Before Midnight  (2013)    72/100

Rating :   72/100                                                                     109 Min        15

The continuation of a story focusing on a relationship under the microscope, in this case all before midnight on a certain day, and previously ‘Before Sunrise’ in 95 and ‘Before Sunset’ in 2004. The couple are Jesse and Celine, played respectively by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, both of whom helped write the screenplay along with the director Richard Linklater. The vast majority of the film is a dialogue between the two characters, whilst they holiday in Greece with their two twin daughters, with the only real notable exception being a dinner table scene with friends, but even if you haven’t seen the previous two films and are unfamiliar with the characters, as I was, this is still easily accessible. Both central performances are engaging, and though there are shades of whiny melodrama, the story touches on just enough common relationship issues and overarching themes of transience and mortal companionship to keep us interested. It’s not Bergman (Ingmar), but it is charming and involving, with a decidedly bittersweet aftertaste.

World War Z  (2013)    67/100

Rating :   67/100                                                                     116 Min        15

This is a reasonably good zombie film, but one massively hindered by a director who hasn’t learned from previous mistakes. The man in question, Marc Forster, was criticised on a grand scale for his ultra fast editing of the action sequences on the Bond film ‘Quantum of Solace’, and here the same problem all but ruins the opening section of the film, where we are granted our first visual treatment of the zombie hordes (they are effectively the same as the zombies infected with the rage virus in 2002’s ‘28 Days Later’) and everything is so completely frenetic we can’t make out what on Earth is going on. The idea was to put the audience in the situation as much as possible, but ironically it has the very opposite effect, deadening our perception of events, in much the same way as watching a tense scene in fast forward would do.

It’s based on the novel by Max Brooks (the son of Mel Brooks), and after the first half an hour or so things start to pick up, and the story gets going. Brad Pitt does a good job of playing the central character, Gerry Lane, employed to investigate the source of the outbreak due to his military connections with the U.N. At one point he awakens to find himself tied to a stretcher and facing none other than Malcolm Tucker (well, Peter Capaldi) from ‘The Thick of it’, which is potentially far scarier than any of the zombie attacks. Decent, but never as tense as it should be.

The film is already famous throughout Scotland for being partly filmed in Glasgow, doubling up as Philadelphia, most notably in the city centre for the aforementioned starting attack. It is great to see the city on the big screen, and it’s obvious not just because of its architecture, but also because it looks decidedly coooooold and dreich (for anyone not familiar with Scots, this word is almost always used in connection with the weather and means dreary and miserable, we use it a lot) and I wonder if local business won’t be able to milk that to some degree, a zombie cafe perhaps, or the occasional zombie flash dance on unsuspecting tourists would be interesting …

The film is planned as part one of a trilogy, so the studios may return to Scotland’s largest city in the future. On a similar vein, Neil Marshall’s ‘Doomsday’ (08) revolved around a deadly killer virus which, naturally, began with one person coughing on the streets of Glasgow city centre. England’s response to the outbreak is to build another wall to keep us out, much like the Romans did, and the rest of the world pretty much leaves Scotland to die. Being a hardy bunch we don’t, of course, but we do degenerate into cannibalism and tribal warfare. All, that is, except for Dundee, which essentially carries on as normal.

Man of Steel  (2013)    51/100

Rating :   51/100                                                                    143 Min         12A

This is a pretty major disappointment for what was hoped to be the reboot to the Superman franchise. Helmed by Zack Snyder, whose previous films are often much more notable for their special effects than their ability to engage the audience with the story or characters {‘Watchmen’ (09) and ‘Sucker Punch’ (11), for example}, his Superman suffers from this same central problem – it feels like we’re watching a series of storyboards put together without any thought whatsoever as to what goes between them, or even why some of them are there in the first place, other than as excuses for more explosions. This is a big surprise, given the screenplay is from David S. Goyer, based on a story from himself and Christopher Nolan, both hot off the success of their Dark Knight trilogy, though it is certainly fair to say plot holes abounded in the escapades of their Batman, but Nolan’s skill behind the camera made them much more palatable than Snyder is able to do here.

