Top 5 Best and Worst Movies Of 2015

Another year pinched off from our collective backside and therefore we must suffer the inevitable splash of cold water upon the buttocks that is the top and bottom 5, before we can reach for the toilet paper of moving on with our lives. I will say, only movies I have seen personally are in the running. That’s my insurance policy against people demanding to know why I haven’t bowed towards the East, and chanted “Hail Indie Out.!” the minimum number of times.

Just to digress for a moment, it was cunning of Inside Out to include the idea of emotions, because I’m only really interested in movies that have some kind of narrative design and interesting characters and that aren’t interactive toy shop windows for people who couldn’t leave their comfort zone if it was in the path of a herd of charging wildebeest. But now it’s time to get out your betting slips, 'cause it’s time to make like Sesame Street and learn how to count to five!

Fifth Best:

Speaking of refusing to leave a comfort zone, our fifth best movie wears nostalgia like crispy duck wears a pancake. But in this case, it’s actually managing to capture the spirit and movie style of retro-action adventure, not say, parading a bunch of geriatric characters before us in sparkly costumes in the hope we’ll start throwing money and underpants: it’s Mad Max Fury Road! Keeps everything interesting with a very basic story and great action, plus I thought it was integral to put it somewhere on this list as everyone else seems to be doing so also.

Fifth Worst:

An attempt at comedy that falls flat is the basic unit of raw despair. A movie that unfailingly produces one every five seconds is officially worse than being held hostage by Somalian pirates. Surprisingly, I’m not talking about Vacation (which at least had some fun writing, as long as you keep the TV on mute), but Mortdecai - a movie that utterly and completely failed at comedy, action, entertainment, movie design and getting out of the way of my gun!

Fourth best:

You know, the more I look back on Spectre, the less I think of it, at least compared to Skyfall. The set pieces don't feel like vast cohesive wholes, the writing isn't great, some of the theme song was aggressively boring, and characters just don't have the same grim despair-fueled spark, none of which changes the fact that I watched the movie like three times this year, so I’m putting it in fourth, mainly because it’s far too late to give any awards to Skyfall. That ship has sailed, realised it's forgot its keys, come back, then sailed again.

Fourth Worst:

It’s said of course, that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. A popular if untrue saying, and a guideline that the wachowski brothers should've bore in mind before they passed around the ether-soaked rags and made Jupiter Ascending. I did hesitate a little to stick in the bottom five a movie I’m pretty sure I didn’t see and wasn’t for me, but then I tried to picture someone who it was for and did get it, and then that they were introduced as my future daughter in-law, and then I pictured myself chasing them across the croquet lawn with an elephant gun.

Third Best:

You know me; I don’t think it’s a good year unless I’ve lost at least one piece of furniture to a movie that makes me cack my pants with the force of a shotgun blast. I thought triple-A movies had forgotten how to effectively pace themselves and build atmosphere, but Marvel’s Ant-Man means my sofa can’t get complacent just yet. Linear plot's self-explanatory and the protagonist's very likeable and since that seems to be the running theme of this top 5, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. What do you want from me? This wasn’t exactly a 2014-grade year.

Third Worst:

There was a time when I would have been more hesitant about putting movie franchise spin-offs into a bottom five, as most of them only exist because someone needed to fill a space next to a film and they would of filled the space with cakes of mulchy feces, if they thought that would turn a profit. But then again, that’s hardly an attitude exclusive to movie spinoffs these days, and if a movie in my top 3 can be a movie spin-off, then there are still good people out there! Not on Point Break’s development team, however! Half of whom didn’t give a crap, while the other half lived in the office fish tank!

Second Best:

I like Star Wars as you know. I wouldn’t go so as far as to petition to rename new year’s day “Hooray for Star Wars!” but I will take the opportunity to big up movies that fly the same flag, that ending the lives of endless streams of thinking, feeling human beings of varying moral character is, while entertaining, slightly grim. And that’s what I liked about Star Wars: The Force Awakens - you can almost feel the crushing weight that sits upon the shoulders of its engaging characters, but it doesn’t take itself so seriously that we can’t spend an hour or so killing space Nazis on the moon. Yes, you heard me right, I said, "killing face Yahtzees with a spoon".

Second Worst:

Well, this is about as late an entry as late gets, but you really would be hard-pressed to find worse than one of the first movies I reviewed. I say “reviewed”, perhaps the better word would be, “autopsied”. Terrible Acting, Horrendous Visuals and with dialogue as irritating as chicken wire across the plums, Fantastic Four can die in a hole. I’d think of a more roundabout way of saying that, but I refuse to put more effort in than the writers did.

First Best:

Oh, how I ummed. Oh, how I ahhed. Ah, how I ohhed between this and Star Wars. Like I said, it wasn’t as good as last year. There were only few movies that made me go: “Yes! All of this! In my face!" Eventually, I decided that the top spot is a place for the most interesting movie, if not the unqualified best one. So while Ridley Scott has directed some questionable movies over the past few years, he’s finally found his footing again with the innovative and yet deceptively-simple organic storytelling mechanics of The Martian -yeah, just dropping the name like it ain’t no thing.

First Worst:

And similarly, the worst movie needn’t necessarily be the most objectively badly-made or frustrating one, but the movie with the worst intentions. Fantastic Four and Point Break feel like the writers were all wearing oven-mitts, but a movie that has every advantage in the world and then calmly, decisively and deliberately puts its todger in a saucepan full of hot bleach is somehow orders of magnitude worse: It’s Fifty Shades Of Grey! I will never understand the logic behind movies based off bestselling novels: “Here’s this book people seem to like, primarily for its uniqueness, let's make it a movie and make it just like everything else! I see no reason why people could be anything less than delighted! Do you think my todger’s clean yet? I think the bellend's fallen off!”

Fifty Shades Of Grey - I don't get it. Why do women love this? It sounds awful.

If the figures are correct, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E. L. James, has been bought by more than a hundred million people, of whom only twenty million were under the impression that it was a paint catalogue. That leaves a solid eighty million or so who, upon reading sentences such as “He strokes his chin thoughtfully with his long, skilled fingers,” had to lie down for a while and let the creamy waves of ecstasy subside. Now, after an enticing buildup, which took to extreme lengths the art of the peekaboo, the film of the book is here.

Nothing has exercised the novel’s devotees—the Jamesians, as we must think of them—quite as much as the proper occupants of the central roles. Who could conceivably play Christian Grey, the awkward young billionaire with the extensive neckwear collection, let alone Anastasia Steele, the English-lit major who is also, as we gasp to learn, one of the leading virgins of Vancouver, Washington? Many combinations were suggested, my own preference being Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who made such a lovely couple in “The Prince of Tides,” but in the end the lucky winners were Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. Good choices, I reckon, especially Johnson, who, as the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, knows everything about predators who stare and swoop.

Ana, as she is usually called, first meets Christian Grey at Grey House, which is home to Grey Enterprises, in Seattle. (Don’t you adore rich men who hide themselves away?) She is there in lieu of her roommate, who was meant to interview Grey for the college newspaper but has fallen sick. Ana, ushered into his presence, stumbles first over the threshold and then over her words, but begins to melt as he expounds on his bountiful gifts. “I’ve always been good at people,” he says, as though people were Scrabble or squash. He is interested in “what motivates them—what incentivizes them.” Any woman should run a mile from a man who uses the verb “incentivize,” but things could have been worse, I guess. He could have said “monetize.” He also lends her a pencil, bearing the word “Grey,” the tip of which she rubs against her lip. Either she has a cold sore or these folks are getting ready to rumble.

Their next encounter comes at a hardware store, where Christian is stocking up on masking tape, cable ties, and rope. “You’re the complete serial killer,” Ana says. Now, there’s a thought. We know Ana reads Jane Austen, and here, for a second, she sounds like the heroine of “Northanger Abbey,” who is mocked for always assuming the worst, or, at any rate, the most gothically arousing. Also, Dornan is no stranger to wickedness; in “The Fall,” a BBC drama that shows on Netflix, he is a serial killer, armed with a rasping beard, his native Belfast accent, and roughly ten times the sexual allure that he projects in “Fifty Shades.” Could Ana’s fears be well founded? Is Christian a terminator? No. He is many things—a pianist, a pilot, a pervert, and a tremendous bore—but evil is not in his wardrobe. Ana asks casually if he is a “do-it-yourselfer.” That would explain a lot.

