Mount up for action with Chris Hemsworth in this impressively staged real life war movie.

The Thor star saddles up as the leader of a dozen special forces soldiers who ride horseback into Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attack on the twin towers.

It’s a covert operation, and with military intelligence being what it is, only one of them knows how to ride. 

With a forward operating base nicknamed The Alamo, this feels as if it’s a western armed with automatic rifles.

They’re on a mission to assist local warlord take a strategically important city. In the grand tradition of General Custer, they find themselves outnumbered 5000-1 and facing missile launchers and tanks.

There are shades of Lawrence of Arabia as Hemsworth leads the locals’ charge into battle, but he’s no Peter O’Toole and Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig is certainly no David Lean.

There’s probably a really good thaddle Thor joke in here somewhere, put I just can’t seem to find it.

Though the action scenes are bloodily effective, the pace never manages to gallop.

 

Slog your way through the  pedestrian third and final episode of this meandering sci-fi adventure.

Conceived as male-orientated cash-in on Jennifer Lawrence’s wildly successful Hunger Games series, it’s set in a ravaged future where an incurable disease has shattered civilisation and created a race of rabid zombies.

Having escaped the lethal maze of the title, our immune merry band of photogenic outlaws have to break into the remaining city of a totalitarian regime, to rescue one of their own.

There’s a nifty train heist in a well constructed and exciting pre-title sequence, but it’s a misleading advert for the grind which follows.

Due to a serious on-set accident to lead hunk Dylan O’Brien, there’s been a three year gap since the previous episode.

Given the fickle nature of its young adult target audience and a longer than intended wait, it will be interesting if anyone still cares.

By the time this remarkably unmemorable marathon was over, I certainly didn’t.

 

English football is stuck in the dark ages in this deliriously daft family animation.

The makers of Wallace and Gromit return to the big screen with a pre-historic adventure, created in their trademark clay model characters and traditional stop-motion technique. 

From the kick off it’s filled with their familiar combination of slapstick, puns and glorious attention to detail.

A determinedly populist plot pits the local underdogs versus wealthy European sophisticates in a game of football.

Caveman Dug and his tribe are captured by a Bronze Age invaders, and only by agreeing to a football match can Dug’s tribe win their freedom.

Dug has to train his agricultural inclined players to work as a team, relying on hard work and heart, rather than those suspicious innovations of skill and tactics.

Exploitative foreign administrators and gloating Germanic players come in for some harsh treatment, and the way bad guys have used their mineral wealth to find a team of high maintenance mercenary foreign players will not be lost on fans of the beautiful game.

And there’s no escaping the gentrification of the game, with the principal players being voiced by posh actors Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston, while working class Johnny Vegas is pushed firmly to the back of the team.

From the beginning scene featuring a homage to the stop motion masterpieces of filmmaker Ray Harryhausen, this is is a riot of references to British film history and terrace culture.

So the famous words of commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme mingle with nods to Terry Gilliam and Gregory’s Girl. 

There’s a return to the directors chair for four time Oscar winner Nick Park, it’s his first feature film since the wonderful 2005’s Wallace And Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Another rabbit features prominently here, and despite some close shaves, no animals were harmed in the making of this movie.

 

 

A diminished Matt Damon runs in ever decreasing circles in this ponderous sci-fi satire.

The Bourne Identity star gives a pleasantly guileless performance as occupational therapist, Paul.

To solve financial worries, he signs up to be shrunk to five inches tall and live in an experimental community. However the reality of his gilded existence is not exactly as it says in the brochure.

It’s consistent in tone, well designed and acted, but over long, patronising and only intermittently entertaining.

And as in his previous two films 2011’s The Decendents and 2013’s Nebraska, writer and director Alexander Payne offers plenty of disdain for the working class, portraying them as fat, lazy, stupid and drunk.

Nor is the film’s premise isn’t as original as it thinks, being considerably less exciting than the 1957 classic The Incredible Shrinking Man, and a lot less fun than 1989’s huge hit, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

Out on Wednesday.

 

 

Rattle along with Liam Neeson in this express thriller.

Including 2014’s entertaining airline action movie, Non-Stop, it’s the grizzled Irishman’s fourth film with Spanish director, Jaume Collet-Serra.

With knowing nods to work of Alfred Hitchcock, a keen sense of paranoia underpins the hefty leading man performance, whistle stop storytelling and knuckle cracking fist fights.

Neeson plays Mike, a newly unemployed insurance salesman taking the train home to his loving wife and family.

Vera Farmiga is the glamorous femme fatale who offers to pay Mike $100,000 to find a fellow passenger, but won’t say why.

She’s part of a criminal conspiracy which pits society’s little guys against each other in a desperate duel in the pursuit of cash.

Following this pointed critique of capitalism, the script argues there are more noble contributions to be made to society than living life as a wage slave.

Add in some terrific popcorn thrills and it makes for a very tasty ticket.

There’s plenty of snap, crackle and pop in Pixar’s latest animated family adventure.

Bursting with warmth and life it’s a musical feast of fun celebrating the Mexican feast of the day of the dead.

When twelve year old Miguel ignores his family’s wishes, he’s accidentally transported to the land of the dead, a mesmerising neon wonderland.

In grave danger, Miguel must find a way back to land of the living before sunrise or be stuck there forever. 

