movie review

Mississippi Grind

Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck (2015)

A pair of gamblers chase a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow in this engaging bitter-sweet fable.

It’s flush with award worthy performances, an intelligent script and a tremendous soundtrack.

Ben Mendelsohn plays a real estate agent in hock to debt collectors. He spends his nights at spit and sawdust casinos.

Gerry’s luck changes for the better when he meets the charming Curtis at the tables.

Ryan Reynolds gives a career best performance as the charismatic storyteller with dreams of travelling to Machu Picchu in Peru.

Gerry is as untrustworthy and entertaining as a leprechaun. The first image we see is of an enormous rainbow which stretches across the screen.

Believing Curtis to be his lucky charm, Gerry throws the dice on a trip to New Orleans.

Together they plan to win enough money en route playing poker to buy their way into a high stakes game.

The Mississippi River leads the jokers into dangerous waters as they encounter whiskey, cardsharps and working girls.

Sienna Miller and Analeigh Tipton provide the possibility of redemption and soften what could be but never is a very macho experience.

Directors Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck co-wrote the script and Boden also edited. Cinematography is by Andrij Parekh and the film was well received and picked by at Sundance this year. (2015).

In a satisfying final hand we fear for the self-deceiving duo as reality threatens to deal the cards.

★★★★☆

The Last Witch Hunter

Director: Breck Eisner (2015)

Chrome domed action hero Vin Diesel defies the dark arts in this deathlessly dull supernatural action adventure.

As a one man Papal super-weapon called Kaulder he uses his rubble voiced presence to brazen his way through a series of beautifully looking but dramatically inert action set-pieces.

As his handler, confessor and friend Father Dolan, Michael Caine provides lengthy exposition before retiring and being incapacitated by a spell.

Thus he spends much of the film comatose. Insert your own joke here.

This allows for the introduction of younger actors and to trundle in a laboured ticking clock plot device.

Meanwhile the star of the Fast Furious franchise is given a cool car to pose with.

Cursed with eternal life and so being generally indestructible is a bit of a tension killer, so he’s also provided with a couple of imperilled passengers.

Elijah Wood is a wide-eyed replacement for Caine who attempts to drag Kaulder into the digital age. Rose Leslie plays a breathy voiced barkeep with hidden powers.

When an 800 year old truce between the church and the witches is broken, a plot to destroy the world is uncovered.

The silliness is CGI heavy but logic light and soon I was longing for the camp majesty of Russell Mulcahy‘s Highlander (1986).

Diesel’s last role which wasn’t a talking plant or a Fast Furious franchise flick was Riddick (2013), a dimly misogynist sci-fi sequel to the brilliant Pitch Black (2000) and the third film in that series.

Similarly this film has a woeful attitude towards women. Witch Hunter begins with a preamble through the medieval period and Kaulder’s mindset remains rooted there.

This wouldn’t be a problem if the script paid more the most meagre lip service to the intervening years of emancipation.

Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless seem to have divvied up the writing into separate parts without ever consulting each other.

Kaulder’s employers the Axe and the Cross, a male religious order dedicated to protecting the world from evil witches.

This wouldn’t be a problem if some sort of balance or modern spin was put on the story, such a s portraying Kaulder as man comically out of step with the times.

Schwarzenegger could still make a very decent fist of that film, but Diesel lacks Arnie’s confidence to send himself up. After all, a man in his position can’t afford to be to look ridiculous.

Instead we’re invited to admire Kaulder’s macho effectiveness at slaughtering his way through waves of women and their compliant male underlings.

With exception of Leslie’s character Chloe and a sexually willing flight attendant, women are portrayed as youth obsessed sexpots or foul midnight hags intent on ruining the lives of man.

Poor Chloe is caught somewhere between being an unsuitably aged romantic interest and a surrogate daughter figure.

In Gladiator (2000) Russell Crowe‘s Maximus sought to rejoin his murdered family in Elysium, a state of peace and grace.

When Kaulder’s real daughter and her mother appear in his dreams they represent weakness, capitulation and subjugation.

Everything the unrepentant, unreconstructed and fiercely heterosexual Kaulder lives to combat.

As the big bad villain, the queen witch is an anonymous shrieking harpy with vaguely explained plans of evil.

She’s less an evil protagonist than just another obstacle to be overcome, her existence serves only to underscore how heroic and manly Kaulder is.

However as her future vision of New York is to transform it into a pastoral idyll, the script may be rooting for the wrong team.

★☆☆☆☆

Crimson Peak

Director: Guillermo del Toro (2015)

This lavishly stylised and violent fairytale splashes around buckets of blood but is sadly anaemic.

Inspired by the Hammer House of Horror films, the period sets and costumes are fantastic though the story is predictable and lacks bite.

