Film Reviews by Alphaville

Why watch this film? The ridiculous trailer tells the whole story and shows all the best bits without the boring talkie stuff. Although touted as sci-fi this is really a would-be globe-trotting action thriller in the Bourne mould. Its USP (hardly a spoiler) is that agency hit man Will Smith is on the run from his younger cloned self. Talking heads on the DVD Xtras are proud to have created the best-ever digital human, but the effects don’t always work and the action scenes would have been better with an actual adversary than with a digital version of our hero. Instead of getting involved in a scene you’re more likely to play ‘spot the join’.

Director Ang Lee was lured by the premise and tries to inject some existential subtext into affairs, but this just falls flat and slows down the pace. The best set-piece is a terrific parkour-type chase in Cartagena near the beginning. After that it degenerates and ends in a generic shoot-em-up finale. Quite a disappointment from Ang Lee, but worth watching for the good bits.

A solid modern take on the old-school war film that many people will unfairly dismiss as a politically incorrect boys’ gung-ho movie. This is so determinedly authentic even the corny scenes are true. What screenwriter in his right mind would make his hero a gum-chewing pilot called Dick Best? But he actually existed, as did all the main characters and all the plotlines. The moving finale shows you the real people that the film portrays.

Much of the Pacific War is now forgotten or unknown to a younger generation. It deserves to be better remembered… Pearl Harbour, the Coral Sea, the daring Doolittle Raid… This film shows what a fascinating and bloody battle arena it was. Shame on those who denigrate it for its depiction of heroism.

Hard to believe all the mayhem and destruction we see (on land, sea, air and undersea) was done on a sound stage and in post-production, but the end result has an epic quality. You’ll believe you’re in the midst of it. Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day etc.) has long been adept at this kind of scale. The excellent DVD Xtras will make you realise what a labour of love this film was and make you want to watch it again with even greater appreciation.

Not nearly so much fun second time around. Our four avatars play different, less interesting, characters and fail to dredge up much humour with lifeless banter and stale action sequences. Confusingly, they also switch characters until you’re never quite sure who is who. Still, there’s some gorgeous desert and mountain scenery (NB no jungle this time around) and an occasional cgi set piece to keep you watching. Best bit: an imaginative set piece on a maze of swinging rope bridges above a chasm. The DVD also includes a vomit-inducing making-of doc that is nothing more than a hagiography to the film’s brilliance – always a desperate sign.

Alternative title: How to Ruin a Classic. It’s just awful. Where to begin? Writer/director Greta Gerwig wanted to make a film about the girls as adults and makes the disastrous mistake of interleaving past and present scenes. It begins near the end, then flashes back and forward, often confusingly, even for just a few seconds. So the film begins with a set of spoilers. For instance, we learn immediately that Jo has turned down Laurie, thereby removing all forward momentum from that storyline and making many of the historic scenes redundant. Newcomers to the story will wonder why sit through the rest of the film.

Equally bad, the plot and dialogue have been irredeemably tainted by a woke mind-set. Gerwig’s aim was ‘to give a more modern take on women’s choices and life’ (according to the DVD Xtras). This turns the film into a travesty of the book. The four girls are supposedly endeared to us by a number of giggly scenes but basically they’re mouthpieces for Gerwig’s feminist agenda. Listen to woke princess Emma Watson pontificating on the DVD Xtras and you’ll want to put your foot through the screen.

Given this, it’s no surprise that Gerwig can’t write for or direct men. Even Timothy Chalamet, so brilliant in Call Me By Your Name, can do little with the role of Laurie, while Louis Garrel as Jo’s Prof has no chance with the few scenes he’s allowed. All this renders the Amy/Laurie and Jo/Prof plots nonsensical.

The direction is pure cliché. The Jo/Laurie break-up should be an emotional highpoint, instead of which it’s so badly shot and stitched together that it plays like am-dram. The only imaginative shot Gerwig chooses is so out-of-place that the producers should have had a word with her – she has Jo speak to camera! Perhaps after Ladybird Gerwig was too untouchable. She even tags on a clunker of a new feminist ending.

Even the music score is woeful, ramming home every beat like in a superhero franchise. She runs… fast music. She’s ill… plinky-plonk piano.

What makes the end-result even worse is that it’s based on such brilliant source material. This reviewer loathes it with a passion. To see how it should be done, watch the 1994 version by Gillian Armstrong. And for a coming-of-age film that really hits home, watch the brilliant Mustang.

Seduced by the Oscar-winning hype, anyone hoping for another movie as riveting as Shoplifters will be disappointed. It’s engaging enough if you stick with it, but it’s over-ripe, long-winded and far too cumbersome for its 2hr run-time. A family of four ingratiate themselves as home helps into a wealthy family’s confidence. When things start to go wrong (after a whole hour) it descends into farce. No spoilers about the outcome, but by the end you probably won’t care what happens.

Bong Joon-Ho is a great director but this isn’t his best screenplay. If you also thought Snowpiercer, his one American movie, was a dud (not his fault), do yourself a favour and watch The Host or Memories of Murder.

The first half-hour plays like a sociological documentary about a backcountry Brazilian village… then a drone appears and soon the villagers are battling an attacking force. The promo material bills it as sci-fi but there’s no sci-fi in it – it’s a glorified political allegory.

