Ant-Man’s barnstorming finale can’t disguise the fact Marvel’s movie formula is growing noticeably stale

Review

Ant-Man

Director: Peyton Reed
Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll
Running time: 117mins

Exactly when did Marvel stop creating compelling villains? I only ask because the bad guy in Ant-Man – Darren Cross/Yellowjacket (Corey Stoll) – is a 24-carat dullard. He’s a one-dimensional evildoer, whose only character traits are arrogance and sneering. If he turned up in an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Daredevil you’d simply yawn and see what else was on. For such an unimaginative, lacklustre character to be front and centre in a multi-million-dollar film is pretty much unforgiveable.

Come to think of it, quite a few of Marvel’s movie villains have failed to hit the mark recently: even James Spader couldn’t make Ultron interesting in an Avengers film actually named after the character, while Ronan and Nebula were the weakest elements in the otherwise terrific Guardians of the Galaxy. Nor was Christopher Eccleston’s Malekith in Thor 2: The Dark World anything to write home about. I vaguely remember Robert Redford being quite good in the last Captain America movie but I couldn’t tell you his character’s name even with a gun to my head. Yes, I get that Loki and the Winter Soldier are great bad-guys… and that’s precisely why they stick out like a pair of sore thumbs right now.

Could it be Marvel are so distracted by introducing new characters, crossovers (Ant-Man meets the Falcon here) and cranking out movie after movie that they are neglecting the very thing that gives their heroes meaning in the first place – namely, villains that are scary, charismatic and memorable? Waiting a couple more years for Thanos to make his move frankly isn’t good enough.

In Ant-Man, Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang, an anti-corporate burglar, fresh out of prison and desperate to go straight for the sake of his young daughter, Cassie. However, when post-clink life repeatedly kicks him in the shins, he soon falls back into bad habits, agreeing to rob the home of wealthy inventor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). When successfully cracking Pym’s almost-impregnable vault turns up not jewels and cash but a weird rubber suit, Lang’s bad luck looks set to continue. However, it turns out the whole thing has been a set-up and that Pym and daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) want to turn him into a size-shifting superhero, code-named Ant-Man, and recruit him to their cause.

Years before Pym had created a shrinking formula then hid it in case it fell into the wrong hands. But villainous Darren Cross (a name more redolent of a Premier League midfielder than a world-class super villain) is now in charge of Pym’s old company and, worse still, is close to perfecting his own version of the miraculous potion with which he plans to do bad things. Ant-Lang – plus the army of insects he telepathically controls – must break into the company’s HQ and destroy the formula to save the world.

Peyton Reed’s film takes an age to get going. Mildly amusing comedy moments and Rudd’s easygoing charm only get you so far when the exposition comes thick and fast, and the plot creaks like one of Stan Lee’s increasingly unwelcome cameos. Worse still, Douglas and Bobby Cannavale (as the partner of Lang’s ex-wife) are wasted in lightweight supporting roles when either one would have made a great villain here. Cannavale is an extremely versatile actor whose finest role to date came not in a movie but as a monstrous senior doctor in the Showtime drama Nurse Jackie – his Dr Mike Cruz was a pent-up ball of anguish and spite who’d have eaten Yellowjacket for breakfast. And just imagine Douglas – that wicked twinkle in his eye – channelling a bit of Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko or a smidgeon of ‘D-Fens’ from Falling Down, and you realise Marvel may have missed a trick…

I could also have done without two of the only people of colour in the entire film – Michael Peña and Tip ‘T.I.’ Harris, playing Ant-Man's buddies/back-up – being used as little more than lazy comic relief. As Richard Lawson's review in Vanity Fair had it: "At times it seems that the only thing funny about them is that they’re not white." Meanwhile, elements of the plot – bald bad guy takes over hero’s company and attempts to use its technology for evil – seem to have been lifted straight out of Iron Man (still, incidentally, the best Marvel movie by a considerable distance).

Thankfully, a bravura final half-hour or so really pulls Ant-Man’s fat out of the fire, including as it does three visually stunning set-pieces. The punch-up between Lang and Yellowjacket in Cassie’s bedroom towards the end –  featuring both a Thomas the Tank Engine toy set and a giant ant – is easily the movie’s finest moment, mixing as it does deranged creativity, laugh-out-loud comedy and pulse-pounding action to impressive effect.

Either side of that, we get the two miniaturised antagonists beating the crap out of each other in a briefcase falling from a helicopter and Lang becoming so tiny he enters a bizarre ‘quantum universe’ (disappointingly he doesn’t encounter the Incredible Shrinking Man there). Any one of the three sequences would have been a treat but placed together – pretty much one after the other – provides a genuine rush and a terrific finale.

Most impressive of all, though, is that, unlike every other blogger and critic on the planet, I made it through my entire review without once mentioning original director Edgar Wright. Oops!

