NEW RELEASE
Hell or High Water (15) Following gritty prison drama Starred Up, Scottish director David Mackenzie makes his American feature debut with an excursion into Cormac McCarthy Texas noir territory courtesy of a script by Sicario’s Taylor Sheridan. Set in a dying West Texas dustbowl of foreclosures, debt billboards and boarded up buildings, it wastes no time in opening with a bank robbery, two men in ski masks storming into a small Texas Midlands bank, but then having to wait until the manager arrives to open the safe.
The men are brothers Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) Howard, the former a divorced down on his luck rancher, the latter a sociopathic ex-con with an aggressive streak. He’s agreed to help Toby rob enough Texas Midland branches (always first thing in the morning and only ever in unmarked bills which they then launder through a casino) to raise the cash to stave off the bank’s foreclosure on the family ranch as the debt owed by their recently deceased mother falls due. Toby wants to keep the ranch in the family and put in trust for his two sons, for whom he’s never really been there. Especially since oil’s just been found on the land. Tanner just likes the thrill.
As the robberies are too small to interest the big boys, soon to retire slow-drawling Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and his long-suffering half-Comanche partner, Alberto (Gil Birmingham), the butt of his good natured racial stereotype insults, are drafted in, the former gradually piecing together a pattern and joining the dots to figure out where the pair will eventually strike.
Before it gets to the inevitable shoot-out climax, Mackenzie takes time to trace the relationship between the two sets of mismatched men, playing the Marcus and Alberto scenes with a dry humour while focusing the emotional content on the brothers, but all the while keeping the film’s state of the nation political themes (the little guy vs, the bankers) clearly in focus. There’s a nice use of scene mirroring too in Toby’s encounter with a diner’s sympathetic and equally struggling waitress and Marcus and Alberto’s less friendly (but very funny) encounter with her mean-tongued aged counterpart (a scene stealing Margaret Bowman) in another steakhouse.
As you might imagine, there’s a strong Western flavour to proceedings with frequent references to the dying breed of cowboys (of whom Hamilton sees himself) as well as subtly suggesting the banks and the ranchers to be the cavalry and Native-Americans, respectively, and the film is careful to avoid any black and white moralising as regards the brothers’ motivations and actions, bringing instead a sense of fate and destiny that echoes Greek tragedy and culminates in a High Sierra-like desert stand-off.
There’s a certain predictability (the dialogue gives clear hints as to who lives and who dies), but equally times when it takes you to unexpected places, closing on an emotionally resonant open-ended coda. The core performances are excellent, Pine carrying a weight of parental guilt and family obligation in his eyes, Foster always suggesting Tanner might kick off at any moment, but never less than loyal to his brother, while Bridges delivers a quietly understated but compelling turn. It’s a well-crafted, slow burn, tense affair that could well loom large come awards season. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Electric; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza; Reel; Showcase Walsall)
Anthropoid (15)
In 1942, using the codename Operation Anthropoid, the Czech government in exile sent two agents, Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis (played by Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan, respectively) back to their homeland to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the so-called Butcher of Prague, Hitler’s third in command and the architect of the Final Solution. Although the attempt was bungled, it did succeed, although none of the agents or resistance members involved survived and the Nazi response was brutal. Like the Daniel Craig film, Defiance, this, directed by Sean Ellis, tells a little known story from the Second World War, highlighting unsung heroes who fought against Nazi tyranny to liberate their people. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as good.
Making their way to Prague after parachuting into Czechoslovakia and avoid betrayal by a collaborator (wherein we see Kubis unable to shoot for his hand literally shaking with nerves, a moment inevitably revisited towards the end), they hook up with the surviving members of the resistance (Toby Jones among them) and enlist two local girls, Marie (Charlotte Le Bon) and Lenka (Anna Geislerová) to pose as their girlfriends as they scout out the surroundings and plan the assassination, Gabcik and Kubis naturally falling for their respective women.
Since no one survived the superbly staged Cathedral gun-battle after the pair were betrayed or the subsequent Nazi reprisals, pretty much everything on screen is surmised and, as such, frequently steeped in the clichés of resistance movies. Although Doran and Murphy are capable as Kubis and the more aggressively resolute Gabcik, the result, shot with disorientingly unsteady camerawork, is a frequently flat and wooden affair, only coming to dramatic life in the final moments. “Boredom may be the biggest enemy we have here,” one of the resistance observes, audiences may feel likewise. (Cineworld NEC; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Ben-Hur (12A)
Originally made in 1926 as a silent and then as the three hour plus Charlton Heston epic in 1959, the 1880 novel now gets another remake courtesy of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, one that on track to be the biggest box office bomb of the year. The screenplay is loosely faithful to the book a such that Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston, a Jewish prince in Jerusalem falls foul of his Roman childhood friend, Messala (Toby Kebbell) following an incident involving the Roman governor (here Pontius Pilate played by Pilou Asbæk) and sent off to slave in the Roman galleys, unaware of the fate of his mother (Ayelet Zurer) or sister (Sofia Black B’Elia). Some years later, free, seeking revenge, Judah takes on Messala in a chariot race. All of which comes with a parallel subplot involving Christ, his eventual crucifixion and Judah’s conversion to the new faith,
However, things have also been tweaked considerably. Now, Messala, the grandson of a disgraced nobleman involved in the Julius Caesar conspiracy) is Judah’s adopted brother (who has a thing for his ‘sister’), Judah marries family serving girl Esther (Nazanin Boniadi) considerably earlier in the plot while Messala heads off to earn his advancement in a montage of battle scenes. Returned home, now the incident involving Pilate is an attempted assassination by young zealot whom Judah (who would rather not trouble the waters by upsetting the Romans) was misguidedly harbouring and for which he claims responsibility and, feeling betrayed, Messala duly dispatches him to the galleys (arguably the best scenes). Liberation here comes following a furious sea battle wherein he’s washed up on shore and tended to by Sheik Ilderim (Morgan Freeman), an African chariot-racing entrepreneur who ultimately facilitates the big race, (here back in Jerusalem not Rome) and, in keeping with local carpenter Jesus’s love thy neighbour message, the film now has a ridiculous everyone reunited happy ending.
Visually, it’s often spectacular, but, in addition to the meandering and at times repetitive screenplay, neither Huston or Kebbell have the necessary screen charisma to carry things off (Freeman sleepwalks through it and still steals everything) and the whole thing, while not exactly terrible, is just dull and inert and lacking in persuasive dramatic plausibility, to which end, long before it enters the circus you’re like to find yourself wishing that sweet chariot would come to carry you home. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Captain Fantastic (15)
Given the huge critical acclaim that’s been showered on this, it’s surprising to find it opening on only a handful of screens, and just one in the West Midlands. Despite what the title might suggest, this isn’t another super-hero offering, but rather an intendedly thoughtful look at alternative parenting in a world where education is poor, capitalism and consumer culture is failing the new generation society in general is not fit for purpose. To which end, anti-capitalist leftist Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) and wife Leslie (Trin Miller, only ever seen in flashback or dreams) have dropped out and now they and their kids, Bodevan (George MacKay), younger brother Rellian (Nicholas Hamilton) and variously aged sisters Kielyr (Samantha Isler), Nai (Charlie Shotwell) and Zaja (Shree Crooks), live in the forest wilderness of the Pacific Northwest,where they hunt and grow their own food (a knife is a much wished for present), listen to Bach and read Middlemarch and The Brothers Karamazov round the campfire, ready to offer analysis at the drop of a hat. But there’s already simmering unrest (unknown to his father, Bo has been accepted into every Ivy League college going without sitting single exam), and this comes to a head when Ben learns that Leslie, who’s been hospitalised with depression, has killed herself.
Blaming Ben for his daughter’s death, influential straight-laced father-in-law Jack (Frank Langella) threatens to have Ben arrested if he attends the funeral, but, persuaded by the kids, they nevertheless pile into the family bus and head off to New Mexico, not least to protest that Leslie’s being given a Christian send-off in strict denial of her will.
What ensues is a series of culture clashes as Jack and Ben butt heads and the kids discover a world they never really knew existed, leading Bo and Rellian (who blames his father for his mother’s death) to increasingly challenge Ben and the way he’s raised them, at one point Bo, after an amusing encounter with a girl, exploding that all he knows about life has come from books. Eventually, unable to stop the funeral going ahead, Ben and the kids decided to liberate mom’s body and give her the send-off she wanted as they all father round singing sweet Home Alabama.
There is, at times, an air of Little Miss Sunshine about things, but the film is problematic in that it clearly wants audiences to sympathise with Ben’s attempts to give his children a richer life, but at times his actions and attitudes (at one point he leads them on a shoplifting expedition as part of ‘the mission’, at others he wander around naked just to shock people) border on child abuse and you can well understand why Jack might feel the need to take custody. A scene where the family visit Ben’s sister (Kathryn Hahn) and brother-in-law (Steve Zahn) amusingly makes a point about school education (their kids have no idea what the Bill of Rights mean, his six-year-old can humiliatingly deliver a treatise on them), but it also comes across as insufferably smug and sanctimonious.
Ben never addresses Jack’s core argument as to what the kids will do when they have to live in the real world, and neither does the film, content to close with a happy comprise after an incident leads Ben to ‘see the light’ about what his attitudes and actions could have resulted in. There’s no truly serious critique of the philosophies it espouses or rejects, largely offering the family’s life as a collection of endearing quirks punctuated with the occasional – and short-lived – eruptions of resentment (and only ever by the two boys), the socio-politics ultimately boiling down to Cash family mantra, “Power to the people. Stick it to the Man.”
