Film Reviews by GI

This is a powerful drama about trauma and identity, it has an eerie feel as it moves from melodrama to thriller. At first this appears to be a film about loneliness and past regrets as it follows Julie (Ann Skelly), a young veterinary student who has discovered she is adopted. She has found her birth mother is Ellen (Oral Brady), a successful TV actor, but Ellen instinctively rebuffs Julie eventually revealing that there's a dark reason for this. But Julie is persistent forcing Ellen to confront her painful past. Julie finally learns who her real father is and tracks him down by pretending to be Julie (her birth name). Eventually this bringing the past back into the present forcing all of them to confront their relationship with each other. The film nicely balances thriller with real world drama in an atmospheric film that draws you in. A suspense film that deals with some very real issues and it's very good indeed.

A tender, beautifully played film that could have been mawkish but manages, due to the fantastic performances, to be an intimate and sad drama about the love of a father for his young son. James Norton is John, a window cleaner and single father to his toddler Michael (Daniel Lamont). John is dying of brain cancer and with no family is desperately trying to find a suitable family to look after Michael when he's gone. Social Services are helping him but John's also desperately trying to shield Michael from the reality of the situation. Norton's performance has real depth and empathy, he nicely underplays it avoiding the trap of cliché. Daniel Lamont as little Michael is a natural. Admittedly some of the prospective new parents that John sees are a bit cartoonishly awful but overall this is a remarkable story of a selfless parent desperate to give his son the very best life. A quite lovely film.

From the use of the score of Magnum Force (1973) you can tell right from the outset this violent action thriller is homaging the shoot em up films of the 70s. Apart from Dirty Harry there's some John Carpenter on show here too. It's all hyper gunplay and extreme characters that battle it out in a small town police station. An 'on the run from the Mob' conman, Teddy (Frank Grillo) gets himself arrested by exuberant young police officer Valerie (Alexis Louder) thinking jail is the safest place. But he hasn't banked on contract killer Bob (Gerard Butler) doing the same thing in order to kill him. The trouble starts when a rival bad guy shows up and one of the cops is on his payroll. This cues lots of shooting and violence inside the police station. No one can be trusted of course and you're never fully sure who the real baddies are. If you like this sort of thing it'll help pass a couple of hours but it's hardly very original and Butler needs to find something far more interesting than just these violent actioners.  

The film that has been described as the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made and it's still often thought of or mistaken for an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Director Stanley Donen created a neat, humorous and light hearted, twist and turn plot thriller with the ever suave Cary Grant and the delicious Audrey Hepburn. She plays Reggie, a naïve socialite who is left penniless and stranded in Paris when her husband is found dead. The police suspect her of being involved in his death and soon three mysterious men begin hassling her claiming she knows the whereabouts of $250,000 her husband has stolen from them. She is helped by the handsome Peter (Grant) whom she meets by chance and Bartholomew, a CIA agent (Walter Matthau). But no-one seems to be who they say they are. The story rattles along, it's charming, funny but with some very dark edges not least the opening scene of Reggie's husband's death. Grant switches between malevolence and playboy giving his role some real depth and he and Hepburn have great screen chemistry. With James Coburn and the great George Kennedy as bad guys this remains a film that is highly entertaining.

Goldfinger (1964) is often considered Sean Connery's best Bond film, his third. Skyfall will no doubt be Daniel Craig's most revered outing as the iconic British agent, also his third film. It's certainly a highly entertaining action adventure furthering Craig's emotionally damaged take on the role with 007's drive mixed with his self doubt and focused on the only meaningful relationship he has with the matriarchal M played superbly by Judi Dench. The film has everything you want in a Bond film, it's a globe trotting plot with a deformed and warped baddie in the guise of Javier Bardem playing Silva. There's some really breathtaking chases sequences from the get go and the script is clever and brings in pieces of Bond's history, not only from the novels but also from the earlier films, even the iconic Aston Martin DB5 is dusted off. When a mission in Turkey goes awry James Bond is presumed dead. Then when MI6 is attacked and there seems to be a plot to assassinate M 007 reappears to help track down a former British agent who is intent on revenge for being abandoned years earlier. Albert Finney makes an appearance in the film's gritty final battle scenes and Ben Whishaw is the new Q and Naomie Harris the new Moneypenny. The Craig Bond films have been a classic reboot of what had become a tired franchise and with the films now having a consistent link with one another there is a great story beyond the story in the actual film. This is a first class piece of action entertainment and definitely a film to enjoy time and time again. Everyone has their favourite Bond but sometimes it's just good to sit back and enjoy them for what they do as individual films. This one ticks all the boxes.

