'Philomena', 'Captain Phillips', 'Le Week-End', 'The Pervert's Guide to Ideology', and 'How I Live Now': review round-up

'Philomena' - Dir. Stephen Frears (12A)

It's a testament to star Steve Coogan's screenplay (written with Jeff Pope), Stephen Frears' light-footed direction and Judi Dench's nuanced lead performance that 'Philomena' isn't the most depressing film of the year, even if it's still a reliable tearjerker. It's based on the heartbreaking real-life story of just one of many teenage girls became indentured servants to nuns in 1950s Ireland after falling pregnant, many having their babies taken from them by the Catholic church - and sold to wealthy families overseas. It's a story almost tailor-made to provoke outrage, indignation and buckets of tears from an audience - and rightly so, but the strength of this film adaptation lies in its steadfast refusal to wallow. In fact it's frequently quite funny amid the weeping and ruminating on the pros and cons of religious faith, as Coogan - playing journalist and former Blairite spin doctor Martin Sixsmith (upon whose book the film is based) - and Dench's Philomena Lee go on the road in search of the latter's long lost son.

When I say the film looks at the nature of "faith" I don't mean that it does so in that nebulous, infuriating, shallow way most movies use the term - as a byword for all that's good and noble, and insisting that those without "it" are less fully realised individuals. No, 'Philomena' genuinely looks at the nuts and bolts of day-to-day faith and how it can impact on a person's interactions with the world around them, for good or ill. How it can be both a great help to Philomena in her times of need and, in some cases, a great hindrance - giving her lingering feelings of institutionalised guilt and shame where none need exist. Her unwavering Catholicism also prevents Lee from seeing her continued abuse at the hands of the church for what it is, as nuns conspire to withhold information from her and cover their tracks decades down the line. Coogan is restrained and effective as Sixsmith, eschewing anything like Partridge mannerisms or phrasing (something which couldn't be said for his portrayal of Paul Raymond in 'The Look of Love'), whilst Dench just about steals the show creating a compelling, fully-formed character unlike anything she's played in recent memory.

'Captain Phillips' - Dir. Paul Greengrass (12A)

The unlikely hybrid of a hi-octane, shaky-cam Bourne thriller, an Oscar-baiting "true life" drama, and the 'Home Alone' franchise (courtesy of some nifty booby-traps), Paul Greengrass' 'Captain Phillips' - which stars beloved everyman Tom Hanks as the title character and based on his controversial memoir - manages to turn failure, incompetence, regional strife and neo-colonialism into a great American success story. Whereas this year's other Somalian piracy film, taut Danish thriller 'A Hijacking', provides a fairly dry, procedural account of a modern piracy ordeal, mostly focussing on the shipping company board room and their reluctance to lose too much money versus the unravelling mental state/physical health of a crew incarcerated for months on the open ocean, this is (in the pejorative sense I usually stay away from) a very "Hollywood" account of similar events.

There's a selfless hero, punch-ups, gun battles, booby traps, and even little on-ship espionage missions as the plucky crew battle the intruders like an elite counter-insurgency outfit. There's lots of army hardware on show too via lengthy and gratuitous tracking shots of aircraft carriers, shots of marines suiting up for duty, and of army men jumping out of planes for reasons that aren't clear but presented in a way that hopefully looks cool. By the time the climatic half-hour is playing out there're no less than three huge American warships, a squadron of gunboats and an air-dropped platoon of elite commandos versus a tiny (distractingly cute) orange lifeboat manned by four variously rubbish Somalian pirates. It's a bold and unconventional storytelling technique to try and get you to root against the underdog. Maybe this is an accurate account of how it all went down, but it's difficult to stomach all the bluster and bombast regardless.

