Precinct Seven Five  (2014)    66/100

Rating :   66/100                                                                     104 Min        15

Documentary that details the corruption proven to be endemic in New York City’s Precinct Seven Five in the eighties – as told via interviews from the actual officers involved as well as some of the drug runners they helped out and some actual footage from the events described. If someone told you this was a comedy spoof, a ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ (84) of policing, you would believe them, you can’t help but think throughout ‘what a bunch of absolute, complete idiots’, although the film itself feeds into the problem with a racy delivery, much like the multitude of cop-chase TV shows on both sides of the pond, and a severe lack of any real consequences for much of the film.

Eventually, the real world hits home for the characters in the narrative and the audience, but it still lacks a lot in terms of the silent voices of several decades worth of victims. Despite large chunks appearing as an opportunity for the corrupt to boast of their various misdeeds, the film does manage to be both depressing and carnally compelling at the same time, and given its access to primary source material and the perps themselves, this does, despite its faults, stand as a very useful record for insights into what turns officers to the other side of the law in the first place, as well as how they can infect others like a virus if allowed to go on unchecked.

North Sea Hijack / Ffolkes / Assault Force  (1979)    75/100

Rating :   75/100                     Treasure Chest                      100 Min        15

I LOVE this film. Roger Moore gives a fantastic performance, in fact it’s the best I’ve ever seen him deliver, as an unashamedly misogynistic, whiskey-toting, iconoclastic, ex-navy, freelance, anti-terrorist trainer operating out of Scotland when he and his men are called upon to try and neutralise a hostage situation in the North Sea which threatens several of the oil rigs there – a crises masterminded by a decidedly unhinged Anthony Perkins (not that he was typecast or anything), with James Mason’s far from convinced navy admiral overseeing the unorthodox counterplay.

From veteran director Andrew V. McLaglen (son of early Academy Award winner Victor McLaglen – who took home the best actor Oscar for John Ford’s 1935 classic ‘The Informer’) and penned by prolific writer Jack Davies as his last ever cinematic screenplay, fittingly adapted from his own novel ‘Esther, Ruth and Jennifer’ (also released in 1979).

This is by no stretch of the imagination a well known film nowadays but it has the unique talent of getting the comedy value spot on (listening to Moore flip out whenever a woman is mentioned is very amusing) and also creating an incredibly decent story out of something that, given the low-key look of the film and its under-the-radar status, certainly primes low expectations (often a significant boon). Indeed, it’s amazing how well the story is written from a number of angles, and if people are looking for a film to rework in light of the success of ‘Captain Phillips‘ then this is absolutely perfect – just so long as they stick to the writing and delivery that give the film its charm, an injection of the kind of tension the likes of Paul Greengrass can deliver would be perfect.

Definitely still one to search out and become a disciple of as it stands though!


Quotes

“You see, I, together with my five elder sisters, was raised by an maiden aunt – both my parents died tragically in childbirth. Until the age of ten, I was forced to wear my sisters’ hand-me-downs. Then when I married I discovered, to my horror, that my wife also had five sisters. All unmarried. And all expecting my support. I find cats a far superior breed. Just on the off chance, I have made a will – I’ve left everything to my cats. I want it testified that I’m sound of body and mind. Well go on!” Roger Moore/Rufus Excalibur ffolkes

Pixels  (2015)    53/100

Rating :   53/100                                                                     106 Min        12A

Opportunity squandered. Adam Sandler’s latest comedy sees an alien race test the human species to deadly combat via an invasion of 80’s arcade games come to life on a large scale (Pac-Man flits about eating cars for example), leaving Sam Brenner (Sandler) as humanity’s best hope for survival and conveniently giving justification and meaning to his and some of his friends’ lives (although to be fair, one of them has also become President of the United States) wherein much time was previously wasted/invested playing classic arcade games.

