2017

DESPICABLE ME 3

Cert U 90mins Stars 3

Funny man Steve Carell returns as the voice of despicable villain turned secret agent Gru, and gets into the groove of this bubble gum coloured animated sequel which has a heavy 1980’s influence.

It’s a typically fast paced affair but the madcap charm and invention of earlier episodes is diluted by a jaundiced pandering to parents, a piecemeal plot and a tendency to soap opera.

Plus the real stars have always been the little yellow minions, and would be better off continuing their own spin-off series. They have great moments but are unwisely elbowed aside in favour of a couple of new, less funny characters.

Gru and his family head off to the European backwater of Freedonia, where his long lost brother Dru, lives.

Meanwhile back in the US Balthazar Bratt is a mullet wearing, break dancing, super villain.

He was a 1980s child TV star who wants revenge on Hollywood for cancelling his show. His lair is littered with Rubik cubes and suchlike, while famous songs of the decade from Madonna and so on are crowbarred onto the soundtrack.

This is all a disappointingly cynical attempt to keep the parents and grandparents in the audience happy, while the comic violence entertains the kids. The minions fart jokes are far funnier than the warmed over nostalgia intended to keep me occupied.

With new characters added with every film, the script has a lot of juggling to do to keep everyone occupied, and it feels as if we’re watching a couple of different scripts less than seamlessly stitched together.

I was bored by the scenes where Gru worries about his job and his new wife frets about bonding with their three daughters.

With the Illumination studio developing new films such as mega hit movie Sing, this feels more a stale contractual obligation than a labour of love. And it’s as not as despicably great as previous films.

MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE

Cert PG 66mins Stars 4

Plant yourself in front of this charmingly original fable, which was Oscar nominated for the best animated film.

This complex, gentle and often sad delight has the social commentary and sentimentality of the work of Charles Dickens.

Hero is an orphan with a clown-like face. Though creative and kind, he has little to laugh about after being placed in a care home. We see how his kindness of spirit has an empowering effect on his fellow inmates.

The skilful storytelling is deceptively simple and technically complex. Small gestures carry great meaning and the use of traditional stop motion animation allows for some dark material to be smuggled in.

Inmates behaviour stems from their experiences. These are communicated with sufficient vagueness so children won’t be scared, but adults will fully comprehend the horrors implied.

The filmmakers tend to their characters with care, and as they bloom we’re given a feast of emotion to tuck into.

 

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS

Cert 15 89mins Stars 3

Sex among the upper classes is explored in this comedy drama which mixes a film noir detective story and the novels of Evelyn Waugh with mild successful.

It’s based on a novel by Stephen Fry, and his over bearing smug pomposity weighs down every line of dialogue.

Roger Allam plays a failed poet who wallows in the caustic mud of his own cynicism. His voice over is full of cruel asides and flowery language, which delights in its public schoolboy humour and obsesses over bodily fluids and functions.

The whiskey sodden writer is employed by a glamorous blonde to investigate a miraculous healing which took place at a large country house.

Fry previously directed a big screen adaptation of Waugh’s Vile Bodies, called Bright Young Things. And there as here, he fails to make us care about his herd of posh idiots.

However the jolly jazz era inspired soundtrack help make it surprisingly brisk on its feet.

 

MCLAREN

Cert 12A 92mins Stars 3

I’m as far from a petrol head as it’s possible to imagine, but this motor-racing documentary kept me engrossed until the chequered flag.

It’s a celebration of Bruce McLaren who overcame a crippling childhood condition and through his driving exploits, became a national hero of his native New Zealand.

Though it races along in nostalgia tinted plumes of petrol smoke, there’s no denying his was a remarkable life. A passion for engineering fuelled his racing ambition and drove his success as a businessman.

Friends, family and competitors offer the personal detail we can’t glean from the footage of beautiful if alarmingly fragile looking cars.

Sadly the film travels unburdened with financial details, salacious pit gossip or much in the way of technical details.