Even the director’s normal artistic and stylistic flair looks here to be very much aping the work of others – in particular J.J.Abrams’ success with the recent Star Trek films, including his trademark lens flares and the way the camera will hover above the action and then zoom in or out abruptly before a cut, particularly noticeable with ‘Man of Steel’s intro section where we see the birth of Superman, or Kal-El, on his home planet of Krypton. With ‘Star Trek – Into Darkness’ released just a few weeks ago, featuring the line ‘Looks like we have a superman onboard’ at one point, one wonders if this was an acknowledgment of the fact – perhaps the two directors are good friends? Although these same visuals are one of the film’s redeeming features, their unoriginality is a little disappointing from Snyder, indeed the story itself has shades of many recent blockbusters that have gone before it – the changes to the backstory of Clark Kent’s foster parents echoes Spiderman’s relationship with uncle Ben, the present threat of alien invasion mirrors the one that raked in millions at the box office for last year’s ‘Avengers Assemble’, and so on.

Storywise, the biggest let down is that precious little of it makes any sense at all. They try to explain Clark’s powers using physics, and the fact that our sun’s radiation and the gravity on Earth is different from those experienced on Krypton. Nonsense. He can FLY for goodness sake. At one point his foster father Jonathan, played by Kevin Costner {still reeling from ‘Waterworld’ almost twenty years ago now}, suggests he perhaps should have let a bunch of children die rather than risk revealing his identity. There just seems to be no real thought or intelligence in the script at all, to the point where come the end you’re thinking, ‘O, of course that character shows up here out of the blue miraculously in time for the kissy kissy drama shot’. Are Goyer and Nolan trying to sabotage a rival superhero outfit to their own?

The acting is generally fine, and leading man Henry Cavill does well and could easily reprise the role if they find a different team to work on it (I believe Snyder has been given the tentative go ahead for the next one – he may have to reboot his reboot), though to be fair he doesn’t really have to do a tremendous amount of acting. The fight sequences do start to make the film a bit more interesting, but it’s not long before they begin to drag, degenerating into the same super-powered stunt repeated again and again, ultimately leaving the movie bland, flat, silly, and completely devoid of any real character. Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon and Laurence Fishburne appear in support. {Look out for the name on some of the chemical trucks toward the end – also, perhaps the most promising aspect of the entire film is that this is planned as a prelude to a ‘Justice League’ team up of several of DC Comics’ super heroes (again, no doubt spurred on by the success of rivals Marvel, with their ‘Avenger’s Assemble’ box office smash). It will be very interesting indeed to see who makes it into the League (Batman is a DC character, in case you didn’t know, but usually only dabbled infrequently with the League)}

The Last Exorcism Part II  (2013)    7/100

Rating :   7/100                                                                         88 Min        15

Being exorcised, or, for that matter, being possessed (at least, judging by the amount of time young girls spend masturbating while possessed), is likely a lot more enjoyable than the tragically dull experience of watching this film. Do yourself a favour and avoid it like the proverbial plague.

Behind the Candelabra  (2013)    80/100

Rating :   80/100                                                                     118 Min        15

Michael Douglas gives what may very well be the crowning performance of his illustrious career, as the secretly, but very obviously, homosexual pianist and entertainer Liberace. Matt Damon plays his young love toy, and he appears on the scene looking like a groomed and buff Prince Adam as both he and Douglas prove committed to the full, giving emotional and engaging performances replete with physical alterations to match their character’s changes over time (Rob Lowe is also good in support). The film focuses on the evolution of the relationship between the pair, with the emphasis naturally leaning toward Liberace, though the story is based on the memoir of Scott Thorsen, Damon’s character, and I think I’d put down Michael Douglas as the heaviest contender so far this year for Oscar nomination in the winter (he has one previous best actor win for portraying Gordon ‘greed is good’ Gekko in Oliver Stone’s 1987 ‘Wall Street’).