Though credibly performed by Somali non-actors, the pirates each have one defining personality trait and narrative purpose. There's the angry one who's a potential liability, the delusional leader with a little man complex, the young, doe-eyed one we're given permission to feel empathy towards, and the guy who drives the boat and says or does nothing else of note (poor bastard). Meanwhile our hero is your average all-American ship captain, which we know because of a ludicrous monologue to his wife (Catherine Keener, no less) at the start of the film, which gives us plenty of "life is hard" truisms about the state of modern America to let us know he's just a regular schmo like the imagined audience. For his part, Hanks delivers a fine performance, especially when dealing with the post-event shock at the film's conclusion - even if his Mayor Quimby-style Boston accent comes and goes.

To give 'Captain Phillips' its due it's a technically "well made" thriller with its share of tense moments, though - for me at least - a lot of that tension evaporates once the pirates are off the ship (about half-way through the movie) and the bulk of the crew are safe. Again, 'A Hijacking' is compelling because it's about helplessness and a complete lack of control for a frightened crew effectively abandoned by those in authority, whereas this one's about a single, brave hero - a leader of men - trying his best at every turn to outsmart, outmanoeuvre and out fistfight his captors. It's hard to feel as much concern or empathy for that, especially when Captain Phillips himself is the only thing at stake for more than half the movie. And as the American warships circle, and reconnaissance drones fly overhead, we're all too aware that he comes out OK, because the damn thing's based on his book. That leaves the pirates as the sole "victims" of the film's last act, as we grimly wait to see how the mightiest military force in history will erase them from existence with sick inevitability.

'Le Week-End' - Dir. Roger Michell (15)

From writer Hanif Kureishi and director Roger Michell - collaborators on 'Venus' and BBC TV series 'The Buddha of Suburbia' - 'Le Week-End' is a bittersweet comedy about an old married couple whose kids have finally left home, leading them to go to Paris to see if anything at all remains of their love aside from a pathetic mutual dependency. Played to perfection by Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent, Meg and Nick Burrows are an all-too recognisable middle class English couple, quietly despairing and getting on each other's nerves. Both are charming and infuriating in almost equal measure, though you wouldn't necessarily want to spend any time with these people - especially when they are together. The film's at its best in a quiet and considered first half during which they squabble about hotel wallpaper and ponder which Parisian restaurant to eat in - careful not to pick one that's too touristy. This stuff is nuanced and compellingly watchable.

However, the film suffers from excess amounts of contrived incident and an over-reliance on coincidence, as if somebody at a meeting somewhere along the line decided something more traditionally filmic had to take place for fear we'd all get bored. A compromise in the name of box office that would be entirely in keeping with Michell's half-hearted desire to make the film in black and white that resulted in two versions of the movie appearing in some cinemas (I saw it in colour, for the record). It becomes bogged down by grand gestures, big, public displays, and contrived wacky happenings involving Jeff Goldblum (funny though his appearance here may be) that distract from a very honest and real depiction of relationships that had been taking place up to that point. It ends up feeling like a missed opportunity, though Broadbent and Duncan are reliably brilliant throughout so it's never a slog to sit through.

'The Pervert's Guide to Ideology' - Dir. Sophie Fiennes (15)

Essentially it's over two hours of Slovene philosopher Slavoj Žižek directly addressing the camera, broadly outlining some of his cultural theories in a wry manner for the documentary camera of director Sophie Fiennes. He shows a lot of movie clips to illustrate his points - citing examples of his theories in everything from Nazi propoganda documentary 'A Triumph of Will' to forgettable Will Smith vehicle 'I Am Legend' - and frequently appears in costume on mock sets of various films as he analyses them, but enjoyment of this hinges entirely on one's interest in the nature of ideology - or at least this man's particular take on it.

For my part, with an amateur interest in philosophy, I found it interesting though a little scattershot in approach, darting quickly between ideas before I felt they'd been adequately explained and at times making broad, unsubstantiated statements that could have benefited from a more rigorous engagement with the subject matter. But overall - speaking as someone not previously acquainted with Žižek and not well-read on philosophy in general - it was a decent and illuminating way to spend some time. Though I do know a few philosophy students who thought it was facile and a complete waste of time, so take my view on this subject with a great big chunk of salt.

