The Way Way Back  (2013)    81/100

Rating :   81/100                        Treasure Chest                      103 Min        12A

The trailer for this did not deliver an especially mouth watering premise – a young boy growing up isn’t understood by his parents and he is forced to turn to the fast cracking comedy schtick of Sam Rockwell to find both a friend and a vague sort of father figure. A film like this gets released on a fairly regular basis, and there was little to suggest this was anything other than a standard and predictable coming of age drama, nor were my immediate sympathies with the protagonist who seemed to be a movie version of a troubled teenager, sporting relatively perfect hair and skin – one can’t help but think a British/realistic version would feature some poor young acne ridden soul with pulsating pustules of pus obscuring his vision and his face turning an explosive vermillion whenever a girl so much as looks in his direction. Magically, the film had genuine moments where I’d be surprised if there existed a single person sitting in the auditorium without a smile on their face, or indeed who didn’t feel the same level of empathy with the characters during their more negative travails, and this achievement alone garnered the movie peals of genuine applause come the end.

Liam James plays the central character of Duncan, who is dragged to Cape Cod (the large Massachusetts peninsula that juts out eastward into the Atlantic) in order to spend some ‘quality’ time with his mother, stepfather and stepsister. All hope is not lost though, as he discovers the impossibly cute girl next door Susanna, played by AnnaSophia Robb (‘Bridge to Terabithia’ 07), who prefers reading books and the pleasure of her own company to that of the more shallow girls in town. The adults do a fantastic job of being conceited twats to Duncan, who is shown to be quiet, shy and unsure of himself but by no means weak as he elects to cycle a pink bike around town of his own accord, which in itself takes a certain measure of courage, and then under his own steam he finds himself a job at the local aqua park – an occupation he keeps secret from his family who are preoccupied with themselves and their own internal drama.

Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Allison Janney, Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet play the adults Duncan is surrounded by at home, whilst Maya Rudolph and Sam Rockwell appear as his co-workers and friends. Janney and Rockwell’s characters are often used in much the same way by the narrative for quick fire comic relief, which does work but is a tad overdone, but other than that this is a well acted, great little film. I’m tempted to draw parallels with last year’s indie hit ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ as another movie where everything combined really well together, but will this one find its way to the Oscars ..? It’s also the directorial debut of Nat Faxon, pictured at the far left above, and Jim Rash, who plays the ‘determined to leave his job’ Lewis at the aqua park. An impressive first time behind the camera from the veteran actors, who also co-wrote the screenplay and each share a best adapted screenplay Oscar with Alexander Payne for 2011’s ‘The Descendants’.

Careful not to confuse the title with Peter Weir’s 2010 film ‘The Way Back’, nor indeed Emilio Esteves’ ‘The Way’ from the same year.

You’re Next  (2011)    75/100

Rating :   75/100                                                                       94 Min        18

A decent enough slasher film that becomes a really good, fun thriller. A couple celebrating their thirty fifth wedding anniversary invite all their children, together with their relative partners, out to their mansion in the woods to celebrate with them. Unfortunately, someone decides this same group would make excellent target practice for their crossbow. At least, that is all the family have to go on for motive when they suddenly find themselves under attack in their own home and must do whatever they can to survive.

Sharni Vinson does a fantastic job of playing central character Erin, the sexy Australian girlfriend of one of the brothers who turns out to be hard as, ahem, nails, and the rest of the cast do a good job of both creating the right atmosphere and suspense, whilst simultaneously managing the difficult task of getting the audience to laugh with a horror film rather than at it. For fans of the genre this is to be highly recommended.

Pain & Gain  (2013)    74/100

Rating :   74/100                                                                     129 Min        15

Michael Bay brings his adrenaline fuelled style of filmmaking to somewhat new and uncharted territory for the director, with this ‘based on a true story’ (published in 1999 as a series of articles in the ‘Miami New Times’) crime drama. Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie are all weight lifters working in the Sun Gym in California who decide, largely at the instigation of Wahlberg’s ringleader Daniel Lugo, to kidnap a local entrepreneur and try to extort all of his money and belongings from him. The three are each the very epitome of the term ‘meathead’ and what ensues is a classic crime caper, with the three leads delivering entirely believable and often amusing performances. Bay still hasn’t quite mastered the craft of truncating his movies so that they run at a reasonable length, but this was still a lot of fun from start to finish, and marks another great turn by Johnson, ranking alongside his appearance in ‘Southland Tales’ (06) and as the lead in ‘Faster’ (10). The characters have been made a lot more palatable than their real life counterparts, and in reality the gang was a lot bigger than just three people, but the story in general follows real life events.

