the creatures (they're called Goblins in the film, not trolls). He even has some miraculous powers which he occasionally uses against the chlorophyll-consuming villains but Joshua has to make some drastic decisions on his own when his unsuspecting parents are about to be poisoned.

And it really does deliver laughs - yes, sometimes in a "so good that it's bad" sort of way, but quite often it's meant to be funny and genuinely is.

Judging it for what it is - a camp low-budget comedy horror - it would be worth a 7 on a 1 to 10 scale, but I'm rounding the score down on account of the disgracefully lazy special effects. I can tolerate the fact that the goblin costumes look as if they're made of starched brown canvas, but in the scenes where people are "vegetablised" after eating the tainted food, it seems the best contrivance they could come up with was alabaster shop mannequin slathered in green hair gel! Effects like this don't even deserve the name "special"!

I'm also a little puzzled by the 18 certificate - there's really nothing in this I wouldn't let the average 12 year old watch.