Christian, it transpires, has a private passion, the cause of what James calls “his odd I’ve-got-a-whopping-big-secret smile.” Down a corridor of his apartment, behind a locked door, lurks his Red Room. Lavishly stuffed with the tools of domestic torture, it is supposed to radiate a breathless lust, although the result looks more like a spread from House Beautiful. Here, within these crimson walls, our hero is free to express himself as a “dominant,” meaning not that he is the fifth tone of the diatonic scale, which really would be hot, but, rather, that he constrains and chastises women who wish to be treated thus. At least, that’s what he tells himself. Mostly, he sounds like your basic stalker: “I’m incapable of leaving you alone,” he informs Ana—a notion that appears to stimulate her, although it would easily warrant a call to 911. She succumbs, up to a point, but her recurring doubts lead Christian to dish up one of those crusty old no-means-yes propositions which feminism has battled for decades: “You want to leave? Your body tells me something different.” Pass the butt plug.

So how does the movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, stack up against the book? And what’s in it for non-Jamesians? Well, we lose Ana’s introduction to fellatio, set precariously in a bathtub; in a similar vein, we skip the breakfast that she shares with Christian at an International House of Pancakes. Above all, we are denied James’s personifications, which are so much livelier than her characters: “My sleepy subconscious has a final swipe at me.” “yes! My inner goddess is thrilled.” “no! my psyche screams.” Couldn’t someone have got Sarah Silverman to play the psyche?

On the other hand, the film, by dint of its simple competence—being largely well acted, not too long, and sombrely photographed, by Seamus McGarvey—has to be better than the novel. It could hardly be worse. No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth. There are poignant moments when the plainest of physical actions is left dangling beyond the reach of her prose: “I slice another piece of venison, holding it against my mouth.” The global appeal of the novel has led some fans to hallow it as a classic, but, with all due respect, it is not to be confused with “Madame Bovary.” Rather, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the kind of book that Madame Bovary would read. Yet we should not begrudge E. L. James her triumph, for she has, in her lumbering fashion, tapped into a truth that often eludes more elegant writers—that eternal disappointment, deep in the human heart, at the failure of our loved ones to acquire their own helipad.

Much of the novel’s fixation with style, or with the barrage of stuff that a sense of style can buy, is carried onto the screen. Where the money shots should be, we get shots of what money can provide. The subtle silk ties that adorned the paperback covers, and which somehow made it O.K., by a dazzling sleight of the publisher’s hand, to read soft pornography in public, are arrayed in the opening scene. Ana can barely move for Audis. Christian wows her with rides, first in his thunderous chopper and then in his smooth white glider, presumably praying that she won’t have seen Pierce Brosnan do the same in “The Thomas Crown Affair.” The only viewer, in fact, who may feel shortchanged by “Fifty Shades of Grey” is Liam Helmer, who is listed in the credits as “BDSM Technical Consultant.” Check out the Red Room: rack upon rack of cutting-edge bullwhips, a variety of high-end ass paddles, and more restraining cuffs than you can shake a stick at. And how much of this kit gets used? A mere fraction, and even then Christian, supposedly the maestro of pain, can do little more than brush his cat-o’-nine-tails over Ana’s flesh with a feathery backhand. He looks like Roger Federer, practicing gentle cross-court lobs at the net.

And there you have the problem with this film. It is gray with good taste—shade upon shade of muted naughtiness, daubed within the limits of the R rating. Think of it as the “Downton Abbey” of bondage, designed neither to menace nor to offend but purely to cosset the fatigued imagination. You get dirtier talk in most action movies, and more genitalia in a TED talk on Renaissance sculpture. True, Dakota Johnson does her best, and her semi-stifled giggles suggest that, unlike James, she can see the funny side of all this nonsense. When Christian, alarmed by Ana’s maidenhood, considers “rectifying the situation,” she replies, “I’m a situation?”—a sharp rejoinder, although if I were her I’d be much more worried about the rectifying. Even Johnson’s valiant performance, however, cannot pierce the gloom, or persuade her co-star to lighten up. He brings color to her cheeks, courtesy of mild slaps, but she brings no light to his spirit in return. He spends half the time badgering her about a contract that has been drawn up, in which she—“the Submissive”—must consent to his supremacy. Clauses and subsections are haggled over in such detail that one feels bound to ask: How much of a sex film can this be, given that the people most likely to be turned on by it are lawyers?

“Fifty Shades of Grey” was released in time for Valentine’s Day. That’s a bold move, since the film is not just unromantic but specifically anti-romantic; take your valentine along, by all means, but, be warned, it’ll be like watching “Rosemary’s Baby” at Christmas. Try holding hands as the hero taunts the rituals of sentiment, such as going out for dinner and a movie: “That’s not really my thing.” What his thing actually is, Lord knows, although, to judge by the importance that he attaches to grooming, regular feeding, and nicely buffed leather goods, my suspicion is that he doesn’t want a girlfriend at all. I know Mr. Grey’s whopping-big secret. He wants a pony.

Grade - F

Jupiter Ascending - Matrix try hard?

The great achievement of the Wachowskis’ 1999 The Matrix was that it brought cyberpunk to the screen only 15 years after it had peaked in science fiction literature. With Jupiter Ascending, they revert to the default of big screen sci-fi by using a panoply of awe-inspiring, cutting-edge special effects to deliver concepts pulp magazines had outgrown by 1935.

Like John Carter and Flash Gordon, heroine Jupiter Jones (a great comic-strip name) is whisked from a dull Earth populated by comedy Russians (played by the likes of Maria Doyle Kennedy and Jeremy Smith) to faraway planets run like Arabian Nights fantasy kingdoms. Decadent sibling tyrants are played as exquisitely camp by respectable British actors who relish raised eyebrows and model a succession of outfits that make the casts of Dune and The Fifth Element look underdressed. Despite stiff competition from molten-eyed Douglas Booth and Tuppence Middleton bathing in a tub of human goo, Eddie Redmayne triumphs as the most thinly-sliced outer space ham since Max von Sydow’s Ming the Merciless and even manages to make ponderous, thudding dialogue sound elegant.

At heart, it’s a loopy wish-fulfilment fantasy whereby a toilet cleaner turns out to be secret owner of Earth. After so many Luke-Harry-Frodo heroes’ journey franchises, it should be a bold stroke to make the Chosen One a princess – but Mila Kunis’s Jupiter is so utterly wet and ludicrously trusting she needs Channing Tatum’s huffy werewolf-with-flying-boots hero to rescue her from certain death every six minutes. The ridiculous love story is sadly more amusing than bizarre attempts at Terry Gilliam/Douglas Adams s-f comedy. Action set-pieces follow the Matrix sequel tradition of falling unscathed through miles of CGI explosions, though the early skirmishes – one featuring the way bees have an innate respect for the royal heroine – are at least exciting

Grade - C-

Mortdecai - Trying Too Hard To Be Funny

It’s hard to think of a way in which the experience of watching the new Johnny Depp film could be any worse, unless you returned home afterwards to discover that Depp himself had popped round while you were out and set fire to your house. This is comfortably the actor’s worst film since Alice in Wonderland, and even dedicated fans will find their hearts shrivelling up like week-old party balloons at its all-pervading air of clenched desperation.

David Koepp’s film, which is based on the half-forgotten Charlie Mortdecai comic novels by Kyril Bonfiglioli, is a psychotically unfunny art-heist romp in which a broke aristocrat (Depp) prances round England and California on the trail of a missing painting, while Jock Strapp (Paul Bettany), his Kato-like manservant, remains either a few steps behind or ahead.

Depp’s performance doesn’t go much further than a passable Terry-Thomas impression, and the film’s make-up artists have even given him a lascivious gap between his top front teeth, just to hammer the likeness home. But the film’s conception of jet-setting glamour and intrigue is pure Alan Partridge: thoroughbred horses, corduroy blazers and bikini-clad models tottering randomly across the set.

“Lucky saddle,” Mortdecai simpers when he spots Olivia Munn’s wealthy heiress cantering across the lawn of some bleached Los Angeles villa – which, if you missed the zinger about underage sex a few minutes earlier, tells you all you need to know about the extent of the film’s comic ambitions. Other jokes are effectively normal lines of dialogue read in a silly accent. During a car chase that seems to take place entirely on motorway exit ramps, Mortdecai ends up on the vehicle’s bonnet and shouts: “I’m on the bonnet!”

But other actors who really should have known better must share in Depp’s disgrace. Gwyneth Paltrow is all bum and teeth as Johanna, Mortdecai’s boringly glamorous wife, whose dislike of her husband’s moustache prompts a bewilderingly in-depth subplot, while Ewan McGregor all but walks around with his head in his hands in the straight man role of a police inspector who calls on Mortdecai to help track down the stolen portrait. Jeff Goldblum is also in it for a scene or two until his character gets shot, and part of you wonders if Goldblum pulled the trigger himself when he read the next page of the script.

