'The Muppets' review:

They haven't been in a major film or television series since the mid-90s, but arguably Jim Henson's best-loved creations haven't been culturally relevant for much longer. Yet in 'The Muppets', the characters' glorious comeback movie, this passing of time that might have been a concern (at least for marketing folks at Disney) has proven to be an asset. The Muppets have always broken the fourth wall to poke fun at themselves and comment on the artifice of whatever they're doing, but here Kermit, Miss Piggy and co show an awareness of that faded glory that's the driving force behind the story and much pathos.

In this James Bobin directed musical comedy, co-writer Jason Segel stars as Gary, whose younger brother Walter is a Muppet in all but name. When Gary decides to take his girlfriend Mary (the graceful and effervescent Amy Adams) out of Smalltown and on a romantic holiday to Los Angeles, he brings Walter, a lifelong Muppet fan, in order to give him the chance to visit the famous Muppet theatre. Upon visiting the derelict theatre, Walter is horrified to learn that the evil Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) is planning to buy up the property in order to drill for oil. Walter and Gary then decide to round up the Muppets in order to perform the comeback show that could save their legacy.

Rather than straining to sell the relevance of our heroes to today's kids, this new film rolls with the idea that the Muppets (who include a 70s-style rock act, an Evel Knievel wannabe and a Catskills comic) are indelibly wedded to a bygone era. When Rashida Jones' sharp-suited television executive tells Kermit he needs a celebrity host in order to get the gang a new TV special, the frog delves into his contact book and calls the White House, only to be informed that Jimmy Carter has changed address. In his mansion Kermit is served New Coke by his butler: 80s Robot - very much yesterday's vision of tomorrow. He also struggles to recognise any current celebrities, instead making moribund references to former Muppet Show guests stars like Dom DeLuise. During a cleaning montage the Muppets play a cassette of Starship's "We Built This City" for inspiration.

There is something poignant about all this, especially as Kermit spends much of the film full of regret that he has (like the rest of us) spent the last few years losing touch with his fellow Muppets. This foregrounding of the Muppets as fallen icons is more than just a neat post-modern joke, it also serves to imbue the characters with a kind of purity. As Kermit sings his 1979 classic "Rainbow Connection" we're given a powerful reminder of a less jaded time, yet they are never twee no matter how earnest the sentiment. This straight-faced niceness is exactly why the Muppets seem ideally placed to provide infectious optimism lacking in today's entertainment. Their sworn enemy is cynicism - as embodied in the film by a crass, "edgy" tribute act, "The Moopets" (who Richman champions as "a hard, cynical act for a hard, cynical world").

The film isn't content to trade solely on nostalgia and old-time good feeling though, even if it could probably just about get away with that. There are loads of inspired sight gags, clever one-liners and, best of all, a few infectious song and dance numbers written by Bret McKenzie of 'Flight of the Conchords'. Of these my favourites are the upbeat loneliness empowerment anthem "Me Party", sung with gusto by Adams and Miss Piggy, and the Oscar-nominated ballad "Man or Muppet" - a duet between Gary and Walter.

There are long stretches where it's difficult to imagine how the film might appeal to young children - along with the anachronistic pop culture references are celebrity cameos from the likes of Sarah Silverman and Alan Arkin. Kids aren't the primary audience and - with the script brimming with nods to minor characters and scenes from the first movies, it's probably a more rewarding experience for fans. But even if you don't quite fit that category I still reckon it'd be nearly impossible to watch 'The Muppets' without a smile on your face the majority of the time. Life is indeed a happy song.

'The Muppets' is released in the UK on February 10th and has been rated 'U' by the BBFC.

'The Grey' review:

'The Grey' reunites 'A-Team' director Joe Carnahan with unlikely action hero Liam Neeson, who plays another rugged, no-nonsense, softly-spoken Irish badass with a grudge against mankind. This time he's Ottway - an ace sniper stationed in the harsh Alaskan wilderness, with only the bitter-sweet memory of his departed wife for company. Employed by an oil company with the unlikely job of protecting drill teams from regular grey wolf attacks, Ottway has taken to a life of isolation, bereft of hope for humanity. He sees those he lives with at the end of the world as being "men unfit for mankind" - you sense he has more affinity for the wolves he is paid to slay.

