Film Reviews by AER

An interesting heist movie set in Las Vegas, this sees Nicolas Cage playing a cop who is in charge of the evidence locker for the LVPD. His friend Elijah Wood is a meek, depressed detective - they seem an unlikely duo to pull off a robbery when they uncover a stash of loot in the suburbs. Both actors embody great roles and as the film develops their characters come to the fore. What at first looks like a low-key comedy turns into a bleak tragedy. This is a reminder of how good Nicolas Cage used to be, and Elijah Wood as brilliant as ever. Recommended if you like low-key crime dramas, this was interesting and entertaining crime diversion. Loved it.

Elevated by a great script and fabulous central performance from Renee Zellweger, this was a very pleasant surprise. I had wrongly dismissed this as just another stodgy British movie based on fact like Darkest Hour where facts and history are manipulated for dramatic speed. JUDY is occasionally guilty of this, by continuously shoehorning a gay couple into the narrative is a mistake that undoes some subtle work early on. Why there were only two gay characters in it, I wonder, and why the makers chose to overegg this element of the film is a mystery. However, a few missteps do little to distract from the fact that this is one of the strongest music biopics to emerge from the UK in a very long time. Renee Zellweger has never been better and she's matched by the young actress that plays her in the flashbacks. The supporting cast is solid but largely unmemorable except for Richard Cordery as Louis B Mayer - he is chilling and his role served by an electric script. It's a really good, involving film with a beating heart and one-hell of central performance. It's a shame about the insubtle way they seem to have added in a pair of cartoon homosexuals - more care should have been taken - but overlook this aspect and we're all good. Superb.

Andrew Gilbert's second feature after The Dead Inside has to be commended for its ambition and scale. The locations are great as well but that's where the good aspects start and end. The acting, script and plot are all thin, basic, surface and reminiscent of 1980/90s British soap operas like Eldorado and Family Affairs. It's a painful 2.5 hour slog that offers little-else but tired tropes, repetitive poorly choreographed action scenes and characters with basic motives. This badly wants to be The Warriors but it's a thin replica without any ideas of its own. This film is a right-wing fantasy and not much else can be said. Avoid.

This film revolves around the conceit that if you have enough talent people will just give you opportunities even if you are a bit of a no-hoper. Supporting characters literally bend over backwards to help the main guy in this film achieve his long-lost dream of being a snooker pro. In terms soapy, melodramatic and cliched, fans of predictable films will love seeing something they've seen 500 times before. The acting is OK, but ultimately, Break is too boring and ordinary to convince - and the main character won't impress anybody unless they to think that the keys to the kingdom should be handed to them on a plate. Dull.

Everything is writ large in the unsubtle Australian movie notable for the presence of a young Mel Gibson in the lead role as Tim. Every emotion is telegraphed by the biggest orchestra this side of Ben Hur. You will emote gatdammit. Perhaps its dated too much but this was too syrupy, too corny and too basic to appeal. Sorry.

Takeshi Kitano's 5th cartoon is madcap sex comedy that becomes wildly incoherent and unfunny around the 1 hour mark. I am a Kitano fan but he's a wildly erratic filmmaker and this is perhaps the worst one of his films I've seen so far. A friend kept on asking me over the years if I've seen it because I am a massive fan of Sonatine, Hana Bi and Zatoichi, so now I can tell him that I have. That's the only benefit. So, there's laughs to be had early on but this runs out of ideas and over stays it's welcome by an hour.

Fantastic cinematography and fantastic dance choreography, accompanied with stunning Santiago locations cannot bring this film to life. A very interesting story is lost due to some very frustrating decisions by the director to fragment the story and keep the narrative largely cloaked. It was an unwelcome distraction to try and put the pieces together in what would have been a relatively straight-forward yet very interesting story. A misfire for Larrain this time. I've only seen Larrain's Jackie and that's magnificent. I'm going to watch No and Neruda this director has certainly got me intrigued. More story with your beautiful visuals next time - I wish he'd had more faith in his material to let the tale be told straight.

Complex characters and some career best performances mark this 90s Australian drama out as something very special indeed. The three brothers are reuinited when the bad breed of the trio returns to the fold after a year in jail for GBH. The pecking order is re-established as the eldest goes about bullying his younger brothers and everyone around him through intimidation and cajolery. David Wenham has never been as good and you can see why his career took after this. Astonishing performances from Lynette Curran and Toni Collette as the tough women who live in their world. The ending contains one of the coldest, most icy endings I know - I couldn't bear to watch at times, but I was glued. Not for everyone, as this is relentlessly bleak and unimaginably sad and tragic. Jon Polson and Anthony Hayes are also superb as the two other brothers. I saw this on release and was glad I caught up with it again. It has really retained its power.

