Legend

Director: Brian Helgeland (2015)

This barnstorming biopic of cockney crime lords the Krays is a double barrelled blast of brutal and funny entertainment.

The exhausted tale of London’s most infamous gangsters is given a fresh impetus by a pair of magnetic performances by Tom Hardy as twins Reggie and Ronnie.

So well defined are their characters at times I forgot I was watching the same actor.

London is in transition from fifties post war austerity to the swinging sixties. The Krays see an opportunity to expand from their poor East end roots to the moneyed lights of the celebrity-filled West end.

We see their rise through the eyes of Reggie’s wife Frances. Their mother who normally looms large in their legend is a minor figure.

The script rockets through the boys’ rivalries with the Richardson mob, their dealings with the mafia and the murder of Jack ‘the hat’ McVitie.

Reggie is the older of the brothers, a charmer with brains. He’s an ambitiously ruthless businessman who owns clubs, runs protection rackets and wants to break into the casino trade.

Ron is a philosopher fool with fists of iron. His tenuous grasp of reality and impulsive behaviour are disastrous for those nearest to him.

Though unquestionably devoted to each other, the nearest the boys come to affection is beating seven bells out of each other.

Their fall is framed as a tragedy with Greek references peppering conversations.

Reggie is seemingly destined for great things but is thwarted by his love for his brother Ronnie; the most unpredictable of loose cannons.

Frances is a fragile pill-popping poppet who struggles as her husband fails to become the straight businessman he professes he wants to be.

Ozzie actress Emily Browning is fine but forced to deliver a terribly written and utterly unnecessary voice over. It ruins every scene it witters over.

Tara Fitzgerald plays her disapproving mother and antagonises Reggie by wearing black to their wedding.

Prime Minister Harold Wilson is played with pipe-wielding gusto by Kevin McNally. Christopher Eccleston is always two steps behind as Keystone cop Detective Superintendent ‘Nipper’ Read.

There’s great support all round from Colin Morgan, David Thewlis, Paul Anderson, Taron Egerton and Chazz Palminteri. The latter plays Angelo Bruno, the head of the Philadelphia crime family with whom the twins strike a lucrative deal.

The occasionally larky tone may chafe with those who believe it inappropriate in a story where real people are murdered.

However it’s titled Legend for a reason. It makes no attempt to be definitive or exhaustingly accurate. Nor does it offer an apology for not being so.

It presents a glamourised, heightened view of a specific period and is anchored by the emotional truth it offers of the twins’ complex relationship.

Write-director Brian Helgeland won Best Screenplay Oscar for LA Confidential (1997), more recently he wrote Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood and Paul Greengrass’ Green Zone. (Both 2010.)

Previously he directed Mel Gibson in the thriller Payback (1999) and baseball biopic 42 (2013).

Legend is extremely confident and ambitiously crafted. There is excellent production design by Tom Conroy and gorgeous costume by Caroline Harris.

The dynamic soundtrack and expertly executed camera moves are hugely influenced by Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic Goodfellas (1990).

HIs famous Copacabana tracking shot is transplanted to Frances’s introduction to Reggie’s club. It’s one of several ambitious and expertly executed camera moves.

It’s the work Brit cinematographer Dick Pope was Oscar nominated last year for Mr Tuner and is a regular Mike Leigh collaborator.

Hardy is currently 3 to 1 to be the next James Bond, but on this showing he might just be too good an actor.

★★★★☆

Ricki and the Flash

Director: Jonathan Demme (2015)

Strip out Meryl Streep’s charisma and we’re left with slim pickings in this redemptive rock ‘n’ roll drama.

She plays plucky Ricki, a divorced middle-aged check-out operator who rocks out with her own band in the local spit and sawdust joint at night.

News of her daughter’s divorce and depression sends Ricki flying to her bedside, only to discover her presence is barely tolerated never mind welcomed.

There’s squabbles aplenty as retail therapy replaces psychotherapy, but not much else happens.

There’s talk of attempted suicide and bankruptcy but the most eventful scene involves spilt ice cream and teenage-like strops.

Full of life’s regrets and the guilt of poor parenting, Ricki faces the hardest gig of her life as she struggles to gain the love and respect of her estranged family.

Streep’s acting is as relentless as her singing as she dominates every scene with scant regard to her fellow performers. She delights in being lewd and revels in her pot smoking, hard drinking rock persona.

Mamie Gummer as Ricki’s daughter Julie isn’t over-awed by sharing the screen with her real life-life mother.

Kevin Kline is far form the master of his own house as ex husband Pete and Rick Springfield is whiny as lead guitarist Greg of her racially representative backing band, The Flash.

