2017

FLATLINERS (2017)

Cert 15 Stars 1

Way back in the summer of 1990 and flush from the mega success of Pretty Woman which made her a global name, Julia Roberts starred in a horror about medical students who experiment in life after death.

This laughably poor and lifeless remake sees Ellen Page struggling to inject some vitality into a brain dead script while everyone tries to keep a straight face.

McMafia star James Norton fronts out his embarrassment at being involved, and Keifer Sutherland has the dubious distinction of appearing in both versions.

This is dead on arrival.

MOLLY’S GAME

Cert 15 140mins Stars 4

Aces actress Jessica Chastain goes all in and comes up trumps in this terrific poker playing biopic.

This is practically Goodfellas for the girls, a super glossy, high tempo character driven drama, stacked with high stakes all-night card games, drugs, alcohol, violence and the Russian mob.

The real life Molly Bloom was an Olympic standard skier who postponed a law degree at Harvard to spend a year relaxing in the Los Angeles sunshine.

Soon she’s running big money card games in LA and New York for the super rich and famous. Always under-estimated by men due to her lip gloss and low cut tops, the knowingly glamorous Molly uses her wits to exploit men’s stupidity and amass a fortune.

But the FBI arrest her and she’s forced to make a choice between integrity and freedom. 

Bang at the centre is yet another terrific performances from the mesmerising star of Miss Sloane, Zero Dark Thirty and more.

Chastain users her ferocious charisma and dynamite talent to deliver a performance of nuclear articulacy. She should just be given this year’s best actress Oscar and be done with it.

The script by director Aaron Sorkin, writer of TV’s The West Wing, provides her with a stream of acidly comic lines which she fires off with self amused detachment. He also directs with dynamism and takes every opportunity to point out how misogyny fixes the odds in powerful mens’ favour.

Just as in Sorkin’s biopic of tech guru Steve Jobs, the emotional weight of the story rests on a parent/child relationship. However it’s disappointing this strong and independent women is defined by a relationship, and not allowed to succeed or fail without reference to a significant other. 

Supporting players Kevin Costner and Idris Elba just about manage to stay in the game, but it’s Chastain who holds all the cards.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

Cert PG 104mins Stars 3

Roll up to get your tickets for this enjoyably exuberant period musical based on the life of circus impresario, P. T. Barnum.

Absurdly sentimental and generous in its portrayal of the self-styled greatest showman, it’s an all singing and dancing rags to riches tale which despite the presence of a glamorous trapeze artiste, never really flies.

It’s greatest strength is in the casting of Hugh Jackman as Barnum, and he fizzles with old school razzle dazzle in a role which maximises talents.

With his experience of performing in London’s West End in shows such as Oklahoma! there isn’t a movie star today better equipped to play the part, and the likeable Aussie actor seizes the opportunity to unleash a full beam performance.

As Barnum’s business partner, Zac Efron harnesses his High School Musical pedigree to decent effect. He’s romantically paired with popstar Zendaya, who builds on her impressive acting turn in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Dreaming big to please his wife and daughters, Barnum puts on stage a collection of differently bodied people, who are variously large, small, hairy or conjoined.

But his hard won success is threatened when his head is turned by Rebecca Ferguson’s sexy Swedish songbird.

This is a Disneyfied vision of Barnum’s life, written by Bill Condon who directed this year’s monster smash, Beauty and the Beast. He creates a highly stylised world where the the circus seems more real than the outside world.

A virtue is made of his extravagant salesmanship techniques and his financial shenanigans and exploitative tendencies are glossed over.

But it’s heart is the right place, emphasising equality, celebrating diversity and defending the rights of anybody to burst into song at the drop of a top hat.

The Greatest Showman succeeds in offering colourful easy going entertainment for a couple of hours. Which from the little we learn of him, I imagine the real Barnum would heartily approve.

 

 

JUNGLE

Cert 15 Stars 3

Daniel Radcliffe leaves Harry Potter well behind him when he gets lost in this real life Bolivian survival adventure.

As the Israeli Yossi Ghinsberg he joins a group of footloose and fancy-free Western backpackers who go off-roading in search of a rural village.

As well as dodgy accent and bushy beard, he’s soon suffering separation, isolation, starvation, hallucination and attack by hungry creatures.

It’s directed by Greg McLean who made the thrillingly entertaining Wolf Creek films and last year’s insane The Belko Experiment. This isn’t his best work, but unlike Yossi, it’s not far off.

 

PITCH PERFECT 3

Cert 12A 93mins Stars 2

The curtain call can’t come quickly enough for this desperately disappointing finale to a joyfully entertaining musical comedy series, which is now sadly out of tune.

It’s a cynical Christmas cash-in greatest hits compilation from the Barden Bellas, the all-girl acapella competitive choir.

