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The Greatest Night in Pop
2024
****
Director: Bao Nguyen
Cast:

This entertaining documentary chronicles the creation of We Are the World, the best-selling charity single for African famine relief. Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson wrote the song and on January 28, 1985, some of the biggest pop stars in America came together to record the vocals. The cameras were on throughout the recording session, and there are present day interviews with some of the artists and technicians involved. Bao Nguyen's film is at it best when it illustrates the massive logistical and psychological undertaking required to get more than 40 top artists to abandon their egos and spend a night together in the studio. At its worst, it features millionaires patting themselves on the back and not giving enough credit to Bob Geldof, who had already done the same in the UK with Do They Know It's Christmas?

Dune: Part Two
2024
*****
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Souheila Yacoub, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem

While he plots vengeance on the people who destroyed his family, Paul Atreides learns the way of the Fremen, many of whom believe he is the prophesied messiah who will lead them to freedom and salvation. Dune: Part One was a stunning science fiction epic that managed to do justice to its difficult source material. Part Two covers the second half of the first book in Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles. It has fewer characters to introduce and less worldbuilding to get through, which is all for the better. If the first film was an incredible cinematic spectacle, now Denis Villeneuve turns the knobs to 11. Everything looks and sounds immaculate. The performances are excellent and Paul (also known as Usul, Muad'Dib, Lisan al-Gaib, and Kwisatz Haderach) remains an incredibly complex and intriguing protagonist. Whether he is good or evil, and what his true motivations and aspirations are, remain to be seen in possible future sequels.

Drive-Away Dolls
2024
**½
Director: Ethan Coen
Cast: Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, Matt Damon, Joey Slotnick, C. J. Wilson, Annie Gonzalez, Josh Flitter, Miley Cyrus

Two lesbian friends pick up a drive-away car and plan a road trip from Philadelphia to Florida, with a series of stops at standout lesbian bars along the way, but they are unaware of the unexpected cargo in the boot of the car. Ethan Coen's first solo feature is a goofy road movie, which plays like a bad cover version of a Coen brothers movie. The story bares a resemblance to Fargo and No Country for Old Men, but tonally it is closer to the likes of Burn After Reading and Raising Arizona. This comedy is delightfully short, breezy, and raunchy, but I don't think I laughed once at the wacky and stupid buffoonery on screen. Some of the performances (namely, Margaret Qualley and Pedro Pascal) are awful. Coen scripted with his wife Tricia Cooke. It's all set in 1999, probably because mobile phones would render the entire plot pointless.

The Zone of Interest
2023
****½
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Ralph Herforth, Daniel Holzberg, Sascha Maaz, Freya Kreutzkam, Imogen Kogge, Johann Karthaus, Lilli Falk, Nele Ahrensmeier, Luis Noah Witte, Kalman Wilson, Stephanie Petrowitz

The commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss, his wife, and five children live happy and oblivious lives in their idyllic home, which shares a wall with the concentration camp, where thousands of Jews are gassed and burned daily. Can cinema ever capture the immense scale and unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust? Some terrific films have attempted it, namely Son of Saul and Schindler's List, but Jonathan Glazer's harrowing drama never goes inside the camp. The scale of the human suffering and systemic cruelty is conveyed through Johnnie Burn's haunting Oscar winning sound design. This well-acted film is an unrelenting portrait of the banality of evil, a term coined by Hannah Arendt to explain that acts of great evil can be committed by ordinary individuals, not monsters, when they follow orders without critically assessing the moral implications of their actions. Glazer scripted from Martin Amis' 2014 novel. Academy Award winner for best international feature film.

They Cloned Tyrone
2023
**½
Director: Juel Taylor
Cast: John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, Jamie Foxx, Kiefer Sutherland, David Alan Grier, J. Alphonse Nicholson, Tamberla Perry, Eric Robinson Jr.

A drug dealer, who was shot dead the night before, teams up with a pimp and a prostitute to figure out the strange events occurring in the Glen, a mostly black urban neighbourhood. Juel Taylor's directorial debut delivers a quirky and messy mix of blaxploitation and science fiction, but it is sadly ruined by its three main characters, boring and unlikeable stereotypes who talk a lot but say nothing funny. The scifi bits bring back memories of Us and the third season of Stranger Things. The explanation behind the events is clever, but not clever enough to carry a 2-hour movie.