Rating: WW

Ant-Man is in cinemas now

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful

WWW = Worthy

WW = Watchable

W = Woeful

Review: We may have reached 'peak zombie' but Maggie – starring Arnold Schwarzenegger – has both depth and humanity

**This review contains spoilers in its final paragraph**

Maggie
Director: Henry Hobson
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson
Running time: 95 mins

Oh dear god, there’s hundreds of them. Don’t look back, just run. So many, so many… overwhelming... no escape from them... they’re bloody everywhere. Yes, I think it is safe to say I’ve had my fill of zombie-related movies, TV shows, comic-books, novels and video games. We have reached peak zombie and the walking dead (and, indeed, The Walking Dead) have delighted me quite enough, thanks.

Unfortunately, while there’s a buck to be earned and a sub-genre to be milked dry, the conveyor belt dedicated to churning out all things undead and Romero-esque continues at full pelt. Hence Maggie, which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Wade Vogel, a farmer whose teenage daughter (Abigail Breslin) has a zombie bite and is now slowly, irrevocably turning into one of them. At what point will Arnie say “Hasta La Vista, Maggie” and pump her full of lead as the local coppers are pressuring him to? Or will the big galoot fail in his duty, allowing Mags to have his wife (Joely Richardson) and two younger kids for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Despite my reservations, Henry Hobson’s film succeeds in doing something a little bit different to the usual ‘survivors band together and are slowly killed off either by the undead or each other’ routine. Maggie is set after Zombageddon and humanity is slowly recovering. Those infected and ‘on the turn’ are quarantined, although, bizarrely, the doctors at the medical facility where Wade finds his daughter hand her over knowing full well she’ll turn into a flesh-munching monster in the coming days. It’s about as naive as returning a member of ISIS to his family on the off-chance he might see the error of his ways and set up a splinter faction called NICESIS dedicated to popping to the shops for old ladies and feeding stray kittens.

Because the fight against the zombie hordes has been largely won, we don’t see many of them and that’s a very good thing. When the undead do pop up it makes their appearance that much more impactful and chilling. In fact, one of the strongest scenes comes fairly early on when a zombified father and daughter stray onto the Vogels’ land. It turns out Wade knew these people – now human-shaped necrotic meat – and you really feel his horror and sorrow. It isn’t the fact they are now wretchedly degraded killing machines that we first notice but the fact they were once just a dad and his little kid. In its desire to make everything bigger, scarier and crazier, the zombie genre has lost those small and personal moments but Maggie is full of them.

Whilst admirable, Hobson’s low-key approach does mean his film is slow at times. Perhaps not Walking Dead season two slow but certainly in the same ball park. The longueurs are especially noticeable whenever Richardson’s character Caroline is on screen, an underwritten part (this is the Arnie and Abi show!) and one with which the British actress clearly struggles. The kindest thing you could say about her accent is that it is recognisably American. From precisely where in America is another matter though.

In place of Richardson, I’d like to have seen more of Maggie interacting with her friends – at least one of whom has also been bitten. There’s a powerful scene late in the film in which she shares a kiss with the boy and it’s a perfectly-judged melancholy moment full of ‘what might have been’. This is the life Maggie should have had; this is the life the zombie plague has now stolen from her.

Demonstrably, Maggie is a zombie film but you won’t find a single mention of the z-word anywhere in its 95-minute running time. You see, these aren’t zombies; they are victims of the Necroambulist virus (it’s so clumsy, even typing it made me wince). I’ll never know why creators do this. Look, you know they’re zombies, your cast and crew know they’re zombies, your audience knows they’re zombies, critics and bloggers like me know they’re zombies, my cat and next door’s goldfish know their zombies. So why not just call them zombies, eh? Is it merely a screenwriter trying to be clever (and failing), or is there still a variation on the old ‘cultural cringe’ at play here – despite the rise and rise of nerd culture, it seems copping to the fact you’re making a zombie flick is still a bit embarrassing to some.

It’s refreshing to see Schwarzenegger for once playing a human being rather than a cartoonish facsimile of one. He’s pretty good here, actually – still a badass (what were you expecting, flower arranging and Reiki?) but a vulnerable, sympathetic one. He conveys a palpable sense of loss as he sees his daughter slipping away from him piece by piece. And that’s the most notable part of the film – it’s rare to see the ‘zombism as terminal illness’ analogy explored this deftly.

Hobson brings a forensic quality to Maggie’s deterioration – we see her mind, body and humanity surrendering itself to the affliction in small, heartbreaking increments. One of the strongest scenes sees her freak out when she discovers a maggot feasting on her rotting flesh, in another she cuts off one of her fingers after accidentally breaking it. Her shift away from humanity takes a while, and it’s painful and it’s ugly but Breslin – her character battling every inch of the way – sells it all very convincingly. 

Considering he has the most prominent and celebrated movie action hero of the last 40 years as his main star, Hobson sidesteps the obvious fighting ’n’ shooting ending. Forget Arnie, Maggie is all about a brave young woman taking control of a terrible situation and refusing to surrender to it without a fight. Ultimately, though, she loses, accepts her fate and leaves this life entirely on her own terms. The film is all the stronger for it.

