The Last 5 Films I've Seen

Wild, wild west: the excellent Meek's Cutoff

There's no Your Week In Film column this time, please accept some reviews in its place. Normal service should be resumed next week...

Every week I watch a bunch of movies then write about five of them here. Some are films I've never seen before, some are old favourites I'm watching for the umpteenth time, others are pictures I've maybe seen once but haven't been entirely convinced by. From Buñuel to Bay, I'm happy to give anything a chance...

1. Meek's Cutoff (2010): The BBC's recent Top 100 films of the 21st Century poll was fascinating and mostly on the money, I think, but there were of course a few omissions that genuinely had me tearing out my hair. If Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive was the most egregious oversight, Kelly Reichardt's fantastic alt-western wasn't far behind. Set in 1845 and based on a real incident, it follows three families as they journey across a vast desert on the notoriously arduous Oregon Trail. Their guide Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), a self-aggrandising frontiersman full of tall stories, gets them hopelessly lost and a trek which should have taken a fortnight suddenly becomes five weeks with no end in sight. The group, which also includes characters played by Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson and Paul Dano, soon become more desperate – hungry, thirsty, exhausted, dirty, depressed and frightened for their lives. They capture a Native American, with whom they can barely communicate, and hope he'll lead them to water rather than into a trap. Meek's Cutoff is one of those films that takes a while to bring you under its spell but, keep watching, and it will utterly beguile you. Reichardt's a terrific storyteller and she really takes her time laying out her characters' predicament here in painstaking detail. There's little melodrama – it just concentrates on the slow but ceaseless erosion of the families' hope: the incessant sun on their backs, coupled with the trudge across pitiless terrain, doesn't just drain their energy, it takes their personality and humanity from them too. They bicker about whether to kill the Native American, discuss whether Meek has deliberately led them astray and start taking foolish risks. Filmed in the old square academy ratio to really emphasise the nature of their dilemma (trapped in a wide-open space – oh, the irony!), this is a masterful slow-burn affair which shows you the dirt under its protagonists' fingernails and the sweat on their brows. The old west has rarely seemed so alien or unforgiving. Rating: WWWW

All is lost: Reichardt's old west is an unforgiving place

2. Dheepan (2015): Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust And Bone) returns with an odd but effective tale of three Sri Lankan immigrants fleeing the country's civil war to France. The trio (including former Tamil Tiger soldier Dheepan) pose as a family – despite barely knowing each other – but quickly discover their past isn't so easy to forget and discard. The film starts off as a serious arthouse drama keen to explore the impact of war and dislocation on our trio as they struggle to make ends meet in their new adopted country. But, late on, it morphs into something only a hop, skip and a jump away from Taken or Death Wish. The sudden gear change – provoked when Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) clashes with drug dealers on the rundown estate where he lives and works – is jarring, disorienting and I was unsure of its message: the all-pervasiveness of violence and conflict perhaps or, more simply, never mess with a pissed-off Tamil Tiger. However, the most baffling thing about Audiard's enjoyable but flawed work remains how it ever won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes over the far superior Son Of Saul. Rating: WWW

A history of violence: Dheepan boasts a brutal final act

3. The Commune (2016): With his fellow Dane, Lars Von Trier, director Thomas Vinterberg founded the influential and gratifyingly punk-rock Dogme 95 movement, which gave the world the likes of Festen and The Idiots. Since then Vinterberg has struck out for more commercial waters, culminating in last year's solid but by-the-numbers adaptation of Far From The Madding Crowd. The Commune sees him on slightly less mainstream ground in a melodramatic tale of communal living and romantic betrayal. Set in 1970s Copenhagen, it sees stick-in-the-mud Erik (Ulrich Thomsen) inherit a huge house and, after a little prodding from his wife Anna (Trine Dyrholm), invite friends and strangers alike to move in with them. Matters soon become fraught, however, when the lecturer commences an affair with one of his students; a woman who could comfortably pass for Anna's daughter or far younger self. The rest of the film deals with the impact on the couple, their actual daughter and their house-mates, but most of all Anna herself, who soon falls into a destructive spiral of booze and self-loathing. It's all about selfishness and personal desire versus community and collectivism, and Vinterberg – who lived in a commune as a child  – is even-handed in his appraisal. Communal living can offer people enormous love and support, but such social experiments are also fraught with danger, especially when the needs of the group come into conflict with those of one or more of its individual members. Dyrholm is raw, compelling and utterly sympathetic as poor cast-aside Trine, a beautiful, successful woman suddenly made to feel old and undesirable. No one does unreasonable bastard quite like Thomsen (as evidenced in trashy US TV show Banshee, in which he played an Amish gangster), while Martha Sofie Wallstrøm Hansen is also terrific as daughter Freya, a young woman who clearly adores her parents and fellow house-mates, but is quietly perplexed and appalled by them too. Rating: WWW