What’s fascinating about the film, other than its early and near-impregnable status as the worst of 2015, are its superficial but nagging similarities to Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, a project to which Depp was once attached. Both films centre on fey but sexually rapacious men who belong to bygone eras, and both involve a missing art treasure. Perhaps in a parallel universe, Ralph Fiennes missed a train by a fraction of a second, and Depp is now the star of a tragicomic Academy Award nominated masterpiece, while Fiennes gropes co-stars half his age and jokes about statutory rape.

Grade - D-

Pixels - Standard Sandler Movie

Just like Back to the Future 2 predicted, here in 2015 we seem to be obsessed with nostalgia. It’s nowhere more obvious than in our movies, with some of the most (Jurassic World) and least (Terminator Genisys) successful films of the summer betting squarely on people’s love for looking backward.

Joining the chorus is the new Adam Sandler comedy Pixels. It’s been sold as a playful callback to arcade games of old, in which a team of video game experts are called upon to save the world when an alien race starts attacking Earth with creatures from ‘80s gaming classics. It’s such a bizarre set-up that before I saw it I started wondering if there wasn’t some other element that hadn’t yet been revealed. Nobody would actually make this movie unless there was a clever reversal or inspired twist, would they? There had to be something… right?

Anyone?

To begin with — and this is going to tell you a little bit about how terrible movies get made — Pixels began life as a short film. Patrick Jean released his movie in 2010, and the premise was nice and clean: somebody puts an old television out on the curb in New York, and magically, 8-bit computer graphics begin pouring out of the screen. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger: all of the original arcade hits start rampaging through Manhattan, turning everything they touch into pixelated blocks. Eventually an 8-bit bomb goes off, sending shockwaves throughout the city, and turning our planet itself into one massive, three-dimensional pixel.

As a metaphor it wasn’t exactly subtle, but it did exactly what a two-and-a-half-minute short should do: successfully execute a clever visual idea while giving the audience something to chew on. Adam Sandler’s production company, however, seemed to see feature film greatness in Jean’s movie, and snatched up the rights. Run the concept through the Sandler Movie Factory, and you get what’s hitting theaters now.

Sandler plays Sam Brenner, whose life was ruined as a teenager when he lost the 1982 worldwide arcade game championship. Cut to the present day, and he’s a Geek Squad-style TV installation guy who just happens to be best friends with the president of the United States (Kevin James, and no, I am not making this up). When a military base is attacked by huge creatures that look just like Galaga, Brenner is called to the White House to consult, and after teaming up with their other childhood friend Ludlow (Josh Gad), Brenner and the president realize what’s going on. An alien race has misinterpreted video game footage sent into space 30 years ago as a declaration of war, and has sent physical versions of those games to destroy humanity — and only Brenner and his team of misfits arcade gamers can save us.

As executed, it’s like Contact meets Armageddon meets sticking knives into my eyes, but what’s most frustrating is that, philosophically, the concept is actually intriguing. There’s something about the idea of our own recycled pop culture coming back to do us in that feels timely and unique, a meta commentary on the sad state of reboots and ultra-franchised everything. But that would require some daring, or at least some basic situational awareness, and Pixels can’t be bothered with either. Instead, it’s the kind of movie that’s emotionally tone-deaf enough to expect us to root for a hero that puts the moves on a recently split single mom while she’s drunk and crying (in her bedroom closet, no less), and thinks that leaving awkward empty pauses after random lines is the same thing as making a joke. And did I mention the gag about Q*bert peeing himself?

Now, if you’re one of the straggling Sandler defenders, let me clarify that I like dumb comedies. I even like many of Sandler’s dumb comedies. The actor hit upon a winning formula in the late ‘90s: take cookie-cutter story structure, plug in Sandler playing an idiot version of some common character, and let stupid things happen. It was fun, breezy, and it worked, and in odd cases like The Wedding Singer it worked so well that the movies actually seemed kind of, well, good. But even the most devoted fan will have to admit that in recent years Sandler’s been coasting (Grown Ups) if not flailing (That’s My Boy), and with Sony Pictures execs feeling increased animosity toward the star, it’s no surprise that he’s moving away from theatrical movies altogether.

A middle finger aimed right at the audience

But that’s not really the solution for him or audiences. One of the biggest problems with Hollywood is its slavish devotion to repeatable success — or more specifically, the illusion of repeatable success. If a formula worked once, studios are happy to cede control and crank it out again and again, even when it’s clear things are no longer working. And when you’re talking about a star whose very brand is built upon the idea of not giving a shit, you end up with Pixels — and the middle finger once directed at the establishment ends up aimed right at audiences instead.

If Netflix is creatively blank-checking Sandler, none of that is is going to change — but at least he’s moving to a place where he won’t have to worry about critical or commercial failure. I do wonder, though, what would an alien race, monitoring our movies and television, think of a planet that puts out something like Pixels as mass entertainment? Would they consider it a declaration of cultural war? Would they send emissaries down to smite us, wiping the slate clean — and would we deserve it?

Grade - F

The Forger - Forgery Of A Film

John Travolta has had quite the storied career, from being run over by Carrie to accidentally shooting Marvin’s face off in Pulp Fiction! And he was killed by a swordfish in Swordfish!…right? I’ve only seen Halle Berry’s uh performance from that film. But hey everybody loses their luster at some point. Not everything can be a winner. You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. I’m sorry I’m just trying to ease the pain when I say that Travolta’s latest vehicle The Forger is a FORGERY of a film! With Travolta’s terrible accent and wooden acting, a lifeless, dull, meandering plot, and an uncanny ability to make puppies cry, it appears director Phillip Martin just threw mud at the wall and called it art.

The film’s plot revolves around Travolta’s thief Ray Cutter’s release from prision. He’s asked to do a job copying a Monet painting for a shady gangster (Anson Mount). Also, Ray wants to spent time with his cancer-ridden son Will (Tye Sheridan), who has been in the care of Ray’s father Joseph (Christopher Plummer). There’s also something about a young police woman inexplicably played by an unrecognizable Abigail Spencer trying to track down Ray, or the gangster, or anybody really. She’s just super eager to arrest someone.

The Forger seems to be advertised as an action-thriller — in the first act, there’s a hint that that might actually be the case, with violence spread thick throughout. In fact, Ray, the sensitive painter-thief beats down an entire mob of goons just for some information. There’s whispers of a forthcoming heist that’s going to change everybody’s life. We see a gun or two. But it’s all a trap. We’ve been set up, double-crossed, we’ve been made everybody! The film grinds to a halt almost immediately. The plot moves slower than, you know, something slow. Like a slug or a worm on the sidewalk after it rains. I frequently checked the time to see how long until the heist, which I assumed would be in the third act. I was right, but boy, that was a disappointment. More on that in a moment.

I need to address the acting in this film. Travolta has adopted a Boston accent so bad that Mark Walhberg has officially threatened to make The Happenening 2: Happenin’ Again as punishment. In fact, everyone in this movie seems to be trying to do an accent, to varying degrees of success. It’s laughable to see the ebb and flow of Travolta’s enthusiasm for the accent throughout the film. Otherwise in the scenes of hamfisted drama or mild contemplation on behalf of Ray’s character, Travolta is simply just trying way too hard to emote and it comes off as forced. Plummer, however, knowing what a sham this film is, hams it up as an extremely cartoonish, drunken Irish grandpa. He’s the only bright spot in this brood-fest.

The plot, like I said, moves slowly. It meanders between shaky scenes of Travolta and Sheridan awkwardly becoming father-and-son through an adventure at the end of Will’s life. Will sets out to achieve three “wishes” before he passes. Ray assists him, along with painting the fake Monet, and brooding alone. The second act is consumed with the Ray-Will storyline, pushing the “heist” part of this heist film to the back-burner while we comically try to get Will laid. The tone shifts so often between dark and drear to lighthearted family romping to “thrilling” that it was hard to stay focused or get into the film at all.

Not helping is Martin’s idea to film the sole “action” scene of the film from a very awkward fly-on-the-wall long shot. While it’s technically a one-take fight scene that’s becoming more and more prevalent these days, the audience can’t see anything. Nothing. Travolta punches some people, they punch him, it’s definitely a fight, but thanks to the ridiculously low lighting and far away camera position, the audience doesn’t engage in the conflict whatsoever. Instead, we’re left to shrug and say “Hey, wow, Travolta’s so tough he beat up people I guess.” Very poor decision there.

The heist sequence is extraordinarily brief. It’s not even a third of the third act. They treat it like just another scene in the film, not attempting to add any more tension than they’ve had previously in the film already. There’s a ton of build up, obviously, to this going down, but we don’t see any actual planning of anything. The three plus Ray’s brother go in and steal and swap and… it’s done. Then the movie ends pretty soon afterward. So much for having an engaging, full plot. Let’s just have stuff happen and call it a movie.