Rating: WWW

Maggie is in UK cinemas from July 24

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful

Review: Jurassic World has thrills aplenty but lacks charm

Jurassic World

Director: Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio
Running time: 124mins
As much a remake of Jurassic Park as it is a direct sequel, Jurassic World cannot help but suffer by comparison with the original film. Park had warmth and wonder, a bevy of intriguing and likeable characters, plus it all felt so new (that “Welcome… to Jurassic Park” scene (below) still takes the breath away). Twenty-two years on and a couple of unfairly maligned follow-ups later and it’s like we’ve come full circle. Unfortunately, this time, too much seems second hand and worn around the edges.

The park of Steven Spielberg’s movie is now a massive Disneyworld-style enterprise situated on John Hammond’s original Isla Nublar, off Costa Rica. Dino-fatigue has long since set in amongst the public, so, to keep visitor numbers high, hybrid creatures have been created using the DNA of a variety of dinosaurs and other animals. One such beast – the Indominus Rex (a kind of T-Rex on steroids) – is the movie’s big bad. Two boys (both irritating) arrive on the island to spend quality time with their aunt (Bryce Dallas Howard as the theme park’s underwritten operations manager) just as the Indominus escapes and Velociraptor-wrangler Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) steps in to try and save the day (and, unfortunately, the kids).

Pratt’s transformation from amusing sitcom schlub to A-list movie star has been enormous fun to witness, and even though he now has abs of steel and fights galactic super villains and dinosaurs, there’s a part of him that will always be out-of-shape moocher Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation. Indeed, it’s that everyman side to him that makes Pratt so watchable. Here, his relationship with the team of raptors he’s forged a bond with provides many of the film’s best moments, including a genuinely exciting night-time hunt for the Indominus towards the end, and an earlier scene in which he attempts to save one of the park’s workers who has fallen into his scaly pals’ enclosure.

The climactic final battle is also a cracker, producing in me the same giddy rush I felt as a child seeing King Kong’s punch up with the T-Rex (below) for the first time. Additionally, there’s an intriguing subplot about the military wanting to weaponise the raptors for use on the battlefield and I really hope that’s something they properly explore in one of the inevitable sequels. Jurassic War does have a nice ring to it.

Alas, the film’s flaws are simply too big to ignore. Outside of Grady, the other characters are dull and one-dimensional (hubristic billionaire, nasty military man, tedious career woman, sulky teen), which might be more forgivable had not the original film given us the more fully realised Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), as well as Hammond himself (the late Sir Richard Attenborough). I understand why the makers of Jurassic World wanted a clean slate but the replacements simply aren’t up to the job. Director Trevorrow’s first feature – the wonderfully quirky indie comedy Safety Not Guaranteed – was very character-focused so it’s a surprise he hasn’t brought more of that sensibility to bear here.

Elsewhere, many of the thrills feel awfully familiar (we’re off to save the kids… again), while constant references to the original film only serve to highlight this one's shortcomings. Jurassic Park had genuine charm to accompany its thrills and spills, Jurassic World has only noise and spectacle. Even the Indominus itself is surprisingly unimaginative. With a whole world of fictional monsters to draw upon for inspiration (Godzilla, Cloverfield, Pacific Rim), surely they could have come up with something a bit more interesting than a slightly bigger and meaner tyrannosaur.

Rating: WW

Jurassic World is in cinemas now

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful

Review: San Andreas - Cheesy and ridiculous but hard to dislike

San Andreas

Director: Brad Peyton

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Paul Giamatti

Running time: 114mins

Despite its cringe-making dialogue, predictable story arc, massive plot contrivances, and the cheesiest ending in cinema history, I found it impossible to dislike San Andreas. I’m a sucker for disaster movies – everything from Earthquake to Melancholia – but was nevertheless impressed by the sheer scale and intensity of the destruction so artfully rendered here. Unlike many CGI-heavy films, you can see where every single cent of its $110million budget went.

Dwayne Johnson – charismatic and likeable as always – is Ray, a fearless rescue-chopper pilot. The death of daughter Mallory in an accident has led to the collapse of his marriage to Emma (Carla Gugino), who is now shacked up with oily wrong ’un Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd). Meanwhile, professor of earthquake-related stuff Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) too late realises a super-huge mega-quake is due to strike America’s West Coast – right along the infamous San Andreas fault in fact – and that he must stick around to provide exposition and the occasional grave look to camera. When the ‘Big One’ hits, Ray zips off in his chopper to save Emma, as well as Blake (Alexandra Daddario), his other daughter, who is every bit as plucky as her dad and looks considerably better in a bikini.

