The Purge : Anarchy  (2014)    56/100

Rating :   56/100                                                                    103 Min        15

The sequel to last year’s ‘The Purge‘ from Blumhouse productions (with James DeMonaco writing and directing again) who don’t waste any time in getting the next installment in their franchises out. It retains the good basic story from the first one – that at some point in the very near future the U.S. Government sanction one day of violence and wanton destruction when people can ‘purge’ themselves of their baser inclinations and not face any recriminations (until the next Purge possibly), thereby theoretically creating a society largely free of crime for the rest of the year. Here, the concept is advanced a little and more politics come into it, which was a good idea and works quite well, but its critical sin is that four of the five main characters are terribly written and just as terribly acted.

Frank Grillo (‘The Winter Soldier‘, ‘End of Watch‘) plays one man on a mysterious mission – driving around on purge night in a bullet proofed car with a small arsenal with him for company, but focused on his goal rather than engaging in the bedlam around him. The character is the strongest element of the movie. Unfortunately, he stops to help out some strangers and ends up with a small entourage of completely hopeless gibberlings that shackle him for most of the film. I mean, you really feel sorry for this guy, as the others waltz around in plain sight, scream and shriek at every possible opportunity, talk when they shouldn’t, tell him killing is wrong but ask him to kill everyone around them so they can survive, just generally break his balls and cover constantly. It picks up dramatically for the last twenty or thirty minutes, and if the rest had been like this then it would have been possibly better than the original, but as it is the very people we’re supposed to empathise with effectively destroy the entire core of the film.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes  (2014)    65/100

Rating :   65/100                                                                   130 Min          12A

The sequel to 2011’s very successful, and very good, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ continues with the story a decade further down the line, with Caesar and his motley bunch of intelligent apes living free in the wild whilst humanity attempts to deal with the deadly ‘Simian Flu’ virus unleashed at the end of the previous film. In a nutshell, this is nowhere near as good (although it is still a country mile better than Tim Burton’s take on the story back in 2001) but it does just about enough to pass mustard as the next chapter in the franchise.

This has a significantly increased action quotient compared to its predecessor, and in terms of the script it’s much more, ahem, primitive – at times it even feels like scenes must have been omitted that were necessary to explain certain things, and at various points the characters feel a little forced and silly. The plot centers on what’s left of the human populace in San Francisco trying to access a hydroelectric dam in the ape controlled forest in order to restore power, which proves to be a diplomatic nightmare for both sides, eventually setting precedent for relations between the two species in the future.

The human protagonists are played by Jason Clarke, Keri Russell and Gary Oldman, with Andy Serkis returning to play Caesar and Toby Kebbell (who’s slated to play Doctor Doom in the Fantastic Four reboot, incidentally) giving a very good performance as the other main monkey, I mean ape, Koba. This has a similar feel to the original series of films which started with the magnificent ‘Planet of the Apes’ (68) and kind of then went steadily downhill with ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes (70), ‘Escape from the Planet of the Apes’ (71), ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’ (72), ‘Battle for the Planet of the Apes’ (73) and a couple of TV series before the eventual appearance of Burton’s aforementioned attempt which choked and died instantly. Interestingly, the original film is based on a novel by French author Pierre Boulle, who also penned ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’, which of course then inspired another of the most famous movies of all time. This particular outing in the Apes series is reasonably entertaining, but I think it’s best to go in with pretty low expectations …

Cold in July  (2014)    70/100

Rating :   70/100                                                                     109 Min        15

A film that begins in darkness and yet still becomes relentlessly more and more opaque. Michael C. Hall plays a husband that shoots dead an intruder at the witching hour in his livingroom, without really meaning to. The police tell him he has nothing to worry about, but he is rather understandably shaken up by the ordeal and things start to intensify when it is revealed that the perps father (Sam Shepard) has just been released from prison and isn’t too thrilled at learning his son has been popped off, irrespective of the circumstances.

A few of the character choices will have you asking questions, but mostly it holds up quite well – although the wife (played by Vinessa Shaw) is incredibly irritating. Hall fits bars on the windows the day after the incident and buys a new sofa since the old one has been splattered a new shade of crimson, all of which seem like perfectly reasonable things to do, and all his wife can offer in support is to give him a hard time about not consulting her about his interior decorating choices, the fist of a few out of place whines and gripes.

Adapted from the 1989 novel by Joe R. Lansdale and directed by Jim Mickle (‘Stake Land’ 2010) the film is set in the early eighties and sports a retro synthesized score, giving it a slightly unique feel for a contemporary piece, and with its fast pace and decent if not fantastic acting it should prove compelling throughout, just expect to encounter some pretty horrid stuff while you’re in there. Also with Don Johnson.