That is until he is one of a half-dozen survivors of a plane crash thousands of miles away from civilisation. Stranded with a handful of others he is forced to reconnect with humanity in the harshest of circumstances, battling the elements and fending off an aggressive pack of wolves in a bid for survival. At times as the men argue their Alpha behaviour seems to run parallel with that of the wolf pack - one of many interesting ideas in a surprisingly theme rich film that also finds time to give God the finger. It hardly qualifies as a spoiler to say the supporting cast (which includes Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney and James Badge Dale) exist primarily to be picked apart by ravenous wolves, and to provide Ottway with people to wax philosophical with.

You might find yourself drawn to 'The Grey' by the undeniable appeal of seeing Liam Neeson punch an angry CGI wolf in the face - and there is some of that to enjoy - but amidst the bone-crunching carnage and suspenseful survival action there is time for just as much pathos. As the men discuss their children and Ottway recites some of his taciturn father's poetry: "Once more into the fray/Until the last fight I'll ever know/Live and die on this day/Live and die on this day". From that oft-repeated mantra you can probably work out how it all ends.

Carnahan shoots the film in a restrained and gritty style, with heavy use of grain. By avoiding showing too much of the wolves he ensures that sections of the film play like an impressive monster movie. But it's his handling of the survival stuff that's the film's best asset, particularly in the disorienting, noisy plane crash sequence and in a scene of nerve-jangling terror as the surviving men attempt to cross a ravine using a hastily conceived makeshift rope. In its depiction of men battling the elements, it's also far more visceral and engaging than last year's similarly themed 'The Way Back'. Ottway's strange (presumably made up) vocation and the presence of exaggerated, man-eating wolves sets up a sillier film than 'The Grey' actually ever wants to be. In fact it's more often a brutal and painfully realistic depiction of death and loss.

'The Grey' is out now in the UK, rated '15' by the BBFC.

'Carnage' review:

A sharp and bitterly funny attack on middle class social mores and attitudes, Roman Polanski's 'Carnage' is the kind of movie I'm easily smitten by: a tight little film which primarily takes place on one location (in real-time, no less), peddles deft social satire and zips by in a welcome 79 minutes. It's to the veteran director's credit that it never feels paired down or non-cinematic, despite being based on a stage play: French playwright Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage. Tight close-ups develop a sense of claustrophobia and Polanski's camera seems to relish the few occasions where the characters nearly escape their setting, eagerly rushing out into the hall and returning to the apartment with an air of resignation.

The film hinges around an event briefly glimpsed (from a distance) during the opening credits as one young boy hits another with a stick in a New York park. Then, in one intense, unbroken scene that ultimately seems to find equivalence in the actions of adults and children, the rest of the film takes place in the apartment of the assaulted boy's parents - Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) - who have invited the other boy's parents - Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) - over to discuss about what happened between their kids. It doesn't take long before the mood shifts from one of reconciliation to recrimination (and back again) as the couples turn on each other and feud amongst themselves.

Michael's overbearing attempts to play the good host and considerate husband conceal deep resentment and nihilism that are soon exposed (memorably with the bitter revelation that his wife dresses him as a liberal). Penelope is far less concerned with acting "civilised" and resolving differences than she is with asserting her moral and parenting supremacy over the Cowans. Alan is hyper-rational (or, depending on your point of view, cynical) to the point of seeming cold, aloof and more than a little rude - taking work calls throughout their meeting to the annoyance of everybody. Nancy seems to be the only one entering the situation in genuine good faith - something that's tested by extreme feelings of nausea as a result of the slightest confrontation and, later, by some potent Scotch.

The whole thing is as much about the futility of trying to bring order to chaos as it is about peering voyeuristically underneath the veneer of the characters sense of well-bred respectability. Whilst all of them interact in interesting and ever-shifting ways, the central confrontation is really between Alan, who believes in the inevitability of animalistic, amoral behaviour, and Penelope, who believes with absolute certainty that those in need should be saved and those who do wrong must be punished (according to her own uncompromising standards). Yet these extreme points of view are as easily compromised as anything else: when his phone is broken Alan is less indifferent about human cruelty and suffering, whilst Penelope is more concerned with cleaning up her coffee table books than Nancy's well-being after she suffers a fit of vomiting.