The fifth Carry On film has the usual ensemble cast led this time by Sid James but it is structurally just a series of sketches of differing lengths bound together by the story of an odd job agency. This is run by Bert (James) and called Helping Hands. It employs the usual bunch of hapless characters who get into a variety of scrapes carrying out the tasks that the agency has been employed to do. Some of the sketches are very funny, others a bit silly and the final one is simple slapstick comedy. What makes this an interesting British comedy is that it deals with social issues including unemployment, women's status in the workplace, addiction to smoking and the British attitude to foreigners. All very relevant for the early 60s and still relevant today! The usual regular cast are present including Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims and Charles Hawtrey. Hattie Jacques has a smaller role than in the previous films as she'd been ill before production started and Liz Fraser, who appeared in some of the later films, replaced Shirley Eaton as the glamorous character. Again this film gives a shot of nostalgia for Britain in the 1960s and it remains a genuinely funny British comedy. If you are a fan then this is a worthy addition to the Carry On series and worth checking out. These early carry Ons deserve rediscovery.

A thoroughly over-the-top action thriller and exactly the sort of thing you expect from director Michael Bay. And yet it's simply great fun and entertaining if at times downright silly. It is certainly hi-octane from the opening car chase in Florence to the climax and as expected with bay it's an ode to weaponry and gunplay. Basically this is Bay harnessing the Mission Impossible franchise into his own take with added humour courtesy of Ryan Reynolds who plays the leader of a team of experts all with complex pasts they have left behind to become the righters or wrongs. They've even given up their names so Number 1 (Reynolds), who appears to have bankrolled the whole arrangement, has gathered together a team with various skills mostly to do with combat. His Number 2 (Mélanie Laurent) being the beautiful assassin type. In short they plan to depose a nasty tyrant who keeps killing his own people and replace him with his more caring brother but first have to rescue said brother. It all carries on with a bit of globetrotting and luxury locations, lots of explosions, and whilst some of it is a bit surreal it is definitely a real blast to watch. One of those pure action entertainment films and nothing more aided by Reynolds comedy persona.

A tough and uncompromising story of the destruction of morality caused by war. Hailed by Quentin Tarantino as one of the greatest Vietnam war films it tells the story of a five man patrol, all young men, led by Sergeant Meserve (Sean Penn), who kidnap a young Vietnamese farm girl from her home, take her into the bush where they rape and murder her. One of the men, Pfc Eriksson (Michael J. Fox), refuses to participate and is threatened by the others particularly Meserve. When they return to base Ericsson is determined to get justice for the girl but finds his senior officers just want to bury the incident. Supposedly based on real events this is a moving and frightening film with realistic combat and at its centre a vicious crime. As a story of how war, and in particular the Vietnam War, erodes emotional stability and destroys innocence in the young men sent to fight it is unparalleled. This is mostly embodied in the character of Meserve, a 20 year old NCO who has lost all sense of moral boundary, although Penn's portrayal is so scary that you can read that he was potentially capable of such crimes before being exposed to the horror of war. Penn captures his psychotic nature and his deep rooted cowardice in a very nuanced performance and Fox is excellent in a serious role that he nails perfectly. This is a film about brutality and of one man standing against many to do what's right. It has often been overshadowed by more celebrated Vietnam films such as Platoon (1986) and Full Metal Jacket (1987) but it deserves it's place as a key film about a war that America is still trying to come to terms with. A must see film.

An interesting variation on the theme of 'Are we alone in the Universe?' although here it's not aliens but the idea of multiverses. The idea is certainly clever but such a shame that the character motivations are firmly grounded in the materialistic, entitled world of the 21st century. Four friends living in an old rented house discover in the attic a portal that allows access to an alternate Universe. There everything is the same with little deviations which allows the four to exploit artistic and technological developments in the alternate world by making money in their real world. This all develops into greed and eventually murder and there's guns and violence. What a shame that the centre of the narrative becomes all about money rather than exploration. This turns the film into a fairly routine thriller with a degree of complexity, indeed keeping track of who's in which universe can tax the brain on occasion. Average stuff.

Routine action thriller in the cycle of deadly female assassins films. It's all fights and bloody shootouts with a revenge narrative. Maggie Q plays Anna, a Vietnamese woman trained from childhood to be an international contract killer by Moody (Samuel L. Jackson) after he rescued her from the massacre of her family. When he is killed Anna vows revenge and sets off on the rampage. There's plot twists and general mayhem all presented with fast direction courtesy of veteran action master Martin Campbell. There's nothing subtle about it and it doesn't offer anything fresh or particularly interesting. Michael Keaton adds some flair as a sort of bad guy and Robert Patrick supports. The fights are typically tough and Bournesque and the gunplay very 'John Wick'. Entertaining as far as it goes but instantly forgettable.

As adaptations of John Le Carré novels go this is slightly disappointing. It's more a character piece that doesn't really get into the characters deep enough to draw you in and then it attempts some thriller style action which is a bit half hearted too. Overall it's an entertaining film that is very watchable and has a decent, if a little preposterous, story. Perry (Ewan McGregor), a university lecturer and Gail (Naomie Harris), a successful barrister, are on holiday in Morocco attempting to save their failing marriage when they're befriended by Dima (Stellan Skarsgård), a big Russian gangster, who slips Perry a computer flash drive urging him to hand it to MI6 on his return home. Dima wants protection in return for information on corrupt British politicians and MI6 man Hector (Damian Lewis) is all ears but faces internal problems getting Dima's demands agreed and adding to the problems Dima will only trust Perry and Gail, who are forced into a very dangerous situation. A basic story of the Mr Normal getting caught up in espionage and political shenanigans. The plot has holes galore and some of it makes little sense but it's a globetrotting tale told with panache and the cast are good.

