James Ponsoldt directs Emma Watson, Tom Hanks and Karen Gillan in the techno thriller about a social media app that begins to dominate one of its latest employee’s life. 

James Ponsoldt is becoming one of the key cinematic documenters of the 21st century experience. Though The Circle is his most prescient work yet it fails to reach the uncommonly high emotional intelligence of Smashed, The Spectacular Now or The End of the Tour. Yet his depiction of modern working environments, insidious apps and a generation of sharers and commenters is… pretty fucking accurate, a few accentuations aside. Shame that it never really reaches for a gripping third act and that Watson is again insipid in a role that lacks agency or consistency. Though maybe that weak willed, vacuous flip flopping protagonist is the harshest satirical blow landed.  If so, that’s a damning indictment on millennials. A film that captures its moment in time perfectly, without doing anything particularly entertaining with that accuracy.

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Neil Marshall directs Rhona Mitra, Craig Conway and Bob Hoskins in this futuristic sci-fi actioner about an anti-hero cop who has to mission into quarantined Scotland to deal with cannibal and cult tribes who have been abandoned there for decades.

Escape From New York to Aliens to Excalibur to Road Warrior. So blatantly unoriginal that it transcends its actually thievery. For viewers of the right vintage this is akin to  passing in and out of a series of cult 80s VHS classics; watching the best bits, then blacking out while someone else changes the tape and lines up the next movie’s iconic set piece. It is not perfect, some of the imagery is flat and the combat sequences are way too overedited, but it hits the sweet spot more often than not. A manic villian turn by Craig Conway helps. For energy, gore and punch this matches the 30 year old favourites it jukeboxes through gleefully.

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My Top 10 Post Apocalyptic Movies

1. Mad Max 2 : Road Warrior (1981)
2. Children of Men (2006)

3. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
4. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
5. Planet of the Apes (1968)
6. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
7. Return to Oz (1985)
8. Snowpiercer (2012)

9. Wall-E (2008)
10. Logan’s Run (1976)

 

Gary Ross directs Jeff Bridges, Tobey Maguire and Chris Cooper in this historical drama about an underdog racehorse who captured the imagination of the US public during the Great Depression. 

I’m always surprised that Seabiscuit doesn’t come up in conversation more often. To me it shares so much with The Shawshank Redemption, a perennial choice for other people’s favourite movie. It has the same richly realised period sheen. The same lost era Americana fablesque quality. The same masculine sentimentality and wallop of tragedy. It is a film you can watch with all the family, yet deals with grief, depression, unemployment, disability and the restrictive unfairness of free market economics. It also has tremendous race sequences that use a combination of undetectable CGI and stunt jockeys to put you right in the saddle during the breakneck speed battles. Seabiscuit the horse makes a cute conduit for four intertwining strands. Cooper as a last cowboy drifter type, realising that America (and his way of life) is losing its freedom of movement. Bridges as a tycoon looking for a new challenge, one that will distract him from his grief of losing a son. Maguire as a young man brutalised and abandoned by the economic crash, whose skill on a horse is his meal ticket but one that is becoming less and less valid as he ages. Finally, of America as a whole recovering from mass unemployment. This final strand is voiced in a Ken Burns documentary evoking narration, giving the pleasing manipulations we witness a syrupy weight of historical import. It proves to be a quality, feelgood, adult experience… one that maybe goes around the track of failure and comeback one time too many to be a truly perfect experience… but you can’t blame Ross for letting the truth get in the way of a great story.

9

 

Paul McGuigan directs Paul Bettany, Malcolm McDowell and David Thewlis in this violent flashback of an ageing gangster shocker. 

Told with a cocky, if often superficial, visual panache, a million uses of the word “cunt” and a breakout performance from Bettany – this is a solid example of the genre that ran rampant after Lock Stock’s success. What a pity it disappears up its own arse in the final half hour. When we are in the Sixties, we enjoy a psychopath literally crawling out from under his own skin, riddled with the violent horrors he holds within. There’s a moment of silent primal scream where Bettany’s mouth threatens to devour his own head, it widens so terrifyingly wide. Cthulhu in a mohair suit, he could make a great Joker. But when we fast forward to the modern day for retribution and regrets, it fizzles out to nothing. Dodgy old age make up, McDowell hamming about in a narrative dead end. Shame.

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Peter Lord directs Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman and Imelda Staunton in this animated comedy about some daft, harmless pirates who discover their beloved “parrot” is actually a rare scientific find that the British Empire definitely wants sovereignty of. 