Hobo with a Shotgun  (2011)    79/100

Rating :   79/100                                                                       86 Min        18

What a great ‘splatterhouse’ film. This, like ‘Machete’ (10), began as a trailer for a movie that didn’t exist, shown during the ‘Grindhouse’ (07) double bill of Robert Rodriguez’s ‘Planet Terror’ and Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Death Proof’ (filmmakers Jason Eisener, John Davies, and Rob Cotterill, based in Canada, won an international competition to secure their trailer in the slot) . Rutger Hauer brings the titular Hobo to life, traveling into a town where all notions of law and order have been torn to shreds, and life is effectively dictated by the whims of the ruling drug lord’s family, which, naturally, our (anti) hero will take exception to. A film whose entire premise is encapsulated by the title, and at the same time we can’t wait for the Hobo to pick up his shotgun and start kicking some ass – and really, who better to do it than Hauer?

This is a bloody, bloody film, but it is highly enjoyable. Some of the scenes have been heavily colourised, to the extent that they are effectively completely blue or orangey yellow – it’s terrible, and yet it somehow works for this film! Directed by Jason Eisener, it offers an interesting perspective on the raging debate over the portrayal of violence in film, as watching this not long after ‘Elysium’ I found a scene here where a school bus full of children is deliberately torched much less disturbing than the one in ‘Elysium’ that simply has a young girl being verbally threatened. The reason of course is entirely down to the way each is filmed (we only really see an exterior shot of the bus in flames, whereas in the latter it is very obvious there is a real young girl in the room), with Eisener having a much better idea of what he was making, and the fact that here the violence has an unreal tongue in cheek manner to it laced with dark humour.

With a perfect retro soundtrack in accompaniment, this is one irreverent action film to fall in love with.


Quotes

“I can promise you, when I get out of here, I’m gonna bite your face off!”   Rutger Hauer/Hobo

“You want to know if I’m homeless? So you can kill me! Some people, got a bed to sleep on. Where they can crawl under the covers and have a good night’s rest. But other people, they don’t got beds at all. Instead they got to find a alleyway, or a park bench, where some fuckers not going to stab them. Just because they don’t got beds doesn’t mean they’re homeless! Cos guess what? They got the biggest home of any of us. It’s called the streets! And right now, we’re all standing in their home! So maybe, we should show them some God damn respect! If this is their home, they got a right to keep it clean don’t they? Sometimes, on the streets, a broom just ain’t gonna fuckin’ cut it! That’s when you gotta get a shotgun! So if you wanna kill me, go ahead. But I’ll warn ya, from where I’m standing, things are looking real fuckin’ filthy!”   Molly Dunsworth/Abby

We’re the Millers  (2013)    73/100

Rating :   73/100                                                                     110 Min        15

Surprising enjoyable. As this is a light hearted comedy film we know exactly where it’s heading – its success is that we are quite happy for it to do so. Jason Sudeikis is a small time drug dealer who falls into debt with a bigger fish in his regional pond. To make amends he agrees to drive down to Mexico and collect a new shipment of Marijuana, and to facilitate the operation he decides to bring along a collection of people to pose as his family ‘The Millers’, people who are, for a variety of reasons, all at loose ends. The fake family are rounded out by Jennifer Aniston as the mom, and Emma Roberts and Will Poulter as the two kids.

Drawing quite a bit of attention from the trailers, something which they cunningly focused on, is Aniston’s character’s occupation, that of a nightclub stripper, suggesting her acting career may be continuing along the path begun with her more sexualised role in ‘Horrible Boses’ (11), and here the film lives up to expectations, with a lithe and salacious Aniston brazenly giving a show in itself more erotic than the whole of ‘Showgirls’ (95) taken together, and yet it never feels overtly gratuitous, in a sort of Megan Fox ‘Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen’ (09) kind of way, and she simultaneously maintains the spirit of most of her romcom characters as well.

The film provides a few genuine laughs, but scores highest with it’s enjoyable character dynamic, with some obvious improv and in the case of Will Poulter it features a rare cinematic moment when you are not only happy for the character, but also very much for the actor playing them too (you’ll see what I mean).