The film has very obviously taken huge inspiration from the wonderful documentary ‘The King of Kong’ (07), which charted the rivalry between two contending Donkey Kong champions (although there is suggestion it may have sacrificed facts for drama in the process which would be a shame if true). Here, the characters are all pretty lame and the actors: Sandler, Kevin James, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage, invest in them with varying degrees of success but none succeed in creating anything with enough screen presence or workable comedy to be worthwhile. Indeed, Michelle Monaghan is arguably the most successful with her fairly run-of-the-mill romantic interest for Brenner, but the film’s largest drawback is that, despite convincing effects, they have managed to make the concept unbelievably dull and tedious. It perhaps wasn’t all that great for comedy to begin with, but coupled with plodding and ungrounded character and environmental interplay it just grinds ever downward into predictable and irredeemable pointlessness.

Max  (2015)    48/100

Rating :   48/100                                                                     111 Min        12A

Preposterous little film supposed to showcase and extol the value of the bond between man and dog as Max (a Belgian Shepherd) is adopted by a rather introverted, and somewhat disconnected from his family, young kid in his early teens, Justin (Josh Wiggins). It does have some success in that regard and the central performances, including Thomas Haden Church and Mia Xitlali as justin’s father and new friend respectively, are fine but they are all completely buried under the ridiculous story that falsely moves the drama along, a plot that sees Max witness the murder of Justin’s brother by his best friend whilst on a tour of duty in the Middle East (the suggestion is that it’s murder concealed by a firefight, although it is far from clear what actually happened) – a traitorous friend who also happens to run a heavy-duty illicit arms operation, replete with corrupt police official, in Justin’s small home town which will ensnare the family who will then, of course, have to rely on Max to help save them. Features supposedly fake combat between Max and some pit bulls although it really does not look like they are play fighting, as well as the father locking Max up in an open-air metal cage in their garden, leaving him to his own devices out in the hot sun for several indeterminate periods of time with no food, water or shelter. Nice.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  (2015)    55/100

Rating :   55/100                                                                     116 Min        12A

Guy Ritchie’s movie adaptation of the extremely popular sixties TV show of the same name sees Henry Cavill take on the role of suave American spy Napoleon Solo, with Armie Hammer as the much more stoic KGB operative Illya Kuryakin, all with the kind of stylistic touches that are immediately reminiscent of his Sherlock Holmes adaptations (back in 09 and 11). The director’s approach here isn’t as unreal looking as in those previous films, but it is what eventually ruins the movie – indeed, this is one of the best examples of how overuse of music in a film can be destructive: his choice of tracks is very good, but they are essentially used as a constant vehicle for narrative removing any sense of story or characterisation from the film. Cavill has been aptly cast as Solo, but Hammer’s initial Russian accent delivery is enough to make entire continents cringe aghast, although it does become less annoying as time goes on – I’m not sure if that is because it improves, or just because he has less lines to deliver as the music dominates over everything.

The pace is adequate, if a little ponderous, and the opening does suggest a lot of promise – which is unfortunately never delivered, as the two spies are lumped together for the first time by their respective governments in a mission that will be a precursor to the founding of U.N.C.L.E.: together they must attempt to thwart a nuclear threat on the world in general, from spurious bad guys up to no good as usual. An attempted emphasis has been placed on creating a light-hearted, fun action film with a focus on comedy, largely via the abrasive union between the two agents destined to become friends, and visually in this sense the film finds some success but alas the jokes never fully fire off the way they were intended, it’s all a little obvious and a little stilted. Hopefully Ritchie doesn’t repeat the same mistakes in his upcoming ‘King Arthur’ flick, as his track record disappointingly suggests it may be aimed as just another vacuous and irrelevant franchise anchor.

Nostalgia for the Light / Nostalgia de la luz  (2010)    69/100

Rating :   69/100                                                                       90 Min        12A

Documentary from genre veteran, director Patricio Guzmán, exploring, or rather interweaving, the desolate beauty of the Atacama desert in Chile, inclusive of some of the world’s most sophisticated telescopes and observatories (La Silla Observatory, Paranal Observatory, the immense ALMA radio telescope array), with the harrowing and continuous search of that area by the mothers of the Chilean disappeared, the victims of general Pinochet’s brutal regime who were buried in the desert: indeed they were dug up from their original points of execution and secreted in the desert specifically in the hope they would never be found.

