Film Reviews by Alphaville

Like many Chinese films of its ilk, this is a feast for the eyes but lacks plot clarity and characters to root for. The typically hammy acting doesn’t help. However, it has an undeniable grandeur right from the outset, which features a visceral cgi-enhanced battle in the snow. The plot, such as it is, centres on a relic called the Fengshen Bang that can save mankind from the Great Curse (yawn, yawn). It’s overlong and gets bogged down in boring court intrigue. Nevertheless, the scale is vast, the visuals are sumptuous, the cgi jaw-dropping, the camerawork kinetic and there’s a rousing climax with added monsters. If cinema is a visual medium (clue: it is), this is a visual treat.

This is a well-executed film about a Korean moon landing that goes wrong, with some thrilling Gravity-style visuals early on. The trouble is… we’ve seen it all before. It develops into the standard rescue mission, with various technical problems and emotional outbursts in mission control that are neither involving nor exciting. Shame.

While Kong’s in Hollow Earth fighting off predators, Godzilla’s on the surface fighting off monsters and napping in Rome’s Coliseum. But… oh no!... Kong’s got toothache and has to surface so that gung-ho vet Dan Stevens can fit him with a false tooth. And that’s just for starters. Dan and Rebecca Hall now have to go down to Hollow Earth. Why? Who cares? Coupled with a knowingly ironic score and filmed by a director (Adam Wingard) who doesn’t get overly bogged down in character exposition, this is a fast-moving off-the-wall ride with grandiose visuals. Negatives? The token unfunny wisecracking sidekick and the cgi mash-up climax. Still, eat your heart out, Marvel.

Perhaps you need to like noisy cars to like this. Even then, this is a crushing disappointment from the director of such rousing films as Heat and Last of the Mohicans. The subject of the film, as played by a stone-faced Adam Driver, comes over as an unappealing figure and the plot just treads water. It’s 1957 Italy and we follow Ferrari as he tries to make deals to stop his business going broke and deals with problems in his personal life. Nothing much happens until a final 1000-mile road race, which you’d think Mann would at least shoot excitingly, but one noisy car is much like any other and we barely know the drivers so there’s no investment in the result. Plus it’s intercut with yet more financial dealing to blunt any momentum. What a disappointment.

Marvel nerds will hate it, but this is better than you could have hoped for from Marvel. It’s a pre-superpower origin story, so for three-quarters of its run-time there’s no boring cgi flash-bang fight scenes nonsense. Sure, the concept’s nonsnense, with a spiderman-type villain, but the plot’s focus is on a heroine who can see bad things happening before they happen, giving her the chance to avert them. This leads to some scenes that actually have tension. Even three teenage girls, whom she saves when the spiderman goes after them, are not your usual excruciating teenagers. Shame it all falls apart in the FF-worthy flash-bang finale, with all four women now having silly superpowers for a sequel, but for an hour and a half it’s a good watch.

Well-written, warm-hearted tale of a teacher, a troublesome teenage boy and a cook forced to spend Christmas together at a 60s US prep school in 1970. Such a set-up sounds stagey and boring, but in the hands of director Alexander Payne it’s a beautifully observed, study of human nature – sweet, sad and funny – that hooks you in until you don’t want it to end.

More po-faced Dune nonsense, laughably overfull of its own importance. As directed by the once-promising Denis Villeneuve, it has all energy drained from it. All 159 minutes of it. Right up to the thrill-free climax. With its pallet of muted colours it even looks dismal. Only those who buy into the silly plot premise will find anything but boredom here

Embarrassingly bad coming-of-age so-called comedy about two irritating teenage girls. You’ll want to turn it off after five minutes.

Animation in the Ghibli mode. Glorious landscapes but characters that lack nuance and a kindergarten plot. Sample dialogue: ‘We must take the keystone back and banish the worm’. So says a talking chair, referring to a giant worm that’s demolishing Japan. Shame. The landscapes are beautiful.

After the rollicking Part 1 of this French blockbuster, Part 2 is a disappointing sequel. For a start, unless you remember everything from Part 1, it’s hard to get a grip of. The action is also disappointing. Apart from a couple of hand-to-hand fights (not a patch on the Part 1 fights), Part 2 concentrates mostly on political intrigue. Protestants v Catholics, French v English… it’s hard to know or care who’s on which side. The musketeers themselves barely get any plot interest apart from their political affiliations, while Eve Green as Milady sems to have 9 lives. The ending leaves room for a Part 3, so let’s hope that has as much derring-do as Part 1.

What a disappointing sequel after the visual flair of the original. Sadly it’s one long bore, with a plot reduced to incorporating a warmist climate message to assuage wokist sensibilities. The cgi undersea shenanigans are no more than a whirl of pixels, having neither drama nor excitement. The only character with any arc or interest is baddie-turned-goodie Patrick Wilson, but with a script like this the actors stand no chance of adding any interest to affairs.

Dream Scenario is that rare beast – a visually interesting comedy... at least for half its length. It has a great surreal concept, a great look and startles from Frame 1, making it engrossing to watch as well as funny. But then it switches to less humorous satire, taking a welcome swipe at cancel cultuire but getting bogged down in uninteresting scenes. A boring meeting with social media nerds seems to go on forever. It gets bleaker as it progresses and eventually feels as though it has missed its targets, losing both its edge and its sense of humour.

A deadly boring film of slow, still, overlong shots, mostly in medium close-up, of people staring into space and occasionally talking. Not that they’re acting. We learn on the much more lively DVD Extras that director Aki Kaurismaki, a ‘living legend’ according to the DVD sleeve, told them not to act. You have to feel sorry for them. This travesty of a ‘film’ is so stilted that it’s embarrassing to watch, especially the occasional attempts at humour. The whole mishandled caboodle, short though it is, is mind-numbing to watch. The worst kind of arthouse cinema. Finnish compatriot Jalmari Helender should have a word in Aki’s ear. He’s promised never to make a film with two people arguing in a room (see Sisu).

This excruciating theatre-piece alienates from the start, with close-ups of talking heads making inane conversation to an irritating soundtrack. It then continues in the same annoying fashion for 2½ hours. Someone is dead. Accident or murder. The investigation is painstakingly talky and funereally slow, followed after an hour by a court case that is even more painstakingly talky and funereally slow. How this has garnered good reviews is unfathomable. Maybe it could have been interesting given something to watch rather than listen to, but the director can do nothing but shoot talking heads. The trailer adds music and fast cuts to make it look interesting. Don’t be fooled. This is just a filmed play that takes 2½ hours out of your life when you could be more usefully employed watching paint dry.

A surreal fantasy beautifully directed, quirkily shot and scored, opulently staged, funny, grotesque, raucous, outrageous and defiantly anti-snowflake (eat you heart out, Barbie), this is a scintillating riposte to the bland TV-fare that often passes for film these days. Weird and wonderful, with outrageous sex scenes and gorgeous set designs of a surreal Lisbon, Paris… all luxuriating in deep-focus detail that makes it a feast for the eye. Just watch it.