'Blue Jasmine', 'Rush', 'In A World...', 'The Great Beauty', 'About Time' and 'Riddick': review round-up

'Blue Jasmine' - Dir. Woody Allen (12A)

The words "a return to form" seem to have been ascribed to every Woody Allen film since the mid-90s to the point where I'm genuinely surprised any professional critic would actually use them in a review. But what that curious phenomenon seems to show is that however lacklustre some of his recent canon have been perceived as by many - including, from time to time, this reviewer - they've always managed to feature enough reliably great performances, some sharp lines of dialogue and often an ingenious central concept that means they're always somebody's "best since Manhattan" (or whatever the yardstick for Woody greatness is this month). In other words, every 'Curse of the Jade Scorpion' or 'Scoop' has something to recommend it and, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Allen's decline have been greatly exaggerated.

I often wonder if, say, 'Melinda and Melinda' had been by a new filmmaker whether critics would have been much more impressed. We'll never know the answer to that one for sure, but it's difficult to argue against the idea that Woody is to some extent a victim of his own successes. That's not to say all of his movies have been golden (there are one or two I can't stand *cough* 'You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger' *cough*), just that we need to have a little perspective. He's a 77 year-old man who still manages to write and direct  a new feature every single year. I don't single out his advanced years to be patronising, but rather to point out that he's still vital, creative and seemingly just as concerned with pondering the human condition as he was in the 60s - at an age when most of us close ourselves off and become reactionary Daily Mail readers (huge generalisation, but you get my point). Anyway, I say all this to cover my ass before getting into his latest film.

I'm gambling that displaying an awareness of the critical discourse surrounding his movies will lend me a bit of credibility (or else let me off the hook) when I somewhat inevitably say: 'Blue Jasmine' is a triumphant return to form! Woody's best since 'Sweet and Lowdown'!

And it is. To my mind, it's his most perfect movie since 1999. Its closest contender for that accolade, 'Midnight in Paris', is easy-going, charming, inventive and often very funny - but 'Jasmine' vaults over it by virtue of genuine dramatic heft and, with Cate Blanchett in the title role, a lead performance for the ages. It's rare for a Woody Allen film - even a vintage 70s/80s one - to be so tragic, sad and consistently tense as this. It made me uncomfortable and anxious throughout, and the funny lines don't feel like jokes or witticisms in the Allen style, but are born of great characterisation. There's a lot of heart and feeling in this one and no easy answers about life's troubles, nor is there an Allen surrogate figure making sardonic wisecracks to soften the blow. It's a brave and disturbing movie, whilst still feeling like a Woody Allen film - unlike some of his previous attempts at prioritising drama over comedy, such as artistic misfires 'Match Point' and 'Cassandra's Dream'.

Blanchett gives a titanic performance as a force of nature who sweeps through the film delivers lines like "there’s only so many traumas a person can withstand until they take to the streets and start screaming" with an intensity that's nearly frightening. Her part is fantastically well-written to begin with, but she takes the material to another level and manages to make Jasmine a sympathetic character in spite of her selfishness and self-defeating attitude, probably because she really nails representation of the character's mental problems and crippling dependence on drink and pills. The supporting cast is also brilliant, with Sally Hawkins particularly good value as the sympathetic sister and comedian Andrew Dice Clay giving a surprisingly effective performance as her wounded ex-husband. It's a difficult film to find fault with, though I might have taken issue with Hawkins' beautiful San Francisco home (which can't be cheap) being dismissed so often as some kind of shameful hovel had the film not convinced me so thoroughly in every other respect.

No question, this is one of the year's best and it's safe to say we have a clear favourite for the Best Actress Oscar.

'Rush' - Dir. Ron Howard (15)

In keeping with Howard canon to date, this F1 racing biopic - which explores the 70s rivalry between brash, womanising Brit James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and clinical, cold Austrian Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) - is a polished, competently put together crowd pleaser that doesn't take any risks. A decent crop of actors, giving charismatic performances, in a "based on a true story" tale of man's triumph over adversity, the will to win and every other hackneyed sports movie cliché available. I'll say this for it: 'Rush' races by, no pun intended, and isn't at all boring, but it's very difficult for me to pinpoint why that is. Maybe it's because it's loud and there are lots of fast cars in it? Perhaps it's all the gratuitous female nudity that serves neither plot nor character? It's probably got the most to do with the pleasure of seeing Brühl's Lauda being relentlessly dickish to various people. Yeah, it's probably the last one.

Peter 'The Queen' Morgan's screenplay leaves nothing unexplained, with race commentators and track announcers enabling the writer to commit the cardinal sin and tell even as he's showing, more or less at all times. You'd expect a bit of hokey exposition in the race commentary, explaining the sport to those unfamiliar or establishing the context of various races in the drivers' careers, but Morgan and Howard go further - having an almost ever-present commentary that updates us helpfully on the simplest of things. I'm exaggerating slightly but the commentary at times says things like "here are the two rivals, the by-the-book Austrian Niki Lauda and his playboy British challenger James Hunt. Of course, they don't like each other all that much after the incident in the last scene you saw, but they both want to win here today, with points to prove on their various competing philosophies on life. One thing's for sure though: the duo have a grudging, mutual respect that will really come into the fore in the third act." And when the commentary isn't doing that the soundtrack is, notably as Bowie's "Fame" plays during a montage of Hunt being famous.

Everything is technically top-notch but there's no character or originality to the way this movie's been put together. You always get exactly what you've come to expect and no more. It is literally a longer version of the trailer. Stylistically it's a collage of bits you've seen (over)used elsewhere. Such as the obligatory bird's-eye shot of crowds holding umbrellas in the rain (because it's pretty) and the low-angle, over-exposed shaky-cam shots of Hunt drinking beer that show us he's on an out of control bender driven by despair. It's like every scene in the screenplay caused Howard to ask himself "now, how has this been done well before in other people's movies?"

'In A World...' - Dir. Lake Bell (15)

The promising directorial debut feature of writer and actress Lake Bell, 'In A World...' is a smart comedy about a vocal coach, Carol Solomon (Bell), who dreams of breaking into the male-dominated world of voice-over work - with no gig as prestigious as narration for the trailers of epic movies. It's a vocation her competitive and egotistical father, Sam Soto (Fred Melamed), is at the top of and - as a terrible sexist with no faith in his daughter - he's grooming another man, Gustav Warner (Ken Marino) to take his place in the industry. So Carol, with the help of a sound technician played by meek, niceguy comedian Demetri Martin, goes against the odds, and against her father's advice, to try and win the chance to say those famous words of the title over the teaser trailer for the film adaptation of a Hunger Games style teen-lit phenomenon.

The voice-over industry squabbling is pretty funny, but the film's trump card is the presence of Bell herself as a confident, likeable lead. Carol is the sort of silly, immature, wisecracking character women don't normally get to play in Hollywood - usually consigned to playing tutting shrews in comedies about 30-something man-babies and rarely getting the funniest lines. It appears Bell's answer to that particular imbalance has been to make her own damn film - and I'm glad she did. Especially as it means we have a female character whose relationships with her father and vague love interest (Martin) are demonstrably equally important as that with her sister (Michaela Watkins). In other words, she isn't defined exclusively by her relationship to male characters even if the film is about her relationship with a male-dominated industry.

Light and breezy, consistently funny and overflowing with charm, the film's only misstep is a final ten minutes in which too many moral lessons are learned and the film's female-empowerment message is spelled out in clunky fashion, when it was already implicitly clear from the synopsis. It's also jarring to see [SPOILER WARNING] the film let Carol's father off the hook in such spectacular fashion when he's spent the entire movie not only discouraging his daughter but actively placing obstacles in her way. Don't get me wrong, you expect some kind of father-daughter reconciliation, but Sam's speech - in which he expresses pride in his daughters' achievements - feels disingenuous after what precedes it, and therefore it doesn't quite pack the feel-good punch you feel the movie is going for.

'The Great Beauty' ('La belleza grande') - Dir. Paolo Sorrentino (15)

A total and utter cinematic treat from the supremely talented director of 'Il divo', Paolo Sorrentino, 'The Great Beauty' stars Toni Servillo as a once promising author who got sucked into the decadent Rome party scene after his one great success, 40 years prior, and is now deeply unfulfilled - his lifestyle lacking any real beauty or appeal. He's a man who, in his own reckoning, "wanted not just to be the king of parties, but the power to make them failures": and in that respect he has been a great success. A dominant presence amongst the city's fading intellectual class, all equally unhappy in secret - an isolated, self-loathing and hopelessly vain bunch who you feel have been playing out the same social gatherings for decades.