The film is very successful in generating a haunting feel throughout. It’s calm, and slow-paced with some beautiful shots of landscape and the night sky, leaving plenty of room for contemplation as parallels are drawn between those looking to the Heavens, and thus looking back in time at light travelling toward us from the distant universe, and the archaeologists studying the area who are also looking to understand the past, whilst they mention a collective national attempt to do the opposite regarding Chile’s more modern history and its atrocities.

Where the film does let itself down though is with the details, which it is very light on. We never see any maps of the desert, nor do we get much about Pinochet and his regime within a historical context for those not in the know, and there is a moment where we watch astronomers as they look for calcium spectral lines from distant stars to make the quite profound connection between that and the bones being searched for in the desert around them, but they don’t explicitly explain that calcium is one of many primary elements forged by nuclear processes at the heart of stars and then disseminated throughout the universe when those stars eventually go supernova. The observatories featured were founded there of course because of the lack of light pollution and atmospheric interference in the area, but to be fair a lot of the stills of galaxies and the night sky used to exhibit the wonder of the cosmos are amongst the most famous of images, and indeed some of the interlinking effects used seem perhaps a little overtly basic.

Nevertheless, a film that is successful in its primary goal of putting our lives and existence a little under the microscope and making us reflect purposefully on the value of not only remembering the past, but also understanding and coming to terms with it – all driven home with deeply emotional interviews from survivors of brutality and people who have been relentlessly searching for the remains of their loved ones for many, many years.

The Gift  (2015)    73/100

Rating :   73/100                                                                     108 Min        15

Written, produced and directed by one of its stars, Joel Edgerton, who teamed up with the current big name in horror production, Blumhouse (who are doing a good job of diversifying after last year’s ‘Whiplash‘), to make the film. In his big-screen directorial debut Edgerton has proven himself to be one to watch as a filmmaker, creating a brooding and involving psychological drama that combines some traditional horror moments with great pacing and storytelling. Happy couple Simon and Robyn move into a new home when they bump into Gordo at the shops, who once upon a moon went to school with Simon and so promptly decides to pop over uninvited and leave a number of mysterious gifts for them ….

Jason Bateman and the ridiculously attractive Rebecca Hall play the recipients of the pressies with Edgerton as Gordo, and the success of the film is down in no small measure to the strength of all three throughout – with somewhat lingering and understated direction that allows space for a sense of menace, something that equally applies to the writing that mixes the stress given to the hints it has scattered around for the audience. The trailer brutalises a number of the plot points so avoid it if possible, and the finale isn’t as well rounded-off as you might wish it to be, but bar that this is a great suspense and character driven film.

Fantastic Four  (2015)    0/100

Rating :   0/100             COMPLETE INCINERATION           100 Min        12A

Easily the worst superhero film in memory and in fact a very strong contender for one of the worst films I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s as if they asked a nine-year-old fanboy to scribble the entire story on the back of a milk carton and then accidentally put the entire thing into production. It’s so bad it almost parodies itself – but not in an amusing way, rather the movie sends you through a Dante-esque descent through seven hells of depression before you finally manage to climb out in a torrent of rage just in time to kick the chair in front of you during the one-dimensional finale. You could probably make a better Fantastic Four film with your mates, a Handycam and twenty quid for special effects (try if you like – call it the ‘FakeFour Challenge’).

This is 20th Century Fox’s latest attempt to the milk their Fantastic Four intellectual property which they bought from Marvel years ago and then proceeded to do nothing much of value with thereafter: 2005’s ‘Fantastic Four’ and the 2007 sequel ‘Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer’ far from doing the source material justice. Here, they’ve foolishly eschewed any input from Marvel legend Stan Lee and instead relied on a screenplay from the film’s director Josh Trank (‘Chronicle’ 2012) but rumour is Trank not only behaved erratically onset, he also published a critical tweet slating the final version of the film the day before its international release before quickly deleting it – his treatment ultimately having been rewritten by the producers themselves.