Weird bit of trivia - Director Rowan Woods went on to be one of the chief creators / series directors of TV's Farscape.

Initially intriguing, this relatively straightforward horror film delivers where it counts. It gives up trying to be inventive after the first hour but I loved seeing a wrote horror film that's been made with real care. See this for the poised performances from a cast of unknowns led by the director Shane Carruth. Supreme.

OUR TIME. This epic Mexican film directed and starring Carlos Reygadas comes highly recommended. Beautifully filmed and inventive too, I've never seen another film quite like it. It tells the story of a bull rancher/poet and his wife, whose open marriage flounders when she falls in love with one of her extra-maritals and keeps it a secret from her husband. But there's so much more at play in Our Time. Complex, visually stunning, toxic, infuriating, very moving and very impressive, I've never seen a film like this. It's so authentic and immersive. The footage of bulls fighting each other in a mist covered field, children playing games in a drought inflicted lake, a shot from the undercarriage of a taxiing aeroplane, raw and difficult scenes of male toxicity - this was a truly unique watch. Has anybody scene it? It came out on cinemas last year but didn't play at my local arthouse cinema.

I don't mind the Blumhouse horror brand but The Nun has to be the worst I've seen by some distance. Repetitive jumpscares, bad characterisation and a predictable plot make The Nun a bit of a dud. The CGI is OTT and the scares non-existant - other films in The Conjuring universe of related movies are a lot better than this one. It's a struggle to get through - I felt sorry for the French guy called 'Frenchie' - you will have seen more realistic French people on Allo Allo - all he had missing was a beret, a Pepe Le Pew moustache and a string of onions around his neck. Shame, as the trailer was intriguing.

Charmless, cgi soup, an I doubt anybody actually bothered to read the story of King Arthur. This is the worst Guy Ritchie film by a long-chalk. Good actors in it for the pay check deliver wooden performances, spout terrible lines and look bored. But not as bored as I was. This made Uwe Boll's In The Name of the King look awesome and that's saying something. Awful in every department. Avoid, please.

I’ve seen f88k awful films from Wales, Ireland, and England (mainly Essex) but Scotland (up until now) have come out ahead. Somehow Attack of the Herbals has escaped my attention and I like to watch British and Irish movies… This sorry horror-comedy is unfunny, badly acted and fairly unimaginative.

A crate of Nazi tea washes up in a crate at a remote Scottish village decades later. It stayed waterproof! When some dopey morons decide to sell the tea to the locals in a get rich quick scheme to save the post office from an evil property developer, little did they know that after drinking it the villagers would turn into zzzzzombies.

This is retrograde sixth form project made by people who thought that Shaun of the Dead would be a doddle to remake. The amateur cast struggle and literally die on camera, struggling with the shoddy script and plodding plot, which witholds the carnage for a very long, very unfunny 60 minutes or so. The only thing worse than a boring horror, is a boring and unfunny horror-comedy. This was a waste of time.

This registers some point because the sound, the camera work, the special effects worked, editing as they should. But this was far from entertaining.

this everso slight comedy has a melancholy core - it's a shame that the production design and the tone are wildly uneven. The drama of a missing son and brother is actually quite potent and the storyline very inventive. yet the decision to focus on the comedy aspect and for the makers to hedge their bets at making this an English answer to Wes Anderson derails many of its good intentions. Shame as overall, I liked it. It's very funny if you can ignore the slighty ropey Scouse accents all over the place?

This a curio for fans of Horror film actor, Tony Todd, who broke stereotypes to appear in the French family drama. His role amounts to little except for the object of desire for a troubled mother of a two-year-old who is going through a rocky patch with her husband. Troubled by her lack of life options when her husband suggests having a second child, Marie takes a lover, a strange American who is house-sitting for his friend. The drama plods along at a steady pace and this is a standard Parisian set character drama that doesn't really distinguish itself from the pack except for the very strange casting of Tony Todd. He's fairly good but his role is thin as his Bill West isn't all that interested in talking about his life. I wonder how he got the job - it's certainly a wild card, and it wouldn't appeal to 95% of his fanbase.