JURASSIC WORLD: THE FALLEN KINGDOM

Cert 12A 128mins Stars 4

Mammoth mayhem stampedes across the big screen in this meaty sequel to 2015’s monster smash.

This fifth dino-epic is set three years after the ending of the previous billion pound box office super-heavy weight, and the dinosaurs existence on the island home of the defunct Jurassic Park resort is threatened by a volcano.

So stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard helicopter in alongside a bunch of military mercenaries to ferry 11 species of dinosaurs to safety as the mountain erupts.

It’s a brilliant, breathless action sequence packed with dinosaurs, takes place on an enormous scale, and is exciting, scary and fun.

Once the creatures are saved, the second part of the film is framed as a haunted house horror and takes place in a huge gothic US mansion, where there is a nefarious plan to auction off the beasts to international arms dealers.

Though each half of the film is excellent in their own way, they’re very different and not entirely successfully spliced together, much like the new killer hybrid dinosaur on the loose, the Indoraptor.

Despite having more than enough of talent and empathy to anchor the series, Howard is sadly too often allowed to be elbowed out of the way so co-star Pratt demonstrate his smug wisecracking action-man prowess.

Veteran James Cromwell brings gravitas as Sir Benjamin Lockwood, and young Isabella Sermon as his vulnerable and brave granddaughter makes a strong debut. Rafe Spall plays his trusted right hand and is becoming one of my favourite actors.

Spanish director J. A. Bayona previously made tsunami drama, The Impossible and the teenage fable, A Monster Calls, and all his work is concerned importance of mothers.

Here he brings in elements of fable from his spooky horror, The Orphanage, which I suspect are closer to his heart than all his impressively staged blockbuster action.

Though at times too full on and grisly for the very little ones, the dinosaurs are back and they are roarsome!

 

WELCOME TO CURIOSITY

Cert 15 94mins Stars 1

There’s nothing inviting in this drab, tawdry and all round rubbish low budget British thriller.

Set in the fictional Cornish town of Curiosity, an escaped psychiatric patient and the heist of £6million draws various unconnected characters together with grim violence.

Cardboard characters wander through scenes devoid of visual interest, in a landscape dotted with vague bits of Americana, nods to the original intention to set the film in the US.

Former rapper and now Eastenders regular, Richard Blackwood is wholly unconvincing as a gangster. The rest of the cast such as Jack Ashton and Amrita Acharia will be familiar from Call The Midwife and games of Thrones.

They all deserve better than the lumpen and flavourless dialogue they’re asked to chew on.

The director has swallowed the ideas of far more talented people such as Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers and regurgitated them in a messy puddle, sadly with none of the colour or violent surprise this implies.

 

THE BOY DOWNSTAIRS

Cert 12A 89mins Stars 2

There’s little to laugh at in this slight, limp, frustrating and maudlin millennial romcom.

The likeable Zosia Mamet stars as aspiring writer and singleton, Diana, who has moved to New York after three years in London.

She takes a job in a bridal shop and this is probably intended as irony but the script fails to build on the idea.

Moving into an apartment Diana is surprised to discover her ex-boyfriend is the boy living downstairs and OMG, in a new relationship.

Matthew Shear’s struggling musician Ben is such a remarkably unprepossessing presence I’m staggered he can romance not one but two attractive women during the course of the film.

And that’s without his default behaviour which is clingy, spineless and dull.

Thank goodness for Diana’s best friend Gabby, who brings energy and humour and is far more worthy of our attention than her sadly scant screen time allows.

Plus her love life seems much more dynamic, interesting and well, fun.

THE LITTLE VAMPIRE

Cert U 82mins Stars 2

This bloodless animation offers thin pickings for all but the most undemanding cinema-goers.

It’s a cross-cultural bromance between two 13 year old boys, a Transylvanian vampire with punk hair, and a fresh-faced US holidaymaker on a creepy castle tour of Europe with his family.

They team up to rescue the vampire’s clan from a pair of inept villains. The head baddie is voiced by Jim Carter, best known as Downton Abbey’s butler, Carson. 