After the first two films whistled up an astonishing global total of £301m from a total budget of £35m, the idea of getting the band back together one last time must have sounded like sweet music.

But with the troupe having graduated university, the tone deaf scriptwriters has no idea what to do with them. So the Bellas are sent to Europe to entertain US troops where they resort to making knowing jokes about themselves, and become embroiled in an action adventure espionage plot.

 Anna Kendrick has a lovely deadpan delivery as the lead Bella, and Rebel Wilson provides a filthy tongue as fan favourite, Fat Amy. But sadly everything else bar the singing falls very flat.

 

WIND RIVER

Cert 15 Stars 4

Taylor Sheridan is a horribly talented scribe responsible for the brilliant thrillers Sicario and Hello Or High Water, but penned and directed this bitingly chilly and hugely engrossing crime drama.

An inexperienced ill-prepared FBI agent and a local hunter team up to investigate the murder of a young woman on an Indian Reservation in frozen Wyoming.

Best known as members of Marvel’s Avengers superhero team, Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen seize the opportunity to stretch themselves with the bleak material and harsh winter conditions.

This is thought-provoking, violent, tense, and expertly builds towards a devastating finale.

 

 

 

DETROIT

Cert 15 143mins Stars 5

Full of fear, panic and prejudice, two British actors excel as Americans caught up in the devastating Detroit race riots of July 1967.

The Force Awakens star John Boyega is a security guard who acts as our witness to events, while Will Poulter is a racist trigger happy cop leading the search of a motel for a sniper.

To a soundtrack of sirens and soul tunes, the head banging brutality is punctuated by photos from the real events.

Kathryn Bigelow is the first and only woman to win the best director Oscar, for her Iraq war bomb disposal drama The Hurt Locker in 2009. She was nominated for the best film award in 2012 for her hunt Osama bin Laden thriller, Zero Dark Thirty, and this film will certainly add to her list of nominations.

Once again she casts a critical eye on the machismo of a militarised environment, and uses her particular brand of rapid editing and hand held camerawork to generate heart stopping tension.

 

 

MOUNTAIN

Cert PG 74mins Stars 3

From the Himalayas, to the Grand Canyon and the Alps, this sky scraping documentary is a hymn to the majesty of mountains.

But as much as it soars with gorgeous vistas and the sublime music of Vivaldi, it crashes to earth whenever humans intrude.

Gravel voiced Willem Dafoe delivers a narration which explores humans relationship with mountains, It falls from profundity to trippy pretentiousness, and lacking facts or insight, it makes wild assumptions of our sympathies.

Plus there’s an odd nostalgia for a time when access to Mount Everest was exclusively for exploited locals and gentleman amateur climbers of the empire.

Astonishingly beautiful photography sits at odds with what at times seems a collection of YouTube clips or outtakes from the rubbish remake of extreme sports action thriller, Point Break.

The only thing bigger than the peaks are the towering egos of these self satisfied show offs who ski, cycle, free jump and occasionally face-plant from the precipices.

THE UNSEEN

Cert 15 106mins Stars 3

Open your eyes to this intriguing British thriller which plays tricks on our perception.

It holds outlets our attention due to the astutely measured performance of Jasmine Hyde in the central role. As Gemma she’s a married mother who works as voice recording artist who specialises in audio books.

Her well heeled London life is shattered when her young son dies, and she begins to have panic attacks, incurring temporary blindness.

Desperate for respite she and her husband take up the kind offer of accommodation in a guest house in the Lake District.

With Hitchcock undertones full of paranoia, guilt, faith and obsession, there are also shades of 1970’s classic Don’t Look Now, and John Travolta’s 1981 thriller, Blow Out.

The cinematography creates a chilly look and the unsettling score twists the melancholy tone. Full of foreboding and a strong sense of creep though a little lacking in menace, it’s worth getting this seen.

FERDINAND

Cert U 106mins Stars 3

Films featuring bulls are rare but this one is reasonable well done, so take a butchers at this enjoyably silly animation which has a strong Spanish flavour.

With its goofy characters and lively slapstick there’s no mis-steaking it’s from the same stable as the Ice Age franchise.

Former WWE wrestler John Cena voices a bull caught in the horns of a dilemma between his pacifist nature and his matador fighting physique.

As a calf Ferdinand was adopted by a farmers daughter. But now grown up there’s an incident in a china shop and he’s sent back his birth farm where the other bulls have an historic beef with him.

The beasts battle to take on a preening matador, very akin to turkeys voting for Christmas. However the unsuccessful ones are sent to be mincemeat at the local abattoir.

But it’s all sweet not scary and this will easily cut the mustard with kids too young to see Star Wars.