It begins as a sumptuous and intriguing gothic romance bubbling with ideas, filtered through the director’s usual motifs of steampunk contraptions and ladies of letters.

But once the story leads to bleak estate in the north of England where red clay oozes from the mansion’s every pore, proceedings become bogged down in sticky CGI.

There’s a workshop in the tower, many doors are locked and Edith is warned not to go down to the cellar.

it all sadly ends with all the suspense of a steroid-filled episode of Scooby Doo. But without any of the fun.

Talented Mia Wasikowska is at her insipid worst as young heiress Edith Cushing who follows her new husband Sir Thomas Sharpe to his crumbling gothic pile.

The baronet is pallid, impoverished and played in impeccable black by the devilishly charming Tom Hiddleston.

The pair played vampiric siblings in the superior Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) in which they vividly essayed far more interesting characters.

Here Jessica Chastain plays Hiddleston’s screen sister who keeps her brother’s best interests close to her heart. With barking intense piano playing and a choice wardrobe, she dominates her every scene.

An anonymous Charlie Hunnam plays a lovelorn ophthalmologist left looking for clues, probably as to where any sense of mystery or danger is.

★★☆☆☆

Pan

Director: Joe Wright (2015)

Set sail to the stars with the boy who never grew up in this magical family fantasy.

Based on the tales of J.M.Barrie, it’s the action packed story of how the young orphan Peer first encounters the fantastical world of Neverland and discovers his destiny.

Die-hard fans of the book may be aghast at the liberties taken with the characters.

But there are compensations in this old fashioned adventure which is bolstered by some lovely design and beautiful animation.

Levi Miller is tremendously confident and engaging as the orphan Peter who is kidnapped from London by a flying pirate ship and whisked off to Neverland.

It’s a riotous place of broad humour, acrobatic fights, circus colours and rock songs, populated by Never-birds, crocodiles and fairies.

He’s set to work in a huge mine where he has to dig for Pixum, the powerful pixie dust.

It’s craved by the villainous pirate chief Blackbeard, performed in a lively pantomime by Hugh Jackman.

Peter escapes with the future Captain Hook, a two-handed rascal in the mould of Han Solo from Star Wars (1977).

Garrett Hedlund strives manfully in an unenviable role which requires a physical performance full of charm, humour and an edge of mystery and danger.

It’s too bad he’s not a young Harrison Ford but then again, who is?

He flirts unconvincingly with the kick ass princess Tiger Lily who’s from a multi-racial tribe of natives.

The character is described as a ‘redskin’ by Barrie and by allowing itself to be accused of whitewashing the role, the film scored a soft publicity own goal.

I’m far more concerned with Rooney Mara’s forgettable performance in a disappointingly thinly written female lead.

Her and Hedlund seem cast by committee.

Kathy Burke has fun as a devious nun and Cara Delevingne is alluring as a pod of mermaids.

Tiger Lily is mostly there to explain to Peter his part in a prophecy.

In order to fulfil it he must learn to believe in himself if he wants fulfil his destiny.

Director Joe Wright has form with making very theatrical film versions of classic books, such as in his Anna Karenina (2012).

He brings out the spectacle of the source material which was of course originally written for the stage.

Go on this awfully big adventure and you will believe in fairies.

★★★☆☆

Suffragette

Director: Sarah Gavron (2015)

Political passion and personal punishment power a prodigious performance in this stirring historical drama.

In the dark, violent world of 1912, a young mother risks everything as she battles the government for the right to vote.

Fictitious characters mix with real people and events to create a gripping story filled with emotional truth.

Following her excellent turn in Far From The Madding Crowd (2015), Carey Mulligan gives another mesmerising performance as factory worker and reluctant activist Maud Watts.

Her young son George is ominously diagnosed by Helena Bonham Carter’s chemist as ‘a bit chesty’.

Hardworking and aspirational, Maud is drawn into the bosom of the suffragettes and their world of nighttime rallies, back room meetings and property attacks.

Soon she feels the full force of the law in the form of the intelligence gathering Special Branch and truncheon wielding constables.

With Maud’s behaviour considered to be madness not badness, she’s ostracised, beaten, jailed and endures a hunger strike.

Radicalised by her experiences, she is soon waging a guerrilla war alongside veteran campaigner Emily Davison.

It mostly involves blowing up the UK’s communications infrastructure. i.e. postboxes.

Corrupt politicians collude with the media to keep the violent campaign off the front pages.

In desperation to  be heard, the women seize upon a target so big as to be impossible to ignore.

At times the heartbreaking events resemble the grimmer moments of Les Miserables (2012). With the thankful exception of the awful sing-alongs.

It’s an inspiring tale of kindness, courage and comradeship Which at times tries too hard. We’ve long since been won over by Maud by the time she’s reduced to waiting in the rain.