'How I Like Now' - Dir. Kevin MacDonald (15)

Perhaps Meg Rosoff's original novel is worth a read, with a glance at Wikipedia confirming it's very different from this movie adaptation, but this film is boring, laugh-out-loud stupid and pretty darn cynical in its attempts to milk pennies from the 'Twilight' crowd with its tween romance plotline - with shirtless falconry and well-lit cow-whispering uncomfortably dominating proceedings that otherwise include: children being executed, an atomic bomb going off in London (killing "thousands" apparently), and a grisly rape scene. It also doesn't help that our "hero" Daisy, played by Saoirse Ronan, is a terrible prick for no reason at all (unless we buy into the film's hand wave explanation of "daddy issues") - moving to England to stay with her cousin's and being nakedly horrid to all of them immediately upon arrival in the face of constant kindness.

The tone is jarringly all over the place, the characters make no sense, and the near-future dystopia depicted is lacking in any commentary or satire: all that we're supposed to care about is whether Ronan will be able to continue bonking her hunky cousin once the ill-defined "terrorism" stops. This is a film where a young boy starts swigging alcohol from a previously unseen hip-flask during one supposedly poignant scene and we're not supposed to laugh. It's a film in which the lead character says the title out loud. A film where handsome farmhands display an unexplained - and never again mentioned - ability to communicate with cows, which is brushed off with a shrug and another surly pout from our infuriating, charisma-less lead One of the year's very worst - and I'm a self-confessed sucker for an apocalypse movie.

'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.

'Iron Man 3', 'Oblivion', 'The Look of Love' and 'Mud': review round-up and 'Thor: The Dark World' trailer

Here's a trailer for this November's terribly exciting looking 'Thor: The Dark World', just because. Now on to the business of reviews:

'Iron Man 3' - Dir. Shane Black (12A)

As much as I love 'The Avengers' and am (as evidenced above) obsessed with the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, 'Iron Man 3' was not a film I rushed into with much expectation or the excitement I already feel for the upcoming Thor and Captain America sequels. Whilst Robert Downey Jnr's Tony Stark has been the most profitable one of the bunch so far for Marvel, with the patchy 'Iron Man 2' the most successful pre-Avengers "Phase One" movie, Iron Man has always left me cold. I've enjoyed the films enough, but I never loved them like I love the others. Perhaps because Iron Man seems to love himself enough for the both of us. That all changed, however, with Shane Black's new sequel to the series, which basically just turns the franchise into an awesome 90s buddy comedy, combining jaw-dropping action sequences - and some of the biggest and most imaginatively conceived superhero set-pieces yet seen - with dozens of genuinely funny and quotable lines. It's exciting, clever, superbly acted (Ben Kingsley's performance, in particular), and as close as you can come to a guaranteed good time at the pictures.

The script somehow blends all the best elements of a buddy cop movie (notably in Downey Jnr and Don Cheadle's team-up), a sort of Capra-esque Christmas movie (it'll sound shit on paper, but Iron Man's pairing with a smalltown kid is entirely winsome), an espionage thriller, a deft political satire (maybe overselling that a touch, but what the film does with Kingsley's villain is inspired) and a classic modern superhero movie. It's a 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' style deconstruction of action movie tropes and a faithful sequel to both 'Iron Man 2' and 'The Avengers' - which it references whilst also managing to be its own thing completely. It bravely takes Tony Stark out of the suit for most of the movie - putting him in more peril than ever before, and allowing him to be more genuinely heroic - whilst also still recognisably being a Marvel comics adaptation. It does a lot of things and it does most of them excellently. And it's probably the only superhero movie to have a satisfying "end boss" fight to boot.