The performances are terrific, with both Mortensen and Mackay like to secure award nominations, but some may find the gap between what you get and what the filmmakers think they’re giving too wide to comfortably accept. (Electric)
The Childhood of a Leader (12A)
The directorial feature debut of Brady Corbet with a score by Scott Walker, this stars Liam Cunningham, Robert Pattinson and Bérénice Bejo in a powerful drama set during and just after World War I as the angelic-looking young son of an American diplomat living in France learns to manipulate the adults around him, offering a coming of age metaphor for the rising tide of Fascism. (Sat/Sun:Electric)
Don’t Breathe (15)
The best thrillers are lean and concise, they build their claustrophobic by dispensing with unnecessary subplots and by focusing on the events in hand. Although it takes a while to get going, this is one such. Broke and desperate in economically depressed small town Detroit, Rocky (Jane Levy), Alex (Daniel Zovatto) and the rather less likeable Money (Dylan Minette) raise the cash they need to get out of their dead-end lives by breaking into the homes of the more well-to-do, aided by the fact that Money’s father runs a security firm, so he has access to the passcodes and gadgets than can circumvent the burglar alarms. Rocky just needs one big score so she can get away from her dead-beat mother and her trash boyfriend. Which would seem to present itself in isolated old house scoped out by Money. Its sole occupant is a grizzled army veteran (Stephen Lang) blinded in the first gulf war whose daughter was killed by a hit and run rich girl. She got off free and he got a hefty settlement, which Money reckons he has stashed somewhere in the house. Although Alex has qualms about knocking over a blind guy, the three eventually decide to go for it. After all, how hard is it going to be.
As it turns out, lethally hard. Although they dope his ferocious Rottweiler, the man himself proves less susceptible, appearing in the doorway just as the three are cracking open a locked room and, realising there’s an intruder, swiftly taking down the armed Money. Now, the doors locked and the windows barred, Rocky and Alex find themselves trapped in a darkened house of which their intended victim knows every inch.
And that’s pretty much it for the cat and mouse set-up as the pair’s increasingly desperate attempts to avoid their pursuer, all stubble, white hair and grubby vest, and escape, preferably with the loot, regularly fid them in an even worse situation. Since, even for a home invasion movie, that’s a fairly limited premise, the film, directed by Fede Alvarez, fresh off the back of his gory Evil Dead remake, introduces a little extra in which the blind man’s revealed to have a secret locked away that suddenly spins the moral compass (and is the first time he actually speaks), one which entails a rather unpleasant scene of sexual violence involving a turkey baster and Rocky suspended in a harness that rather undermines what, until then, had been relatively credible.
As with all such films, the remaining protagonists prove surprisingly resilient, walking way from any number of injuries and falls through windows, but, with the house a dimly lit and at times blacked-out maze (why don’t they turn on the lights, after all, their assailant won’t be any better off?), Alvarez uses the shadows to ratchet up the intensity that tends to a level that makes you forget the plot holes. Ultimately, effective though it is, it never quite lives up to the possibilities it offers and, inevitably, ends with the hint of a horror-franchise style sequel, something that seems rather inevitable given the huge box office. Or maybe that’s just blind man’s bluff. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Kubo and the Two Strings (PG)
A combination of CGI and stop motion animation, the latest from Laika Films, the company behind Coraline and ParaNorman is not only their finest yet, but mounts a real challenge to the supremacy of Pixar in the animation field.
“If you must blink, do it now” a voice announces as the film, set in a feudal Japan, opens with a woman in a small boat battling against mountainous waves with the help of her magical shamisen, a traditional Japanese three-stringed lute. Washed up on the shore with the one-eyed baby she has concealed in her bag, the film flashes forward and the baby, now grown to a boy, Kubo (Art Parkinson), who spends his nights caring for his mother, who drifts in and out of a sort of catatonic state in the cave where they live atop a mountain, and his days telling stories to the local villagers, using the shamisen to create animated origami shapes, most particularly that of a samurai based on Hanzo, his father, who died saving them from the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes), Kubo’s grandfather, who took his son’s eye. Unfortunately, Kubo never gets to end his stories as he must always be back in the cave before night falls.
However, one day, after hearing from an old dear (Brenda Vaccaro) how the villagers honour those who have passed on by conjuring their spirits in lanterns, Kubo seeks to do the same with his father. Nothing happens, but as the sun goes down a cloud of darkness forms, from which emerge The Sisters (Rooney Mara), the daughters of the Moon King, come to take his other eye. Rescued by his mother, seemingly at the cost of her life, Kubo finds himself alone – alone that is save for the no-nonsense talking monkey (Charlize Theron), the talisman that’s been brought to life in his mother’s last magical act.
Learning that, in order to defeat the Moon King, he must finds his father’s lost indestructible sword and powerful armour, on which quest the pair (and the origami Hanzo) are joined by a samurai that once served Kubo’s father and now cursed to take the form of a humanoid beetle (Mattehw McConaughey channelling George Clooney) who’s ace with a bow, but comes up a little short in the brains and memory department. And thus the companions set off in search of Kubo’s legacy, Monkey and Beetle bickering, and pursued by the twin Sisters. As the tale unfolds, further secrets are revealed about Kubo’s his family background and protectors.
Drawing on Japanese mythology, the story is as enchanting and mysterious as the setting within which it unfolds and the metaphors it embraces. Visually breathtaking, it mixes action, adventure and humour with a liberal helping of philosophy about family, loyalty and the value of memories, though the meaning of the title never becomes clear until the final showdown between Kubo and his grandfather. In keeping with its interwoven spiritual themes of family, loss, grief and how those who have passed live on, it also substitutes vengeance for forgiveness and redemption in a climax and coda that are unexpectedly very moving. The race for the Animation Oscar just got very interesting. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Birmingham International Festival of Social Justice
Thu 15
After Spring (12A)Documentary about the rebuilding of the displaced community in Zaatari, in Jordan the largest camp for Syrian refugees. (Mockingbird, Custard Factory)
Lubaraun (12A) Documentary about the Garifuna people, dewsxcents of tribes from Eest and Central Africa now living on the Caribbean coast of Central America. (Mockingbird, Custard Factory)
Seed: The Untold Story (PG)
Documentary about the struggle between the big biotech chemical companies and those seeking to protect the nature of our food. (MAC)
Fri 16
Generation Revolution (15) Documentary and Q&A about the new generation of London’s black and brown activists seeking to change the socio-political landscape. (MAC)
Giro – Is This the Modern World? (12A) 1984 Birmingham Film & Video Workshop documentary by Jonnie Turpie as a group of young Midlanders explore the benefits system and the effect of unemployment on young people. + Q&A (MAC)
Shadow World (15) 
Based on the book of the same name, a documentary investigation into the international arms trade. (MAC)
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Bad Moms (15)
Considering this was written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the screenwriters of the Hangover trilogy, it will no surprise to learn that the comedy makes extensive use of crude sexual gags and similarly coarse humour. What is a surprise is how insightful and sympathetic it is about mothers trying cope with demanding kids, absent or useless fathers and, for some, hold down a job at the same time. Chicago-based Amy (Mila Kunis) falls into all three categories. Pregnant and married at 20, her kids, neurotic overachiever Jane and slacker Dylan, expect to have everything done for them, she’s working far longer than her part-time agreement at a coffee company run by people barely out of training pants, has to all the shopping and housework and, to top it all, she’s caught her husband (David Walton) having an online affair with someone on sex room website. When she says the only thing she’s good at is being late, she’s only half joking.
No wonder she’s frazzled and doesn’t take kindly to the patronising attitude of bullying, catty privileged PTA president Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate) and her sidekicks, Stacy (an underused Jada Pinkett Smith) and the dim Vicky (Annie Murnolo). Blowing a fuse one night, she winds up in a bar and bonding with brash, sexually forthright foul-mouthed single mom Carla (a go for it Kathryn Hahn) and Kiki (Kristen Bell), a clueless mother of four unruly kids whose controlling husband expects her to do everything (she fantasies of being hospitalised in a car accident so she can get some rest). Agreeing that these days it’s almost impossible to be a good mom, they decide to be bad instead.
Which basically means slo-mo trashing a supermarket, making the kids get their own breakfast, cutting PTA meeting and even going to the movies during the day. Then, following a Bake Sale incident with Gwendolyn, Amy decides to run against her for PTA president, which, in turn, means more slo-mo, this time at a boozy meet the candidate house party fuelled by cheap wine and dance music. There’s also the sub plot about the hot widowed decent dad (Jay Hernandez) to whom Amy takes a shine, and the return of her husband looking to save the marriage (cue a very funny counselling session).
It’s a fairly predictable template in which the bully gets their comeuppance and the misfits come out on top, but, in great part down to the terrific energy and chemistry of the three leads (and some often hilarious improvisation, notably Carla using Kiki’s hoody to demonstrate how to have sex with an uncircumcised penis), it never feels tired while the one-liners are always dead on target.
It gets a little sentimental at the end (which includes a credits sequence of the stars with their own mothers, Bell’s being a dead ringer for Diane Keaton), but by this time it’s more than earned its right to tug at the heartstrings too. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
The BFG (PG) One of the attractions of Roald Dahl’s stories is that they are not all sweetness and light, there is a darkness and scariness to them in which children delight. Initially, it seems as though director Steven Spielberg and the late Melissa Mathison’s screenplay (she also wrote E.T.) might be remaining true to Dahl’s tone as it appears that, after plucking 10-year-old orphan Sophie (Ruby Barnhill, who makes her initially bossy character endearing without being cloyingly cute) from her orphanage bed after she sees him walking London’s night-time streets from her window, he may actually be preparing to fry her up for his dinner. However, inevitably such darkness gives way to a more soft, family friendly approach about the importance of dreams.
