A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

A Royal Affair

A Royal Affair The story is genuinely startling, the cast is excellent (especially Mads Mikkelsen), and the writing… is very good in places. We’re in the Danish court, late in the 18th century, and the not-entirely-sane king has just taken a young English bride. Things are not going well between them; the king’s cruel sense of humour and fondness for prostitutes don’t help. A newcomer to the court wins the king’s confidence and starts nudging him in the direction of much-needed social reform. The old aristocracy grind their teeth. Then the newcomer catches the unhappy young queen’s eye. Things quickly get very complicated indeed. Director and co-writer Nikolaj Arcel has a slightly heavy hand when it comes to political intrigue, but the unlikely love triangle at the heart of this film is well realised and affecting. 3.5/5 DL

A Separation Very few of the people I’ve discussed this Iranian masterpiece with in the nine months or so since it screened at last year’s film festival have failed to report that it blew them away. The subject matter is severe, though not extreme: a couple in the throes of a contested divorce get caught up in a legal dispute with another couple, less educated, less prosperous, and far more religious than they are. Director Asghar Farhadi attends to each of the four litigants with a spacious, careful respect; this is multiple perspective storytelling raised to a high art, and the acting, like the camera work, is so unshowy you could almost fail to notice how good it is. Without much in the way of stylistic bells and whistles, Farhadi earns himself a place at the very top of his profession. Full review here. 5/5 DL

B

Brave

Brave If you’re a parent looking for a yes/no answer to the question, “Should I take my kids to this?”, it’s a yes. Energetic, looks great, story works okay; attempt at getting feminism and mainstream American conservatism to hold hands and pretend to be friends laughably inadequate, but that’s par for the kids movie course. If you’re a Pixar watcher looking for a yes/no answer to the question, “Was Cars 2 just a blip?”, things get a bit more complicated. This is certainly a much better film than Cars 2, the one that broke Pixar’s 15 year “no bad movies” streak. It has decent voice acting – one of the things we used to take for granted with Pixar, before Larry the Cable Guy’s awful turn as Mater in the Cars films – and it’s fun. And gorgeous to look at of course; that, we can still take for granted. On the other hand, this has been trumpeted as the first Pixar film with a girl hero. You have to ask yourself – with 12 features about boys being boys behind them and not one that centers itself on a female point of view, what exactly does “telling a girl’s story” mean to Pixar? Apparently, it means 1) make her a princess, that always worked for Disney, and incidentally allows us to 2) put her in a society with an incredibly confining notion of female behaviour, so she can be rebellious and feisty just by virtue of not wanting to be married off at 15, and then let’s 3) make her express her rebellion by shooting arrows at things, so we can have action scenes. In other words, this is a girl who superficially behaves like Pixar’s idea of a boy, while acting out the tamest possible version of a female empowerment story: if she can manage to achieve less freedom than the audience’s great great grandmothers had, we’ll call that a happy ending. But any little girls out there hoping for a positive role model can take some comfort: she has amazing hair. Meanwhile, the film is mostly bereft of the originality that made Up and Wall-E so memorable, and it can’t own its mainstream American values the way the Toy Story films can, because it’s busy trying to make the princess thing work. Pixar’s grand magus, John Lasseter, was the man who announced, shortly after Disney brought him in to save their animated films from irrelevance, that Disney was getting out of the princess game – but this lively, forgettable thing is a Disney princess film with a make-over. 3.5/5 DL

C

Cafe De Flore

Cafe De Flore Domestic drama and New Age spiritualism form an unlikely alliance here, but let yourself go with it and you’ll have something to ponder after the credits roll. To start, there are parallel stories with different timeframes: a mother (Vanessa Paradis) and her Down syndrome boy in Paris in the 60s; a troubled DJ (French-Canadian singer-songwriter Kevin Parent) and his broken-but-mending family in present-day Montreal. The connection isn’t obvious, and it doesn’t become clear till near the end, but along the way you’re so hooked into possible clues that you’re inclined to hang on through the structural confusion and puzzling tangents. The clues are mostly visual, building a surreal sense of broken memory and perception, and even if you end up not buying the explanation, there’s no doubt that director Jean-Marc Vallée has come up with an intriguing angle on love, fate and letting go. And if you did happen to live in Paris in the 60s, this is the kind of film you’d argue about with friends in some cool, smoky café for hours afterwards. 3.5/5 HW