Better than most kid’s films in that this anarchically embraces its daftness and loves its genre. It is spirited, silly stuff but the gag rate dips as the plot dominates.

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Damiano Damiani directs Jack Magner, Diane Franklin and James Olson in the demonic possession prequel / sequel to the “true story” horror original.

The first one is an absolute duffer but sometimes you are at your parents’ house, you have to compromise, find yourself watching a film already 30 minutes into its runtime as your Dad has the remote control and there are no channels left. He has cycled through all of them, the only other options are madness or Babestation. Babestation would have been the more wholesome option. We join the new family in the midst of abuse and sibling incest. Fun for all the family. It dawdles. The acting is poor. Yet it isn’t the utter write off that it progenitor was. The on location photography is superior and ambitiously framed for a mere cash-in horror sequel. The freak out, pure horror sequences are off key and chilling. The possessed boy stalking his family at night with a shotgun sequence belongs to a five star film. Native American ghosts trundle out of a secret portal. The demon hatches angrily from his host’s screaming head like it was hardboiled flesh egg. The effect work is unconvincing but gloopily vivid. And while acting might not be Diane Franklin’s forte, she prettily convinces as innocence fallen. I kinda wish Dad had settled on it from the very start as I’ll never watch it again of my own volition.

4

Tate Taylor directs Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis and Dan Aykroyd in this biopic of The Godfather Of Soul / The Hardest Working Man In Show Business / James Brown. 

If Get On Up retained the manic energy of the first 10 minutes then we’d have a platinum plated classic on our hands. We meet James Brown in decline, threatening a group of honkys as one has used his personal office bathroom. He gets distracted by a bit of music in his head. The shotgun he casually waves around goes off. He discovers the culprit and after verbally reprimanding her, reaches a moment of understanding. She was just trying to get what was good for her. He gets it. Then he hears approaching sirens. We shift to 1968. He’s meeting the president… and wanting to bring the FUNK to the troops in ‘Nam. We’re flying into a base under fire. And James Brown is still calling the shots… We reach his impoverished childhood… the nonlinear mosaic of incidents continues but the shock factor levels out. We start to get the standard rags to riches, rise and fall, conflicted tribute of a complex creative. That chaotic energy is dialled right back, mawkishness shares its driver’s seat. But even when this biopic loses its uniqueness, Boseman is superb. He captures Brown perfectly. The cadence, the moves, the confidence, the power. The ageing make-up is uncanny. So it loses steam, so it becomes a back-handed hagiography. There’s enough fun, enough recreation of Brown’s brilliant music and a powerful central turn that keeps this keeping on.

6

 

Coralie Fargeat directs Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe in this hyper-stylised rape and revenge thriller. 

The imagery is neon, bleached, burned and blistering. We get close-ups of ants being drowned in globs of blood, candy being grotesquely chomped and embedded glass being removed from vagina-like wounds. We get a heroine who goes from defenceless trophy to hardened predator, men who go from lecherous threat to manic incompetence, and a directorial gaze that gives us as much hard bodied man flesh as it does alluring lady butt shots. You are going to have to like your gore to enjoy this, you are going to have to be a fan of Cinéma Du Look to appreciate it. But it works… hard and nasty, but it works. Pulse racing, smartly experimental reverse-exploitation.

7

Richard Lester directs Richard Harris, Omar Sharif and Shirley Knight in this disaster movie where a cruise liner is held to ransom by a mysterious terrorist who has planted seven complex bombs. 

A dull and bloodless airport novel adaptation. None of the characters are given any room to breathe. Lester’s direction is restless – building little tension and completely fumbling the parlour game of guessing who the “Juggernaut” is. There’s a decent stunt sequence at the midway point but in general this is stodgy and lifeless.

2

My Top Ten Disaster Movies

1. Die Hard (1988)
2. Speed (1994)
3. The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974)
4. Captain Philips (2013)
5. The Martian (2015)
6. Con Air (1997)

7. The Posiedon Adventure (1972)
8. Jurassic Park (1993)
9. Deepwater Horizon (2016)
10. Lifeboat (1944)

Jay Baruchel directs Seann William Scott, Liev Schreiber and Alison Pill in this sequel to the ice hockey comedy. 

Uh-oh! All the way through this I thought I was watching the first one. I had no idea I was watching the sequel until I went online to read the trivia after and realised I hadn’t seen Eugene Levy in it once. So now I don’t know if a lot of the deadpan, random humour I quite enjoyed are actually just callbacks to jokes and characters set-up in the first film. If not then, this very, very, very violent sports comedy is an off-the-wall amusement that benefits from a likeable cast.

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