Although the ending is different, for the most part it’s faithful to the book’s setting (the 80s, including a reference to the Reagans) and story as, carried away to Giant Country to stop her and telling everyone that giants are real, Sophie quickly becomes friends with her enormous-eared abductor, the Big Friendly Giant (Mark Rylance), or, as she calls him, the BFG. It turns out that, a sort of country bumpkin, he too is a lonely misfit, bullied by his far bigger water-phobic fellow giants who, unlike him, are cannibals (and love snacking on human beans while he eats stinky Snozzcumbers), go by such names as Fleshlumpeater, Bonecruncher and Meatdripper and refer to him as Runt.
He also reveals that his visits to the land of humans are not about gathering tasty morsels, but to blow pleasant bottled dreams through the windows of sleeping children. He collects and crafts these dreams by travelling through a magical pool to the upside down world of Dream Country and netting the “phizzwizards” of which they are made. The scene where he takes Sophie along with him is like something out of Fantasia, even if John Williams’ orchestral score is (as throughout the film) rather overpowering.
However, when Sophie drops her handkerchief, Fleshlumpeater (Jemaine Clement) puts his enhanced sense of smell to work and tries and track her down, prompting her to devise a plan to enlist the Queen (Penelope Wilton) in capturing the giants and stopping their children-eating raids. While It also entails the film’s biggest child-friendly fart scene, one not in the book, as the royal household, korgis included, quaff the BFG’s frobscottle, resulting in an outburst of “whizzpoppers”.
The film’s biggest attraction is the BFG himself, facially designed to look like a distorted version of Rylance who, speaking in Dahl’s “gobblefunk”, brings huge warmth, soul and humanity to the role.
On the downside, the plot simply isn’t enough to sustain almost two hours, meaning there’s an awful lot of repetition and, with very little happening, it often feels sluggish, likely to cause much fidgeting among the small children who are its main audience. There are, indeed, times when it is a thing of wonder, but, unfortunately, also too many when it’s just hugely wearisome. (Cineworld NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; MAC; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Brotherhood (15)
When Noel Clarke made his screenwriting debut with Kidulthood, despite some narrative flaws, he was hailed as a new shining star of the British film industry. For the sequel, Adulthood, he also added directing to his CV, as well as starring in both films as inner city London school and subsequently homeboy psycho Sam Peel. However, this time round, grudging praise for his debut was replaced by less favourable critical comments, being dismissed in one review as ‘hoodie porn’. Perhaps inevitably then, the third in the trilogy which he’s again writer-director-star, has already been tagged with a similar condemnation as ‘gangster porn’.
It picks up the story some years on from Adulthood (in which he’d been released after serving time for killing fellow teen Trevor) with Sam, married to Sariya (Olivia Chenery) with two kids (and another daughter unaware he’s her dad), now on the straight and narrow and trying to hold down a number of jobs to take care of the family. Not that this stops him giving in to desire when a naked Eastern European woman spreads her legs for him. When his brother, an up and coming singer, is shot to send Sam a message, he finds himself involved with Daley (a suitably menacing Jason Meza), a gang boss involved in sex trafficking (cue numerous naked women as set dressing) and his henchmen, headed up by the sadistic Hugs (Leeshon Alexand) , who also include a character played by rapper Stormzy, who probably shouldn’t give up the day job.
All of which turns out to be a convoluted (and badly scripted) way of bringing Sam back face– to-face with Curtis (Cornell John), who, out of jail, wants payback for Trevor’s death, but not until he’s forced Sam to revive the bad boy side of himself he’s tried to bury. On top of which, as you’ll no doubt have guessed from Sam’s indiscretion earlier, a video duly arrives at home causing the missus to take off with the kids.
Bizarrely, given the overall grim and gritty urban tone with its brutal violence (one recurring character doesn’t make it to the end credits), Clarke also ladles on a huge dose of comic relief in the form of Henry (Arnold Oceng), Sam’s brother’s mate, who, drawn into ferrying Sam around in his Prius, tries to keep things from the wife with a running gag about a Sainbsury’s discount card and who is constant worrying that his son’s not really his. It’s very funny, as are his attempts to act street, but it feels at odds with everything else. All the more so when, strong though the scene is, things suddenly switch as he tries to talk one of the gang out of a life of violence.
But then the film’s uneven throughout, as indeed is the acting, the screenplay particularly clumsy in places (why does gang girl Poppy suddenly switch sides?), There are some really solid moments, but these are undermined by the plethora of clichés, clumsy plot shifts and any number of holes on the screenplay. Judging by the preview screening, there’s still a considerable audience out there to see things wrap up, but it’s definitely time Clarke put this increasingly tired saga to bed. (Cineworld NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Café Society (12A)
Woody Allen’s 49th feature, his first shot on digital (by Apocalypse Now director of photography Vittorio Storaro) is yet another homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood, and, if it’s not in the same league as Bullets Over Broadway, neither is it a turkey like The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Amiable and amusing, at times melancholic, set in the 1930s it ticks off familiar Allen themes of fate, class, doomed romance, guilt and, of course, his love/hate relationship with the movie industry, but it never quite seems to know what it actually wants to be about. It’s a narrative in three parts. In the first, good Jewish kid Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg in the Allen role) decides he’s had enough of working for his jeweller father (Ken Stott) and ups sticks from the Bronx and moves to Hollywood, looking to get work with his uncle, Phil Stern (Steve Carell), one Tinseltown’s hottest agents. Although primed by his sister (Jeannie Berlin), Phil still keeps him waiting for three weeks for a meeting, and even then calls him Ben (Corey Stoll),his charismatic older gangster brother who’s moving into the nightclub business.
Nevertheless, he takes him on as a sort of errand boy and promises to introduce him around. He also arranges for his secretary, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart) to show him the town. Naturally, besotted with her beauty and won over by her down to earth attitude in a town where everyone’s namedropping, he quickly falls for her. She’s fond of him too, but says she has a boyfriend. In fact, she’s actually Phil’s secret mistress, setting up a line in romantic farce when they both learn each want to marry the same woman.
The second part of the story flashes forward a few years. Bobby’s now back in New York, running his brother’s highly fashionable and successful nightclub, a well-known figure in café society and married to divorcee Veronica (Blake Lively). Meanwhile his sister and her mild-mannered husband are having problems with the next door neighbor, something Ben takes it upon himself to fix.
The third part kicks off when Phil and Vonnie turn up on a visit and, although both have changed, old feelings stir, then, after things with Ben take a turn, Bobby travels to L.A. to consider opening up a club and again spends time with Vonnie, the film ending on New Year’s Eve with scenes set in the two cities.
Romantic melancholia is the overall tone, but Allen can’t resist the comedy side of things, at times running parallel to the main narrative (Ben’s havit of bumping people off and burying them in cement is played as a running joke), yet, at others, having no real bearing on proceedings, a sin the admittedly funny but ultimately redundant scene in which Bobby organises a hooker only to turn out to be her first ever client leading to them arguing over him just telling her to take the money and her feeling she’s letting him down. You expect her to resurface,. But she never does. Likewise, Bobby’s bicoastal benefactors (Parker Posey, Paul Schneider) are always seem on the verge of a subplot without ever getting there
Inevitably there’s plenty of humorous Jewish philosophical one liners, but you can’t help feeling that the film is wandering around looking for a focus, but never quite finding it. An engaging distraction, but no more. (Cineworld 5 Ways, Solihull; Electric)
Central Intelligence (12A) The latest in a long line of mismatched reluctant partners, this pairs Kevin Hart (small) with Dwayne Johnson (big), the former as motormouth Calvin Joyner, an accountant who feels he never lived up to his Student Most Likely To award back in High School, with the latter as Robbie Weirdicht who, as the school fat kid, (a CGI blubbery Johnson) was befriended by Golden Jet Joyner after a cruel prank left his naked in front of the whole school. These days, though, as Calvin’s shocked to discover after agreeing to meet up for a drink when he’s contacted via Facebook, he’s renamed himself Bob Stone and is a pumped up He-Man who effortlessly takes out a bunch of thugs in the café because he doesn’t like bullies. He also still goofily idolise the only person who was ever kind to him.
However, it also turns out that Bob works for the CIA and has actually hooked back up with Calvin because he needs his skills to track down the meeting place for an online auction deal to sell off stolen Americans satellite secrets by someone known as the Black Badger. On the other hand, could Bob himself be the traitor who, as CIA Agent Harris (Amy Ryan) tells Calvin, stole the secrets and killed his partner. Or maybe Bob’s been set up and Harris is actually the Black Badger.
It’s to the film’s credit that it actually manages to keep you guessing right up to the final showdown, but the ride there is never quite as much fun as it should have been. There are some genuinely hilarious moments and, even though Hart’s pretty much wheeling out the same shtick as in Ride Along and Get Hard), he’s less irritating than usual while, once again, Johnson shows he has a real flair for comedy as well as the usual action man roles. He also brings a lot more character depth to the table than Hart, playing Bob as both the tough guy, but also still a vulnerable insecure child haunted by his past humiliation, something that pays off when he meets the now grown up bully responsible (Jason Bateman) and is again cowed.
It’s let down by the somewhat forced nature of the plotting, some underwritten secondary characters (such as Danielle Nicolet as Calvin’s high school sweetheart and now wife) and the fact that it stretches things out far longer than it need. However, there’s real chemistry between the two stars, who seem to be improvising many of their exchanges, such as lines about Taylor Swift’s ever-changing boyfriends and Calvin being like a black Will Smith (the outtakes also has Hart cracking a joke about the Rock) and it’s absolutely riddled with movie references, from Molly Ringwald and 16 Candles to Patrick Swayze and Roadhouse.
