City Of Ghosts, Kong: Skull Island, and Scribe: Your Week In Film (July 24-30)

A time to kill: City Of Ghosts offers a horrifying account of ISIS in Raqqa 

The best and worst of this week's home entertainment releases on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD. All films featured are available to buy/rent/stream now, unless otherwise stated.

Ratings guide: WWWW - Wonderful  WWW - Worthwhile  WW - Watchable  W - Woeful

If you have a long memory, you may remember me saying nice things on here a couple of years back about Cartel Land, Matthew Heineman's startling and revelatory documentary exploring Mexico's war on drugs. Now, the US filmmaker returns with another visceral, eye-opening piece of work, this time focusing on citizen journalists in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which was seized by ISIS in 2013, during the country's seemingly interminable civil war.

City Of Ghosts (VOD and cinemas) WWW½ is, by turns, horrifying and inspiring as our band of journos risk life and limb (quite literally) bringing the world news from inside Raqqa as ISIS strengthen their grip on the populace and its infrastructure, going so far as to order all TV satellite dishes to be taken down to leave the city increasingly isolated. The early minutes of Heineman's film are tough to watch, as Islamic State soldiers carry out public executions and punishments. If you're in any way squeamish, this really isn't the film for you. There's one particular image that is going to stay with me for a long time. The journalists – a collective operating under the name Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently – are eventually compromised, some members captured, tortured and executed, others publicly identified and having to flee to Turkey and Germany in fear for their lives.

The second half of the film concentrates on those who escaped and how they use their new base in Germany to help spread RBSS's information, while avoiding possible reprisals from lone-wolf ISIS nuts and trying to cope with a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment in their adopted country. In many ways, this is the most powerful and poignant part of the film as young men such as Hamoud, Hassan and Hussam can only watch what is happening in Raqqa in impotent despair and fury. There's one sequence in which the violent fate of a relative is revealed that is beyond heart-rending.

I suppose you could say, other than telling us that Assad and ISIS are bad, City Of Ghosts neglects to ask the members of RBSS what they'd ultimately like to see happen in their country and whether they, themselves, have connections to any of the country's multifarious groups or factions. Their thoughts would have been useful, I think, especially to a western audience struggling to understand what is actually going on in Syria. Still, in 90 minutes and change, Heineman does more to capture the sheer madness and malevolence of ISIS than anything I've yet seen. It's an astonishingly ugly but essential film.   

Under the gun: Citizen journalists battle Islamic State in Syria 

I'm not sure I've had as much fun in a cinema this year as I did watching Kong: Skull Island (DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD) WWW. As a kid, the original King Kong (1933) was my favourite film (well, tied with Jason And The Argonauts), and it was not only my first monster movie but also the one that taught me about injustice (how else would you describe the great ape's fate at the end?). There's a hint of that here too, as bitter Vietnam vet Samuel L Jackson and his gung-ho helicopter squadron drop bombs all over Kong's home, Skull Island, then launch further assaults against the mighty gorilla when he hits back hard.

It's 1973, Richard Nixon is in the White House and the Vietnam War has just ended. Bill Randa (John Goodman) and Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) – representatives of a top-secret organisation called Monarch – persuade the US government to fund an expedition to Skull Island, a mysterious, uncharted land mass in the Pacific Ocean. Accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Jackson), former SAS tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), pacifist photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), and battalions of soldiers and scientists, they hope to secretly flush out something 'interesting'. However, they get rather more than they bargained for – Kong, a 100-foot ape, who is very pissed off.

There's a definite and deliberate Apocalypse Now vibe to Jordan Vogt-Roberts' movie and that, plus some very fine action set-pieces, comfortably make it one of 2017's best blockbusters. This monster-movie-meets-war-film is certainly a big step up from Gareth Edwards' Godzilla (2014), the first instalment in the new 'Monsterverse', with far better enemies (the nightmarish skullcrawlers) and a couple of compelling characters, of which Jackson's Colonel Kurtz-esque soldier is one, and John C Reilly's loveable, long-lost pilot is another. If there's a criticism, though, it's that the cast is rather too large and some of them either get lost in the crowd (Brooks' monster hunter and Tian Jing's biologist) or drawn too thinly to be truly memorable (Hiddleston's SAS tracker and Larson's photojournalist). 