It's a beautifully sad film punctuated by a bouncy, euro-dance soundtrack, which perfectly encapsulates the gilded cage that Rome has become for its protagonist. And it's also capable of being extremely funny, and more than a little wise with some really pithy dialogue worthy of future quotation. As you might expect from Sorrentino, it's sharply observed and offers a stinging, satirical rebuke to aspects of contemporary Italian culture: from a conveyor-belt approach to cosmetic surgery to the empty pretension of Rome's young avant garde set. Yet it's also a tender and sincere piece in which sex, death and the Catholic church all play a part. And gosh is it pretty to look at.

'About Time' - Dir. Richard Curtis (12A)

It's difficult talking about Richard Curtis' latest twee, upper-class comedy 'About Time', because though I really didn't take much from it, didn't find it at all funny and found elements of it's central premise a little troubling - I'm reluctant to tear a strip off something so faultlessly kind. Yes: Curtis paints Britain as a strange fantasy world, supremely exportable to foreign cinema markets and alien to most people that actually live there, and he does (infamously) tend to whitewash what is - and has been for centuries, by the way - a multi-cultural country. What's more, the idea that only men in the film have the power of time travel is more than a little sexist, and in a peculiarly contrived sort of way - which literally robs female characters of agency during this story. However, I really do think he means well. I think he's overall a kind sort of person with broadly decent intentions, even if I don't seem to share his world-view, and whilst that doesn't make me like his films any more than I otherwise would, it does make me baulk at the idea of kicking them in the groin quite so hard as I might usually enjoy.

One of the peculiar features of 'About Time' is that there is really no conflict at any point... at all. Domhnall Gleason's character begins the film a decent chap and ends the film more or less an unchanged (if slightly older) man. When the plot presents him an opportunity to cheat on his luminescent girlfriend (Rachel McAdams) he wisely refuses it first time around. He's ultimately supposed to be imparting some lesson to us about not wasting what little time you have, punctuated here by his using time travel to get to spend more time with his dapper, wise old father (Bill Nighy) - yet Gleason's character always makes the most of his time with his father throughout what we see of his life. He is seemingly not a man with any regrets and, quite honestly, he's a pretty much the last person in all of fiction worthy of the gift of time travel, given that he pretty much just likes life the way it is. For a film ostensibly about time travel, there are incongruously long stretches where none takes place. Personally I find this lack of any antagonism or conflict refreshing: maybe there should be more films where people are basically decent and are allowed to like each other. But it isn't really the stuff of great drama or, it turns out, comedy.

Yet there's something genuinely sweet about a film where, during the inevitable wedding speech (as compulsory in a Curtis as the American girlfriend, kooky sister and well-meaning but mad old relative) the best accolade a father can bestow upon his son is that he is a kind man. Not a clever man or a wealthy man (though Gleason's character is shown to be both) but a kind one. You can (and should) find fault with many aspects of this film and of Curtis' wider filmography - certainly in his representations of social class and evident institutionalised sexism - but we could all do with a little more kindness and it be very churlish of me to spit from a great height upon something as painfully well-intentioned as this bit of old dross.

'Riddick' - Dir. David Twohy (15)

I'm going to start this one with the positive and then get on to the regrettable, regressive and wrong-headed sexual politics later on, because what 'Riddick' gets wrong it gets so catastrophically wrong that if my kinder comments followed they could seem in bad taste by association. OK? Let's go...

'Riddick' is the third entry in a series kept alive only by Vin Diesel's 'Fast and the Furious'-led star-power, as he attempts to ham-fistedly bludgeon his character from the well-received 2000 sci-fi/horror 'Pitch Black' into pop-culture significance. The logic seems to be that if night-vision afflicted convict-turned-anti-hero Richard B. Riddick(TM) appears in enough movies and video games, and is presented as a sufficient enough "badass", he is guaranteed to enter the pantheon of cult movie heroes, alongside Bond, Indy and the dog from 'Marley & Me'. It's an interesting theory, even if it doesn't seem to be panning out that way (there's no evidence people are any closer to caring). Regardless, Diesel has his fans and 'Riddick' does enough to satisfy that audience - even if it's destined to do next to nothing for anybody else.

That said, there's something strangely hypnotic about the film's opening 40 minutes in which a mostly-silent Riddick (a wise scripting choice, given Diesel's difficulty emoting and reading lines) stalks the arid wasteland of an anonymous alien world killing increasingly large CGI beasts. Birds, fish, dogs, giant scorpions: Riddick can best them all when it comes to punching and stabbing and running and grunting. Like a survivalist's wet dream, Riddick spends a significant chunk of the movie living in a cave, crafting weapons out of bits of bone. In all seriousness, it seems like it might be an attempt to chronicle ancient man's assent to the top of the food chain, as he's tormented by various creatures before becoming the area's main predator. At which point he sets his sights on greater quarry: man.

Then we get the slightly less compelling, but still oddly watchable second act in which Riddick is mostly absent and presented as some sort of horror movie monster (we occasionally see an outstretched hand), as he stalks two teams of bounty hunters who have been dispatched to the planet to capture him. One of them is a lady (Katee Sackhoff) and, as we learn through clunky and grotesque banter, she is a lesbian. This will be important later. In this section the film feels like a low-budget, over-lit, cheesy-as-fuck version of the original 'Alien', with Riddick filling in as the unknowable antagonist. Which is pretty jarring and unusual given it's a movie called Riddick and the third film in which this character has appeared, but I've got to admit I have a lot of admiration for this because it's so unexpected as to verge on brilliant.

A 'Wall-E' style first act in which our hero barely speaks and doesn't interact with any other humans, and then a second act in which he mostly disappears and the film shifts focus to being about a bunch of new characters. That's sort-of marvellous. Note: also of considerable joy to me, there's no more to the plot of this movie than the fact that Riddick is stuck on an alien world and wants to get off it. It's simple and doesn't waste time with an unnecessary, convoluted nonsense: the goal is clear and when it's reached [spoiler warning!] the movie ends. Right away. That sounds like a very simple thing to praise a movie for, but it's amazing how many modern films can't tell a simple story and don't know how to end without half an hour of various characters meeting to say goodbye. It's as if studios think we view every movie as some beloved relative and it's feared we all need sufficient closure before we can let go.

I've got to say, if that's all the film was - and if the last act was just Riddick punching mercs and monsters and stealing a spaceship - then 'Riddick' would probably get a mostly enthusiastic review from this critic. However (and it's a huge however), you run into difficulty when your edgy, amoral, loner anti-hero starts dispensing rape threats and it's not something the film can ever (read: should ever) expect to recover from. When Riddick is captured by mercs at the start of the third act, he grimly explains - in tedious and predictable fashion - how he's going to kill various male elements of the cast. But for Sackhoff's lesbian, tough-girl he has something else in mind: basically he says he's going to "go balls-deep" in her, and she's going to ask him to "real sweet-like". He also gloats that he saw her nipples earlier in the movie, perving whilst she was showering (in a gratuitous topless scene). This is just creepy. Not charming. Not funny. It's unpleasant and leaves a very bad taste. He is trying to intimidate (and simultaneously woo?) a woman by bragging about seeing her tits to room of her co-workers whilst she is present. That's literally what our hero is doing in that scene. She is defiant, at first. But... you know how the film ends, right? Of course you do.

Sackhoff's lesbian straddling Vin Diesel and asking him to fuck her is the film's sad, loserly idea of the ultimate display of masculinity for our hench male hero. He turns a lesbian whilst ascending into a spaceship from a battlefield strewn with the corpses of all the space aliens he killed. Teenage male empowerment fantasies simply don't come any less subtle or mature than this. It's the highest possible calibre of gross, macho bullshit. It spoils what is otherwise a pretty weird and (if not always for the intended reasons) entertaining movie.

'Upstream Color': review

In order to satisfy a verbal contract I've made with myself, I try to write something amounting to a "review" of every film I see at the cinema. For that reason I feel obliged to write a little bit about the universally acclaimed 'Upstream Color' - written and directed by its star Shane Carruth, who also provides the music. For what it's worth, it was a film I was really looking forward to. It's the story of [anybody's guess really, Google one of the many detailed descriptions if you're curious]. You probably gather by now that the film did nothing for me. In fact I'm willing to admit I didn't follow it very well at all, either on a plot level or as a metaphor, so oblique was it - hence my reluctance to spend much time talking about it. Apologies if you came here genuinely seeking some sort of proper analysis.