Also, the action sequences rip along (especially a shoot out at Calvin’s office) and it’s pretty much devoid of the coarse vulgarity that seems to have become de rigueur in today’s comedies, and there’s also a surprise uncredited cameo at the high school reunion. It’s not up there in the Nice Guys league, but you won’t walk out feeling disappointed. (Vue Star City)
David Brent’s Life on the Road (12A) Thirteen years on from the end of The Office, BBC2’s mockumentary sitcom about a Slough paper company and its employees, headed up by office manager David Brent (Ricky Gervais), Gervais has revived the character who, now working as a rep for a sanitary company, is approached by the documentary team for a where are they now follow-up, Brent decides to take one last stab at finding fame as a rock star. Resurrecting his band, Foregone Conclusion, with all new members, as well as rapper protege and token black mate Dom Johnson (Doc Brown) and forever exasperated road manager/engineer Dan (Tom Basden), taking unpaid leave and cashing in his pensions to fund everything in the hope of getting a record deal.
Despite being unable to get more than a handful of low rent gigs within a limited radius of his home, he still stumps up for hotel rooms and a lavish tour bus (although the band make him follow in his own car). Needless to say, while the tunes are catchy, Brent’s excruciating songs are as cringe-inducing as he is, they can’t pull audiences and the band regard him as an embarrassing idiot, he even has to pay them to have after-show drinks with him.
The pathos and the character’s not changed, Brent still does the knowing to camera looks and remains willfully oblivious to his lack of social skills. There is, however, although it takes time to admit it, an awareness that he has no friends and the tour is, essentially, about trying to find acceptance. Although he laughs off the fact that, save for the equally socially-inept Nigel (Tom Bennett), all his bullying colleagues think he’s at best a pathetic joke, he’s blind to the fact that the supportive Pauline (Jo Hartley) harbours a secret crush.
Gervais delivers a constant stream of humour that is as uncomfortable as its is funny, but he’s also found a sentimental streak that brings unexpected poignancy and vulnerability; even songs like Don’t Make Fun of the Disableds are written with a genuine if mishandled compassion. There’s even has a happy ending.
At the end of the day, it’s an extended Office spin-off. If you’re unaware of that, this won’t be of interest and, if you are, you might wish Gervais had been bolder, rather than just reheating things, but there’s still enough laughs to make it worth taking the trip. (MAC; Vue Star City)
Finding Dory (U) Thirteen years after Finding Nemo swam to Oscar glory, Pixar have gone back into the water for a sequel, this time putting the focus on Dory (a terrific Ellen DeGeneres), the blue tang with short-term memory loss who helped grumpy clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks) find and rescue his missing son, Nemo (Hayden Rolence).
Despite what the title suggests, it’s not just a simple rerun of the original. Yes, Dory goes missing and has to be rescued when she’s scooped up from the ocean and taken to the Marine Life Institute, a Californian fish hospital and conservation centre (with Sigourney Weaver as its audio tour guide) where its patients either become part of the exhibits before being returned to the ocean or are shipped to an aquarium in Cleveland. However, this is less about Marlin and Nemo finding Dory, than Dory finding herself.
Following a flashback that shows her parents, Charlie (Eugene Levy) and Jenny (Diane Keaton), looking to protect her from coming to any harm because of her short-term memory loss and to always follow the shells that will lead her home, inevitably, things go wrong and Dory gets swept away, forgetting all about her home and her parents. Fast forward to a year after Finding Nemo, and, after a knock on the head, the now grown Dory suddenly has a brief memory burst. She remembers her parents.
The details are fuzzy, but now she’s aware that she’s lost and needs to find her family and home, which, as further flashes reveal, are somewhere called Jewel of Morro Bay. And so, accompanied by Marlin and Nemo, she sets off from the Great Barrier Reef to California where she’s sure her parents will still be waiting for her.
And so, after a narrow escape from a giant squid ( in which Nemo’s almost killed, prompting Marlin to snap at Dory “Go wait over there and forget. It’s what you do best”), the three friends finally arrive at the Institute.
Inside, Dory finds herself tagged and informed by Hank (Ed O’Neill), a grumpy seven-tentacled octopus with chameleon-like abilities, that this means she’ll be shipped off to Cleveland. However, if she agrees to give the tag to him (so he can have a peaceful specimen life in the aquarium), he’ll help her escape Quarantine and look for her parents. What follows is a series of mishaps as Dory tries to get to the Open Ocean exhibit where she’s convinced her parents are being kept and Marlin and Nemo try to find Dory, all of which variously involves an excessively talkative oyster, a pair of territorial sea-lions (Dominic West and Idris Elba), a wild-eyed loon bird, Dory’s short-sighted childhood whale shark friend Destiny (Kaitlin Olson) and Bailey (Ty Burrell), a beluga whale who’s convinced his echolocation no longer works.
As well the fraught journeys through the sunken wreck and the Institute, unlikely as it may seem, the film also contrives to introduce a truck chase action climax that sees Ed taking a very tentacles-on role and is arguably the funniest sequence. In decided contrast to the Touch Pool, which presents the interactive exhibit from the terrifying perspective of those being handled and will surely make kids think twice next time they’re at some Sea-Life centre.
That Dory and her folks will be reunited is never in doubt, but even so the needle swings all across the emotional scales, surely likely to bring a lump to the throat when, echoing Marlin, our memory-challenged heroine asks herself “what would Dory do?” The theme of family is frequently sounded, but the film also reminds audiences to appreciate the moment and the things that make life worth remembering as well as, for all those who feel like outsiders, a reminder that they are not alone and to be who they are. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Ghostbusters (12A)
32 years since the original spook-hunters, Bill Murray, Dan Akyroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, director Paul Feig has rebooted the comedy franchise, but with an all female team. Paranormal researcher Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) and ditzy physicist Erin Gilbert (Kristin Wiig) once wrote a book claiming that ghosts were real. And were roundly ridiculed. They’ve not spoken to one another for years, but now the book has resurfaced online, threatening Erin’s chance of tenure at her prestigious university.
However, they get the chance to prove they were right when, starting with an incident at a heritage museum, New York is suddenly plagued by all manner of supernatural and paranormal manifestations, that leads the pair, along with Abby’s genius engineer lab partner Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) and Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones in Hudson’s TBC role but getting rather more and better lines), a subway ticket officer and amateur historian who provides this film’s Ecto-1, a converted hearse, to become a spook fighting team, subsequently dubbed the Ghostbusters, and go proton pack to slime to save Manhattan from an army of ghouls that have been set loose to destroy the world by some disgruntled nutter (Neil Casey) in revenge for being treated as a freak.
Joining the ensemble is Chris Hemsworth doing droll comic relief as their hunky but slightly dim sexually objectified receptionist Kevin. Unfortunately, that and a ghost that takes the giant shape of the team’s logo are the only notes of originality here. Rather than try and establish a whole new Ghostbusters universe, the film seem set on reminding everyone of the original. Not only are there cameos from Murray, Aykroyd (who gets to deliver the “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts” line), Hudson and Sigourney Weaver, but there’s the green glowing Slimer, a rework of the theme song, a nod to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, the familiar green ectoplasm vomiting and the same fire station HQ, not to mention the uniforms and weapons bearing close resemblance to those in the original. Indeed, the film just seems too busy reminding audiences of the earlier movie to give it an identity of its own. Although, at times, McCarthy and Wiig seem to be doing their usual routines, the foursome bounce off one another amusingly enough and the ghosts are slightly scarier. On the other hand, a brief one line cameo by Ozzy Osbourne as himself is squirmingly embarrassing. Although it’s opened well here to generally positive reviews, response in America has been less enthusiastic and it’s been denied a release in China, the world’s second biggest market, suggesting that, whatever the end credits might hint, it’s unlikely to scare up a sequel. (Vue Star City)
Ice Age: Collision Course (U) Five films in and it’s clear the scriptwriters are running low on ideas, there is, after all, only so many times you can serve up a plot which relies on the characters trying to save themselves from extinction. They’re at it again here, this time threatened by a meteor shower akin to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, inadvertently triggered by Scrat who, in his constant quest to protect his acorn activates a flying saucer embedded in ice and got flung into space where, along with initiating the Big Bang, sends a huge meteor towards Earth.
Back on the planet, the prehistoric pals have other problems too. Manny (Ray Romano) can’t reconcile himself to the fact that daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) is planning to marry and take off with, in his opinion, useless goofball Julian (Adam DeVine), all of which has led to him forgetting his and Ellie’s (Queen Latifah) anniversary. Sabre-tooths Diego (Denis Leary) and Shira (Jennifer Lopez) would like to start a family, but are worried they’re too scary for the kids. And Sid the sloth is despairing of ever finding true love.
All this is temporarily put on the back burner when balls of rock start hitting the neighbourhood and they and the rest of the herd, among them Sid’s granny (Wanda Sykes) and annoying manic possums Crash and Eddie (Josh Peck, Seann William Scott), set off to find a way to divert the giant asteroid that’s heading their way.
Joining them in their efforts is Buck (Simon Pegg), the one-eyed dino-hunting weasel from the third film, who, returned from his subterranean world, is being pursued by a bickering family of three dino-birds whose egg-stealing activities he’s been thwarting and who are very keen to see the destruction go ahead. For Manny and co, the solution to preventing extinction lies in travelling to the usual meteor crash site and using the magnetic crystals from another asteroid to repel this one. However, a hollow rock, that’s become Geotopia, home to a bunch of New Agey characters, among them an effervescent female sloth (voiced by Jessie J who also provides the obligatory song) and their spiritual leader, the Shangri Lama, as well as endowing them with eternal youth.
