2017

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

Cert 15 132mins Stars 4

A summer of love has long lasting repercussions for a teenager in this coming out, coming of age romance.

Elegant, sincere, sensual and sensitive, it has two exceptional performances from Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer. The latter is all the more impressive as the actor is mostly famous for playing the Lone Ranger to Johnny Depp’s Tonto.

Chalamet plays Elio, an American-Italian Jewish 17-year-old. While spending his holidays in his parent’s Italian villa, he’s attracted to the presence of Hammer’s visiting 24-year-old American Jewish scholar.

Small gestures have huge significance, and as the pair edge towards each other they talk in coded language so as not to betray themselves.

Though much time is spent by the pool or playing volley ball, a key seduction scene involves the witty use of a piano.

Occasionally the pace is overly languid, however this does allow us to drown in the local texture and gorgeous locations.

THE RITUAL

Cert 15 94mins Stars 3

Get back to nature and discover your inner pagan with this British supernatural horror.

Four middle aged mostly middle class friends go on a hiking holiday to northern Sweden, they’re on a guilt trip to honour a recently deceased friend.

It’s a majestically clean and beautiful landscape, chosen presumably because its remoteness denies the walkers access to the internet. When they’re forced off route it becomes a terrifying journey of self discovery.

Equipped with a low budget and lacking star power, they are possessed by a director intent on maximising his resources.

Spooky thrills are summoned by some cracking creature design, tremendous sound mixing and an interestingly prickly performance by Rafe Spall in the lead role. 

The script sticks to the  familiar path and sightseeing features a cabin in the woods, strange symbols carved on trees and grisly blood offerings. However by utilising local folklore we’re led to a satisfyingly dark psychological destination.

DOUBLE DATE

Cert 15 89mins Stars 3

Get the weekend started with this British comedy horror which offers shots of gore, sex and humour in roughly equal measure.

Michael Socha plays an idiot jack–the–lad tries to engineer the loss of his mates virginity. Danny Morgan is the guileless soul who turns thirty the next day and  is routinely humiliated for his poor physical condition. 

The quest for casual sex leads them to a bar where they identify two sisters as suitable conquests.

Kelly Wenham is impressively ripped as a kick boxing vamp while Georgia Groome is the sweet and sensitive young sibling. However the women have a butterfly fixation, daddy issues and their own agenda.

Soon events turn messy in a toxic rush of alcohol, drugs and violence, and complications arise when two of the four developing feelings for one another.

It’s much more than the town which ends up painted red in the energetic and bloody finale.

 

LOVING VINCENT

Cert 12A 91mins Stars 4

Step into the mind of troubled maestro Vincent Van Gogh in this intriguing and masterful composition.

One of the founders of modern art, the Dutch post-impressionist painter had a history of mental illness and self harm.

On July 27 1890 shot himself and died two days later aged 37, in the Parisian suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise.

Animated in the style of his paintings, over a 100 artists painstakingly hand crafted each of the nearly 65,000 individual frames. The bold colour and brushstroke create a liquid kaleidoscopic effect which is dreamily trippy and hypnotic.

This dazzlingly feat of technical virtuosity explores Van Gogh’s life, art and the mysterious circumstances of his death, framing the story as a murder mystery.

We’re asked to consider whether his death was a cry for help, a crime of passion or an act of commercial aggression.

A cast which includes Aidan Turner and Eleanor Tomlinson from TV’s Poldark, ensures by the end you’ll be loving Vincent, too.

THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US

Cert 12A 111mins Stars 4

Get hot under the collar as Kate Winslet and Idris Elba turn up the heat when stranded on an icy mountain.

In an era where actors are considered of less important to a film than its franchise brand, this survival adventure is refreshingly built around the chemistry, charisma, talent and global fame of its stars.

It’s especially welcome as both are British, though only one of them sports a US accent.

This unashamedly old fashioned and enjoyable romantic melodrama begins with an exciting and well staged crash, leaving the strangers high up The Rockie mountains in the depths of winter.

Though Winslet is not the only cougar around in the epic and beautifully bleak environment, there’s less cliff hanging than you’d expect as the script chooses to focus on developing the characters.

The only disappointment is Winslet never channels her inner Mae West and asks ‘is that a mountain between us or are you just pleased to see me?’

THE REAGAN SHOW

Cert PG 74mins Stars 3

This frustrating documentary about 40th US president overestimates the strength of its own brief and ends up improvising to camera.

It begins by arguing after starring in 53 Hollywood movies, Ronald Reagan was perfectly trained to be Commander in Chief.

He had great broadcasting skills, was comfortable surrounded by cameras, had an eye for a photo opportunity and established a new media template for those who followed. 

Plus there are some entertaining snippets about techniques he’d use to avoid answering awkward questions, but it exhausts its best material early on.

So with little evidence in support, it reduces the resolution of the Cold War nuclear arms race against the USSR to a series of PR stunts designed to upstage Gorbachev, Reagan’s opposite number in the Kremlin.

