Rattle along with Liam Neeson in this express thriller.

Including 2014’s entertaining airline action movie, Non-Stop, it’s the grizzled Irishman’s fourth film with Spanish director, Jaume Collet-Serra.

With knowing nods to work of Alfred Hitchcock, a keen sense of paranoia underpins the hefty leading man performance, whistle stop storytelling and knuckle cracking fist fights.

Neeson plays Mike, a newly unemployed insurance salesman taking the train home to his loving wife and family.

Vera Farmiga is the glamorous femme fatale who offers to pay Mike $100,000 to find a fellow passenger, but won’t say why.

She’s part of a criminal conspiracy which pits society’s little guys against each other in a desperate duel in the pursuit of cash.

Following this pointed critique of capitalism, the script argues there are more noble contributions to be made to society than living life as a wage slave.

Add in some terrific popcorn thrills and it makes for a very tasty ticket.

There’s plenty of snap, crackle and pop in Pixar’s latest animated family adventure.

Bursting with warmth and life it’s a musical feast of fun celebrating the Mexican feast of the day of the dead.

When twelve year old Miguel ignores his family’s wishes, he’s accidentally transported to the land of the dead, a mesmerising neon wonderland.

In grave danger, Miguel must find a way back to land of the living before sunrise or be stuck there forever. 

Miguel is helped on his journey by a goofy spirit guide called Dante, and Hector, a skeletal guitar player.

Music and memory are mixed in the magical song Remember Me, totally in tune the film’s message of remembering and respecting our forebears.

One of many elements paying respectful homage to Mexican culture, contributing to Coco becoming the country’s biggest box office hit.

And Pixar’s family fun continues in June, with the super-powered sequel, The Incredibles 2.

 

 

Embrace complete Madness in the company of pop star Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson, frontman of the nations favourite ska band and surrogate big brother to the school kids of my generation.

Appropriately irrepressible, chaotic, joyous and very funny, it’s a first hand account of the rise up the charts of the seven strong London outfit.

Directed by Julien Temple who made 1979’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, he stands Suggs on a musical hall stage in front of family and friends.

Suggs then uses his fiftieth birthday as a springboard for anecdotes, animations and songs, tempered by a touching account of searching for his wayward father who abandoned his mother in Suggs’ early childhood.

Echoing their best songs such as Baggy Trousers, it’s bursting with passion, vitality, comradeship, nostalgia and riotous observation.

When I wasn’t laughing, I was trying not to sing along so as not to spoil it for everyone else. It’s unleashed into cinemas on Wednesday.

Burning anger at institutional injustice may supercharge this lacerating black comic drama to Oscar victory.

 As a grieving mother launches a blistering one woman attack on prejudice and indifference, it’s slap-in-the-face shocking, laugh-out-loud funny, and move-you-to-tears tragic.

In 1996 Frances McDormand won Oscar gold for her role in the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece, Fargo, a similarly violent tale of small town America.

She could easily win another for her sharp, brave and confrontational performance here as Mildred, having already picked up a Golden Globe win and several other awards nominations.

Mildred begins a media campaign to shame the local police dept into properly investigating the murder of her daughter, by hiring three billboards and using them to post a message questioning the head of police.

Played by woody Harrison with dignity and humour, Chief Willoughby is none best pleased. Nor is his stupid, lazy and aggressive deputy. Sam Rockwell is beyond tremendous the younger redneck cop, buckling up his familiar loose style into something tighter and more aggressive.

With the issues of rape and collusion at the heart of the story, it chimes with the outrage of Hollywood’s sex scandal  which has resulted in the #MeToo campaign’s response.

Three Billboards has garnered huge support at award ceremonies, such as Bafta where it’s been nominated in nine categories. 

And it’s also terrifically entertaining, albeit in a brutal, abrasive and foul-mouthed fashion, with the cast spitting venomous and jaw-dropping dialogue at each other.

Acclaimed playwright turned respected producer, writer and director Martin McDonagh previously made 2008’s wildly entertaining In Bruges, before following up with a career low of 2012’s Seven Psycopaths.

This is his richest and most accomplished work yet, being horrifically bleak but keeping the barest flicker of optimism alive.

A wild trip to the dark heart of gender politics, this is a timely, devastating and magnificent achievement. They should stick that on a billboard.

 

 

In 2007 director Joe Wright gave us Atonement, a wartime romance whose grand moment was an impressive peak at the enormity of the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Having established good form with the Second World War, he now provides us the other side of the event. This is a look at the low politicking in Parliament which led up to the momentous event.

It took up to four hours a day to prepare actor Gary Oldman for his role as Prime Minster Winston Churchill, but you have to wonder whether this stuffy Second World War drama was worth it. 

Some theatrical framing shows Churchill isolated and boxed in in middle of screen, but generally it’s a plodding affair, lacking the invention of Wright’s 2012 adaption of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

There’s a dramatically important but laughably absurd scene in a tube carriage. It’s a sop to the working class who are otherwise silent and in their place for the duration.

