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.