Tetris
2023
***½
Director: John S. Baird
Cast: Taron Egerton, Nikita Efremov, Sofia Lebedeva, Anthony Boyle, Toby Jones, Ben Miles, Ken Yamamura, Igor Grabuzov, Roger Allam

In 1988, game developer Henk Rogers discovers Tetris and goes all in to secure the rights to the game. This takes him to the Soviet Union, where he is caught between corrupt and regimented Soviet bureaucrats and rivalling Western bidders. This entertaining drama comedy is based on real events, but then again if features some scenes (car chase, close call at the airport), which were clearly embellished to make the story more cinematic. The film is about licensing this addictive game and not about creating it, but it tells a warm story of the friendship that developed between Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov, the programmer who created Tetris. To visualise this all, director John S. Baird uses some nostalgic video game graphics.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie
2023
*
Director: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic
Cast: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen, Sebastian Maniscalco, Kevin Michael Richardson

Just as Italian-American brothers Mario and Luigi are starting a plumbing business in Brooklyn, they are sucked into a Warp Pipe. Mario ends up in the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi in the Dark Lands. Nintendo's iconic video game was first launched in 1983. The 1993 live-action film Super Mario Bros. was famously a critical and commercial bomb. This animation made over a billion dollars worldwide, but I wouldn't go as far as call it a movie. It's a 90-minute screen recording of someone playing the game and anyone under the age of five must be enthralled by all the colourful and fast-paced scenes levels. I'm sure gamers will enjoy the references and easter eggs, but as a cinematic experience with no story, humour, or compelling characters, I was bored out of my mind.

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
2023
*****
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Cast:

Due to his small stature and youthful looks, Michael J. Fox became a comedy star in the 1980s playing teenage characters on TV and in the Back to the Future trilogy. His booming career took an unexpected turn when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at the age of 30. Davis Guggenheim's warts-and-all documentary is funny and moving. Fox has faced some difficult moments in his career and private life, but he comes out of it all with his sense of humour intact. His story is told through raw interviews and brilliantly selected clips
from the actor's films and sitcoms Family Ties (1982-1988) and Spin City (1996-2000).

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
2023
*****
Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Vélez, Jake Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Shea Whigham, Greta Lee, Daniel Kaluuya, Mahershala Ali, Oscar Isaac

Although Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) delivered a highly entertaining multiverse adventure with different incarnations of live-action Spider-Man and his nemeses, the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) took the concept even further. The first of the planned sequels builds on this and maintains the high quality level. While Miles Morales cannot decide whether to reveal his secret to his parents, Gwen Stacy flees her own universe and joins the Spider-Society, who are tasked to protect the integrity of the multiverse. The first half includes some very strong character building, whereas the plot really only kicks in during the second hour. Even if the action scenes are often incomprehensibly fast, this in an incredibly rich, original, and surprising franchise in terms of storytelling and animation techniques. Daniel Pemberton's terrific soundtrack is an icing on the cake.

Sharper
2023
**
Director: Benjamin Caron
Cast: Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, Justice Smith, Briana Middleton, John Lithgow, Darren Goldstein, Phillip Johnson Richardson, Kerry Flanagan, David Pittu

Benjamin Caron's feature debut starts as a sweet romance between a New York bookstore owner and a PhD student, but this is the first bit of misdirection in a caper story, which involves con artists, a billionaire, and his heir. Once it's clear that I cannot trust anyone or anything on the screen, the rest of the movie becomes a mechanical, predictable, and increasingly boring sequence of short cons, long cons and double-crosses. The cast is attractive, but when the characters are either duplicitous grifters or gullible idiots, I really don't care how it all ends.

Poor Things
2023
****
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael, Hanna Schygulla, Suzy Bemba, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine, Margaret Qualley

In Victorian London, an eccentric scientist Godwin Baxter resurrects a young woman using the brain of her unborn child. The childlike Bella embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns the pleasures and horrors of being a woman. Yorgos Lanthimos' dark comedy is funny, sexually explicit, and definitely unique. Bella Baxter is a wonderful creation and Emma Stone deservedly won an Academy Award for her courageous and multi-layered lead performance. Bella's story does lose its grip a bit in the second act during the extended trip across Europe, but the film has a very satisfying conclusion. Robbie Ryan's camerawork (shallow focus, fisheye lens, and pinhole cameras) and the fantastical Oscar winning production design, costume design, makeup and hairstyling carry an air of artificiality that occasionally feels alienating. Tony McNamara scripted from Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel.

