Film Reviews by Alphaville

Those silly blue cgi people are back, with their flying around the forest on big birds and singing in the toilet (sorry, la’vi). Now they’re underwater as well! Those nasty humans are back too, with their nasty robots and their nasty clanking machines disturbing the peace and – worst of all – their nasty attitude. Tom and Jerry had more depth.

Why can’t they just drop a big bomb on the whole planet? Surely this is one place in the universe that would be improved by species extinction.

As if the first film wasn’t bad enough, this one doubles the pain by lasting for a posterior-numbing, brain-numbing three hours. If you sit through this you really need to get out more.

The anti-war aim of the film is laudable, the epic scale undeniable, the direction faultless, but… Churlish to say, we’ve seen it all before. Raw recruits go to the trenches in WW1 and we follow them from training into battle. Despite the endless carnage, there’s little dramatic interest when everything is so repetitive and predictable. Ironically, the most dramatic scenes cover the off-battle politicking to end the war. It’s a classic story and a remake of a classic film, but is perhaps better viewed as an educational documentary than an engrossing feature film.

Bargain basement Japanese gore, OTT lurid and amateurish. Never has so much paint be spilt in the service of simulating blood.

A dad and his annoying daughter fight to survive in a world overrun by monstrous plants. Why are screen daughters so annoying? Papa! Papa! Will no plant rid us of her? Also ruining the film is a by-the-numbers plot and screeds of inane dialogue and hammy acting between bouts of action. It’s a shame because, even with a measly run time of 89mins, the scale is epic and the special effects, even when hilarious, are spectacular and deserve a better film. Worth a look if you’re partial to a cgi extravaganza to pass the time.

An English-speaking alien looking very much like Adam Driver crash-lands on earth 65 million years ago. This is his survival story as he contends with asteroids, dinosaurs and the obligatory 9yo girl (not as bad as usual). It doesn’t sound promising. There’s nothing here we haven’t seen before. Yet written and directed by the two guys who wrote ‘A Quiet Place’, this is a good-looking, well-made, grown-up and intelligent antidote to kiddie superhero franchises.

As in ‘A Quiet Place’, good use is made of sound design and the action doesn’t disappoint. At a mere 82mins before the end-credits roll, they should have re-instated some of the deleted scenes shown on the DVD Extras, but what remains is admirably taut. In a film world beset by childish superheroes, it should be applauded.

Light-hearted caper pits a cast of expendable characters against a cocaine-fuelled bear. It takes a while to get going then the severed limbs start flying to pop songs such as Depeche Mode’s ‘Just can’t get enough’. The main problem is that the comic characters hold no interest and there are too many scenes of them without the bear. Plus it was a mistake to hold the climax in gloomy darkness. Still, it’s an irresistible idea, based on true events, and is a hoot in parts.

Sion Sono’s first English-language film is even more unclassifiable than his previous work. With explosives attached to his privates, gangster Nick Cage sets off on his push-bike to rescue a woman from the land of no escape. Not that the plot matters as it barely hangs together from one scene to the next. What matters is the epic scale, surreal visuals and wild confrontations. For example, one monumental set has hordes of people trying to stop the hands moving on a giant clock to stop the universe exploding. You’ll either give up on it all after a few minutes or sit open-mouthed in wonderment. The final guns and swords climax, played out to a dramatic orchestral score, is a tour de force of operatic grandeur. It’s a divisive film not without many faults, but a Sion Sono movie is always an event worth catching.

Absurdist drama about a man who loves his deerskin jacket and goes to increasing lengths to stop anyone else wearing any jacket. One drab scene follows another as he wanders around in his jacket and talks to it in his hotel room. Unfortunately it’s not funny and it goes nowhere. It’s probably the longest 73-minute film you’ll ever see. Even as a ten-minute short it might be pushing it.

You’d hope a film directed by and based on Steven Spielberg’s early life would be full of wonder and insight about cinema, but those moments are few and far between. It’s mostly a bland family drama that takes a whole hour (out of an overlong 2½ hours) to get going. After that there’s some heartfelt drama among family members at last and a couple of telling cameos from Judd Hirsch as a black-sheep uncle and David Lynch as John Ford. Otherwise it’s little more than a vanity project with little flourish and disappointingly meh.

Another devilish, unclassifiable, remarkable film from Japanese director Sion Sono. Is it sci-fi? Teenage drama? Fantasy? Voyeurism? Gothic horror? An exploration of free will v determinism? Who cares when it’s this weird and wonderful. The gruesome, surreal opening coup de cinema, thankfully not shown in the trailer, is startling in its audacity. Things tail off for a bit after that as we become involved in teenage girl shenanigans (hence only 4 stars instead of 5), but soon we’re back among the action and plot twists. Not the masterpiece that was Love Exposure, but pure cinema. Why can’t the British film industry wean itself off social realism and make something as weirdly wonderful.

A sort-of Korean John Wick that never quite works. The feeble set-up has our trained assassin hero looking after a teenaged girl played by a K-pop star (yawn, yawn). But the main problem is his stoney-faced indestructability, which robs the fight scenes of any drama. There are a couple of well-choreographed fights – one filmed in a single Steadicam take and the final one against the main blond villain, but the long between-fight scenes really sag. It always seems to be on the verge of taking off but never does. In the end I got so bored with the hero that I wanted the villain to win.

Dull, would-be horror thriller about a girl troubled by an ‘evil entity’ (don’t laugh). If you’re hoping to see more of the devil-man who appears in the trailer and over the opening DVD play page, forget it. That’s about the sum of his appearance. Most of the film, especially the first hour, is just people talking. There are no thrills or scares and it’s not even silly enough to be funny. Final nail in the coffin – the end-credits are shown in woke order!

The latest thriller from M. Night Shyamalan is as tense as that opening scene in Inglorious Basterds. Most of it takes place in a cabin in the woods where a male couple and their adopted daughter are forced to make a kinda Sophie’s Choice: either one of them kills one of the others or mankind ends. It sounds preposterous, but so was The Sixth Sense and that worked. And we do get to see convincing apocalyptic scenes such as planes falling out of the sky.

The family are given this choice by a quartet of (very strange) strangers that burst in on them, but it’s not a home invasion movie as the incomers are not bad guys – they’re in as much peril as the family and have come to help them make the necessary choice. It’s hard to take the premise seriously and there’s no way it can lead to a satisfying climax, but it does hold the attention throughout with some tense and exciting action scenes.

You’ll know what this is about so it’s relief when the killer girl doll finally makes an appearance about a quarter-way through. Until then we’re stuck with its creator Allison Williams, who is one of those American actresses who speaks with an annoying vocal fry (frog voice). Fortunately things improve when the doll turns out to be a mixture of live action and animatronics that really works. You can guess where the plot’s going but the predictable climax doesn’t disappoint. (although the spoiler trailer does its best to ruin it by showing the best bits). The DVD offers two options: theatrical release or uncategorised, but disappointingly the only extra material the latter has are a few f-words that some snowflake must have objected to.

Yet another snooze-fest drops off the seemingly endless conveyer belt of British dramas that lack even a scintilla of visual imagination. It’s the kind of film that’s advertised by the lead actor’s brilliant/unforgettable/remarkable (choose your own adjective) performance. Just plonk the camera in front of him/her and hey, we have a film. This one’s full of long, drawn-out, static conversations that drain it of any interest, whatever the subject matter. Naturally it has been nominated for awards, which is probably one reason why nothing improves in the British film “industry”.