movie review

X+Y

Director: Morgan Matthews (2015)

An autistic teenage maths prodigy seeks a formula for love in this humorous, gently uplifting and supremely moving British drama.

While exploring the delicate relationship between Nathan (Asa Butterfield) and his mother Julie (Sally Hawkins), the plot follows the template of an underdog sports movie, based on the world of international competitive maths.

The story was inspired by the director’s own BAFTA nominated documentary ‘Beautiful Young Minds‘ featuring real maths competitors. Here he makes sure the maths is always interesting and understandable, keeping a firm grip on tone by adding as much humour as possible so scenes are never maudlin.

Cinematographer Danny Cohen  harks back to his work on Dead man’s Shoes and This is England, offering the film low-key realism and economically communicating Nathan’s complicated world view.

Nathan suffers from autistim and synthesia; though highly gifted at maths he is socially awkward and sensitive to changes in light and colour. He must have his toast divided into geometrically exact slices and food such as prawns served in prime number portions.

He is struggling to come to terms with his father’s death in a car crash. In flashback we see the close connection he shared with his father Michael (Martin McCann).

This loss is accentuating Nathan’s condition and isolating his mother. She is barely coping with life and her blunt speaking son has no idea how hurtful his words frequently are.

Although his condition leads to small domestic accidents such as a broken window and a flooded kitchen, Nathan finds beauty and peace in the perfection of maths and its practical application such as the geometric shapes in bridge underpasses.

Through school Nathan is introduced to scruffy, swearing teacher Mr Humphreys (Rafe Spall). Himself a former maths prodigy, he now suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, depression and loneliness.

As Humphreys tutors Nathan a bond develops and the teen qualifies for a trial for the International Maths Olympiad UK team.

Nathan is flown to Taiwan by UK team leader Richard (Eddie Marsan) with sixteen extremely intelligent maths students. It’s the first time Nathan is painfully average.

They meet young competitors from different countries and all are under pressure. Refreshingly the film doesn’t pander to the audience by providing subtitles for the Chinese speakers – angry is angry regardless of the language.

Nathan’s shy charm unexpectedly leads him to being at the sharp end of a love triangle between fellow students Rebecca (Alexa Davies) and as Zhang Mei (Jo Yang).

Along the way there’s self-harm, accusations of nepotism and a dash to the station in rom-com style.

Only the best six students will be chosen to represent the UK at the Olympiad to be held at Cambridge University – as we’re only really introduced to half a dozen of the students, it’s not hard to work out who’ll survive the cut.

But the lack of tension is not important as the film is more interested in character than narrative. The real pleasure lies in this quality cast enjoying their acting and creating characters we care about.

Butterfield is the pick of a winning young cast whose quietly expressive performance carries the film with open-faced innocence. Marsan offers the closest anyone comes to grandstanding but always to serve the needs of the film. His upbeat performance is calculated to provide balance through optimism, comedy and tempo.

Spall is given the most choice lines and in his most affecting performance to date delivers them deadpan to great comic effect. Hawkins is as wonderful as ever, she plays Julie with brittle finesse and is the maternal soul the story coalesces around.

★★★★☆

’71

Director: Yann Demange (2014)

Collusion, coercion and violence are tied together by a compelling central performance in this tremendously tense British thriller.

With a pared-down plot it’s an action movie without a love interest, barely any humour and a great deal of pain. Assured pacing and confident editing complement a script remarkable for its sparse dialogue. It allows for Jack O’Connell to use his native accent and makes the most of his physical screen presence.

Private Gary Hook (O’Connell) is a raw recruit enduring a gruelling training programme. It’s mercifully brief and included to underline how unprepared these raw recruits are.

A deterioration of the political and social situation in Northern Ireland sees Hook’s platoon packed off in an emergency deployment. Dumped on the front-line in Belfast we’re carefully reminded this war-zone is part of the UK, not a foreign land.

With the city divided by the notorious Falls Road with the friendly Protestants to the east and hostile Catholics to the west, the squaddies are warned of the paramilitaries on both sides. It’s a monstrously messed up environment of graffiti, burnt-out cars and teenagers throwing rocks and dirty (urine and faeces) bombs.

Their fresh-faced and middle class commanding officer Lieutenant Armitage (Sam Reid) is hopelessly out of his depth.

