GLASS

Cert 15 Stars 3

Obsession and self-delusion threaten the world in this much anticipated sly superhero sequel from the supernatural horror devotee, M Night Shyamalan.

The writer and director of 1999 smash, The Sixth Sense, brings two of his previous thrillers together, with a trio of star names in a clever but plodding exploration of group psychosis.

2016’s low budget mega hit, Split, saw Scotsman, James McAvoy, as a monstrous predator with a multiple personality disorder, while 2000’s Unbreakable saw Bruce Willis star as a super strong vigilante alongside Samuel L. Jackson, as the criminal mastermind, Mr Glass.

Now the three are incarcerated in a psychiatric institution where the wonderfully watchable Sarah Poulson plays a psychiatrist who specialises in delusions of grandeur.

To underlined the point there’s discussion of magicians and circus acts, and a fairground ride appears in a key scene.

She has only three days to persuade the men they do not have superpowers before they are permanently locked up, but the guys are resistant her treatment and there is a plan to escape.

With an impressive range and physicality, McAvoy is superb as he flips between 19 different characters, and is by turns scary, funny and compelling, and his performance deserves a more entertaining film.

Critiquing society’s obsession with superheroes is a bold and daring exercise in the week the Aquaman movie becomes the latest billion dollar behemoth at the box office, and may possibly turn off casual movie-goers here who feel they were promised a more traditional superhero film, albeit with a twist.

Jackson gives a purposefully twitchy performance, and Willis at least seems more engaged than in any of his recent films.

Shyamalan’s indisputable craftmanship is undermined by his showmanship and alienates his audience by operating on an intellectual level not an emotional one, delivering a movie which is light on action, has major pacing  issues and has a very low quota of scares.

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS

Cert 12A 131mins Stars 2

This super-sized creature feature with a pea for a brain stomps into cinemas intent on ruling the box office by squashing the audience into submission.

A sequel to 2014’s visually gorgeous but dramatically sterile Hollywood reboot of Japan’s most iconic export, this is a screaming CGI assault on storytelling as well the senses.

As giant reptiles threaten all human life, it’s up to Godzilla to restore order and balance to the planet, aided by a plucky band of scientists and soldiers armed with nothing but heavily armed hi-tech bunkers, battleships and fighter jets.

Neither Aaron Taylor-Johnson or Elizabeth Olsen return so humanity’s survival rests on the ability of ‘B’ list middle-aged leading man Kyle Chandler to deliver pitifully poor dialogue with the maximum dignity a fine actor can muster knowing his agent has sold him a ginormous pup.

As Dr. Mark Russell, he’s determined to rescue his teenage daughter Millie Bobby Brown, and ex-wife Vera Farmiga, from a host of ancient monsters who are battling for supremacy.

Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe reprise their roles as anxious and awe-filled scientists who stand around and throw scraps of info to the audience.

While this delivers on its promise of epic monster action, this is an adventure which manages to make a staggering dull spectacle of someone scrabbling through an ancient lost city being consumed by lava to defibrillate a giant monster with a nuclear warhead.

Plus the script suggests we live in a world where massively powerful secretive global corporations are a force for good, while eco warriors are evil, and nuclear weapons have health giving properties.

Any film with the smallest degree of self-awareness or irony could have a lot of fun with these topsy turvy concepts, but not this one.

While the beasts have every excuse to be lumbering, incoherent and boring, this expensively assembled wannabe blockbuster has none whatsoever.

HALE COUNTY IN THE MORNING, THIS EVENING

Cert 15 72mins Stars 3

Take a trip to the deep south of the US with this revealing and heartfelt documentary which offers a poetic portrait of the low wage population as they struggle to thrive and survive.

Director RaMell Ross was deeply embedded in the community while managing a youth program and this afforded him extraordinary excess with which to capture his subjects at their most relaxed and off-guard, though he sensitively retreats to a discreet distance when attending a funeral.

