movie review

The Theory of Everything

Director: James Marsh

This tasteful, tear-ridden and terribly British biopic of scientist Stephen Hawking is sadly uneven.

Despite some Oscar worthy acting this brief history of his life is too thinly stretched with the latter half not matching the emotional power of the first.

 Prodigiously clever student Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is at Cambridge University; cycling and studying for his PhD.

He meets the arty, angelic Jane (Felicity Jones) and they enjoy a picture postcard courtship amid the dreaming spires.

It’s an impressively physical performance by Eddie Redmayne and Jones is as excellent as always, great support is offered by David Thewlis as kindly don Dennis and Harry Lloyd as Hawking’s best friend Brian.

His growing clumsiness leads to a collapse and in hospital he is diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

While his mind stays sharp he will lose control of his muscles which will gradually waste away through lack of use.

He is given two years to live.

Moving you to tears with the sort of stiff upper-lip that built the British Empire, Jane refuses Stephen’s requests to leave.

They marry and as walking sticks give way to wheelchairs, his scientific career goes supernova.

Jane is poorly served; transforming abruptly from loving wife to challenged carer, signalling a sea change in their relationship.

However science and the story’s emotional momentum is abandoned for soap opera as the focus moves to marital infidelity and his growing international celebrity.

Meanwhile although we’re left to wonder how years after his terminal diagnosis Hawking is still alive at 72 as the careless script, happy to ponder the scale of the universe, never alludes to that particular mystery.

Nor are we close to knowing whether he’ll ever establish his unified theory of life, the universe and everything.

If only it had ended in physics not platitudes this could have been one of the films of the year.

★★★☆☆

Gone Girl

Director: David Fincher (2014)

She’s sexy, savage and inscrutable – British actress Rosamund Pike finally gets a role worthy of her talent in the most entertaining thriller of 2014.

Filled with murder, kidnap, rape and revenge, the movie is glossy on the surface and trashy at heart.

But it’s also superbly sharp and twisted, with a fine-tuned sense of humour to balance the darkness.

On his fifth wedding anniversary Nick (Ben Affleck) finds his home spattered with blood and his perfect wife Amy (Pike) missing.

Nick refuses to believe Amy is dead and starts a high-profile campaign to trace her.

Through flashbacks from Amy’s diary, we see the couple fall passionately in love, marry and pursue successful careers.

But the police investigation into her disappearance uncovers Nick’s large credit card debt, incriminating evidence and a mistress.

They also discover her diary, which details Nick’s history of violence and her fears for her safety.

Now the prime murder suspect and facing the death penalty, Nick employs charismatic celebrity lawyer Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry).

Then the story is turned on its head.

As well as exploring how we create our own identities, the story takes a swipe at trial by TV and has a few choice words to say about marriage as well.

Pike goes full throttle into the curves of her performance and Affleck’s measured performance allows the supporting cast to stand out.

Carrie Coon brings warmth and concern as his twin sister Margo and Kim Dickens as cop Rhonda Boney, steals every scene she’s in.

Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth (son of cinematographer Jordan) should pick up his third Oscar nomination for his stunning work.

First time scriptwriter Gillian Flynn adapted her own bestseller and the direction by David Fincher is gleefully malicious.

★★★★★

About Time

Director: Richard Curtis (2013)

Having torpedoed his own ­reputation with his previous film, The Boat That Rocked, Richard Curtis does nothing to rescue his career with this twee time-­travelling comedy drama.

About Time is the writer and director’s indulgent tribute to fatherhood. Curtis is a long-time shameless magpie with other ­people’s ideas and here he’s content to ­complacently plunder his own ­material – recreating the wedding dress scene from Four Weddings And A Funeral.

Along with a wedding and a funeral, About Time has much familiar, unfunny, ‘comic’ ­profanity. Poor Domhnall Gleeson is apparently under instructions to ape Hugh Grant while a sickly-sweet voice-over is reheated from Love Actually and/or Notting Hill.

On top of all this, the actors have to wade through their scenes while gallons of syrupy music is poured over them.

