Matthew McConaughey

Gold

Director: Stephen Gaghan (2017) BBFC cert: 15

 

Hollywood golden boy Matthew McConaughey was clearly mining for an Oscar when he signed up for this knockabout adventure about a gold prospector.

Dressing down his leading man looks helped him nab a statuette in 2014 for Dallas Buyers Club, but the trick isn’t going to work this time.

As badly dressed Kenny Wells, he sports bad teeth, a balding pate, and a very proud paunch.

Kenny teams up with Michael, an enigmatic geologist, played by the dashing Edgar Ramirez.

Risking bankruptcy, malaria and a serious bromance to look for gold in Borneo, the pair strike it rich but back home they discover no one can be trusted.

Sadly the film can’t decide if it wants to be a jolly heist caper, an indictment of Wall Street greed or a celebration of the American pioneering spirit.

Gold has failed to find an audience in the US, so its prospects for turning a profit are low.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Sing

Director: Garth Jennings (2017) BBFC cert: PG

This giddy animated musical comedy is stuffed with silly sparkling fun and will make you grin until the top of your head falls off.

Produced by the inspired creators of the Minions Movie and The Secret Life of Pets, it’s a gloriously mad musical mashup of TV’s The X Factor and Gene Wilder comedy The Producers.

Buster is a cuddly Koala whose theatre is going to be closed by the bank unless he has a hit show. He advertises a singing competition but a typo means the winnings are far more than he can afford.

As creatures of every stripe and hue perform a dizzying number of pop, rock and soul tunes, the story squeezes in bank robberies and car chases among the first night nerves and pushy showbiz parents.

The animals are stuffed with Judy Garland’s ‘lets do the show right here’ spirit and just about keep Buster’s show on the road. Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Hudson are among those providing the pipes.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Free State Of Jones

Director: Gary Ross (2016) BBFC cert: 15

Matthew McConaughey is the Hollywood romcom star who so successfully reinvented his career he won an Oscar. In only his third leading role since his 2014 success in Dallas Buyers Club, he gives a brooding and impassioned performance in this high minded American civil war drama.

What begins as an exciting action movie develops into a sincere and somber look at how the wealthy white elite kept their grip on the lives of freed slaves when the fighting stopped.

Newton Knight is a confederate deserter who leads of an insurrection during the American civil war. McConaughey hides his leading man looks behind long hair and a ragged beard, mostly saving his charm for Rachel. The underused British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw does well to bring depth to her role as a slave who joins his band of outlaws as they hide out in the local swamp.

The two leads ensure it’s always watchable and there’s no shortage of battles, burnings, hangings and evil deeds by the Ku Klux Klan. But brief flash forwards to a court room drama involving Knight’s great great grandson muddy the narrative flow, and the story becomes mired in the Mississippi swamp.

Although the film is keen to flag up its the accuracy of its historical accuracy via contemporary photographs and on screen captions, Knight is presented as an unrealistic combination of Robin Hood, Che Guevara and Jesus Christ.

As a revolutionary socialist who preaches from from a bible, Knight inspires slaves, farmers and women to take arms against the powerful and the rich. They declare themselves the free State of Jones.

However as Knight moves from pacifist medical orderly to merciless killer and then political activist, he suffers from an alarming lack of self reflection and none of his horrific experiences seem to affect him. And if he isn’t moved by what he sees, there’s no reason why we should be.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Interstellar

Director: Christopher Nolan (2014)

This plodding, muddled and bombastic sci-fi flick doesn’t fly – despite having talented Matthew McConaughey at the controls.

Even the star’s rocket-fuelled charisma can’t stop the space-travel, dimension-hopping, time-twisting tale from drifting aimlessly.

Cooper is working as a farmer, the sort who is cheerily content to cruise a truck through his own crops.

His daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) is left coded messages by a ghost.

Solving this riddle leads them to a super secret Nasa base run by Professor Brand (Michael Caine).

He’s fond of quoting Dylan Thomas while scribbling equations on a blackboard in a sciency manner. Normally in Nolan films it’s Morgan Freeman‘s job to do that.

Despite having hugely limited resources – what with the break down of civilisation due to the crops not growing – Brand decides Cooper is the man they’ve been waiting for to pilot a spacecraft into a plothole, sorry, wormhole, near Saturn.

It’s tunnel to another galaxy where three astronauts are lost. Cooper is to rescue them if possible while scouting for worlds that could support human life.

He returns home to say a guilt-ridden goodbye to Murph but she’s not best pleased.

In Cooper’s crew are Brand’s scientist daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) and a robot called TARS; a cross between a giant iPod and a Swiss army knife.

It’s unusual and impractical design seems only for the purpose of demonstrating director Nolan is familiar with the work of Stanley Kubrick. TARS jokes are misplaced among the grim solemnity.

Hibernating en route they awake to hear a signal from one of the lost men and investigating they encounter the effect gravity has on time.

There is courage, sacrifice and stupidity. When the crew land on a watery world they are surprised by an enormous laws of physics-defying wave. Twice.

A betrayal results in a shortage of fuel means Cooper has to choose between returning home to his daughter or saving the world.

In space no-one can hear you scream because of the ear-piercing soundtrack. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema conjures up spectacular images but Nolan offers but no depth or mystery to accompany them.

While the dialogue is functional at best and occasionally laughable in it’s portentousness, the weak script signposts the twist which is possible to see from light-years away.

Later the galaxy’s most intelligent man repeatedly yells “override” to a password-protected computer. Which is showy but not very clever – like this film.

★★☆☆☆