I can't express enough how smart and purely fun Shane Black's movie is: unsentimental and yet full of unabashed heart, in a way that finally made me love this character. His screenplay - co-written with Drew Pearce - is fantastic, not only in its dialogue and character choices (Gwyneth Paltrow is refreshingly allowed to be much more than a damsel in distress), but in the way he contrives such wonderful and unexpected action sequences. Such as when Tony is forced to improvise new weapons after losing his suit and so nips into a hardware store, or when he successfully retrieves part of his suit and has to make do with what boils down to a glove and a boot. Here, for the first time in one of these movies, filmmakers have crafted antagonists who can actually pose a threat, allowing Tony to reasonably deploy his extensive arsenal in its entirety, hopping between suits in a sequence that's fast-paced and unlike anything else in the series to date. Don Cheadle gets more punch-the-air-awesome moments than I thought possible for an actor who was the British one in 'Ocean's Eleven' and Guy Pearce makes a sensational villain. It's just fantastic summer fun.

'Oblivion' - Dir. Joseph Kosinski (12A)

Say what you will about Hollywood "product" being derivative and low on original ideas, but surely nothing - no sequel or spin-off or re-make - is as cynical and brazenly plagaristic as the Tom Cruise sci-fi vehicle 'Oblivion', directed by Joseph Kosinski of 'Tron: Legacy' fame. You'd struggle to name a sci-fi movie or video game made in the last two decades that this one doesn't pillage for intellectual property, stealing wholesale plot elements, concepts and designs from the likes of the low budget cult hit 'Moon' all the way up to blockbusters like 'Independence Day'. There's weapon and costume designs lifted from the game series Mass Effect, whilst many will be quick to spot the embarrassingly blatant similarities between Melissa Leo's character - an untrustworthy, disembodied computer-treated voice - and the game Portal. And that's not even mentioning how much it rips off the filmography of its star, as we watch his continued slow fade from relevance.

It's a film that allows Tom Cruise - in the increasingly desperate "I'm not too old, honest, look what I can do!" phase of his career - to run really fast across sand, to ride motorcycles wearing sunglasses and to play an ace-pilot-and-ace-marksman-who-is-the-best-at-everything-he-does-and-a-scientist-and-the-saviour-of-mankind-who-is-irresistible-to-all-womenTM. Within the first twenty minutes he's taken two showers and gone for a dip in a swimming pool, and whilst the man is in unquestionably good condition for a fifty year old (much better shape than I've ever been in, for the record), his ab-flexing determination to prove how he still "has it" really isn't at all appealing.

The film itself is at its most tolerable when it epitomises the world of Tom Cruise cliche rather than when it's raiding every modern sci-fi classic for ideas - but mostly it's a bland, flavourless waste of two hours. Sometimes it's at least a slick and reasonably pretty diversion, with Kosinski's bright white Apple-influenced brand of future chic carrying over from the similarly attractive-yet-hollow world of his last film. Yet more often the whole thing is a display of baffling incompetence on nearly every level, with a central premise that doesn't stand up to any scrutiny, clunky exposition monologues repeated in their entirety more than once and twists you see coming a mile away (at least one of which is on the damn poster). The drone robots are fairly cool - with their use in war raising the film's only potentially interesting moral question - and the 'Top Gun' style flying sequences have their moments, but this is definitely one to avoid and, I would predict, one destined to be quickly forgotten.

'The Look of Love' - Dir. Michael Winterbottom (18)

The Steve Coogan/Michael Winterbottom partnership, which has served both so well over the years with the likes of 'A Cock and Bull Story' and '24 Hour Party People', continues with 'The Look of Love': an unfocused and shallow biopic about Paul Raymond - the infamous millionaire who was once Britain's wealthiest man. The film chronicles Raymond's career from - as the film would have it - a glorified circus ringmaster in the 1950s to an ageing property magnate and soft-core pornographer in the 90s, via his 60s/70s heyday as the proprietor of Soho's most sophisticated and talked about gentleman's clubs and publisher of a controversial, and widely read, men's magazine. The main problem with the film, aside from its strange refusal to engage with any social/political issues beyond glib one-liners, is that Coogan - a versatile performer - plays Raymond as indistinct from TV creation Alan Partridge.