Carnage Curious: Roman Polanski’s adaptation of this four-hander stage play is so intelligently shot and so well cast that the limits of the source material become glaringly obvious… and yet, being so intelligently shot and so well cast, it’s still a treat to watch. Two New York pre-teen boys get into a fight. One knocks the other’s teeth out, and the parents of the evil-doer go over to the victim’s apartment to apologise to his parents. Much back-handed courtesy ensues; and then things go downhill; and then things go off a cliff. Jodie Foster reminds you just how good she can be; her role is perhaps the juiciest, but Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and John C Reilly all shine as the other warring spouses. Polanski’s direction is a masterclass in getting the most out of a small set without resorting to attention-getting weird camera placement stunts – brief opening and closing sequences aside, the film takes place entirely in one small New York apartment, but it never feels cramped or visually static. The play ultimately wastes its best satirical opportunities in favour of over-the-top couples-on-the-warpath humour, but it’s hard to object too strenuously when it’s done this well. 3.5/5 DL

Chinese Take-Away

Chinese Take-Away The obvious phrases to describe Chinese Takeaway – “charming”, “warmhearted”, “delightful” – would be perfectly adequate, except that the opening, a prologue of wonderful absurdity, introduces an almost magical element that wafts this Argentinian film beyond cliché. In Buenos Aires, the chance meeting of a solitary, grumpy shopkeeper (Ricardo Darín of The Secret in Their Eyes) and a penniless Chinese immigrant (Huang Sheng Huang) sparks a tale of human connection and coincidence that unwinds gently and surprisingly without ever feeling engineered. Darín is deadpan amusing, and Huang’s almost exclusively nonverbal performance is just right. 3.5/5 HW

Coriolanus Taut and thrilling, Ralph Fiennes’ adaptation (with writer John Logan) of this Shakespearean tragedy is a triumph for him as both actor and director. Set in Rome but with sly visual referencing of contemporary theatres of civil war (Eastern Europe, the Middle East), this production takes the concept of “opening it up” by the scruff of its neck and hurls us into a cinematic telling that’s visceral and urgent in look and feel, yet never sacrifices the tragic psychology at its heart. Shaven-headed and dead-eyed, Fiennes is a truly scary Martius – dubbed Coriolanus after he saves Rome – a soldier hero lugging a bag of pride, anger and disdain which curdle into a shocking vengeance that we know cannot – must not – end well. Even his mother Volumnia (pretty dodgy herself when it comes to patriotic bloodlust, as underscored by Vanessa Redgrave’s appearance in military drag), cannot tame the monster in her son. Fear and pity indeed. Showing in Auckland and Hamilton only. 4/5 HW

D

Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows It’s a Tim Burton film. It’s also a remake of a cult TV classic, in the “obscure, still has fans, probably dreadful even in its day” sense of that phrase, and you could certainly see its many and various weaknesses as side-effects of the distorting compressions, elisions and exaggerations that tend to go on when Hollywood reimagines a small screen property. But I’d put most of the blame on those increasingly ominous words, “a Tim Burton film”. In an astonishing departure, Johnny Depp stars as a whimsically drawn comic character with overtones of menace. (In this instance, a 200-year old vampire, newly released from the grave and working his way down a long list of of fish-out-of-water cliches as he gets to grips with that mod, mod year, 1972). Helena Bonham Carter has a pointless supporting role, the set design is gorgeously overdone, and neither the story nor the characters have any great dramatic coherence. So yes, a Tim Burton film, and not one of the now vanishingly rare ones where he seems to care about what he’s doing. But it isn’t his worst. I laughed a few times, smiled quite often, said “Give me a break” only once or twice. With Michelle Pfeiffer as the matriarch of Johnny Depp’s dysfunctional clan of descendants (she’s great), and Eva Green as his immortal lovesick nemesis. (Sorry, Casino Royale fans, I’m calling it: she simply cannot act). 2.5/5 DL

G

Good For Nothing

Good For Nothing It’s a Western. It was made in New Zealand. South Otago and the McKenzie Country stand in (brilliantly) for the mid-American plains. Cohen Holloway (Boy, Eagle Vs Shark) plays Clint Eastwood, or at least, Clint Eastwood as he might have been, were the classic Eastwood characters of yore more inclined to rape people, and more troubled by erectile dysfunction. Holloway’s great, and the film looks magnificent – first-time DOP Mathew Knight should be getting lots more work offers. The potential difficulty is the rape-driven storyline, in which Holloway’s Man With No Name abducts Isabella Montgomery (Inge Rademeyer, very good in her first screen role), a young British woman with a lot of romantic ideas about the American West. Director Mike Wallace sets out to explode every one of these ideas, and his humour is so dry you could frequently miss it altogether: especially while his hero is attempting (and failing) to rape his heroine. Male impotence is the film’s grand comic theme, and it works very nicely in a running gag about a sheriff who can’t shoot straight, but the funny side of rape is harder to locate than Wallace possibly realises. The thing which ultimately sold me on the film despite its wince-inducing moments is the John Psathas score, at once so original, so stirring and so evocative of the great Western soundtracks of the past. Psathas has never scored a film before. He’s going to be in hot demand internationally as a film composer from now on; not that he needs the work, but I hope he takes some of it. I haven’t been this impressed by film music in a long time. The first thing I wanted to do after watching the film was to find out more about his contribution, and happily, Guy Somerset has an interview with him here. 3/5 DL