Hook’s squad assist the brutal Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) searching Catholic houses and a rifle is stolen. As a riot breaks out Hook loses his weapon and is separated from his team.

Attempting to return to barracks he must dodge bombs and rioters. Not all locals are hostile but all face repercussions if caught helping him.

The upper ranks of either side have a shaky control of events on the streets. There are betrayals, blackmail and executions as they race to find the lost soldier.

Cinematographer Tat Radcliffe colours a dingy, damp world with an autumnal palette. An eerie and disorientating soundscape by sound mixer Rashad Omar emphasises Hook’s weak and vulnerable state and creates a general air of confusion.

Set a year prior to the infamous Bloody Sunday civilian massacre, ’71 offers an explanation but not an excuse for those events.

There’s no gung-ho flag waving but a bunch of scared working class lads trying to survive a situation they barely understand and have no control over. ’71 is a superior film to the similarly themed and lauded American Sniper. No-one survives without being affected.

★★★★☆

Chappie

Director: Neill Blomkamp (2015)

This socially aware sci-fi flick about a rogue robot suffers clunky construction, short-circuiting serious ideas with silliness.

A muddled exploration of what it means to be human, it lacks soul. Chappie the robot is annoying while human characters are unlikeable and thinly written.

It’s also determinedly derivative, poorly plotted, unintentionally funny and ends unconvincingly.

However there’s some great design, good action and an entertaining bad guy.

The crisp light of South Africa allows for fresh cinematography by Trent Opaloch and it’s edited with haste to keep the pace upbeat.

In his previous films District 9 and Elysium, director Blomkamp tackled racism and inequality. Here it’s the criminalisation of children, with echoes of Pinocchio and Oliver Twist.

In the near future, crime in Johannesburg has fallen dramatically due to the successful deployment of Scouts; heavily armed android police officers.

They’re designed by Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) who works at the Tetravaal corporation.

Rival designer Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) believes his beast of a machine – called the Moose – to be superior to the Scouts and is frustrated CEO Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver) won’t provide the development funds he needs.

The contrast between the two different designs is remarkably similar to the two robots in Paul Verhoeven’s far superior 1987 classic Robocop.

It’s great fun to have Jackman as a bullying bad guy and there’s a little hint of Blade Runner’s JF Sebastian in Patel’s lonely Deon who builds toy robots for company at home.

Weaver is powerless to deliver anything interesting. Her ability, charisma and sci-fi cultural capital from playing Ripley in the Alien franchise is squandered.

While on a drugs raid, robot officer 22 is damaged and ear-marked for scrap. His battery is irreparable and only has five days of power remaining.

Deon rescues the robot to test his unapproved artificial intelligence program.

Meanwhile tattooed criminals Ninja and Yolandi (real-life rap duo Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser) and their accomplice Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo) are in a tight spot.

They have to pay gangland boss Hippo (Brandon Auret) 20 million Rand within seven days or face his violent wrath.

The’re so edgy they live in an abandoned warehouse decorated in day-glo graffiti and drape themselves in the Stars and Stripes.

Their plan is to force Deon to switch off the city’s police robots to facilitate their robbing an armoured bank truck.

When they discover 22 in Deon’s van, it’s decided he would add muscle to their scheme.

22 is reactivated with his newly programmed artificial consciousness and renamed Chappie – but he is naive and emotionally under-developed.

Sharlto Copley provides his voice and mannerisms through a motion capture performance.

Deon and Ninja are equally unsuitable father figures fighting for influence over their ‘child’. One teaches art and literature, the other swear-words and violence.

We pity Chappie as he’s exploited and abused – but he quickly becomes a petulant teen with an irritating gangster persona and styling.

Playing the gangsta attitude for laughs undermines the script’s earnest warning of learnt criminality.

There are heroic security failures, eruptions of comic-book violence and a mysteriously disappearing riot. A plastic chicken features frequently.

A jerry-built not custom made script fails to offer memorable scenes or dialogue. Except for the South African setting it’s all extraordinarily familiar and disappointingly tame.

★★☆☆☆

Robocop

Director: José Padilha (2014)

This grim-faced mechanical reboot of the 1987 sci-fi classic stomps through the motions with all human interest surgically removed.

The action sequences are incoherent, dull and lacking in tension. And the gleefully satirical edge of the original is sadly absent.

Set in Detroit in 2028, the remake offers no sense of a wider society or vision of the future – it’s just like today but with robots and amazingly little internet use.