Whiteout  (2009)    0/100

Rating :   0/100             COMPLETE INCINERATION            101 Min        15

This is one of those rare films that has left The Red Dragon genuinely quite sad at the couple of hours of life wasted watching it. Normally, even if a film is bad, I may not necessarily regret having given it a go, but here there really is nothing good to say about the film whatsoever, it’s just a solid block of endless shit. Kate Beckinsale stars as the law official at an Antarctic outpost who must solve the mystery of bodies turning up in the snow, despite being so poor with her firearm she might as well be wielding a banana, all occurring a couple of days before she was due to leave for civilisation again. It’s primary sin is that the story is catatonically dull, but it soon degenerates from boring to gratingly daft, with Beckinsale at all times looking more like she’s just left a beauty parlour than been braving extreme arctic conditions. Whiteout itself deserves to be blotted out of history.

3 Days to Kill  (2014)    69/100

Rating :   69/100                                                                     117 Min        12A

Kevin Costner stars as a CIA operative diagnosed with terminal brain and lung cancer and given three months to live, inducing him to visit his estranged wife and daughter in Paris to make amends before he kicks the bucket – enter sex on legs Amber Heard to throw a spanner in the works and offer him an experimental life extending drug, if he does just one more job for the agency that is …

It’s a lot more light hearted and fun than it sounds with numerous comedic moments, decent action and several beautifully iconic shots of Paris. In fact, it is exactly what you might expect from mixing writer Luc Besson (‘Leon’ 94, ‘The Fifth Element’ 97) with director McG (‘Charlie’s Angels’ 2000, ‘Terminator Salvation’ 09). It doesn’t start off too well, with the intro intelligence brief telling us about primary terrifying villains ‘The Wolf’, and, ‘The Albino’, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously, nor does it take long to settle either.

Costner brings his wealth of experience to ground the central role and he plays it in the same subtle and subdued way that he did in ‘Jack Ryan : Shadow Recruit‘, again playing a CIA operative there, and the support from the likes of Hailee Steinfeld as his daughter is equally good.  A return to form for many involved and a suitably likeable and entertaining weekend action film.

Edge of Tomorrow  (2014)    75/100

Rating :   75/100                        Treasure Chest                      113 Min        12A

‘Groundhog Day’ (93) meets ‘Gears of War’ (XBox franchise) in this sci-fi action adventure starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The film looks fantastic throughout, although it feels a little jittery in the beginning before Bill Paxton arrives to settle things, no doubt his ‘Aliens’ (86) credentials highlighting him for the role, and he makes sure to nod in James Cameron’s direction with mention of Judgement Day as we are introduced to our recognisable modern day world – except aliens called Mimics have decided to invade Europe, and with the threat barely contained there humanity plans a D-Day style invasion to be launched simultaneously on every available front, with our viewpoint being the Normandy launch from London. Cruise is a spokesperson for the military who gets himself on the wrong side of Brendan Gleeson, never wise, and finds himself very much dropped in at the deep end where he quickly gets obliterated but, mysteriously, instead of dying he finds himself back where he was twenty four hours ago …

Based on the 2004 ‘light’ novel ‘All You Need is Kill’ by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Tom Cruise was the perfect choice for sympathetically selling a potentially difficult story to ground, and Blunt is every bit as brilliant as the successful war veteran, or the ‘Full Metal Bitch’ as the military PR dubs her (a wonderful moniker I fully intend to appropriate for personal use – you know who you are). The action is relentless, with the humans all armed with robust mechanised exosuits, real props, again much like ‘Aliens’ or ‘Avatar’ (09) but on a more manageable scale – similar to the one in ‘Elysium‘, together with elements common to computer games. Blunt, for example, often wields an enormous ‘Soul Calibur’ esque blade. Don’t expect much on the philosophy front, but this is almost seamlessly put together by director Doug Liman and despite a couple of hiccups, it’s rock solid entertainment.

An interview for breakfast telly with the two main stars …

X-Men : Days of Future Past  (2014)    77/100

Rating :   77/100                                                                     131 Min        12A

This is perhaps not only the best of the X-Men films, but I’d definitely consider putting it into my top ten superhero films in general, a success that has to be accredited to the wonderful ensemble cast, an exciting story with a lot of soul searching for many of the characters, and the return of director Bryan Singer to the franchise, who helmed 2000’s ‘X-Men’ and ‘X2’ (03) but then dropped out to concentrate on his Superman reboot (which has since been rebooted), with Brett Ratner taking the reigns for ‘X-Men : The Last Stand’ (06).