McLaren’s untimely death behind the wheel arrived in 1970 at the horrifically young age of 32. The F1 team which he established and bears his name is his legacy to the sport he loved.

 

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE LONG HAUL

Cert U 91mins Stars 1

I thought the recent reboot of National Lampoon’s Vacation set the all time low in family road trip comedies, but this car crash goes the extra mile.

Stockport-born director David Bowers has entirely recast his own franchise from 2012’s last instalment, and it’s poor Alicia Silverstone who suffers the most.

Her career may never to have recaptured the heights of 1996’s teen comedy Clueless, but it’s extremely upsetting to see it sink this far.

She plays the mother to wimpy boy Greg, who decides to take her husband and three sons on a road trip for their grandmother’s 90th birthday.

However the social media-addicted boys conspire to attend a video game convention instead.

Along the way they suffer cockroaches, a farting pig and projectile vomit. There’s an-in car karaoke scene featuring Wannabe by the Spice Girls, which is gnaw-your-own-leg-off painful.

It’s all as desperate as needing the toilet and knowing the next motorway services are 37 miles away.

 

 

 

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: SALAZAR’S REVENGE

Cert 12A 129mins Stars 3

The supernatural swashbuckling franchise returns to chart a course through familiar waters, but there’s a new star to light the way.

After 2011’s ponderous adventure On Stranger Tides, this adventure moves at a fair clip along its formulaic route of spectacular CGI sea battles and big scale stunts.

The special effects, costumes, sets and locations are a treasure dazzle us, but outshining them all is newcomer Kaya Scodelario. The Brit actress brings fresh life to the regular skeleton crew as a feisty astronomer turned treasure hunter.

Carina is the only woman of note in an ocean of men, and it’s a pity she’s saddled with Brenton Thwaites as a romantic interest. As Henry, he’s a suitably bland son and heir to Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner.

They team up with Johnny Depp’s hapless pirate, Captain jack Sparrow. Though Depp’s pantomime performance becomes more tiresome with every appearance, the troubled actor needs this film to rescue his badly listing career. 

Sparrow features heavily, but through judicious editing, stunt work and stand-ins, there’s a lot less Depp than we’re supposed to believe. 

Bloom and Keira Knightley briefly reprise their roles and Paul McCartney continues the series’ rum tradition of rock star cameos.

A ruddy faced Geoffrey Rush does a spot of acting as Captain Barbossa and gives his one legged pirate some real welly. And one time James Bond villain, Javier Bardem harries everyone amidships as the revenge seeking Salazar, the matador of the sea.

The scattershot script pays lip service to its own plot which involves the Trident of Poseidon. The reappearance of pirate galleon The Black Pearl, brings closure to a major character.

This week Depp was confirmed as the Invisible Man in Universal Studio’s new ‘Dark Universe’ franchise. If his career continues its downward spiral, he won’t need special effects to play the part.

 

 

ALIEN: COVENANT

Cert 15 122mins Stars 5

Scream as though no-one can hear you as the galaxy’s greatest space horror franchise is back to terrorise us once again.

Director Ridley Scott returns to the sci-fi thriller which made his name, and delivers an epic of spine-busting action, exotic locations and stunning design.

The Oscar winning director made the original Alien in 1979 when he was a young man in a hurry. As one of cinemas elder statesmen, in 2012 he belatedly  followed up with the grandly ambitious but less well received, Prometheus.

Now he splices the pair to create an explosive hybrid of blood-splatting thrills and apocalyptic destruction on a mythic scale. It’s all very familiar and at times daringly new.

There are chest-bursters, face-huggers, and acid blood. Orifices are penetrated and cavities evacuated, as we’d expect. But Scott plays on our knowledge of the franchise to skilfully toy with our expectations of the narrative.

We’re challenged to have some sympathy with the the ferocious flesh hungry parasitic alien, called a Xenomorph. A seduction is played with such subtle grace and integrity, it disguises how audacious and mind bendingly freaky it is. 

Set ten years after Prometheus, a small team of colonists are stranded on a planet and are unable to communicate with the orbiting mothership.