J

Jiro Dreams of Sushi The perfect subject for an unlikely hit biographical documentary meets not quite the perfect film-maker. Jiro Ono is a Japanese sushi chef. Actually, he’s the Japanese sushi chef, 85 years old when this film was made and widely viewed as the zen master of his field. People wait months and years for a booking at his little Tokyo sushi bar, where he serves them whatever he thinks they ought to eat: the simplest of food, prepared by a living exemplar of the principle that you should devote your life to perfecting your art. And what kind of father and boss does a man like that make? We meet Jiro’s various apprentices, one of whom is his son and presumptive heir; they’re stoical about the decades they’re expected to devote to learning to cook rice, after which Jiro may, possibly, allow them to invest further decades in learning to slice fish. It’s fascinating material, but it presents director David Gelb with a problematic challenge: when your subject is constantly emphasising the importance of getting the little things right, your audience is likely to pay more attention than usual to your editing, your choice of music cues, and, generally speaking, your broad-spectrum technical competence. To say that Gelb’s work is not up to Jiro’s standards is to put it kindly, because few people’s would be – but a lot of directors would come far closer than he does. 3/5 DL

L

Last Will

Last Will A reporter yawning her way through the annual Nobel Prize ball in Stockholm is shocked awake when the couple next to her on the dance floor gets gunned down. One of them was a controversial genetics researcher. The other was the head of the Nobel committee. Which one was the target? Before she can follow up, the police slap a gag order on her: and if you imagine she doesn’t follow up anyway, or that her research doesn’t nearly get her killed, you’re imagining a far less by-the-numbers story than this one. As crusading journalist murder mysteries go, this is entertaining enough, but it suffers from one of the major problems of the form – having asked you to switch your brain on and attend to its trail of clues, it then has to come up with a plot resolution which doesn’t insult your intelligence. Don’t hold your breath. 3/5 DL

Le Havre I hesitate to call this a sweet, funny comedy of intergenerational kindness – although it’s a description anyone coming out of the film would be likely to agree to enthusiastically – because the humour is so understated, so deadpan, that it takes a while to creep up on you. In other words, not a good film to go into expecting instant hilarity. An old man and his elderly neighbours help a young illegal immigrant evade France’s immigration police, just because it strikes them as the right thing to do. Full review here. 4/5 DL

Letters To Father Jacob A simple tale that’s all done in 74 minutes, yet with the depth, meaning and impact of something much, much bigger. Father Jacob, elderly and blind, lives in a far-flung corner of Finland. The letters are from seekers of advice and comfort, and the task of reading them aloud to him is taken up by Leila, a surly ex-prisoner, recently pardoned. They barely communicate, yet out of the sparseness of her daily routine and silent observing, a glimmer of compassion begins to grow. The quiet unfolding of the story has that compassion taking her to a place that neither she nor we could have suspected, and yet, even as we recover from the intensity and emotion of the surprise, it all makes perfect sense. Crafted beautifully, shot atmospherically, and performed with the kind of restraint that speaks volumes, this is an affirmation of faith, forgiveness and humanity that even nonbelievers can buy Full review here. 5/5 HW

M

Margin Call Moral fibre is conspicuous by its absence in JC Chandor’s compelling imagining of what happened the day the music died on Wall Street. Or rather, the day the musician-traders watched in paralysed horror as the volume began to fade from 11. The resulting overnight scramble, overseen by a CEO based not-so-loosely on Lehman Brothers’ John Tuld, and played to eminence gris perfection by Jeremy Irons, is a visual orchestration of internalised spinelessness and panic. It also earned Chandor a well deserved screenplay nomination in this year’s Oscars. And unlike documentary treatments of the crisis (eg., Inside Job), there are no whizzbang diagrams or jargon garble to grapple with. Some of these players admit to not really getting any of this stuff either, so, usefully for us, have to have it explained over and over. It’s an example of the way the film humanises those we would normally label greedy bastards, but it doesn’t let them off the hook, either. Kevin Spacey heads a good, solid ensemble of unshowy performers, and a nice surprise is that one of them is Demi Moore. Review here. 4/5 HW