Gorilla warfare: Kong channels Apocalypse Now 

French conspiracy thriller Scribe (VOD and cinemas) WW is two-thirds impressive but ultimately undermined by a rushed and muddled final act. Clocking in at barely an hour and a half, this is that rare modern film; one that could have actually done with an extra 10 or 15 minutes to let its various twists and turns breathe a bit.

François Cluzet (The Intouchables) is Duval, an unemployed former accountant and recovering alcoholic who, out of the blue, is offered a mysterious new job. He is instructed to go to a room every day and transcribe conversations gleaned from telephone taps. Striving to get back on his feet, Duval looks this particular gift horse in the mouth and soon regrets it. What initially seems innocuous, takes on a darker tone, when he hears something he shouldn't have. Cue various spooks and wrong 'uns on his tail as he fights to stay one step ahead of a grisly fate.

Thomas Kruithof's film lays out its groundwork expertly, drawing on '70s Hollywood touchstones such as The Conversation and Marathon Man as it builds tension and ushers in its subplots. But then disaster, as Kruithof keeps adding elements to the story, until the whole thing becomes ungainly and keels over like a drunken Frenchman on Bastille Day. At times, I even found myself thinking, "Hang on, who's that bloke working for again?' and 'I haven't the faintest idea what all this stuff about kidnapping and hostages is.' Worse still, diminutive Duval becomes the 'worm that turned', suddenly growing a pair of big brass balls as he threatens to transform into the unlikeliest of action heroes. Ultimately, Scribe doesn't live up to the elegance of its original French title, La Mécanique de L'ombre (The Mechanics Of The Shadow) and that's a shame.

Mr Write: thriller Scribe runs out of steam before the end

Finally, there's To The Bone (Netflix) W, a soppy and unconvincing drama about anorexia, written and directed by Buffy The Vampire Slayer alum, Marti Noxon. The promising Lily Collins (Okja, Rules Don't Apply) is Ellen, a young woman battling the disease who seeks treatment under Keanu Reeves' unconventional doctor at a live-in rehab clinic. I know the subject matter is one very personal to Noxon but that doesn't make her film any less self-conscious or limp. Characters exchange clunky dialogue that no one would ever say in real life, and Alex Sharp's Luke – a weird and wacky Brit – is so annoying you wish the reassuringly wooden Reeves would turn into John Wick and put a bullet between his eyes.

The whole thing reaches a climax of cringe when Ellen allows her estranged mother (Lili Taylor) to feed her milk from a bottle, while she sits on her lap like a baby. If you're interested in seeing a better film about the same subject, give Sanna Lenken's My Skinny Sister (2015) a go instead.

Slim pickings: To The Bone is well intentioned but cringeworthy

What I shall be watching this week: Last time I took the kids to watch a Christopher Nolan film – 2014's Interstellar – they said it was the most boring movie they'd ever seen. Let's hope we have a bit more luck with Dunkirk.

My 25 favourite films of 2017 so far: Part One #25-11

The first six months of the year pretty much flew by, didn't they? It doesn't seem like five minutes ago that it was January and I was sat in my local multiplex watching A Monster Calls - my first new movie of 2017. Since then we've had the usual parade of the good, the bad and the downright terrible (I'm looking at you Assassin's Creed). This is Part One of my top 25, with Part Two - featuring my top 10 - following tomorrow. If you see anything you violently disagree with, feel free to let me have it in the comments below...

To qualify for inclusion, films had to have been released into UK cinemas between 1 January-30 June 2017. Just because a film was released in the US or other territory last year doesn't preclude it from inclusion on this list. Movies that went straight to DVD, Blu-ray or VOD (including releases exclusive to Netflix and Amazon Prime) are not eligible for inclusion...