With an approach to filming which is almost experimental with oblique angles, brash colour and time lapse photography, his restless camera hangs on their shoulders as locals hang out, goof around and jam in a variety of musical styles including blues and rap.

This award winner at last year’s prestigious Sundance Film Festival is a showcase for the human spirit and offers a taste of America which is much overlooked, and is sometimes sweet, occasionally tough, but surprisingly rarely bitter.

THE HIGHWAYMEN

Cert 15 Stars 3

Bonnie and Clyde were the Great Depression era outlaw killers whose definitive screen portrayals were by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s 1967 masterpiece.

With little new to say about them, this handsomely mounted period crime drama is focused on the lawmen who tracked the duo down.

There’s no hardship in keeping company with class acts Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as the Texas Rangers brought out of retirement by Kathy Bates’ state governor. 

Their humour and wry chemistry give a dignified gloss to a standard tale of two good old boys rediscovering self-worth in later life.

BAD REPUTATION

Cert 15 94mins Stars 3

Raven-haired rocker, Joan Jett, is best known for her classic 1982 single, I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll, and as this unquestioning documentary amply demonstrates, she’s still rocking the free world at the age of 60.

While coyly skirting around her private life, Jett talks us through her career as part of the all-girl glam rock group, The Runaways, and later as singer of her own group, The Blackhearts, plus there’s a lot of onstage footage, artists such as Iggy Pop and Blondie are interviewed, while Miley Cyrus swings by to sing Jett’s praises.

Having emerged out of the Los Angeles LGBT club scene of early 1970s, and alongside the women’s liberation movement, Jett is presented as an important trailblazer in the macho and misogynist 1970’s rock industry.

But claims to legendary status are overstated due a deficit of hit songs and the lack of  evolution in her look and sound, especially in comparison for a singer born the same year as Madonna.

FIRST MAN

Cert 12A 142mins Stars 5

Have an out-of-this-world experience with this brilliantly ambitious biopic of history-making astronaut, Neil Armstrong.

He became the first man to walk on the Moon on July 21, 1969, during NASA’s Apollo 11 space mission, and we learn how this flight of global importance was a trip of deeply personal significance.

Superb cinematography and astonishing sound design convey the bone-shaking, ear-shattering and nerve-shredding experience of travelling in the extraordinarily primitive spacecraft in terrifyingly immersive sequences.

While attempting space travel in little more than a Morris Minor strapped to a skyscraper-sized firework, the spacemen have to calculate their trajectory with paper, a pencil and a slide rule.

In being inspiring, mournful, uplifting, terrifying and heartbreaking, it’s another staggeringly accomplished success from Damien Chazelle.

For 2016’s romantic musical, La La Land, he became the youngest ever winner of the best director Oscar, and he’s reunited with his star, Ryan Gosling, who is skilfully cast as the impressively impassive pilot who is inwardly troubled.

We follow the devoted family man on his seven year mission preparing to boldly go where no-one had gone before, and experience his arrival at an unexpected and emotional destination.

His down-to-Earth wife, Janet, is played with devastating precision by The Crown star, Claire Foy, and with Armstrong regarded as a US national symbol, their relationship becomes a reflection on the US during the 1960’s.

Corey Stoll is abrasively outspoken as Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, and is someone you wouldn’t want to spend two minutes in a lift with, never mind a week-long space mission.

And the Command Module pilot, Michael Collins, is played by Lukas Haas, the young Amish boy in Harrison Ford’s 1985 cop thriller, Witness, who still doesn’t look old enough to drive.

Elevated by the divine spectacle of outer space, this trip of a lifetime will leave you bruised, battered and moved to high heaven.

STAN AND OLLIE

Cert PG 98mins Stars 4

Hats off to Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly who don the famous bowlers of Hollywood’s  most popular double act and do delightful justice to the supreme slapstick talent of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Blessed with two modern performers at the top of their game, this funny, affectionate and respectful tribute is also surprisingly moving as it touches on age, fame and friendship, with an array of headwear charting the state of their messy relationship.