Men In Black 3

Men In Black 3 One of the better moments in this surprisingly entertaining revival of a seemingly dead franchise involves people standing on top of Manhattan’s Chrysler building, watching a fleet of alien warships devastate the skyline. It’s only a few weeks since I saw Thor standing on top of that same building while a fleet of alien warships devastated that same skyline. It’s a beautiful building, and, as someone commented dryly in the wake of The Avengers, wrecking New York for fun is one of the ways we show the terrorists they didn’t beat us; but would some filmmaker out there mind working up a few new images for future pop entertainment to overuse? Our decade just doesn’t seem to be pulling its weight in the visual cliche generation business; and the extent to which it’s instantly forgettable is the main black mark against this film. Still, you don’t need to remember every soft drink you ever drank, and as disposable products go, this is an honest one: far more than the second film in the series, it works hard to give you an actual story, not just a bunch of gimmicky set pieces. Will Smith – absent from our screens since Hancock four years ago – is in likable form, and Josh Brolin does an astonishingly convincing turn as a young version of Tommy Lee Jones. (Do I mean Tommy Lee Jones’s character? I really don’t. These characters barely exist except as vehicles for channeling star personas). Curious to say, the film manages to err a little on the side of too much story and too little “aliens are all around us” gimmickry (though the time travelling visit to Andy Warhol’s Factory was a stroke of genius on someone’s part), and Emma Thompson, as the highest profile new name on the bill, is largely wasted. But Jemaine Clement does excellent work as – well, let’s not say who as; I knew he was in the film and I still failed to spot him. And in general, this is a fun bit of light SF action. Oh, the 3D? Perfunctory. 3.5/5 DL

O

One Man, Two Guvnors I can’t remember when I last laughed as loud and as long as I did in this brilliant piece of tomfoolery from the National Theatre. I missed it first time around, in last season’s NTLive, but I’m not surprised it’s being given another trot (along with its stable mate, Frankenstein). Nicholas Hytner’s production, and Richard Bean’s adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters is like the Best of British broad comedy (farce, panto, a bit of stand-up and improv) in a homage to commedia dell’arte, and it’s a perfect antidote to mid-winter blues. The cast is impressively sure-footed – or bumble-footed in Tom Edden’s case, with his OTT turn as a hapless waiter – but front-and-centre is the large presence of James Corden (The History Boys). He’s the one man of the title, juggling a full and sometimes confusing complement of plot complications even as he desperately tries to keep his two guvnors apart. Recently awarded a Tony for the role on Broadway, he turns impeccable timing, physical comedy and even a spot of musical skill into an arresting, delicious performance. All right, it’s more a filmed production than a piece of cinema, but who cares when you’re laughing this much? Do not miss. 5/5 HW

P

Prometheus

Prometheus You have a long directing career. You have made half a dozen highly popular films, but only two of lasting importance, and you made them thirty years ago. You decide to go back and make follow-ups to each of them. In the case of Alien, you opt for a prequel. Alien starts with the discovery of an unknown species on an unexplored planet, so right off the bat, your audience know that whatever happens in your new film, word of it will not get back to Earth. This rather reduces the suspense as to the likelihood of many of your characters surviving, so it would appear that you either 1) have a cunning plan for moving this franchise, which has produced as many bad films as good ones, out of the suspense game, or 2) have a cunning plan for wresting suspense from the jaws of your audience’s expectations, or 3) are inviting the inevitable comparisons with your younger self to no good purpose whatsoever. But it surely won’t be the last of these? You’re Ridley Scott, legend! You even made a film called Legend once! Though you prefer not to talk about that one much these days. And if you were smart, you would have given yourself the option of not taking about this one either. By not making it. It’s a mess. A confused and desperately pretentious screenplay attempts to fuse lofty questions about the meaning of human life to the old “Who’s going to die next?” game, with a side order of poorly judged and poorly executed body violation horror. The original film was a tightly constructed Freudian nightmare, startling to its first audiences in ways that are hard to appreciate three decades later. Scott was never likely to equal it, though the hope that he might come close has driven pre-release expectations of Prometheus quite as much as its expertly conducted marketing campaign. He’s delivered an undeniably handsome film, and some will find its striking visuals partial compensation for its narrative and thematic failure. I go the other way. So much talent on display to so little purpose makes me grind my teeth with frustration. If Scott’s upcoming Blade Runner sequel is as disappointing as this one, he will be hearing from my dentist. Full review here. 2/5 DL