Joel Kinnaman is trigger-happy, straight backed and taciturn. And that’s before his character Alex Murphy is transformed into the relentless crime-fighting cyborg.

When Murphy’s life is saved by the technician’s of OmniCorp, he’s turned into a crime-fighting war machine and put back on the streets as the ultimate deterrent.

When investigating his own attempted assassination he uncovers a trail of corruption and once again becomes a target.

There is some lovely design work in the new streamlined suit. And when we first see the extent of Murphy’s injuries there is a promisingly nightmarish feel. But it’s quickly lost thanks to the plodding direction.

Computer-generated images mix unconvincingly with live action and although Robocop looks very cool when riding his neon and black motorbike, we see him doing it far more often than is necessary.

There is wit in the casting of actors associated with that other faceless crime-fighter Batman – but even the considerable talents of Michael Keaton and Gary Oldman can’t tease any humour from a dour script.

Keaton plays the duplicitous CEO of the powerful OmniCorp and Oldman co-stars as a technical genius with compromised principles.

And Samuel L. Jackson has fun as a TV commentator – but his scenes seem disconnected from events happening elsewhere.

Key catchphrases are lifted from the original to be chucked around. But the new dialogue is as leaden as Robocop’s thudding footsteps as Murphy hunts down the men who had tried to kill him – and unleashes powerful forces that are hellbent on finishing the job.

★★☆☆☆

Kill The Messenger

Director: Michael Cuesta (2015)

Despite a plot of international significance featuring political corruption, money laundering and drug dealing, this real-life thriller is surprisingly weak and muddled.

It’s a busy dramatisation of the fall from grace of investigative reporter Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner). Uncertain of tone it begins as a courtroom romp, rifles into an astonishing hard news story then dissolves into a dull human interest feature.

Renner hides behind a goatee bristling with self-righteous rage but his taciturn everyman act lacks charisma. His two Oscar nominations (The Town, The Hurt Locker) seem ever more indebted to strong direction than any tremendous ability.

A scruffy family man with a penchant for British cars, motorbikes and music, Webb works on the small San Jose Mercury newspaper.

In a 1996 newsroom teeming with now unimaginable numbers of staff, Webb is indulged by young editor Anna (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and avuncular executive editor Jerry (Oliver Platt).

One day the glamorous Nicaraguan Coral (Paz Vega) drops a folder of confidential information into his lap. The first of many characters to pop up before being forgotten, she uses an unwitting Webb to have her boyfriend’s court prosecution collapse.

Following the info in the folder, Webb is soon interviewing incarcerated drug-dealer Rick Ross (Michael K. Williams). He claims the CIA turned a blind eye to Danilo Blandon (Yul Vazquez) importing industrial quantities of cocaine as it served their foreign policy purposes. The enormous sums of cash raised funded the Contra’s attacks on the communist Nicaraguan government.

It’s a doddle for Webb to bribe his way into a Nicaraguan jail to meet fearsome drug baron Norwin Meneses (Andy Garcia). Everybody is happy to tell the journalist exactly what he needs – which means there’s no tension or drama to his story-gathering.

Publishing his story online (a novelty at the time) attracts nationwide attention. Webb is nominated for journalist of the year but quickly competitors line up to challenge the story, mostly by pointing to his conspicuous lack of evidence.

Now painted as a conspiracy theorist, Webb himself becomes the story. He’s convinced the CIA are in cahoots with the Washington Post to discredit him and the pressure affects his relationship with wife Sue (Rosemarie DeWitt) and teenage son Ian (Lucas Hedges).

Blinded by his indignant anger to the realities of the world and consumed by a martyr complex, Webb is demoted to a backwater department but keeps obsessively working the case.

Government insiders Fred Weil and John Cullen (Michael Sheen and Ray Liotta) appear in cameos to confirm Webb’s theories. They could well be figments of his imagination.

As his paranoia increases Webb sees prowlers in the dark and enemies everywhere. When his bike is nicked he stupidly smashes up his own car and harangues passes-by. As Webb’s mental state deteriorates his attire becomes progressively sharper.

Webb suffers a tragic end but the film fails to provide sufficient evidence to support it’s theory as to why.

★★☆☆☆

Hyena

Director: Gerard Johnson (2015)

With it’s line-up of dull characters and drab dialogue there’s nothing to laugh at in this grim and grimy tale of London lowlifes.