An intelligent script insists the women are fighting a war and the dialogue includes frequent exhortations for them never to give up.

It celebrates their bravery and solidarity against the state who use covert surveillance and brutality to suppress a popular political uprising.

However it aligns the direct methods and organisational prowess of the suffragettes with historical and contemporary terrorist groups such as the IRA.

This may prove problematical to viewers. It’s certainly the starting point for an interesting debate.

Cinematographer Edu GrauIt captures the drama in palettes of browns and greys, as films of this sort so often are.

Better known as James Bond’s Q, soft spoken Ben Whishaw is counter-intuitively cast as Maud’s working class barrow boy husband Sonny.

His subtle acting suggests a marriage of convenience and as the story progresses, Sonny’s feebleness adds perspective to Maud’s situation.

Geoff Bell stops shy of pantomime as an abusive factory boss and the film is not too sure what to do with Brendan Gleeson’s cop. His concerned reasonableness challenges you to remember he’s one of the guys.

Meryl Streep makes a brief and typically stagey appearance as head girl Emmeline Pankhurst. It veers towards an impersonation of Maggie Smith in TV’s Downton Abbey.

In The Iron Lady (2011) cinema’s grand dame won an Oscar for playing the famously unsisterly first female Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

During her divisive time in office she was not for turning when it came to civil unrest and terrorist campaigns.

Spoken of in hushed voices in her absence, Pankhurst addresses a crowd messianically from a balcony and a signed book is passed around as if a holy relic.

This is the nearest religion comes to being referenced in the film.

There are no priests in the church which offers sanctuary to the dispossessed and the position of the established church seems to be one of benign neutrality.

This despite organised religion having a poor track record in the public arena of women’s rights.

Made In Dagenham (2010) showed car factory workers campaigning for equal pay in the 1970’s. Suffragette is a spiritual prequel and in the 60 odd years between the periods portrayed, it’s sobering to realise how little progress had been made.

As a representative of all the foot soldiers of the suffrage movement, Mulligan’s emotional performance puts us at the heart of their struggles against the established order.

She easily wins my vote for 2016’s Best Actress Oscar.

★★★★☆

Leading Lady

Director: Henk Pretorius (2015)

A prickly rose blooms in the heat of the veldt in this amiable and unremarkable Afrikaans romcom.

It’s a pleasant enough trip but one lacking in any ambition except the desire not to cause offence. It’s absolutely unobjectionable, almost insultingly so.

Irish actress Katie McGrath plays Jodie, a drama school teacher and aspiring big screen thesp who heads to South Africa to research a film role she has yet to win.

Her accent is determinedly none specific except when her natural intonation breaks through.

On arrival she’s nearly run over by hunky Bok van Blerk who agrees to take her back to his drought-ridden farm so she can sample rural life.

He’s sort of intense, she’s kind of bossy. They bicker and seem ill-matched. Who knows what the fates may have in store for them.

In return for board and lodge she agrees to direct the annual farmyard concert. This allows the script to drive in a flock of local eccentrics.

As weak attempts at humour fall to take root on the barren comedy ground, the green shoots of romance are blighted by unexpected arrivals.

With Nelson Mandela, blood diamonds and sci-fi allegory dominating the country’s cinematic exports, it’s nice to encounter a South African offering which purposefully avoids politics in any form.

It’s a shame then this the RSA equivalent of a Richard Curtis chocolate box movie. It’s cosy, affectionate and full of regard for ordinary country folk and their amusing little ways. And it’s none too funny.

The agreeable cast go about their business with enthusiastic competence.

But there’s an unforgivable lack of villainy or devilment. The uneven script can’t even bring itself to be beastly about the British, and lord knows we’ve supplied them with enough historical ammunition.

Even the traditional romcom dash to the airport is reduced to a brief skip across the front porch.

Truths are spoken, lessons are learnt and personal growth occurs. But it time seems to move so slowly in the countryside it’s hard to care.

★★☆☆☆

I Believe In Miracles

Director: Jonny Owen (2015)

Revisiting one of the more endearing successes in English football, this celebratory documentary has a joyous end of season feel to it.

A shameless and entertaining nostalgia trip, fabulous footage of Nottingham Forest’s fluid football is married to a soul music soundtrack to fun effect while former players contribute well practised anecdotes

It’s an energetic telling of the well trod tale of how maverick manager Brian Clough utterly transformed the fortunes of struggling Nottingham Forest FC.

And the Middlesbrough-born maestro did it in only five years.

Having made Derby County FC unlikely champions of England before falling foul as the boss of Leeds United, we begin in 1974 with a televised Teesside tiff between the unemployed Clough and the England boss Don Revie.