25. Frantz
Director: Francois Ozon UK release date: 12 May
Haunting post-WWI drama from prolific French director Ozon (The New Girlfriend). A young German woman (Paula Beer), still in mourning for her dead fiancé, meets a mysterious Frenchman (Adrien Rivoire) at his grave. He has a devastating secret and the way Ozon handles that revelation and its consequences is never less than utterly compelling.    

24. Their Finest
Director: Lone Scherfig UK release date: 21 April
Gemma Arterton's best role in years sees her signed up as a screenwriter for Allied propaganda films during WWII. In this sexist milieu, she is assigned the task of writing the 'slop' (i.e. dialogue for women). Suffice to say, she soon shakes things up in an absorbing book adaptation that nicely balances broad comedy and heart-rending drama.

23. My Life As A Courgette
Director: Claude Barras UK release date: 2 June
Beautifully-realised animation from France about a young boy - the titular Courgette - sent to a children's home after the death of his alcoholic mother. Barras's film (with a screenplay by Girlhood's Céline Schiamma) handles some incredibly heavy issues with sensitivity, warmth and winning humour. Lovely.

22. Hacksaw Ridge
Director: Mel Gibson UK release date: 27 January
Gibson returned from the Hollywood naughty step with this powerful World War II epic about Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), an army medic and staunch pacifist who refused to take a gun into the hell of Okinawa. Garfield's terrific, while the visceral nature of the battle scenes make his character's point about the horrors of combat better than any dialogue ever could.  

21. Colossal
Director: Nacho Vigalondo UK release date: 19 May
Alcoholic Anne Hathaway realises she is psychically linked to a monster rampaging through South Korea in this odd and highly original indie flick. Cut through the Kaiju hijinks, though, and Vigalondo's film is really about the affect self-destructive behaviour can have on those around you. Jason Sudeikis provides the toxic masculinity to give things an extra kick.

20. Suntan

Director: Argyris Papadimitropoulos UK release date: 28 April
Unsettling drama about an emotionally disturbed doctor (the excellent Makis Papadimitriou) on a small Greek island falling in love with a beautiful young tourist initially happy to play along with his obsession. An odd but satisfying mix of pitch-black humour with deluded middle-aged men in its sights and sheer, unadulterated creepiness.

19. Kong: Skull Island
Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts UK release date: 9 March

The only blockbuster this year that had me gripped from beginning to end. A weird amalgam of monster movie and war film (Apocalypse Now's influence looms large), it may have wafer-thin characters but more than makes up for that deficiency with some terrific action set-pieces and a kickass Kong.

18. Neruda
Director: Pablo Larrain UK release date: 7 April
Off-kilter but visually sumptuous biopic of the famous Chilean poet, Nobel Prize winner and communist. Luis Gnecco's titular lead becomes a fugitive in his own country during the 1940s as he is pursued by Gael García Bernal's disturbed police officer. Larrain (Jackie) takes all sorts of liberties with real events, while his portrayal of Neruda is enjoyably unflattering.

17. Mindhorn
Director: Sean Foley UK release date: 5 May
Julian Barratt (The Mighty Boosh) is a washed-up former TV detective in this Isle Of Man-set comedy which comes on like a cross between Bergerac and The Six Million Dollar Man. Some critics suggested it petered out before the end but I think the opposite is true - the crazier it gets, the funnier it gets. Sequel, please!

16. T2 Trainspotting
Director: Danny Boyle UK release date: 27 January
Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie and Renton are reunited on Edinburgh's mean streets after 20 years in a nostalgia-soaked meditation on ageing and coming to terms with your past. It's certainly not as good as Boyle's original movie from 1996 but is extremely funny, endlessly entertaining and, ultimately, oddly moving.

15. Certain Women
Director: Kelly Reichardt UK release date: 3 March
The Meek's Cutoff director presents three loosely-linked stories about the lives of four very different women, the best of which sees a naïve young Native American (Lily Gladstone) desperately trying to forge a romantic connection with Kristin Stewart's oblivious teacher. Gorgeous-looking, low-key, and poignant.