Each of the four actors are superb and wring the most from the script's faultlessly well-observed, caustic humour, though Waltz is again the stand-out performer. Several times in the last year the Academy Award-winning Austrian has been the bright spot in sub-standard films, but here he steals the show in more exalted company. His Alan is deliciously cruel and somehow intensely likable with it. You certainly want to see him get the better of Foster's shrill and conceited Penelope. Winslet gives a very subtle and believable performance, in spite of being given some of the more extreme stuff to do (throwing up and playing drunk). Reilly's innate likability and sensitivity - as the perennially put-upon schlub - are also well deployed and cleverly subverted, providing some of the funniest moments.

'Carnage' is out now in the UK, rated '15' by the BBFC.

'Chronicle' review:

When high schooler Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider it doesn't take long for him to use his newly developed super powers to recover the purses of old ladies and foil bank robberies. "With great power comes great responsibility" is the famous mantra. Well somebody should have told the kids in 'Chronicle', a film in which three teenagers develop telekinetic abilities after being exposed to a nosebleed-inducing, glowing rock in a mysterious cave.

But if Spider-Man was born into the idealistic 60s, these kids are definitely from our more cynical present - in that they just piss around aimlessly, content to serve no grand purpose. In the fun first half of the movie, they pull immature pranks on passersby, win a high school talent show and play American football in the troposphere. It's the first super powers movie I've seen in which the kids on-screen do what real kids would actually do: they film themselves doing the sort of stuff the 'Jackass' crew could only dream of and laughing constantly. If 'Kick Ass' was the story of a guy whose vigilante fantasy was limited by his lack of special abilities, then 'Chronicle' is the reverse.

That's already a sound premise but the really inspired part is the decision to frame the film as "found-footage" - with most of it captured through handheld video cameras. A closer cousin to 'Cloverfield' than 'The Blair Witch Project' or 'Paranormal Activity', 'Chronicle' isn't using the style as a neat way to make a movie on the cheap: the special effects are better than average, not least because by the time things really kick off (alas, the childish hijinks can't last forever) we've been grounded in a very tangible, recognisable world.

The film is, for the most part, framed as the video diary of Andrew (Dane DeHaan), a meek guy who decides to film his day to day life, ostensibly to deter his abusive, drunken father. Director Josh Trank, working from a Max Landis (son of John) script, uses the conceit imaginatively, having Andrew levitate his camera, allowing for a greater range of shots than you'd usually expect, a trick which helps to keep the gimmick from becoming irritating or hindering the action (characters bound to video cameras can't exactly fight).

Over its brisk 83 minutes, 'Chronicle' is also buoyed by its deeper-than-expected central character study, as Andrew's home life (his mum is dying from cancer) and his miserable time at school, as a bullied social outcast, combine to give him exactly the sought of pent-up rage you don't want in a teenager suddenly given unprecedented power over his environment. This is another way in which the style of filmmaking ehances the story: as the obsession with filming events deepens, Andrew's feeling of detachment from the world seems to become greater, diminishing his already fragile sense of empathy with grave consequences for the people of Seattle.

'Chronicle' is out now in the UK, rated '12A' by the BBFC.

FilmQuest 2012 (9/30): 'Goodfellas':

Until this morning I hadn't seen Martin Scorsese's 'Goodfellas': a fact many of my friends regard as some kind of crime against cinema. But, happily, filling gaps like this is exactly the reason I began my "FilmQuest 2012" column last month. My first reaction to this seminal, oft-quoted gangster film is that I'm surprised how fresh it felt. I worried it could only be a disappointment considering its legacy and pervasiveness in popular culture (the mob oeuvre in particular). I worried that I wouldn't be able to see it as something original but as one of a million 'Goodfellas' tribute acts, a bit like when I saw 'Indiana Jones' for the first time a few years ago, having seen all the best bits parodied a thousand times on 'The Simpsons'.