Miguel is helped on his journey by a goofy spirit guide called Dante, and Hector, a skeletal guitar player.

Music and memory are mixed in the magical song Remember Me, totally in tune the film’s message of remembering and respecting our forebears.

One of many elements paying respectful homage to Mexican culture, contributing to Coco becoming the country’s biggest box office hit.

And Pixar’s family fun continues in June, with the super-powered sequel, The Incredibles 2.

 

 

Embrace complete Madness in the company of pop star Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson, frontman of the nations favourite ska band and surrogate big brother to the school kids of my generation.

Appropriately irrepressible, chaotic, joyous and very funny, it’s a first hand account of the rise up the charts of the seven strong London outfit.

Directed by Julien Temple who made 1979’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, he stands Suggs on a musical hall stage in front of family and friends.

Suggs then uses his fiftieth birthday as a springboard for anecdotes, animations and songs, tempered by a touching account of searching for his wayward father who abandoned his mother in Suggs’ early childhood.

Echoing their best songs such as Baggy Trousers, it’s bursting with passion, vitality, comradeship, nostalgia and riotous observation.

When I wasn’t laughing, I was trying not to sing along so as not to spoil it for everyone else. It’s unleashed into cinemas on Wednesday.

Burning anger at institutional injustice may supercharge this lacerating black comic drama to Oscar victory.

 As a grieving mother launches a blistering one woman attack on prejudice and indifference, it’s slap-in-the-face shocking, laugh-out-loud funny, and move-you-to-tears tragic.

In 1996 Frances McDormand won Oscar gold for her role in the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece, Fargo, a similarly violent tale of small town America.

She could easily win another for her sharp, brave and confrontational performance here as Mildred, having already picked up a Golden Globe win and several other awards nominations.

Mildred begins a media campaign to shame the local police dept into properly investigating the murder of her daughter, by hiring three billboards and using them to post a message questioning the head of police.

Played by woody Harrison with dignity and humour, Chief Willoughby is none best pleased. Nor is his stupid, lazy and aggressive deputy. Sam Rockwell is beyond tremendous the younger redneck cop, buckling up his familiar loose style into something tighter and more aggressive.

With the issues of rape and collusion at the heart of the story, it chimes with the outrage of Hollywood’s sex scandal  which has resulted in the #MeToo campaign’s response.

Three Billboards has garnered huge support at award ceremonies, such as Bafta where it’s been nominated in nine categories. 

And it’s also terrifically entertaining, albeit in a brutal, abrasive and foul-mouthed fashion, with the cast spitting venomous and jaw-dropping dialogue at each other.

Acclaimed playwright turned respected producer, writer and director Martin McDonagh previously made 2008’s wildly entertaining In Bruges, before following up with a career low of 2012’s Seven Psycopaths.

This is his richest and most accomplished work yet, being horrifically bleak but keeping the barest flicker of optimism alive.

A wild trip to the dark heart of gender politics, this is a timely, devastating and magnificent achievement. They should stick that on a billboard.

 

 

In 2007 director Joe Wright gave us Atonement, a wartime romance whose grand moment was an impressive peak at the enormity of the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Having established good form with the Second World War, he now provides us the other side of the event. This is a look at the low politicking in Parliament which led up to the momentous event.

It took up to four hours a day to prepare actor Gary Oldman for his role as Prime Minster Winston Churchill, but you have to wonder whether this stuffy Second World War drama was worth it. 

Some theatrical framing shows Churchill isolated and boxed in in middle of screen, but generally it’s a plodding affair, lacking the invention of Wright’s 2012 adaption of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

There’s a dramatically important but laughably absurd scene in a tube carriage. It’s a sop to the working class who are otherwise silent and in their place for the duration.

Doing any kind of acting underneath the weight of his impressive prosthetic costume and makeup is an achievement in itself. It’s the sort of immersive and painstaking physical transformation which always attracts awards attention.

So Oldman’s Golden Globe win for best actor was no surprise, and he’s the bookies favourite for the Oscar.

However with the British veteran anchoring the film with such weight, everyone else seems to be vague and insubstantial.

Neither Lily James or Kristin Scott Thomas have much to contribute as respectively his winsome secretary and supportive wife. 

According to the pedestrian script, Churchill’s darkest hour was spent persuading the War Cabinet to save the British army at Dunkirk, while being steadfast in refusing Viscount Halifax’s siren call of a peace treaty with Hitler.

It’s acknowledged his career up to this point was a litany of catastrophes, including masterminding the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of the First World War. Former public school boys being promoted for failure is not a new feature of public life.

There’s absolutely no quibbling to be had with the quality of the design, costumes or makeup, which have all been deservedly recognised with Bafta nominations. It has nine in total.

But it’s telling the film has been overlooked for Bafta noms in the editing and directing categories.

Nor was it nommed for writing, though given its reliance on Churchill’s own words, best adapted screenplay would have been the most appropriate category.

There’s nothing new to be learnt, and much like Churchill himself, this film chunters along, trying ‘not to bugger it up’.

As the occasional CGI bomb falls on British troops and a CGI fleet briefly musters in front of the white cliffs of Dover, it proves how correct Christopher Nolan was in his instincts to avoid the use of CGI in his Dunkirk masterpiece of last year. 

Both Darkest Hour and Dunkirk have best film Bafta noms, but the gulf in class is staggering.