Oppenheimer
2023
*****
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a theoretical physicist who was hired to lead the Manhattan Project. During the McCarthy era, his continued calls for international arms control and his past associations with the Communist Party turned the father of the atomic bomb to an outcast. Most biopics offer a superficial run-through of a person's career and/or private life. Christopher Nolan's ambitious and beautifully constructed drama provides a biographical story and a horrific history lesson. Nolan's script is based on American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, and it intercuts between three timelines: the development of the atomic bomb, the 1954 security hearing by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and the 1959 Senate confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss, who became Oppenheimer's political adversary. The midsection about the Manhattan Project is the obvious dramatic high point but, although it's very dialogue-heavy, there is solid cinematic brilliance throughout the 3-hour runtime. The cast is amazing. Cillian Murphy is excellent as Oppenheimer, Emily Blunt gives a brave performance as his alcoholic wife Kitty, and Robert Downey Jr. gives a memorable turn as Strauss. Ludwig Göransson's powerful score is the icing on the cake. The film won Academy Awards for best picture and for directing, acting (Murphy and Downey), cinematography, editing, and score.

No One Will Save You
2023
***½
Director: Brian Duffield
Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Elizabeth Kaluev, Zack Duhame, Lauren Murray, Geraldine Singer, Dane Rhodes, Daniel Rigamer, Dari Lynn Griffin

A young woman, who has become an outcast in her community, lives by herself outside the town. When an alien breaks into her house, she has nobody but herself to rely on. Brian Duffield's minimalistic science fiction thriller doesn't spend too much time explaining what the aliens want and what powers they possess. In fact, the film cannot explain much of anything, because the soundtrack features only five words of dialogue. This approach can seem gimmicky at times, but it means that Duffield must rely entirely on his visual storytelling skills. He does do a much better job with directing than he does with writing. The end result is not always coherent but it is tense, gripping, and visually striking.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
2023
****½
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Henry Czerny, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Cary Elwes, Greg Tarzan Davis

When advanced, self-aware AI known as the Entity goes rogue, Ethan Hunt and his team must secure two halves of an activation key and discover the location of the Entity, but they are not alone. Tom Cruise and his Mission: Impossible franchise seem to get better with age. Once again, the plot, although incredibly topical, is nothing but an excuse to zoom from one place to the next to find a McGuffin. However, the CGI-lite set pieces are inventive and exciting, and Cruise's physical stunts are amazing. The scenes at the airport and onboard the train are my personal favourites. Part Two comes out in 2024.

Meg 2: The Trench
2023
*½
Director: Ben Wheatley
Cast: Jason Statham, Wu Jing, Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Skyler Samuels, Cliff Curtis, Melissanthi Mahut, Whoopie Van Raam, Kiran Sonia Sawar, Felix Mayr

Six years have passed, and rescue diver Jonas Taylor has become an all-around action man and a single dad to an adopted daughter. All hell breaks loose again when Megs and other creatures escape the Trench while the thermocline is temporarily ruptured. The Meg offered consistent silliness and occasional goofy fun, but the sequel doesn't come up with anything new. The movie spends half of the runtime in the Trench, where the team discover a secret underwater mining facility. Down there, Ben Wheatley, better known for low-key indie films such as Kill List, directs some ridiculous and almost incomprehensible action set pieces. On the surface, things are a bit more coherent, but also hopelessly stupid and predictable. Like last time, it all ends in a carnage at a tourist resort.

The Marvels
2023
*½
Director: Nia DaCosta
Cast: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Zawe Ashton, Gary Lewis, Park Seo-joon, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Saagar Shaikh, Samuel L. Jackson

A jump point anomaly creates an entanglement, which affects Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan. The three ladies eventually team up to fight Dar-Benn, a Kree leader who seeks revenge on Captain Marvel. In order to make any sense of the main trio, you need to have seen not only Captain Marvel (2019) but also two different Disney+ TV shows, WandaVision (2021), and Ms. Marvel (2022). I have seen them all, but the 33rd MCU feature starts off as a confusing mess, and ends as one of the worst releases in the franchise. The script is useless and DaCosta's movie is in a mad hurry to move forward, which doesn't allow any emotional moment to linger long enough to resonate. The tone is always light and playful, which means that there is a notable lack of danger to the world or the characters. While there is plenty of banter and attempted humour, I don't think I laughed once. The low-point is a visit to Planet Aladna, where the population communicates through song.

Maestro
2023
***
Director: Bradley Cooper
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bradley Cooper, Matt Bomer, Vincenzo Amato, Greg Hildreth, Michael Urie, Brian Klugman, Nick Blaemire, Mallory Portnoy, Sarah Silverman, Yasen Peyankov, Zachary Booth, Miriam Shor

Biographical dramas often struggle to deliver a satisfying balance between their subjects' personal and professional lives. This biopic of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), the American composer and conductor best known for composing West Side Story, concentrates on Bernstein's marriage to Felicia Montealegre, which was strained throughout the years by his many indiscretions with men and women. After two hours, I've learned that Bernstein is a joyful and playful person, but not much else. I still don't know why he is such an important figure in music, or what he's like as a father, as a friend, as a husband, or as a philanderer. The story ultimately revolves around sex, but it all takes place off screen. Despite the flaws in the script, Bradley Cooper's second film behind the camera is an impressively directed and visually stunning drama, which is anchored by two commanding and heavily made-up performances.