Mad Money  (2008)    70/100

Rating :   70/100                                                                     104 Min        12

This film has been critically annihilated by just about every journalistic source I’ve seen it mentioned in, but I really don’t think the poor reviews are merited, it’s just a nice, easy to watch film. Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes star in a crime caper about three women working in menial jobs at the federal reserve, who decide (largely at the instigation of debt ridden Keaton, whose husband Ted Danson has been forced out of work) they could really do with some of the money they see being moved around every day, surely no one would miss it …It’s based on an earlier British film, ‘Hot Money’ (01), which in turn loosely depicted real life events (no details here in the interests of avoiding spoilers). The film is directed by Callie Khouri, winner of the best original screenplay Oscar for ‘Thelma and Louise’ (91), and this was her second feature film behind the camera.

It opens with the three women frantically trying to dispose of their ill gotten gains with the feds waiting outside their homes, so we know it goes pear shaped eventually, but it still manages to be interesting, and the three leads are fun to watch. The Red Dragon had a splitting headache after eating something that disagreed with him (a couple of Tory campaigners) and this, together with a cup of tea, was a perfect remedy, requiring little brain power and yet I didn’t want to leave the room for too long during the break for fear of missing some of the dialogue (always the sign of a good film). It’s the sort of light hearted film your mother would enjoy, but to be honest, I quite liked it too.

Kick-Ass 2  (2013)    65/100

Rating :   65/100                                                                     103 Min        15

The sequel to ‘Kick-Ass’, one of the most popular films of 2010, sees a return of the cast, but not director Matthew Vaughn, who instead personally selected the relatively inexperienced Jeff Wadlow to step behind the cameras and also write the screenplay. Oddly, the change in director isn’t particularly noticeable, a testimony to Wadlow and his adherence to both the previous film and the comic book source material, from Scottish writer Mark Miller.

For the series Miller has openly stated that the story is autobiographical, primarily in that when he was young, he and his pals decided to actually train to become superheroes. Eventually, reality kicked in and they changed their minds, but when writing the comics his desire to play with this concept together with his founding love of the genre produced a curious, violent, blend – central character ‘Kick-Ass’ with no powers whatsoever, trying to fight crime and often being brutalised in the process, and other characters like ‘Hit-Girl’, a schoolgirl with deadly fighting skills and an unparalleled eloquence for one-liners, who is for all intents and purposes a real superhero. Therein lies the founding problem with the series on the big screen – it’s a fun blend, but one constantly compromised by the need to get the balance spot on, an all but impossible task that sucks the heart out of the story, leaving the supporting characters, like Hit-Girl, a lot more interesting than the fraudulently motivated central one.

‘Kick-Ass 2’ sees a raft of people don capes and spandex and take to the streets to fight crime, all after being inspired by the exploits in the first movie, and Kick-Ass finds himself in a sort of very low-key Avengers style gang. Here, the aforementioned balance is constantly rattled around, with severe and dire consequences applied via a layer of gloss. A scene involving the killing of a dog was removed from the film, as was a rape scene – although the footage left in the film suggests the only reason the rape doesn’t happen is because the villain can’t get it up at the time. It’s all a little too much – sensible deletions for the sake of trying to focus on a fun, comedy comic book film, and yet it leaves the feeling of something sinister that isn’t quite being given the serious treatment it needs.

Jim Carrey has a fantastic cameo (much like he did in ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’) as Colonel Stars and Stripes, but has since distanced himself from the film in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings. This is the statement he released;

I did Kick-Ass a month before Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involved with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.”

And the response from Chloë Grace Moretz (who plays Hit-Girl);

It’s a movie. If you are going to believe and be affected by an action film, you shouldn’t go to see ‘Pocahontas’ because you are going to think you are a Disney princess. If you are that easily swayed, you might see ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and think you are a serial killer. It’s a movie and it’s fake, and I’ve known that since I was a kid… I don’t want to run around trying to kill people and cuss. If anything, these movies teach you what not to do. Each to their own. I respect [Carrey’s] decision.”                Source : Huffington Post

Interestingly, the penciller for the comics, John Romita Jr, has talked about the violence he has to depict, saying he morally never thought he would be drawing the stuff, but he frankly loves the characters and the fact that it has become a movie – it’s now a guilty pleasure for him. That sort of encapsulates the difficult duality of the thing. Personally I love Hit-Girl arriving and dicing the bad guys (this film is just as gory as the first one) but there’s a definite conceit, an uneasiness to everything. Kick-Ass decides to go back to crime fighting simply because he’s bored, for example, which is a little too convenient after the events of the first film, and here the police seem a little too relaxed about allowing several teams of costumed vigilantes roam the streets – not to mention the fact real superheroes regardless of their costume would make every effort not to be noticed by the public, not withstanding the likes of Iron Man.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson returns as the titular hero, with Christopher Mintz-Plasse, as was hinted at the end of part one, becoming the bad guy – ‘The Motherfucker’. There’s a host of other bad guys who aren’t given enough screen time and barely get one line each, and indeed the climax is nowhere near as good as in its predescessor. Ultimately, it’s wayward but enjoyable, and it still left me in the mood to watch Batman again, which is no bad thing. Part three is being written as the finale. I suspect there will not be much of a happy ending.