In About Time, when Tim (Gleeson) turns 21 he is told by his father (Bill Nighy) that the men in the family have a secret ability to travel through time.

By standing in a dark room and clenching his fists Tim can appear anywhere in his own past.

With incredible opportunities now available to him, Tim decides to settle down to a dull life of work, babies and playing ping-pong with his Pa.

Tim is useless with women and exploiting time travel to seduce the American Mary (Rachel McAdams) is the only ­exciting thing he does with his gift. Curtis is typically so ­uninterested in her character that his ­habitual Yank-bashing is limited to giving her dodgy hair and dowdy clothes.

Tim’s friends and family are bumbling idiots or foul-mouthed miseries that irritate as much as the wobbly camera work.

One scene takes place entirely in a blacked-out restaurant which means we’re watching a blank screen and listening to a poorly scripted radio play – filming it in silence may have improved it.

The dominant image of this film is of a sex-starved man sitting alone in a dark cupboard and gripping his sweaty palms.

Curtis has threatened to stop ­directing after this latest offering and that would indeed be about time.

★☆☆☆☆

Trash

Director: Stephen Daldry (2014)

Fresh fish are good and plastic is bad in this environmental sermon that masquerades as a thriller.

It opens with a teenage boy holding someone at gunpoint, by the time we eventually discover why it’s all turned terribly silly.

Favela-living boys from Brazil Raphael (Rickson Teves)and Gardo (Eduardo Luis) are paid a pittance to scavenge all day on the municipal rubbish dump.

No wonder the US and Europe have sent Father Juilliard (Martin Sheen) and Sister Olivia (Rooney Mara) to bring religion and education.

It’s good they’re doing something as they don’t interfere with the plot in any meaningful way.

Otherwise it’s non-stop street parties and skinny-dipping amid the picturesque poverty of the colourful favela. It even burns down in a  pretty manner.

When Raphael discovers a money-filled wallet, he and Gardo enlist sewer-dwelling Rato (Gabriel Weinstein) to help fence it.

But Rato recognises the key it contains as coming from a train station locker, so off they go to investigate.

However on the payroll of a corrupt  congressman, bad cop Frederico (Selton Mello) is searching for the wallet as it contains something incriminating.

Frederico drinks water from a plastic bottle making him not only brutally corrupt but gasp, a walking environmental disaster as well.

When he indulges in a bit of ultra-violence to classical music he does so on a creative whim – not because it tells us anything anything about his character.

There’s bags of cash, a ledger of crooked accounts, rooftop running, motorbike chases, gunplay and beatings.

There’s aggression but a lack of anger. Sister Olivia who simply shrugs her shoulders at events, even when lured to a prison under false pretences and later arrested.

It’s a shame as Mara is very good acting angry, maybe she’s despondent because the script give her so little to do.

Wretched script-writer Richard Curtis adapted this boy’s own Brazil-based adventure from Andy Mulligan’s book.

There are echoes of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire and Millions but it’s nowhere near as coherent, compelling or dynamic.

Editor Elliot Graham tries manfully to inject pace and energy using the cinematic steroids of freeze-frames and flashbacks – but real muscle is lacking.

Failing in its attempt at a feel-good finale, the ending lasts more than long enough to spell out its sanctimonious message.

★★☆☆☆

Big Hero 6

Director: Don Hall, Chris Williams

Robots and superheroes collide in this dazzling dayglo delight from Disney.

Beautifully animated and pop bubblegum fabulous to look at, it’s hilarious, joyous and thrilling.

At heart a touching tale of friendship, it’s alive with loveable characters, great jokes, exciting battles and gizmos and gadgets galore.

In the futuristic fusion city of San Fransokyo 14 year old Hiro (Ryan Potter) is a self-taught robotics genius who lives with his older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) and their Aunt Cass (Maya Rudolph).

Hiro spends his time winning money in illegal backstreet robot bouts (think TV’s Robot Wars but far more exciting).

Meanwhile Tadashi’s developed an inflatable talking robot healthcare companion called Baymax (Scott Adsit).

Soft talking and slow moving, it looks like a walking marshmallow and the animators have great fun with his ungainly girth and relentlessly gentle manner.