R

Rock of Ages

Rock Of Ages As the owner of the Bourbon Room, a fictional club on the Strip in Los Angeles during the 80s rock scene, Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin in a long, tragic wig) promises “a sea of sweat, ear-shattering music and puke!” Well, no. It never gets that assaulting, or dangerous, or grungey. This is 80s-lite, based on a Broadway musical about stars-in-their-eyes kids making it in Hollywood, so reality is of the heightened kind, not gritty. You’ll pick that from the way a load of strangers bursts into song around our young small-town heroine, Sherrie (perky Julianne Hough), as she rides the bus to LA to seek fame and fortune. She meets Drew (pretty Diego Boneta), an aspiring singer; things go well, then badly, etc. And so it goes in this slight, briefly entertaining diversion that mildly spoofs the era and its characters, features Tom Cruise in Bret Michaels mode (he sings and takes his shirt off, but he’s no rock god), and Catherine Zeta-Jones trying, and failing, to convince that she hates rock ‘n’ roll. Strangely, the soundtrack never really grabs, but what does come across is the exuberance, energy and optimism of all that young ambition. 2.5/5 HW

S

Safe The pun in the title is possibly the only thing that’s a little bit smart about this piece of studio fodder, but if you’re in the mood for a spot of Jason Statham action – spray-shooting, car-wrecking, bone-cracking mayhem – then knock yourself out. New York’s the setting, the bad guys are a three-headed monster of locals and foreigners, and the object of their desire, whom Statham’s character naturally leaps to protect, is a small Chinese girl with a head for numbers. Exposition is delivered under fire – which is marginally better than ponderous discussion – but there’s no knowing if any of it makes sense. Not that it matters, except for the fact that the end hints at a sequel. If there is, they’ll need to find a better reason – chemistry or something – for these two fugitives to turn up together on screen again. 2/5 HW

Salmon Fishing In The Yemen I thought this was supposed to be a satire of British politics, based on Paul Torday’s book, but Simon Beaufoy’s script has channelled most of the comedy into a light and quirky romance, producing more of a chickflick than commentary. Odd couple Harriet – assistant to a progress-minded Yemeni sheik who decides to have a go at introducing North Atlantic salmon to the desert – and Fred, the government fisheries expert recruited to help her, spend most of the film behaving as though what we know is going to happen between them isn’t going to happen, only you couldn’t exactly call it sexual tension. Despite the contrivance and predictability, it’s gentle and amusing enough to pass the time – although when the satire does put in an appearance, in the form of an OTT Kristin Scott Thomas as the PM’s media minder, it almost punches a hole in the screen with the force (farce?) of its caricature. And thus loses much of its satirical power. Emily Blunt as Harriet, and Ewan McGregor as Fred are fine, but are hardly exercised by this material. OK if you like your salmon in spring water rather than oil. 2.5/5 HW

Shihad: Beautiful Machine Fans will enjoy this inside look and its generous use of archive footage of both the onstage and offstage life of the band. If you’re not a fan, you’ll still appreciate the choice to focus on the personal stories, even though they track the familiar rise-and-fall arc of most band documentaries. They’re frank about the personal highs and lows, and there’s a decent section on THAT decision to change their name when they went to conquer America. Although it would have been good to have explained why they chose as its replacement a word that Americans use for a baby’s dummy. I mean, what were they on? Oh, right. Overall, as competently made as it is, it never rises above mere document … except for the moment when we first clap eyes on Jon Toogood’s Mum’s splendid tat. Now there’s a story. 2.5/5 HW

Snow White and the Huntsman

Snow White and the Huntsman There are so many lousy fantasy and science fiction films around these days. This isn’t just another one. First time feature director Rupert Sanders has the very best of intentions, you can feel it in the shape and flow of his story. He really does want to pay attention to character and narrative logic. He wants to take a fairy tale and spin it into a grand fantasy adventure, full of darkness and wonder. He just doesn’t quite know how. Where most bad films in the mega-budget range go astray by staking everything on the effects budget and piling on too many poorly constructed action sequences, Sanders errs on the side of too many slow, awkwardly handled character-developing moments. It’s actually rather charming. And the film looks splendid; most of the visuals are clear lifts from the likes of Tim Burton and Hayao Miyazaki, but if you’re going to have fantasy influences, those aren’t bad ones to have. Still, it has to be said: all in all, this is lame, and it has exactly the wrong person playing Snow White. I do like Kristen Stewart, but the reason she works as Bella in the Twilight films (and I insist that she does) is that she always, always looks slightly conflicted. Sanders is constantly telling us that his Snow White’s power lies in her purity. Purity, in conventional fantasy terms, is the opposite of corruption, but in acting terms its opposite is ambivalence: if you’re always registering multiple, conflicting emotions, you are by definition not purely any one thing. With everything else that’s against it, this film really didn’t need a heroine who looks like she’s wandered in from an indie romcom and isn’t quite sure how she feels about being in the wrong place. 3/5 DL