Fans of the triple Oscar winner and weak cover U2 versions will probably find more to enjoy here than I did.

★★☆☆☆

Me And Earl And The Dying Girl

Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (2015)

This tiresome coming-of-age cancer flick should have been titled Me, Myself and I.

Thomas Mann plays gangly geek Greg Gaines. He spends his high school life avoiding everyone but his friend Earl.

As they remake their favourite movies, a large volume of film references are dropped heavily on the viewers’ head.

Greg’s mother packs him off on a mercy visit to Rachel, a fellow student who’s dying of cancer.

Olivia Cooke is a picture of perky good health until suddenly sporting an array of fetching hats and wigs.

The script has no interest in her or the disease. She’s made to suffer only so Greg can develop as a character.

Played by Ronald Cyler II, all we learn of Earl is he hails from the wrong side of the tracks and has a hankering for titties. His word, not mine.

Poor Katherine C. Hughes is cast as the high school hot girl whose breasts the camera invites us to admire.

There’s inappropriate adult behaviour, accidental drug taking and fisticuffs in the cafeteria.

Quirky camera angles and cute animations are as provocatively passive aggressive in their behaviour as Greg is.

Ideas such as receiving advice from movie stars via their image on bedroom posters are never developed.

The young cast have charm and there are fleeting funny moments but the tone is teeth grindingly twee.

Kiwi screenwriter of Brit comedies Richard Curtis would be impressed by the random quirks masquerading as characters who populate Greg’s world.

I empathised mostly with a coma victim.

★★☆☆☆

Straight Outta Compton

Director: F. Gary Gray (2015)

Busting out of Los Angeles with exhausting attitude, this self-serving musical biopic is an occasionally exhilarating ride of ego and excess.

Straight Outta Compton takes it’s name from the 1988 controversial breakout album of N.W.A., the groundbreaking five strong rap group. It charts their rise and demise.

Central trio of lyricist Ice Cube, producer Dr Dre and rapper Eazy E are played by O’Shea Jackson, Jr., Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell. The script isn’t too interested in the other two members, MC Ren and DJ Yella.

With endless macho posturing and ferocious music, they established their reality brand of gangsta rap as a cultural force.

Paul Giamatti plays their shifty, silver-haired manager Jerry Heller whose close relationship with Eazy E threatens the band’s harmony.

Suffering brutal discrimination at hands of the militarised police, their anger and frustration finds a voice in music and reaches a peak with their incendiary and provocative track ‘F** tha Police’.

Sold out concerts bring a heavy police presence and strongly worded letters from the FBI.

There’s barely a female character to speak of though several acres of nubile flesh. And it’s a surprisingly drug light experience.

An indulgence of guns and groupies keep the band occupied, with the former far more highly valued than the latter. One particularly unpleasant post-gig party is disturbingly played for larks.

A parade of unlikeable characters pass through the story which rhymes with a general perception of the music industry. At times even the band are hard to root for.

This is surprising given they produced the movie themselves and Ice Cube is played by his real-life son.

Like many vinyl records, the first side is strong but the second side is weak. Bubbles of soap opera froth up as the story dissolves into contract disputes and ill health.

Even when their millions of dollars have bought huge mansions and flash cars, they’re still breaking the law and getting arrested.

This is where the film loses it’s audience. It wants to suggest regardless of extreme financial and cultural success the band can’t escape the racist behaviour of the state.

And though this may be true, it’s also true for anyone that driving one’s car at extremely high speed through downtown LA will attract the attention of the police, regardless of the officers’ prejudices.

Up until this moment I was mostly on board. But any film which fails to hold the audience sympathies close to it’s own point of view is failing on at least one level.

We’re left with the feeling it’s possible to take the boys outta Compton but not Compton outta the boy.

They wouldn’t seem to want it any other way.

 ★★★☆☆

We Are Your Friends

Director: Max Joseph (2015)

Angst and ambition are mashed up in this uplifting ode to the transcendental powers of dance music.

Zac Efron gives it large, well largeish, as Cole, a real estate developer who dreams of being an international DJ.

When not clubbing Cole spends his time staring into the empty swimming pool of life.

Wes Bentley plays his mentor, a famous forty something club DJ full of alcohol and self-loathing.

He has a beautiful assistant Sophie, brought to doe-eyed life by Emily Ratajkowski.

The model rocketed to fame by appearing naked in Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines video.

Her dancing here is no worse and she mostly keeps her clothes on.

When Cole begins to fall for Sophie, it threatens his chance at a career-making summer gig.

It’s an unthreatening portrayal of contemporary twentysomething life.