There’s other storylines, but they’re tied up pretty quickly leaving the audience to focus solely on Ray’s immediate goings-ons. The core of the film is, I suppose, Ray’s “journey.” Only not much really seems to happen; even the characters all seem bored. In a tidy ending that the film did not deserve, one can only make the “:/” face in real life and exhale slowly. The film was dark, distant, cold, and unloving. There was no joy, not even the cynical performance from Plummer can make people crack half a smile. The Forger is bland, boring, and sad. I expect to find twenty copies of it at my local used media store next year.

Grade - D+

Tak3n - Easily one the dumbest titles I've seen

hey took his daughter. They took his ex-wife. They took him. Now they’re going to take his daughter (hang on, didn’t they do that already?) after doing something even worse to his ex-wife. But he will find them. And he will kill them. Again and again and again. While it may seem unreasonable to complain that a cynical “threequel” lacks originality, even leading man Liam Neeson looks bored beyond belief as he goes through the motions of hunting down evildoers, looking for all the world like an armed sleepwalker.

This time he finds himself framed for murder and must run around LA causing freeway pile-ups and random shoot-’em-ups until Inspector Franck Dotzler (Forest Whitaker, doing annoyingly “characterful” things with doughnuts and a rubber band) realises he’s innocent. As before, the ethnic strokes are broad, with bad guys easily identifiable by their funny accents, handy tattoos and terrible taste in tighty-whitey underpants.

There’s a “twist” of course, although it’s signposted so heavily that only those taking stupid pills could possibly be surprised. Texts are read out loud for the hard of thinking, dialogue is redubbed for the younger market(“Mummy, why did the man’s lips say ‘fucking’ when his voice said ‘screwing’?”) and Liam evades death in a manner that would have Kathy Bates screaming: “He didn’t get out of the cockadoodee car!” The tagline promises “It ends here” but the denouement keeps the door open for more. What next? Taken 4: Taken the Piss?

Grade - D

Compared to the first two entries, Taken 3 has in some ways matured and mellowed, with politically incorrect racial stereotypes that were flagrant in the earlier films no longer apparent this time around.

Spectre - taps into audience expectations

Having handled Skyfall, the 50th anniversary entry in the 007 series, Sam Mendes is back for Spectre, a direct sequel to the earlier film — a vital clue is found in the burned-out ruins of Skyfall, Bond’s childhood home — which also picks up story threads (and the odd character) from Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace and retcons Daniel Craig’s run as James Bond into one slightly wonky super-saga. Since it’s part of the Bond remit to evoke the franchise’s past, this does for Craig what You Only Live Twice did for Sean Connery, down to the welcome return of the evil white cat stroked by the head of Spectre throughout the 1960s. After three films more rooted in real-world worries than Pierce Brosnan’s mostly fantastical vehicles, Spectre relaxes a little (even if it debates the ethics of surveillance and the relevance of licensed-to-kill boots on the ground in an age of drones). Craig doesn’t get Connery-Moore quips, but allows much more wry humour to sneak into his hardman-in-a-suit hero. When a beautiful woman mentions that the astonishing scenery (and art direction) of her mountaintop clinic can be a distraction, Craig’s smooth throwaway as he focuses intently on her (“Really? I hadn’t noticed”) is typical of the kind of laugh only he can get. Roger Moore would have arched an eyebrow, but Craig is funny because he doesn’t wink at the audience — but can also turn off the charm when it’s time to throw someone through a window.

Skyfall was a knowing victory lap for the series, but also told a different type of story and spent its last half taking Bond home — to his grim childhood house but also, with Ralph Fiennes as a new M and Naomie Harris sitting at Miss Moneypenny’s desk, to the sit-com-like status quo circa Dr. No. This means Spectre has to play by the established rules rather than break or radically overhaul them. There’s an unhelpful hangover from the ‘personal story’ angle in a contrived backstory that links Bond’s unhappy childhood with the creation of Spectre — as if subverting worldwide democracy and massive terrorist attacks weren’t evil enough to annoy the hero.

Other elements are too rote — the tentacular title sequence is cool but the song is a dud; Dave Bautista’s Oddjob-like silent, smirking thug, Mr. Hinx, is a formidable opponent in a From Russia With Love fight-on-a-train, but is otherwise a formula goon; Léa Seydoux works wonders with thin material as one of the more passive Bond girls (her job is to be imperiled and rescued) and Monica Bellucci is in and out with little chance to show her fire. A couple of the car chases — through weirdly depopulated nighttime cities — are oddly frictionless, and the one major gadget turns out to be a get-out-of-certain-death-free card on a par with Bond’s silliest habits.

Even if this is less satisfying overall than Skyfall, there are sequences that rank with Bond’s best. The pre-credits set piece, with a skull-masked Bond in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead, opens with a Touch Of Evil-style tracking shot that’s a stunner (Daniel Craig just walking briskly across precarious rooftops with style is a thrilling spectacle) and delivers a definitive struggle-inside-an-out-of-control-helicopter climax most films would save for a finale. After such things have been out of fashion for a while, it’s great to see Spectre back in business — with an evil business meeting in Rome and a spectacular desert lair in Tunisia, inhabited by a mercurially nasty, whimsical, overconfident chairman (Christoph Waltz) who wipes the taint of Dr. Evil away from the part and matches the amusing menace of Donald Pleasence or Gert Frobe.

Craig had a less tough job at the start than Fiennes does here, taking over from perhaps the most-beloved M in the series (Judi Dench) and entering the superspy arena without reminding you that he was in the Avengers film we don’t talk about. With his own subplot, clashing with a slick new spymaster (Andrew Scott) whose wrong’un status is affirmed when it’s mentioned he was “at school with the Home Secretary”, Fiennes is so convincing in and out of the action that his M could probably carry a series on his own. If this is to be Craig’s last bow as 007 (the credits at least promise James Bond will return), he’ll be remembered as the man who brought Ian Fleming’s grit back to one of the great British film franchises.

Grade - B

Full marks to Mendes, Craig, Waltz, Fiennes and the location finder. But could we please get a hummable song next time?

The Dark Knight Rises - an ambitious, thoughtful, and potent action film

As The Dark Knight Rises, so has anticipation. In 2005, when Christopher Nolan rebooted and resuited Batman, the cinematic reputation of the Caped Crusader was at a pitiful low after the gaudy debacle of The Film That Shall Not Be Named. Now, a short seven years later, Nolan could deliver the print of his trilogy topper in a chariot drawn by flame-breathing unicorns with diamond eyes and some people would still shrug and say, “Meh. It’s not as impressive as The Dark Knight.” In this — as within Rises itself — he could be said to be the victim of his own success. He raised the bar so high, no-one could be expected to clear it. Still, whether you believe this betters Begins or eclipses Knight, it is certainly a satisfying conclusion to what is now — we’re calling it — the best superhero series of all time.

Not that Nolan ever really wanted his Batman to be ‘super’ — instead, he posed what proved to be a compelling question: what if this were real? Sure, it’s hardly Ken Loach’s Batman (though we’d pay to see that: about a Hackney bat-wrangler with anger issues), but Nolan bends more rules of physics than he breaks, with his heart focused on the heart of Bruce Wayne: a child traumatised by the murder of his parents and raised with a rage he cannot quench. Rises asks other probing questions: Can you redeem without sacrifice? Can revenge bring peace? What the bloody hell is Tom Hardy saying?

Actually, the preview footage palaver about Bane’s babble is largely irrelevant: he may sound like Sir Ian McKellen gargling meths in a wind tunnel, but the verbal clarity of the masked, muscled monster is never as important as his brute bulk (though he does have some memorable vocal barbs). Hardy looks like he could have played the Hulk — with a CG Bruce Banner — and is more than convincing as the man who could break the Bat. For the first time, perhaps ever, you really worry for Batman, with his armoured suit unable to disguise a relative physical frailty, his body worn down by years of putting it in the literal line of fire for the citizens of Gotham.

Bane is not fuelled simply by whatever pumps through his mask, either, as Alfred (Michael Caine) observes: “I see the power of belief.” The Wayne family butler has acted as his master’s conscience throughout the films and he’s at it again here, challenging the bruised billionaire about what he could achieve if he sought social justice instead of rough. Indeed, there’s a sense that Wayne has regressed back to the boy of Begins, his journey out of the grief of his orphaning reset by the death of his childhood love.