Tadashi and the wily professor Callaghan (James Cromwell) use reverse psychology to persuade the contemptuous prodigy Hiro to apply to college.

When Hiro demonstrates his newly invented, hugely powerful microbots, smooth-talking tech-entrepreneur Alistair Krei (Alan Tudyk) wants to buy to them.

But after Hiro rejects the offer there’s a mysterious fire that kills Tadashi and Callaghan.

Obeying his programming to heal, a warm and humorous bond slowly develops between Baymax and Hiro.

Jokes are cleverly constructed with the audience laughing at the same time but for different reasons such as when Baymax’s low battery causes speech and mobility impairment. Hiro has to smuggle him home in the manner of drunk teenagers sneaking in.

As Hiro grieves, his remaining microbot mysteriously activates leading he and Baymax to discover a factory making thousands where they’re attacked by a Kabuki-wearing stranger, massively menacing in dynamic expressionless splendour.

Escaping with the help of his nerd-school friends, Hiro upgrades Baymax with fighting abilities, armour and powered flight. His sensors lead them to a quarantined island, where they find industrial espionage and military conspiracy.

With industrial espionage, military conspiracy and an epic battle, it embraces noble sacrifice, death, grief, puberty and err, fart jokes.

With Disney owning Marvel Studios it’s allowed to be all very meta.  There’s unmistakable Iron-Man references, a Stan Lee cameo and the final showdown nods at 2012’s Avengers Assemble.

Taking charge of Pixar and has given the venerable Disney Studio an insulin boost of creativity, producing a wonderfully fresh if unexpected high point. Pixar now are relegated to junior partner producing inferior sequels to the hits of yesteryear.

Mashing up East and West in the cultural melting point in the fictional San Fransokyo is not only a canny ploy aimed at capturing the important Asian market but is clearly creatively driven by a love of Japanese cinema.

Japan’s Studio Ghibli is a driving influence both in tone and style. There is more than one wink to the masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro, notably in the Fat Cat restaurant owned by Hiro’s Aunt Cass and in the end credits.

But Big Hero 6 also has sufficient strength of character and identity to be franchise in it’s own right which is certainly the aim.

Just as in a Marvel movie it’s worth staying until the very, very end – by which time I was so enamoured of the movie I wanted my own Baymax.

I guarantee your kids will too.

P.s. In the manner of Pixar the main feature is preceded by the short cartoon Feast, an enjoyable lightweight snack that will whet your appetite for the main course to follow.

★★★★★

Boyhood

Director: Richard Linklater (2015)

This astonishingly ambitious and unique coming-of-age drama is another change of direction from the ever-surprising Texan director Linklater.

Filmed over twelve years using the same talented cast throughout, Boyhood creates great emotional weight through small domestic scenes.

We quickly invest in these characters, liking them, anticipating the directions their lives are taking and fearing for them. When drama erupts we don’t dwell on it but follow the consequences.

Years slip by as haircuts and shoe sizes change. Part of the fun is guessing how the actors will alter when time jumps forward again. Graciously allowing the audience the benefit of a brain, Linklater never flags up the changing of the years with captions but leaves us to work it out.

It’s eerily like being a parent on fast forward and I gazed in wonder at the truth of the lives on the screen.

There’s domestic abuse, alcoholism, first dates, marriages and eventually Olivia finds a peace of sorts as she braces herself for the future full of an empty nest.

Six-year-old Mason Jnr (Ellar Coltrane) and sparky older sister Samantha (director’s daughter Lorelei Linklater) live with single mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette). The three form a compact family unit that expands and contracts as step-fathers and siblings come and go.

Much of the film’s understated, unassuming intelligent springs from the well of Coltrane’s even-tempered playing. Mason’s cautious approach to events is a coping mechanism which serves him well through some turbulent times.

Arquette is the emotional anchor; strong, anguished, fallible, continually trying to improve herself and forever making poor choices. It’s a beautifully honest performance as she attempts to marry the anxieties and sacrifice of motherhood

Equally excellent is Ethan Hawke as Mason’s dad who annoyingly and disconcertingly, never appears to age. He’s a well-meaning if absent father who pops by occasionally and spoils the kids rotten. It’s clear by his car of choice – a 1968 Pontiac GTO – that the film’s title applies equally to him.