Friends of mine who did enjoy it have since directed me to pages devoted entirely to explanation of its themes and basic story, but I gain nothing from that, personally. For me, the film needs to speak for itself and needs to make me feel something. Or maybe it doesn't? Who's to say you can't make films catering to a very specific niche of people, and with little regard for or interest in a bulk of the audience? Perhaps there's a place for 'Upstream Color' and plenty of hardcore Thoreau fans out there to lap it up. Certainly lots of people I trust seem to think it's one of the best of the year. It's just not for me, I guess.

'The Way, Way Back', 'Elysium' and 'Planes' (sort of): review round-up

'The Way, Way Back' - Dir. Nat Faxon & Jim Rash (12A)

The words "Twentieth Century Fox Searchlight presents" or (better still) "from the makers of 'Little Miss Sunshine'" rarely herald something good. There's a certain quirksome, brightly coloured, ensemble cast-powered American Indie - usually with a sun-faded blue and yellow poster - that comes out every year bearing these stark promotional slogans (or warnings, as I call them). They usually have boring-straight-man-Steve-Carell in them somewhere ("I'm an actor!", these appearances seem to scream) and Alison Janney is never far away - though she's completely superfluous in the latest of these jangly guitar music laden monstrosities, 'The Way, Way Back', which adds to the feeling that a perfunctory box ticking exercise has informed some of the decision making from writers-turned-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.

This one can be summed up as being about a kid (Liam "one expression" James) who is entirely miserable and unsympathetic in the face of constant, unearned kindness and compassion from almost everyone he meets. Sam Rockwell runs a water park and wants to be this kid's best friend, for... reasons, I guess. It's never clear why. He just starts following him around and smiling at him in a way that should register as creepy. Likewise, everyone at the water park - customers and employees - loves him. Amanda Peet wants to dance with him. Alison Janney is desperate for her son to be friends with him, while her daughter (the three first-name sporting AnnaSophia Robb) is equally desperate to be his summer girlfriend, hanging around looking longingly at him in spite of his clear lack of social graces and charisma.

The cherry on the cake here is that he hates his mother's (Toni Collette) new boyfriend (Carell), as children his age are liable to do. But whereas most kids in his position form an irrational hate they can't reasonably express about a person who's probably decent enough, this kid actually has sees first hand evidence that this guy is a douchebag and gets to shout about it at a garden party - re-framing the story from "angsty teen who needs to grow" to "crusader teen who knows better than the grown-ups about everything".

He should be a sympathetic character. We've all been awkward, moody teenagers. But this kid is his own worst enemy in a world that's throwing nothing but well-intentioned metaphors and sunshine in his direction for the most part... and he doesn't even really learn anything or change at all by the time the credits roll. He enters the film a moody, entitled little shit and exits the film in the same fashion. At the start Carell tells the kid he's a 3/10 and that he needs to put himself out there more and smile occasionally. Well, this is the story of a kid or goes from three to, charitably, a four and a half over an hour and forty minutes that will have you thinking "shit, even Sam Rockwell is bad in this" and "did these guys really write 'The Descendants'"?

'Elysium' - Dir. Neill Blomkamp (15)

It isn't 'District 9' but Neill Blomkamp's follow-up is as ambitious and imaginative as it is clunky. There's a lot of ham-fisted, panto-quality, over-acting involved - notably from Brazilian actor Wagner Moura as "Spider" and Jodie Foster, who seems to be playing a Disney villain in a film happening in her own imagination - while the childhood flashback sequences are a bit cheesy and obvious and, I'll concede, its movement between irreverent, splatter-gore comedy and cloying, string-music backed scenes of children on crutches in peril speak of a tonal mishmash. But it's also got some decent dystopian world building and spectacular design work, as well as some interesting politics for a mainstream blockbuster - with our hero, Matt Damon, framed as an insurgent against the robot drones, unhinged mercenaries and satellite surveillance footage of the film's privileged bad guys - white, wealthy elites living far above a shanty town and predominantly Hispanic Los Angeles in the shiny, clean space station paradise of the title.

The man who once nearly directed a Halo movie, based on the Microsoft video game, continues to borrow heavily from recent sci-fi hits of that medium - notably with elements of Mass Effect and Halo itself. There're some very video gamey future-weapons too, and the plot sees Damon effectively level-up into an augmented mech warrior for some hi-octane fight scenes against Sharlto Copley's crazed henchman that make me question whether I'd rather be playing 'Elysium' than watching it. But it's a solid and entertaining action movie with ideas and a high-concept, so overall I'm enthusiastic about it despite a great many shortcomings.

'Planes' - Dir. Klay Hall (U)

Now, I can only kind of review this - so take my opinion with a greater than usual pinch of salt - but I took my aviation-obsessed 2 1/2 year-old brother to see 'Planes' and he got bored after about 15 minutes, and we left the screening after 30. So I haven't seen the entire movie and usually wouldn't give too strong an opinion based on that. However, I wanted to note that this movie seemed to fail with its target audience: on a plane-mad toddler who will patiently watch actual YouTube footage of a helicopter take off with wide-eyed glee for a very uneventful ten minutes. Sadly, he just couldn't be bothered with the exploits of Dusty the Cropduster and I can't really blame him.

From my end I can only say it's very clear that the film was produced by Disney's straight-to-video people and not by Pixar. It's flat, not particularly detailed and the animation lacks finesse. And, on top of that, it's basically a re-make of the first 'Cars' with a less flawed, more bland central character. That's right: a re-make of 'Cars' made by less talented people. Shudder.

'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa': review

'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa' - Dir. Declan Lowney (15)

It's a familiar story by now: the successful UK TV sitcom - usually a small-scale, charmingly parochial comedy of manners or subtle character study - gets blown up to epic proportions for cinema screens, in a way that can't help but detract from what made the series work in its original form. That's not to say many of these films aren't fun to watch, especially for fans deprived of fresh TV episodes, but this tried and tested formula rarely results in anything that holds a candle to the small-screen original.

'The Inbetweeners Movie' could be held up as a good example of this well-worn trope working well: that film taking its teenage cast on a summer holiday to Crete is completely in keeping with the characters and the result is something very much in the spirit of the show. Though perhaps Armando Iannucci's 'In the Loop' does the best job of maintaining the spirit of its source, BBC TV series The Thick of It, in spite of transporting the back-room dealings and ineffectual PR spin antics of its British cabinet minister to Washington, DC. So, on a first glance, it would seem a shame that another Iannucci TV creation would be catapulting themselves rights over the shark on their debut big-screen outing.

'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa' - a new vehicle for Steve Coogan's long-running character co-created with Iannucci (among others) for radio comedy On the Hour, and the star of several TV series and specials since - sees the middling local radio DJ caught up in a hostage crisis and forced to become an unlikely negotiator between disgruntled, shotgun-toting DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) and the East Anglia police force. It seems like a set-up slightly off-kilter with the former chat show host's world, as gleaned over the years in shows like I'm Alan Partridge, but it doesn't play that way in practice. Happily this movie Partridge is as nuanced as ever and - though there are some broader moments to satisfy the film's wider audience - all the best moments stem from the character's trademark small-minded asides and from little character moments: for instance as he bemoans people who insist on keeping eggs in the fridge.

Fan favourite characters like troubled, ex-army Geordie Michael (Simon Greenall) and beleaguered, unappreciated personal assistant Lyn (Felicity Montagu) also benefit from nice, little bits of business which are simultaneously funny and which enhance these already rich characters - from Michael's revelation that he sleeps in a cupboard because "sometimes me brother wants the whole bed to himself" to Lyn's heartbreaking reaction to the fact that somebody is going to make a cup of coffee for her. For his part, as the nominal antagonist, Meaney's Pat is another subtle and surprisingly developed character, worthy of as much sympathy as derision - making him a fitting addition to the ensemble.

There are a few times when it falls a little flat in translation to a feature film format, with some gentle parody of Hollywood movies that comes off like B-Team 'Hot Fuzz', but for most of its length 'Alpha Papa' feels like a very good episode of the TV series. For some that might seem like an example of damning with faint praise but, as a fan of the character, nothing could be further from the truth. It's nice to spend an hour and a half with the infuriating, selfish, egotistical character that is Alan Partridge: rooting for him against our better judgement and sometimes even finding yourself touched by that ever-present, underlying sense that somewhere inside he's all too aware of his inadequacy. There's something very humane and humble about Coogan's Alan Partridge: on one level a figure of fun and a satirical assault on middle aged Top Gear viewers everywhere, but on another a strange testament to empathy and understanding of even the most wretched people.