I make light of the plot, but there’s real jeopardy and proper tension in many of the scenes here. In the opening 10 minutes, before we even get to the earthquake, we see Johnson and his copter crew attempt the rescue of a young woman whose car has skidded off the road and plunged into a narrow ravine. It’s armrest-gripping, nail-biting stuff filled with moments when you seriously wonder if all concerned aren’t going to meet a very messy end indeed. But director Peyton (who teamed up with Johnson for 2012’s Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) is just setting out his stall at this point, as if to say, “You think this is tense, just you wait…”

And, of course, what follows is sequence after sequence packed full of skyscrapers being rent asunder, shattered glass and pulverised concrete raining death and destruction down upon all and sundry, tsunamis as big as houses, the earth splitting open like a burst melon – and a host of beautifully choreographed, nick-of-time escapes for our hero and his family. Peyton really keeps the action moving too, quickly getting Johnson out of his chopper – into a car, into a plane, into a boat – as the story becomes a straight-no-chaser race against time to save his daughter from a watery grave.

I really don’t like 3D – if I wanted to reduce the brightness of something I was watching by 25 per cent, I’d simply wear a veil – so I have no idea how San Andreas looked in that format. In 2D, though, it’s a real feast for the eyes. There’s a scene towards the end of the film when Johnson and Gugino are on a speedboat searching for Blake and it’s like something out of a dystopian sci-fi film in which global warming has melted the polar ice caps and the sea level has risen to engulf even our biggest cities. You really get a sense of the scale and madness of the devastation that has been wrought, and downtown San Francisco – a crumbling, flooded ruin – is the stuff of nightmares. 

San Andreas may be purest hokum and, ultimately, just another paean to the strength of the family (and America) but still I found its appetite for destruction pretty intoxicating.

Rating: WW

San Andreas is in cinemas now

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful

Reviews: Spy, Danny Collins

Spy

Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Jude Law
Running Time: 120mins

Melissa McCarthy is the most gifted comedy performer in Hollywood right now but, when the competition is Kevin Hart and Adam Sandler, it’s probably damning her with faint praise to say so. Here – in a third collaboration with writer/director Paul Feig following Bridesmaids and The Heat – she plays Susan Cooper, a mild-mannered CIA operative who, from the comfort of her office computer terminal, acts as eyes and ears for Bond-esque secret agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law). But when Fine is taken out of the picture, she steps up to take his place. On the trail of a portable nuclear device for sale to terrorists in Europe, Cooper – employing a variety of cringe-making aliases – butts heads with Rose Byrne’s Bulgarian crime boss Rayna Boyanov, while Jason Statham’s rogue agent Rick Ford keeps popping up to get under her feet and under her skin. 

McCarthy has the ability to elevate mediocre material (Tammy, Identity Thief) but she really shines when armed with a good script and a decent ensemble around her. She gets both here and her chemistry with Statham is particularly enjoyable, the pair swapping insults at 100 miles an hour as they nab many of the best scenes. Statham, star of The Transporter, Crank, and a lot of other movies involving fighting and explosions, plays it absolutely straight as the slow-witted, permanently-furious Ford, his boasts of hardman prowess becoming madder and madder (“I once drove a car off a freeway on top of a train while I was on fire”) and funnier and funnier (“This arm has been ripped off completely… and reattached with this fucking arm”). 

Yes, it’s all over the place and probably 20 minutes too long (the downside of having a big cast and globe-trotting plot), while a big twist towards the end doesn’t quite work; but despite all that Spy is hugely entertaining and, by mainstream Hollywood standards, utterly eccentric. At times it’s like Miranda Hart – playing Cooper’s best pal Nancy – has just wandered in from an episode of her sitcom and, when she teams up with rapper 50 Cent towards the end, the whole thing threatens to turn into some kind of weirdly niche BBC comedy/gangsta rap fan fiction. 

There have been a huge number of spins on the spy genre over the years (everything from Austin Powers and Kingsman: The Secret Service, to Mortdecai, TV's Archer, and the forthcoming Man from U.N.C.L.E reboot) but this is a definite cut above.

Rating: WWW

Danny Collins
Director: Dan Fogelman
Starring: Al Pacino, Annette Bening, Bobby Cannavale
Running time: 106mins

Two things I have a serious aversion to are gloopy sentimentality and John Lennon’s solo oeuvre. Unfortunately, Danny Collins is choc-a-block with both so my enjoyment of it was always going to be limited as a result. And that’s a shame because director Fogelman’s film has its moments. 

Pacino is the titular Collins, a veteran rock star who long ago sold his soul to mammon and now makes a very lucrative living regurgitating his greatest hits on tour. But a personal letter to him from the ex-Beatle – written 40 years ago when Collins was starting out but which never reached him – finally finds its way into the singer’s hands. Lennon’s advice contained in the missive confirms all of Danny’s worst fears: he has betrayed his art and himself, and he decides to cancel his current tour in one last, desperate bid to get back to his song-writing roots. He also tries to reconnect with his long-estranged son, Tom (Cannavale). 