Starbuck Charming French-Canadian comedy based around one of the great comedy film tropes of our time, the Boy-Man Who Needs To Grow Up. Patrick Huard plays David Wozniak, a middle aged loser perpetually supported by his long-suffering family and on the verge of being dumped by his long-suffering girlfriend. Who is, it transpires, pregnant, and disinclined to see David as a good potential father figure. While he’s dithering over how to respond to this unwelcome turn of events, he discovers he is, in fact, a father figure already: long ago, he raised some much-needed quick cash by selling his sperm to a fertility clinic. He now has 533 children. And they’re challenging his anonymous donor status in court. Surprisingly witty, surprisingly sweet, and in the end, surprisingly moving. 4/5 DL

T

The Amazing Spiderman

The Amazing Spiderman Be amazed… it’s pretty ordinary. Though “ordinary”, in the through-the-looking-glass world of big budget CGI franchise movies, is not the ordinary ordinary. It’s the ordinary of “Hey, we told this story ten years ago – let’s do it again, only dumber!” Andrew Garfield is a likable Peter Parker, though he doesn’t make sense in the role the way Tobey Maguire did. (Why is Spiderman more interesting than Superman? Because Superman pretends to be Clark Kent, but Peter Parker pretends to be Spiderman. Why does Peter Parker need a wise-cracking heroic alter ego? Well I could bore you with the long version, because I grew up on this stuff, but the salient point here is that Peter Parker is an insecure nerd who can’t get a date. Even in The Social Network, which at least gave him a well written character to play, it didn’t really seem plausible that someone as pretty as Garfield could be so unused to social success). The fight scenes are the best thing about this long, only superficially coherent version of the Spiderman origin story. The actual story bits are all over the place, as though several different writers each had their own ideas for where to take things and they thought it would be fun to use all of them. It’s certainly a long way from the worst superhero movie we’ve seen, but… is the bar Sony has to clear to relaunch this franchise really set as low as “not the worst we’ve seen”? Okay, maybe I’m amazed after all.  3/5 DL

The Avengers Superhero movie agnostics, here is your test case: if you don’t like this one, you’re never going to like any of them. This is not quite to say that writer/director Joss Whedon has squared the circle and produced the perfect marriage of big budget action and old fashioned storytelling, but my god, it’s hard to imagine anyone getting much closer. To put it at its crudest, this is a film where the fight scenes have actual characters in them. I could have done without the rent-a-villain hordes of aliens who turn up in the final act (no spoiler; we see them coming from the first scene) so that our cast of heroes, having fought each other a bit and then other people a bit, can take things to the next level (in the computer games sense) and fight a city-levelling, world-threatening army a bit; or rather, I’d have liked it if the aliens had been slightly less anonymous. And that final battle does go on rather. But it’s so cleanly composed as an action sequence, so easy to follow, and, thanks to the work Whedon’s put into building his subplots and establishing his characters, it’s so full of moments that have meaning: it is in fact a character-driven final battle, a thing which any student of the works of Michael Bay might have taken to be a contradiction in terms. And the process of getting to it is just pure fun. Robert Downey Jnr and Tom Hiddleston get the best of Whedon’s many good lines, playing Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Loki (evil brother of Thor), respectively, and their big scene together was my favourite one by far; but this is an ensemble film, and none of the characters is neglected. Even the Incredible Hulk gets to be a real person here, and many another character who’s annoyed or baffled me in previous Marvel films serves a meaningful purpose. I still rank the much-neglected Serenity – another ensemble action movie requiring a degree of investment in a previously established story universe for full appreciation – as Whedon’s best work on the big screen. But only by a whisker. Interview with Brian Michael Bendis, writer of the Avengers comics and consultant on the movie, here. Update: I forgot to mention that I saw this in 3D, which tells you all you need to know on the format choice question. If I were seeing this again, and I most likely will, I can’t think of any reason to pay more for the 3D version; on the other hand, if someone insists on thrusting 3D tickets into your hand, the 3D isn’t the murky, irritating kind that sabotages your enjoyment. 4/5 DL

