7500

Cert 15 Stars 3

Tense, brisk effective and brisk, this airplane action thriller is grounded in the best sense by great central performance Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

He stars as Tobias, an American co-pilot on a Berlin-Paris flight who’s caught in a life and death struggle to save the lives of his passengers and crew after terrorists try to seize control of the plane.

Having found fame as a teen star of TV series 3rd Rock From The Sun, Gordon-Levitt graduated to blockbusters such as Looper, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises.

However this is far from an action man role but a portrait of an ordinary and mild-mannered man driven by extremes to desperate measures.

Tobias is confused and slow to respond to events and finds himself locked in the cockpit with an injured co-pilot and an unconscious terrorist, while his flight attendant girlfriend is at the mercy of the hijackers who threaten to murder their captives if Tobias doesn’t open the cockpit door.

Being a non-German speaker temporarily flummoxes the aggressors, and Tobias’s behaviour is desperate and painful as the balance of power switches back and forth.

Omid Memar is uncertain and scared as the youngest of the attackers, while Aylin Tezel is made to suffer as Tobias’s girlfriend.

It’s confidently directed by Patrick Vollrath in his feature-length film debut, who squeezes us into the claustrophobic cockpit and makes us question how would we act as Tobias does in the same circumstances.

He doesn’t keep us waiting for the drama to begin, maintains a strong tone and makes the close quarter violence shocking and realistically brief and nasty.

The sound design adds hugely to the fraught atmosphere, combining the warm hum of the instruments, heavy breathing of the injured co-pilot and the hammering of the terrorists on the cockpit door, while the calm voice of air traffic control contrasts with the onboard screams of panic and fraught shouted conversations. Book your seat now.

YOU DON’T NOMI

Cert 18 Stars 4

Showgirls was an unforgettable sleazy and bare-cheeked erotic drama and the biggest box office flop of 1995, yet as this documentary shows it was far more knowingly subversive than credited at the time.

Derided for being crude and exploitative by those who failed to see the satire in the film’s madly camp excess, Showgirls made a profit on home video where people were able watch it in the seclusion of their own home, it’s second coming sees it enjoying sold out screenings, being embraced by the drag artist community and adapted as a stage musical.

Starring Elizabeth Berkley as a dancer trying to climb the seedy Las Vegas pole from stripper to showgirl, Showgirls was directed by Dutch master Paul Verhoeven flush with success from his Basic Instinct featuring a crotch-flashing Sharon Stone.

We see how Showgirls fits perfectly within the scope of his other deliriously over the top films such as Starship Troopers and Robocop which also heavily feature nudity, vomit and violence. You Don’t Nomi is so enjoyable immediately afterwards I re-watched Showgirls. Twice.

GREED

Cert 15 Stars 4

Having made the brilliant TV series The Trip together as well as several films including the fantastic Manchester music comedy 24 Hour Party People, Steve Coogan re-teams with Brit director Michael Winterbottom in this scathing satirical comedy.

Never afraid of making himself look ridiculous in search of a laugh, Coogan sports outrageous white teeth and fake tan as a billionaire high-street fashion mogul Richard McCreadie.

Stephen Fry, Ben Stiller, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, Louis Walsh and Keith Richards appear as themselves as McCreadie celebrates his 60th birthday at a lavish Roman emperor themed party on the Greek island of Mykonos.

TO THE STARS

Cert 12 Stars 3

This unforgiving portrait of small town prejudice in 1960s is also a heartfelt coming-of-age drama which is filled with fine performances but saddled with a twee sugary and sentimental soundtrack which wrestles at times with the sombre tone.

With alcoholism, depression and domestic abuse it’s a moody period piece with interiors to match, given welcome respite by the glorious expanse of the Oklahoma landscape.

Kara Hayward and Liana Liberato star as Iris and Maggie, polar opposite characters whose burgeoning friendship is to have a dramatic and irreversible impact on their lives.

Iris is a shy and bespectacled wallflower who is saved from the unwanted attentions of local boys when Maggie arrives in town with a violent intent and confidence worthy of a Western hero.

They bond over make-overs, road trips and midnight skinny-dipping sessions, and though Maggie is an inspirational figure to Iris, she has a secret which threatens their developing friendship, and it’s not just her father isn’t the glamorous photographer she claims him to be.

THE CALL OF THE WILD

Cert PG Stars 4

Harrison Ford takes the lead from a canine co-star in this epic, expensive and determinedly old fashioned family outdoors adventure based on the 1903 novel by Jack London.

Every bit as monumentally craggy as the gorgeously photographed scenery, Ford plays a frontiersman who forms a bond with a dog named Buck, who was stolen from his home in California.

Buck may be a CGI creation but is as full of character, loyalty and bravery as any other big screen dog. Which is more than you say for the characters played by Dan Stevens and Karen Gillan.

DOGS DON’T WEAR PANTS

Cert 18 Stars 3

Love hurts in this provocative, explicit and eye-watering Finnish drama which goes so far beyond a bit of slap and tickle even ardent admirers of the Fifty Shades films may find themselves crossing their legs in sympathy.