14. Free Fire
Director: Ben Wheatley UK release date: 31 March
It turns out a 90-minute shoot-out in a filthy warehouse between two gangs of inept criminals is a hell of a lot better on the big screen than it sounds on paper. Michael Smiley, Sharlto Copley, Brie Larson, and Armie Hammer are all on top form in a violent and riotously funny piece of work that doesn't owe quite as much to Reservoir Dogs as you'd imagine.

13. The Levelling
Director: Hope Dickson Leach UK release date: 12 May
Compellingly dark British drama about a young woman (Ellie Kendrick) returning to her family's farm following the suicide of her younger brother. Director Leach conjures an atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia which is only a hop, skip and a jump away from proper horror. These are helpless people caught in life's vicious crosshairs.

12. Silence
Director: Martin Scorsese UK release date: 1 January
Based on Shûsaku Endô's novel, Silence sees two Catholic missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) searching for their lost mentor (Liam Neeson) in 17th Century Japan, at a time of great religious persecution. Bloated, self-important and old-fashioned? Maybe, but nobody does heavyweight epic with quite as much pizzazz as the Goodfellas director.

11. Lady Macbeth
Director: William Oldroyd UK release date: 28 April
The title's a warning about what to expect in this merciless Victorian-set drama about a young woman sold to a wealthy landowner as his wife. While he's away, she commences an affair with a stable-hand and, soon emboldened, her thoughts turn to darker matters. A blisteringly bleak meditation on class, race and sex based on the Nikolai Leskov novel.

Your Week In Film will return next week. Look out for #10-1 here tomorrow...

Kong: Skull Island - The Rough & The Smooth

Going ape: King Kong's back and appears to be in Apocalypse Now

Now everyone has had the chance to see Kong: Skull Island, here's my review. Please note, it contains big spoilers and goes on a bit...

Kong: Skull Island

Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson

Running time: 1 hour 58 mins

It's 1973, Richard Nixon is in the White House and the Vietnam War has just ended. Bill Randa (John Goodman) and Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) - representatives of a top-secret organisation called Monarch - persuade the US government to fund an expedition to Skull Island, a mysterious, uncharted land mass in the Pacific Ocean. Accompanied by 'Nam vet Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L Jackson), former SAS tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), pacifist photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), and battalions of soldiers and scientists, they drop explosive charges all over the island purportedly to help map the place but secretly to flush out something 'interesting'. However, they get rather more than they bargained for as, disturbed by the wanton destruction of his home, Kong - a 100-foot ape - attacks the fleet of helicopters in which they'd travelled to the island, killing almost everyone on board.

Split into two groups, following Kong's attack - one led by Packard, the other by Conrad - they trek through dense jungle and other inhospitable terrain, encountering a variety of giant creatures along the way, including Kong's arch-enemies the skullcrawlers. Conrad's group also stumbles across Hank Marlow (John C Reilly), a US airman who has been stranded on the island since being shot down during World War II. Marlow has spent the last 29 years living with a tribe native to the island - the Iwis - and he reveals how Kong is not only their god but the last of his kind after the skullcrawlers killed the rest of his family.

The survivors plan to escape Skull Island and, thanks to the ingenuity of Marlow and a long-dead Japanese pilot shot down at the same time he was, have the means. But Packard is going nowhere - not until he's gained revenge on Kong for the deaths of his men...

Life of Reilly: John C is downed WWII airman Hank Marlow

THE ROUGH

1. I tried - and mostly succeeded - to remain spoiler free for the movie, which meant I had no idea there was a post-credits scene, and managed to miss it the first time I saw the film. These tacked-on-at-the-end bits have become a real pain. After I've sat through a movie, all I want to do is get out of the cinema as soon as possible, not remain in my seat for another 10 minutes while loads of other people rumble past and over me on their way to the exit. I know moviegoers who like to stick around for the credits because they think it's polite to check out all those who worked on the film. But I've already shown my appreciation for those people's efforts, by buying a ticket to see their work up on the screen. Maybe cinema managers could put a little sign on the door as you enter that says: "Please note: This movie has a post-credits scene - remain in your seat to the very end."