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Not to be mistaken for any kind of masterpiece, but don’t underrate the professional expertise required to put a good, likeable ensemble culture-clash comedy together. Director John Madden throws a dream cast of senior British actors – Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton – into a run-down Indian “luxury retirement facility”, and they have a satisfying amount of fun there. At its weakest when it tries to be serious and meaningful, but never less than pleasant. Longer review here. 3.5/5 DL

The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea Just as he has done in his previous work (Distant Voices, Still Lives, and The Long Day Closes), Terence Davies imbues his version of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play with the atmosphere of postwar Britain, evoking sombre tones and a mood of melancholic limbo. The sing-alongs are there, too, with all their nostalgia and comment on the action. And there is a story, of forbidden love between a dashing airman (Tom Hiddleston) and a judge’s young wife (Rachel Weisz), but it’s a barebones one, told through her memories of episodes that play like, well, scenes from a play. Such a tenuous narrative might work if we could get inside the characters, but there’s so much repression at work here – of passion, of expression of hopes and desires – that they are too opaque. Yes, we get that she’s yearning for a more sensual life, and that he’s unsettled by his war experiences and unable to give her what she wants, but the stylized treatment keeps us at a distance, and we never quite care. Full review here. 2.5/5 HW

The Door All the right things seem in place for this to be good – Helen Mirren, Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others), director Istvan Szabo (Mephisto, Being Julia) and a post-war Hungarian setting that casts a visual spell with its spare, cool ambience. The story’s about a complicated and frequently testy relationship between Mirren and Gedeck’s characters, divided by class, personality and experiences, but in the end it’s about too many things, stretched across an episodic narrative with no clear theme. I suspect there are autobiographical elements in the novel it’s based on (by Magda Szabo – no relation) which are responsible for this, so the adaptation struggles to locate an arc for the film. It’s also distracting – no, irritating – to find that the accents have been replaced by overdubbed British. Why? 2.5/5 HW

The Dictator Borat was a work of demented genius. Bruno… wasn’t. And now we get to see what Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles can do by way of in-your-face, sacred-cow-slaughtering comedy when they strip away the fake documentary device. Who would have thought it would be this little? Cohen plays Aladeen, the title despot, a North African strongman on a mission to defend his nation’s nuclear program to the UN Assembly. A coup attempt – courtesy of a grand vizier character played by Ben Kingsley, whose loyalty to his Hugo co-star must have overwhelmed his sense of self-preservation – leaves Aladeen lost on the streets of New York, where he proceeds to say ever such daringly rude things about women, Jews, blacks, and whoever else he can think of. None of it’s at all funny, and the implication that liberal sensibilities can be bruised by such lame wannabe offensiveness is the only shocking thing on offer. That, and the revelation that Cohen, who bottled lightning with Borat, could sink this low. 1.5/5 DL

The Kid With A Bike

The Kid With A Bike An abandoned preteen boy teeters on the edge of a very bad future, and a sweet-souled woman sees what’s happening, sees the huge emotional price adopting him is likely to cost her, and does it anyway. The latest film from Belgium’s writer/director/producer Dardenne brothers duo is built around this simple idea, and it’s built very simply. We know almost nothing about the characters’ histories, and key moments (the handful of seconds immediately after the boy’s father tells him to go away and not be part of his life any more, for instance) occur off-screen. In the end, the raw, honest acting of Cecile De France and young Thomas Doret won me over, despite the Dardennes’ poorly judged insistence on treating their characters as figures in a schematic morality tale. Full review here. 3.5/5 DL

The Way “You don’t choose a life, Dad; you live one” is the line that tells you what you’re in for. Just so you know. Which isn’t to say this road movie is just an episodic greeting card, but it does have flat patches and the kind of plot predictability that has you knowing what’s going to happen just before it pops up on the screen. Never mind. It has great scenery, since it’s a kind of tourist doco for Spain (interestingly, the landscape looks a lot like New Zealand). An American widower (Martin Sheen) travels to Spain to collect the body of his son, killed when walking the 800km Camino de Santiago, a popular pilgrimage from the French Pyrenees to the Atlantic coast. Dad then decides to do the walk too, but has to suffer some unwanted companions: an irritatingly cheerful Dutchman, an acid Canadian and a garrulous Irishman (sounds like the basis for a joke, but at least the actors here are capable of lifting them above mere stereotype). Sheen does his crusty old bugger routine, and much international bickering ensues before the inevitable hugging and learning. And only after lots of shots of walking, drinking and smoking, some minor jeopardy and a final extraordinary piece of religious theatre which I won’t spoil by divulging. Directed and written by Emilio Estevez, Sheen’s son. The better-behaved one. 2.5/5 HW