'The World's End' and 'The Wolverine': review round-up + Interview with 'Frances Ha' director Noah Baumbach

My laptop went and broke the other day, so that's why (or, should I say, the latest reason why) I haven't been updating. Got a quiz to write for tonight (if you're Brighton-based, and fancy a challenge, get to Dukes at Komedia for 6.30ish), so I'll keep this short.

First up, I did an interview with director Noah Baumbach a little while ago for What Culture. That's available to read online here. Next up, reviews:

'The World's End' - Dir. Edgar Wright (15)

Full disclosure: I didn't grow up with Spaced and have only ever rated 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz' as "alright", so take my opinion of this conclusion to Edgar Wright's "Cornetto Trilogy" with a larger than usual pinch of salt. This one takes on aspects of the sci-fi genre as a small town's inhabitants are slowly replaced with, what I'm going to call (to make it easier to explain in shorthand), robots - though in a way that feels like the zombie horde from 'Sean' meets the strange, rural-folk conspiracy stuff of 'Fuzz'. In 'The World's End', Simon Pegg plays Gary King, a middle-aged man who hasn't moved on since the greatest night of his life: attempting "the golden mile" - a 12 pub crawl across his home town - with his closest mates. However, decades later, everything has changed except for Gary.

The pubs themselves are now identikit chain pubs and all his mates have moved on with their lives and moved away from the small town of their youth. Many of them, including Nick Frost's Andy, actively hate Gary - making things all the more uncomfortable as he pathetically attempts to get the gang back together for one last crack at the mile. It doesn't go well and only gets worse when the robots turn up. That was originally meant as descriptive, but actually forms a pretty good anchor point to start my critique because, for me at least, the film was far more entertaining and engaging before the science fiction elements kicked in. The "former friends coming back together in their sad little home town for a pathetic pub crawl" story was actually really well worked for the first half-hour, with nuanced characters and genuine pathos for Gary: a complete prick, but one you feel crushingly sorry for nevertheless. With his mates played by Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman and the ever-dependable Frost, the film trundled along very nicely for the first 30 minutes as a bitter-sweet comedy-drama.

And then the film gets lost in long (admittedly well choreographed) fight scenes, exposition about this alien/robot threat and all manner of other things that actually detract from what's really appealing and interesting about the film as was: the human drama and the character arc of Gary King - who, reservations about the overall film aside, I think is the year's best original character [more on that to follow at a later date, when I have time]. Gary's arc is maintained and still carries the film, of course, but it gets bogged down in everything else that's going on. It also doesn't help that the film - nominally a comedy - isn't really very funny. It has a few chuckles and it's never less than pleasant to watch, but it's uncharacteristically gag-light by the standards of the creative team. I will say this for it though: what this film has to say about friendship is far more mature and rewarding than pretty much ever other "bromance" movie. There are a lot of similarities between this and the summer's US comedy 'This is the End' - yet, whilst that film is far funnier, this one is the more interesting and emotionally affecting.

'The Wolverine' - Dir. James Mangold (12A)

It's the wrong side of the two-hour mark and goes by extremely slowly - with far more green tea-sipping than claw-knucked action - but 'The Wolverine' is watchable and oddly compelling if mainly because of Hugh Jackman's charisma as the title character. Loosely based on Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's celebrated and far-better-than-this-movie 1982 mini-series, which sees Logan on a solo adventure in Japan, the film takes the character out East where he becomes embroiled in the familial intrigue of a large corporation, a few fights with the Yakuza, and a punch-up with an unconvincing CGI robot samurai. There's a neat action sequence on a train and some nice moments for fans of the character (he even throws in a "bub" at one point), but James Mangold's film - strangely reliant on the maligned 'X-Men: The Last Stand' through extensive Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) dream sequences that might have been better left on the cutting room floor - requires prior investment in the character to be of any interest.

There are some odd cinematic allusions to great Japanese works, for instance one ninja fight sequence borrows imagery from Kurosawa's Macbeth adaptation 'Throne of Blood', and these might help explain the logic behind the film's mannered style and extremely slow pacing. This is probably the quietest blockbuster made this century - and that's admirable and makes for something weirdly fascinating, even if it doesn't really work as intended. It feels boring rather than intense or dramatic, but it's clear (and, again, admirable) that they were really trying to make a character-driven movie about regret and coming to terms with loss. I'm left wondering if they might have succeeded had Darren Aronofsky accepted the long-rumoured offer to direct, but - like his aborted 'Batman Begins' - it was sadly not to be. I will say this for 'The Wolverine' though: if modern superhero movies exist in large part as extended trailers for their inevitable sequels then the film did its job. Even before the post-credits scene, the film left me more excited about next summer's 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' than I was going in.

'Pacific Rim', 'Monsters University', 'The Bling Ring', 'We Steal Secrets' and 'The Deep': review round-up

'Pacific Rim' - Dir. Guillermo Del Toro (12A)

A clear labour of love for creature feature obsessive Guillermo Del Toro, 'Pacific Rim' marks the 'Pan's Labyrinth' director's first completed film since 2008's 'Hellboy II' and sees the Mexican channeling his fandom of Japanese mecha anime series and kaiju monster movies into something grand and frequently spectacular of the summer blockbuster variety. It takes place in the near-future, where a trans-dimensional portal beneath the Pacific ocean has been unleashing giant beasts upon the Earth for a number of years with city-destroying consequences. Humanity's solution? We created monsters of our own, in the form of Jaegers: towering metal soldiers controlled by teams of specially selected, mentally compatible human pilots, built in a spirit of international co-operation. However, years into this struggle, we are losing the battle: the kaiju are getting bigger, their attacks are more frequent and only a handful of Jaegers remain as governments worldwide abandon the program in favour of hiding behind ineffectual coastal walls. It's down to the last Jaeger pilots, and a pair of eccentric scientists, to cancel the apocalypse.

Packed with jaw-dropping set-pieces, characteristically striking visuals and boasting gorgeous production design, it's a visual treat and the sort of thrill-ride you only get from the very best Hollywood fare. Even the 3D - post-converted, but apparently given more time and attention than usual - is a treat, adding texture to the rain effects in particular, as the Jaegers battle the Kaiju at sea. From a character point of view it's broad, but certainly not dumb or empty: the drama feels humane and ties into the action rather than being a perfunctory afterthought. It's also pleasing how international the whole thing is. Yes: it's an American movie, so the American pilot and American mech win the day. But, on the flip-side, rarely is an action movie of this kind less militaristic or nationalistic than this. There's a Russian mechs, a Chinese mech and we're told the Australian mech is the best of the bunch - the most successful and effective around - allowing a sense that this is truly humanity fighting together in its darkest hour.

Also missing is the traditional antagonism between the military and scientists: the misunderstandings, the distrust, the contempt that's usually a huge part of the sci-fi genre. The human characters are, broadly speaking, all good guys and all on the same page - for the most part behaving rationally and not just shouting each other down. At several key moments the film neatly side-stepped whatever horrid cliche I thought was about to occur in favour of something less frustrating or contrived. There are still cliches, but they are the fun kind: like something out of the best bits of 'Independence Day' rather than 'Transformers'. What's more, the male characters are allowed to be emotional, while the lead actress (Rinko Kikuchi) is capable and not really a love interest in the traditional sense (the bond she shares with Charlie Hunnam's lead is not explicitly based around sexual attraction, and she's certainly never presented as a prize to be won by the hero).

Where the film really shines is in the amount of subtle world-building that takes place, with lots of background details and minor plot-points making the world feel rich and lived-in. This is a world effected in numerous ways - big and small - but the arrival of the Kaiju, and this provides some really excellent moments and imaginative ideas. Ideas that become enigmatic and encourage audience curiosity. If this film was a character, it's Boba Fett from 'The Empire Strikes Back': intriguing, rarely seen, the potential basis for endless hours of thought and fantasy by fans. What it's not is Jango Fett from 'Attack of the Clones': over-exposed, over-explained and under-whelming as a result.

One of the most purely enjoyable films we're likely to see this year and possibly the finest original sci-fi action film since 'District 9'.

'Monsters University' - Dir. Dan Scanlon (U)

Why don't presidents and prime ministers ever do all the stuff they promised they'd do once elected? The cynical view is that they're all cads and crooks: they never intended to do those things. They said what they had to in order to get elected and then they did what everybody does - they protected their own interests. But maybe (maybe) the reason the Obamas of this world don't live up to expectations is that, when you're actually in the chair, you're suddenly seeing different data, hearing different opinions from advisers and faced with a different set of responsibilities and expectations. I think this latter analysis might explain why Pixar - who once deliberately, self-consciously stood as a counter-point to the cynical, sequel churn - has been milking its "franchises" for all they're worth ever since founder John Lasseter got promoted at Disney.