As Gotham prospers in the wake of the criminal crackdown brought about by the death of District Attorney Harvey Dent — and his mythologising by Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) — Wayne feels he can stay hidden in his mansion, a truculent Beast resisting being transformed by Marion Cotillard’s Beauty. Where his parents were active, engaged philanthropists, giving life to the city, Wayne nurses only his own grief. He walks with a stick as symbolic of his psychological frailty as his physical degeneration. Here, the film could be said to be going over old ground, but Wayne’s mental fissure has been mined in the comics for 73 years and it’s testament to Christian Bale’s stalwart, admirably unshowy but soulful performance that we once again feel for a man born to privilege but eternally trapped in a personal prison.

This is aided by a valedictory feel to the first act, with everything freighted with the knowledge of its finality and a sense that this will not end well. Caine is all heart in a beautiful recollection about his hopes for his surrogate son, while Joseph Gordon-Levitt — who looks supremely dashing despite a somewhat glamour-free role as a rozzer — also has a sorrow-fuelled speech, but with a more positive sense of belief to counter Bane’s destructive faith.

Then, when Batman finally returns, you relish the gleeful comment of a copper to a younger colleague: “Boy, you are in for a show tonight, son.” That you are, even if the film doesn’t, until the very end, match the emotional tenor of its blistering beginning. That 45 minutes or so can be called the ‘beginning’ gives a clue that Batman not only rises but lengthens. This is a long film that feels weighed down somewhat in its middle section, struggling to carry the weight of exposition. The desire for scale and belief-beggaring action also means that, curiously, what would be other movies’ budget-blitzing conclusions are reduced, in a way, to the level of mild incident. There is more plot here than there is story and as impressive as certain scenes are — the sporting spectacle seen in the trailer, for example — they can feel a little like a very expensive treadmill when you’re waiting for the emotions to really run.

As ever, Nolan’s Batman is at its best in the more intimate moments — whether it’s a man finally realising a hero’s identity, or the scene- (and jewellery-) stealing introduction of a new character. As slinky burglar Selina Kyle, Anne Hathaway is superb: physically dangerous, emotionally intriguing and sexy without milking it. (It’s a very different take from the Catwoman portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer, but no less enjoyable.) As ambiguous as Kyle is, her journey shares with Wayne’s a sense of struggling for a fresh start, for a clean slate, ultimately for redemption.

Many of the best characters in the Batman universe offer a mirror to the man himself, whether walking that razor-wire between justice and revenge, or being trapped by the traumas of the past.

Dedicated fans of the comic books are unlikely to feel surprised by many story twists here, but that’s no surprise in itself given the DC icon’s extensive history. Another story strand feels a little familiar and may unconsciously reflect the director’s love of Bond (please, God, let him and Bale one day deliver 007), but it’s ideas, not schematics, that you will be mulling over afterwards. What’s impressive is how Nolan, his fellow story wrangler David S. Goyer and co-screenwriter Jonathan Nolan have found a way to bring their Bat-cycle full circle without coasting — instead touching on our world within a comic-book context.

Where Avengers demolished New York with a glee unrivalled outside of a terrorist training camp, Rises takes turning Gotham into Gomorrah very seriously indeed. Nolan’s has been the Batman of the War On Terror and the credit crunch, made in an age where belief-driven crazies threatened world security (Osama bin Laden, George Bush) and men with nothing more than computers and a sense of entitlement destroyed arguably as many lives as thugs with guns. Rises plants seeds of sedition, questions the position of the financial elite and presents the plight of the 99 per cent. Even as the jeopardy ratchets and our position — as surrogate citizens, the people Batman has sworn to protect — is dire, Rises doesn’t forget to have some fun, with a pyrotechnical act that brings to mind Fight Club’s Project Mayhem. It’s this balance between sobriety and sensation that is Nolan’s most significant achievement throughout these films. Batman can easily play as either glum or camp — it takes a special talent to not just recognise his inherent absurdity and his inspirational power but also embrace them both: a talent with a taste for the theatrical.

Grade - A+

With spectacle in abundance and sexiness in (supporting) parts, this is superhero filmmaking on an unprecedented scale. Rises may lack the surprise of Begins or the anarchy of Knight, but it makes up for that in pure emotion. A fitting epitaph for the hero.

Jurassic World - The new batch

Jurassic World is an adventure 65 million and 14 years in the making, but it’s the 14 that’s the key figure. In the time that’s passed since Jurassic Park III underwhelmed, creatively and commercially, other franchises and shared universes - you know the ones, with fluttering capes, fast cars and giant robots - have come to the fore and made a series that once boasted the biggest film of all time seem like something of, well, a dinosaur.

Not anymore. Colin Trevorrow's assured blockbuster, which has at its core a caution about the dangers of trying to keep up with the Joneses by going bigger and better and faster, is comfortably the best dino-outing since Spielberg's unimpeachable original. Given the competition - The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which had the franchise’s most suspenseful set-piece but also a young girl drop-kicking a velociraptor, and Jurassic Park III, which didn't even have that - that may be the very dictionary definition of damning with faint praise. But Jurassic World is fresh and thrilling, and while it often tips its hat to the original, it’s not a slavish copy, introducing more than enough new wrinkles into the prehistoric playbook to launch a new wave of sequels.
Where both Avengers: Age Of Ultron and Fast & Furious 7 blasted off big this summer with pre-credits blowouts, Trevorrow resists the temptation to plunge us straight into carnivore carnage, opting instead for a Spielbergian slow build. We don’t actually see a full dinosaur until roughly 20 minutes in, with the introduction of Chris Pratt’s Hunk McStubble (not his actual name; that’s Owen Grady) and his band of trained raptors. But if anyone thought, following the money shot of Pratt riding with his fanged friends at the end of the first trailer, that the series’ most effective threats had been neutered, we’re very quickly reminded that they still have teeth and claws and big appetites. But for his Big Badosaurus, Trevorrow needed something new. Enter the Indominus Rex: a truly terrible lizard.
Genetically engineered by BD Wong’s Dr. Henry Wu (the only returning cast member, though watch out for nods to Ian Malcolm), the Indominus Rex – named by a focus group, naturally – is the spared-no-expense dinosaur to end all dinosaurs. Literally. It’s a giant, chameleonic mother with all kinds of nasty tricks up its scaly sleeve, and once it gets out into the wider World, chaos reigns. From the off, fuelled by Michael Crichton’s big brain, Jurassic Park has always been a debate about the boundaries of science, and here that’s explored further. The Indominus is a textbook example of scientists being so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. Silly scientists.
It’s at once a neat comment on our been-there-done-that generation, which so quickly gets bored with the new, and a genuinely menacing movie monster. Despite being the size of a Routemaster, it lends itself neatly to several suspense sequences dotted throughout the movie, notably an Aliens-esque moment when it makes mincemeat out of a platoon of Muldoons. Because it’s been engineered in a lab, and because it’s batshit loco, single-clawedly creating the series’ biggest body count, it’s the first Jurassic Park resident that can be treated as a villain, and not a living, breathing animal simply doing what living, breathing animals do, thus giving our heroes no qualms whatsoever about trying to blast it into oblivion.
Of those heroes, Pratt cements his reputation as cinema’s new go-to leading man, even if he’s not quite as quippy or charming here as Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Star-Lord. Like Indiana Jones, he’s an unyielding man of action, who’s pretty much the same at the picture’s end as he is at the beginning. Instead, the major character arcs go to other humans and, intriguingly, certain dinosaurs. Both Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins, as the brothers who become embroiled in the turmoil, bring surprising notes and warmth to roles that could have been standard movie brats you can’t wait to see get munched.
In a way, neatly heading those accusations of '70s-era sexism at the pass, the biggest arc belongs to Bryce Dallas Howard. When we first meet her park supervisor, Brittle McButtonedup (not her actual name; that’s Claire Dearing), she’s not entirely cold-blooded, but she is more preoccupied with profit margins than looking after her visiting nephews (in a neat touch, she can’t even remember their ages), but by movie’s end has transformed into a flare-wielding furiosa. Life finds a way.
It’s not all plain sailing – InGen’s villainous agenda has a hazy, underdeveloped, fix-it-in-the-sequel vibe, while some of the supporting characters feel like mere sketches. Fans of Vincent D’Onofrio’s incredible turn in Daredevil will be disappointed to find him on one-note form here as arch villain, Evil McMoustachetwirlerson (not his actual name; that’s Vic Hoskins). And some professional pooh-poohers may also have a problem with the everything-but-the-genetically-modified-kitchen-sink climax.
But the joy here comes from watching a new director on the summer blockbuster scene make an impact. Trevorrow’s debut was the lo-sci-fi Safety Not Guaranteed, and this is a significant step up. He’s at ease with the oohs and the aahs as he is with the running and screaming, even if he knows full well that the impact of the original’s astonishing ‘you-will-believe-a-dinosaur-can-roar’ effects can’t be recreated (though ILM does sterling work here). And when the dino-shit really hits the fan, you can almost hear him cackling as he piles outrageous beat upon outrageous beat. After careful consideration, I've decided to endorse this park.