If there’s one shame it’s due to the sometimes waning interest of the young actress in the project; so Samantha features less as time progresses.

It’s funny, engaging, uplifting and the finest film of 2014.

If I have to wait twelve years for a sequel, It will be worth it.

★★★★★

Birdman

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

This extraordinarily ambitious black comedy about a desperate actor having a nervous breakdown is funny, sexy, brave and bold.

Michael Keaton, former star in blockbusting Hollywood superhero franchise Batman plays Riggan Thomas, former star in the blockbusting Hollywood superhero franchise Birdman.

That was twenty years ago and now Riggan, aware of his age and lack of artistic legacy, wants to reboot his career as a serious artist by starring and directing in a Broadway adaptation of an important literary work.

However he’s beset by professional and personal problems – not least being haunted by his gravel voiced masked-man alter ego of yesteryear who preys on his many insecurities.

As an accomplished actor Riggan is an untrustworthy guide to his own existence and it may be best not believe anything he says, sees or shows us.

He has re-mortgaged his house to pay for the production but influential critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan) threatens to bury the show and a former employee wants to sue him.

His daughter Sam (Emma Stone) is out of rehab and last minute replacement actor Mike (Edward Norton) is re-writing his lines and stealing the limelight.

Meanwhile co-star girlfriend Laura (Andrea Riseborough) is pregnant and manager Jake (Zach Galifianakis) is constantly lying to him.

Dressing rooms are trashed amid scenes of fights, affairs, drunks, drugs, and attempted suicide.

It all leads to an astonishing scene in Times Square where Riggan clutches at his rapidly shrinking dignity.

As shamelessly superb camerawork (Emmanuel Lubezki) and editing (Douglas Crise, Stephen Mirrione) create the astonishing illusion of a single continuous shot that lasts the entire film.

Dynamic and fearless performances embrace the vanity of the flawed characters and offer moments of insight creating an exhausting, energetic and constantly surprising experience.

Birdman is a soaring success.

★★★★★

The Equalizer

Director: Antoine Fuqua (2014)

British TV series The Equalizer gets a full Hollywood make-over in this glossy and violent action thriller.

Even sillier than the original it’s now a patriotic vigilante fantasy about defending homely American values against imported Russian vices.

The late Edward Woodward is replaced by Denzil Washington as widowed ex-CIA agent Robert McCall .

Played by Washington McCall can’t help but be charismatically charming and an impressively mean physical presence.

Living quietly, assisting colleagues with their careers and being an all-round good egg, he even finds the time for a little song and dance routine.

He’s moved to help local prostitute Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz) when she’s hospitalised by her Russian Pimp Slavi (David Meunier).

Armed only with the novels of Hemingway and Mark Twain, McCall visits the gangsters and attempts to buy her freedom.

They reject his offer, there’s some peculiar and unnecessary stuff with a stopwatch and it ends impressively badly for them.

So evil oligarch Pushkin (Vladimir Kulich)  sends over his badass fixer, the sharp suited and silver-tongued Teddy (Marton Csokas).

AsTeddy begins hunting down McCall with the help of corrupt cops, our hero jets off to see his former boss Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo) to warn her of the violence to come.

There’s no real reason for this but it’s a handy excuse to include a helicopter; this sort of film has to have a helicopter. And a dockside gunfight. And really big explosions to stride heroically away from towards the camera.

Washington does give good stride.

Action scenes are deftly handled but a strong opening is squandered and plot-holes are scattered all about as it descends into silly brutality.

Director Antoine Fuqua once made the brilliant Training Day (also with Washington) but now lifts all Guy Ritchie’s slow motion action moves but without the same elan.

The bloody finale takes place in a hardware store. A venue that always signifies the honest, hardworking, independence of American men – and provide McCall with a variety of grisly weapons.

Eventually good-hearted Yanks overcome a wave of Russians, embrace redemption, education and self-reliance while wrapping themselves up in the stars and stripes.