At time of writing this is set to be the last feature film from director Steven Soderbergh as he takes a break of undetermined length (not ‘Side Effects‘, as was originally reported, although they were likely filmed around the same time) and it would be a ‘fabulous’ way to bow out of cinema, featuring as it does many refinements to his craft, especially the use of music in the narrative, with here the sound never imposing a viewpoint and yet still driving the story forward – with that of the ensuing scene repeatedly preempting the transition by appearing in the current one, and also the subtle thread of devilish comedy (see his excellent ‘The Informant’ (09) for more along that vein, again with Matt Damon). Filmed not long after Michael Douglas’ was given the all clear regarding his throat cancer, you can be sure this will be work he will never forget, as you can tell by his heartfelt press release below. (Incidentally, his cancer was caused by the sexually transmitted HPV virus, of which there are many strains, so much so that many cannot currently be detected and those that can be are often not tested for at health clinics, in many senses it’s assumed that if you’re sexually active, you are probably carrying some version of it. Worth reading here for more, albeit succinct, info).

(As a further aside, in a fantastic strategic move, a couple of years ago researchers looking to solve a genetic problem in the search for an AIDS cure, sent the real life puzzle out to gamers on Second Life, and one of the many thousands of players actually did solve it. Creatively using the computer game trained minds of gamers to help solve humanity’s problems was a great idea, and indeed it remains so for the future)

After Earth  (2013)    20/100

Rating :   20/100                                                                     100 Min        12A

A ridiculous story matched by ridiculous acting. Planned as a trilogy that will now most certainly not be happening, this film never really gets past the main problem of knowing that Will Smith has cast his real life fourteen year old son to play the son of his central character onscreen and, although I do feel a degree of pity for Jaden Smith’s situation here, his son’s acting ability simply isn’t where it needs to be for a huge blockbuster like this. This issue is compounded by Will Smith himself actually having come up with the story (though not the screenplay), and it’s hopelessly contrived to allow the character his son plays to conquer his fears and in effect become a man. His heart was likely in the right place, and it has the feel of Mr Smith senior trying to pass the acting gauntlet onto Mr Smith junior, but it absolutely needed a better script.

Set in the future after we’ve destroyed our planet by abusing its resources, although this is actually nonsense as the two central characters end up on a crash landed ship (wherein the entirety of the ship’s crew have conveniently otherwise perished) that warps back to Earth (this is not a spoiler by the way), and it is displayed as abundantly full of vegetation and megafauna. There’s a volcano, if that is supposed to denote global warming, but we do actually have volcanoes at the moment Mr Smith (admittedly, it is set one thousand years after we left for pastures new, but hardly enough time for every species on Earth to more than double in size, especially in their supposedly resources limited environment).

Anyway, Will’s legs are also conveniently broken, or as his character puts it ‘Both my legs are broken. One of them really badly.’, hmm yes, which thus forces his young mini me to go on a trip through the perilous forest to find the tail of the crashed vessel with the emergency distress beacon. And therein an enormous problem with the story rears its ugly head – since there are only two of them it is abundantly obvious that young Mr Smith is in fact not going to be annihilated by the several things that he encounters which will, of course, try to annihilate him. Though he does pretty much ask for it by smacking a baboon in the face with a rock for no apparent reason. Fortunately, he is so super fit, despite Earth’s gravity being stronger than on his home planet, he is able to outrun an entire pack of angry baboons in their native forest. Did. Not. See. That. Coming. Sarcasm.

O there’s an alien bad guy that may or may not have survived the crash too, see the above line, all that being said, some of the visuals and cinematography are quite good. Indeed, the production design on the spaceship is interesting, with an aesthetic that appears to be a hybrid of an old sailing ship and a beehive/organic structure on the interior, and a more Star Trek esque hull on the outside. With the start of the final credits and the revelation that the director is M. Night Shyamalan (his name was removed from trailers after they performed badly) there was a moment of, ‘O, of course, it all makes sense now’, as there was one part when our young hero looked as if he were going to try to outrun the weather as well as the baboons, and one couldn’t help but think of Shyamalan’s ‘The Happening’ (08) when Mark Wahlberg and co did actually try to outrun the wind and the airborne evil that came with it, and here we find similar veins of trashy nonsense throughout the story. There are a lot of good films out at the moment, don’t waste your time and money on this.