Stronger together: Vinterberg's The Commune

4. Pete's Dragon (2016): Young orphan boys being found in the wild by CGI animals has been a bit of a theme in films this year. There was Mowgli (discovered by wolves) in The Jungle Book, Tarzan (stumbled across by apes in The Legend Of Tarzan) and now here's five-year-old Pete being adopted by a ruddy great dragon in Disney's charming remake of their 1977 live action/animation adventure. How come this stuff never happens to girls? Pete is found by the dragon – who he names Elliot – after his parents die in a car crash and he, the wreck's only survivor, gets lost in the woods. Boy and beast remain undiscovered within the forest's dense canopy for six years until a logging operation brings them into contact with humanity – some kind (Bryce Dallas Howard's forest ranger, and her dad Robert Redford, who'd encountered the dragon many years before), some with a villainous glint in their eye (ruthless logger Karl Urban). The plot's ebbs and flows are fairly predictable (boy gets dragon, boy loses dragon, rinse and repeat) but David Lowery's film is a real treat despite that. It's sweet and sentimental but never cloyingly so – simple, straightforward, and refreshingly old fashioned too. Despite the presence of a colossal mythical beast and a seat-of-your-pants final act, this is a small story – one that's really about family, friendship and imagination. To call it lovely might sound like I'm damning it with faint praise but that's really not my intention. That said, Howard, Redford and Urban – all fine actors – are only permitted one character trait each (nice, eccentric and nasty, respectively), and it certainly won't be challenging The BFG or The Jungle Book in the Best Visual Effects category come Oscar time. But, when you have the jaw-dropping beauty of New Zealand's Redwoods Forest (doubling for the US) as your backdrop, who needs artifice? Rating: WWW

Hit and myth: Pete's Dragon is simple and lovely

5. Bait (2012): Silly B-movie about a pair of great white sharks running (swimming) amok in a flooded supermarket after a tsunami leaves an Australian seaside town under several feet of water. The premise is as intriguing as it is ridiculous but the film is scuppered by risible dialogue, poor pacing, wooden acting and bargain-basement CGI. Those survivors of the disaster fighting for their lives in the flooded store and its underground car park are the usual cardboard cutouts these films seem to thrive upon – the bad girl and her disapproving cop dad, the star-crossed lovers, the bickering couple, the geek, the misunderstood villain (Julian McMahon, the only actor I recognised in the entire thing). There are far too many characters and not nearly enough of them are gorily despatched before the end credits, while the charm that usually gets this type of caper over the line is in very short supply. In fact, the only thing that made me smile was the fact its ending is practically identical to the one in last year's San Andreas, right down to the final line of dialogue. Rating: W

Great white dopes: Bait failed to entice me in 

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

The Last 5 Films I've Seen

Sing when you're winning: John Carney's '80s-set film is a real joy

1. Sing Street (2016) John Hughes meets Roddy Doyle in writer/director John Carney's joyous tale of love, escape and music set in '80s Dublin. The wonderfully named Ferdia Walsh-Peelo is Conor, a smitten teenager who forms a band purely so he can spend time with aspiring model Raphina (Lucy Boynton). But his feelings for her bring out the pop star in him and it isn't long before the titular band are improving in leaps and bounds, finding their own identity, making videos, and even dreaming of the big time. There's so much warmth and wit here, and so much about Carney's screenplay that rings true, that it would take me all day to list its merits. Additionally, the young leads are terrific, ably abetted by Aidan Gillen, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Jack Reynor as Conor's dysfunctional family. One gripe? The rest of the band disappear well into the background after being introduced early on, which is a shame as they are interesting characters in their own right. It's a small criticism, though, for a film that quickly outstrips any suggestion it's just an exercise in cheesy '80s nostalgia (although even that element is fun) and one that left me with a great big smile on my face. Rating: WWWW

Model behaviour: Lucy Boynton lights up Sing Street

2. The Bronze (2015) If Sing Street is about youthful optimism and having the talent to take on the world, then The Bronze deals with its flipside - the frustration and bitterness of shattered dreams. Melissa Rauch has been the best thing about The Big Bang Theory for a while now and she enjoys herself here as Hope Ann Gregory, a former gymnast who – against all odds – won an Olympic bronze medal back in the day. Her career ended by injury, she's now a thieving, foul-mouthed has-been who clings for dear life to her small-town hero status, only agreeing to train a young gymnastic prodigy after a letter from her late coach promises a big cash prize for doing so. Yes, it's Eastbound & Down with a female lead but ultimately Bryan Buckley's film (co-written by Rauch with her husband) is a lot warmer than HBO's misanthropic sitcom. Gregory may be a nasty piece of work but there are reasons for her perma-scowl - Danny McBride's Kenny Powers, on the other hand, was really just an obnoxious arsehole. Beneath the abrasiveness, there's a palpable melancholy to Rauch's character - she has allowed her life's one success to totally define her, the old USA Olympic training top she wears a constant reminder of her inability to move on. But this is a story of redemption, above all else, and while the film could have done with a few more moments as laugh-out-loud funny as its much-discussed and improbably athletic sex scene, The Bronze is ultimately more Nadia Comaneci than Dong Fangxiao. Rating: WWW

