Michael Pena

War On Everyone

Director: John Michael McDonagh (2016) BBFC cert: 15

This sleazy, cynical and violent black comedy gets down and dirty in the war on good taste.

Drugs, double crosses, beheadings, strip joints and porn films feature in the story which goes isn’t afraid to visit very dark places. How much you enjoy it will depend hanging out with Michael Pena and Alexander Skarsgard as the pair of corrupt police detectives.

They star as sharp suited cops chasing a million dollars in cash which has gone missing from a crime scene. And they have no intention of turning the loot in when they get their hands on it.

These likely lads are called Bob and Terry, the former is a committed family man, the latter a hard drinker with a glad eye. This reference to the 1970s TV show is just one of many, very knowing pop culture in-jokes scattered through the script.

Another is having Brit actor Theo James sending up Hollywood typecasting as an English master criminal. An exasperated Paul Reiser plays their angry Lieutenant back at the station while Tessa Thompson and Stephanie Sigman add heart, charm and glamour.

Though the action takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the cine-literate story should really be set in LA. It’s dizzyingly stitched together with references to musicals, sci-fi, westerns and cop thrillers, all mixed up and strung together to make a surprisingly satisfying whole.

Though it takes time for us to adjust to the films unique groove, and at times the tone veers about like the boys’ flash car in hot pursuit, the pace never flags.

Profane discussions about movies, art and philosophy litter the dialogue while jokes about police brutality and racism are no less funny for being topical. The opening gag involving a mime artist is inspired. As a bonus the brilliant songs of Glenn Campbell are used throughout.

John Michael McDonagh is the fiercely independent minded writer and director of Cavalry (2014) and The Guard (2011) and once again he takes no prisoners with the audiences sensibilities. War On Everyone is ambitious and sharp but its shock and awe approach may not to everyones taste.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

The Martian

Director: Ridley Scott (2015)

Blast off to the red planet in this breathless, big budget sci-fi adventure which rockets along to a disco beat.

Based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel, director Ridley Scott has rarely had so much fun or provided so much clever, crowd pleasing entertainment.

Scott washes away his reputation as a dry visual perfectionist by splashing wild torrents of humour and humanity over his typically brilliant design and cinematography.

When a Nasa team is forced to abort their experiments on the surface of Mars, Mark Watney is assumed dead and left behind.

Intelligent and likeable, Matt Damon is terrifically cast as the marooned astronaut forced to improvise to survive.

His resourcefulness allows him to farm water, oxygen and food but is constantly beset by technical problems, not least having no communications with colleagues in space or on Earth.

The operation he performs on himself is not as graphic as the one Noomi Rapace endured in Scott’s flawed Prometheus (2012) but still not for the squeamish.

Meanwhile Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara and Michael Pena begin the long journey home in their spacecraft.

When a Nasa technician discovers Watney’s alive, his now not-dead presence presents a tricky PR problem, especially if they fail to keep him alive a second time.

It’s a race against time, budgets, office politics and technical limitations.

As harassed Nasa officials, the comic ability of Jeff Daniels and Kristen Wiig are used to good effect in straight roles.

British Oscar nominated star of misery memoir 12 Years A Slave (2013) Chiwetel Ejiofor brings charm and warmth.

Sean Bean is a gruff conscience who brings heart to the constant equation crunching and scores for a big laugh.

The huge success of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) combination of humour, action, state of the art effects and pop tunes is clearly an influence. But this is more grounded and less smug.

With the exception of a strangely retro-titled ‘advanced supercomputer’, an excellent script offers plenty of plausible sounding sciency stuff.

Remember the killer scene in Apollo 13 (1995) when the Nasa techies have to improvise a new gizmo from old hairdryer parts and a vacuum cleaner? Most of The Martian is that scene – but bigger.

There are scenes in China which may well be extended when the film is released in that market. Unlike films such as Iron Man 3 (2013) the Chinese element feels a necessary part of the narrative.

Ideas and motifs touched upon in Silent Running (1972) Robinson Crusoe On Mars (1964) appear.

There’s little bitterness, fear or insanity but vast amounts of hope, hard work and optimism.

The Martian celebrates the courage, ingenuity and loyalty of humanity. It is a cry from the heart for the return of to an age of space exploration.

Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski worked on Scott’s flawed Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014). Scott often has him shoot from a low angle to include ceilings and skies in his shot, heightening the sense of Watney’s captivity and suffocating isolation.

Special effects by British SFX house Framestore bring the same bravura technical skills we saw employed to Oscar winning effect in Gravity (2013).

Having made two definitive pieces of sci-fi early in his career with Alien (1979) Blade Runner (1982), Scott has finally added a markedly different but triumphant third at the tail end of it.

Although much of the humour is as dry as the beautiful Martian landscapes, with music by Abba, Donna Summer and the O’Jays, there’s no shortage of atmosphere in this outer space epic.

★★★★★

Ant-Man

Director: Peyton Reed (2015)

Marvel Comics’ inch-high superhero springs into action but comes up short in this action heist caper.

After a difficult and rushed production, it arrives in cinemas labouring under a weak script, some surprisingly mediocre SFX and a mistaken if unwavering faith in the charisma of it’s leading man Paul Rudd.

What’s most impressive about Ant-Man is it manages to crawl to a conclusion despite the obstacles of bottomless plot holes and boulder sized inconsistencies strewn in it’s path.

This is busy, forgettable and easily the weakest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Genius inventor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) has created an Ant-Man suit. But after initial success he buried the research after a fatal accident.

He also discovered prolonged exposure to the suit’s active agent – the Pym Particle – causes psychological imbalance.

A beauty of steam punk design, the suit shrinks the wearer to ant sized dimensions while offering super strength.