Visually, this is every bit as good as past outings, but, relying heavily on fart and body parts gags, the humour is pitched very much at a juvenile level and, with little dramatic tension, snappy dialogue or emotional pull, the film and its over-padded plot offer few diversions for anyone over the age of 10. At one point, Manny says “This isn’t working.” It’s time the filmmakers accepted the fact and let evolution takes its course (Vue Star City)
Jason Bourne (12A) Nine years after what everyone assumed would be the last of their Bourne partnership, Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass have reunited for a third outing that adds further details to Bourne’s backstory and introduces another CIA black ops programme with even wider global ramifications than Treadstone.
It involves a clandestine alliance between bureau director Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones at his craggiest) and Kallor (Riz Ahmed) a social media guru about to launch a new platform called Deep Dream that promises total privacy; except, that’s not quite the case behind the scenes. Information on this, an operation known as Iron Hand, and all other CIA black ops has been hacked by former operative Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) who’s now working with liberty activist Christian Dassault. Dewey needs to shut Parsons down before she goes public, to which end he assigns a professional hitman, known only as the Asset (Vincent Cassel) to take her out.
Unfortunately, she’s made contact Jason Bourne (Damon) who, memory back, has gone off the grid and spends his time at bare knuckle fights. She draws him in by revealing there was more to his father’s part in Treadstone that he knows. And more about his own involvement too. Flashing back to his father’s death, allegedly at the hands of terrorists, Bourne senses all is not what some want him to think, and so agreement is made.
It’ll come as no surprise to learn that Parson’s doesn’t make it to the end credits, leaving Bourne globe-hopping (Greece, Berlin, London, Washington, LA), pursued by the Asset (for whom this kill is personal), in his search for the truth behind his father’s death and to expose those responsible for the latest conspiracy, Dewey especially. Also in the mix is Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), an ambitious operative who persuades (or so she thinks) Dewey to let her take charge and try and bring Bourne back in. Needless to say, there’s double crosses and secret agendas wherever you look.
Featuring two breathtaking ultra-octane chases through the streets of Athens and LA, respectively, there’s not an ounce of fat anywhere, be it the complex screenplay with its various twists and turns, or in Greengrass’ dizzying direction which races from one hard-hitting sequence to the next.
It goes without saying that Damon is electrifying as the perfect weapon who also has a conscience and sense of guilt about who and what he is, while Cassel is a perfect ruthless assassin, Jones is his usual dry and complex self and Vikander, with her ambiguous motives, reps a solid entry into the franchise should a further instalment be on the cards. (Empire Great Park; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Julieta (15)
Following excursions into romantic thriller (Broken Embraces), physiological horror (The Skin I’m In) and camp comedy (I’m So Excited), Pedro Almodovar’s 20th feature, based on three Alice Munro short stories, marks a return to the ‘cinema of women’ embodied by the likes of Volver, Women On The Berge…., All About My Mother and Talk To Her. And, while it may be, relatively, one of his most conventional films, it’s also one of his best, and features two Oscar worthy turns from Emma Surazes and relative newcomer Adriana Ugarte who seamlessly play the respective older and younger versions of the title character.
Opening on a typical Almodovar shot of the folds of a red dress, we meet the older Julieta as she’s packing up her house in Madrid in readiness for a move to Portugal with her lover Lorenzo. But then, a chance encounter on the street with Beatriz (Michelle Jenner), her daughter’s childhood friend, changes all her plans. It transpires that Julieta has not seen her daughter, Antia, since she disappeared 12 years ago and is taken aback when Beatriz says she saw her recently and that she has three children.
Resolving to now stay in Madrid in the hope of seeing Antia again, Julieta sits down to write her a long letter, telling her everything she could never tell her at the time. And so the film flashes back to 1989,, introducing the younger Julieta, then a short-cropped, post-punky Classics teacher, as she meets her future partner, fisherman Xoan (Daniel Grao) on a train. They spend a night together and then part, Julieta eventually visiting him in Galicia, unaware that his wife, who’d been in a coma for some years, has recently died. He’s out and she’s given a frosty reception by his housekeeper (Rossy de Palma), but, already pregnant, decides to stay, and the relationship gradually deepens while she also becomes friends with his childhood friend, Ava (Imma Cuesta), a sculptor who makes phallic bronze figures.
Without revealing more, suffice to say events leave Julieta a single mother and suffering breakdown, nursed through by Antia, who now shares a Madrid apartment with Beatriz. Deciding she needs some calm, Antia arranges to stay at a retreat. That was 12 years ago.
With Julieta haunted by both her husband’s death and the suicide of a man on the train, the film is very much about guilt and grief, compounded by the regret of consequences that can ensue when we keep things bottled up or tell half truths to avoid uncomfortable situations, as well as the sometimes claustrophobic bond between mother and daughter,
Mirroring subplots involving Julieta’s frail mother and her father’s affair with his younger housekeeper don’t have the same involvement, but the core story is emotionally compelling, its darkness set against the film’s rich colours and landscapes, and soundtracked by Alberto Iglesias’s jazzy score. One of the year’s best. (Electric)
The Legend of Tarzan (12A) David Yates’ attempt to reboot the live action adventures of Edgar Rice Burrough’s iconic hero combines origin flashbacks and sequel narrative into one story, as well as a revisionist message about slavery, but the result is both cumbersome and turgid. Some years after reclaiming his heritage as Lord Greystoke, John Clayton III (Alexander Skarsgard) is approached by the Prime Minister (Jim Broadbent) to return to Africa at the behest of King Leopold II of Belgium who wants to parade the good works he’s carried out since colonising the Congo. Except, since Leo’s up to his eyeballs in debt and the PM reckons this would be a good opportunity for the Brits to step in and take over.
Clayton refuses, but is persuaded to change his mind by George Washington Williams (Samuel L Jackson) who, a Civil War veteran, wants to travel gather evidence on Belgium’s use of slavery. Naturally, a determinedly feisty Jane (Margot Robbie) insists on accompanying her husband.
The invite, however, is all a ruse by Leopold’s envoy, Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz doing his familiar suave sociopath) who has struck deal with a tribal chief (Djimon Hounsou) to deliver up Tarzan (who killed his son) in exchange for the fabled Opar diamonds, which Leopold intends to use to pay for an army of mercenaries to enslave the whole Congo.
Unfortunately, the film never gets off the starting block in delivering any real thrills or action, and things swiftly devolve into a lengthy plod as Tarzan and Williams cross the jungle to rescue Jane, who’s been taken prisoner by Rom, briefly punctuated by Tarzan’s rumble with his former gorilla brother. Skarsgard presents an impressive physical figure, but lacks any screen charisma and has more chemistry with his gorilla mother than with Robbie. Another problem is that, while the landscape looks terrific, the CG effects involving animals are decidedly less persuasive, although the stampede of buffalos through the port is an effective touch. When he first appeared, Tarzan was the king of the swingers, but these days he’s withered on the vines. (Vue Star City)
Lights Out (15)
So much for set up. With Martin having to return to his mom. Rebecca starts digging round and miraculously comes across cassette tape from her mother’s childhood days in a mental hospital that, conveniently starting from the necessary expositionary moment, reveals she had a mentally disturbed fellow patient friend named Diana who died during the course of some experimental light treatment. Could it be the same Diana mom talks to and whose long-taloned, wild-haired figure is framed in the bedroom doorway back home and attacks both her and Martin! So they and Bret decide to stage an intervention with bipolar Sophie.
All of which makes for some predictable but clunky jolt moments and various characters’ (including two cops) obligatory stupid decisions as everyone contrives to find different (and, it must be said, sometimes ingenious) ways to keep the place lit up. Which is fine as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go that far. The screenplay feels half-formed and has some woefully bad dialogue while the whole subject of mental illness is never used for anything more than a plot device. And, despite his grisly death at the start, there’s barely any subsequent mention of Paul and it remains vague as to what happened to his predecessor. As the original short suggested, there was real scare potential in the concept. A pity so little of it made its way into the full length version. (Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Mechanic: Resurrection (15) A sequel to the 2011 remake of the Charles Bronson original, having boosted his status with Spy and the Fast and Furious series, Jason Statham takes several steps back in reprising the role of Arthur Bishop, an assassin for hire whose specialty is making his hits look like accidents. Having retired and gone to ground, he’s tracked down by some woman whose boss wants him to do three kills. Bishop declines rather physically manner and heads off to Thailand where Michelle Yeoh is hanging around wondering what happened to the rest of her scenes. At which point the film sort of starts all over again as Gina (Jessica Alba), who’s dedicated her life to looking after local orphans, is blackmailed into trying to trap him into taking the contract. Almost overnight, she inexplicably becomes the love of Arthur’s life, which means she’s now ripe to be kidnapped and held to ransom until he carries out the murders. If you can follow the incoherent script, it seems that the Brit behind all this (Sam Hazeldine) has some sort of connection to Bishop’s past, and the ones he wants killed are all unsavoury arms-dealing characters, one of whom is an African dictator now in a maximum security prison, one’s a multi-millionaire living in a high security Australian high rise and the third is a distracted Tommy Lee Jones with a naff goatee who’s turned up to collect the paycheck for a couple of hours playing someone in Bulgaria who has a pen full of nuclear submarines.
