Drama

SPACESHIP

Cert 15 90mins Stars 2

There’s not too much out of this world about this teen drama, which has a distinctly British atmosphere.

It’s constructed with a rickety homemade charm and uses the under-explored visual texture of Aldershot as a launching pad.

But the haphazard storytelling fails to achieve escape velocity. Looping around in an unambitious orbit, it’s powered by hormones, angst, an over abundance of black eyeliner and experimental hair styles.

Displaying more exuberance than experience, the mostly young cast are suitably self-obsessed as they indulge in role playing and discuss at length their preferences regarding blood, death, sex, beer, unicorns, black holes, vampires and fairies.

Alexa Davies is nicely off kilter as Lucidia, a cyber-goth teenager who fantasises about aliens. She’s suffering from the fallout of her mother’s suicide and has a difficult relationship with her father.

Her friends assume Lucidia’s been abducted by extra-terrestrials when she goes missing and fails to phone home.

MISS SLOANE

Cert 15 132mins Stars 4

Flame haired Jessica Chastain gives a red hot performance in this scorching political courtroom drama.

The two time Oscar nominee has never been better than as Miss Sloane, a ferociously cold-blooded political fixer who takes aim at Washington DC’s powerful gun lobby.

Even her role as a deer-shooting mob wife in 2015’s A Most Violent Year wasn’t as jaw-droppingly determined to crush her opposition.

Chastain is reunited with her Zero Dark Thirty co-star, Mark Strong. Alongside fellow Brit, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, they provide the film a conscience to the dubious goings-on.

With a twisted plot is full media manipulation, bribery and blackmail, the intelligent script moves its well-heeled cast at pace through meeting rooms, TV studios and hotel assignations.

Probably due to its nakedly anti-gun agenda, this took an undeservingly small £3m in the US on an £14m budget. But don’t be fooled by negative spin, this movie hits the target.

 

 

 

MAN DOWN

Cert 15 Stars 2

This is the drama which made headlines when it made only £7 at the UK box office. It’s not quite as bad as all that, and certainly it’s heart is in the right place.

Though somber and sluggish, it serves to highlight the plight of veterans who suffer PTSD.

Shai LaBeouf’s typically introvert and intense performance sees him engaged in a macho grunt-off with the Jai Courtney.

They play best buds who patriotically sign up for the Marines and tour Afghanistan. On return LaBeouf’s family are missing and the pair set off to find them.

 

 

GHOST STORIES

Cert 15 97mins Stars 4

Investigate the paranormal with this devilishly scary supernatural British thriller.

Andy Nyman stars as a TV presenting Professor who is evangelical in his mission to debunk psychics and the existence of the afterlife.

But his faith in science is tested when he is challenged to solve three separate cases of ghostly experience.

As the tremendous trio of Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther and Martin Freeman anchor each segment, the spectre of A Christmas Carol haunts the story and Charles Dickens would have appreciated its bleak and dark turns. 

Beautifully played and with a theatrical insistence on in-camera special effects, it’s inventive and funny as events become increasingly bonkers.

Asylums, churches, caravan parks and the Yorkshire Moors provide a suitably damp and downbeat environment alongside a more traditional fog-bound forest.

We’re asked to contemplate the emptiness of life without the possibility of an ever-after. And by the time Ghost Stories have scared you to death, you’ll be praying there is.

BEAST

Cert 15 106mins Stars 4

The pungent atmosphere of this throat-grabbing British thriller is a heady mix of earthy lust, poisonous snobbery and cold-hearted corruption.

It’s a modern-day fairytale inspired by infamous ‘Beast of Jersey’, a 1960’s paedophile who preyed on the islands inhabitants.

Moll is a red-haired Cinderella who escapes her strict mother to pursue a romance with a local poacher, only to see him suspected of being a multiple child rapist and murderer.

Irish actress Jessie Buckley will be familiar from Tom Hardy’s TV series, Taboo, and gives a mesmerising performance which swings from dead-pan subtlety to raw physicality. Johnny Flynn is vulnerable and wolfish as her boyfriend, Pascal.

A haunting choral soundtrack reinforces the timeless nature, and the arch script is a great example of how filmmakers are choosing to side-step the plot-ruining internet, by pretending it doesn’t exist.