Sixteen years after an acrimonious split at the height of their big screen stardom, it’s now 1953 and the pair arrive in Newcastle Upon Tyne for a live tour of England’s low rent theatres, intended to showcase their talent with the hopes of catapulting them back to the big time in film.

Dogged by ill-health and financial issues, their fans believe them long retired,  younger generations don’t recognise them, and to add to the pressure their formidable wives are flying in with high expectations.

Played by the waspish Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda, they’re a scene-stealing double act whose comic chemistry is a venomous echo of the mens.

Coogan and Reilly bring out the competitive best in each other and perfectly capture Stan and Ollie’s famous mannerisms to an almost unnervingly accurate degree.

Their affecting and testy relationship have us believe they’ve spent years together honing their act as they deliver the familiar evergreen gags with great skill and immaculate timing.

Stan And Ollie is nominated for Best British film at this year’s BAFTAs which also sees Coogan nominated for Best Actor as he again demonstrates what a skilled dramatic actor he is, while Reilly was nominated for Best Comedy Actor at this weeks Golden Globes.

But as Stan says, ‘you can’t have Hardy without Laurel’, and it’s as a team they bring heart and humanity to this poignant portrait and a long overdue celebration of a pair of comedy giants.

 

 

 

 

IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

Cert 15 119mins Stars 3

Director Barry Jenkins returns with another melancholy character-driven mood poem to sit alongside his 2016 Best Picture Oscar winner, Moonlight.

There is a standout score, tremendous use of colour and strong performances, but Jenkins also tests our patience with his rejection of dramatic storytelling.

KiKi Layne and Stephan James are endearingly sweet as young lovers, Tish and Fonny, but she is pregnant and he is prison after being wrongly accused of the rape of another woman.

And Regina King deservedly follows in the footsteps of Moonlight’s Naomie Harris by being Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress, as Tish’s mother.

Possessing the articulate elegance of James Baldwin, on whose novel this is based, this is less a night out, more a distillation of the late 20th century African-American experience.

But it’s frustrating to watch as the dreamlike narrative flits back and forth through time, and consequently Beale St. failed to challenge for the top Oscars.

 

BUMBLEBEE

Cert PG 114mins Stars 3

The Hollywood machine has retooled the Transformers franchise for a sleeker, quicker and more enjoyable ride in this character driven prequel set in 1987.

With an impressively epic sci-fi opening on the planet, Cybertron, it soon changes into an Earth-bound goofy high school comedy version of E.T. the Extra-terrestrial, with some Herbie Goes Bananas-style shenanigans bolted on.

Pitch Perfect singing star Hailee Steinfeld finds the right gear as a teenage mechanic who befriends a shapeshifting Autobot she names Bumblebee, who acts like an eager to please puppy.

While she struggles with school and a part time job with a complicated home life, they must stop a pair of killer alien Decepticons intent on world domination. 

New director Travis Knight aims for a lighter tone but very little kids may be in danger of having their circuits blown by some of the heavy metal action.

However the sparky chemistry of Charlie and Bumblebee means the series has got its buzz back.

 

PAPILLON (2018)

Cert 15 130mins Stars 3

Geordie TV star, Charlie Hunnam, takes on one of the iconic roles of Hollywood legend, Steve McQueen in this effective period prison drama remake.

As a prisoner nicknamed Papillon, he sweats through the vicious regime of a remote island prison in French Guiana, before being sent to the notorious Devils’ Island.

He befriends a forger called Dega, and as good as he was as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, Rami Malek is no Dustin Hoffman.

This second adaptation of Henri Charriere’s famous 1969 autobiography is straightforward, sturdy and handsomely designed with impressive location work and always commits to the brutality of the story.

But it cleaves so closely to the earlier film without offering any new perspective on criminal justice, colonisation, racism or any other subject, I wonder why they bothered.

And Hunnam’s a piece of casting on a par with Carl ‘Apollo Creed’ Weathers, stepping into Oscar winner Sidney Poitier’s shoes in the 1986 remake of 1958 chain gang classic, The Defiant Ones.