If you’ve seen the trailer with Bishop suspended by suction pads, cracking the class of a high rise swimming pool, you’ve seen the only moment of inspiration, the film eventually descending into a ludicrous showdown onboard a luxury boat. Statham puts in more effort than the film deserves, but everything else is workmanlike at best. It does what it says on the tin, but that’s a very short sentence. (Odeon Broadway Plaza; Showcase Walsall; Vue Star City)
Morgan (15)
The directorial debut of Ridley Scott’s son, Luke, is a sci fi psychological thriller on the theme of artificial intelligence, Morgan being the titular intelligent five-year-old humanoid (The Witch’s Anya Taylor-Joy, good in a difficult role that requires her to be both robotic and emotionally confused), a major breakthrough after several failed attempts (there’s a never fully explained reference to an incident in Helsinki). After she stabs one of her scientist creators (a wasted Jennifer Jason Leigh), in the eye, corporate (Brian Cox in voice over) dispatch ruthlessly efficient and steely risk-management consultant Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) to assess the project’s viability. Encountering resistance from the team (among them Toby Jones as Morgan’s ‘father’, and Rose Leslie as Morgan’s closest friend, Amy), who refer to their creation as she rather than it, and have birthday party footage of them all celebrating, in her initial meeting, Morgan, behind a glass cage, professes regret and says what happened was an error. When, the next day, psychologist Dr. Alan Shapiro (Paul Giamatti) arrives and presses Morgan on her emotional responses, things turn increasingly violent and bloody, leading to Weathers pursuing a fleeing Morgan into the woods.
By this time, if you’ve not sussed the true purpose of Morgan’s creation and Lee’s real nature, you’ve clearly skipped 101 in films about humans and humanoids. Variously evocative of Ex Machina, Splice, Terminator and Scott Snr’s own Blade Runner, it’s never quite as deep as it would like to appear while the likes of Michelle Yeoh (Morgan’s ‘mother’), Michael Yare’s project boss and nutritionist Boyd Holbrook have very little to do except hang around until required to become body count. Scott turns in a serviceable, workmanlike debut that makes the most of a limited budget, cranks up a reasonable degree of tension and boasts strong performances from Weathers and Giamatti, but the eventual slide into genre cliché is a little disappointing. (Cineworld 5 Ways; Odeon Broadway Plaza; Reel; Vue Star City)
Nerve (15) A cautionary satire on the dangers of social media peer pressure and cyberspace obsession, driven by an terrific performance from Emma Roberts, this is arguably the best sci-fi thriller since Ex Machina. Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who made the Facebook-fuelled documentary Catfish, with a neon glow lighting design that contrasts with the narrative’s dark heart, the premise revolves around an online game in which those involved are either Watchers or Players. Players receive dares to complete, for which they’re rewarded by payments to their bank account, while the Watchers watch on their mobile phones and computers and are encouraged to come up with dares.
A risk-averse high school senior who lives with her nurse mom (Juliette Lewis) and whose elder brother died shortly after graduation, Vee (Roberts) is goaded by wild child friend and Nerve star Syd (Emily Meade) into becoming a player, much to the disapproval of Tommy (Miles Heizer), the obligatory loyal friend with a secret crush. Her first dare is to kiss a stranger, who Vee elects to be the guy in the diner who just happens to be reading her favourite book, To The Lighthouse. Naturally, this also turns out to be no accident. Motorbike-riding Ian (Dave Franco) is also a player and the book is down to the fact that, once you join Nerve, all your online information is hacked into the system.
And so, Ian and Vee embark on a series of escalating dares that range from trying on expensive clothes to riding the motorbike at 60mph blindfolded. As Vee soars to the top of the ranking, prompting friction with Syd. another player (who has history with Ian) also enters the equation; things get dangerously out of control, leading Vee to talk to a cop. Which, in Nerve, is a no no as “snitches get stitches”, leading to the final life or death mob mentality gladiatorial climax while Tommy races against the clock to try and shut the game down.
Eat times echoing The Hunger Games, it’s a cautionary critique of the digital age where people use fake online ids and a vicarious cyberspace existence numbs their actual humanity, served up as a pulse-pounding, visually striking thriller that keeps you hooked even when you know you’re being played. (Odeon Birmingham; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Nine Lives (PG)
A self-absorbed, ego-driven billionaire, Tom Brand (Kevin Spacey), CEO of Firebrand, is obsessed with building the biggest building in New York. Unfortunately, it turns out a rival in Chicago may be 60 foot taller, something his top executive (Mark Conseulos) failed to be aware of. With the opening just a few days away, Brand is so consumed with the building that he’s totally forgotten daughter Rebecca’s (Malina Weissman) upcoming 11th birthday. But that should be no surprise, career-driven Brand’s single-minded obsession with being the best and wealthiest, means he’s always putting family second. It’s already seen him divorced from one wife, Martini-swigging Madison (Cheryl Hines), and he could be well on the way to a second, from Lara (Jennifer Garner). Nor does he have much time for David (Robbie Amell), the son from his first marriage, who works for him, but who he regards as ineffectual and weak.
In trying to come up with a suitable gift for Rebecca, he’s eventually persuaded to get her what she actually wants, a cat, despite the fact that he personally hates them. To which end, he fetches up at Purrkins, a back alley pet shop run by Felix Perkins (Christopher Walken) who instinctively judges Brand to be in need of a moral awakening. However, taking a detour to meet with Ian en route to Rebecca’s party, Brand ends up falling from his building’s roof, crashing through a window and landing in a coma. His consciousness, however, winds up inside the cat and, while his body lies in hospital, Mr Fuzzypants is taken in by his wife and daughter.
Brand’s best attempts to let his family know he’s trapped in the cat come to nothing and, visited by Purrkins, he’s told he will stay there until he understands why it happened – but that time is running out. Meanwhile, despite David’s efforts to stop him, Ian’s pressing ahead with his plan to sell off the company.
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, it’s received almost unanimously scathing reviews. And yes, it’s no masterpiece. Spacey is fine in human form as the supercilious Brand, but his work as the cat’s inner voice sounds phoned in. The parenting message about discovering what matters in life is family is nothing new and, while clearly aimed at kids, the whole storyline about corporate backstabbing won’t mean a thing to them.
However, that said, Walken is a sly treat and the Fuzzypants footage (clearly inspired by YouTube cat videos), which includes the cat pouring itself a bowl of Scotch, is frequently very funny and never less than entertaining. And, who hasn’t wanted to use his ex-wife’s expensive handbag as a litter tray! (Odeon Broadway Plaza; Reel; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Now You See Me 2 (12A) Playing on the public’s fascination for the art of illusion, the original film was one of 2013’s biggest hits of, so a sequel was inevitable. Unfortunately, it falls into trap of many such follow-ups in looking to serve up the same ingredients, but on a bigger scale. However, where the first film hooked viewers with its sleight of hand, this time round audiences already know to look beyond what they see, which rather takes some of the fun out of things. On top of which the film reworks some of the original set-ups and character back stories in a way that feels like cheating, not to mention not making any actual sense.
Set a year after their exposure of corrupt businessman Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine), the Horseman have gone to ground and, after initiating them into the secret magic circle of The Eye, Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) has gone back to his FBI day-job where he spends his time trying to keep the agency off their trail. With Isla Fisher dropping out, her place on the team is taken by Lizzy Caplan as Lula, a cocky illusionist recruited by Rhodes to join Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), McKinney (Woody Harrelson) and Wilder (Dave Franco) for a comeback sting to expose a high tech company’s CEO’s plans to launch a product that that can access any laptop or mainframe on the planet.
Except they’ve been set up, a debacle that leads to them jumping down a construction tube in New York and emerging in Macao where they’re taken to meet wealthy presumed dead inventor Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe) who tells them his former-partner’s privacy-breaching chip was actually his creation and he wants them to steal it back. They also meet up with a Chinese mother and son who run the world’s most famous magic store and discover that McKinney has an crazy evil twin, Chase (a hugely pointless and irritating addition), who’s working with Mabry. And, just to tie things together, the plot also contrives to reintroduce Tessler and Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), the magic debunker last seen behind bars as part of Rhodes’ revenge for the death of his father when (as revisited again in flashback here) a trick went wrong. Again, nothing is what it seems.
Director Jon Chu races the endless misdirection along entertainingly enough, but the banter and dynamic between the Horsemen feels forced and the whole concept of The Eye (which makes the film a sort of magicians’ version of Charlie’s Angels) is extremely contrived, as is the love interest between Caplan and Franco that seems to have been thrown in as an afterthought. Admittedly, the illusions are well executed, as are the subsequent reveals, though the big one, while offering a pleasing grin, defies practical logic in its preposterousness. A second sequel has already been announced, but audiences might like to recalls the phrase, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. (Vue Star City)
Pete’s Dragon (PG) The original 1977 version of the latest Disney remake was a strange mix of live action, animation and songs involving a young orphan who hooks up with a magical green and pink dragon, whom he names Elliot and whose unseen antics get the boy labelled as a source of bad luck by the local fishing village folk. The plot also involved a shortage of fish, a medicine show charlatan and a lighthouse.
Mercifully very little of this has made its way into the new 80s-set version, wherein four-year-old Pete (winningly played by Oakes Fegley) is orphaned in a car crash o and winds up spending the next six years living in the forest (touches of The Jungle Book) with his invisibility-powered green friend and protector dragon, whom he names Elliot after the dog in his storybook.
One day, spotting forest ranger Grace Meacham (Bryce Dallas Howard) exploring near their cave, he steals her compass and, curious, sneaks down to the lumber company camp run by her fiancé, Jack (Wes Bentley), and his brother, Gavin (Karl Urban), for a closer look. Spotted by Jack’s young daughter, Natalie (Oona Laurence), he’s taken into town to be looked after. Naturally, Elliot, unaware of what’s happened to his young chum, comes looking. Meanwhile, ignoring his brother’s orders to ease up on the logging, Gavin also stumbles across Elliot and determines to capture him as a sideshow attraction.
Eventually realising that her grizzled wood-carver father’s (Robert Redford) tall tales of having seen the so-called Millhaven dragon when he was young aren’t that tall after all, Grace, her dad, Pete and Natalie also set off to find Elliot.