There’s a good deal of winning humour in the film’s first half-hour and this is when it’s at its strongest. Pacino – a perfect mix of natural charm and world-weary ennui – is clearly having a ball and brilliantly bounces off Christopher Plummer (Danny’s manager), Katarina Cas (his young trophy wife), and Annette Bening (the manager of the hotel where he holes up to write new material). However, once Cannavale, his wife (Jennifer Garner) and their cute, ADHD-afflicted young daughter show up, we’re on a one-way trip to Schmaltzville. A revelation just over halfway through about one character’s failing health doesn’t help matters either. 

Music from the late Lennon’s post-Beatles career looms large and is woven in throughout the film. Sometimes it works well, like when Working Class Hero is used ironically to illustrate how absurd Danny’s opulent lifestyle has become, but more often it’s ridiculously on the nose. Collins has a bad day so we get Nobody Told Me, he’s feeling sad about his son so it's time for Beautiful Boy, he’s thinking of what might have been so up pops Imagine. They aren’t great songs in the first place (especially Imagine, the most shamelessly hypocritical ditty ever written) and having them shoehorned in does the film few favours. (In fact, seeing how the movie is based on something that actually happened to Brit folkie Steve Tilston, how come his music wasn’t used?).

Mercifully, Danny Collins finds its feet again in the final third as it refuses to do the predictable thing and serve up a neat and tidy happy ending. A missed opportunity in many respects, then, but a sporadically entertaining one with something to say about second chances and redemption.

Rating: WW

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful

Reviews: A Most Violent Year, Ex Machina, and Girlhood

A Most Violent Year
Director: JC Chandor
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo
Running Time: 125 mins
An atmospheric, slow-burning drama from Chandor (Margin Call, All is Lost) that somehow makes the business of selling heating oil utterly compelling. Set in New York in 1981 (to that point, statistically, the most violent year in the city’s history), Isaac plays immigrant businessman Abel Morales. He is successful and ambitious but lately has seen his drivers assaulted and other parts of his operation under attack, presumably from one or more of his many rivals. Worse still, he is being investigated for tax evasion and price fixing by Oyelowo’s Assistant District Attorney, while his mob-connected missus (Chastain on top Lady Macbeth form) is urging him to take robust action against the saboteurs. If A Most Violent Year was merely a portrait of a flawed man desperately trying to hang on to his sanity, dignity and humanity in the face of enormous provocation, it would already be a very good film. The fact it offers so much more than that – superb performances, a critique of US capitalism, a vivid recreation of the period, and sumptuously-shot views of wintry New York – is what makes it one of the finest dramas you’re likely to see all year. It would have been easy for Chandor – who also wrote the screenplay – to do the predictable thing and turn this into a typical mob drama full of wiseguys trading blows and bullets, but he’s far cannier than that and his film is all the better for it.

Rating: WWWW

A Most Violent Year is available on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD now

Ex Machina
Director: Alex Garland
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander
Running Time: 108 mins
The ridiculously versatile Oscar Isaac crops up again here, this time playing a reclusive and hubristic alcoholic who just also happens to be a brilliant tech billionaire. Isaac’s character Nathan chooses Caleb (Gleeson), one of his employees, to spend a week at the vast, sprawling and remote estate he calls home. There, Nathan shares the secret of what he has been working on – a walking, talking Artificial Intelligence named Ava (Vikander), upon whom he wants Caleb to perform a “Turing test” to gauge whether she has attained independent thought. Ex Machina is an expertly woven three-hander that starts off as an engaging bit of sci-fi exploring ideas of consciousness, humanity and attraction, but ends up as an out-and-out thriller. Garland’s directorial debut (if you discount his reported input into the disappointing Dredd) is a tense and tight affair, with some fine twists that invite you to try and figure out who is manipulating who and to what end. There are moments when it reminded me of last year’s Joaquin Phoenix/Scarlett Johansson AI movie, Her. But, in truth, Ex Machina is a far darker and altogether more satisfying piece of work.

Rating: WWW

Ex Machina is available on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD now

Girlhood

Director: Céline Sciamma
Starring: Karidja Touré, Assa Sylla, Lindsay Karamoh
Running time: 113 mins
French writer/director Sciamma’s film (her third) couldn’t be more different to last year’s similarly-titled Boyhood. Where Richard Linklater’s much-celebrated coming of age tale was all about a typical middle-class American kid and his family, Girlhood is set in and around one of the tough estates on the outskirts of Paris and focuses on the members of a black girl gang. Never mind growing up and going to college, in Sciamma’s story it’s all about surviving. Marieme (splendid newcomer Karidja Touré) escapes life’s hardships – no father, no job, insufficient schooling, and a bullying older brother – by hooking up with Lady (Assa Sylla), Adiatou (Lindsay Karamoh) and Fily (Mariétou Touré). They rechristen her Vic (for Victory) and together the four bond over trips into the city, shoplifting clothes, punch-ups, and, in one of the film’s finest moments, miming along to Rihanna’s sublime Diamonds. Of course, membership of the gang only offers temporary respite from Marieme’s troubles, a situation that comes to a head when she is physically attacked by her brother for sleeping with a boy then flees the estate to commence a short-lived life of crime. Sciamma – a white woman – has been criticised in some quarters for portraying black characters and their lives negatively but this is as much about the limited choices and pressures faced by young women as it is a film attempting to chronicle the black or immigrant experience in France. Besides, at no point does Girlhood seek to denigrate its main characters or their choices. In fact, Marieme is an empowering, inspiring creation; a strong, determined and resourceful young woman who simply refuses to buckle under the weight of a difficult life. Eventually, you know, she’ll be just fine.