Grade - B

The most notorious theme park in movie history reopens in thrilling, terrific style. Enjoy the ride.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn - Blistering blockbusters!

Belgian, contend that all art is finally self-portrait. This being the case, maybe we can catch a reflection of the animated double-act that is Tintin – globetrotting journalist of indeterminate age but with last-ditch gumption in spades – and Captain Archibald Haddock – semi-functioning, disaster-prone alcoholic salt of (nearly) unfailing positivity – in the budding partnership of Steven Spielberg (our Tintin) and producer Peter Jackson (our Haddock).

Heaven forfend we suggest The Hobbit director conceals jars of whiskey about his person or that his liquor-fumed belches might kick-start the engine of a crash-landing aircraft, but the Kiwi producer has cajoled a joie de cinema from his American director, who appeared so bogged down upholding the legacy of The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Animated or not, depending on your stance of this whole performance-capture game, Spielberg has brought a boy’s heart, an artist’s guile, and a movie-lover’s wit to computer generating Hergé’s immortal hero. Where Jackson was the Tintin geek, following the ageless Belgique Morrissey on his dashing but non-superheroic escapades as a kid, Spielberg only got the bug when a French critic (them again) likened Raiders to Europe’s all-time favourite comic-book idol. In effect, Spielberg landed the goofball sidekick with whom to traverse the globe, without leaving the studio.

From the Nouvelle Vague flourish of the opening credits, featuring Tintin in silhouette dashing past giant typewriters and former foes, recalling the Saul Bass-themed curtain raiser of Catch Me If You Can, set off by John Williams’ fleet-fingered piano score, the mood is set. Here is a joyful play of opposites: the romance of old-school cinema, conjured by the slick synthesis of CG wizardry.

Vitally, as near as can be, here too is the ardent, moules-frites aroma of Hergé’s rainbow-lovely world of high adventure and colloquial antics. Spielberg’s first venture into animation (we’ll stick with that) expands the Belgian’s formal elegance into a wonderland of digital detail without ever losing sight of the bubbly charm of the books. Encompassing the shovel chins and bobbled noses of the Hergéian caricatures, Weta pursues a whimsical variation on photoreal. But it’s not just about the flour-fine textures of sand or gunpowder, the flicker of firelight across a blade or a breeze ruffling Tintin’s unbendable forelock. This is also an expansion of the Spielbergian dream (with a tincture of Jackson’s boldness). Like a boy set free from the schoolroom of reality, he lets fly.

In an exalted midsection, in which Haddock, stricken by sobriety, relays his family history, we flow with unceasing movement between his telling and a titanic sea battle of old. Here, finally, is what the medium offers a filmmaker. Spielberg reaches a delirium of creativity through match cuts and dissolves: reflections in blades, bubbles, the bottom of a whiskey bottle transformed into a telescope, and a desert morphing into a squalling ocean. Across the film’s sunburst of entertainment, the director applies the rain-slicked atmosphere of Jules Dassin’s noir, Indy’s self-mocking awareness of genre, and the catapult-momentum of the Keystone Kops. The 3D, neither fish nor fowl, is simply part of whole immersive effect: Hergé by Spielberg.

We open in what might be Paris, in what might be the ’30s – as with Hergé, it is a mythical, timeless world: cobbled streets, shuttered windows, old ladies walking decadent dogs, and for the eagle-eyed cineaste a homage to Robert Bresson’s 1959 Franco-classic Pickpocket. The introduction of Tintin is a gag so good we can’t possibly spoil it here. There has been an understandable fretting over how Tintin would be depicted on film, a tricky task given his Belgian creator effectively made him a blank slate on which we project our dreams. Spielberg, with his writing trio of Anglo-nerds – Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat, Scott Pilgrim’s Edgar Wright and Adam & Joe’s Joe Cornish – has bravely kept faith with the author.

Jamie Bell gives him a neutral English accent and a boyish gait, but he remains lightly sketched: depending on the age of the viewer, translatable to 15 or 30. His face is blankly handsome, cheeks lightly blushed, eyes expressive and bright as light bulbs (not a hint of the dead-eye that plagued Robert Zemeckis). It is the jutting crest of hair that cuts a shadow as iconic as the brim of Indiana Jones’ fedora.

As we know Indy as an easily diverted archaeologist, Tintin’s job description is cleared up – he is the roving reporter who never files his copy! Although, as Harry Thompson reported in his excellent biography Hergé & His Creation, the writer-artist was drawing upon the ’20s fashion for adventurer-reporters, who created their own news. And this boy certainly has a nose for a story: he barely strolls through a French market, before he’s up to his jodhpurs in a conspiracy surrounding the Haddocks’ absconded heritage and Sakharine (Daniel Craig) of the perfectly Mephistophelean beard.

While Tintin is coolly abstract, his co-stars are a gang of Dickensian cranks and kooks. The potential mishap of Snowy, his faithful wire fox terrier, is rendered as the smartest dog in town regularly tugging his master from the brink of disaster, but not some preternatural Scooby-Doo. Although more fool those who leave a sandwich untended. In short, the kids will adore him. For all that the film plays the nostalgia card for the devoted Tintinologist (their hearts warmed by soprano Bianca Castafiore’s glass-shattering assault on Haddock’s eardrums) Snowy offers the unabashed charm of the heroic pooch.

Even the most Hergé-phobic will know that Haddock is the funny man, Tintin the straight guy. Andy Serkis, in a broad Scots brogue, again surpasses the limitations of not being physically there. The jury is still out on whether performance-capture attains something greater than animation, but Serkis gives the movie its rich, flawed, bountiful heart. In another bravura set-piece that amplifies like a wondrous Rube Goldberg contraption, Tintin picks his way between the swaying bunks of a cabin full of snoring Quints, as Haddock unhelpfully regales him with their distinctive traits. Reporting on the tragic loss of one particularly shifty crewman’s “eyelids”, we glimpse a pair of yawning lifeless(!) eyeballs. “That was one hell of a card game!” sighs Serkis with perfect timing, a faraway look momentarily in Haddock’s piercing blue eyes. For all the flurry of detail, the victory here, like Pixar, is of creating recognisable humanity.

Away from Haddock the script struggles to be out-and-out funny. Interpol’s worst, Thomson and Thompson, in the plumbed double-act of Pegg and Frost, provide slapstick and idiocy with a fifty per cent hit rate. The much funnier Professor Calculus remains on the back burner for a Peter Jackson-directed sequel.

No room is found for Hergé’s political satire, or his more becalmed, intuitive moments, to gaze, incredulous, at the world – an iconography so ingrained in the artist’s style it might be untranslatable. And, with performance capture, there is still that gravitational pull toward endless chase sequences. The pace throughout is rat-a-tat-tat quick, the plot tripping along, and the exposition breathless. You have a job keeping up, but never at the expense of the sheer goodwill. While luxuriating in its pre-existing universe, here is a film imploring you to join in. It would take a hard heart to resist.

Grade - A-

Action-packed, gorgeous, and faithfully whimsical: Hergé thought Spielberg the only director capable of filming Tintin. He was onto something.

Guardians Of The Galaxy - Banter Fodder

If you’re old enough to remember watching John-Boy from The Waltons fly a spaceship that looked like a massive pair of breasts on VHS, then there is plenty in Guardians Of The Galaxy for you. And if you’re young enough to accept without scoffing the sight of a talking raccoon wielding a heavy calibre weapon, then you’re in the right quadrant, too. No doubt keenly aware that this movie lacks even a smidgen of the brand awareness of its previous output, Marvel has savvily located its latest megabudget entertainment firmly in the Venn diagram overlap between Modern Innocence and ’80s Irony.