This is a scarily confident directorial debut by writer Michael Pearce, and I’m intrigued to see what beastly surprises his talent serves up next.

A MOVING IMAGE

Cert 15 74mins Stars 1

Take a trip to south London and experience the worst kind of indulgent, inarticulate, and incontinent film-making.

In a self appointed challenge to explore the affect of gentrification on the borough of Brixton, first time writer and director Saloo Amoo director makes many assumptions.

Such as the audience having a knowledge of the history, politics, and social makeup of the area.

He fails to make a case that gentrification has occurred, or even it is undesirable. And his greatest mistake is to assume anyone outside of London cares.

Instead of offering us a compelling drama or well researched documentary, we’re provided with a tedious lump of impressionist moments.

These typically feature gigs, pop up art installations, street parties and random residents ranting about coffee shop proliferation.

Various young attractive arty types sit in a massive warehouse loft, drink wine and film each other. This is Brixton. And you’re welcome to it.

HEAL THE LIVING

Cert 12A 104mins Stars 2

A strong stomach is required for this metaphysical hospital melodrama, which has the sterile feel of a feature length advert for organ donors.

When an extreme sports loving teenager suffers terminal brain damage, his organs are made available for donation. Simon’s surfing scenes are the hypnotic highlight.

With its tastefully torpid and lily-livered bedside manner, the drama fails to generate any meaty anger or bile.

With a soundtrack of irritating piano noise, bridges are a metaphor for the way people connect, and water is shorthand for the spirit world.

Imagining itself to be a hymn to the oneness of humanity, the script stitches together class, gender and sexual orientation.

But the film’s brain never realises how token Asian and black characters are lumped together in the background, and the working class suffer so the artistic middle class can live.

I’m far from convinced this film’s heart and head are in the right place.

THEIR FINEST

Cert 12A 117mins Stars 4

Gemma Arteton makes movie magic in this hugely entertaining second world war comedy drama.

The actress deploys her ample talent as Catrin, a writer who inadvertently wages a one woman war on sexism in the British film industry. It’s a gift of a role which makes the most of her ability to be warm, vulnerable, smart and sexy.

Meanwhile wily old trouper Bill Nighy leads a first class platoon of homegrown supporting talent, which includes Helen McCrory, Eddie Marsan and Jeremy Irons.

Working though the Blitz, Catrin discovers looking like a Bond girl in a male dominated environment provides additional hazards.

Equipped with a wedding ring, a thick skin and a desire to succeed, Catrin shares a small office with the cynical senior writer, Tom, played by the dependable Sam Claflin.

They must concoct a screenplay celebrating an heroic episode from the evacuation of Dunkirk. But their work is complicated when they discover the ‘facts’ involved in their story are not as have been reported in the press.

With deception is key to filmmaking, especially in the art of propaganda, Their Finest explores the way great fictions can reveal even larger truths, and looks at the way lies are employed to serve a greater good. But the tone is never strident and the story is never neglected.

Plus there’s a lot of fun with the mechanics and tricks of filmmaking, and affectionate spoofs of the period style of cinema.

Confident and sure footed, the script seems to commit a clumsy narrative stumble as it nears its destination. But its necessary to allow this uplifting and inspirational tale to reach its empowering conclusion.

Handsomely photographed, wonderfully played and full of humour, this is a thoroughly British crowd pleaser in every way. All the more surprising then, it was directed by a Dane, the talented Lone Scherfig.

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

AFTERMATH

Cert 15 90mins Stars 2

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s screen career takes an interesting detour in a rare serious-minded role. Sadly his decent attempt at acting goes unrewarded in this dull aeroplane disaster.

It takes off with good intentions but stalls mid-flight. Unable to decide on the best route, it crashes somewhere between tired revenge thriller and underpowered drama.

The story is inspired by true events of 2002 when two planes collided mid-air. The resulting carnage on the ground left no survivors, but created a wake of angry relatives.

As a grief stricken grandfather, Schwarzenegger fails to secure an apology from the authorities. So he hunts down Scoot MacNairy’s hapless air-traffic controller.

The build up to the crash is nicely tense, while the scenes of the rescue services trawling the wreckage are sensitive and effective.

But the ploddingly paced script is even handed to a fault, leaving us without a hero or villain, or little in the way of drama.