It’s a tawdry and tiresome tale to be added to the canon of dispiriting British gangster flicks.

Unkempt and unlikeable, bent copper Michael (Peter Ferdinando) moonlights as an enforcer for a criminal kingpin known as The Turk and uses his police Task-force colleagues as muscle. One member Keith (Tony Pitts) looks and sounds like Vic Reeves on steroids and peps up our interest whenever he appears.

Michael has £100k invested in the new drugs supply route from Afghanistan but when vicious Albanian brothers Nikolla and Rezar Kabashi (Orli Shuka and Gjevat Kelmendi) muscle in on the deal, Michael demands a cut of their profits or his money back.

Then Michael is re-assigned to the Vice squad to investigate the Kabashi’s. This means he must spend a lot of nervous energy trying to keep his drug deal alive and his new colleagues in the dark.

To make matters worse Vice is ran by Michael’s old colleague David Knight (Stephen Graham). He and Michael share a fraught career history. Despite some unconvincing behaviour Graham raises the quality bar in his few scenes.

At the same time Michael is being investigated for corruption by the smarmy Nick Taylor (Richard Dormer). He’s treated with comic contempt until he’s needed as a serious player.

An eclectic soundtrack and itchy camerawork try to power proceedings along as on a diet of champagne and cocaine, Michael visits cafes, nightclubs and brothels.

Suspects are beaten and interrogated while elsewhere limbs are hacked off and people are raped and beheaded.

Due to Michael’s poor investigative skills, a trafficked Albanian Ariana (Elisa Lasowski) is sold to another gang to work as a prostitute. She’s the only sympathetic character in a film that lacks any moral grounding.

The other female is Lisa (MyAnna Buring). We learn nothing of her but she is granted one scene to emote.

Too much screen-time is spent driving in cars and as Michael’s life unravels, the script hasn’t the courage or wit to resolve its own plot.

★☆☆☆☆

The Hundred Foot Journey

Director: Lasse Hallström (2014)

There’s a generous helping of charm and humour in this culinary culture clash.

Talented young Indian chef Hassan (Manish Dayal) is taught to cook by his mum but when she dies in a riot, his Papa (Om Puri) moves the family to Europe for safety.

The family are rescued from a car crash in rural France by local beauty Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon). An aspiring chef, she cycles about in vintage frocks with the doe-eyed appeal of Audrey Hepburn.

Seduced by the quality of the local food and setting, Papa decides to open an Indian restaurant. The family then energetically set about renovating a derelict bistro into a loud and colourful eatery.

Gifted Hassan manages to mix traditional Indian recipes with French cuisine, much to the anger of Madame Mallory who owns a restaurant a hundred feet away. She’s played by a terrifically tart Helen Mirren who has great fun as the extravagantly accented workaholic widow.

Normally I would choke on the film’s symbolic use of food, adoration of cooks and idealised view of the French. But the deft direction, spicy script and engaging performances make for an indulgent blend.

As Madame Mallory and Papa lock horns, the younger ones lock lips – but simmering passions cool when she poaches Hassan and promotes him above Marguerite. Further success sees Hassan working in Paris but Michelin stars and celebrity fail to feed his soul.

The finale serves up no surprises and if living in France were as satisfying as this film suggests, we’d all be moving there.

★★★☆☆

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

Director: Francis Lawrence (2014)

She’s scared and angry but Jennifer Lawrence fights on as reluctant warrior Katniss in this third, darker episode of the spectacular sci-fi series.

Mockingjay resumes the story with rebels led by President Coin (Julianne Moore) regrouped in a huge hidden bunker in the desolate District 13.

The Hunger Games arena, where children fought to the death, has been destroyed and a popular uprising was crushed by soldiers from the Capitol.

Coin, whose silver hair and two-faced nature mirror despotic leader President Snow (Donald Sutherland) wants Katniss to be the Mockingjay, a symbol of rebellion to inspire the repressed districts to rise against the Capitol.

Despite her fears, Katniss agrees. But only if her traitorous best friend Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is rescued and given a pardon.

As bombs and bodies start to fall, she and self-pitying soldier Gale (Liam Hemsworth) get closer and he volunteers to lead a daring mission.

Katniss is an expert archer and inspirational Games survivor yet, disappointingly, she barely fights because people are so protective. In the movie’s best sequence she is attacked when visiting a hospital.