Battle Beyond The Stars, Flight Of The Navigator, Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon, Back To The Future (2), Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Total Recall and a certain other space-based saga all donate their DNA, and Guardians isn’t about to apologise for replicating it. It’s proud of its heritage, dammit, right down its 1988-on-Earth prologue, “Awesome Mix” tape-cassette soundtrack, and scoundrel hero Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) describing the film’s spherical MacGuffin as having an “Ark Of The Covenant, Maltese Falcon vibe”.
Writer/director James Gunn (Slither, Super), true to his roots, even injects some fluoro-gungy Troma flavour making it all feel like Star Trek from a punked-up parallel reality where Gene Roddenberry was actually Lloyd Kaufman.
A good portion of the film is solid, set-based and (relatively speaking) grounded, avoiding the wispy daylight glow of pure-pixel backdrops. Gunn’s strengths are most evident during the central team-gathering sequence, where Quill, wiseacre raccoon-thing Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), sentient tree Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), green assassin Gamora (Saldana) and vengeful big baldie Drax (former pro-wrestler Dave Bautista) discover their synergistic power during a hugely enjoyable prison break, which somehow involves the removal of a prosthetic leg and its subsequent use as a weapon.
Gunn and co-writer Nicole Perlman keep things breezy and snappy (it’s the Marvel way now: snark over dark), importing the Avengers’ banter-bickering into the self-aware B-sci-fi setting; which, given the Joss Whedon connection, means this is also reminiscent of Firefly/Serenity. And Gunn’s cast appropriately, from reforming Parks And Recreation’s Andy as a buff galactic lothario to having the voice of Face come from the face of a raccoon — while the pair enjoyably vie for the position of this film’s Han Solo. You’ll hear much about how either Groot or Rocket steal it — the bark-and-bite pairing certainly have their moments — but the big surprise is Bautista’s Drax. Cursed with a genetic inability to understand metaphors, the movie’s apparent muscleman actually has many of the film’s wittiest lines. (“Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.”)
The antagonistic contingent, however, is less successful. Lee Pace’s Ronan, Djimon Hounsou’s Korath and Karen Gillan’s Nebula feel barely written, although the one-time Who companion looks fantastic with blue skin and shark eyes and exhibits a tight-focused anti-charisma in a thinly sketched part. And ‘phantom menace’ Thanos (Josh Brolin) is an embarrassment: a lantern-jawed CG ’toon blessedly only given a minute or so of screentime.
As much as Guardians largely thrives through its lovably scuzzy style, it cannot avoid the immense tractor-beam pull of The Big Marvel Studios Final Act. Only a few months ago, reviewing Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Empire exhibited frustration at yet another climax which involved a frantic sky battle, culminating in a giant object crashing to the ground. Well here we have yet another. There is even a replay of Thor: The Dark World’s CG-drenched Infinity Stone struggle, although now it’s purple swirly stuff rather than red. For all the digital artistry on display, these Marvel final set-pieces are becoming suggestive of a climax-by-committee default mode.
Still, Gunn thankfully pulls the film back onto its own turf once the big fight’s over. And Guardians Of The Galaxy does expand the breadth and diversity of the Marvel Universe; we go beyond superheroes and threats to Earth. It also proves how even a kid raised by Troma in the filmmaking badlands can succeed in Blockbuster City.

Grade - A

Colourful, tongue-in-cheek fun, purpose-built for grown-up lovers of kitsch ’80s science-fiction. But the Marvel formula is starting to feel, well, a little too formulaic.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes - Hail Caesar

The highest compliment you can pay Matt Reeves’ impressively uncompromising, propulsive and, yet, poignant sequel to the prequel that wasn’t quite a reboot of the Chuck Heston franchise (they supposedly still share narrative DNA) is how soon you take its achievements for granted. Before long, you stop being amazed by the mottled contours of Andy Serkis’ noble Caesar, troubled leader of a simian community in the arboreal heart of California. Your jaw remains in place at the ravaged visage of Toby Kebbell’s war-mongering Koba as his distrust of humankind stews into ravenous hatred. No awe is inspired as an army of nigh-on photo-real chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans (one gentle orange giant going by the name of Maurice) swing, scramble and ride bareback into what remains of the streets of San Francisco.
You are far too wrapped up in the journey, indeed the fraught emotions of a set of characters — most of whom just happen to be very smart apes — to stop and gawp. Transformers’ ‘marvels’, jerking and rattling like fairground Twisters on overdrive, clamour for our attention. Reeves calls upon the multifarious talents of Weta Digital, who have taken hair follicles and tooth cavities from uncanny valley to the silvery mountaintops of the hyper-real, to simply meet his requirements, not define his storytelling. He wants you to pay attention to what is going on.

As you may have read, Reeves came on board the prequel-sequel following Rise-director Rupert Wyatt’s departure, unwilling to split hairs with the studio. His first act was to beat a slight retreat from Wyatt’s apparently more forward-looking set-up to a middle-film scenario where the apes still communicate in a caveman staccato (Serkis’ Caesar frequently slipping into a fine Brando-as-Vito Corleone) but have built a functioning proto-society in a wood-bound shanty town of huts, spiked walls and walkways like a particularly paranoid Ewok village.
We hasten to add that forest, apes’ enclave and rubble-strewn San Francisco are all actually there. Reeves determinedly places his ‘real’ apes in a physical landscape. Apart from a partial surrender to the spectacular for the necessity of the big finale, which falls back into a more obviously CG-supplied zone of disintegrating masonry and that old chestnut, the collapsing gantry, the film is a celebration of real-world aesthetics. The overall look and mood shoots for a brooding, overcast intensity, often drenched by downpours (one order for wet fur, please Weta) — Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver’s script doesn’t go for funny. It is as bleak and sodden as Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1968 progenitor was sun-baked.

There is an irony in a film so reliant on computers to create its characters being set in a world where technology is effectively redundant. Moreover, events turn on the fact the apes’ hideaway happens to be in the vicinity of an abandoned hydroelectric dam — the opportunity for a troupe of human outliers, led by the warm-hearted engineer Malcolm (the always strong Jason Clarke), to return power to the Homo sapiens pack mustering amongst the bones of San Fran.
Despite the paw of friendship being shakily offered, a series of betrayals will mean both Caesar and Malcolm — who are deliberately matched as peaceable, family types — will have to swallow the hard lesson that prejudice and violence lurk on both sides of the species divide. Quick on the uptake, and poisoned by years in a research facility, Koba encourages his cadre of bad apes to get to grips with firearms. His human opposite is fraught human leader Dreyfus, played by Gary Oldman, who evokes post-apocalyptic ennui by reprising his effective trick of talking reasonably then SUDDENLY SHOUTING (and sounding a tiny bit like Heston as Taylor). In other words, the preordained battle for planetary dominance begins and all hell swiftly breaks loose.
Now officially credited as the leading man, Serkis’ performance as Caesar is another evolutionary bound forward for the art form begun with Gollum. Beyond the actor’s brilliant facsimile of animal gestures, he gives Caesar a complex personality: burdened leader, loving family ape and fierce warrior, short on trust and dangerously protective of his turf. It may just be us, but there is a Serkisness to Caesar’s eyes and body language, and yet he is a chimpanzee. Just as there is a discernable Kebbellness to the conniving, psychopathic Koba. On an almost meta level, the film challenges our own prejudices. Can digital effects become so good, so indistinguishable from real life, that you form a genuine emotional connection with them? And, given human actors and human artists are at the heart of that process, should we even think of them as special effects? It’s another thing that confounds the film’s blockbuster status — just how moving it is.
Reeves is a director who adapts to his environment. He was able to switch from the wobblecam hysteria of found-footage hit Cloverfield to the stillness and melancholy of vampire remake Let Me In. Quite who he is as director is a mystery, although he clearly has a keen desire to bed the fantastical in the commonplace (however ruined). At least with Dawn he has allowed himself to revel in the details. Not just in the spread of light within a simian eyeball or the lie of dampened fur, but in spicing up his turbulent action with flashes of high style.
For one bravura sequence, in which Koba hijacks a tank, Reeves fixes the camera to the turret madly revolving through 360 degrees, as the tank lurches forward, and the scene-spinning background teems with angry apes and terrified humans. Throughout its furious, thrilling skirmishes, Dawn honours the horse-bound world of Heston-era Apes movies (as does Michael Giacchino’s terrific percussion-crazed score).
With the technical ambitions equalled and bested, and beautifully married to story, it is in the story itself the film lacks a bit of ambition. The strident themes of the original series and even Rise — race, ecology, the hubris of science and the cage of instinct — allowed them to reflect their times. In its localised way, Dawn is preoccupied with more obvious concepts of family and belonging. There are few mysteries to unravel, no grand time-torturing twists. The overarching story doesn’t really move on that much at all. Aside from its emotional punch and action, the film is quite predictable in its moves. It has the marked moral ground of a B-Western: good hats and bad hats, carefully classified. Or, if you will, cowboys and Native Americans (take your pick which is which).
In fact, it feels more Western than science-fiction. Yet even if the scope is relatively narrow, within the tight, gritty confines of the story, Reeves and his team have excelled. So much so, you really don’t notice.

Grade - A-

A superbly mounted, powerfully performed, if slightly underfed Apes sequel. That Reeves is set to direct Untitled Of The Planet Of The Apes next is cause for much celebration. This guy’s fur real.

