Film Reviews by GI

This zany musical comedy has become a big cult favourite. It's gloriously stupid, over the top and hilarious with a fantastic central performance from John Belushi assisted by Dan Ackroyd and a host of musicians and actors in support roles. Based on the characters Belushi and Ackroyd created for the American TV show Saturday Night Live and with a simple plot this is a comedy that has a fantastic rhythm and blues soundtrack. Belushi is Jake, who on being released from prison is taken by his brother Elwood to see the nun who runs the orphanage where they grew up. Partly terrified of her and partly out of duty they agree to try and raise the funds to stop the orphanage from closing. To do this they decide to reform their old band and play gigs. The trouble is the old band members are reluctant and the brothers end up wanted by the police. By the films end they are being pursued by a host of 'enemies' including the local Nazi party. Filled with car chases, fantastical and crazy set pieces including Carrie Fisher as a vengeful woman trying to kill them throughout the entire film in more outrageous ways this is a film that will have you laughing out loud or groaning at the whole daftness of it. But the songs are great not only from the Blues Brothers themselves but you also get Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, James Brown and John Lee Hooker. With a brilliant support cast that includes John Candy, Twiggy and keen eyes will spot Steven Spielberg in a small role. Many absolutely love this film and it's certainly one everybody should try at least once because it is bonkers and you will laugh and tap your feet too.

A routine action thriller with Liam Neeson toning down his usual action man stuff. This is the sort of film that at one time Clint Eastwood would have starred in and indeed director Robert Lorenz has worked on Eastwood films in the past. Neeson plays Jim, a widowed Arizona rancher down on his luck. He ends up promising a dying woman to take her young son Miguel (Jacob Perez) to her family in Chicago. But the boy is being hunted by nasty Cartel baddies which cues a long road movie, where the curmudgeonly Jim bonds with the boy whilst they manage to get away from the tattooed nasties. It all points to the inevitable confrontation which is a bit of a disappointment especially as the title and the narrative all allude to Jim's past as a Marine sniper but he's forever losing his guns and doesn't do much sniping. The film rips from Sicario (2015) even using the same music and there's numerous examples of similar stories that have all been better. Average stuff, entertaining in parts but nothing memorable.

Kristen Stewart is note perfect as Princess Diana in this imagined story of a royal Christmas weekend at Sandringham. She portrays the fragility of Diana as her marriage has collapsed and her increased feelings of being trapped in a world she cannot escape. Not only has Stewart caught Diana's mannerisms and accent but as a performance of a woman descending further into mental torment she is revelatory. The royal family are painted as preposterous as they no doubt are showing bizarre traditions such as being weighed on arrival but they are kept mostly in the background here as the film focuses on Diana's mental decline and some touching scenes with her two children. The atmosphere is one of gothic claustrophobia with long, cold corridors and a creepy Major Gregory (Timothy Spall) who is head of the staff ever present. Not all of the film works especially some of the visions that Diana is depicted as having but the analogy of her with Anne Boleyn is apt and interesting. Sean Harris and Sally Hawkins as friendly servants but who are also part of the royal machine are both very good. An interesting film, well told and surprisingly clever and certainly better than the awful Diana (2013) and knowing the royal family will hate it makes it well worthwhile.

A routine monster horror that steals from just every nasty shark movie and a couple of others too. You can break it down thus: a group of pretty but dopey teenagers go scuba diving in an underwater ancient city, get trapped and are then pursued by some large, blind and very hungry sharks all the time running low on air. The bullied, shy one will inevitably prove the bravest, the brief respite from heroic rescuer will end suddenly when he snuffs it and it's never quite over until it is! It steals shamelessly from Deep Blue Sea (1999), there's the inevitable Jaws homage and the plot is a copy of The Descent (2005) with none of the panache or originality. A comic book throwaway that offers nothing new, it's all been done before and much, much better.

A humourless, rather boring family drama set in the picturesque Portuguese town of Sintra. It has an interesting cast who all seem to be on autopilot with the exception of Marisa Tomei who brings a sense of truth to her role. Isabelle Huppert plays the title role, a rich world renowned actor who has bought her family together for a holiday to impart some news. They are all rather spoilt and have their own relationship problems and so we watch as they all act like their rather weary problems are played out over a day. The film is all a bit cold despite the impressively beautiful setting and with such talent as Brendan Gleeson as Frankie's husband and Greg Kinnear as Frankie's best friend, Ilene's (Tomei) new boyfriend it's a film that had potential but is a damp squib.