The Purge  (2013)    60/100

Rating :   60/100                                                                       85 Min        15

A film that ironically purges itself of any real satire or commentary, despite its promising setting. Opening in the near future in America, the country’s crime rate has dropped to almost zero due to an ongoing successful social experiment whereby, for one day of the year, any and all crime is legalised, with no emergency services available for the twelve hour period concerned, and no repercussions of any kind allowed to follow activities undertaken during the anarchic period. The exceptions to this rule are a weapons grade restriction, and immunity for political figures who have a ranking of ‘ten’ or above, for reasons of national security of course, not because they don’t want to be targets for rape, murder and mutilation. Also, restricting their own illegal activities to just one day in the year may have been a little far fetched even for the film.

It’s from Blumhouse productions, the studio behind the ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise whose last output, ‘Dark Skies’, did leave Red Dragon wondering what direction they would take their work hence, in order that it survive the endless repetition of their trademark techniques. So, the beginning of this attempt certainly had a lot of promise, a sanctioned explosion and indulgence in anything the human psyche could conceive, one even publicly encouraged by society’s leaders and law makers, suggesting everyone revel in order to ‘purge’ themselves of natural primitive desires – especially intriguing with the billing of lead actors Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey, who is an actor that certainly doesn’t shy away from twisted character portrayals, as evinced by her work on ‘Game of Thrones’ and as lead villain Ma-Ma in last year’s ‘Dredd’ (which was really good incidentally, even though no one went to see it).

Unfortunately, what unfolds is yet another ‘family under peril in their own home’ scenario, exactly like all of Jason Blum’s previous films. It even still features more overuse of security cameras, with the young boy in the house operating a remote controlled one in several scenes, to very little effect in terms of the tension. Everything pans out very, very predictably as it devolves into a simple action movie with the family trying to survive. Some of the action is very pointedly set up at the beginning with one of the neighbours complaining that the new extension to Hawke and Headey’s house has effectively been paid for by the rest of the neighbourhood, them all having bought security systems from the family’s business, and that a lot of them are not happy about it. It’s completely ridiculous, as if they only sold security to that one street, or everyone else in their enormous houses are so poor they can’t afford to do the same thing, or that they were even forced to buy from them for that matter – it’s not like the basic principles of business have changed in this jointly dystopian and utopian future.

It is successful in creating a certain amount of dark atmosphere, and the initial story was a great place to start, but everything else is pretty disappointing, and it still features main characters doing ridiculous things sure to endanger everyone, in true horror film style. Michael Bay is also listed as one of the producers (he co-owns the production company Platinum Dunes which predominantly works on horror films), and it is difficult to say how much overall influence Blumhouse had over the final cut, but given the end product, and the fact they make a big deal of marketing ‘from the producers of Paranormal Activity’, it’s probably fair to assume they had the lion’s share of influence on the film. They certainly found a writer/director with a suitable name to tie in with their image – James DeMonaco, for whom this is his second time behind the camera, though he has notable previous writing credits with ‘The Negotiator’(98) and ‘Assault on Precinct 13’(05).

The Big Wedding  (2013)    56/100

Rating :   56/100                                                                       89 Min        15

Completely silly. Featuring the stellar cast pictured above, this remake of the French film Mon frère se marie (My brother is getting married) is comprised of very predictable comedy and farce, as everyone invited to the wedding of the youngsters Alejandro and Missy, played by Ben Barnes and Amanda Seyfried, turns out to be intimate with one another, whether in the present or past tense. Robert De Niro’s Don is currently in a live in relationship with Bebe (Susan Sarandon), but was previously married to Ellie (Diane Keaton), with whom he had two children and adopted a third, who is now to be married. The only problem is, Alejandro’s biological mother is coming to the wedding, and she is deemed so devoutly Catholic that all evidence of the foster parent’s divorce must be covered up, meaning Ellie and Don pretend to be married again and Bebe goes off in the huff.

