2018

ON CHESIL BEACH

Cert 15 110mins Cert 3

A marriage heads for the rocks in this tasteful and thoughtful drama of love, desire and regret.

Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle play newlyweds spending their wedding night in a beachside hotel, but awkwardness in the bedroom has serious implications for their relationship.

It’s a poignant, fragile and wistful tale from award-winning writer Ian McEwan, which he adapted from his own 2007 novella.

The beautiful Dorset coast is photographed with a suitably chilly air as the story wades into strong emotional currents. It offers sympathy to the central characters while hinting at dark tides in their past. 

Recently Oscar nominated for best actress for Lady Bird, Ronan is painfully vulnerable as the reticent Florence. It’s her second adaptation of McEwan’s work after 2007’s, Atonement, for which she was also Oscar nominated.

Howle has to work extremely hard to keep up with the Irish actress, while Emily Watson, Anne-Marie Duff and Samuel West appear as in-laws who stick their oar in.

A CAMBODIAN SPRING

Cert 15 126mins Stars 4

This horrifying documentary explores how Cambodia swapped the tyranny of Communism under Pol Pot for the wild west corruption of a UN-sanctioned free market democracy.

Following the collapse of the brutal Khmer regime, corporate and political corruption was fuelled by the World Bank injecting massive amounts of aid money for urban development.

The forced eviction of citizens from land they had held for generations lead to the ‘Cambodian spring’ of political protest, marked by street demonstrations and a violent response by the army and police.

Award-winning filmmaker Chris Kelly spent the six years shooting this debut feature, which charts the lead up to the country’s 2013 election crisis.

He centres the narrative around two ordinary mothers-turned-activist leaders and a Buddhist monk. All three suffer in different ways for taking a stand against the authorities and vested interests.

There’s no shortage of ambition in his offering a wide-ranging look at these under-reported events, and it makes for a frequently shocking and often compelling watch.

BREAKING IN

Cert 15 88mins Stars 3

There’s one bad mother on the loose in this brisk and effective home invasion thriller.

When her kids are taken hostage in her own luxurious, remote and hi-tech fortified mansion, an ordinary mum has to break in to try and rescue them.

There aren’t many black female fortysomethings given the opportunity to reinvent themselves as an action star.

Gabrielle Union seizes the moment with two fists, carrying the movie as the resourceful, brave and desperate parent.

Meanwhile the four armed and ruthless criminals inside are seeking the millions in cash they believe is locked in a secret safe.

Intent on squeezing out as much action as possible from the limited location, the script doesn’t dwell on the social commentary inherent in having a black family terrorised by white guys in pursuit of cash.

And although it feels as if some gory elements have been edited out of the more brutal moments, Breaking In will smash and grab your attention.

 

ENTEBBE

Cert 12A 107mins Stars 3

There’s a bumpy experience awaiting you on board this down-beat real life airline hostage drama.

It’s a serious-minded look at Operation Thunderbolt, a 1976 Israeli armed forces attempt to the rescue of a plane-load of civilians.

Four terrorists diverted a Paris-bound plane to Uganda’s Entebbe airport, where they demanded the release of Israeli-held prisoners in return for the safe return of the passengers.

The country is ruled by the dictator Idi Amin, who even the terrorists consider a lunatic.

This set-up is so cinematic it has been filmed three times previously, and inspired the 1986 Chuck Norris adventure, The Delta Force.

Throw in some great performances and this should be terrific entertainment.

But the producers are best known for romcoms such as Four Weddings, and the Brazilian director Jose Padilha is best known for his woeful 2014 remake of sci-fi classic, RoboCop.

He is indulged in his almost experimental approach to the material, which means the daring military attack arrives almost an afterthought. Plus amid some decent character work, he brings in moments of contemporary dance to examine the relationship between art and war.

However the film is given an emergency airlift by stars Rosamund Pike and Daniel Bruhl, who are on strenuous form as the German members of the infamous German Baader-Meinhof terrorist group, and leaders of the hijack.

Their accomplices are a pair of thinly-sketched Palestinians whom the film has little interest in. 

However Brit actor Eddie Marsan is quietly wonderful as the poker-faced Israeli defence minister who insists there can be no negotiation.

However the passengers are anonymous pawns of politics, and the story would have been better served by a more straightforward narrative and an emphasis on action.

Steven Spielberg’s meaty 2008 thriller, Munich, and Ben Affleck’s crowd-pleasing Oscar winner, Argo, covered similar ground far more successfully.

And sadly Entebbe fails to achieve their dramatic height.

REVENGE

Cert 18 108mins Stars 5

Guns, drugs and sex are a gut wrenching  mix in this visceral rape revenge thriller.

From the blistering opening to the blood drenched finale, it bakes us in the glare of its searing confidence.

Marrakesh landscape is unforgivingly harsh as the action, which is fuelled by the gutsy performance of Matilda Lutz as Jennifer.