Doing any kind of acting underneath the weight of his impressive prosthetic costume and makeup is an achievement in itself. It’s the sort of immersive and painstaking physical transformation which always attracts awards attention.

So Oldman’s Golden Globe win for best actor was no surprise, and he’s the bookies favourite for the Oscar.

However with the British veteran anchoring the film with such weight, everyone else seems to be vague and insubstantial.

Neither Lily James or Kristin Scott Thomas have much to contribute as respectively his winsome secretary and supportive wife. 

According to the pedestrian script, Churchill’s darkest hour was spent persuading the War Cabinet to save the British army at Dunkirk, while being steadfast in refusing Viscount Halifax’s siren call of a peace treaty with Hitler.

It’s acknowledged his career up to this point was a litany of catastrophes, including masterminding the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of the First World War. Former public school boys being promoted for failure is not a new feature of public life.

There’s absolutely no quibbling to be had with the quality of the design, costumes or makeup, which have all been deservedly recognised with Bafta nominations. It has nine in total.

But it’s telling the film has been overlooked for Bafta noms in the editing and directing categories.

Nor was it nommed for writing, though given its reliance on Churchill’s own words, best adapted screenplay would have been the most appropriate category.

There’s nothing new to be learnt, and much like Churchill himself, this film chunters along, trying ‘not to bugger it up’.

As the occasional CGI bomb falls on British troops and a CGI fleet briefly musters in front of the white cliffs of Dover, it proves how correct Christopher Nolan was in his instincts to avoid the use of CGI in his Dunkirk masterpiece of last year. 

Both Darkest Hour and Dunkirk have best film Bafta noms, but the gulf in class is staggering.

 

 

Wallow in the blues with this music documentary, which exhaustively covers the career of noodling guitar hero, Eric ‘slowhand’ Clapton.

Technically accomplished, humourless, introverted and rife with musical snobbery, it’s an overlong riff on his life.

Following a blissful childhood in Surrey, the axeman popularised blues music for a white mass audience.

Filled with family photos and home videos, it frames his life as an X Factor-style journey of redemption, following his struggles with drug addiction, alcoholism and unpleasant political posturing.

The entire middle section is spent justifying his pursuit of Patti Boyd, for whom he wrote his signature tune, Layla. She was at the time the wife of his friend and neighbour, George Harrison.

Bringing The Beatles to a music doc is like introducing a gun to a knife fight, and even in his own film Clapton plays second fiddle to the Fab Four.

Far from being Wonderful Tonight, this is one for the completists.

This desperately dull essay on middle aged angst sees Ben Stiller at his most serious, sentimental and unfunny.

I’ve always been unpersuaded by Ben Stiller’s comic turns and he’s even less bearable when he plays straight, such as here.

As Brad, he’s a wealthy middle class middles aged consultant with beautiful wife and home. But he’s riven with insecurity by the mega success of his old university friends. 

Interminable soul searching begins when he flies off with his musical prodigy son for an interview at Harvard university.

The only cheer comes from Welshman Michael Sheen playing an old buddy. Bouffant and bearded he’s a refreshing oasis of unreflective vanity and superficial charm.

It was written and directed by Mike White whose other writing credits include The Emoji Movie, and this is no more insightful.

If I wanted to pay to experience the full horror of a midlife crisis, I’d take my mates to the pub.

 

 

Despite spanning fifty years and two major European wars, this action heist adventure has zero interest in history or politics and is all the more entertaining for it.

However the backdrop does allow for an early storming action scene, seeing a real tank cause carnage during a city chase is always good fun and the underwater sequences are fresh.

Set in and around Sarajevo during the Bosnian conflict of 1995, it’s an updated riff on Clint Eastwood’s Second World War caper, Kelly’s heroes, which was similarly filmed in the former Yugoslavia.

The larky humour and hard hitting violence is winningly played with a straight face throughout.

Gruff Aussie actor Sullivan Stapleton is the shaven headed and alarmingly unfazed leader of a group of renegade US navy SEALS who attempt to liberate a lost cache of Nazi gold from a lake.

Meanwhile Dutch model Sylvia Hoeks plays the love interest and J. K. Simmons is their exasperated commanding officer.

 

 

There’s mayhem and murder among the mince pies and mistletoe in this violent and funny festive comedy horror.

Riffing on classics Home Alone and Ferris Bueller, the twisted story sees 12 year old Luke making plans to have sex with his beautiful 17 year old babysitter, Ashley.

However they’re surprised a masked intruder with a gun and become trapped in their home.

As the mismatched pair, Levi Miller and Olivia DeJonge give energetic performances, skilfully and intelligently driving the desired tone.

Rejection, revenge and psychosis pepper the smartly constructed script. It’s very aware of itself and gleefully toys with our expectations as it leads us on its merry dance of death.

And though it raises important issues of consent, abuse, peer pressure, male privilege and influence of porn, this is never allowed to interrupt the fun.

With the title taking its cue from my 2nd favourite Christmas song, this is a joyously acerbic antidote to this sentimental time of year.