Creed, Attack The Block and A Hologram For The King: Your Week In Film (May 16-22)

Stallone and Jordan fight for their futures in Creed

TV, Radio, DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and cinema picks for the next seven days...

Monday 16th: Like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Creed (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) has gone the 'requel' route. Ryan Coogler's film is part Rocky sequel, part reboot, and at times borrows wholesale from the original 1976 picture and its various follow-ups. That said, it's a definite cut above other recent boxing flicks, such as last year's Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Southpaw, while Michael B Jordan and Sylvester Stallone have genuine chemistry. Check out my original review here. When Animals Dream (DVD and VOD) is a Danish werewolf film that has been favourably compared to the likes of Ginger Snaps and Let The Right One In. Well, I'm sold. If you only see one film this week, you should probably make it The Master (23:10, Film4). Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson is at the height of his powers in a lengthy but powerful drama that sees Joaquin Phoenix's ex-soldier struggling to adapt to life, post-World War II. He soon falls under the spell of Philip Seymour Hoffman, the charismatic leader of a religious cult, known as The Cause. The writing is razor-sharp, the performances are pitch-perfect and any resemblance to the church of Scientology is fully intended.  

When Animals Dream: A werewolf movie from Denmark

Tuesday 17th: Attack The Block (21:00, E4) sees the denizens of a south London council estate fighting off an alien invasion. Luckily for them they have Finn from The Force Awakens (aka John Boyega, in his first movie role) to help them. Joe Cornish's film homages Walter Hill's The Warriors and John Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13 to serve up a superior slice of sci-fi that is gritty, funny and surprisingly thrilling. MUBI have recently added The Hunt to their ever-changing but beautifully-curated catalogue of films. Thomas Vinterberg's excellent drama sees Mads Mikkelsen's nursery teacher accused of molesting one of the children in his care. He is quickly vilified and ostracised by the local community as his life falls apart. A fascinating, horrifying meditation on collective hysteria.

Attack The Block: South Londoners versus aliens

Wednesday 18th: The ubiquitous Oscar Isaac is the blue-hued big bad in X-Men: Apocalypse, which hits cinemas today. Amongst numerous new faces (including Olivia Munn, Sophie Turner and Kodi Smit-McPhee) are franchise regulars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Rose Byrne. Unusually for a Bryan Singer X-movie, the reviews have so far been a little underwhelming. To Rome With Love (Netflix) is typical late period Woody Allen - a likeable if hit and miss affair with all the substance of a soufflé. Rather better is Barbra Streisand's bravura debut turn as Fanny Brice in musical comedy Funny Girl (Netflix). Hello, gorgeous...

Barbra Streisand hits the heights in Funny Girl

Thursday 19th: Tom Hanks talks to Francine Stock about A Hologram For The King on The Film Programme (16:00, BBC Radio 4). Hanks plays a failed American businessman hoping to recoup his losses by traveling to Saudi Arabia and selling his idea for 3D meeting technology to a wealthy monarch. Director Tom Tykwer made the brilliantly inventive Run Lola Run back in the day, so I have high hopes for this culture-clash comedy despite its seemingly pedestrian premise. The trailer in which Hanks 'sings' Talking Heads' 'Once In A Lifetime' has certainly piqued my interest.

Hanks sings Talking Heads in A Hologram For The King

Friday 20th: Amy Schumer's US TV vehicle - Inside Amy Schumer - is one of the finest sketch comedies to appear on either side of the Atlantic in the last 20 years. Trainwreck (15:45 and 20:00, Sky Movies Premiere) was director Judd Apatow's attempt to refashion her schtick for the American mainstream and it smooths off far too many of the comic's sharp edges. In fact, the film's boozy, promiscuous journalist is like something out of 1990s Britain - a story about a ladette, only 20 years too late. Bill Hader, Tilda Swinton and Schumer herself are always worth watching, though. Tom Hanks pops up again on Kermode And Mayo's Film Review (14:00, BBC Radio Five Live), again talking about A Hologram For The King which opens in cinemas today. 

Amy Schumer deserves better than Trainwreck

Saturday 21st: In a fascist future America (insert Donald Trump gag here), Jennifer Lawrence is made to fight for her life in The Hunger Games (21:00, Channel 4). Yes, it's just 2000's Battle Royale repurposed for US teens but is hugely enjoyable all the same. Elena (00:40, BBC2) is the film Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev made before 2014's epic gloom-fest Leviathan. This time he focuses on an ageing Muscovite woman (Nadezhda Markina as the titular character) battling to protect her future after her businessman husband changes the contents of his will. An atmospheric and gripping drama.

Elena: Where there's a will there's a way...

Sunday 22nd: Hitchcock (23:30, Channel4) stars Anthony Hopkins as the titular director struggling to get Psycho made. The big Hollywood studios with whom he'd had such a successful relationship all passed on it so he had to finance the movie - now, of course, a classic - himself. Sterling support comes from Helen Mirren (as Hitchcock's long-suffering wife Alma Reville) and Scarlett Johansson (as Vivien Leigh). 