Unfolding at a gentle pace, well-acted, delivering a nicely understated, but deeply emotional message about friendship, home and family and sensitively directed by David Lowery, this is an old-fashionedly wholesome delight that successfully balances state of the art CGI with real character depth. It should, however, be said that the crash which leaves Pete orphaned and his subsequent encounter with wolves are genuinely dark and scary and likely to upset very young children.
However, from the moment the dragon appears, despite the tense action sequences later in the film, the tone is far warmer, his dog-like features and personality, not to mention the flying sequences, bringing to mind The Never-Ending Story, just as the bond between Pete and Elliot recalls How To Train Your Dragon. The original film may have been one of Disney’s less successful outings, but this is up there among its very best. (Cineworld Solihull; Empire Great Park; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Vue Redditch, Star City)
The Purge – Election Year (15)
The third of the series finds Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell), the only family survivor from a purge 18 years earlier, as a presidential candidate with a pledge to bring Purge Night to an end. A manifesto that doesn’t sit well with the elite New Founding Fathers of America and their own candidate Minister Edwige Owens (Kyle Secor), to which end, the NFFA leader (Raymond J Barry) proposes changing the rules to make everyone, senators included, eligible targets.
When her supposed safe house is blown, Roan ends up on the run from both the mercenaries hired to kill her and the crazy fanatics who’d do it just for the fun. Initially, her only protection is her Secret Service bodyguard, Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo, reprising his character from the previous film) but they’re soon reinforced by Joe Dixon (Mykelti Williamson), who’s decided to protect his convenience store himself, and his assistant Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria), after being threatened by a couple of bad attitude schoolgirls. Also in the mix is Laney (Betty Gabriel), a former bad girl who now cruises the streets on Purge Night in a triage van, and Dante Bishop (Edwin Hodge), the leader of the anti-Purge movementwho’s planning to assassinate Owens.
Essentially a prolonged series of run, fight, hide, run sequences, complete with a liberal amount of killings, it inevitably ends up with a race against the clock to save Roan from the NFFA, but director James DeMonaco orchestrates these with a relentless energy, even if it often s feel like a re-run of Olympus/London Has Fallen. Politically, its satirical liberal/fascist debate (the NFFA want to kill off the poor to cut back on benefit costs) and pop psychology about our inner beasts hasn’t significantly advanced over the trilogy, but it must be said that the Trump/Clinton showdown does give it a decided extra timely resonance. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Sausage Party (15)
Bringing a whole new meaning to the term crudités, this is a frequently hilarious and constantly foul-mouthed animation reminiscent of Team America that takes a food’s eye view of life in and beyond the supermarket. Sitting on the shelves, the food can’t wait to be taken out into the Great Beyond by the gods (the customers), to where paradise awaits. At least that’s what the song they all sing every morning promises.
Particularly excited about the upcoming celebrations are Frank (a sausage, voiced by Seth Rogan ) and Brenda (a hotdog bun, voiced by Kristen Wiig), who are looking forward to him slipping inside her. However, when Frank gets separated from his friends, Carl (Jonah Hill) and the slightly imperfect Barry (Michael Cera) and he and Brenda are left behind in the store, they embark on a journey across the shop floor that brings them into contact with a bickering Jewish bagel (Edward Norton) and an Arabic flatbread (David Krumholtz), a lesbian Taco ( Salma Hayek) and Firewater (Bill Hader), a bottle of Native American booze, who confirms to Frank that the stories about the gods are lies – and that the purpose of food is to be eaten by humans.
As Barry has a narrow escape from being sliced open and targets a local stoner (James Franco) in an attempt to get back to the store, Frank tries to warn the others while he and the others are pursued by a feminine hygiene douche (Nick Kroll) bent on revenge. All of which involves a constant stream of expletives and sexual innuendo, but also, as, er, food for thought, some subversive satirical socio-political commentary, swipes at national stereotypes and organised religion, a message about not letting prejudice blind us to what we have in common and even a chewing gum version of Stephen Hawking and a literal singing Meatloaf.
There’s a sense of genuine horror at seeing a potato being skinned alive or baby carrots being chomped to pieces, while everything climaxes in a quite literal food orgy. Rude food indeed, you’ll never hear a frankfurter squeal in the microwave quite the same way again. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
The Secret Life of Pets (U) The latest from the team behind Despicable Me suggests that, when you leave the house in the morning, your pets aren’t just curled up in their baskets waiting for you to come home. When his owner brings home Duke (Eric Stonestreet), a scruffy mongrel with abandonment issues, her terrier, Max (Louie CK), finds his life isn’t as cushy as it used to be. However, in his attempt rid himself this rival, following a run-in with a bunch of collar-stealing alley cats, the pair end up captured by New York’s Animal Control, prompting a rescue mission across Manhattan from their four-legged friends, among them sardonic fat cat Chloe (Lake Bell) and headed up by Gidget (Jenny Slate), a feisty Pomeranian with a big crush on Max and some hidden kung fu skills, who enlists the help of red-tailed hawk Tiberius (Albert Brooks) and Pops (Dana Carvey), a half-paralysed old Basset Hound bloodhound fitted with a set of wheels.
Meanwhile, Max and Duke have to learn to work together when they’re first forced to join up with and then find themselves on the run from Snowball (Kevin Hart), a crazy former magician’s white bunny who’s assembled an army of abandoned pets, the Flushed Pets, who live in the sewers and have vowed revenge on all domesticated pets and their owners.
Essentially, it’s an animal version of Toy Story with Max as Woody and Duke as Buzz Lightyear, the interloper competing for their owner’s affections, but it doesn’t have the same emotional depth, nor is it as clever as Disney’s recent Zootopia. There’s also too many peripheral characters to give them all the time they warrant and, after an often hilarious start, the plot gradually descends into a series of action movie chases.
However, impressively animated and taken at a nifty pace, it’s never less than fun and serves up an inevitable message about friendship and family. Just keep the kids away from the pet shop on the way home. (Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza, West Brom; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
The Shallows (15)
It’s been 13 years since the last decent shark movie (Open Water), but finally, Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra has come up with another good reason not to go into the water. Dispensing with subplots and supporting characters (unless you count a seagull with an injured wing), this strips everything down to basics with just Blake Lively as Texan Nancy Adams, a med student who’s thinking of dropping out following her mother’s death from cancer and has come to surf the same secret Mexican beach mom went to when she was pregnant, both in honour of her mother and to try and make sense of the loss. Given a lift to the beach by one of the local, when she arrives, there’s a couple of local guys already surfing, but, as a young boy watching footage on a helmet camera in the preamble shows, they’re not going to be around long.
Everything’s perfect until her board is rammed by a shark, which also leaves her leg with a gaping wound. Managing to make it to, first a dead whale and then a jagged reef, she fails to attract the guys’ attention and, resigned to having to spend the night there, improvises some self-surgery on the wound. Hope is briefly raised the next day, only to be quickly dashed, and, when the Mexican brothers meet their grisly end, she’s again left alone with the wounded gull. The tide is rising, meaning the rock will soon be submerged, and the great white’s circling, but Nancy’s determined that she’s not going to die here. If only she can make it to the bobbing metal buoy just a few yards away.
That’s all there is to the plot, but, although the tacked on sentimental coda is a decided anti-climax, Collet-Serra wrings every ounce of tension from his survivalist thriller, delivering any number of shark-eye shots of Lively’s board and legs and a false shock before the man-eater swims into the picture and it becomes a duel to the death.
Lively gives a terrific physical and emotional performance as the resolute Nancy and, despite some iffy effects shots of the shark, the final showdown is a real crowd rouser. If you want to go deep, you can see the whole thing as a metaphor to find a reason to go on living with the seagull as her guardian angel mother, but far better to just enjoy it for the quality B-movie pulp that it is. (Vue Star City)
Star Trek Beyond (12A) The third in the rebooted franchise sees Fast and Furious director Justin Lin behind the camera with Simon Pegg, who also plays Scotty, stepping up to share screenplay duties. As such, once it gets going, you know it’s going to go full throttle, serving up some of the most visually spectacular set pieces in the series. The problem is that the plot and the action are sometimes unclear and hard to follow.
The crux is that Krall (Idris Elba), the lizard-faced alien who brings down the USS Enterprise, is after some ancient artefact so he can destroy the Federation, although quite how the thing works is never really specified and, even when his motivation is finally revealed in the last real, it’s still somewhat vague. However, , rather like the dynamic involving Kirk (Chris Pine) and his crew, it’s not dissimilar to that of Khan in Into Darkness, albeit with a different personal twist. And, of course, the whole thing about a multicultural team working together for each other as a family is something with which Lin is very familiar.
While the Enterprise crew are on downtime during their ongoing five year mission, with Kirk reflecting on his upcoming birthday and Spock (Zachary Quinto) contemplating a return to New Vulcan, a female alien arrives at Yorktown, a mammoth orbiting Federation outpost, telling how her crew have been stranded on a rocky planet. Only the Enterprise has the capacity to rescue them, but travelling through the unstable nebula will put them out of communication with HQ. Naturally, the whole thing’ a trap, Krall using a swarm of bee -ike mechanical drones and pretty much tearing the Enterprise apart, forcing the surviving crew to abandon ship as it crash-lands on the planet.
Initially separated, Scotty (who, whaddya know, gets a lot more screen time) encounters Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), a warrior with kabuki-like black face markings who tells him she escaped from Krall’s prison compound (where he drains the life force of captives to keep him alive) and turns out to be living in an early model Starfleet ship that went missing decades earlier.