Pekka Strang bares his soul – as well as the rest of himself – as a heart surgeon struggling to cope after the accidental drowning of his beloved wife.

He begins secretly spending his time in a sex dungeon with a dominatrix who calls him a dog and demands him to strip, hence the title, and as he finds solace in his own humiliation, the two lost souls begin to connect.

The appropriately named Mona also works as an osteopath, clearly a bit of a busman’s holiday for the broad minded professional.

This blackly comic chamber piece is definitely not for the timid or squeamish, it’s sensitive to its characters needs and everyone comes out with their dignity intact, though you can’t say the same for all their other bits.

EDGE OF EXTINCTION

Cert 18 Stars 2

Blood, mud, skulls and cannibal gangsters feature heavily in this violent and nasty low budget British dystopian sci-fi thriller, which sadly lacks the invention, scope or devious camp sensibility which made it’s spiritual grandfather Mad Max, such a full throttle success.

Set fifteen years in the future after an atomic war, a lone scavenger becomes the reluctant ally of other survivors to mount a desperate rescue mission.

A welcome absence of CGI sees the blood-spurting action use medieval weapons and a lot of fake blood, and though the relentlessly grim tone is almost provocative, it’s grounded in the gritty realism of its desolate locations.

An overgrown comprehensive school has ‘welcome to hell’ sprayed above the front door, but I’m not sure if the graffiti is pre-apocalypse or not.

Originally titled ‘The Brink’ and a labour of love for director Andrew Gilbert who’s not short of ambition and stages a tasty finale where the remnants of civilisation make a final stand against the forces of chaos, but it’s a slog to get there.

THE DALAI LAMA – SCIENTIST

Cert U Stars 4

Science and faith enjoy an unlikely love-in as this documentary about the Buddhist leader combines animation, interviews, and previously unseen archive footage, while revealing him to be a far-sighted and astute political operator on the world stage.

Exiled since 1959 when the Chinese army occupied his country the political and spiritual leader of Tibet took refuge in India, he cuts an attentive, polite, wily, charming and quite jolly figure.

A syrupy narration explains how his childhood interest in science has been the driving force for meetings with leading Nobel prize-winning scientists, and loose comparisons are drawn between buddhist beliefs and scientific such as quantum physics, cognitive science, and neuroscience.

I began watching with skepticism and ended in awe at the 85 year old, as his decades long strategy of Buddhist and Western scientific co-operation is now bearing fruit as he uses research projects to build bridges to the Chinese scientific community, a clear gateway to pressuring the Beijing authorities to re-examine their policies regarding Tibet.

PROXIMITY

Cert PG Stars 3

Old school aliens, conspiracy theorists and menacing government agents make for throwaway entertainment in this cheesy sci-fi which successfully summons the goofy spirit of 1980’s family adventure such as Flight of the Navigator.

Ryan Masson is badly dressed and convincingly socially inept as Isaac, a likeable yet lowly and nerdy Nasa scientist, obsessing over the future of possible Mars exploration.

While in the countryside recording a video diary, Isaac films a large meteorite crashing nearby, and waking up three days later he’s convinced he’s been the victim of an alien abduction and now possesses psychic powers but is accused of being a fraud by the media.

Isaac finds a sympathetic ear in Sara, a fellow abductee, and Highdee Kuan makes an attractive foil for Masson’s out-of-his-depth geek, but the pair’s search for answers attracts unwanted attention.

They’re soon on the run in a world of mysterious operatives in dark sun-glasses, sleek black cars, white interrogation rooms, laser guns and android henchmen.

The film makes a virtue of these overly familiar elements, plus it’s a joy to see flying saucers in their traditional shape as giant, beautiful, metallic spinning frisbees, and we’re not kept waiting long to meet the aliens, who are in the classic 1950’s mould; tall, thin and angular with large eyes.

Although set in the here and now, the last time I saw anybody using Isaac’s shoulder carried VCR, it was Michael J. Fox in the classic caper, Back To The Future. It’s one of the cute references which demonstrate the film’s love of the movies of the period and along with the synth pop songs on the soundtrack, add to the general 1980’s vibe.

A passion project for writer director Eric Demeusy who’s previously been a special effect guru on TV”s Stranger Things and Game of Thrones, and as he impressively stretches his slim budget and story across an ambitious canvas, he adds sparkle to his lightweight fun.

ENEMY LINES

Cert 15 Stars 3

Opening titles of real war footage set a chilly and sombre tone to this respectful and effective Second World War action adventure is a by-the-numbers boys’ own adventure lifted by its great locations and a hard working cast.

John Hannah keeps a stiff upper lip as the British Army liaison officer back in Blighty as English actor Ed Westwick stars as a square-jawed US Major leading a team of British commandos to extract an important scientist from the hands of the Germans in Nazi-occupied Poland of 1943.

Of course plans go awry, radios don’t work, they can’t identify which locals are collaborators, and the Russian army who are much more used to fighting in the bleak snow covered landscape, are also the same target.

There’s plenty of courage and sacrifice among the many shoot-outs, and the fierce and the excitingly staged three-way battle of foreign troops on Polish soil to determine ownership of Polish resources, can be read as a scathing view of the war.