Anthony Hopkins is Alfred Hitchcock in, erm, Hitchcock

Last 5 Films I Saw

1. Mustang (2015): Deniz Gamze Ergüven's Oscar-nominated drama chronicles the lives of five orphaned Turkish sisters, imprisoned and forced into marriage by their conservative guardians. Its subject matter is harrowing but the film never slips into clumsy melodrama. Instead, it is hopeful, defiant and a real kick in the pants for Turkey's ruling patriarchy. Currently in cinemas and on demand.
2. Dazed And Confused (1993): Richard Linklater's coming of age comedy about a group of American high schoolers perfectly captures the aimlessness and madness of adolescence. His female characters are all a bit too low in the mix though.
3. In The Bedroom (2001): A New England couple (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek, both superb) struggle to come to terms with the violent death of their only son in this effective family drama. Takes an unwanted detour down Death Wish Boulevard towards the end.
4. Captain America: Civil War (2016): The opening sequence and punch-up at the airport are spectacular but, if I'm honest, I preferred the overblown silliness of Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice. Plus, The Vision and Black Panther are just very dull, aren't they?
5. Hot Pursuit (2015): I'd watch Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara in anything... apart from this disappointing chase comedy. Not so much a Midnight Run, more a mid-morning amble through a series of weak gags.

Turkish drama Mustang is hopeful and defiant

UK box office top 10
1. Captain America: Civil War R
2. The Jungle Book R
3. Bad Neighbours 2
4. Florence Foster Jenkins
5. Robinson Crusoe
6. Eye In The Sky
7. Zootropolis R
8. Bastille Day
9. 24
10. Friend Request

R = Recommended

2015 in review: The disappointments

The worst films of the year – Get Hard, Pixels, the 20 minutes of The Wedding Ringer I could stomach – aren't worth the hike in my blood pressure it would take for me to discuss them, so let's do something different. Here are 10 movies I expected good things from in 2015 but which, for me, failed to deliver on the hype. Some are irredeemable turkeys (Black Mass, Pitch Perfect 2), others are watchable despite their shortcomings (Trainwreck, Sicario)...

1. Crimson Peak (pictured above)

Visually stunning but ultimately vacuous gothic horror/romance from director Guillermo Del Toro. It lacked the punch (both political and supernatural) the director had brought in the past to Spanish-language films such as The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. 

2. Sicario

The complexities of the Mexican drug war reduced to clumsy macho revenge fantasy. A pity because elsewhere there is much to admire in Denis Villeneuve's film, not least a fine leading turn from Emily Blunt (Edge Of Tomorrow) as an in-over-her-head FBI agent. Probably this year's most overrated movie.

3. Black Mass

Johnny Depp abandons silly cartoonish roles in movies such as Mortdecai and The Lone Ranger to play an, erm, silly cartoonish role as real-life gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger. Depressingly one-note throughout, Black Mass is a mess of witless confrontation, murder and misogyny. Goodfellas for dummies.

4. Trainwreck

Amy Schumer's US TV vehicle - Inside Amy Schumer - is one of the finest sketch comedies to appear on either side of the Atlantic in the last 20 years. Trainwreck (co-written by and starring Schumer) was director Judd Apatow's attempt to refashion her schtick for the American mainstream and it smoothed off far too many of the comic's sharp edges. In fact, the film's boozy, promiscuous journalist was like something out of 1990s Britain - a story about a ladette, only 20 years too late.
5. Pitch Perfect 2

The original film about an all-girl a cappella group starring Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson had charm by the bucketload and plenty of funny moments. The rotten sequel was lumbered with one of the year's worst scripts and generous lashings of casual racism. Witless tripe. 

6. Southpaw

After Nightcrawler and Enemy, I couldn't wait to see what Jake Gyllenhaal did next. Unfortunately, it was this absurdly melodramatic boxing flick that contained plot holes so huge you could manoeuvre Starkiller Base through them with no danger of touching the sides.

7. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

After all that hype and anticipation, J.J. Abrams' bow as Star Wars supremo had its moments but far too much of it felt secondhand. Nods to the past were inevitable but The Force Awakens too often seemed like a nostalgia-soaked mash-up of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, with Abrams even wheeling out a pimped-out Death Star in lieu of a decent or original plot. Admittedly, Finn and Rey were intriguing new characters but Kylo Ren was like Harry Enfield's Kevin The Teenager in Darth Vader cosplay. 

8. The Overnight
Limp sex comedy that manages to squander both its great cast (Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling and Jason Schwartzman) and intriguing premise (a vanilla married couple are invited to dinner by their new friends, who may be swingers). Despite being barely 80 minutes long, The Overnight runs out of steam long before the end. 

9. Me And Earl And The Dying Girl
One of those quirky US indies that arrives on UK shores every year having been the "toast of Sundance". I genuinely can't remember the last time I loathed a lead character in a movie the way I did Thomas Mann's Greg (the titular Me), an irritating little twerp full of fashionable ennui in need of a good, hard kick up the arse. 