Yet whilst a lot of movies have affected the accents, phraseology and look of the mobsters from 'Goodfellas' - with Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci and, to some extent, Robert De Niro living in the shadow of these roles - its imitators have consistently fallen short when it comes to matching the film's historical and sociological heft. 'Goodfellas' is many things: it's a true crime story (closely based on real events), a look at the immigrant experience (Scorsese's own Sicilian routes come through in the 50s section and in the casting of both his parents in minor roles), and a plotted history of the American gangster (from small-time protection rackets to heavy-duty drug dealing). But best of all it examines the appeal of becoming a mobster (the movie star aura, the mythos, the idea of being somebody) to Liotta's impressionable, true-believer Henry, whilst also critiquing the romanticised view of who these people are (as best embodied by Coppola's 'The Godfather') through showing their ruthless disregard for human life and frail sense of loyalty.

This dichotomy is best demonstrated by the ending: as Henry (now in witness protection) bemoans his safe, average, white picket fence existence ("I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.") Here Scorsese cuts briefly to an idealised shot of Pesci's fallen mob enforcer Tommy DeVito who looks smart, stylish and handsome standing against a redbrick wall and shooting his handgun at the camera. This is the character as Henry remembers him, as a perfect movie star, as James Cagney: a charismatic anti-hero who didn't take shit from nobody. It's an image that sits in stark opposition to the angry, sadistic murderer whose violent unpredictability hangs over much of the film.

It's a theme which is brought into focus right away by the seeming contradiction between the opening shots of barbaric murder (a dying man being stabbed to death with a kitchen knife in the boot of a car) and the cheerfully optimistic first line of Liotta's voiceover which follows: "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." Scorsese sets up the horror and the reality and then goes about explaining its appeal, but without ever confusing his message and making the violence itself appealing. Whereas 'The Godfather' is sometimes poetic in its depiction of death, 'Goodfellas' never shows murder as anything other than senseless and brutal.

One strange quirk did stand out for me though: why do we get small sections of voiceover from a second narrator, Henry's wife Karen (played by Lorraine Bracco, one of many cast members subsequently seen in 'The Sopranos')? These moments are great in that they provide a female point of view in a genre where women are traditionally marginalised (as demonstrated with singular beauty by the final shot of 'The Godfather'), but wouldn't the film be a little tighter without them? Without these moments the whole thing would be consistently presented from the point of view of Henry, which makes sense because he's in almost every scene and because he ultimately breaks the fourth wall in the court room, presenting the whole film as a story he's telling (raising questions as to its reliability). I just don't think Karen's voiceover is used enough to justify its use at all.

That's a minor grievance though - and I'm not even that sure I'm right about it because, as I say, I like that there's a female voice what would otherwise be another exclusively macho film about the fraternity of violent men. It certainly doesn't detract from the film's stunning period detail and some of the finest steadicam work you'll ever see. These single-take sequences, as we're taken through nightclubs and around restaurants, stand testament to Scorsese's virtuosity and imagination.

FilmQuest 2012 (8/30): 'Con Air':

"Beautiful? Sunsets are beautiful, newborn babies are beautiful. This... this is fucking spectacular!" If I hadn't seen Michael Bay's 'The Rock' the day before there's a good chance producer Jerry Bruckheimer's next film - 1997's Simon West directed 'Con Air' - would have seemed like the epitome of hi-octane. However, seen in the shadow of Bay's quote-a-second action flick it seemed comparatively sedate.

But this is odd because 'Con Air', the latest entry in my rapidly expanding "FilmQuest 2012" series, is arguably more extreme than Bay's film in terms of raw ingredients: this time Nicolas Cage has daft hair and a thick Cajun accent, he gets to run (and jump) away from explosions with far greater frequency, and the cartoonishly over the top villains are brilliantly cast (including Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo and Dave Chappelle) with the scenery-chewing John Malkovich in top form. It also has a suitably BIG premise: the world's most loathsome scumbags (notorious rapists, drug lords and mass murderers) hijack a prison transport plane, making it hell in the air. There is, of course, one good man aboard. Meanwhile the authorities on the ground (led by John Cusack) bicker over whether to shoot the plane out of the sky or trust the one good man to restore order.