This primes most of the material, as infidelity is trivialised and yet the film absurdly still attempts a few scenes of serious drama, mostly surrounding Don’s daughter Lyla (Katherine Heigl), though they are at least kept to brief interludes. There are a few laughs in there, and if you like the cast and are in the mood for some irreverent inanity then it might be worth a look in, just don’t expect to be rolling around in the aisles at any point …

The Hangover Part III  (2013)    33/100

Rating :   33/100                                                                     100 Min        15

Being somewhat hungover whilst going to see this film, I was looking forward to sharing a degree of pathos with the protagonists, a knowing wry smile on my face as I sipped my super strong coffee and compared my antics the night before to those of the returning ‘Wolfpack’ onscreen. Surprisingly, mine were the more riotous, as this film DOES NOT feature drinking, and by its absence neither does it also feature shared hangovers and a plot to unravel what happened the night before. It should have been entitled ‘Phil, Stu, Alan and Doug go on an absurd and pointless adventure to recover money that their old buddy Mr Chow stole from some drug dealer, even though it has nothing really to do with them, and in between dull excuses for action, Alan will do random stupid things to which Phil will say ‘What the fuck?’ and this will constitute the one gag that is repeated throughout until you almost fall asleep, despite your super strong coffee, and Doug will be kidnapped and disappear again like in the first film as he is the most boring character’. False marketing to say the least (there is actually a hangover scene, but you have to wait through the start of the credits at the end of the film to see it). All the original cast return for this, with the addition of secondary roles for John Goodman and Melissa McCarthy, but none of them can lift the inane script out of the trash can it must have accidentally been taken out of. Even features Alan luring a small child into a tent to be alone with him so he can pretend to be his real father and talk about how he used to like holding him close to his chest. Just plain wrong.

Fast & Furious 6  (2013)    60/100

Rating :   60/100                                                                     130 Min        12A

For a quick recap, this is the latest in The Fast and the Furious franchise, following on from ‘The Fast and the Furious’ (01), ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ (03), ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ (06), ‘Fast and Furious’ (09), and ‘Fast Five’ in 2011, all of which possibly makes this the worst named film franchise in history, so much so the marketing campaign for this instalment included a fan based vote on what to actually name the new one, and it seems the fans have a bit more common sense than the previous lot’s producers.

It’s primarily set in London, with the film imagined as a sort of bridge between the series focusing on underground racers and becoming an action platform that simply has fast cars, hot girls (including the quite stunning Gal Gadot, Miss Israel 2004, and Gina Carano, the mixed martial artist that went on an ass kicking rampage in Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Haywire’ two years ago) and many, many cheesy one-liners – most often courtesy of Dwayne Johnson’s returning character, Luke Hobbs. Here we see a team up between Hobbs and Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, as their combined forces are required to take down a highly skilled team of heist drivers led by Welshman Luke Evans (who played Zeus in ‘Immortals’, and will appear as the hero Bard in the forthcoming Hobbit films) and just maybe save an old colleague they had previously given up for dead in the process.

It starts off promisingly, with tight action from director Justin Lin (who helmed no’s 3,4 & 5), but eventually it just becomes too far fetched, and with a lot of the sequences taking place at night it’s visually a little tiresome and repetitive to watch. It also suffers massively from predictability in terms of dialogue, story, and what will happen to most of the characters, and has been to no mean degree ruined by advertising a huge ten minute or so segment of the film with the trailers shown before other previous big name releases – certain screenings of ‘Star Trek – Into Darkness’ and I think ‘Iron Man Three’. I’d already seen the same footage three times prior to seeing it in the actual film, and other frequent film goers will doubtless have the same reaction of ‘Argh not this bit again!’, especially as it comes toward the climax of the film, a climax also featured in some of the film’s normal trailers.

One of the best bits actually appears at the very end – after a screenshot of text warning people not to try any of the stunts they’ve seen at home, a tad unnecessary really, the story continues and sets up the next film, tentatively entitled ‘Fast & Furious 7’, with a surprise appearance from someone you might just recognise… Some of the shoots took place in Glasgow doubling as London (though filming took place there too whilst the Olympics were on) something which prompted Vin Diesel to state his claim to Scottish heritage and that one of his ancestors, he won’t say who, is in fact buried at the mysterious Rosslyn Chapel (the one from ‘The Da Vinci Code’). An interesting bit of trivia, but, whether or not it’s accurate, what isn’t in doubt is that he has been confirmed as the person to play Kojak in the planned big screen adaptation of the titular detective’s crime stopping antics, ironic as he used to watch Telly Savalas (the original Kojak) coming in and out of the building he grew up in whilst they were filming the tv series in his neighbourhood of New York City.