The Well Digger's Daughter

The Well Digger’s Daughter Daniel Auteuil directs his own adaptation of a Marcel Pagnol novel: Pagnol being the author of Jean De Florette and Manon of the Spring. Neither of those books was adapted by Auteuil, and though he was in the films, he didn’t direct them, so it’s worth emphasising that he does a decent job getting this one onto the screen. He also stars, and when he’s got his acting hat on he’s more than decent. His Pascal Amoretti is a solid working class man in rural 1930s France, thoroughly lacking in imagination and just barely coping with the responsibilities of raising his six daughters on his own. The eldest, Patricia, falls in love with the wrong man and gets pregnant, and Amoretti’s response takes his family instantly to the brink of tragedy. This is a four-square, swelling-symphonic-music, golden-light-on-the-wheat-fields historical drama, with very few surprises, but it’s solidly made, and I found myself genuinely caring about the characters. There isn’t quite the distinction there needs to be between Auteuil the actor and Auteuil the director; his character is incapable of seeing his daughter’s point of view, and the film doesn’t always seem aware that she has one. It really should have been called The Well Digger. But it’s still moving. 3.5/5 DL

The Women On The 6th Floor The pitch for the film probably went something like, “culture clash meets class conflict”, and there’s plenty of fun to be anticipated when Spanish maid Maria replaces a French maid in the Paris household of the middle-class Jouberts. (This did happen in the 60s, when Spanish women sought work and refuge from Franco across the border). Life-changing events ensue from this meeting of Parisian detachment and Spanish exuberance, and although you can see them coming a mile off, they’re played out with light cheerfulness rather than delving into their underlying psychology. Sandrine Kiberlain, who was wondrous in Mademoiselle Chambon, is rather wasted here as Mme Joubert, inevitably upstaged by the bevy of Spanish ladies engulfing her stockbroker husband (Fabrice Luchini), who can’t seem to believe what’s happening to him. Not total froth, but not particularly demanding either. Review here. 3/5 HW

Tortoise In Love In a quiet way, this is one of the strangest films you’re likely to see this year. It’s so very close to complete lifelessness you wonder the people behind the camera didn’t nod off. Maybe they did. It would explain a lot. A young Brit returns to his small town home after a failed attempt at making a life in the big smoke, gets a job as a gardener, falls madly in love with a young Polish woman who’s working Up At The Manor, and… nothing much happens. Lots and lots of nothing much. He’s of the “can’t talk coherently to woman he likes” school of romantic hero; but the town is full of well meaning salt-of-the-earth types, and they all see what’s going on, and… nothing much happens. They make jokes. They give him bad advice. They hold village fetes. It’s all fairly good humoured and utterly lacking in spark. You can imagine it on British TV in the 1960s. Or do I mean 1950s? How it found its way onto movie screens today I can’t imagine, but as empty vessels go, it’s harmless enough. 3/5 DL

Trishna You don’t need to know Tess of the d’Urbervilles to appreciate Michael Winterbottom’s reinterpretation of Thomas Hardy’s novel, but it might help you over the hump of its melodramatic finale. If you’re not familiar with it, keep in mind that in transporting the action from 19th century England and the Industrial Revolution to 21st century India and globalisation, Winterbottom’s making a valid point about the unintended human cost of social change. The film’s very much in his style – such as it is, given his predilection for trying different genres – with its docudrama rhythms and inclusion of non-actors. Slumdog Millionaire’s Freida Pinto makes a gorgeous Trishna/Tess, and the palaces of Rajasthan make a lovely counterpoint to the rush of Mumbai. 3.5/5 HW

W

What To Expect When You’re Expecting Not the sequel to Bridesmaids, and certainly not in that league in its humour, but an entertaining enough merry-go-round of the state of pregnancy. An ensemble of five loosely-related couples at different stages of relationship nudges the film towards something close to unwieldy, but the business (comic) and busyness (narrative) help zoom over the cracks. There are even jokes for blokes, courtesy a tragic stroller-pushing fathers’ group, but they’re mostly lame and irrelevant – which kinda goes for the group itself. There are tears as well, and twists and turns that give the characters simple story arcs in lieu of anything more profound. It’s a shame to single out anyone from this large, competent cast, but Glee’s Matthew Morrison looks pretty happy to have scored his first big film role opposite Cameron Diaz, and Elizabeth Banks delivers good comedy along with a baby. Good clean fun, and minimal cringe except for a bit of barfing and obviously prosthetic baby bumps. 3/5 HW

Click here for more stories and reviews by David Larsen, here for more stories and reviews by Helene Wong.