As the script wrestles with the big questions of existence, our heroes have to grapple for their lives.

Leading the fight for survival is Daniels, played by Katherine Waterston. The tall, dark-haired beauty is slyly styled by Scott to resemble the undisputed queen of the franchise, Sigourney Weaver.

Despite displaying Weaver’s kick-ass aptitude, Waterston is overawed by a majestic Michael Fassbender. He’s mesmeric in a dual role as synthetic androids, David and Walter.

Scott’s final theatrical flourish sends the franchise spinning out in a new direction. This is screamingly great cinema.

MINDHORN

Cert 15 89mins Stars 3

Tune into this telly detective spoof, where the Bionic Man meets Bergerac.

Back in the 1980’s, Richard Thorncroft was the star of the TV crime series, Mindhorn. The ‘best plain clothes detective on Isle on Mann’ was equipped with a truth-reading cybernetic eye.

Thorncroft sees an opportunity to reignite his career when he’s roped in by the real police to help solve a murder.

Relying heavily on nostalgia for TV shows which are probably best forgotten, too many scenes drift, and jokes about acting auditions are funnier for the cast than the audience.

However, Julian Barratt is a paragon of deluded middle age as Thorncroft. It’s a consummate performance in the vein of Steve Coogan’s failed sportcaster, Alan Partridge.

Coogan is part of an impressive cast which sees cameos from Kenneth Branagh and Simon Callow.

The design looks suitably cheap and the films one joke is milked relentlessly, albeit with energy, conviction, and occasionally laughter.

 

SLEEPLESS

Cert 15 95mins Stars 2

This run of the mill thriller may offer some respite for sufferers of insomnia.

The stakes are established early and fail to escalate, so we idly watch some decently-staged action scenes and the glossy neon glow of Las Vegas at night.

As a corrupt cop called Vincent, the well fed Jamie Foxx sees his chickens come home to roost when his son is kidnapped by the mob.

These include gangsters, a casino boss, more corrupt cops and Michelle Monaghan’s Internal Affairs police officer, who ambitiously wants to arrest everybody at once.

At the centre of the plot is a bin bag of cocaine who everyone wants to get their hands on.

As the cast chase each other a crowded Las Vegas casino, the cocaine changes hands in the manner of a fizzing bomb in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. By the end I’d forgotten who had it or why I cared.

UNLOCKED

Cert 15 98mins Stars 2

This silly thriller seems designed to unleash a female rival to James Bond on the unsuspecting world of international espionage.

The topical Europe-hopping plot includes a reasonable amount of action. But the film is unevenly paced, predictably plotted and the moments of broad humour dilute the under-powered tension.

Noomi Rapace and Orlando Bloom play a CIA interrogator and a former marine. They’re on the run and have to prevent the detonation of a biological bomb in London.

Michael Douglas and John Malkovich add Hollywood gloss as CIA top brass, with the latter not taking his role with absolute seriousness.

Filming wrapped in January 2015, and since then the movie has collected dust on a shelf. Presumably it’s being released now to cash in on the fact its stars are about to return to cinemas in much bigger films.

Rapace appears next week in Alien: Covenant, the follow up to sci-fi epic, Prometheus.

Meanwhile in two weeks, Bloom attempts to kickstart his stalled career with a return to The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. In the first Pirates film, Bloom was the romantic hero. But Johnny Depp swaggered up as Captain Jack Sparrow and sank Bloom’s career as a leading man.

Bloom has since failed to offer any evidence he’s anything other than a posh pretty boy of reasonable talent and an inoffensive screen presence. He’s astonishingly miscast here in a role more suited to the rough charm of Jason Statham.

And now forty years old, Bloom seems beset by an early mid-life crisis. He’s sporting tattoos, an ill advised haircut and a desire to prove his physical prowess.

This uninvolving mess was directed by Michael Apted, who made 1999’s not great 007 film, The World Is Not Enough. I’m sure any plans for Rapace to make a sequel to this remain locked up and for her eyes only.