★★☆☆☆

Into The Woods

Director: Rob Marshall (2014)

Disney embraces the dark side in this dazzling big budget live-action adaption of the award-winning magical musical fairytale.

Based on the stories of the Brothers Grimm, the wicked lyrics of songwriting maestro Stephen Sondheim are performed by an all-star cast on top form.

Plus as great sets and costumes boost the sometimes uninspired direction, it all makes for a spooky and frequently funny fantasy.

Once upon a time, a baby-stealing witch (Meryl Streep) has cursed the house of a poor baker and his wife (James Corden and Emily Blunt) so they cannot conceive a baby.

Corden and Blunt share a bickering chemistry and play commendably straight which allows the more fantastical characters to showboat.

Streep indulges herself with may a shriek and cackle as the witch who is also under a spell, forcing the couple to help her before she will lift their curse.

They must go into the woods to find a white cow, a golden slipper, a red cape and some yellow hair before the full moon in three days’ time.

On the way, they meet familiar characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, played by an astonishingly confident and scene-stealing teenage Lilla Crawford.

She is of course preyed upon by the big bad wolf, an excellent Johnny Depp in an extended cameo.

There’s also Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy), Jack of the beanstalk (Daniel Huttlestone) giants, ghosts and some golden eggs, Anna Kendrick is pitch perfect as Cinderella.

She is pursued by a a philandering Prince (Chris Pine). He’s wonderfully vain, self-centred and thoroughly enjoys himself delivering the funniest song and the best line.

Proving you should be careful what you wish for there are betrayals, mutilations and deaths as well as some unpardonably poor parenting.

As greed is punished and bravery and honesty win out, you won’t fail to be charmed by this wonderful tale’s dark magic.

★★★★☆

Boxtrolls

Director: Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi (2014)

Funny and exciting from the off, this delightfully dark fairytale is a painstaking miracle of old school stop-motion animation.

For ten years since the Trubshaw baby was kidnapped there’s a nightly curfew in the cobble-stoned city of Cheesebridge.

Despite the horror stories about them devouring children, the Boxtrolls are actually peaceful, kind and incredibly inventive.

Their subterranean grotto is a Heath Robinson paradise, a magical place full of weird and wonderful contraptions built out of all the junk the city-folk have thrown away.

Living with the Boxtrolls is a boy named Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright). They’ve raised Eggs so successfully he thinks he’s a troll and the well-intentioned ‘trolls have difficulty explaining the painful truth.

Meanwhile First citizen Lord Portley-Rind and his white-hatted councillors employ the ferocious red-hatted exterminator Archibald Snatcher (Kingsley) to hunt down the cardboard box-wearing trolls.

If he can hunt down and destroy all the creatures, social-climber Snatcher is promised a white hat – an honour only bestowed to the cheese-gobbling upper classes.

Cheese-eating is the ultimate in conspicuous consumption for these burghers who drip with delicious self absorption. In the best tradition of Roald Dahl the films designers and animators delight in every exaggerated ill-mannered slurp.

One night as Eggs and the Boxtrolls venture out to tidy the city, his adopted dad Fish (Dee Bradley Baker) is captured by the fearsome Snatcher and his crew.

As the voices of Snatcher’s henchman Pickles and Trout, Richard Ayoade and Nick Frost are a curious casting choice with neither offering much energy or spark, they’re adequate with added whimsy.

Pickles is the more interesting of the two, constantly questions the validity of his dark deeds even as he perpetrates them. This is a lengthy set-up for a beautifully crafted gag which pays off tremendously in the final reel when Ayoade provides a wonderfully delivered monologue culminating in a brilliant reveal.

Eggs attempts to rescue Fish, teaming up with Portley-Rind’s spoilt, headstrong and argumentative daughter Winnie (Elle Fanning) along the way.

Breaking into Snatcher‘s factory they discover the captured Boxtrolls and the truth about the fate of the Trubshaw baby. It’s dangerous information and the resulting battle threatens to tear Cheesebridge apart in an action-packed finale.

Unwrap these Boxtrolls with care and you won’t be disappointed.

★★★★☆