The next season Clough took charge at The City Ground and dragged the struggling team from the lower end of the domestic second tier to become 1980 European champions.

And to prove it wasn’t a fluke, Clough lead his team to a second European Cup triumph the following year as well.

Rather than trying to cover every blade of contextual grass, a route one approach focuses on the players’ experience as John Robertson, Viv Anderson, Martin O’Neil and others contribute well practiced anecdotes.

As enjoyable as these misty eyed reminisces are, they carefully avoid any muddy swathes of personal problems by flying up the pristine narrative wings of on-field success.

Plus they fail to adequately explain why their achievements were astonishing then and practically impossible for a club of Forest’s fiscal flow to repeat now.

Other than the headline-making first million pound player signing, there’s little talk of the financial side of the game.

In a bygone world of halftime cigarettes, a diet of chip butties and booze and more days off than those spent training, tactical advice consists of ‘give it to the short fat b****** on the wing.

Or John Robertson as his parents named him.

Season ticket holders to the Brian Clough fan club won’t find anything new.

Surprisingly Old Big ‘Ead isn’t allowed the last word but the man who famously described himself as being in the top one remains as charismatic and engaging as ever.

★★★☆☆

Red Army

Director: Gabe Polsky (2015)

Russian sportsmen skate on the thin ice of Cold War politics in this cracking ice hockey documentary.

With drama on an off the rink, it’s an irrepressible combination of huge egos, fabulous action, political power games and private gain.

This film is built around interviews with the charismatic former champion player Viacheslav ‘Slava’ Fetisov.

Hugely rude, arrogant and compelling, he’s also the world’s most decorated ice hockey player.

He’s a shockingly refreshing antidote for anyone who suffers the bland, PR controlled and media-trained offerings of English football’s players and pundits.

The presentation of his achievements is one of many sequences that use humour to hurry the puck of narrative along.

In football terms Slava and his team mates play in a style best described as Total Hockey.

With even my limited exposure to or understanding of the game, the footage is as exciting and demanding as any sport I’ve seen.

Like many players Slava was specifically drafted to be eligible for the army team, it formed the vanguard of the USSR’s propaganda wing.

This relationship between the state and the individual is explored through the prism of Slava’s career, an astonishing accumulation of trophies, teams, air miles and vendettas.

With consummate timing Red Army holds back it’s best shot until the last minute.

For anyone with an interest in sport, history, politics or just wants to admire some really cool cold war kits, this is a brilliant watch.

★★★★☆  

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.

★★★★★

MacBeth

Director: Justin Kurzel (2015)

This bold and bleak adaption of Shakespeare‘s Scottish play is violent and visually arresting but curiously unmoving.

A moody, macho and masochistic Michael Fassbender frets for a couple of hours upon the stage.

He drips with menace and blood and there is much sound and fury.

After serving his King by quelling an insurrection, Macbeth encounters three witches who prophesy a royal future.

Encouraged by his wife he murders his way to the throne, and becomes consumed by madness.

A macabre tone is struck from the start with the burial of an infant. Among the battles, murders, ghosts, and witches, the rural feudal society is chillingly and chillily realised.

The relentless rain-lashed realism captures the grim hardships of the era, but there is also beauty is the landscapes, a children’s chorus and the craftsmanship of cloaks and daggers.

Fiona Crombie’s strong production design offers fine detail and heavy weathering, anchoring the actors in the period.

It’s a consistent vision, utilising wild exteriors in what was a gruelling shoot for cast and crew.

Interiors were filmed in the magnificent and contemporaneous Ely Cathedral.

Cinematographer Adam Arkapaw frames some lovely images but fellow Australian, director Kurzel rarely use his camera to fully bring out the drama of the verse.

The pair are stronger on the hoof, creating some terrific moments in battle and in the hunt.

Kurzel’s brother Jed adds to the tone with an unsettling screeching soundtrack.

Three writer’s have acceptably trimmed Shakespeare’s verse. But it’s sadly compromised through frequently flat recital, caught within beards or lost thick fog of a Scots brogue.

There’s also tendency by most of the men to employ a throaty whisper as often as possible, so we have to strain for understanding.

Only Englishman Sean Harris as Macduff and the French actress Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth offer engaging readings. Both characters are motivated by grief for lost children.

Elizabeth Debicki has a moment on fire but David Thewlis, Jack Reynor and Paddy Considine seem oddly removed from events around them.

Shakespeare put humour in his tragedies to emphasise his antagonists’ fall and make their doom compelling.

As Fassbender’s Macbeth moves from military machine to murderer to madman, the actor fails to find the humanity.

Devoid of love, humour or a conscience to lose or regain, the tragedy is missing in action.

What remains is a blood-soaked slog through the fog of 10th century war.

★★★☆☆