Rating: WWWW

Girlhood is in cinemas now


Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful

Reviews: Tomorrowland: A World Beyond, Spring, and Clouds of Sils Maria

Tomorrowland: A World Beyond
Director: Brad Bird
Starring: George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson
Running time: 130 mins

Perhaps not up there with director Brad Bird’s very best work (Ratatouille, The Incredibles) but this old-fashioned, family-oriented, sci-fi romp is a lot of fun nevertheless. Clooney plays a curmudgeonly and reclusive scientist, Robertson the wide-eyed girl-genius who fetches up at his door searching for the titular destination – a futuristic utopian society constructed by Earth’s brightest and best that exists in a parallel dimension. I enjoyed Tomorrowland’s retro SF styling, its optimism (a better world is possible but we have to want it badly enough) and the fact it seemed influenced by some pretty impeccable work (a sprinkling of HG Wells here, a splash of Alan Moore’s Watchmen there). It also contains a couple of genuinely thrilling action set-pieces as good as anything you’ll see in other blockbusters this summer. That said, isn’t it time Hollywood called a moratorium on films featuring a “special one” who can save the world? It was getting old when Joss Whedon first did it with Buffy in 1992 but now seems incredibly hackneyed. At least Robertson excels in the saviour role, her Casey Newton character being everything you look for in a movie heroine; plucky, resourceful and hugely likeable.

Rating: WWW

Tomorrowland: A World Beyond is in cinemas now

Spring
Directors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Starring: Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker, Vanessa Bednar
Running Time: 109 mins

The likes of The Babadook, Honeymoon and Starry Eyes have managed to assuage my contempt for modern horror and that positive trend continues with this clever romantic spin on the genre. Pucci’s character Evan flees from the US to Italy when his life falls apart and he soon meets the beautiful and enigmatic Louise (Hilker). They start a passionate affair but his beloved ends the relationship as the terrifying secret she harbours becomes harder to conceal. So far, so seemingly formulaic, but writer/co-director Benson and partner-in-crime Moorhead effortlessly side-step the usual traps and tropes typical of such material. The horror element is ever-present and rears its head in the odd eye-popping sequence but it is never once allowed to overwhelm the characters or the mystery of what Louise really is (not an alien, werewolf, vampire or zombie, in case you were wondering). Although there’s a darkly humorous element to proceedings, this is no tongue-in-cheek, Life After Beth-style comedy. Spring is played straight for the most part and is all the better for it. It’s a thoughtful and atmospheric character piece with something to say about sticking by people even when they are at their absolute worst. Although the final 15 minutes veer into “love conquers all” territory, it is easy to forgive. These engaging characters have more than earned our indulgence. 

Rating: WWW

Spring is in cinemas now and available on DVD 

Clouds of Sils Maria
Director: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz
Running time: 124 mins

Fantasy and reality collide in this talky but fascinating drama featuring Binoche as a successful Hollywood actress asked to star again in the stage play – Maloja Snake – that launched her career 20 years before. Concerning a lesbian relationship between an older woman and her much younger employee, Maria Enders (Binoche) had originally played the role of the manipulative teen that drives her boss to suicide. Enders initially recoils when offered the part of the middle-aged woman in the revival but she and personal assistant Valentine (Stewart) nevertheless take to a remote region of the Alps to rehearse. Stewart – who improves as an actor with every film – imbues Val with nuance and depth, and matches old-stager Binoche every step of the way here. Maria and Val’s is an enigmatic relationship – intense, yes, but as friends and confidants rather than lovers. At times it’s hard to work out when they are actually conversing and when they are running lines from Maloja Snake. There is mutual dependence but distance and antagonism between them, too. Unpicking their complicated friendship is as tricky as unpicking the film’s many themes and ideas. Clouds is clearly a rumination on ageing, and how easily we are all replaced by younger, more dynamic up-and-comers (in Enders’ case it’s by enfant terrible Jo-Ann Ellis, played with twinkly-eyed glee by Moretz). But there’s more to it than that, including a distinct meta element that interrogates the way in which art and real life overlap. You end up wondering whether anyone or anything in the film is meant to be real; a thought that lingers every bit as long in the memory as the beautifully-shot Swiss Alps.

Rating: WWW

Clouds of Sils Maria is in cinemas now and also available on VOD

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful

Amazing stunts and eye-popping visuals make Mad Max: Fury Road the year’s first must-see blockbuster

Review

Mad Max: Fury Road
Director: George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult
Running time: 120 mins

The first Mad Max film since 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome (all together now: “We don’t need another heeerrrooo…”) is, essentially, a two-hour chase, albeit a visually stunning, incredibly imaginative one, with jaw-dropping stunt work and some impressive world building. It only has two settings – very fast and very loud – going all the way up to 11 from the get go… and staying there.