Following the original trilogy came ‘X-Men Origins : Wolverine’ (09), ‘The Wolverine‘ (13) and ‘X-Men : First Class’ (11), and here we find a story that interweaves the threads of all the films thus far, as we see a glimpse of what the Earth looks like in 2023 with war raging between mankind and mutants, together with those who took up arms to defend them – a war that ravages the whole of humanity and yields scenes not dissimilar to James Cameron’s Judgement Day. Mechanoid hunters called sentinels, that can detect the mutant gene (a version of one of them appears in the training room in The Last Stand), have proven decisive in the conflict and the last remaining X-Men plot one final desperate attempt to avoid annihilation, by sending Wolverine back in time to 1973 to the very point of the sentinel’s deadly inception of power in an effort to change history and create a better future for all.

There are a couple of fairly unexplained and egregious continuity errors (unless we are dealing with alternative universes, which remains a possibility), most notably following on from events in The Last Stand and The Wolverine, but they can pretty much get away with it because in the former something was hinted at (not explained in that movie was the fact that the comatose patient we at one point see being cared for by Moira MacTaggert {played by Olivia Williams, and then Rose Byrne in ‘X-Men : First Class’} is in fact professor X’s twin brother who was born brain dead, prof X having no doubt devoured his mind in the womb) and, well, they’re X-Men, and in the latter what they changed was rubbish to begin with so it was a good idea to ditch it. Despite the time travelling shenanigans the story holds its own really well, with only the occasional bit of dialogue that could have done with a few tweaks, and the various character arcs at play are all pretty satisfying and should all resonate with audiences despite their variety and the extreme scenarios, as with a lot of sci-fi and fantasy it is after all the human weaknesses, problems, relationships and fragility that ultimately determines whether or not it finds a place in the viewer’s heart.

The special effects look great, as too do the real props made for the film, with the costume and makeup department really outdoing themselves. The score fits the film well, and Peter Dinklage provides just the right amount of screen presence and gravitas as the primary villain Bolivar Trask (an interesting choice of name, given it is most famously attached to Simón Bolívar who liberated much of Latin America from imperial rule – also relating to the story, in The Last Stand Bill Duke’s character is defined as Secretary Trask). Some of the enormous cast are as follows: Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page, Halle Berry, Bingbing Fan, Shawn Ashmore, Daniel Cudmore and Booboo Stewart, with Bryan Singer making at least two cameo appearances in the background.

There’s one post credits scene right at the end, and for a bit of trivia this is reputedly the second most expensive film from 20th Century Fox after ‘Avatar’ (09) and one of the primary producers is Lauren Shuler Donner – wife of Hollywood legend Richard Donner, who of course directed the original ‘Superman’ in 78. There is an episode of Star Trek the Original Series on TV in one of the scenes, which no doubt plays on the fact the comics did on occasion interlink the worlds of Star Trek and the X-Men and interestingly a book exists, ‘Planet X’ (98), that crosses over their universe with the Next Generation’s, and when Xavier and Captain Picard meet one another they remark how much they look alike, but it was published before Patrick Stewart was signed on to play Xavier (he, of course, also played Picard in the Next Generation and its subsequent films).

Speaking of crossovers, there is now a link between the films of all three different companies making major adaptations based on Marvel characters, with this being advertised at the end of Sony’s ‘The Amazing Spiderman 2‘ (reportedly as a condition of Fox freeing up director Marc Webb to work on his second Spiderman film, but oddly Josh Helman, who plays William Striker here, also has an uncredited appearance as Striker in the movie) and here we are introduced to the character of Quicksilver, called Peter Maximoff in the film, who can also be seen in one of the post credits scenes of ‘Captain America : The Winter Soldier‘ (here he’s played by Evan Peters, but in the Winter Soldier he’s played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, ironically the two played close school pals in superhero flick ‘Kick-Ass’ 2010, whose director Matthew Vaughn helmed First Class and helped write the story for this … so many connections), although that isn’t quite the whole story with that character ….