La sociedad de la nieve (Society of the Snow)
2023
****½
Director: J.A. Bayona
Cast: Enzo Vogrincic, Matías Recalt, Agustín Pardella, Tomas Wolf, Diego Vegezzi, Esteban Kukuriczka, Francisco Romero, Rafael Federman, Felipe González Otaño, Agustín Della Corte, Valentino Alonso

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, carrying a rugby team from Uruguay along with their friends and family, crashed in the Andes mountains in October 1972. With extreme weather and declining food supplies, the survivors were forced to resort to drastic measures, which included cannibalism. Their harrowing survival story was previously filmed in Frank Marshall's well-made but clunky Alive (1993). J.A. Bayona's version has more or less the same exact story structure, but the Spanish language makes everything more authentic and Bayona's directorial skills turn the events into a supremely gripping and realistic drama. The cast, who are mostly unknown actors from Uruguay and Argentina, are great. Based on Pablo Vierci's 2009 book.

Killers of the Flower Moon
2023
*****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Randy Houser, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau

An oil boom in the 1920s transformed the Osage Reservation in Oklahoma. The sudden wealth attracted an influx of white people, who were ready to con, manipulate, and kill the Osage people to secure the headrights to their land. Ernest Burkhart returns from World War I and begins to work for his uncle Bill Hale, self-proclaimed King of the Osage, who implies that Ernest should pursue Mollie Kyle, a wealthy but unmarried Osage woman. Martin Scorsese's ambitious epic is based on David Grann's 2017 non-fiction book, and it sheds light on a shameful episode of American history. Scorsese's long but enthralling drama brilliantly juggles the various elements of this multi-layered tale, which is simultaneously a compelling historical record, a horrific true crime mystery, and a moving personal story about love and betrayal. The film obviously looks great and the performances are excellent. Robbie Robertson's bluesy soundtrack fits like a glove.

The Killer
2023
***
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell, Kerry O'Malley, Sala Baker, Sophie Charlotte, Tilda Swinton, Emiliano Pernía

This thriller is based on a long-running French graphic novel series by Alexis "Matz" Nolent and Luc Jacamon, and it was scripted by Andrew Kevin Walker, who is best known as the writer of Se7en. The protagonist is a nameless assassin who protects himself by adhering to a strict set of rules. After he misses his target, he is forced to adapt to entirely new circumstances. The latest work by David Fincher looks and sounds terrific, as expected. However, it is unclear what attracted him to this unoriginal and underwhelming story about an emotionless killer. Although the film provides passable entertainment, the main character is incredibly uninteresting, and his boring and repetitive narration doesn't make it better.

Infinity Pool
2023
*
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lespert, Amanda Bruge, John Ralston, Jeffrey Ricketts, Caroline Boulton, Thomas Kretschmann

A layabout novelist and his rich wife are on vacation in the fictional island nation of Li Tolqa. After he accidentally runs over a local man, he is introduced to the country's unorthodox justice system and discovers a peculiar community of returning tourists. Brandon Cronenberg's scifi horror film has an intriguing concept: what happens when people are allowed to act out their wildest desires without any consequence? Like his father David, Brandon fills the screen with so much gore, soft core porn, bodily fluids, and general unpleasantness, that I lost any interest in the story and the characters before the halfway point.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
2023
**½
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, Ethann Isidore, Mads Mikkelsen, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Thomas Kretschmann

Just when Indiana Jones is about to retire, he is forced to accompany his estranged goddaughter Helena on another adventure to locate the missing half of Antikythera, a potentially destructive artifact developed by Archimedes. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came 19 long years after the original trilogy and inevitably disappointed. Another 15 years have passed, James Mangold takes over from Steven Spielberg, and 80-year-old Harrison Ford returns to the role for the final time. The fifth movie provides decent entertainment but it is totally pointless. The treasure quest doesn't offer anything fresh (it's set In 1969, but the villain is once again a Nazi) and the CGI-heavy action set pieces are mechanical. It's 2023, so the running time must obviously be 30 minutes longer than in any of the previous four instalments.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
2023
***
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, Viola Davis, Fionnula Flanagan, Burn Gorman