Meanwhile, elsewhere Bones (Karl Urban) is tending to a wounded Spock and keeping their friendly bickering going, while, having discovered the deception, Kirk and Chekhov (the late Anton Yelchin) are intent on keeping Krall from getting his hands on the artefact and finding the rest of the crew, who, Uhura (Zoe Saldana), whose romance with Spock has broken up, and Sulu (John Cho) among them, are being held prisoner.
Suffice to say, those still free eventually get back together and set out to rescue the others, although, too late to stop Krall and his drones taking off to attack Yorktown, thereby setting up the final showdown that makes effective use of Jaylah’s inherited “loud and distracting” music library.
All of this is solidly told, but never quite gets into fifth gear excitement. On the other hand, it does echo the spirit of the original TV series with the character relationships, banter and general philosophy. The performances are, as you would expect, accomplished, the cast fully settled into their characters, Quinto especially good as Spock (the film also has a nod to the passing of Leonard Nimoy, as well as a nostalgic photographic tip of the hat to the original cast).
Ultimately, it doesn’t hit push any frontiers or boldly go anywhere the franchise hasn’t already been, but it does deliver solid interstellar fun. (Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Suicide Squad (15) Despite overwhelmingly bad reviews, this has so far notched up over $380 million and. while undeniably flawed, it’s nowhere near the unwatchable disaster critics claim.In a nutshell, following the death of Superman, single-minded secret-service hawk Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) plans to recruit a squad of super-villains, most of them currently in a top security prison courtesy of Batman (Ben Affleck), as a disposable asset to combat any possible future meta-human threat. When one of them goes rogue, the others, led by their military handler, are sent in to evacuate a top asset from Midway City, which is under attack by a two super-powered supernatural entities planning to destroy humankind.
All of this requires a lengthy set-up, opening with Waller running down her proposed Task Force for the benefit of her fellow suits. And so, those not familiar with the minor bad guys in the DC universe get lengthy individual bios and flashbacks about: deadly assassin but caring father Deadshot (Will Smith); punk Harley Quinn (Robbie), a former Arkham Asylum psychiatrist who fell for the Joker (Jared Leto) and lost her mind after being electroshocked; Australian bank robber Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney); reluctant firestarter Diablo (Jay Hernandez); the reptilian Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje); and Enchantress (Carla Delevingne), a witch from another dimension who inhabits the body of archaeologist Dr. June Moone, who happens to be the girlfriend of Navy SEAL Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) who has the job of keeping them all in line, and detonating the explosive in the neck if they step out of it. For the mission, they’re also joined by rope artist Slipknot (Adam Beach) and deadly Samurai warrior Katana (Karen Fukuhara), one of the good guys whose sword holds the soul of her dead husband. As you might imagine keeping tabs on everyone is often unwieldy (spoiler –the cast will be smaller in the sequel), especially whenever it takes time out to add extra backstory to give them a sympathetic side.
Anyways, having cut loose from Flag and resurrected her brother, the Enchantress is setting about building an army of transformed humans and some sort of machine that will end the world (like all such gizmos, this involves a lot of lightning and things swirling round in the sky). Meanwhile, the Joker is determined to get his girl back.
Although it sometimes stumbles, director David Ayer manages to just about hold things together and the set pieces and battles are undeniably well handled and thrill-packed. Inevitably, some characters fare better than others, Smith gets plenty of smart lines and Robbie is clearly the main male-fantasy visual attraction as well as the most vibrant presence. Diabolo’s internal conflict makes him interesting, but the other squad members don’t really register, a badly-served Delevingne especially coming off a blank. On the other hand, it’s arguably Wills who gives the most chilling performance as the ‘whatever is necessary for national security’ Waller.
Despite the advance hype, while the laugh may be effective, Leto’s Joker is something of a let down, having none of the sly Nicholson charm or Ledger’s inspired lunacy, although at one point he does seem to be channelling Marlon Brando’s Godfather.
The film wants to be dark, but ends up not quite having the courage of its convictions, to the extent of delivering messages about the value of family that wouldn’t be out of place in a Disney movie. Whatever fun this may have to offer, that surely can’t be what anyone expected. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Odeon Birmingham, Broadway Plaza; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
Swallows and Amazons (PG)
Published in 1930, Arthur Ransome’s novel is a relic of a bygone era, when childhood thrills were to be found in playing pirates and camping out and children’s stories espoused good old fashioned wholesomeness with plucky fresh-faced boys and girls overcoming adults who were frequently up to no good. This new adaptation, the first feature by Phillipa Lowthorpe, the director of the BBC’s Cider With Rosie, makes no attempt to modernise things, and often has the feel of one of those old Children’s Film Foundation outings, but does expand on the book by drawing on Ransome’s own background to make the character of Jim Turner (Rafe Spall) a travel writer who doubles as a spy and is being pursued by a couple of Russian agents looking to retrieve the military secrets he stole.
This expands on the book’s original adventure that sees the four Walker children, Susan (Orla Hill), somewhat petulant John (Dane Hughes) and youngsters Roger (Bobby McCulloch) and Tatty (Teddie-Rose Malleson-Allen), taken to the Lake District for the summer holiday by mom (Kelly Macdonald) while dad’s away with the Royal Navy, sailing out in Swallow, the dinghy owned by the couple (Harry Enfield, Jessica Hynes) with whom they’re staying, and laying claim to an island in the middle of Coniston Water. However, having set up their tents, they discover the island is also claimed by two other children, Nancy (a star turn by Seren Hawkes) and Peggy (Hannah Jayne Thorp) Brackett, whose boat is named Amazon and whose tetchy uncle is Turner, whom the Walker kids encountered on the train down and who lives on a houseboat.
The rivalry over ownership of the island and the abduction of Turner come together to provide the film’s narrative, an old fashioned melodrama that has to do with themes of courage, friendship and being jolly good sorts. Filmed in a straightforward manner with some lovely landscape shots, terrific period design and solid performances by the five young leads, this may not very zeitgeist, but it’s as cosily entertaining and British as tea and buttered toast on a Sunday afternoon. (Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
War Dogs (15)
A change of pace after directing the Hangover trilogy, this finds Todd Phillips taking on a political moral fable that, much like American Hustle, shows the uglier side of the seduction of the American Dream. It’s based on the true story of David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, former high school friends who, in the mid 2000s, joined forces to become arms dealers, selling weapons to the U.S military, making millions by bidding on small scale contracts.
Attending a friend’s funeral, Packouz (Miles Teller), a professional masseuse, reunites with the flashy foul-mouthed Diveroli (Jonah Hill), who’s moved back to town and invites him to a meeting at his makeshift company office and invites him to join AEY (the name providing a particularly good joke later on). Basically, he explains, he scours the lists of military contracts up for tender to find the ‘crumbs’ that no one else is likely to bid on, then goes shopping on the military equivalent of E-Bay to get the weaponry. Although David and girlfriend Iz (Ana de Armas), are against the war, as Efraim argues, this isn’t about the war, it’s about money. Also, David’s snear bankrupt after his scheme to sell Egyptian cotton sheets to old folks homes flopped and Iz is expecting; and what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.
Things get off to a hairy start when they end up driving truckload of pistols from Jordan to the US military base in Baghdad through Iraq’s so called Triangle of Death. However, it puts their name on the map and before long, bankrolled by a Jewish dry clean chain owner (Kevin Pollak), the business is expanding. The crunch comes when they win a $300 million US Government contract to supply the Afghan military, a deal that means them partnering with dodgy arms dealer Henry Girard (Bradley Cooper). However, when David flies out to Albania to oversee the transport of millions of ancient rounds of AK-47 ammunition, he discovers that they’re from China and, while the US military will deal with almost anyone, China isn’t among them. So, faced with coming up with a way round things or losing the contract, he arranges to have them repackaged into cardboard boxes, ultimately leading them to being busted for attempting to defraud the U.S. Government.
However, it’s not just a rags to riches to rags story, that’s just the backdrop to the relationship between the two friends, the somewhat naïve David trying to get a piece of the pie without doing anything technically illegal, and Ephraim, a personality chameleon who wants the entire pie. While often very funny, this is a remarkably dark piece of work about the economic imperatives of war and the lies it engenders, fuelled by terrific performances from Teller and an especially electrifying Hill, whose laugh that (like the giant Scarface poster on his office wall) says much about his character, encouraging the audience to both root for its protagonists for playing the system. This isn’t about the hangover, this is about getting drunk on the American Dream and finding your drink’s been spiked. (Cineworld 5 Ways, NEC, Solihull; Empire Great Park, Sutton Coldfield; Everyman; Odeon Broadway Plaza; Reel; Showcase Walsall; Vue Redditch, Star City)
The Wave (12A)
Norway’s first ever disaster movie in which a geologist has to fight against the forces of nature to rescue his family. (Until Wed, MAC)
CINEMAS
Cineworld 5 Ways – 181 Broad St, 0871 200 2000
Cineworld NEC – NEC 0871 200 2000
Cineworld Solihull – Mill Ln, Solihull 0871 200 2000
The Electric Cinema – 47–49 Station Street, 0121 643 7879
Empire – Great Park, Rubery, 0871 471 4714
Empire Sutton Coldfield – Maney Corner, Sutton Coldfield
0871 471 4714
The Everyman – The Mailbox 0871 906 9060
MAC – Cannon Hill Park
Odeon Birmingham -Birmingham, 0871 224 4007
Odeon Broadway Plaza – Ladywood Middleway, 0333 006 7777
Odeon West Bromwich – Cronehills Linkway, West Bromwich 0333 006 7777
Reel – Hagley Rd, Quinton Halesowen 0121 421 5316
Showcase Walsall – Bentley Mill Way, Walsall 0871 220 1000
Vue Redditch – Kingfisher Centre, Redditch 08712 240 240
Vue Star City – Watson Road, 08712 240 240