As the mistress of a married family man, she experiences the full spectrum of toxic entitlement and misogyny when his two armed assistants unexpectedly turn up at their remote luxury hunting lodge.

Wealthy and handsome, Kevin Janssens is full of physical premier league arrogance as her prime tormentor as Jennifer faces a desperate fight for survival.

With the symbolic  bite of an apple we’re metaphorically moved into the realm of fable. This allows us to forgive the more outlandish plotting and outrageous physical punishment, to embrace its core message of female emancipation. 

This delirious experience is probably the film Quentin Tarantino dreams of making next.

ANON

Cert 15 Stars 2

This beautifully crafted but inert sci-fi thriller is more interested in its high concept ideas than offering a compelling narrative, likeable characters or sense of mystery, fun or spectacle.

It’s set in a bleak future world, online wireless technology allows total surveillance by the government.

Clive Owen is at his monotone worst as a cop investigating a super-hacker whose skills are used to disguise a serial killer. Identified only is Anon, she’s played by Amanda Seyfried on similarly low key form.

Andrew Niccol writes and directs with concrete self importance, leaving 1997’s Gattaca the high watermark of his career.

MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH

Cert 15 99mins Stars 3

Taking its title from the album of indie rockers, Bur, this shoe-gazing indie drama plays out to the music of London’s post-Britpop era.

Natalie is a graphic artist who reluctantly works in advertising, Liam is an aspiring musician who refuses to sell out, and harangues strangers in record shops for their poor taste. 

Their long-playing relationship was stuck on repeat and has recently broken up. As they divide their considerable music collection, we repeatedly flashback to see how they arrived in this unhappy place.

Freya Mavor and Josh Whitehouse have a sweet chemistry when they first meet, and are energetically supported by a cast playing enjoyably eccentric friends, bar staff and bandmates.

Despite not featuring Blur, the music is nicely curated and strays away from obvious Britpop stalwarts such as Oasis, favouring instead the tunes of Radiohead, Spiritualized and Stereophonics.

And there’s no escaping the ghost of Nick Hornby’s classic, High Fidelity, which hangs in the air.

 

BIRTH OF THE DRAGON

Cert 12 Stars 2

There’s some halfway decent Kung Fu action in this goofy knockabout action thriller which defies any effort to be taken seriously.

Very loosely inspired by true events, it puts a fictional spin a famous fight between a young Bruce Lee and a famed Chinese martial arts master, in 1960’s San Francisco.

Philip Ng swaggers his way through as Lee, in contrast to the quietly spoken Xia Yu, as his mild mannered but steel-fisted opponent.

As well as fighting each other, they must struggle against local Triad gang, a laboured romantic subplot and suspiciously made-for-TV production standards.

 

TULLY

Cert 15 96mins Stars 5

Charlize Theron changes gear from the Fast and Furious franchise to give a first class performance in this wryly funny and gaspingly honest comedy drama.

Only last year the Oscar winner was an impressively ripped action star, now she’s believably hefty, wrinkled and worn.

She brings warmth and humour to the married forty-something, Marlo, who’s suffering soul-sapping sleep deprivation and barely coping with the her newborn, third child.

Marlo watches TV reality shows and scoffs pizza in exhausted surrender to the pressure of conforming to the impossible standards of other, seemingly perfect parents. Her husband returns from work each night and collapses each night in front of the telly.

Marlo’s wealthy older brother has hires them a night nanny, to help with the midnight feeds.

Played by Mackenzie Davis, Tully is an eager-to-please 26 year old, with a toned physique and model looks. And slowly the boundaries between employee, family and friend are blurred.

It’s directed with  sympathy by Jason Reitman and written with commendable insight by Diablo Cody. They previously teamed up for 2007’s teen pregnancy drama, Juno, and 2011’s Young adult, which also starred Theron. This is equally polished and my favourite of the three.

Cody’s script is astonishingly good at portraying the noise, frustration and physical indignities of child rearing, while people tell you how precious and fleeting those early moments are.

Painfully accurate in its depiction of domestic distress, I was suffering Vietnam War-like flashbacks to the terrible times of my son’s first years.

And then Cody delivers a perfectly flighted narrative curve ball which bowls us over with its emotional power.

But this isn’t a depressing experience, more a therapeutic hymn to virtues of sacrifice, compromise and steadfastness.

If a newborn has made you feel afraid, desperate and broken, this film will help put you back together. By the end I was crying like a baby. 

 

MOM AND DAD

Cert 15 Stars 4

Nicolas Cage unleashes his inner maniac to demented effect in this outrageous and funny satirical comedy horror.

Often uncomfortable to watch and daring to voice unspeakable truths about parenting, he and Selma Blair play a very ordinary middled-aged suburban couple with two kids.

One day a mass psychosis grips their town, and parents start murdering children, but only their own.

We’re shown parenting is not all love and kisses, but jealousy, resentment and a form of madness. And as a parent I’m not sure it’s healthy to laugh as much as I did.