For the record: I love Pixar. I think, not controversially, the people at Pixar are geniuses who have presided over arguably the most consistent run of quality animated films ever delivered by any studio. Unsurpassed in terms of technical accomplishment, story development and animation detail, their films are modern masterpieces. 'Cars' accepted, the nine of the ten films released between 1995 ('Toy Story') and 2009 ('Up') have to be considered among the finest animated films ever made. I say this not to fawn unduly, but to show that I both deeply love and greatly respect what the studio has stood for during the peak years of its existence. But ever since John Lasseter became the CFO at Disney in 2006, all those sequels the studio used to shun have happened or are on their way to happening at the expense of the sort of original ideas we've become accustomed to as devoted members of their audience.

We've had the (and I know I'm in the minority here) lackluster 'Toy Story 3', the embarrassing 'Cars 2' and now - with a sequel for 'Finding Nemo' apparently on the way - here comes 'Monsters University': a prequel no one asked for, from a studio that - less than a decade ago - would never have considered making it. I have all the respect in the world for John Lasseter and, since 2006, the quality of output coming from Disney Animation Studios has increased dramatically ('Princess and the Frog', 'Tangled', 'Wreck-It Ralph'), but I mourn for Pixar after this latest assault on its legacy.

As you may have gathered from the opening three paragraphs of increasingly shrill hysteria, 'Monsters University' - which sees the beloved Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) learning to be "scarers" and friends during their college years - is not a great piece of work. It's good. It's perfectly fine. It passes the time. There are moments of great wit and invention, and a few genuinely inspired laughs, whilst the animation and technical side of things is as polished and sophisticated as ever. Yet, overall, it's hollow and unfulfilling - the gags obvious "college movie" stuff punned with monsters the way The Flintstones does with the stone age. Worse still, it's not too indistinct from the sort of unambitious, by-numbers sequel you'd expect of Dreamworks or Fox. That's not say it isn't entertaining, but Pixar are victims of their own great success in this instance: what would represent a creative high-point for one of their imitators is simply not good enough. I enjoyed 'Much Ado About Nothing' last month, but would I have enjoyed it as much if someone told me it was the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie? Some folks you hold to a higher standard.

'The Bling Ring' - Dir. Sofia Coppola (15)

Want to make a film? Only got about 15 minutes of actual story (something you read in a magazine article, perhaps?) and worried it might not stretch to feature length? Well, my friend, you've lucked out, because Sofia Coppola's latest provides you answers to this very conundrum! For instance, if the one scene you have sees five vapid teenagers breaking into a minor celebrity's house and stealing some of their clothing and jewelry: just show that same scene half a dozen times! It's easy - just take the teenagers to another house and do the same thing again! They can pick up slightly different bags and say how cool a slightly different house is. If you're feeling adventurous you can shoot this a few different ways to make people think they're watching something different each time. Sofia gives us a few options to play with: night vision, security camera footage, eye of god external shot etc. And make sure your characters say "Facebook" and "Twitter" a few hundred times so we know how hip and young and thoroughly now the whole thing is. You can string out the scenes in between with the kids driving and just, sort of, standing about looking at their phones. Really: if you put a cool enough soundtrack behind it you can even get it distributed and played in cinemas for actual paying customers. It's genius really.

Oooohh! Start with the ending and then... show the ending again later! That's another 10 minutes taken care of. And play some of the same dialogue multiple times - sometimes in a jarring, faux documentary style that's at odds with the rest of the film and then again out of that context. Have the actors say it word-for-word too, so you don't have to re-phrase it even slightly, because that might require more writing and you only have 15 pages to work with after all. If you have the money, you can hire a former child star freshly liberated from a wildly popular franchise. It doesn't matter if they're any better at acting than the other kids who nobody has heard of at all - or even if they have to do an accent. What matters is that you can get free publicity out of their appearance here, maybe halving the marketing budget of your picture. They may even work relatively cheaply because they're trying to break-out and be a "serious actor". Who knows? You can hope. All of this works much better if: 1) your famous family can produce it for you and 2) if you still have goodwill left over from a genuinely great film you made once.

There you go, lazy budding filmmakers of the world. Enjoy!

'We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks' - Dir. Alex Gibney (15)

An amazing piece of work: balanced, stylish, thrilling, sick-making - sometimes funny and never less than compelling. Alex Gibney takes on Wikileaks and Julian Assange in this revealing documentary that - like many of the contributors - is on one hand in awe of its subject and on the other immensely troubled by him. Bound up with the potentially world-changing and arguably heroic activities of Wikileaks itself - which, among other things, helped bring to light the ugly reality of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan - is the increasingly odd story of Assange, the organisation's founder: whose behavior has been increasingly antithetical to the ideals the whistle-blowing website stands for in the eyes of supporters. It's neither a hatchet job, nor a celebration, but an examination of flawed human beings. It's a sad portrait of a man who seems equal parts a brilliant idealist, a paranoid loner, and self-styled international celebrity.

As much as it follows the career and recent legal troubles of Assange, the film also looks in detail at Bradley Manning - the US private who disclosed thousands of classified files to Wikileaks and who has subsequently been imprisoned without trial and, it would appear, tortured. There's discussion of war crimes committed by the US military under Obama's leadership. Discussion of how the procedures behind the sharing and storage of intelligence data changed after 9/11. Discussion of the moral grey areas around the entire subject: who is hurt by this freedom of information? What do we lose and what do we stand to gain from it as a society? A lot to chew over and Gibney's film, which features a wealth of interviews with fascinating contributors, does a fantastic job of facilitating and furthering the debate.

'The Deep' - Dir. Baltasar Kormakur (12A)

Iceland's official Academy Award entry for the last Oscars (though it wasn't in the final pool of nominees), 'The Deep' is a dry and slightly boring "based on a true story" account of how one man survived in the Northern Atlantic for six hours when he should have died after 15 minutes. When a fishing boat goes down, isolated and at night, all but one of her crew succumb quickly to the extreme cold - but one overweight man, who isn't even an accomplished swimmer, makes it back home against all odds. He even has to climb a mountain of volcanic rock when he gets there, so understandably he's hailed as a evidence of a miracle and a national hero upon his successful return. It turns out this wasn't a very cinematic feat, even if it would make a mildly diverting story if you came upon it in a newspaper.

However, with a third of the film left to go (most of it's a man swimming very slowly in the dark, talking to a bird), it shifts into a tale of a mostly apathetic man, devoid of charisma, shuffling between dry medical examinations and unconvincing efforts to comfort the families and friends of his fellow sailors. It's basically what a shrug looks like if filmed in super slow-motion.

'The Act of Killing' and 'Stories We Tell': review round-up

We held the sixth edition of the Hold Onto Your Butts film quiz at Dukes @ Komedia last night. As usual, I've posted Joe Blann's fantastic picture round above for your pleasure!

Reviews...

'The Act of Killing' - Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer (15)

Unsettling, bizarre, sometimes oddly amusing and always a challenging watch, documentary 'The Act of Killing' follows a group of Indonesian war criminals as they stage camp and increasingly strange re-enactments of their crimes for a feature film. These men - who carried out genocide on 1 million of the countries communists, ethnic Chinese and their families in the mid-60s, with the backing of their army and Western governments - mimic their favourite American gangster movies and incorporate pieces of Indonesian folklore in order to celebrate their part in the killing of thousands, with executioners among those proudly demonstrating the techniques they used to kill on the very locations where they committed their heinous and unpunished crimes.

What's immediately striking about the film is how frank and open the men are: from the newspaper owner (still running his paper) who declares his job was to "make the public hate communists" and to single out individuals for persecution and death, to politicians (still in power) who boast about their use of violent gangsters and uniformed militia groups to keep dissenters in-line. We witness gangsters in modern day Indonesia as they bully and extort "protection money" from frightened Chinese shopkeepers and hear one political candidate talk candidly to the camera about his plans to use his office to force local business to pay him bribes - or else he'll have their buildings condemned. It's a scale of corruption and celebration of mass murder so brazen the criminals can appear on what looks like the Indonesian equivalent of "Loose Women" to promote their film - and loudly declare that they will kill any communists who speak out against it, to the cheers of the studio audience. Unnerving in the extreme, but so heightened and seemingly exaggerated that it's hard not to laugh: for instance, when the head of a paramilitary organisation brags of his "relax and Rolex" lifestyle.