10. Avengers: Age Of Ultron

2014 was probably the best year for superhero flicks to date with Guardians Of The Galaxy, Captain America: Winter Soldier, and X-Men: Days Of Future Past all impressing. Unfortunately, it was back to earth with a bump this year as Fantastic Four stank the place out, Ant-Man was a curate's egg, and Joss Whedon's Avengers sequel was overlong and cluttered. Let's hope 2016's Deadpool and Captain America: Civil War stop the rot.  

**Next up: My 10 favourite documentaries of 2015**

5 for Friday (August 14): Trailers, new releases and box office

It's New York week here on As Human as the Rest of Us with no fewer than three of this week's five most essential film choices set in the Big Apple, although one shows a side of the city I'm guessing its citizens might want to forget. Elsewhere, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. brings the summer blockbuster season to a close and not a moment too soon. Mad Max: Fury Road and Inside Out apart, it's been a pretty lean year quality-wise, with even Jurassic World and Ant-Man coming up short (Ant-Man? Short? Oh, please yourself...)

1. Mistress America

The Noah Baumbach-Greta Gerwig collaboration Frances Ha – the story of a struggling apprentice dancer – was one of 2012's best comedies (in a year that also gave us That's My Boy and The Watch, I appreciate that's damning it with faint praise, but still...). The pair reunites here for more New York-centric mirth as lonely college fresher Tracy (Gone Girl's Lola Kirke) is taken in by Brooke (Gerwig), her eccentric but highly adventurous stepsister-to-be. Crazy shit featuring a former nemesis who stole Brooke's cats ensues...

2. Precinct Seven Five 

This year is shaping up to be a fine one for documentaries. I've already enjoyed the likes of Going Clear, Amy and The Look of Silence, and Tiller Russell's film about Michael Dowd, "the dirtiest cop in NYC history", looks like a winner too. In the 1980s, Dowd patrolled one of Brooklyn's toughest beats... he also headed up a ruthless criminal network that stole money and drugs, ultimately resulting in the city's biggest ever corruption scandal. As the man himself says here: "I considered myself both a cop and a gangster". (By the way, in the States this film was simply called The Seven Five but it has been retitled for the UK market, just in case us stupid Brits mistook it for a documentary about the number 75. Duh.).

3. Trainwreck

Amy Schumer's stand-up and her TV sketch show (Inside Amy Schumer) make me laugh like an idiot so I'm very much looking forward to director Judd Apatow's attempt at transferring her easy charm and gloriously filthy mind to the big screen. In Trainwreck, she's Amy Townsend, a New York-based magazine writer and boozy, promiscuous gal about town. But Amy's licentious, bed-hopping ways threaten to come to a halt after she spends the night with sports injury doctor Aaron (Bill Hader) and decides – horror of horrors – that she quite likes him. Apparently the film contains cameos from US sports stars no one here in the UK will give a fig about but we won't hold that against it.

4. Absolutely Anything 

To put it mildly, this British comedy has not been well received by critics. "The second word of the title should be 'appalling'," booms The Guardian, while The Times dubs it: "Certainly one of the worst movies yet made". Crikey, even Pixels received better notices than that. The Monty Python team - Terry Jones (who also directs), John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam - play aliens who imbue Simon Pegg with the power to bend reality to his every whim. Fancy being president of the US for a bit? Easy. Want your pet dog to talk? No problem. Unfortunately, there's a catch. The extra-terrestrials are considering destroying Earth and Pegg is being tested. If he uses his powers for good the planet will be spared. But, if he uses them for selfish reasons, it's goodnight Vienna. The trailer's funny and I like Pegg and the Pythons so, sod the critics, I'm in.

5. The Confessions Of Thomas Quick

Another crime documentary (perhaps more of a docu-drama, in truth), this time about an extraordinary Swedish case. In the 1990s, the titular Quick - real name Sture Bergwall, then in his forties - was sent to a psychiatric hospital after committing a series of crimes. Whilst receiving treatment, however, he confessed to the rape and murder of an 11-year-old boy - a long unsolved investigation. But it didn't end there. He also took the rap for all manner of other sadistic killings, 39 in all, suddenly making him the most notorious serial killer in Swedish history. But that isn't the end of the story either. All is not as it seems and, to remain completely unspoiled, you should probably only watch the first 50 seconds of the trailer below. It doesn't give away the big twist but strongly hints at it.

Also on release from today

Brothers

Captain Webb 

Karachi To Lahore

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. 

Paper Towns 

Pleasure Island
Ramta Jogi

Theeb

Vaalu

Vasuvum Saravananum Onna Padichavanga

UK box office top 10

1. Fantastic Four
2. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
3. Inside Out
4. Southpaw
5. The Gift
6. Ant-Man
7. Minions
8. Empire Strikes Back (Secret Cinema)
9. Jurassic World
10. Amy

US box office top 101. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
2. Fantastic Four
3. The Gift
4. Vacation
5. Ant-Man
6. Minions
7. Ricki and the Flash
8. Trainwreck
9. Pixels
10. Southpaw