2. There are, perhaps, far too many characters, and quite a few of them aren't fleshed out nearly as much as they should be. This is forgivable with some of the supporting players but rather less so when it comes to the film's stars. Tom Hiddleston's Conrad, is posh, English, tough and, erm, that's about it, while John Goodman's monster hunter gets one good line (see below), delivers a whole lot of exposition, and is then eaten. Brie Larson's anti-war photojournalist Mason Weaver isn't a lot better served and I suspect discussions about her character might have gone something like this...

STUDIO EXECUTIVE: So, Brie's character... what's she like?

WRITER: She wears a tight-fitting grey vest that shows off her ample bosom.

STUDIO EXECUTIVE: I see... and is this tight-fitting grey vest ever... wet?

WRITER: Sure, once or twice.
STUDIO EXECUTIVE: Cool - this is gold. And does she ever run about in this tight-fitting grey vest?
WRITER: Yeah.

STUDIO EXECUTIVE: Kid, you're a frickin' genius. Add another 10 bucks to whatever we're paying you.

Vest in show: Brie Larson is photojournalist Mason Weaver

3. On the subject of under-utilised characters, there were times I actually forgot Corey Hawkins' seismologist Houston Brooks and Tian Jing's biologist San Lin were even in the film. It was as if they were only included so they could pop up again in the post-credits sequence as agents of Monarch without audiences wondering who the heck they were.

4. As the US army choppers fly through thick cloud and violent storms to reach Skull Island, Jackson gets to deliver one of his trademark blood 'n' thunder speeches - it's meant to be the story of Icarus, I think. Unfortunately, I could hardly hear a single word of it over the helicopter blades and rumbles of thunder.

5. Cognisant of the criticism 2014's Godzilla deservedly received for showing too little of the monster, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts clearly decided to go in the completely opposite direction. Not only was Kong front and centre in all the trailers but, even if you'd been able to avoid them, he appears in the first five minutes of the film, looming up out of the jungle gloom as a far younger Hank Marlow and his Japanese enemy fight to the death. A little more mystery might have been appreciated.

A monster calls: John Goodman is Monarch agent, Bill Randa

6. So how does Skull Island work as an ecosystem exactly? There are a lot of normal-sized creatures (birds and suchlike), but also Kong and the skullcrawlers (great name for a band). We also see a huge spider, a massive water buffalo, a colossal octopus, and a giant stick insect thing. But only one of each. Reilly's character tells us there are also giant ants and, in one scene, we see a triceratops' skull. Dinosaurs, monsters and regular animals, all living on an island together; some in abundance, some seemingly one of a kind. What gives?

7. Disappointingly, The Dickies' You Drive Me Ape (You Big Gorilla) is nowhere to be found on the movie's soundtrack. Setting it in 1973 is no excuse.

Punk monkeys: The Dickies going ape

THE SMOOTH

1. The sound of old-fashioned fighter planes and their rat-a-tat guns in the film's excellent pre-credits scene - suddenly I was seven years old again and picturing Kong standing atop the Empire State Building. A very evocative opening.

2. I love the idea that someone thought, "You know what a new King Kong movie needs more than anything else? To be a bit more like Apocalypse Now." And that seemingly mad idea works like a charm here. The snazzy IMAX poster at the top of this review and the fact Skull Island was filmed in Vietnam are really just the tip of the iceberg, Francis Ford Coppola's '70s classic was clearly a big influence on great swathes of the film - the choppers, the evocative rock soundtrack (Black Sabbath, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival), the jungle, the napalm, the big, blazing sun, even the fact Hiddleston's character - Conrad - is clearly named after Joseph Conrad upon whose Heart Of Darkness, Apocalypse Now is based. And, of course, Packard has gone full Colonel Kurtz crazy by the end of the film.