Whatever the truth of the matter the existence of behind-the-scenes issues really, really shows and indeed it would hardly be the first time meddling producers had helped torpedo their final product – although it’s interesting that you rarely hear of producers stepping in and making large-scale positive changes, and directors saying ‘hmm, actually I like what you did there’ … In any event the story concerns itself with the four youngsters: Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) and Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), as they gain their superpowers by travelling to another mysterious world all before having to combine their talents to defeat their arch-enemy and old friend Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), and they will of course learn the value of working together in the process in order to avoid the aforementioned certain Doom.

The film opens with primary school age Reed actually developing the prototype inter-dimensional doohickey that he’ll eventually be paid to develop, so it doesn’t exactly get off to a believable start, but as the film progresses there are really only two locations used throughout – the lab (which then gets moved to a military base, but for all intents and purposes is the same place) and the other world they visit, but they explore no more than, say, one hundred metres of the place and it contains nothing other than volcanic primordial superhero-making goo. They leave Doom behind because nobody likes him, and so he tries to exact brutal revenge by destroying the entire Earth and everything living there, which makes no sense whatsoever but there you are (he says he’d prefer to live with the goo).

Arguably pointlessly controversial, asides from the innate terrible nature of the movie, is the casting of a black actor, Michael B. Jordan, to play a white character (they changed that aspect obviously, it wasn’t a reversal of ‘blackface’ although they could have had a lot of fun with that – ‘what’s your superpower?’, ‘I ignite myself, Oh and I’m black now – and yep, it’s completely true what they say about black men. Now, where’s that white chick? Oh, I guess she’s still my sister. Hmm..’). This is hardly the first instance of this happening – Marvel famously did the same thing with Nick Fury in its cinematic universe of course, but there he was played by Samuel L. Jackson and nary a peep of complaint was heard due to the respect carried by the performer, which is ultimately the point – if they have the right actor for the part the colour of the skin is essentially irrelevant unless it pertains to the story somehow.

It’s interesting, however, that the argument used for the character change is that it’s more reflective of modern day American society in terms of ethnic diversity. I mean, that is a valid point in general terms, but for the Fantastic Four, really? Is there a person alive from any background at all that gives a damn that Richard Reed and co are/were white? Seems unlikely…. but when we consider that Trank also directed Jordan in their biggest success at that time, Chronicle, and that Jordan and Teller starred together as buddies in the equally loathsome ‘That Awkward Moment‘, it seems rather likely that they simply wanted to cast their buddy and used this somewhat flimsy racial argument to justify it when really ‘That Awkward Moment’ ought to have been the justification for not casting the two of them together in anything again (they are equally poor in tandem here, in fact Kate Mara is the only one who doesn’t suck tremendously in this).

Having Jordan play Johnny Storm is also curious – seems somewhat daft when the character is not only originally white but also has a sister, who is oddly enough also white, thus forcing them to break two original character traits (they make Sue Storm adopted here) instead of the one that would be broken with either Ben or Reed, ah but would casting him as Ben leave them open to attack given what happens to the character and would casting a black man as the lead who gets the white girl, as Reed would represent, be too big a risk for their predominantly white main market? Does this suggest that this is effectively still a ‘token black guy’ character?

Ultimately, the film isn’t good enough to care a jot about, but for an interesting take on this concept watch ‘Suture’ (93) where two brothers are played by a black and a white actor but they are described onscreen as looking identical by all the other characters – it’s quite a nice little exploration of the theme.