Dreamland is a romantic drama with flashes of action and a sort of twist on the Bonnie & Clyde narrative. Set in Texas during the Great depression and disillusioned young man, Eugene (Finn Cole), gets some excitement when he finds wanted fugitive Allison (Margot Robbie) hiding in the family barn. he agrees to help her despite his stepfather being a local deputy sheriff committed to hunting her down. As you'd expect a slightly bizarre relationship begins between them. The film holds the most interest in Robbie's motives, is she lying about her involvement in the killing of child?, Is she does using this naive young man to engineer an escape to Mexico. This is not a bad film, it drags at times and ends as you'd expect. It's worth checking out but not overly memorable.

A subtle, sensitive and interesting directorial debut from Rebecca Hall. It's very stylish, set in Prohibition era New York and shot in a crisp monochrome to finesse the colours as this is a film all about skin colour. It tells the story of two former high school friends, Irene (Tessa Thompson) and Clare (Ruth Negga), both mixed race, who bump into each other one afternoon and re-bond. The main issue is that Clare has opted to 'pass' as white and indeed is married to racist John (Alexander Skarsgård). This shocks Irene but as the film plays out it reveals Irene too, married to a black doctor, is also leading a life that tries to pass as something beyond her. This is tragic tale, wonderfully told and it's a very self assured first film by Hall. The performances all show great sensitivity. It's well worth checking out.

This is the second crime film that director David Cronenberg made with Viggo Mortensen after 2005s A History of Violence. Eastern Promises is basically a gangster film, set in London and narratively focused on Russian organised crime. It's a brutal film with huge dollops of highly realistic violence one of which opens the film. It tends to give up story to try and give a generalised history of the Russian gangland customs which ultimately leaves the film coming up short although it throws in a plot twist which is weakened by a very anticlimactic ending. When a teenage girl dies in childbirth, midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) armed only with the girl's diary attempts to find her family to tell them about the baby. This leads her to a restaurant owned by the helpful Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who happens to be a ruthless Russian mobster. Anna finds her family are soon threatened but she finds an ally in the mobsters driver Nikolai (Mortensen). Mortensen gives it his all as usual and Mueller-Stahl is excellent. Watts though is sadly underused here and the support of Vincent Cassell doing his usual unhinged psycho is a waste of talent and seems very clichéd. Overall the film has some merit but it's not as interesting as the earlier Cronenberg/Mortensen collaboration.

A passionate and powerful love story that charts sexual awakening, conflicts of desire and the heartbreak of a broken relationship. Whilst there is controversy in this film largely around its intense sex scenes this is also a film that garnered a lot of praise. Filmed in a realist style it follows Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a high school student who struggles with the peer pressure she receives from her friends to have sex with a guy who fancies her. She feels that something is missing in her life until she meets the confident and artistic Emma (Léa Seydoux) and they begin a passionate relationship. But as their lives become more entwined Adèle still struggles with being a part of Emma's life. Feelings of jealousy, shyness and inadequacy all contribute to a downward spiral. This is a film that really captures the reality of relationship struggles, ultimately it has a deep sadness in the story but also a strong sense of a journey of emotion that can only result in a rewarding life. The two leads are extremely good here and capture the intensity of their love along with the pain when things begin to go wrong. In many ways this is one of the best relationship dramas you'll see.

What is disappointing about this film is that in remaking the ground breaking BBC series of the 1980s director Martin Campbell lost all the essence, weight, ingenuity, subtlety and complexity of that's series to produce an average cop thriller that makes little sense.....and he directed both! The story here is very simple and ultimately clichéd as a revenge narrative where Boston detective Tom Craven hunts down the mysterious killers of his beloved daughter who was trying to uncover corruption at a nuclear storage facility. Throw is more bloodshed, take out the superb characterisations from Troy Kennedy Martin's original story and this is what you have left. Mel Gibson as Craven does his usual quivering in anger and tearful righteousness, Ray Winstone is underused and basically wasted, his role as a covert agent is eroded to almost nothing making his actions mostly pointless to the story. Campbell dips into some of the key narrative devices used to such great effect in the series and effectively renders them silly here. This is a poor film from a director who has done far better not only with the Edge Of Darkness series but of course his work in the James Bond series reboots. This is a big disappointment and one to avoid. Watch the series instead it's fantastic.

Tom Hardy gives one of his grandiose performances as Al Capone in this story of the last year of his life. Released after ten years in prison, suffering from syphillis caused dementia, he is cared for by his loving wife and surrounded by family and suspicious Feds on a Florida estate. The main plot of the film is that everyone believes Capone has stashed a large amount of cash somewhere and everyone wants to get it. It's unclear whether this is intended as a genuine biopic or a study of dementia, either way it's a bit of an empty film. Capone is plagued by hallucinations of his violent past, all of which are highly exaggerated, and wanders around his estate in adult nappies. Hardy's performance is quite unsubtle and at times I thought he was drifting into his Reggie Kray or Charles Bronson personas. The trouble is Capone as a self caused dementia victim is still a nasty individual with nothing redeeming, in fact the film sort of makes you feel he deserves his fate. Kyle MacLachlan has a role as a Doctor in the employ of the FBI, Matt Dillon pops up as Capone's old mentor in several hallucinations. There's some gratuitous violence, thankfully limited to a couple of scenes, and by the end it's a film that will make you shrug and think 'So what'.

