3 October 2014
Remember the creepy doll from The Conjuring? Clearly Hollywood did: this spin-off starring her has hit cinemas before the official Conjuring sequel has. Presumably a movie based around a doll is a lot easier to knock out – especially when most of your story comes direct from the giant tome of horror movie stunts that Hollywood has locked in a crypt somewhere.
27 September 2014
Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) is just a regular guy working on an eco-friendly farm outside Portland on the USA’s west coast. Well, that’s his day job: it turns out his commitment to environmentalism extends far beyond film nights and sustainable crops. Together with the more overtly right-on Dena (Dakota Fanning) they buy a powerboat and deliver it to Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), who provides both fake IDs and the fertilizer bombs they need for their mission: blowing up a local dam.
25 September 2014
After a failed suicide attempt, struggling L.A. actor Milo (Bill Hader) reluctantly takes up an offer from his estranged sister Maggie (Kristen Wiig) to head back east and stay with her and her straightforward nice-guy husband (Luke Wilson) in upstate New York.
23 September 2014
Step Up: All In kicks off with a montage showing the various members of dance crew “The Mob” auditioning for commercial work in Los Angeles. Stupid costumes, confusing instructions (“move right, but make it look like you’re moving left”), being openly ogled by the female casting agents, being told the job’s taken before they even get a chance to strut their stuff: it’s a big comedown from the flash mob social justice work The Mob were last seen doing in Step Up: Miami Heat.
21 September 2014
It’s the future, and after a great war humanity has decided the only way to survive is by eliminating all the things that divide us. Passions and love are drugged out of the population; emotions of any kind are banned; lying is forbidden. Even the memory of such things is locked away, with only the mysterious “Giver” (Jeff Bridges) still allowed to recall a more extreme time.
20 September 2014
It’s not quite “the sequel no one demanded”, but coming nine years after the original Sin City it does seem fair enough to ask why they bothered. Especially as much of what made the original Sin City work was a then-unique style: a decade on and comic book movies that look like comic books aren’t exactly hard to come by.
19 September 2014
Josh Lawson’s first feature as a writer/director is the kind of ensemble relationship comedy familiar on the indie film circuit, with one difference: this is a collection of stories about people with particular erotic fetishes.
19 September 2014
We’re so used to young adult fiction being aimed at young girls that what’s initially striking about this story is the way it has boys firmly in its sights. And not just because the lead is a teenage boy thrust into a world full of other teenage boys (though clearly that adds to the testosterone-heavy atmosphere): our story begins with Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) waking up in a lift with no memory of, well, anything.
13 September 2014
Mia (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a seventeen-year-old whose life is starting to come together. An introverted high school cellist, she’s somehow managed to attract the attentions of the hottest dude in school, teenage rock star Adam (Jamie Blackley). Their love of music might be an obvious link – thuddingly obvious thanks to this film’s love of name-dropping at every possible opportunity – but it’s pretty clear there’s real passion between them. Bummer she’s already dead, hey?
8 September 2014
Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) walks off a building site, gets into his car and starts driving. And that’s pretty much it for this film: the following eighty-something minutes are just him behind the wheel juggling phone call after phone call as his life pretty much falls apart. For one thing, his family aren’t exactly happy that he’s not coming home; for another, his bosses are even less impressed that he’s driving off on the eve of one of the biggest concrete pours in European building history – a pour he’s meant to be supervising.
6 September 2014
After getting himself shot (and surviving) during a drug bust, detective Malcolm Toohey (Joel Edgerton, who also wrote the script) is a hero. Which is lucky, because after a night spent in boozy celebration he drives home, sideswipes a kid on a bike, and leaves him in a coma. It’s the kind of thing that costs cops – even hero ones – their badge; fortunately for him, Detective Carl Summer (Tom Wilkinson) is handy and more than willing to put together a cover-up that will keep him out of trouble.
5 September 2014
The story of Ip Man – legendary Kung Fu master of China and teacher of Bruce Lee – has been a popular one in martial arts films for almost as long as there has been martial arts films. Director Kar Wai Wong (Chungking Express, 2046) isn’t exactly known for action filmmaking, so when it was announced he’d be tackling the story of Ip Man, at least some heads were scratched: would he be making a traditional kung fu film, or would he somehow find a way to bring the Kung Fu master’s life into synch with his own storytelling obsessions?