Now, I bow to no man in my love of Alan Partridge as a comedy creation, but I'm guessing Paul Raymond was not so similar to Norwich's favourite son and Coogan's decision to play him this way is baffling. Every comic aside, awkward pause and geekish piece of trivia is pure Partridge, albeit a wealthy and successful one. It's a fact that cheapens the movie and renders its few attempts at real drama insincere. This is a pity as the film becomes more and more about the apparently complex relationship between Raymond and his daughter, as played by emerging star Imogen Poots - who steals the film out from underneath its star with a multi-faceted showing that ranges from vulnerable and troubled, to self-assured and downright cocky. The fact that the tragedy of Poots' character takes centre stage - being part of the film's framing device and used as a the catalyst for present-day introspection for Raymond - makes it even more of a pity that Coogan's central performance seems so disingenuous.

If the purpose of a biopic is to reveal something about its subject, to leave you feeling you know more about a person on the way out than you did on the way in, then 'The Look of Love' has well and truly failed. I leave the film none the wiser about what Paul Raymond was like as a man, with film engaging with this real historical figure the same way it engages with the "swinging sixties": presenting both with crude, cartoonish caricature and seemingly without affection. It certainly doesn't earn its mawkish and manipulative ending.

'Mud' - Dir. Jeff Nichols (12A)

In the very best of ways, 'Mud' - Jeff Nichols' follow-up to the impressive 'Take Shelter' - is a kids film. Not merely because its protagonist, Ellis (Tye Sheridan), is a 15 year-old boy, but because of the way the tale is framed: not simply as a coming of age story, but as a classic boys adventure in the mold of Mark Twain or vintage Spielberg of the 1980s. Or, better yet, 'Stand By Me'. The sort of film that looks children in the eye and treats a young audience with respect, refusing to sand away the rough edges yet not completely forsaking wonder. I have no idea whether Nichols ever envisaged the film as one for all ages - and it certainly isn't being sold that way and may not end up reaching that audience - but 'Mud' is a pretty perfect children's film, featuring a young hero in Ellis young boys can certainly empathise with. It certainly nails a certain time in a boy's life and this is easily as complete and challenging a role as a young actor is ever given, with Sheridan a real talent.

At its simplest, 'Mud' is the story about aimless, working class kids from broken (or breaking) homes who spend their days doing what boys do at that age: they go places they aren't supposed to, stay out later than they are meant to and make grand plans in secrecy. These boys, living on a river, take to playing around on a deserted and snake-infested island, climbing trees and playing with sticks, until one day they find an abandoned boat in a tree and decide to make it their own. The only trouble is a wanted man named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) has made the boat is home and makes them a deal: they can have the boat with his blessing, if they bring him some food and run some simple errands. Increasingly dangerous little adventures follow, which bring the kids deeper into Mud's difficulties than might be sensible, but - in the great kids film tradition - the kids go through hell to protect their new, social outcast friend from the threat posed by the local grown-ups: the police, the parents and the rest. In Mud McConaughey has a role every bit as memorable and intense as 'Killer Joe'.

'Mud' is a beautiful and moving piece of work. Sincere and populated by warm, genuinely loving characters right through the cast. It goes unexpected places and sidesteps every cliche you think you can see coming along the way. Overwhelmingly it's a film about love - in all its forms - in all its fragility and with all its pitfalls, but which ultimately manages to be warm and optimistic without compromising the gritty stuff. Love is hard and sometimes impermanent, it says. You might throw everything into it and get your heart ripped out, or even find yourself publicly humiliated as a result of unrequited affection. Yet it's worth it: it's the best thing we have and the only thing in this world worth having. That is basically the lesson learnt by the young hero through his trials and tribulations, but all without seeming twee or saccharine in the slightest. Quite an achievement - and a noble one at that.