The only other recognisable names the budget stretches to are Miriam Margolyes and Tim Pigott-Smith, with not much left over for the animation, and even less for the script.

Mixes magic spells with some mechanical contraptions such as the Infra-dead vampire locating device, and I could have done with much more of the weaponised vampire-cow poo,

It’s so insubstantial it won’t cast a shadow in your memory, but it’s harmless and doesn’t totally suck. Though it’s probably best saved for the rainiest day of half term.

SHOW DOGS

Cert PG 92mins Stars 3

Enjoy a parade of pampered pooches in this canine crime caper which has a doggy style all of its own.

A New York police department rottweiler teams up with a human FBI agent to go undercover as contestants a Las Vegas dog beauty pageant.

They’re trying to unmask an international animal smuggling ring and rescue a super cute panda cub called Ling-li.

In debt to Tom Hanks’ 1989 Turner and Hooch, but now the animals can talk, courtesy of the voice of rapper, Ludacris, as Max the rottweiler, along with RuPaul and Shaquille O’Neal as fellow contestants.

Best known as the voice of Lego Batman, Will Arnett plays Max’s sidekick, but he’s a far less dynamic crimefighter here.

Raja Gosnell is Hollywood’s top dog for mutt movies having previously directed two live action Scooby Doo movies and 2008’s Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

He embraces the barking mad premise with a straight face, and dog fanciers will fall in puppy love with it.

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY

Cert 12A 135mins Stars 4
Experience a light-speed roller coaster ride in a galaxy far, far away in this rip-roaring Star Wars spin-off.

Set sometime before the original 1977 blockbuster, it follows the young Han Solo from a penniless street thief to becoming a swashbuckling space smuggler.

Having been brilliantly played by Harrison Ford in four films previously, I worried about how the new guy would measure up.

Especially as in the words of Princess Leia who famously quipped of Luke Skywalker, new star Alden Ehrenreich is probably a little short for a stormtrooper. In his defence, everyone looks short next to the enormous hairy frame of Chewbacca the Wookiee.

And Ehrenreich quickly wins us over with an endearingly cocky swagger, as Solo survives a mountainside monorail heist, meets Chewbacca for the first time, acquires his iconic spaceship, the Millennium Falcon, and falls foul of Paul Bettany’s master criminal, Dryden Vos.

Emilia Clarke from TV’s Game Of Thrones plays Solo’s childhood friend, Qi’ra, though she’s such a sweet on-screen presence she struggles to convince of the conflict within her character.

And it’s Donald Glover, as the roguish Lando Calrissian, who steals the film with his cosmic charisma.

A lot more fun than the other Star Wars spin-off, Rogue One, there’s no avoiding the background hum of war.

But this is far from the rarefied world of generals and emperors of previous films, this is a blue-collar world of miners, shipbuilders, and frontline soldiers, where people wrestle in mud for their lives.

Ron Howard’s safe pair of hands were brought in to reshoot large chunks of the film after original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were jettisoned when Disney were unhappy with their loose improvisational style.

Racing against the clock to complete the film it’s remarkable he’s crafted not only a coherent film, but a hugely entertaining one, packed with humour and big screen spectacle.

 

 

ALLURE

Cert 18 104mins Stars 2

Obsession and abuse leave a lot to be desired in this anguished, unconvincing and unsatisfactory low key thriller.

Intended as a character portrait, this is a kidnap story with more sympathy for the perpetrator than its victim.

Laura is a troubled house-cleaner who pursues a transgressive relationship with the under-age teen daughter of a client.

Most recently seen in TV’s Westworld, Evan Rachel Wood is impressively raw in the central role as the thirtysomething who struggles to control her manipulative and self-destructive impulses, the consequence of a traumatic early life.

However this also has repercussion for the impressionable object of her desires, the waif-like and angst ridden teenager, Eva, played with a tremulous efficiency by Julia Sarah Stone.

For debutant directors Carlos and Jason Sanchez this is an extension of their supposedly subversive and provocative career in fine art. Instead we have overwrought underpowered drama which lacks a moral or political position and I struggled to find anything to love about it.

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.