5 September 2014
So a mockumentary about a bunch of vampires living in a sharehouse in New Zealand probably shouldn’t work. In large part why this does is because it fully commits to its premise: Viago (Taika Waititi, who co-wrote and directs) is our guide into New Zealand’s underworld, a foppish vampire from the early 19th Century who’s basically a kind of dorky nice guy … apart from all the blood drinking.
28 August 2014
It’s a rare film where even just mentioning the name of the short story it’s based on is a massive spoiler. But while Predestination is based on a classic science fiction short story, it’s also based on a short story that is (famously) nothing but a series of twists – and while this film version has more to offer than just that, those twists remain such a central part of the story that … let’s just say the less you know going in the better.
25 August 2014
These days Woody Allen’s strikerate is down to around one in three. The trouble is picking which one is going to be the one worth checking out, as on the surface pretty much all Allen’s recent films sound equally likely to be a hit. Midnight in Paris, about a writer who travels back in time to the Paris of the 1920s, turned out to be a charming romp; Allen’s next film, To Rome with Love, was about various relationships in Rome, and was… not so great.
23 August 2014
After three television series and a movie, chances are you already have a pretty good idea whether you’re on board with The Inbetweeners’ take on teenage boys. So to break the shocking news up front: this is pretty much more of the same. Which actually is shocking news, because the last film made a bit of an effort to push the four leads – Will McKenzie (Simon Bird), Jay Cartwright (James Buckley), Simon Cooper (Joe Thomas) and Neil Sutherland (Blake Harrison) – at least some of the way towards adulthood.
22 August 2014
The last two Expendables were about a bunch of over-the-hill mercenaries taking down a bad guy by blowing a lot of stuff up. So let’s be honest here: if you’ve seen the first two, you’ve pretty much seen this one. Some things are slightly different – much less Bruce Willis, much more Wesley Snipes and Harrison Ford – but it’s really more of the same slurred dialogue, bulging muscles, Eastern European locations and planes flying around … So many shots of people on planes.
15 August 2014
It’s the end of the world and Perth is the last place to go. Most sensible people seem to have already killed themselves, leaving behind only the crazy, the murderous, the occasional small child, and James (Nathan Phillips). While he sure seems to have a connection with the woman he’s currently having a lot of sex with, he just can’t stay – he’s got a party to go to.
13 August 2014
Casting Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Hercules? Best casting move of the year. Shame the film he’s in doesn’t quite live up to his awesomeness. The hook here is pretty much the opposite of all the recent run of sword and sandal movies: while our story begins with the traditional bunch of myths and legends around Hercules, son of Zeus, the reality is a bit more prosaic…
10 August 2014
Director Anton Corbijn didn’t set himself an easy task in adapting John le Carré’s 2008 novel. Le Carré’s work is notorious both for his dour look at the world of spying and his intricate, complex plots. So here Corbijn and scriptwriter Andrew Bovell have created a film in which every detail is vital. There are no dead patches here, no moments where you can safely duck out for a minute to check your phone.
9 August 2014
Philosophy and gun fights don’t really seem like a natural combination, but they’re one of the more successful team-ups in movie history. There’s been loads of existentialist hitmen and crooks all the way up to the lead in Drive; The Matrix was more than happy to ponder the nature of reality in between somersaulting shootouts; and now in Lucy Scarlett Johansson unravels the mysteries of evolution and time itself when she’s not fending off a Tawianese drug cartel.
8 August 2014
Oren (Michael Douglas) is an acid-tongued real estate agent living in a tiny lakeside apartment packed with his old furniture while he tries every trick in the book to sell the mansion he’d shared with his now deceased wife. Leah (Diane Keaton) is a ditzy nightclub singer living in the apartment next door who’s still struggling to get over her husband’s death.
8 August 2014
Once you figure out the formula behind Marvel’s current run of movies, it’s awfully hard to go back to enjoying them. In that sense then, Guardians of the Galaxy is just about the smartest move they could have made at this stage of the franchise.
5 August 2014
Thomas (Mathieu Amalric) is a playwright directing his first play and after a long day of auditions he’s about to head home when Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner) comes in out of the rain. She’s here to audition and she’s not going to be put off by his efforts to get her out the door and gradually she wears him down enough for them to at least start talking about his play, an adaptation of the classic story ‘Venus in Fur’ about a man’s obsession with a woman who can dominate and control him.