Gorilla marketing: The official Skull Island trailer

3. “Washington will never be as screwed up as it is now,” deadpans Goodman in an amusingly ironic line at the beginning of the film. Not all of the dialogue sparkles but, every now and again, the film's screenwriting team serve up a real zinger.

4. The look of searing hatred and defiance Jackson shoots the giant ape after the creature has wiped out most of his soldiers in the film's bravura 'Choppers v Kong' battle. Few actors can bring that sort of presence or intensity to bear. In fact, Jackson is the best thing about Kong: Skull Island, his character Preston Packard comfortably its most complicated and compelling player. He's a man clearly defined by conflict and visibly unhappy at the end of the war ("We didn't lose the war, we abandoned it"). Genuinely reticent to return to the States, the chance to beat Kong (after losing to a rather different sort of Cong) is, for him, manna from heaven.

Pulp friction: Samuel L Jackson is vengeful 'Nam vet Packard

5. Reilly's stranded - and slightly crazy - World War II airman Marlow runs Jackson very close in the film's MVP stakes. The fact he's been stuck on the island for 29 years makes him a genuinely sympathetic, even heroic, character (his wife and son don't know if he's alive or dead), but the fact he knows nothing of 1973's 'modern world' is frequently well utilised for light relief. His bemused reaction to hearing David Bowie for the first time is a particular highlight, and you feel like punching the air when he gets a well deserved, emotionally upbeat ending.

6. The human tribe that lives on Skull Island - the Iwis - are refreshingly dull. Lesser filmmakers than Vogt-Roberts (who cut his teeth in TV and with indie hit The Kings Of Summer) would have had Riley's character 'Americanise' them. They'd have been playing baseball, tooting away on improvised jazz instruments, and the whole thing would have been oh-so-cute and thoroughly cringe-making. I really like the fact they are pretty much as Marlow had found them decades before - unknowable, strange and just a little bit threatening.

7. Kong's monstrous foes on the island are christened 'skullcrawlers' by Reilly's character ("Cause it sounds neat"). The revolting creatures - part-crocodile, part-snake, all total bastard - are truly the stuff of nightmares and I hope we see them again.

8. Visual effects have become so ridiculously good in the last couple of years (the likes of The Jungle Book and The BFG seem to have pushed everyone to up their game), that we're now rather blasé about them. But the effects artists deserve a big shout out here because their work is flawless. Not just in the action-packed battle scenes but in smaller ways too. I was particularly struck by the soulfulness of Kong's eyes - you could not just see but feel the pain and sadness in them.

Open wide: Skull Island's skullcrawlers are the stuff of nightmares 

9. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1933 King Kong didn't just thrill me as a kid, it was perhaps the first film that managed to break my heart too. As well as being genuinely upset by the movie's brutal climax, for the first time in my life, I'd glimpsed injustice. I really didn't like the way it felt. And the guy at the end of the movie had it wrong. It wasn't "beauty that killed the beast", it was greedy, nasty, savage human beings. Although director Vogt-Roberts can't match the original's emotional gut-punch (Kong wins and lives this time), when Packard announces his plan to kill the giant ape, that sense of injustice came flooding back. "Blimey," I thought to myself, "This bloke really gets it!" 

10. As much as I object to after-credits scenes, at least this one is worth the wait. Firstly because it finally gives Corey Hawkins (as seismologist Houston Brooks) and Tian Jing (as biologist San Lin) something to do but mainly for the line "Kong is not the only king...", and that final spine-shuddering roar. Wow.

Wild thing: Kong battles monsters and men on Skull Island

11. Skull Island is an awful lot better than Legendary's first Monsterverse movie, Gareth Edwards' dismal Godzilla. It's so good, in fact, I'm now very much looking forward to 2019's Godzilla: King Of Monsters and the following year's Kong v Godzilla. At this point, I feel I should mention a 'difficult' Romanian arthouse film, lest you think I've taken leave of my senses. Cristian Mungiu's Beyond The Hills. There you go...

Result: Rough 7 Smooth 11 - it's a comfortable win for a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit imperfect, blockbuster.