There are speeches at the expense of action, the pace is thoughtful not thrilling and the story suffers as it is a bridge to the fourth and final film.

But the rebel base and splendid Capitol look excellent and Lawrence is so good that she makes ordinary actors like Hemsworth seem poor – and fabulous actors such as Sutherland and Moore look ordinary.

★★★☆☆

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Director: Francis Lawrence (2013)

Jennifer Lawrence once again suffers the slings, swords and arrows of outrageous fortune in this excellent sequel to 2011’s sci-fi blockbuster.

This is a handsome, exciting and intelligent adventure that throws in plenty of humour among the thrilling combat scenes.

Lawrence is as brilliant as ever as the heroine Katniss Everdeen and carries this huge movie on her slender frame. She’s skilled, brave and loyal yet also unsure and vulnerable. It’s another terrific performance from an actress who’s yet to deliver a poor one.

Having survived gladitorial combat in the first movie, expert archer Katniss (Lawrence) is back living in borderline poverty with her sister Prim (Willow Shields).

She’s enjoying the company of the handsome Gale (Liam Hemsworth) while lovestruck fellow survivor Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) sulks.

As masked soldiers are cracking down on the skulls of the starving population, ruthless  President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) are having great fun plotting the demise of a growing rebellion.

Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman and Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket dress with camp flamboyance as vain and vacuous media darlings who provide much needed background info and no little levity.

Even though Katniss and Peeta are forced into a media friendly sham marriage to protect their families, they still find themselves back in the combat arena.

The set design is epic, the soundtrack is haunting and the story rattles along like the express train that shuttles Katniss to the Capitol to do battle.

This time they’re fighting former champions – each one a fully trained killer – and doing it  on a tropical island filled with angry baboons, poison fog and rains of blood.

Although it ends strongly it is also anti-climactic being the middle film of a trilogy, sorry, tetralogy.

Plus it takes its time getting to the Games themselves and Peeta is such a dull person you wonder why such efforts are made to protect him. But what he lacks in charisma, Lawrence is always there to more than compensate.

★★★★☆

The Boy Next Door

Director: Rob Cohen (2015)

A reckless one night stand leaves school-teacher Jennifer Lopez fearing more than detention in this sensationally silly stalker flick.

Indifferent direction, terrible dialogue and a soundtrack that rumbles with unintentional comic effect make this a thriller to avoid.

Struggling mum Claire (Lopez) is rescued from a descending garage door by the hunky Noah (Ryan Guzman). New to the neighbourhood he’s the 19 year old great nephew of the cancer sufferer next door.

With chiselled good looks, perfect grooming and oiled-up abs, Noah looks and acts as if he’s stepped out of a coke commercial. It turns out he’s a transfer pupil to the high-school where Claire teaches.

Noah fixes the family car and makes himself useful around the house. He befriends Claire’s teenage son Kevin (Ian Nelson), intervenes with the local bullies, takes him for target practice and teaches him to box.

As soon as Claire’s estranged husband Garrett (John Corbett) takes Kevin on a camping trip, Noah and Claire are bonding over literature. He pops round to gift Claire a first edition of Homer’s The Iliad.

One dark and stormy night while the boys are away, Noah seduces Claire with the aid of a frozen chicken. She’s quickly demonstrating a nice line in lingerie and her own buff abs – but their steamy night of passion is secretly filmed.

When Claire wakes up she realises her career, family and life are at stake. But overnight Noah has developed a raging Oedipal complex and breathtaking anger management issues.

Claire’s attempts to gently reject him are not well received and Noah takes to playing rock music really loudly in his car as a sign of how truly peeved he is.

Noah tries to pressure Claire into a repeat performance by leaving incriminating graffiti and photographs around the school, so she confides in her vice-principal and best friend Vicky (Kristin Chenoweth).

There’s an unconvincing car crash, some computer hacking, a fractured skull and people are tied up in a barn.

Dutch camera angles, an awry colour palette and a shuddering dissonant soundtrack are employed to illustrate Noah’s inner anguish and rage. Possibly because Guzman is reluctant to project it himself.

Lopez is a decent actress who excels with strong direction, a decent script and talented co-stars – none of which she benefits from here.

This could have been a gleefully vicious and hilarious black comedy similar to The Guest, instead it’s an insipid and stupid compendium of recycled riffs and ideas.

★☆☆☆☆