With the wisdom of hindsight this first 007 outing for Daniel Craig neatly sets up the series that followed. A wise decision to reboot the Bond franchise which had become tired and clichéd and to create an origin story of a sorts. From the black & white filmed prologue the film marks itself as a more serious action film and a turn away from the comic book style that the films had drifted into. Craig is not a naturally handsome man and so the smoothness of the character embodied by Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan for example was abandoned and replaced with a more ruthless version of the character. No longer the playboy but a man from more humble beginnings trained to play a violent part. And quite violent this film is too. To catch up with the action defining Bourne series this Bond is grittier and bloodier. The action if full on from the get-go with the fight scenes realistic and tough and of course there's a controversial torture scene. James Bond is an MI6 agent who is promoted to the 00 section after committing two officially sanctioned kills. The MI6 boss, M (Judi Dench) becomes disillusioned by Bond's gung-ho attitude but is assigned to play in a huge poker game against Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), a banker to the world's terrorists and beat him so he will defect. But there's a traitor involved. The producers here have returned to the source novel, in fact the first Bond book, and the story does, in general, follow the book quite closely. The decision to have Dench return as M is a wise choice linking the film to the franchise and bringing in recognisable 007 tropes such as the Aston Martin DB5 and helps ground the film with the films that went before. The addition of Jeffrey Wright as CIA man Felix Leiter and Eva Green as the love interest make for a great Bond film, arguably Craig's best....maybe.

Buddy movie, road movie and social drama with loads of humour, romance and a heart warming story that avoids being soppy and manages to hit all the right notes. It tells the story of Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Down's syndrome who is stuck in a care home for the elderly as the State has no other facilities suitable for him. He dreams of being a wrestler and endlessly watches a video of his hero 'Salt Water Redneck'. One night he slips out of the home intent on going to the wrestling school run by his hero. On the road he meets Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), a down-on-his-luck poacher on the run from some nasty rival fishermen. Reluctantly at first Tyler agrees to help Zak and of course they form a bond as Tyler sees in Zak his inner intelligence and desire to enjoy life. This is a really lovely film, a delight from beginning to end, with LaBeouf giving a warm, gentle and vulnerable performance. He's assisted here by the onscreen chemistry with Gottsagen and aided by Dakota Johnson as Zak's carer who goes looking for him. Bruce Dern and Thomas Haden Church have great little cameos too. This is one of those little films that surprises you because it is well written, well directed and performed and has one of those genuinely wonderful stories. Highly recommended.

A ludicrous film but presented with panache and with an exemplary cast. When you add up all the ingredients here you have to wonder at what it's all trying to say. Essentially this is a siege thriller based in a South American country. A rich industrialist holds a party in his mansion essentially to convince visiting Japanese entrepreneur Mr Hosokawa (Ken Watanabe) to build a factory there. The President of the country is invited and international opera singer Roxanne Coss (Julianne Moore) has been booked to perform. In the event the President fails to show and Hosokawa only attends because he is a huge fan of Roxanne. Then the whole party gets taken over by a group of paramilitary terrorists who are mightily disappointed by the President's absence. This all happens in the first twenty mins or so and then the film settles into a long rather boring film where everyone sort of falls for everyone else, friendships are made between terrorists and hostages etc etc until eventually the military storm in and shoot a few people. By the time of the climax you'll have had enough and just to annoy you further there's a ridiculous coda to sit through. A soulless film with the cast attempting to hold it all together. Sebastian Koch is wasted as a UN negotiator, he basically does nothing. And a very strange looking Christopher Lambert is a hostage. A daft idea and a daft film.

Jeremy Irons is great as Neville Chamberlain in this historical espionage drama that I otherwise found rather boring and somewhat annoying. Set around the famous Munich treaty between Chamberlain and Hitler (Ulrich Matthes) it's the story of two old Oxford buddies, Hugh (George MacKay), now the Prime Minister's private secretary and Paul (Jannis Niewöhner), a German who is a translator for Hitler and trying to expose the Nazi regime to the British. The plot centres around a secret document that Paul gives to Hugh and that MI6 want. It's all totally illogical as these two amateurs, with no training and no proper instructions faff around looking suspicious beyond belief. Hugh even puts the secret document in his hotel room drawer for goodness sake! MacKay, usually so good, does a lot of nail biting and fretting and of course there's a facially scarred Nazi getting very nosy about them. History is rewritten to suppose that Chamberlain had a cunning plan all along in his appeasement policy towards Hitler and that he knew war was inevitable. Utter nonsense. The women characters are given very little to do and the threat level never rises above a degree or two, you're more likely to groan at the stupidity of the two main protagonists. Oh and Hitler was never that thin! A big disappointment.