Fans of Simon Pegg’s TV show Spaced may snigger at the manner Cole discovers his dance muse.

There’s a loose Los Angeles vibe and some trippy SFX showing the effects of drugs and music on the body.

The music is played on laptops and the script seems written by a robot.

★★★☆☆

Barely Lethal

Director: Kyle Newman (2015)

High school tribulations are compared to water-boarding in this spy comedy. Well it’s flimsy but not quite that bad.

Orphaned teen assassin Agent 83 has been raised in Samuel L. Jackson’s quasi-governmental institution since a baby.

When a mission goes wrong, she’s stranded in Chechnya.

83 adopts the name of Megan and enrols on a student exchange programme to experience real-life in an American high school.

But she’s armed only with teen films such as Clueless (1995) and Mean Girls (2004) to guide her through the social minefield.

Hailee Steinfeld is nicely goofy in the lead and there’s sparky playing from Jessica Alba and Sophie Turner as fellow spies.

From the dubious taste of the title to the unconvincing slang and the weak riffs on superior teen flicks, none of the jokes carry a punch.

There are homecomings and house parties, killer heels and boy issues.

It all feels like the pilot for a TV show which will never see the light of day.

★☆☆☆☆

American Ultra

Director: Nima Nourizadeh (2015)

Slackers, spies and sleeper agents get their brains fried in this darkly comic stoner thriller.

Though it takes a while to find a groove, once the story sparks up and the thrills kick in, the entertainment escalates and acheives a riotous velocity.

Sweet-natured slackers Mike and Phoebe share a drug dependancy and matching tattoos. Unfortunately Mike has a tendency to keep making a hash of their romance.

Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart give the couple a sweetly combustible chemistry.

Unknown to himself, Mike’s a lethal sleeper agent, a guinea pig in the CIA’s Ultra programme designed to turn criminals into expert killing machines.

However the scheme is judged a failure and Topher Grace’s spy boss decides to shut down the programme by terminating the assets.

What the chief lacks in menace he makes up with obnoxious energy.

Connie Britton plays a rival spook who tries to give her one-time charge a fighting chance. She uses a safe word to unlock the training buried deep in Mike’s psyche.

She’s played by Victoria Lasseter on far better form than in the poor Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015).

When two agents arrive to kill his buzz and end his life, Mike freaks himself out with the lethal ferocity of his response.

Together with a surprisingly resourceful Phoebe, they face a desperate mission to survive, leaving burnt out buildings and dead bodies in their wake.

The sneaky soundtrack lulls with soft Hawaiian sounds before launching an ear-shattering assault to complement the bloody and bone crunching violence.

A truckful of assassins, drone strikes and a big box of fireworks all fan the flames of the smouldering fun.

Mike’s a stoned version of Jason Bourne and Eisenberg’s performance squeezes the concept for some decent laughs.

Matt Damon was 32 when he first played Robert Ludlum’s all action anti-hero, Eisenberg is 31.

Stewart is full of fierce defiance and equally good, despite being lumbered with the role of  girlfriend in peril. She slyly sports Franka Potente’s red hair from The Bourne Identity (2002).

As fun as Eisenberg is, it’s a shame he and Stewart didn’t swap roles. A hell bent Phoebe would have added to this year’s joyously bumper crop of kick ass cinematic heroines.

With an hawaiian-shirted hero on the run with a girl in a world of drugs, guns and comic books, American Ultra is clearly influenced by True Romance (1993).

Though it similarly includes a cloud of falling feathers it lacks Tony Scott’s visual lyricism and Quentin Tarantino’s dynamite dialogue.

Made on a reasonable budget of $30M, American Ultra is armed with a keen sense of the ridiculous, offers plenty of juiced up action, some laughs and a couple of recognisable faces.

So it’s surprising it hasn’t found more of an audience in the US where it’s only scored for $11M after ten days on release.

If the US poster ads are as terribly unrepresentative of the movie as the UK ones are, then I’d be tempted to place the blame of lack of interest at the publicists.

While it’s not an outstanding movie it is a worthwhile entertainment, hopefully one which will gain traction on other platforms and find the audience it deserves.

★★★☆☆

Vacation

Director: Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley (2015)

This flat retread of Chevy Chase’s 1983 road trip comedy trundles from coast to coast in desperate search of of a decent joke.

Stupid and cheap, Vacation lifts characters, plot, jokes and theme song from the original and does nothing interesting with them.

At the height of his mystifying ’80’s popularity, National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) starred Chase as Clark, the well-intentioned patriarch of the Griswold family.

A cameo here proves his laboured comic touch hasn’t deserted him. Beverly D’Angelo reprises her role as his wife Ellen.