What makes the film so extraordinary and thought-provoking is that this isn't the story of a group of mad individuals, but seemingly something that runs much deeper and across the entire country. It's a reminder of many things, not least the fact that it doesn't take much to vilify a group of people and encourage a state-sponsored pogrom, but also that there's no such thing as "good" or "evil" people - that, unpalatable as it may be, most of us are capable of either in almost equal measure, guided by the hand of history as it shapes the society around us. These are men who talk of their love of dancing in the street after watching Elvis Presley movies. Men who collect crystal Tinkerbell statues and wear pink fedoras in earnest. Men who give as much thought to how to choreograph a musical number as they did to finding the most efficient ways to kill.

It's also a monument to the power of art to help people better understand themselves, to encourage empathy and as a vessel for exploring existential questions. A simple dialogue or argument with any of these men would have undoubtedly lead to a stand-off, so ingrained in their culture and past 50 years of myth-making is the rightness of their cause. But in providing them the means to make a film about their exploits - ostensibly celebrating and explaining what they did for posterity - the film demonstrates how art can lead to reflection and, in this case, unearth long-suppressed doubts. It's clear that, in the case of one executioner, re-enacting the events and re-visiting them in this way gives rise to feelings of grief and guilt that he might otherwise never have experienced - let alone expressed. It's usually pompous and empty to brand a film "important", but 'The Act of Killing' is exactly that. A near-perfect example of what can be accomplished by documentary filmmaking.

'Stories We Tell' - Dir. Sarah Polley (12A)

From Sarah Polley - the director of the uneven drama 'Take this Waltz' - comes a surprisingly affecting documentary 'Stories We Tell', in which she examines the life of her late-mother, the truth about her estranged genetic father and the way in which we construct stories. Inviting members of her extended family and friends to tell their version of events from beginning to end, Polley edits together disparate, sometimes contradictory accounts of her mother's life, to tell a nuanced tale that is equal parts sad and joyful in its depiction of a person's life and their secrets. The narration, written and delivered by Polley's (non-genetic) father, Michael, is especially poignant and even beautiful.

It's less effective, however, when Polley takes a more proactive part in events - making her own observations and reading excepts from letters with a humourlessness that's hard to stomach. Especially as she brings the focus of the film onto the making of the film itself, drawing attention to some of the techniques and advantages of its construction in a faintly self-congratulatory spirit that almost spoils things. Almost, but not quite: because 'Stories We Tell' is a fantastic piece of work, even (at times) in spite of its director. A celebration of a person's life that never shies away from the complexity of their character: a humanistic film that explores a woman's infidelity without judgement and with uncommon understanding.

'World War Z', 'This is the End', 'A Field in England' and 'Frances Ha': review round-up

Before I get to the reviews, I should (for once) make an effort to plug the Live at the Essoldo Cinema Podcast - the latest episode of which saw Toby and I joined by our friend Craig Ennis and director Ben Wheatley, to discuss his upcoming film 'A Field in England' (reviewed below). You can download that conversation here. Whilst you're there, check out earlier episodes of "The Essoldo", which launched earlier this year from the ashes of Splendor Cinema.

So... reviews:

'World War Z' - Dir. Marc Forster (12A)

I can only put the relatively kind reception this film has received from critics down to severely diminished expectations. It is profoundly terrible, but maybe not in the car crash fashion everybody had been primed to expect. Shot back in the summer of 2011, and subjected to numerous script changes and re-shoots since then, 'World War Z' was shaping up to be a disaster of notorious proportions: this generation's 'Waterworld' or 'Ishtar'. And it isn't that - at all. In fact, as I write, it's number one at the international box office and, whilst it's apparently still got a way from being profitable for Paramount, not any sort of box office disaster story. But it is completely and utterly rubbish - a film genuinely without redeeming qualities of any sort.

Terrible CGI (it's all helicopter shots of unconvincing computer-generated crowds, flocking through various big cities), non-existent action scenes (the climax involves a nap, a monologue, some meningitis, a can of Pepsi and interminable scenes of staring at a fairly docile zombie), thinly drawn characters (what is Brad Pitt's vital, most-necessary-man-on-Earth UN job supposed to be anyway?), gaping holes in internal logic (zombies that can topple city walls and push over buses, but can't get past a pile of office desks?), dubious politics (peaceful cohabitation between Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem attracts the zombies!), the worst-written child characters ever ("I'm scared!", "I need my blanket!"), plot threads that go, literally, nowhere ("my family aren't safe!!!"... um, well they seem OK) and... I could go on.

It's bad. It's a waste of your time. Writing any more about it would constitute a waste of my time.

'This is the End' - Dir. Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg (15)

I've written here before, probably numerous times, that it's very difficult to review all-out comedies (as opposed to comedy-dramas), in that whether or not the film succeeds ultimately comes down to one question: "did it make you laugh"? Comedy is probably the most hit and miss genre out there, when you think about it, because there's usually nothing else going on but a string of gags and, if they don't work for you, there's usually nothing else there that's going to keep you entertained. In fact, being in a room full of people laughing at stuff you (at best) don't think is funny or (at worst) think is utterly moronic can be an alienating and irritating experience. Luckily, for me at least, 'This is the End' made me laugh more often than not.

It's got all the hallmarks of the sort of US dude-comedy that I don't usually like: every gag is more or less based around a bunch of slacker, man-child "bros" talking about sex, chicks, drugs and booze - with ample comic millage taken from taboo subjects, such as rape and masturbation - and, aside from a brief cameo from Emily Watson, there aren't any female characters whatsoever to break up the sausage-fest. Yet there is a real warmth to the central male friendships between (co-writer and director) Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Craig Robinson and Jonah Hill - all playing exaggerated versions of themselves. It's big, it's silly, it's broad - but the novelty of seeing these stars playing with their screen personas, talking trash about each other's movies and sometimes (in the case of Michael Cera) knowingly going against type, is often really fun.

'A Field in England' - Dir. Ben Wheatley (15)

This bizarre, sometimes unfathomable, mix of pitch black humour and sleep-disturbing horror won't be a surprise to fans of Ben Wheatley's other films - or at least to those who've seen the equally macabre 'Kill List'. Set during the English Civil War, 'A Field in England' follows a group of deserters as they flee a battlefield, stumble upon some magic mushrooms and become embroiled in an unsettling, occult treasure hunt, whilst ostensibly looking for the nearest pub. The performances, from the likes of Reese Shearsmith and Wheatley regular Michael Smiley, are enjoyably exaggerated and thespy, the sound design is magnificent and Laurie Rose's black and white cinematography yields wonders that belie the film's tiny budget - facts that all combine to create a unique sensory experience.

'Frances Ha' - Dir. Noah Baumbach (15)

Noah Baumbach films have a way of reaching directly, perhaps uncomfortably, into my heart and brain in a way that makes me feel as if they've been made especially for me. If 'The Squid and the Whale' seems to speak directly to my late-teens and young adulthood, then 'Frances Ha' absolutely nails that feeling of post-graduate aimlessness I share with many of my peers... I can only speculate that 'Greenberg' represents some future mid-life crisis!

Co-written by Baumbach and luminescent star Greta Gerwig, the film depicts Frances as she drifts between temporary, low-wage jobs, flits between various apartments and generally struggles to belong in the world of adulthood that she is nominally now considered part of. A wannabe dancer who looks destined to fall short of being quite good enough to really make it, this is the story of a wide-eyed kid who is gradually coming to the realisation that they might not get to be an astronaut and may have to accept being just another normal person. But that's OK. Baumbach and Gerwig deliver this timely and sobering message with a lightness of touch and touching humour that stops it from being in any way bleak: Frances maybe a bit of a fuck-up, but she's a loveable fuck-up and one I can certainly relate to.

This isn't simply one of the best films I've seen this year but, personally, it's the rare kind of film I can see making a lasting impression on my life in the way very few films can lay claim. Usually, at the very best, films find ways to challenge or perhaps just effectively articulate how you feel about the world. But, for me, films like 'The Squid and the Whale' and 'Frances Ha' seem to bring into sharp focus truths about myself that actually help me better understand the world I live in and my own place in it. That's possibly just me, but - in any case - that's a rare thing for a film to do.

'Man of Steel', 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Much Ado About Nothing': review round-up

'Man of Steel' - Dir. Zack Snyder (12A)

I feel like a full-on review of 'Man of Steel' would be pretty redundant at this point, as everything I had to say about what's wrong with it has been said better elsewhere. I'm talking about blog entries by comic book writers like Mark Waid (author of fantastic Superman origin story 'Birthright') and articles from critics like (massive DC comics nerd) Chris Sims of Comics Alliance, who spoke eloquently - and at length - about why it's a bad adaptation of its source material. I wrote a little piece on here about the film's gender politics, though mainly because that was one of the few problems I had with it that I hadn't really seen expressed elsewhere. But between that piece and those other reviews, you pretty much have my feelings on Zack Snyder's cynical, dour and needlessly grimy take on the Superman mythos.