These cops argue over whose jurisdiction the whole incident is whilst, over the next hour and a bit, pretty much everything explodes and people are battered, shot, stabbed, crushed, impaled and burned with regularity. There is a pitched gun battle between the cons and soldiers in a plane scrapyard, an attack helicopter chase through the Grand Canyon, a crash landing on the Las Vegas Strip (with landmarks destroyed), and a high-speed chase between police motorcycles (commandeered by the Cage and Cusack dream-team, no less) and a rampaging convict-carrying fire truck - complete with climactic good versus evil fistfight on the roof of the moving vehicle. This is a film where a plane tows a sports car into the air for chrissakes, prompting the line "on any other day that might seem strange". But the best line? "Sorry boss, but there's only two men I trust. One of them's me. The other's not you."

As with 'The Rock' every aspect of the story is heightened to its greatest, most ludicrous possible level to ratchet up the drama and punctuate the stakes for all involved. For instance, Nicolas Cage's Cameron Poe isn't just a mild-mannered convict due to leave prison after an 8 year stretch, on the wrong plane at the wrong time (on a story level this might have been enough). No, he's a decorated former soldier who returned home from serving his country to find his pregnant wife (Monica Potter) being pestered by a despicable drunk, who he accidentally kills after being attacked.

He's then assured by a lawyer that he'll only serve a year if he pleads guilty, but the judge gives Poe no less than 7 years because he's a soldier - engendering a sense that he's a victim of rough justice. Yet he's never the slightest bit angry or twisted: a benevolent convict who shares his sweeties with the kindly diabetic man in his bunk (Mykelti Williamson) and writes regular letters home to his young daughter. Oh, and the hijacking of his flight home doesn't merely jeopardise his freedom - it also means he might miss his daughter's birthday party.

The ingredients are there but I think it's held by the fact that West, unlike Bay, is not any sort of visual stylist. Whilst 'The Rock' is rendered even more lovably ridiculous by all the American flags and fast-cutting of its uber-trashy auteur, 'Con Air' just isn't quite as intense. And if 'The Rock' was an inspired once in a lifetime mess of various jobbing writers (including Tarantino and Sorkin) then 'Con Air' is a much more coherent but infinitely less romantic piece from a single screenwriter: Scott Rosenberg. There are some quotable lines ("Put... the bunny... back... in the box"), but nothing on the level of 'The Rock'. Though I accept that this is an unfair and arbitrary standard of measure. Like I said, I saw both more or less back-to-back.

One aspect of 'Con Air' that genuinely elevates it above most of the action competition (puns definitely intended) are the interactions between Cusack's US Marshal Vince Larkin and Colm Meaney's DEA Agent Duncan Malloy. Whereas most movies would be comfortable with the idea that these convicts are an evil blight on society, Larkin makes constant references to the idea that they've been, to some extent, institutionalised by the prison system. Malloy angrily disagrees and often calls the prisoners "animals", but he is consistently shown as pig-headed and governed by reactionary anger rather than thought (see the sequence in which Cusack tries and fails to convince him that he's chasing the wrong plane). Conversely Larkin is shown as intelligent and rational. Perhaps their relationship is best defined by the following exchange:

Vince Larkin: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by observing its prisoners." Dostevsky said that... after doin' a little time.
Duncan Malloy: "Fuck you!" Cyrus Grissom said that after putting a bullet in my agent's head, okay?

Malloy is motivated by revenge which is opposite of justice. This philosophical feud is complicated by the scene in which Malloy wants to shoot the plane down over the desert, only for Larkin to ensure that he doesn't - directly leading to the crash landing in Las Vegas, potentially killing hundreds of people in a densely populated area. Is Malloy's pragmatism vindicated here? Maybe that's a valid way of seeing it, though it's probably not the view taken by the film: after all, we want Cage to survive to see his wife and daughter to the strains of "How Can I Live".

FilmQuest 2012 (7/30): 'The Rock':

"What is wrong with these people, huh? Mason? Don't you think there's a lot of, uh, a lot of anger flowing around this island? Kind of a pubescent volatility? Don't you think? A lotta angst, a lot of "I'm sixteen, I'm angry at my father" syndrome? I mean grow up! We're stuck on an island with a bunch of violence-for-pleasure-seeking psychopathic marines, SHAME-ON-THEM!"