Planes  (2013)    50/100

Rating :   50/100                                                                       91 Min        U

DO NOT GO AND SEE THIS FILM. Not unless, that is, you are aware of what it actually is. Disney have rather cynically released this knowing that people will assume it is another release from Disney Pixar, and whilst it is a spin off from their ‘Cars’ (06) film line, it is actually a creation of DisneyToon Studios, a wing of the Disney machine that normally produces straight to DVD releases. The only reason this has a theatrical release is the money they intend to make from the little trick they’re playing on the public.

The story is about as basic and rudimental as it can be – Dusty Crophopper is a crop duster who dreams of competing with the fastest planes around in a global competitive speed race, but will he overcome his own limitations and the laughter of his peers to realise his ambition? Will he indeed. For older audiences there is absolutely nothing here of any interest value. The animation is slick, and for the people it was made for, young kids, it may well be completely fine – in fact it may make a welcome change to see a Disney film aimed especially for them on the big screen. For everyone else, best give it a wide berth.

2 Guns  (2013)    63/100

Rating :   63/100                                                                     109 Min        15

Mark Wahlberg teams up again with his Icelandic ‘Contraband’ (10) director Baltasar Kormákur, starring opposite Denzel Washington in a film adaptation of Steven Grant’s comic book series, that also hails back to Hollywood’s perhaps excessive history of crime/cop ‘buddy’ films. Here, Wahlberg’s Stig is the undercover Naval intelligence officer foil to Washington’s Bobby, an undercover DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent, and only after they rob a bank together at the beginning does each begin to realise who the other really is, but by this point one particularly interested and rather pissed off bank customer (Bill Paxton) would really like his money back.

Some of the editing is a little ropey, and likewise some of the action explodes perfunctorily, but it is reasonably good fun, largely thanks to the charisma of the two leading men and their obvious ease with, and enjoyment of, each others company. James Marsden, Edward James Olmos and Paula Patton (‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ 2011) appear in support, and the whole is a decent if perhaps unmemorable addition to the back catalogue of like examples, except for one scene that stands out featuring a bunch of Mexicans shooting at some chickens they’ve buried in the sand so that only their heads are sticking up. Stig’s dialogue briefly becomes the voice of the audience in outrage, and it’s not especially pleasant to watch. Poor things. Not sure if psychologically damaged chickens would, ahem, fall foul of the standard “No Animals Were Harmed” in the making of this motion picture, a phrase that American films using animals have run at the end of the credits (courtesy of American Humane Association legislation).

Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa  (2013)    60/100

Rating :   60/100                                                                       90 Min        15

Steve Coogan’s most iconic comedy persona gets his first big screen outing, twenty two years and multiple TV/radio shows after he was first aired to British audiences in 1991, with BBC Radio 4’s parody show ‘On The Hour’. After the heyday of his graduation from radio to television, Alan’s life has returned to a more leisurely pace working once more for the local radio station in Norwich. The peace is about to be ruined, however, when corporate downsizers arrive and it looks like either Alan, or his closest friend at the station Pat (at least, in the eyes of Pat he is his closest friend), are the two most likely candidates for the chop. Chaotic skullduggery ensues, resulting in a hostage situation at North Norfolk Digital, and a chance for Alan Partridge to once again appear in front of the cameras …

The Red Dragon has never been a big fan of the main character, in fact I’ve often wondered if he wouldn’t operate much better as a supporting one with the right surrounding enterprise, much like earlier in his career, and it’s a style of comedy that I find a little drab, a little obvious, and a little flat. That said, I would definitely call this is a solid adaptation of the TV series, but, despite laughing a few times, the thought of someone sitting me down to watch ‘Knowing me, knowing you … with Alan Partridge’ still makes me want to gag. One lady in the audience was practically wetting herself with laughter on more than one occasion (though she may have been laughing at the simple fact she was laughing) so this is most probably worth seeing if you are a fan of Coogan and his alter ego, but at the same time I think it’s unlikely to galvanise many people into new followers.