In an oil-depleted, radiation-ruined future dystopia, Hardy is Max Rockatansky, the tough but taciturn Road Warrior character originally played by Mel Gibson all those years ago. He is captured by the War Boys, soldiers loyal to Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne – Toecutter in 1979’s first film), a fearsome warlord who “owns” the local water supply and uses that fact to keep his downtrodden subjects fearful and supine.

Max escapes and makes common cause with Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a one-armed badass who has betrayed Joe, stolen his gargantuan “war rig” and struck out for the “Green Place”, a land of plenty that supposedly exists somewhere beyond the rad-ravaged wasteland. To enrage him further, Furiosa has liberated Joe’s five “wives” – one of whom is heavily pregnant with his child. He – and a bizarre army of ne’er do wells – gives chase.

Those who know their British comic-books will immediately recognise Brendan McCarthy’s twisted imagination at play in every frame here. Whether he was drawing Spider-Man, Judge Dredd, Paradax or Freakwave, the movie’s co-writer and chief visionary always had an uncanny ability to bring the weird in a way few other artists could match. That sensibility looms large in Fury Road, creating a world that you wouldn’t want to visit but one that is beautifully-realised and easy to believe in. You can practically feel the desert heat on your face and the sand and dirt under your fingernails.

The trucks, cars, motorbikes and armoured vehicles on display are particularly impressive, all battered black chrome, steel porcupine spikes and multiple, oil-dripping exhausts – the old Wacky Races cartoon show reimagined by the Marquis de Sade. Meanwhile, Immortan Joe and his men – big on leather, skulls and scarification – look like the moshpit at a GWAR gig. Joe’s mad convoy even includes synchronised drummers and a guitarist complete with an instrument that shoots flames out of its neck.

If the visuals are impressive, the stunt work is even better. The most thrilling sequence sees the war rig under siege from assailants on long poles attached to fast-moving vehicles. These so-called “Pole Cats” swoop down to attack or carry off their victims, while Max, Nux and their team-mates try desperately to fight them off and outrun them. It is ridiculously exciting and head-spinningly OTT; probably the best blockbuster action scene I’ve witnessed in a very long time. How Miller will go about upping the ante for Mad Max 5 is anyone’s guess.

CGI is kept to a minimum but when it is used it is used expertly. There’s a scene early on when Furiosa steers the war rig into a colossal sand storm quickly followed by their pursuers. Once inside, we see the maelstrom in all its nightmarish, psychedelic glory as numerous vehicles are pulverised by the brutal winds and lightning, hapless passengers smashed, bashed and hurled through the air like rag dolls. Another bravura segment.

Much has been made of the fact Theron’s Furiosa, rather than Max, is actually the film’s main character, to which the only right and proper reaction is surely so what? The Mad Max franchise was always more about the world than the man – teetering on the brink of apocalypse in 1979’s debut, gone fully to hell by the time Thunderdome rolled around six years later. Max – a fairly generic badass/avenger made more interesting than he really was by Mel Gibson’s intensity and charisma – was never the highlight of these films. So the idea a fairly limited character has had to shove over and cede someone else the limelight isn’t one that should worry anyone… anyone sane that is.

If there is anything more worthless and depressing in 2015 than all this “men’s rights” nonsense I’ve yet to see it. It isn’t even as if there aren’t precedents for main characters being little more than co-stars in their own films. Wesley Snipes was upstaged by Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biels’ Night Stalkers in Blade Trinity, while Michael Keaton was pretty much a guest star in Batman Returns as Tim Burton concentrated on Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) and The Penguin (Danny DeVito). When Godzilla only appeared for 11 minutes in last year’s Gareth Edwards-directed blockbuster I don’t remember any “Big Lizard” rights groups sobbing into their neck beards about it.

To hear some of these “menanist” mentalists go on, you’d think Fury Road starred Andrea Dworkin and boasted a script based on Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto. So let’s get some perspective here. Like a thousand other action-adventure films, it features goodies and baddies. The only difference is that, for once, the vast majority of the goodies are women (except Max, and Nux, the War Boy played by Nicholas Hoult) and most of the bad guys are… well, guys. Yes, there’s a patriarchal element to Immortan Joe’s Citadel society (conventionally attractive women are used for breeding purposes, while others are “milked” to provide sustenance), but women’s bodies aren’t the only things Joe seeks to control. Like most dictators he also regulates resources (water, oil), access and information, and the underclass he lords it over is made up of both men and women. So, while Fury Road is certainly a movie with sound feminist credentials, it’s hardly Thelma and Louise.

Besides Furiosa is a terrific character – a kind of post-apocalyptic Ellen Ripley. Brave, resourceful and a true survivor, she clearly has a fascinating backstory that I hope Miller, McCarthy and Co delve into in future instalments.