Mission : Impossible – Rogue Nation  (2015)    72/100

Rating :   72/100                                                                     131 Min        12A

Great fun, and coming as the fifth instalment in the franchise (after ‘Mission : Impossible’ 96, ‘Mission : Impossible II’ 2000, ‘Mission : Impossible III’ 06 and ‘Mission : Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ 11) it perfectly mirrors the trademarks of its predecessors – fast pace and fantastic stunts with supporting characters that essentially just pass muster, and a take it or leave it story that exists to primarily facilitate the action. This time around Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) must do battle with an elite super-secret nefarious organisation hell bent on seemingly random acts of evil – a group so secret that even the CIA disbelieve its existence, forcing Hunt to go dark and avoid capture himself as the IMF (Impossible Mission Force) are annexed by the Agency at the bequest of its director (Alec Baldwin) who apparently also thinks it more likely Hunt himself may be to blame for the aforementioned acts of terror.

Cruise has well and truly outdone himself on the action front here. Always one to step up to the plate and perform his own stunts, this film will absolutely be remembered for the set-pieces involved, chief among them the opening scene which was well reported in the media prior to the film’s release but I shan’t ruin it in case you remain unawares, suffice to say they filmed the thing eight times with naught but a single wire used as safeguard for the film’s star, and given the nature of the stunt I wouldn’t exactly be keen to put all my trust in that solitary wire. Indeed, not long after this Cruise puts to shame everyone who’s ever been handcuffed to a vertical object in a film before, and numerous impressive displays of acrobatics are spread throughout the movie.

Accompanying Cruise’s showmanship as one of the main attractions is Rebecca Ferguson (‘Hercules‘) as a mysterious female member of the shadowy organisation who is nothing short of completely fantastic in the role, imbuing it with physical prowess, sex appeal and solid acting to boot. There are the perhaps to be expected parallels with the Bond franchise, ‘Skyfall‘ in particular, and indeed look out for the several nods to the earlier M.I. films, but this is a very strong, entertaining blockbuster in its own right and it would be surprising not to see the cast and crew return for a decidedly merited number six. Indeed, this is also the fourth collaboration between Cruise and the film’s writer/director Christopher McQuarrie after he directed ‘Jack Reacher‘ and worked on its screenplay, along with that of ‘Valkyire’ (08) and ‘Edge of Tomorrow‘. With Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner, Sean Harris and Simon McBurney in support.

Tom Cruise chats about his infamous stunt (spoiler alert) :

Inside Out  (2015)    62/100

Rating :   62/100                                                                       94 Min        U

Disney Pixar’s latest is unsurprisingly ambitious and technically accomplished, but on this occasion they’ve overshot their own creative mark and landed a little too close to the dead zone of thematic ambiguity for comfort. The plot is theoretically about one family: father (Kyle MacLachlan), mother (Diane Lane) and young eleven-year-old girl Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) who relocate from Minnesota to San Francisco, causing Riley to suffer numerous quite natural insecurities and regrets as she waves goodbye to several friendships and a hallowed place on her ice hockey team.

In reality, the movie is focused on what’s going on inside Riley’s brain as we see Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Fear (Bill Hader) brought to life as individual entities at the helm, ‘Headquarters’, of Riley’s entire personality and normal function. Herein lies problem number one – an attempt to personify characters as representative of one distinct and solitary emotion but also as characters in their own right who must necessarily exhibit more of a range.

The whole motif behind the movie is that it’s OK to feel sad sometimes, as this can be a visual signal to others that we are in need of help. Sadness initially messes everything up before her place in the grand scheme of things becomes apparent, and as her chaotic influence sweeps throughout the labyrinthine corridors of Riley’s grey matter we watch as entire elements of the host’s personality are completely and irrevocably annihilated by mistake, whilst in the real world her life is equally devastated as a result. All of which has the effect of largely distancing Riley from being in any way in control of herself and her own state of being, which in turn is conceptually very alienating for an audience.

Similarly, there are a lot of very eerie goings-on; we see a large creepy clown lurking around in locked away memories, entire characters begin to fade into nothingness as Riley starts to forget them. Notwithstanding this, there are funny moments and the artwork involved is top-notch, as we’ve come to expect, just as the adventure the central personality profiles go in does more or less hold interest until the end. Still, the film’s premise hasn’t been satisfactorily fulfilled and The Red Dragon is by no means convinced this is a good film to be taking youngsters to go and see.