Ant-Man - Small-time crook

 

In a rare bid for the Honesty In Advertising Award, the most recent collected edition of Ant-Man comics is blurbed with, “Scott Lang has never exactly been the world’s best super hero. Shit, most people don’t even think he’s been the best Ant-Man!” In their ongoing attempt to populate a cinema-TV universe with iterations of the characters they wholly own, Marvel has understandably foregrounded heroes of stature and iconic crossover appeal: Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Captain America, Daredevil. But it’s always been a strength of the shared universe created (largely) by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee (and, in this case, Larry Lieber) that it’s populated not only by titans who can be teamed up in something called the All-Winners Squad but by a range of lesser, flawed, not always admirable or important or even successful characters.

When — lo, these many moons ago — it was announced that Edgar Wright was developing an Ant-Man movie for Marvel, most fans assumed it wouldn’t be about Scott Lang – a divorced ex-con trying to maintain a relationship with his daughter, created by John Byrne and David Michelinie in 1979 — but Marvel’s original Ant-Man, Hank Pym, a Lee-Kirby founding Avenger whose big plotline (he created Ultron) got reassigned to the higher-profile Tony Stark in the movies. Actually, this is typical of the way Ant-Men can’t get a break. Maybe it’s that downtrodden, easy-to-underestimate mighty mite quality that has made various iterations of the character — no-one likes to talk about the Irredeemable Ant-Man — stick around for 50 years, despite almost never having a comic title to call their own. Having set out its big guns in its first phase, Marvel shook things up last year with Guardians Of The Galaxy, extending its cinema superhero universe into another genre (roguish space opera) and highlighting second-string characters. Coming off Avengers: Age Of Ultron, the dice get thrown again in Ant-Man, in which perennial also-ran Scott Lang gets a decent introduction and perennially overlooked Hank Pym finally gets some dignity.

After some years in pre-production, Wright departed the project — although he and Joe Cornish get story and script credits, with another script draft by star Paul Rudd and his writing partner Adam McKay. Into the director’s spot stepped Peyton Reed, best known for Bring It On but without a feature credit since Yes Man and another of the run of directors Marvel has been preferring over auteurs like Ang Lee or Sam Raimi in putting together their overarching film franchise. In the process, we may have been rooked out of a spikier, stranger Edgar Wright movie — which isn’t to say that Reed’s Ant-Man doesn’t have its moments of ambition and inspiration, especially when exploring the brand of transcendental mysticism pioneered by The Incredible Shrinking Man (which inspired Kirby and Lee’s Tales To Astonish story in the first place). The Marvel Movie Method is now proven, and seems to guarantee that individual films will deliver solid, top-of-mid-range thrills with a side-order of emotional content. Here, look for the moment when Scott tells Pym’s daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly, with a serious haircut) why her father didn’t put her in the shrinking suit. Also part of the package are self-deprecation (a good-humoured joke about the tendency of Marvel films to end with big objects falling from the sky), guest spots, bits of fill-in history (yes, a dangling plot-thread about Pym’s old partner, the Wasp) and a post-credits teaser for what’s coming next.

The set-up is that Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), another of Marvel’s one-use-only arch-nemeses, is close to replicating Pym’s shrinking technology for Evil Purposes, prompting the wry, regretful Pym (Michael Douglas, looking like he’s having the best fun in ages) to recruit Lang to steal back his tech. Superhero heist movies are thin on the ground so this has a relatively fresh — if basic — plot, with Scott learning how to use his size-changing powers (and how to get on with ants) then going into action (accompanied by Christophe Beck’s catchy theme) to infiltrate super-secure facilities. It’s odd that Scott is saddled with three ethnic stereotype crook buddies (“Not those wombats,” Pym complains) who tend to make an already light-hearted film a little too broad (Reed used to direct Disney TV stuff like remakes of The Love Bug and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, which have a similar tone). Rudd, like Chris Pratt in Guardians, is a fine straight leading man who can pull off sillier moments where he’s his own comic relief so he doesn’t need the likes of motormouth Michael Peña (a throwback Richard Pryor in Superman III) around to boost the laughs.

Besides being a breezy superhero heist movie, Ant-Man is the latest in a succession of shrinking-people movies which have shown off state-of-the-art effects at the time of production — worthy successor to the likes of The Devil-Doll, The Incredible Shrinking Man and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. In brilliantly realised moments, Ant-Man clings to the grooves of a vinyl record, feeds a drop of water to his favourite ant, explores the infinitely small (a genuinely cool 3D trip) and has a climactic confrontation with an equally miniaturised baddie in an out-of-control Thomas The Tank Engine tabletop layout which seems huge and dangerous to them, though a witty shot pulls back to show the frenetic action-movie fireworks just boil down to a toy train falling over.

Grade - A+

A science-fiction, action-heist, superhero comedy soap opera, this straddles as many genres as the Avengers films have characters but manages to do most of them pretty well. Extremely likable, with a few moments of proper wonder.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Rape, chrome dildos, emotional scars - Merry Christmas!

"F%&.k You You F%$king F#*ker." The T-shirt (briefly) worn by Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling novel speaks volumes. First of all, it addresses the nay-sayers who thought Niels Arden Oplev’s 2009 original should be left alone — not because it was any kind of cinematic masterpiece, but because the previously unknown Noomi Rapace’s centrepiece performance was deemed definitive. But it also deftly represents The Social Network director’s personality. While aspects of the media disparaged his awards-season chances against The King’s Speech last year, Fincher was already disengaged from the beauty contest and hard at work on this excellent, often pitch-dark but otherwise almost note-perfect thriller.

It was, it must be said, a weird thing to want to do: remake a European hit so soon after its original release. But Fincher’s effort is perhaps the film Larsson’s book deserved all along; it may largely be faithful to the main story, but Steven Zaillian’s economic, witty script compacts and tidies up the minor details that make the difference between a very good literary adaptation and a gripping cinematic thriller. And while Blomkvist’s labyrinthine travails reappear in the last half hour, Fincher’s film sensibly concentrates on the whodunnit element — most smartly of all, dispensing with the strange quirk of Swedish justice that allowed Blomkvist to go to jail at the very end of the original.

Instead, Blomkvist is a ruined man, and Craig is the perfect foil to the eventual, explosive arrival of The Girl. Even though everyone else seems to have a Swedish accent, however slight, Craig plays it with his own, but surprisingly the effect doesn’t jar. Bleary-eyed, stubbled and often seen in disturbingly unfashionable winceyette pyjama bottoms, Blomkvist is a low-key, effective everyman in what could easily be an overplayed, hokey story. The wonderful Christopher Plummer — excellent in Mike Mills’ Beginners too, and looking at an Oscar nomination either way — is especially delicious in this regard, inviting the writer into a story that involves “thieves, misers, bullies — the most detestable collection of people you will ever meet”. Then he adds the clincher: “My family.”

The Girl herself takes her time, and Lisbeth’s story takes a good while to bed down as Blomkvist gets to grips with the dysfunctional Vangers. And without wishing to get too caught up in comparisons with the other movie, Mara’s performance completely holds its own here. Where Rapace was aloof and flinty, Mara is more childlike and mercurial. Her actual age (withheld, for good reason, for most of the film’s running time) is hard to fathom. When she flips her hoodie she could be a 14 year-old boy; when being raped (rather graphically) by her legal guardian she could be any underage girl. But when she’s in control — which is much more satisfyingly shown here, given the age gap between herself and Blomkvist — she is most definitely a woman.

The main thing, however, is perhaps how much Fincher has grown into the role of auteur, without apparently trying or even wanting to. While it appears to be another one of Fincher’s five-finger exercises — like Panic Room or The Game — this is a film that could prove to be a key work when the big study book is written. The oily, exhilarating credit sequence suggests a knowing, Fight Club-style subversion of Craig’s 007 persona; the awkward parental bond between Blomkvist and his daughter recalls the wistful poetry of Benjamin Button; Vanger’s need for closure echoes that of Robert Graysmith in Zodiac; the film’s casual, slyly funny cyberpunk heroism makes a great counterpoint to the dry, sceptical satire of The Social Network, and the whole film is suffused with the harsh brutality of Seven.

Are there flaws? Well, arguably, in the decompressing final stretch, which relates back to the book and opens the door to the possibility/inevitability of a trilogy. But that also enables an ostensibly hard film to wind down to a surprisingly tender climax. Though Fincher professes to be a hard-ass both professionally and aesthetically — and with its not-to-be-underestimated moments of anal rape and torture, his film is not for the faint-hearted — The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo says more about broken hearts than broken people. Which, to address the nay-sayers, is where Fincher went right.

Grade - B+

A tough, post-punk Tintin-meets-Klute for the Occupy Wall Street set, this kinetic, hard-edged thriller is the perfect festive comedown for Fincher fans and dysfunctional families everywhere.