Jon M. Chu directs Constance Wu, Henry Golding and Michelle Yeoh in this romantic comedy about a university professor who travels to Singapore with her beau for a wedding… only to discover he is filthy rich. UH-OH!

Distasteful opulence abounds. There is a hint of satire to this but a satire where the only difference between the gaudy and the classy characters is whether they pull a silly or a sad face when they are onscreen. And so so many characters. 3 bland couples (the men exist only to be introduced with their tops off). 5 fairy godmothers. 6 road blocks to love. Countless bitches. It is all very brattish and brash. Which last time I checked isn’t very romantic… Still the production values are top notch and the makeover scenes are giddy confections.

4

Eli Roth directs Jack Black, Cate Blanchett and Owen Vaccaro in this juvenile horror about an orphan who joins his warlock uncle in his doom-laden mansion.

Eli Roth does a kid’s movie! It is too delicious a prospect not to go see. I even put aside my dislike for Jack Black. While it isn’t a film for me, an afternoon was pleasantly passed. It is pretty much the standard colourful gothic slapstick product you’d expect but there are a dozen creepy images hidden among the soft play that will scar imaginative kids long term. The demon in the Black Forest could come from any hard R genre piece. And kids need their first scary movie too, so well done Roth for making something that remains family friendly while still having some fang to it.

5

 

Peter Berg direct Mark Wahlberg, Iko Uwais and Lauren Cohan in this bloody actioner where a special ops team have to transport a double agent from embassy to airstrip with the entire Fakestanistan military trying to stop them. 

16 Blocks meets The Raid. Only not very good. The action is frenetic and ultraviolent. Ronda Rousey goes out like a trooper. There’s a twist you won’t care about. Mark Wahlberg spends a lot of the film making pronouncements into thin air about how completely badass he is. Someone’s been on the fight milk.

4

Paul Feig directs Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively and Henry Golding in this comedy thriller about a single mom who gets entangled with a femme fatale who goes missing. 

What is it? WHAT IS IT?! I’d have enthusiastically gotten onboard with any one of the films this tries to be from scene to discordant scene. Colourful neo-noir. Hitchcockian farce. Broad Gone Girl spoof. Kinky soccer mom wish fulfilment fantasy. You want to like A Simple Favour but it is all a bit too much. Incest and 180 degree U-turn character growth arcs… and potty mouthed kids… and Anna Kendrick’s ditzy klutz twice being thrown on a bed to be ravished by men she clearly shouldn’t be fucking… and sassy bitches sassing. All happen jarringly in a film that should be… well… simple. It feels as jumbled and as uncertain as The Predator did last week. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were also extensive reshoots here. The lead investigator changes from act to act, for no real point. The ending is garbled… the twists ineffective. Frustratingly it squanders two strong star turns. Lively looks fantastic, her comically chic wardrobe is spectacular and she confidently seduces us with less screentime than she deserves. Kendrick goes at her hyper super mom role with admirable quirk, but she is weighed down by subplots that mark her out as a potential villain. That’s fine to keep us guessing but leaves us without a solid protagonist for a good hour. You can’t have the same character be investigator, patsy and possible antagonist concurrently. All the while putting them in slapsticky situations. And then expect the mystery elements to engage. Far too sloppy for something so polished looking. What starts out brimming with possibilities, ends on weak punchlines and patience testing confrontations.

4

Paul Grimault directs Jean Martin, Pascal Mazzotti and Raymond Bussières in this animated fairytale about a mockingbird who helps two painted urchins escape the tyrant king who wants to break up their romance.

A film that took 30 years to complete and was released in various half produced states until 1980. It is a bit naff and naive at times. The plot is very loose and random. However it does conjure up some lovely images; a 3D airbrushed castle connected by rocket ship elevators, a polar bear dancing with a blind busker and a hunting dog adopting his prey. The funniest parts involve the terrible king punishing his useless minions. If you are a fan of steampunk or Disney this has overlapping form, but the joins of a rocky journey to completion do show a little too glaringly.

6

Damiano Damiani directs Gian Maria Volontè, Lou Castel and Klaus Kinski in this spaghetti western following a group of bandits profiteering from the Mexican Revolution.

Starting with a domino rally of tense set pieces (so smartly devised that The Joker from The Dark Knight would be impressed by their cruel zero sum gamesmanship), Damiani’s Leone rip-off sets out his stall thrillingly. It eventually becomes a little mawkish and didactic but never dull. Volontè is superb as the criminal El Chuncho, a charismatic man whose better instincts keep him from true evil. The colours of the clear sky and arid vistas are beautiful in this.

7

Kiah Roache-Turner directs Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradey and Leon Burchill in this zombie comedy horror about regular Aussies trying to outrun an outbreak in improvised armour and undead fuelled jeeps.