I was surprised to hear the above rant voiced by the hero of a 1996 Michael Bay action movie. Welcome to 'The Rock' - the latest entry for "FilmQuest 2012" - where it is spoken (or shouted) by Nicolas Cage's FBI chemical weapons specialist Stanley Goodspeed. It seems to be criticising the violent machismo of every Bay movie (even the ones that hadn't been made yet). And it's not an isolated case: elsewhere Sean Connery's ace escape artist and former SAS operative Captain Mason cites Oscar Wilde in declaring patriotism "the virtue of the vicious".

Both quotes seemingly run in direct opposition to much of what we see throughout Bay's movie, which fetishises American military men, might is right pragmatism and the star spangled banner as much as ever. There are sombre speeches about the importance of respecting the armed forces and about the honour involved in "serving", just like all of Bay's other glossy feature length army recruitment videos (and with the same frenetic cutting). 'The Rock' is in many ways the definitive "get the President on the phone" movie: full of ultra-macho one-liners, strangely charming vulgarities and fist-pumping moments of explosive violence. It's a film in which, without irony, people say things like:

• "Your best? Losers always go on about doing their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."
• "This is the toughest call I've ever had to make... airstike approved!"
• "This man knows our most intimate secrets from the last half-century: the alien landing at Roswell, the truth about the JFK assassination. Mason's angry, he's lethal, he's a trained killer... and HE is the only hope that we have got!"
• "General, we've shed the same blood in the same mud - you know god damn well I can't give that order!"
• "Make no mistake, gentlemen. We are in the fight of our lives against maybe the greatest battalion commander of the Vietnam war, I shit you not!"
• "The whole world is being Fed-exed to hell in a handcart!"
• "You're between the rock and a hard case."

Anyone who's seen it will know there are a million more zingers like those, most punctuated by the cocking of a gun or the twang of an electric guitar. 'The Rock' invented hi-octane... then shot it into space on the back of a radioactive unicorn on crack where it exploded with the heat of a billion suns. You get the point: it's a film that waves its big dick in your face to the sound of the American national anthem. It's a film so over the top that it sometimes feels less like Bay's 'Armageddon' and more like Wes Anderson's MTV Awards parody of 'Armageddon'. Yet remember those two quotes from before? They feel like they're from a different movie universe.

Perhaps it's not surprising that 'The Rock' should exhibit signs of multiple personality disorder: it is the fruit of at least eight different writers - most of whom are uncredited for reasons only those within the nebulous and highly litigious world of Hollywood writing credits could explain. Among the uncredited are voices as disparate and distinctive as Aaron Sorkin and Quentin Tarantino (highly speculative, but perhaps some of that liberal-minded critique came from Sorkin).

But wherever the lines came from and however much they contradict each other (undermining whatever the point of 'The Rock' is in the process) there is little sense in denying that it's in the same bracket as 'Casablanca', 'Withnail & I' or 'The Big Lebowski' in terms of how endlessly quotable it is. Personally I love all the lines which lay out the stakes in really direct fashion, such as this doozy: "Look, I'm just a biochemist. Most of the time, I work in a little glass jar and lead a very uneventful life. I drive a Volvo, a beige one. But what I'm dealing with here is one of the most deadly substances the earth has ever known, so what say you cut me some FRIGGIN' SLACK?" What more do we need to know about the disparity between the life of Cage's character and the gravity of the situation he finds himself in? 'The Rock' is the sworn enemy of subtlety and I wouldn't have it any other way.

After foiling Ed Harris' apparently noble terrorist plot (it's easy to forget that pre-9/11 a lot of movie terrorism was domestic), Cage ends up in possession of the MacGuffin microfilm, holding information that got Connery's character locked up in Alcatraz for life without trial. Goodspeed's never previously expressed any interest in possessing this information, so why does his attainment of it count as a win? The answer: it just does. Especially because it facilitates one of the best (and most irreverent) final lines ever: "Honey, you wanna know who really killed JFK?"