It’s nowhere near the fun ride that some reviewers would have you think it is. It’s far too long in the build-up and the final confrontation is a damp squib. But its main fault is that there’s no emotional engagement with any of the characters so that we don’t care about their fate. And if you watch the tell-all trailer you’ll be even more disappointed. Nevertheless, and with an eclectic soundtrack, it’s probably different enough to make you keep watching.

Laughter-free belated sequel to the superior Zombielend. The script has the cast simply play around in sketches that have little sense of plot, jeopardy or drama. Voice-overs and on-screen captions attempt to add missing humour but to no avail. Everything about the film smacks of trying too hard with insufficient ideas to merit the empty exercise.

To annoy UK viewers even more, there’s an annoying stupid American teenage girl along for the ride and a cloying sequence in homage to Elvis Presley. To further insult the audience’s intelligence, the unfunniest sketch of all has a tired cameo of Bill Murray killing yet more zombies during the end-credits. If you start fast-forwarding, pause after an hour for one single unexpected treat – a brilliantly choreographed single-shot brawl.

This unrelenting tale of a self-confessed ‘mentally ill loser’ is a distasteful character study of how down-at-heel Arthur becomes Batman’s nemesis Joker. It’s a complete downer of a movie with no forward momentum and nothing of interest to maintain attention along the way. Superhero fans will not be the only ones to be sorely disappointed. A low-key 2hr character study of a cardboard-thin comic book figure was always going to be a tough ask, and writer/director Todd Phillips makes a complete hash of it.

He’s not helped by a hammy Joaquin Phoenix acting his socks off, nor by a barely disguised anti-Trump plot. No one cares about people like Arthur, you see. He’s ‘ignored by the system’, especially by Bruce Wayne’s unfeeling capitalist father, who runs for mayor. Even Ken Loach wouldn’t make the parallels that obvious. To further twist the knife, Arthur even has a sick mother to look after. In a despicable Act 3, this unbelievably forms a basis for justifying rioting and murder. No wonder this stinker of a film has garnered good reviews from certain quarters.

Laughter-free belated sequel to the superior Zombielend. The script has the cast simply play around in sketches that have little sense of plot, jeopardy or drama. Voice-overs and on-screen captions attempt to add missing humour but to no avail. Everything about the film smacks of trying too hard with insufficient ideas to merit the empty exercise.

To annoy UK viewers even more, there’s an annoying stupid American teenage girl along for the ride and a cloying sequence in homage to Elvis Presley. To further insult the audience’s intelligence, the unfunniest sketch of all has a tired cameo of Bill Murray killing yet more zombies during the end-credits. If you start fast-forwarding, pause after an hour for one single unexpected treat – a brilliantly choreographed single-shot brawl.

An aged writer is found dead and private eye Daniel Craig interviews a cast of talking heads, in a house, in close-up, to find out who dunnit. How this gets any favourable reviews is unfathomable. It would have been past its sell-by date in the 1950s. It’s completely devoid of flair and drama and is unrelentingly boring. It’s even played out to the most annoying Carry On muzak score that over-emphasises every beat. Only Inspector Clouseau could liven this one up. Who dunnit? Who cares?

Makeshift disjointed film about a charisma-free detective and a vigilante chasing sexual predators. It’s poorly realised in all departments and soon loses interest. Watch any episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit instead.

In this defiantly anti-superhero movie, people with superhuman powers are the underclass, policed into impotence by advanced drones and robocops. Our hero Connor, a Class 5 Electric, rebels and joins a power-abled heist team to make money for an operation to save his ailing mom. Detective Park is on his case. It’s a fascinating ride to a terrific electronic score as we discover what powers each character has and watch them put them to use when thieves fall out.

Low-key thriller about an East German family’s attempts to escape to the West in 1979. After their initial hot-air balloon attempt fails it’s a race against time as the Stasi close in. It could do with more oomph and a stronger score, but you’ll be rooting for the family to make it. Settle in for a solid watch as the film builds to a nail-biting climax and unexpectedly poignant end-credits sequence.

Spooky sci-fi movie begins in melodrama mode as an extended American family gathers and squabbles in a house in the woods. Then weird things start happening. Unnatural lights and noises. People disappear. A lesser film would descend into horror territory, but this evolves into an engrossing mystery thriller that packs an unexpected emotional punch. The stunning third act is almost totally wordless, telling its story purely in pictures and music. Horror fans will hate it. Sci-fi fans will feel short-changed. Anyone who loves cinema will be mesmerised. None of it makes any sense, but neither did 2001. Just sit back and let the visuals take you on an enthralling journey.

With Solis and now this, writer/director/editor/producer Carl Strathie is a name to watch. If anything is more incredible than that final half-hour, it’s the fact that he made Dark Encounter on a small budget in Yorkshire with a British cast.

A cool detective chases a resourceful baddie through the Manhattan night. Eight cops are dead and that’s just the start. There’s no mismatched buddie nonsense, no stupid cops, no idiot baddies who can’t shoot straight, no bulletproof heroes, no love interest, no subplots. This is a straight-down-the-line intelligent action thriller directed with gusto by Irishman Brian Kirk, upping his game after work on TV series such as Luther and Game of Thrones. The two leads (Chadwick Bozeman, summoning his inner Denzel, and Stephan James) ooze charisma. Sienna Miller shows she should be an action star. Henry Jackman’s pulsating score echoes Bernard Hermann’s work for Hitchcock.

To delve deeper, listen to the director’s commentary on the DVD and learn how some scenes had to be shot by a parkour runner using a warp cam. Great stuff. It’s the best cop film since Den of Thieves.