Cheap and nasty and inventive. Clearly made over half a decade of fun weekends but never letting that lack of professional resources excuse unprofessionalism onscreen. It looks the part. This is daft and dirty ride, packed with gory moments, creepy moments, great unsubtle gags and a revolving door of protagonists… gleefully, not many survivors survive more than a few scenes. If you like Braindead or Shaun of the Dead or The Evil Dead then this is a modern low budget show-off well worth chuckling along to.

7

 

Renny Harlin directs Geena Davis, Matthew Modine and Frank Langella in this infamous pirate movie that flopped massively.

It killed a studio. Proved women couldn’t lead action blockbusters. Highlighted that pirate films never work at the box office. All nonsense of course. Twenty years down the line the best you could say was Cutthroat Island is a folly but not one indicative of box office trends. Carloco Pictures was already struggling to make ends meet before production began. They had the choice of this project or an Arnold Schwarzenegger / Paul Verehoven crusades epic as their last shot at survival. Paul Verehoven came into a production meeting with some extreme ideas one day and Cutthroat Island was greenlit by default. They raised a lot of the budget by pre-selling it to foreign distributors. The package was Davis, Michael Douglas and massive period set action. Then Douglas pulled out. When they couldn’t find a leading man Davis and director Harlin tried to run also. Their contracts wouldn’t allow it. So Modine was roped in. The film HAD to be made as it had already been sold. And no one wanted to be there. Maybe that explains why it is all so distant and uninvolving. Because Cutthroat Island is a handsome lavish production. The costumes and the ships and the locations look like a $100 million dollars but the direction of them and acting in them is half hearted at best. Davis behaves like a secondary school teacher who has to oversee a two hour detention rather than the captain of a ship. Modine apes Kevin Kline for a bit but eventually gives up and matches his co-star’s ambient energy. Harlin stages spectacular battles and stunts but never involves the audience in them. There are lines that sound like jokes without any humour to them. There is a conspiracy of factions at loggerheads but this never produces much peril or conflict. It just sits there like a very expensive punishment. There are far worse blockbusters out there. Uncharismatic, sloppy cash-ins that should never have seen the inside of a picturehouse. Cutthroat Island isn’t one of those travesties… it merely has the misfortune of having the reputation and box office of one with little else to exonerate it.

5

Woody Allen directs himself, Charlotte Rampling and Jessica Harper in this arthouse satire where a filmmaker is the star guest at a weekend retrospective of his own work, while trying to unpick his complex relationships to women.

A pleasant surprise this. One of Woody’s best that I had long avoided due to iffy critical standing. He visually apes Fellini and a bit of Bergman and the result are sumptuous. Gorgeous monochrome vistas are danced around in. The opening moment of Kafkaesque disappointment is a brilliant wordless joke. Though you wouldn’t want to be cast as an extra in any of this. Every crowd shot features a gaggle of cloying and grasping grotesques. Psychologically I don’t know how sound all of Woody’s confusion and frustrations are but he lands as many laugh out loud jokes here as in his “earlier, funny ones.” Proof that despite his desire to explore drama and stretch his pretentions as a serious filmmaker he still had it in him to tickle us.

9

James Marsh directs Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and Charlie Cox in this crime caper retelling the downfall of the Hatton Garden jewel thieves, a gang mainly made up of pensioners. 

When news first broke that one of the biggest heists on British soil was perpetrated by greying old lags I said to myself “I bet there’s a great movie in that.” And bless the producers of this starry ensemble they get the casting right. Caine. Courtenay. Ray Winstone. It is a Last Orders reunion movie. Add in Jim Broadbent, Paul Whitehouse and a decrepit Michael Gambon and I bet the makers thought we can just leave the camera running and we’ve got ourselves an instant classic here. Sadly King of Thieves is a film of two halves. The first section with the planning and the caper itself, glides nicely. Marsh lays out his game swiftly, adds a neat visual flourish where the old boy illegal larks are often intercut with similar footage from Swinging Sixties genre films. Then after the robbery things fall apart. It becomes a very loose downfall where old men bitch and gripe about each other behind their own backs. For what feels like hours. Very similar to the recent American Animals we shift from charming naughty enthusiasm to reprehensible anti-socialism in the final stretch. I’m guessing this is less a moral choice. I don’t think Marsh cares about a “crime doesn’t pay” message. I think the creatives had too much access to the real old crims’ statements, confessions and mobile phone transcripts. A by-product of the net closing in on the perpetrators is you no longer have to imagine the legend and the myth, their frailty and nastiness has been documented as evidence. It is a shift in tone the more playful air of the film cannot survive. Worst still there is a better, only briefly explored subplot, where the younger member of the team benefits from their ignorance of modern surveillance and childish back stabbing. He uses their infighting to getaway, their greed to snag a small but ultimately more valuable cut. With his mocked disguises, burner phone and low profile he slips out of the country while the tall tale of bus pass bank robbers fires up the media. Maybe his gaming of the experienced “experts” should have been the focus of the final half. Rather than wrinklies moaning and insulting each other ad nauseam.

6