It also seems to bestow a super leaping power and an imperviousness to injury.

Pym has also created a device to control ants giving the tiny warrior an airborne army to command.

However his former protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) is now a corporate boss and intends to use Pym’s technology to create a more powerful Ant-suit called Yellowjacket.

Cross wants to make a fortune selling Yellowjacket to evil military interests.

So Pym recruits cat burglar Scott Lang (Rudd) to use the Ant-suit to break into the highly guarded lab to steal back his data.

Lang is a pacifist do-gooder who’s estranged from his cute-button daughter and is short of cash.

Despite being more than qualified, Pym’s daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) is not best pleased at being overlooked for the dangerous mission.

Lily is mostly required to stand and stare. She’s allowed to punch Rudd in the face but is generally employed to look pretty and be the recipient of Rudd’s ‘charm’.

As her onscreen dad, Douglas is cinema’s most action-orientated tweed-wearing elderly professor since Dr Jones Senior.

The former Oscar winner manfully does what he can with the material.

Even at full size Rudd is an anonymous leading man, mugging his way through scenes.

He can’t blame the script after he contributed a great deal to it. He does award himself an undeserved kiss.

It’s unsurprising Rudd is absent from the best scene. It occurs early doors where a younger Pym (an effectively CGI’d Douglas) faces off to an aged Howard Stark and Agent Carter (John Slattery and Hayley Atwell).

Rudd’s only saving grace is that he isn’t Ryan Reynolds, an actor even more forgettable who is unfathomably presented with leading roles.

Reynolds has been gifted the lead in X-Men spin-off Deadpool (2015) – this after being awful as DC’s Green Lantern (2011).

Stoll is kinda playing the Jeff Bridges role in Iron Man (2008) but lacks the big man’s roaring presence.

He can’t generate sufficient evil intent even when literally leading lambs to the slaughter.

In extremely minor parts the excellent actors Bobby Cannavale and Judy Greer scowl and scold to order.

The action scenes are dull fights or concerned with Ant-Man being flushed along drainpipes or falling from heights.

They are parallel redemption tales of father’s reconnecting with their daughters.

But the film runs shy of engaging with it’s emotional core, possibly for fear of alienating its teenage boy fan base with icky feelings.

So it undercuts potentially tender scenes with Rudd’s gurning face, reducing our engagement.

Ant-Man experienced a difficult and eventually rushed production.

After working on a script since 2003, original director Edgar Wright – Shaun of the Dead (2004) – and co-writer Joe Cornish – Attack the Block (2011) – were jettisoned in May 2014 prior to principal photography.

Creative differences were cited and the pair were replaced on writing duties by Rudd and Adam McKay, Rudd’s director on Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004).

Peyton Reed was dropped in as director and briefed to make the film conform more neatly to the Marvel movie template.

His most recent directorial effort was the weak but appropriately named Jim Carrey comedy Yes Man (2008).

Moments of Wright’s trademark zippy writing remain. So does his love of British pop culture in the form of Thomas the Tank Engine in a seemingly Hornby train advertisement-inspired set-piece.

Plus his deconstructive tendencies are apparent in Lang’s inept accomplices Luis, Kurt and Dave (Michael Pena, David Dastmalchian, Tip Harris).

They are respectively hispanic, Russian and black. Each are so typically reductive of unthinking Hollywood, it suggests Wright intended to use his sly wit to invert their behaviour and our expectations.

Sadly non of this happens because in Reed’s pliant corporate hands all subtlety and irony is lost.

The trio remain un-amusing ethnic stereotypes played for broad and laughter-free comedy.

It’s interesting Russian sits alongside hispanic and black as an ethnic ‘other’ in Hollywood eyes.

More entertaining and/or interesting films featuring tiny protagonists are The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), Fantastic Voyage (1966), Innerspace (1987) and Honey I Shrunk The Kids (1989).

Them! (1954) and Antz (1998) offer larger amounts ant-related fun.

The best Marvel movies are expertly constructed entertainments who reach beyond their comic origins and core audience – but Ant-Man lacks ambition or wit and prefers to pander to its fan base of teenage boys.

It’s one good joke features British children’s character Thomas the Tank Engine – so if you’ve seen the trailer there’s no need to watch this.

★★☆☆☆

Fury

Director: David Ayer (2014)

Hollywood big gun Brad Pitt rolls into action as a battle-hardened tank commander in this mud and guts war epic that takes no prisoners.

Engineered to a familiar and straight-forward narrative, US army Private Norman (Logan Lerman) is sent straight from basic training to the frontline as the Second World War draws to a bloody conclusion.

Despite being a uniformed clerk, recent losses mean he has to join a Sherman tank unit under the merciless leadership of Sergeant “Wardaddy” Collier (Pitt).

Pitt is a trusted father figure to the crew who have been with him since the North African campaign  and include mechanic Boyd ‘Bible’ Swan – a barely recognisable Shia LaBeouf, plus driver ‘Gordo’ (Michael Pena) and gunner ‘Coon-Ass’ (Jon Bernthal).

Struggling to adapt to his close-knit and de-sensitised comrades, the raw recruit is pounded as their tank – nicknamed Fury – rumbles into a series of battles as they cross the muddy fields of Nazi Germany.

Bravery is matched by savagery as soldiers are blown up, burnt, decapitated, shot and stabbed. There’s a brief and tense period of R&R in a small town where liberation comes at a very personal price for the local women.

Then Wardaddy leads a convoy that encounters a militarily superior enemy Tiger tank and only the Fury survives to continue the mission to the ferocious finale.

Riveted together with excellent acting and direction, the phenomenal fight sequences leave you battered and bruised. Macho down to its army boots, this brilliant and brutal war movie that magnificently depicts war as hell.

★★★★☆