SPOILERS, but it's hard to come away from 'Man of Steel' feeling that anything heroic has taken place given that, in the words of comic writer Brian Bendis: "you basically had Superman save the world but not without causing a worse than 9/11 disaster, make out with his girlfriend in the middle of it, and then murder the bad guy in front of children". When civilians emerge from the rubble and say "he saved us", it's hard to take that seriously given the entire city (and untold millions of lives) seem to have been lost in the meantime. This is not a film in which Superman (Henry Cavill) goes out of his way to save people's lives - at least outside of scenes where that is the express purpose (such as the oil rig and school bus bits near the start). And the aforementioned make-out with Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is even worse when you consider Superman has super hearing: surely he's kissing her whilst hearing the screams and tears of those trapped in the rubble?

For those that think I'm over-thinking that bit or (heaven forbid!) "taking it too seriously", I remind you that Snyder's film - created with 'The Dark Knight' duo David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan - takes itself incredibly seriously, expending a lot of effort and energy creating a joyless, colourless vision of the hero and his world. A film in which young Clark Kent is bullied by stock movie jerks, when all he wants to do is quietly read Plato. And for a film that takes itself so seriously, it's really odd when it runs headlong into the cheesiest movie cliches - never more so than when Kevin Costner's Jonathan Kent (the film's one genuine triumph) dies trying to save the family dog from an incoming tornado.

Aside from the greatness that was the casting of Kevin Costner as a kindly, middle-American patriarch, Henry Cavill makes for a compelling Superman (speaking with authority but never arrogance) and you're never going to get better than Michael Shannon as an intense, shouty, slightly insane bad guy - but all of the above are wasted by the dreadful movie that surrounds them. It's got more in common with Michael Bay's 'Transformers' than Nolan's Batman: over-loud, tone-deaf, disaster porn and destruction occurring without conscience or consequence. In last years' 'Avengers', we similarly see an American metropolis beset by alien invasion and, whilst the city takes a bit of damage (though nothing on the scale here: it isn't reduced to a crater), there is also emphasis on the heroes saving people's lives and trying to limit that damage. The spectacle in that film comes from all the awesome things the good guys do as they save the day. By contrast, 'Man of Steel' puts emphasis on buildings being punched over as spectacle in and of itself, and Superman rarely comes out of this seeming heroic.

It being a bad movie in its own rite is bad enough, but 'Man of Steel' also makes it extremely difficult to see how DC/Warner Brothers can spin this out into an entire DC cinematic universe of movies, culminating in a Justice League team-up (featuring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman et al). We've seen seen gritty Superman, and we know gritty Batman can work - and even gritty Green Arrow is currently doing the rounds on TV - but do we really now have to suffer through gritty Flash, gritty Aquaman, gritty Marsian Manhunter, gritty Shazam and gritty Wonder Woman? In the Marvel movies, which thrive on silver age, costumed spectacle and a sense of unabashed fun, it wouldn't be too strange for any character to turn up in all their weird and wonderful glory - a point born out by the in-production 'Guardians of the Galaxy': which features among its heroes a wise-ass, gun-toting Raccoon and an anthropomorphic tree. But with DC's movies to date, it's difficult to understand how this can work - and 'Man of Steel' poses more questions than answers in this regard.

It's also really difficult to see where the Superman franchise itself can go from here: a city got destroyed in this one, during a full-on invasion by dozens of soldiers with, basically, the same powers as Superman. That sounds like the final film in a trilogy, or the perfect scenario for that Justice League movie (with enough stuff going on to keep every hero occupied and necessary), but how can they top it with the next one in this series in terms of pure CGI-fueled spectacle? I'll say this for it: I'm intrigued to find out the answer, though I won't be surprised if the answer is even more explosions and an even higher body-count. Isn't the prevailing wisdom that sequels have to go bigger?

'The Great Gatsby' - Dir. Baz Luhrmann (12A)

This one's been out for ages, but I only found time to see it last week so I'll give my two-penneth a little late.

I haven't read Fitzgerald's celebrated novel - supposedly the masterpiece of American literature - so I can't speak with any authority on whether or not Baz Luhrmann's movie gets it right. But, for my taste, it's a vapid, tacky mess of a film, populated by underdeveloped, yet strangely hateful characters (is there anyone more simpering and with less agency than Tobey Maguire's Nick Carraway and Carey Mulligan's Daisy Buchanan?). A sickening, barely tolerable mix of hyper-active editing, overbearing music and a general busy-ness of aesthetic that drowns out all the details and is the enemy of subtlety. In some ways it feels like a Broadway musical stripped of its songs, and maybe a musical version would have been more watchable, but instead - with the exception of one character-driven scene: a climactic confrontation between Leonardo DiCaprio's Gatsby and Joel Edgerton's Tom - it's a total car crash.

It could be that these problems come straight out of the novel, but there are so many gaps in logic and reason that make this film infuriating. For instance, why is it claimed that nobody has ever seen Gatsby before, when he's constantly shown making the cover of national newspapers? Why are we told he NEVER comes to his lavish, celebrity-filled parties only moments before he makes an appearance at one such event? Why is Nick so instantly enamoured with Gatsby? What is it that Gatsby finds so appealing about the insipid Daisy? Why is it that Daisy and Tom's daughter - mentioned once in passing - doesn't feature at all? Why is it that Nick - the only character with a normal job - seemingly never has to go to work? Why is Jason Clarke's character totally fine with Tom seeing his wife (Isler Fisher) on the side? And why is he immediately enraptured by premeditated, homicidal rage towards a complete stranger when she's killed by accident? I imagine answers to these questions lie in the novel, but they certainly weren't apparent in the film. Which wouldn't really matter if the film was at least a little bit entertaining and not a flagrant abuse of your eyeballs.

And on the Jay-Z soundtrack - which litters the film with anachronistic modern R&B tracks from Beyonce and the like: I'm not inherently against that, even if I think the reasoning (let's show the kids that the excesses of the 1920s were similar to hip-hop culture today!) is spurious and superficial. But where that approach does become a problem is that it has the ultimate, unintended effect of giving the film a very short shelf-life: this is very much 2013's vision of 1925, and it's hard to see how that will have any value - or find much lasting favour - as we get further from the film's initial release.

'Much Ado About Nothing' - Dir. Joss Whedon (12A)

"Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites". Just one of many succinct and perfect lines in Shakespeare's play that really sing coming from the assembled cast of Joss Whedon regulars in this paired down adaptation of the bard. Directed by the 'Buffy' creator, with characteristic wit and lightness of touch, the film sees regular collaborators Amy Acker/Alexis Denisof/Tom Lenk (Buffy/Angel), Nathan Fillion/Sean Maher (Serenity), Clark Gregg/Ashley Johnson (Avengers), Reed Diamond/Fran Kranz (Dollhouse) in front of the camera, whilst brother and sometime writing partner Jed Whedon (Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog) contributes the soundtrack: it's a Whedonverse reunion - all shot on location at the director's Californian house, during downtime from production of 'The Avengers'.

If the idea of a group of wealthy, LA pals, shooting a black and white Shakespeare film whilst on holiday sounds like a recipe for a slightly self-indulgent and incestuous love-in, then it is at least one that works. Not only is 'Much Ado' a really heartfelt and sincere version of the play, featuring stunning performances from Acker and Kranz in particular, it's also riotously entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny in a way most probably won't associate with 17th century iambic pentameter. Without deviating substantially from the original play, Whedon has created something that feels fresh and modern and, in part due to the naturalistic delivery of his cast, is very easy understand for a contemporary audience - giving the old English verse a new lease of life.

'Populaire', 'A Hijacking', 'Fast & Furious 6', 'Behind the Candelabra' and 'The Iceman': review round-up

A bumper edition round-up this week, as I've not updated for a while. Been busy with other stuff, like hosting/writing the Hold Onto Your Butts film quiz at Komedia (in Brighton). Above is the latest of our picture rounds, as drawn by the excellent Joe Blann. Consensus is that this is the hardest of the picture rounds so far... I don't think anybody got the three point question!