Hardy is a solid, charismatic action hero who has Max's thousand-yard stare down pat. But I prefer him in smaller, low-key films – Locke and The Drop being two recent examples – where he is gifted the time and space to really delve into whichever character he is playing. He isn’t given that luxury here or even a lot to do, apart from run from and fight off War Boys while suffering painful flashbacks to the death of a young girl (his daughter?). He’s rocking a very strange, almost Bane-esque, accent, too.

Two hours is an awful long time to sustain a cat and mouse chase but director Miller – whose credits since Thunderdome have included The Witches of Eastwick, Babe: Pig in the City and the two Happy Feet movies – just about gets away with it. The 70-year-old keeps those blood-pumping set-pieces coming thick and fast, while making sure our protagonists never loiter in one place for long. It’s exuberant, hi-octane and completely barking bloody mad. Yes, the actual plot errs on the thin side but that simplicity is perhaps something to cherish after the overstuffed antics of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Unlike Joss Whedon’s unwieldy sequel, Fury Road’s sturm und drang never once becomes a sturm und drag.

Rating: WWWW

Mad Max: Fury Road is in cinemas now

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful

Still: Game of Thrones' Aidan Gillen stars in a clunky Brit thriller that comes good in the end

Review

Still
Director: Simon Blake
Starring: Aidan Gillen, Jonathan Slinger, Elodie Yung
Running time: 97 mins

The final 20 minutes of director Simon Blake’s debut feature are genuinely gripping and there’s a twist you kind of see coming but that is, nevertheless, expertly dealt. Unfortunately, the preceding hour or so isn’t nearly as accomplished or interesting. Not Still so much as stilted.

Aidan Gillen plays Tom Carver, a north London photographer wracked with guilt and grief after the death of his teenage son in a hit and run, and the disintegration of his marriage to Rachel (Amanda Mealing, doing some proper acting after all those years on Holby City). He inadvertently falls foul of a thuggish gang who threaten and abuse him. These feral youths may also be linked to the murder of a local kid, something Carver’s journalist mate Ed (Jonathan Slinger) is trying to prove. Circumstances grow nastier and bleaker – Carver’s implausibly beautiful girlfriend Christina (Elodie Yung) is attacked – and suddenly we find ourselves in revenge thriller territory.

At first you groan and assume Blake is taking us at speed down the same avenues as the just plain awful Harry Brown, or perhaps riffing on Gaspar Noé's Irreversible. Mercifully, though, the writer/director proves a lot smarter than that as Still ultimately returns to what it’s really about in the first place – the corrosive, dehumanising nature of grief and how it can make good people do some very ugly things. The final shot is beyond heartbreaking.

Gillen is a fine actor; one able to slip into the shoes of Machiavellian Lord Petyr Baelish in Game of Thrones as easily as he transforms into Tommy Carcetti, The Wire’s fast-talking Baltimore politician. His performances can be broad and mannered but he’s one of those thesps whose natural charisma easily outweighs any lack of nuance. As Carver he has to play it low-key and more subdued, and I’m not sure it suits him. The creaky script doesn’t help – some scenes are over-talky and overlong, a lot of the dialogue is in need of a polish. If you’re going for naturalism, you can’t have characters saying stuff that feels “written down” and that happens here all too often. In fact, you can't do naturalism if you have characters that simply don't feel real in the first place (I'm looking at you Ed and Christina).

The best early scenes are simple two-handers featuring Carver and Rachel. There’s an ease between Gillen and Mealing – whether sharing a drink in Carver’s dilapidated London home or placing flowers on their son’s grave – that immediately establishes their characters’ history as a couple. Nothing else here quite rings as true, not Carver’s friendship with the frankly irritating Ed, or his relationship with Christina, who seems to exist purely so she can be raped as the film enters its final act. She’s little more than a clumsy and perhaps even distasteful plot device.

Blake and his cinematographer Andy Parsons do a good job with the look of the film - Still's north London is a grey, forbidding place where the shadows are long and the deep gloom is broken only by a speeding car's headlights or neon shop sign. It's all rather noirish, a feeling reinforced by a jazzy score I could probably have done without. Meanwhile, Carver's house - complete with peeling wallpaper and threadbare furniture - is the perfect visual metaphor for his turbulent state of mind. 

That Still rallies to deliver a satisfying and powerful climax is in no small part down to Sonny Green, the young rapper-turned-actor who plays street thug Carl. At first he’s the epitome of every clichéd underclass yob you’ve ever seen on film or TV, albeit one with a pleasingly unpleasant line in sneering gittishness. As Carver makes Carl the target of his vengeance we see a very different side to the character – suddenly vulnerable, terrified and really just a stupid, mouthy kid with no direction or future. I wonder if Still may have more successful had it focussed on him and his life, and pushed everyone else into the background.

Rating: WW

Still is currently showing in UK cinemas and is available on various streaming services including Virgin Movies

Ratings

WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful