Film Reviews by Alphaville

How can a film about the rave scene in 90s Paris be so dull? What should have been fun and interesting becomes, in director Mia Hansen-Love’s hands, simply disjointed and pedestrian. Who wants to spend two hours with a bunch of boring people who do little but walk around, sit around and feed their nicotine habit in one incoherent scene after another? Where was the editor when he was needed? Mind you, cut out the superfluous scenes and this would be a very short film indeed. Drama is conspicuous by its absence.

Did I say ‘rave’? Was the music scene ever as bland as this? How many shots of nameless people jigging around in samey discos with their hands in the air is it possible to sit through? Don’t believe the unexpectedly warm reviews of critics who would no doubt believe the emperor had clothes. Just fast forward to the nauseatingly pretentious ending. Daft Punk deserve better than this.

Director Sylvain Chomet’s supposed animated homage to Jacques Tati is a travesty. Unlike many comedians, Tati understood the visual nature of cinema. As an actor he was a wonderful visual performer and as a director he filled his films with artfully visual gags. Animation has the capacity to expand and enhance reality but Chomet completely fails to understand this. The Illusionist diminishes both Tati and the medium. Chomet likes to hem in the frame and destroy all sense of wonder. Some scenes even place the Tati character on a stage, forcing us to watch animated theatre. The film deserves one star for a wonderfully intricate final aerial shot, which spirals out from Arthur’s Seat, the hill in the centre of Edinburgh, to encompass the whole city. This shot was tellingly sub-contracted out of the director’s hands.

It’s a crying shame because hand-drawn animation has the power to transport, as with Ghibli films. The blame lies entirely with Chomet, who describes his film as intentionally ‘anti-cinema’. Unbelievable. Watch and weep or enjoy M. Hulot’s Holiday again instead.

This is a tense, closely observed thriller that develops into an enthralling watch. As usual these days, avoid the tell-tale trailer because if you think you know where this is going you’ll be wrong. Minor quibbles are a terrible title and a lack of oomph in places, although a dramatic electro score does wonders to up the ante. There’s also a clichéd family-man-finds-his-mojo subtext, most of which thankfully appears to have ended up on the cutting room floor.

Against this, it’s a pleasure to see Don Johnson still strutting his stuff. He turns up half-way through as a pig-farming private eye and steals every scene he’s in. It’s no spoiler to sat that the climax would be worthy of any western. Jim Mickle made one of the great vampire movies in Stakeland and this is on a par.

A refreshing antidote to the usual creepy filmic view of a relationship between an adult man and a teenage girl (eg the peculiarly overrated An Education). This is a comedy in which the man is the one who is manipulated. Doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs but director Marielle Heller, greatly helped by lead Bel Powley, treats the sexual relationship with the same lightness of touch that Louis Malle did mother-and-son incest in Murmur of the Heart. Warm-hearted, funny and truthful. Going against the grain of standard Hollywood produce, it’s also great to see a film that portrays sex as fun and drugs as seedy rather than vice versa.

Opening with epic landscapes and portentous titles about a Roman legion on the Silk Road, this risible nonsense immediately descends into the usual Jackie Chan play-fighting hokum and from then on it’s impossible to take seriously. All the fight scenes are lengthily choreographed past the point of boredom, John Cusack is difficult to believe in a thankless role as a legionnaire, there are long stretches of east-meets-west détente and the widescreen vistas soon deteriorate into middling cgi. Looks like it would have been fun more to make than watch. Thank goodness for baddie Adrian Brodie, who turns up after an hour to add some much-needed gravitas, but by then it’s too late to save the movie. One star for those vistas.

A talentless young French writer finds a dead man’s brilliant unpublished manuscript and passes it off as his own. No spoilers – this all happens in the first ten minutes. The book is a first-hand account of soldiering in the 1950s Algerian war. What could possibly go wrong? Finding out will keep you glued to the screen. The more dangerous and ridiculous his predicaments become, the more you’ll squirm with him. The suspense is akin to watching Kevin Costner becoming increasingly cornered in No Way Out. Great stuff, with a doozie of an ending that will make you both laugh and cry.

Kingsman is the best Bond film since Goldfinger… and Bond isn’t even in it. With current Bond movies mired in gritty realism and the Bourne franchise ruined by Greengrass wobble-cam, Michael Vaughn gives us an uproarious genre-savvy secret service movie that thrills as much as it amuses. From the opening set-piece with Jack Davenport as an urbane action hero, you know you’re in good hands here. As for Colin Firth… who knew that behind that stiff Darcy exterior lurked such effortless action-man potential? The set-piece where he slaughters a whole church full of rednecks to a soundtrack of wailing guitar from Free Bird is one of the most astonishing pieces of pure cinema in recent years.

Beside Colin Firth and scenery-chewing baddie Samuel L. Jackson, wannabe agent Taron Egerton cuts a somewhat lacklustre figure, but the movie’s only ‘bum’ note comes at the end, where the notion of anal sex as a reward for saving the world leaves a sour taste. Don’t let that put you off. See our heroes tackle the hench-woman with razor-sharp blades for legs!

For anyone who loved the TV series the spin-off film will come as a real disappointment. Kit Harrington lacks charisma as the leading agent and Peter Firth (reprising his role as spy boss Harry) pouts his petulant way through proceedings as though auditioning for his next role of Pontius Pilate in Risen. The plot makes the same mistake with Harry as Skyfall did with M. These are backroom overlords not field agents. Getting them out from behind their desks merely exposes their limitations when involved in an action plot. Harry’s completely out-of-character behaviour makes the whole narrative unbelievable, and there are insufficient thrills to lure a Spooks-ignorant new audience. The TV series lost its way in its final episodes, with the emphasis more on Harry than the agents, and the film does nothing to redress the balance.

An inexplicable multi-Oscar winner in 2009, this is one of the few films that blatantly gives away its climax even before you set foot in the cinema. Structured around the famous TV quiz show, the plot is constantly interrupted by lengthy flashbacks of the contestant's upbringing in the slums of Mumbai, as depicted by the usual rent-a-cute street urchins. Any tension is provided not by the narrative but by the audience-manipulating TV quiz itself, and we know how that’s going to end. Boyle directs with his customary verve, hence its two star rating, but a more realistic depiction of Indian life will be found in the tedious but more informative films of Satyajit Ray.

Matters are not helped by a lacklustre central performance. The only interesting characters are the morally ambiguous quizmaster and the detecting investigating cheating. It all ends in the expected rousing climax that you’d have to have a heart of stone not to vomit at. Oscars? All boxes are ticked. The Academy comes over all warm at the prospect of cloying sentimentality and political correctness, and it just loves a happy-clappy ending. Whoo! Whoo!

This derivative 2014 actioner, entitled ‘Rage’ in the States, is simply monotonous. As too often these days, Nicolas Cage plays it dour as he goes on the rampage in search of his missing daughter. Numerous shoot-outs merely up the yawn-count. There’s even a bog-standard frenetic car chase. Have today’s directors learned nothing from Bullitt? One star for a thunderous score that tries to inject some life into affairs, otherwise it’s B-movie fare that wastes the talents of all concerned.

Villeneuve knows how to inject tension into a scene, as in Prisoners, but this film lacks the narrative drive of that superior film and develops into something of a low-key procedural (compare Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty). It also has a glaring default at the heart of the story. After a bright opening, our heroine (Emily Blunt) is never anything but a bystander and completely disappears from the final act. We're half an hour into the film before even she knows what she's doing in it. Her co-star, the mysterious del Toro, is seriously underwritten (apparently at his request) but eventually turns action-man to deliver a rousing climax. Most unattractive, superfluous and annoying feature: our heroine's constant gasping for a cigarette. Did the producer pocket some lobby money?

You're either in the market for juvenile Marvel tosh with paper-thin plotting and characterisation or you're not. This film easily matches the dizzying heights of Thor and Avengers movies as our hero uses his shield as a Frisbee to kill the baddies. Lots of cgi and cliched superfast editing of fights to mask their lack of skill and artistry. The default generic Mickey Mouse muzak. There may be a plot, but who cares? Everything is throwaway and shallow for an audience of ADHD thumb-twiddling zombie-heads. Reminiscent of Saturday-morning Flash Gordon serials, though they were intellectual masterpieces by comparison. Worst of all, the ending sets up the threat of another sequel. Feel sorry, very sorry for chief baddie Robert Redford that it's come to this. One star for production values.

At least you know what you're getting with F&F - an obnoxious alpha-male film that glories in the power of revving automobiles and the view of women as sex-objects. There are the usual couple of OTT set-pieces to wake the viewer but there are no high stakes to encourage involvement. You know Vin ain't gonna get whacked. Elsewhere, maudlin attempts at character interaction are nauseating in their contrivance. And guess what? Such is the state of the multiplex audience these days that three more instalments have already been planned! Cinema has always produced naff franchises for the hard-of-thinking (Connery made Never Say Never Again in exchange for the right to make three more interesting films for Sidney Lumet). So I guess we shouldn't begrudge brain-dead fare such as this if it rakes in money for the industry. It's just that this franchise leaves a bad feeling in the mouth.

Strictly for brain-dead petrolheads.

A po-faced prequel to the TV series that thinks it's cool when it's merely dull. Any fun is squeezed out of it by a talky script and staid direction that constantly brings any narrative drive to a halt. The two leads can do little with their wooden characters, while giving Kuryakin a rage issue is a serious miscalculation. On the extras Guy Ritchie even says he 'didn't want them looking too cool'! And whoever thought it a good idea to include scenes of concentration camp torture?! In keeping with these errors of judgement, the film is burdened with an intensely irritating score by (BAFTA-winning) Daniel Pemberton. Even the Mission Impossible films, good or bad, manage to make exciting use of the old TV theme.

An utterly predictable chamber piece, totally bereft of ideas or interesting dialogue, about two sets of squabbling parents. So instantly forgettable I attempted to watch it for a second time because I forgot I'd attempted to sit through it a year before. It's based on a stage play and, boy, does it show. Fans of ACTORS may find something here to detain them, but a MOVIE it ain't. No stars.