(note the remarkable correlation between the advertising poster for the film shown above, and the national flags of Scotland and England, especially with the blue cross over Scotsman James McAvoy’s face as it is – is there a hidden referendum agenda within X-Men? If so, are we, the Scots, the mutants? I quite like that idea – possible weak but nevertheless useful powers to have: Johnny Five’s ability to read entire books in two seconds and remember everything, the ability to tell that human females are diseased by their eyes glowing red and also knowing what part of their cycle they’re on, perfect control lucid dreaming with real-time special features, being able to breath fire … )

P.S. Having watched this more than once now, I can’t be sure but I think Mystique at one point actually turns into Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Also, curiously, in ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ (98) Johnny Depp has the line “Both Kennedys murdered by mutants”, something briefly alluded to in the film …

Sabotage  (2014)    55/100

Rating :   55/100                                                                     109 Min        15

The latest film from director David Ayer, who continues with similar themes from his last film ‘End of Watch‘, although he has largely ditched the hand held camera aspect this time around. We once again are put in the midst of American law enforcement, this time a squad of hard as nails DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) operatives led by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, with Sam Worthington, Mireille Enos, Joe Manganiello, Terrence Howard, Josh Holloway, Max Martini, Kevin Vance and Mark Schlegel rounding out the rest of the group. Catchphrases like ‘high octane’ and ‘adrenaline fuelled action’ could probably be used to describe the action but really I think the term ‘sick’ is the most accurate descriptor for the piece. The team are caught up in a scandal when they all decide to steal some of the bad guy’s money before they burn the majority of it, but it’s not waiting at the point of egress as it should be – so where has it gone?

One by one we see the group brutally murdered, and we have to guess if it’s an internal thing, if the hits are being planned by the drug cartels, or if the rest of the department aren’t too happy about a rogue unit planning thefts of millions. The level of bloody violence has really been taken to the nth level here, which is just indulgent and silly – the same as in End of Watch when the officers uncovered all sorts of stuff when they were on the beat, things that you would normally expect to see in horror films. Olivia Williams turns up as the FBI agent assigned to investigate the assassinations and the acting is fine overall, but the plot, as well as being soaked in buckets of blood, just doesn’t add up in several places. Ayer has the skill to make an exciting action film, but he has to learn to ground it in reality, not the darkest regions of hell.

Blue Ruin  (2013)    73/100

Rating :   73/100                                                                       90 Min        15

Funded on Kickstarter by its writer and director Jeremy Saulnier, this is a study of vengeance and the cycle of violence that it can begin. Dwight (Macon Blair) has never been able to deal with the murder of his parents by a man whom he learns is about to be released from jail. At the film’s beginning we see Dwight living out of his car, rummaging in garbage for anything edible, and we learn later that he hides from remaining family members, fully aware of the shameful state he has allowed to become the norm. The knowledge that the person he holds responsible for everything is to be set free though, galvanises his long gestating hatred and he plots brutal recriminations.

Well shot and acted, this doesn’t pull its punches, dealing in a very real way with the harsh reality of violence, hate and anger. Some of the scenes aren’t as successful as they could have been, in terms of character reactions and the staging of some of the action, and it would perhaps have not been amiss to show more moments of inflection from the protagonist as he continues his descent into hell, but this is nevertheless believable overall, and compelling throughout.

Transcendence  (2014)    73/100

Rating :   73/100                                                                     119 Min        12A

A lot better than I was expecting, in fact they’ve done quite a clever thing with the trailer as most of what we see in it appears onscreen near the beginning reducing the amount of spoilers left to come. Will (Johhny Depp) and Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall) are completely devoted to each other as husband and wife, but they both also happen to be brilliant scientists working together on artificial intelligence projects – projects that will bring them to the attention of terrorist group RIFT, who deem their work a threat to all of humanity and plot to put a permanent end to their efforts. After Will is mortally wounded, Evelyn desperately tries to save him by transferring his consciousness digitally onto computer data banks.

One of the film’s strongest points is that it doesn’t waste any time mulling over the details and the far flung plot elements, it just gets on with it, which not only makes it more enjoyable but it also helps it seem more plausible. Hall is great as the doting and determined wife whose emotions blind her to the possibility that she has become a modern day Frankenstein, as Paul Bettany and Morgan Freeman provide the perfect foil of concern to her unshakeable devotion as they question whether or not the Will they knew could possibly have ‘transcended’ as completely as they hoped. As with all good sci-fi, even though this takes us in leaps and bounds forward, the beginnings of the basic story are now a matter of science fact, from work on nanobots to our ability to transfer the electrical signals of our brain digitally – see the end of the review for The Zero Theorem.

Well paced and directed by Wally Pfister in his directorial début (he is best known as Christopher Nolan’s long running cinematographer, who won the Oscar for his work on ‘Inception’ 2010), an interesting story from Jack Paglen (also his first screenplay) and brought to life by a wonderful group of actors, this is enjoyable sci-fi with plenty of hooks to follow up on in the real world (click here for a few examples).