Rauch and roll: Melissa is solid gold in The Bronze  

3. The Brand New Testament (2015) God lives in Brussels with a wife, who he bullies, and a young daughter - Ea (Pili Groyne) - who has grown to hate the appalling way he treats humanity. Breaking into his vast computer room, she releases the 'death dates' of everyone on Earth and runs away to assemble a team of six new apostles with a plan to "rewrite the world". Apoplectic, God (Benoît Poelvoorde) gives chase. Jaco Van Dormael's gleefully provocative film is a magical realist satire that has religion firmly in its sights. This supreme being is a capricious monster who visits torment on his creations both because he can and because he enjoys it. It's hardly an original notion but Van Dormael interrogates his subject with black humour both sharp and surreal, so the various twists and turns never feel hackneyed or dogmatic. Each of the new apostle's stories are served up as vignettes as Ea visits each one in turn, the strangest of which sees Catherine Deneuve's unfulfilled wife commencing a passionate affair with a circus gorilla. Bound to drive conservatives mad, Le Tout Nouveau Testament (it's original French title) is a rich, off-kilter call to arms full of optimism and imagination. Rating: WWW

Gorilla warfare: God under fire in Brand New Testament

4. Disorder (2015) Matthias Schoenaerts is Vincent, a soldier suffering with PTSD who, between missions, gets a job as a private security guard for Jessie (Inglourious Basterds' Diane Kruger), the glamorous wife of a troubled arms dealer in over his head with some very nasty people. When the husband is arrested while travelling abroad, Vincent suspects his charge and her young son are in danger. Is he right or merely paranoid? Take a wild guess. Whilst we've seen this kind of set-up before in The Bodyguard and Someone To Watch Over Me, Disorder stands out because it keeps the obvious attraction between Vincent and Jessie firmly on the back burner and concentrates instead on building an atmosphere of unease punctuated by the occasional burst of flinch-inducing brutality. I don't recoil like everyone else seems to when Schoenaerts steps out of his Bullhead comfort zone to tackle less physical roles in A Little Chaos or The Danish Girl, but he's best as an arse-kicking taciturn lump and certainly doesn't disappoint here. Some critics have tried to sell Disorder as a kind of psychological thriller but that's only half right. Alice Winocour's film is certainly thrilling (taut and stripped back, too) but whether PTSD-impaired Vincent is imagining the threat to Jessie and her son isn't something that is left hanging for long. You know exactly where the story is heading but it is none the weaker for that. If anything, Disorder is really an exploration of violence - its rank ugliness and occasional necessity. Rating: WWW

Welcome to the punch: Schoenaerts takes no prisoners

5. Suicide Squad (2016) The stuff I actually liked about Suicide Squad can be dealt with in short order: Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Viola Davis and Jared Leto, the latter adding much needed danger and unpredictability to proceedings every time his Joker (a punk-rock Al Capone) put in an appearance. The problem with the rest of David Ayer's film is that it's a bog-standard s̶u̶p̶e̶r̶h̶e̶r̶o̶ super-villain flick when its trailers promised something spikier and cooler. I expected Nirvana and got Nickelback. The problems start to mount in an interminable first 20 minutes as some of the characters are clumsily introduced, complete with their own somewhat on-the-nose 'entrance music' (Sympathy For The Devil for government black ops bad ass Davis, You Don't Own Me for Robbie's Harley Quinn). That feeling of clunkiness hangs around and sticks to the film like glue. It affects the main villain (the Scarlet Witch's dull goth sister), various plot strands (one character is introduced purely to be killed off 10 minutes later), the CG (ugly, unconvincing) and at least a couple of the team themselves (Jai Courtney's Captain Boomerang contributes nothing, Karen Fukuhara's Katana little more). When Leto pops up it's like he's reminding us what we could have had – Ben Affleck's Batman (who gets a cameo here) duking it out with Mr J and Harley in a gangster-packed Gotham. That's a film I'd have wanted to see. This one? Not so much. Rating: W½

Worst. Heroes. Ever? Pretty much, yes.

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