This time out their grown up son Rusty takes centre stage and is played by Ed Helms, formerly of The Hangover franchise.

Rusty is following in his father’s footsteps and dragging his own squabbling family on a bonding trip across the US, heading once again for the Walley World amusement park.

En route the Griswold’s suffer white water rafting troubles, quad bikes accidents, quarrelling cops and dogging experiences.

Helms does an uncannily accurate impression of the young Chase, regardless of whether the world needs or asked for one.

Christina Applegate gives her all as his wife Debbie. Her talent was honed as the teenage daughter on TV’s Married With Children and she deserves far sharper material. As do we.

As an accomplished comic actress Applegate gives Jennifer Aniston a run for her money. They went head to head as screen sisters in Friends and it would be great to see them paired up in some future project.

Skyler Gisondo is their sensitive, singing teenage son James. He is bullied by his younger brother Kevin, a gleefully foul-mouthed Steele Stebbins.

Thor star Chris Hemsworth flexes his pecs as cow-wrangling brother-in-law with a suspiciously large gun in his pocket.

With craft in the writing all four family members have an identifiable arc which dovetails into the overall dynamic. Situations are set up and have a pay off.

But there’s a distinct lack of ambition as the script sets the comedy bar dispiritingly low and persistently fails to clear it. But at no point do any of the jokes raise a smile, just a rictus of disbelief.

The tone is set at the very beginning with a series of supposedly real holiday snaps which find hilarity in snot, urine, vomit, violence and inappropriate erections.

Vacation also riffs on Duel (1971), National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and Airplane! (1980) to barely discernible comic effect.

There is a meta moment where Rusty addresses the film’s nature as a sequel but it’s executed without the wit of Phil Lord and Chris Miller‘s Jump Street 22.

And of course there’s a special circle of hell reserved for films which features TV cook Gordon Ramsey in any capacity.

Technically it’s a fifth sequel to National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983). That was penned by John Hughes, directed by Harold Ramis.

Hughes was responsible for writing and directing the great teen movies of the period including Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) The Breakfast Club (1985). Ramis went on to co-write Ghostbusters (1984) and Groundhog Day (1993) as well as directing the latter.

Despite this talent on board, it wasn’t very good.

Vacation 2015 was scripted by the directors Goldstein and Daley who were responsible for writing Horrible Bosses (2011) and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013). It’s an altogether lesser pedigree, and it shows.

At one point a tour guide gives a primal scream of anguished rage, exactly mirroring my own feelings.

You’re better off at work than experiencing this vacation from hell.

Post script.

Chase and D’Angelo starred in National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) and Vegas Vacation (1997) plus the short Hotel Hell Vacation (2010) released online.

There was also National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2 (2003) focused on the recurring character of cousin Eddie played by Randy Quaid.

★☆☆☆☆

The Wolfpack

Director: Crystal Moselle (2015)

This toothless grin of a documentary begins as a disturbing exploration of abuse and ends as a sunny coming of age tale.

The Wolfpack is the nickname of six movie-mad brothers who grew up in a high housing project on the Lower East Side of New York.

Their dad Oscar kept the only key to their threadbare apartment, only allowing his children out for essential appointments. One year they claim never to have been allowed out at all.

A committed conspiracy theorist, the Peruvian-born Oscar refuses to work. The only source of income is a government stipend their American mother Susanne receives for homeschooling the children.

With no access to the internet, the bright, articulate and creative boys entertainingly re-enact scenes from favourite films such as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

When one boy makes an illicit journey outside, it leads to their assuming increasing levels of independence.

There’s a lot of love, camaraderie and communal cooking. Their talent for mimicry asserts itself whenever they experience anxiety, seeking safety in the voices of favourite film characters.

When Oscar finally speaks on camera, he reveals himself as a pitiful person possessed of a paranoid philosophy, not the bogey-man we’ve been lead to imagine.

The Wolfpack seem to bear their parents little ill will. They’re remarkably well-adjusted for people prevented from mixing socially with anyone outside their immediate family.

Too little effort is made to tell the boys apart and there’s a failure to establish two of them are twins.

Plus we wonder how much influence the presence of the unseen documentarian is having on the behaviour of the family.

As they spread their wings and visit the cinema, the beach, the countryside, the narrative offered is suspiciously convenient for a filmmaker.

Susanne makes a phone call to her 88 year old mother, their first contact in 50 years. It seems particularly opportune rather than the organic result of a new era of domestic glasnost.

Plus the subjects’ sweet natures consistently neutralise the use of crashing guitar chords and Halloween imagery to convince us of a tragedy in progress.

★★★☆☆