A gonzo revenge western that is heavily influenced by Tarantino with added dashes of Leone and John Sturges, blood spattering galore resulting in this being more cartoon than genre. It has its moments but overall adds nothing that you haven't seen before and in fact lacks a witty enough script to balance out all the gore. Interestingly the characters are all based on real people who lived in the old west but the events of the film are entirely fictitious. Essentially it's two gangs of gunfighters who are out to kill each other. Jonathan Majors plays Nat Love who leads one gang and are sort of the good guys. He's out for revenge for the murder of his parents by Rufus Buck (Idris Elba). Buck's gang are much more ruthless and includes a cold blooded Regina King. The story does some crazy things and there's heaps of nasty violence and the odd laugh (one of the gangs robs a 'white' town which is literally all white). The film has energy and a garish look but it's too long and the final bloody climax is a bit underwhelming.

This is one of the key films of the 1980s. A very dark mystery thriller from director David Lynch and if you're unfamiliar with Lynch's films this is a good one as an introduction to them and you can see the roots of Lynch's later Twin Peaks series here. Here Lynch uncovers the dark underbelly of small-town America with his opening images of a picture postcard world that is corrupted by the strange and evil that lies out of sight. Blue Velvet is a film that once seen is not forgotten, it's essentially a mystery that unravels gradually but it's infused with a grotesque characters, sexual violence and a pervading sense of unease. Set in the 1980s it has a 1950s classic film noir vibe but it goes in some very dark and shocking directions. Kyle MacLachlan plays college student Jeffrey, who returns to his hometown after his father has a seizure to help at the family's hardware store. One afternoon he happens to find a severed human ear and takes it to a police detective who lives nearby. Intrigued by his find Jeffrey begins his own investigation, aided by Sandy (Laura Dean), which leads him to a nightclub singer, Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini), and to the psychopathic Frank, a real monster of a villain, played with gusto by Dennis Hopper. The film has a nightmarish visual style and manages to be a mainstream film with avant-garde and arthouse influences. There's themes here of loss of innocence that are key to Lynch's preoccupation with the darkness that pervades American suburbia. This is a modern masterpiece and one that shows how Hollywood occasionally takes risks.

There's no doubt that fans of the MCU will absolutely love this and to be sure the character of Black Widow is one that had the potential for a fulfilling spin-off/stand alone film. This is certainly action packed, spectacular, exciting and great fun although if the Avengers series is not your thing then it'll have some confusing moments in trying to understand what is always going on and where it fits in the Avengers film chronology. In short Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow is forced to join up with her dangerous assassin sister, Yelena (Florence Pugh) to foil the ubër baddie Dreykov (Ray Winstone) who has created an army of brain washed female super soldiers. This forces both to confront their past as the 'daughters' of two Russian spies who posed as their parents in the US where the girls grew up. David Harbour and Rachel Weisz have great fun as those parents and both get stuck into the great fight scenes and huge action set pieces. The influences of the Mission Impossible series and hints of the Terminator films are obvious and William Hurt and Olga Kurylenko have cameos. It's good fun all round and there's the usual end credits sequence so don't switch off too soon.

You could say this is a soppy ol' Disney family adventure that will make you go 'Aww...' at various intervals and you'd be right but it's a good solid, old fashioned dog story that has a good heart much like it's main character. Adapted from the celebrated novel by Jack London (previously adapted in 1923, 1937, 1972 and 1997) this one opts for full on CGI for it's canine characters and this was a good choice giving the animals a wide emotional range that gives the film a lovely, cuddly feel. This is the story of Buck, a St Bernard/Collie cross breed, who is stolen from his luxury home in California, where he lives a mischievous life but is well adored, and sold to be part of a sled team working in the harsh Yukon during the infamous Gold Rush. Here he has to battle the winter conditions, a nasty lead dog named Spitz, and a baddie in the form of Dan Stevens. But he finds love and friendship with grizzled old John (Harrison Ford), who befriends the dog. But the remote forests starts to affect Buck as he feels the call of the wild summoning back to nature. It's all bit corny but there's a warmth to the film and kids of all ages will love this. This is a film that you can all snuggle together on the sofa and enjoy. It's actually a bit of a treat.