This is a useful primer for the YouTube generation for whom all this is ancient history, but there’s little new for those of us who remember it first time around.

BLADE RUNNER 2049

Cert 15 163mins Stars 5

Prepare to see things you’ve never seen before in this astonishing sci-fi sequel.

In Brit 1982 Brit director Ridley Scott and star Harrison Ford created the most influential sci-fi film of the last 35 years.

I love the original Blade Runner so much I was consumed with gut wrenching nerves immediately before seeing this new trip to Los Angeles of the near future.

Attempting to compete with a visionary masterpiece seemed an act of absolute folly by new director Denis Villeneuve. And so it proved, the Canadian will just have to settle for making the best sci-fi film of the decade.

It’s a visually majestic, brilliantly acted, emotionally arresting and deeply humane epic which wrestles with questions of memory, identity, and the meaning of love and life.

Ford reprises the part of Deckard. As a Blade Runner he was employed to hunt and kill powerful slave androids, called replicants.

However the lead role is occupied by broodingly charismatic Ryan Gosling.

Villeneuve has asked for the plot not to be revealed, but it’s safe to tell you Gosling plays a Blade Runner called K who is employed by the LAPD.

While on an assignment, the hired killer makes a discovery which challenges the world order and makes him question his own beliefs.

There’s a strong spiritual core plus environmental concerns and social commentary are stitched into the rich fabric its incredible design. British cinematographer Roger Deakins will surely receive his 14th Oscar nomination, and hopefully an overdue first win for his mesmerising work.

There are impressive flying cars, fist fights, gun battles and people being punched through walls.

But this is an intense and serious minded odyssey for grown ups, one without the easy pleasures of a light hearted romp such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

I haven’t stopped thinking about this masterpiece since I saw it, and I probably still will be in 2049.

Nemo’s Fury is an exciting digital reinvention of Jules Verne’s classic steampunk adventure novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 

Download for free to your smartphone or tablet, search your app store for ‘Nemo’s Fury’.

A mobile interactive fiction game employing a bespoke combat system and hundreds of original illustrations, Nemo’s Fury is inspired by the 1980’s role-playing gamebooks such as ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’, of the Fighting Fantasy series which celebrated its fortieth anniversary last year.

Each player joins the legendary Captain Nemo on board his fabulous submarine, the Nautilus, on a wild voyage of adventure, intrigue, loyalty, and betrayal.

There’s mayhem, monsters, maelstroms and murder as Nemo takes you from the South Pacific to the Northern Atlantic via Antartica and the Red Sea. And if they survive long enough, the player will of course fight a giant squid.

Available on your smartphone or tablet, (but not yet your desktop), click on your app store below

Or go to Nemo’s Fury for more info

BERLIN SYNDROME

Cert 15 Stars 3

This claustrophobic and dingy thriller preys on the fears of parents who wave their adult children off on holiday,

Teresa Palmer plays an Australian backpacker who has one night stand with Max Riemelt’s hunky German teacher, but the next morning she finds herself a hostage.

It’s an chilly urban nightmare whose best moments of skin itching creepiness and nasty violence arrive early.

Marred by its cramped confines, the story finds it difficult to make room to manoeuvre or build momentum, possibly the reason it made a modest impact at the box office.

BRIMSTONE

Cert 18 149mins Stars 3

There’s a powerful operatic air to this brutal western for which you may need a strong stomach to digest it’s gut ripping action.

When a new preacher arrives in town promising pain for sinners, he begins a campaign of terror against a local family.

Guy Pearce has a hoarse voice and a nasty facial scar as he pursues Dakota Fanning’s young wife and her children. As the story moves back and forth in time, biblical themes of revenge and punishment are explored.

Religion is used to justify treating women as slaves. They are bought, sold, beaten, raped, mutilated and hanged.

And there’s strong political commentary in the script as women are often gagged to deny them a voice with which to protest.

As this bleak and chilly epic sweeps across the harsh yet beautiful landscape, the ripe and bloody melodrama is ramped up with thunder and lightning.

Plus the relentless brutality and considerable length make for a demanding watch.

 

 

 

THE SNOWMAN

Cert 15 119mins Stars 2

This Scandinavian thriller deserves some sort of award for being the most terrific looking yet listless movie.

Norway is a gorgeously crisp winter wonderland and Christmas card pretty, but watching Michael Fassbender’s grim struggle through thigh–high snowdrifts is a perfect illustration of my viewing experience.

Perhaps the heat of the chase was lost in translation. It’s a Chinese/Sweden/UK co-production adapted from a Norwegian bestseller and stars the German/Irish actor as an alcoholic police detective.

He’s in plodding pursuit of a serial killer whose signature is finding the time to build a coffee bean-decorated snowman at the scene of each grisly murder.

Rebecca Ferguson plays his fellow cop but they don’t generate any heat with which to thaw the chilly, silly and somber storytelling.

The opening scene sets up an intrigue of sex, violence and voyeurism and though there are bloody moments, this is an anaemic exercise as you could possibly wish to avoid.