'Populaire' - Dir. Regis Roinsard (12A)

Light, colourful and fluffy in a way that won't surprise those familiar with this brand of whimsical, middle-brow French comedy - 'Populaire' is an affable enough movie, mostly thanks to its supremely watchable leads: Deborah Francois as a clumsy, hapless secretary with a special gift for speed-typing and Roman Duris as her cold and competitive boss. Set in the late-50s, at a time when international typing competitions were apparently the hottest ticket in town, and a source of front-page news, it's a formula rom-com that's also equal parts 'Rocky' (with its heavy reliance on sports movie tropes), 'The Secretary' (in its power-imbalanced, sadomasochistic relationship between boss and employee) and 'Mad Men' (if only in its emphasis on the sartorial glamour of the period, as popularised by that TV show). It's chic and mildly diverting stuff, that provides a few gentle laughs - and just as many truly awful lines to go with its questionable gender politics.

'A Hijacking' - Dir. Tobias Lindholm (15)

An exceptional Danish thriller which takes an almost procedural approach to its realistic portrayal of modern day piracy, this is a tense, tightly-wound piece of filmmaking that explores what happens when a large freighter ship is commandeered by armed African pirates and its crew held for months on the open sea: a fate that's become increasingly common in the last decade. As the pirates haggle for ransom with the company that owns the ship, 'A Hijacking' follows both the struggles of the captured crew (mostly via Johan Philip Asbæk's traumatised cook) and the moral dilemmas facing those in the company board room - with Søren Malling's no-nonsense CEO taking a dangerously hands-on approach in negotiations, against the advice of a piracy expert (played with authority by real-life corporate security consultant Gary Skjoldmose-Porter).

Even-handed and intelligent, director Tobias Lindholm's film doesn't lay the blame at the feet of the corporation - it doesn't present the board as villains for not immediately caving in to all the pirates demands - and doesn't even really vilify the pirates (even if they are often quite frightening and capable of great violence). Instead it seems to simply present the experience as what it is: something terrifying and life-changing for everybody involved, right down the anxious families of those held captive. Malling's CEO is shown as a man under great pressure, who - though not subject to the appalling conditions of the ship's crew - has his life upended by events to a very similar degree. What the film doesn't do is explore any of the political or economic conditions that have made piracy increasingly common, but that's the subject for a preachier, less visceral movie: one potentially less devastating, shocking and emotional.

'Fast & Furious 6' - Dir. Justin Lin (12A)

I haven't seen any of the other films in this increasingly popular series, but I understand the franchise used to be about street racing - something that, save a pointless, mid-film diversion, doesn't really factor in this straight-up action movie. It's all shooting and punching and making things explode, whilst cops hire criminals to catch worse criminals - in a plot that involves some McGuffin weapon that, if sold to an unfriendly nation, could mean war and stuff. It doesn't really matter. What matters is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is in it, along with franchise mainstays Vin "The Mumbling" Diesel and Paul "Who Is This Guy" Walker. They drive fast and incredibly shiny cars - and they do ridiculous, physics defying things in the name of punching the bad dudes, scoring with chicks in hot-pants and safeguarding their "family".

That particular F-word gets bandied about a lot here, as the film goes to great lengths to show that it's actually a deeply emotional drama about a group of friends with feelings and character arcs such - just like in a real film. But it isn't and, frankly, it'd be better if they didn't bother pretending otherwise. The film is far more fun when tanks are crushing cars on a Spanish highway than when it's about gruff, musclemen explaining how they've got "to set things right" for some wrong committed five films ago that nobody remembers. Just explode more stuff already. Especially as the film's attempts to have anything approaching a plot always backfire, as our heroes repeatedly interrogate enemies in order to find out stuff they already knew - and one character even travels to another continent, has himself put in prison and very nearly dies, trying to unearth knowledge the rest of the gang seemingly already posses back in England. Very odd.

It's also amusing that nearly every scene in the first half of the film follows the exact same formula: a group of our heroes are ridiculed by unnecessarily rude people after asking a polite question, and respond by beating up everybody in the room. The message seems to be: don't mock Vin Diesel... he's, like, really strong and he'll probably smash your face in until you're unconscious. It's a difficult message to argue with, but it isn't revelatory, even to a 'Fast & Furious' series newcomer like myself. Don't pick on people with big muscles for no apparent reason, y'all.

In all seriousness, it's hard to get over how brazenly sexist this film is in order to sit back and enjoy the popcorn. It's all gyrating women in bikinis, dancing around cars, whilst our protagonists watch and say "damn", possibly whilst bumping bro-fists. At one point a character explains that cars are better than women because "when you trade up for a better model they don't take half your shit". This isn't an ironic statement and it says a lot about who these douche bag characters are and who they think this film is for. The Rock admittedly has a really appealing screen presence - self-aware and charming - but the rest of the lunk-heads that make up the cast, including a sadly under-utilised Gina Carano, are just grunting meat-puppets. Aside from a couple of jaw-droppingly ridiculous set pieces, this is a film that could have been gloriously trashy and over-the-top - in a way that compensated you for the aforementioned stupidity of it all - but ended up merely being a bit dull.

'Behind the Candelabra' - Dir. Steven Soderbergh (15)

Following his supposed "last ever film" - 'Side Effects', released earlier this year - Steven Soderbergh returns to cinemas with this blackly comic and extremely bleak portrait of glamorous entertainer Liberace, which focuses on the famously closeted pianist's peculiar relationship with a man named Scott Thorson, upon whose recollections the film is based. A TV movie in the US, produced by HBO after studios reportedly rejected the film as "too gay" to be commercial, 'Behind the Candelabra' is the fruit of a long-running passion project of the prolific director and sees Michael Douglas and Matt Damon deliver brilliant performances as Liberace and Thorson respectively. Douglas in particular is in inspired form, with his turn potentially career-defining, seemingly coming out of nowhere. In many ways his performance is the obvious joy and appeal of the film, with Liberace an outrageous, larger than life figure, so credit must also go to Damon for being the emotional center that gives meaning to all the mincing.

Even as it follows Liberace in his twilight years, with his peak decades behind him, the film manages to show us the highs and lows of his life: giving us glimpses of his performances on Vegas stages, in front of adoring fans, as well as showing us the loneliness and pitiful sadness born of that mix of hyper-fame/wealth and keeping such a large aspect of his life a (admittedly poorly kept) secret. He's a paranoid figure and a man with few (arguably no) real friends - or meaningful connections of any kind, beyond the revolving door of pretty boys that he keeps in his "palatial kitsch" mansion. We can only speculate about how close to reality the film gets, being based on the memoirs of a man who unsuccessfully sued Liberace, but the film is quite perfect at plunging the viewer headlong into the despair and loneliness we can imagine comes with extreme celebrity.

Where the film really excels is in its portrayal of the power imbalance shown in the relationship between Thorson and his self-described "father, brother, lover and best friend" Liberace. This has a universal quality, as Thorson - so in thrall to, and financially dependent on his partner - has almost no agency. He is in a precarious position, and is all too aware of that fact, which means he is to a certain extent unable to resist much of his cruel and often abusive treatment. He's a man who offers and gives so much to his lover but whose contributions are overlooked and frequently denied the moment there's an argument - a situation that's probably familiar to many. It's this transcendent bit of drama, along with Soderbergh's hauntingly sterile cinematography, the black wit of the script and the fine central performances, that means the film stands up very well next to the director's other minor masterpieces of recent years.

'The Iceman' - Dir. Ariel Vromen (15)

An impressive cast - lead by the intensely watchable Michael Shannon - doesn't stop this "based on a true story" biopic about a notorious hitman from being deadly dull. Basically, it's the tale of a guy who murders hundreds of people in cold blood - seemingly because he has a cold detachment that renders him indifferent to human life, brought on by an abusive childhood and lapsed Catholicism - but who's alright really because he doesn't want anything bad to happen to his young daughters. That's about the depth of it. Chris Evans and David Schwimmer are nearly unrecognisable in supporting roles, which is at least mildly interesting, but otherwise we have Ray Liotta as the schlubby, unpredictable head of an Italian crime family and Winona Ryder as the shiny-eyed innocent who doesn't know where her husbands money comes from. Maybe it's a victim of art imitating life, but it's a story we've seen played out a million times before, and with a lot more vigour and imagination.

For a movie about a contract killer, there's no style or panache to how he does his business. Some key "hits" occur off-screen and most are left to montage - with the only exception being a hit on James Franco, which many may find cathartic in the wake of his extreme over-exposure. This is fine if we aren't being sold the crime as glamour bit we usually get in mob movies, but the film offers nothing compelling in its place. The only consequence to violence and a life of crime that we see is that, eventually, people might be violent towards you and your loved ones. Aside from that it's a passionless film with nothing to offer.