18-year-old Coriolanus Snow, the future dictator of Panem, is one of the academy students selected to mentor the tributes of the 10th annual Hunger Games. To win the main prize, a prestigious scholarship, Snow must turn District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird into a winner. The original Hunger Games series (2012-2015), which featured a memorably strong female hero, told a gripping dystopian story about the fight for the future of Panem. This prequel is set 64 years earlier and its stakes are much lower. Although the movie is long and frankly unnecessary, it is quite entertaining, but it definitely includes too many musical interludes. Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt adapted Suzanne Collins' 2020 novel to the screen, and their script suffers from some structural issues. The story appears to wrap up in the Capitol, but we then head to District 12 for the final third.

The Holdovers
2023
*****
Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa, Carrie Preston, Brady Hepner, Ian Dolley, Jim Kaplan, Michael Provost, Andrew Garman, Naheem Garcia

While the students and staff of a New England boarding school go home for Christmas, a grumpy and unpopular history professor is forced to supervise the students who stay behind. Alexander Payne's humane and melancholic comedy reminds us not to judge the book by its cover. All three of the main characters (professor, student, and cook) are troubled and difficult, but wonderfully layered individuals. This charming, funny, and moving film is set in 1970, and Payne has gone all in for the look and feel of the time. It starts with the retro production company logos and the title scene, and continues throughout the film in its visual style and folky soundtrack. All the performances are wonderful, but Da'Vine Joy Randolph was singled out for an Academy Award.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
2023
****
Director: James Gunn
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Will Poulter, Sean Gunn, Chukwudi Iwuji, Linda Cardellini, Nathan Fillion, Sylvester Stallone

An unfortunate injury activates Rocket's kill switch. While the rest of the Guardians attempt to acquire the override code and save their friend's life, we learn Rocket's tragic backstory at the hands of his cruel creator, the High Evolutionary. After recent duds, Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is back to form, at least for now. This is a moving and entertaining but very long comic book movie, which has exciting action scenes and more endings than The Return of the King.

The Flash
2023
**½
Director: Andy Muschietti
Cast: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, Antje Traue, Michael Keaton, Ben Affleck

Justice League (2017) introduced the DCEU version of Barry Allen, aka The Flash. His own movie tells a personal backstory rather than a character origin story. As Barry's father has been wrongfully imprisoned for killing Barry's mother, he uses the Speed Force to travel back in time to save his parents, but ends up in an alternate 2013. The concept of multiverse provides a fun and clever way to explore multiple versions of the same character and to play around with the past releases in the DC roster. If only Marvel hadn't done the exact same thing much better in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). There doesn't appear to be a single (action) scene that does not employ weightless and absolutely awful-looking CGI, so in essence this is a 2½-hour animation. On the plus side, Andy Muschietti's movie is light and brisk, and Ezra Miller gives a likeable but occasionally exhausting double performance.


Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
2023
***
Director: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley
Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Hugh Grant, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head, Jason Wong

A shrewd thief by the name of Edgin Darvis assembles a ragtag team of adventurers to steal a relic that could resurrect his dead wife and reunite him with his estranged daughter. This likeable but disposable fantasy adventure is based on Hasbro's role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Coming in the wake of The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, the universe looks and feels unoriginal and the characters are not exactly memorable; I couldn't remember half of their names at the end. However, the movie provides passable entertainment for its running time.

The Deepest Breath
2023
***½
Director: Laura McGann
Cast:

Competitive freediving is without a doubt one of the most dangerous sports in the world. Laura McGann's documentary tells the story of two people who meet through the sport and fall in love. Alessia Zecchini is a driven Italian freediver who aims to break the world record. Stephen Keenan is a fearless Irishman who finds his calling as a safety diver. McGann's film, which kicks off with a breathtaking opening scene, introduces a free diving community, who are willing to take insane risks for personal fulfilment. It is clear from the start that the story will not have a happy ending, but the way it all unfolds feels extremely manipulative.

The Creator
2023
****
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson, Madeleine Yuna Voyles, Allison Janney, Amar Chadha-Patel, Marc Menchaca, Robbie Tann

After a nuclear bomb was detonated over Los Angeles, mankind declared a war on artificial intelligence. Five years later, a former soldier is sent to New Asia to track down the mysterious creator of AI, who has allegedly developed a weapon that could end the war. Following the disappointing Godzilla and Rogue One, Gareth Edwards returns to original material, so to speak. The screenplay by Edwards and Chris Weitz draws elements from various past works, like A.I. – Artificial Intelligence, Blade Runner, and Looper. Although the film is enthralling and visually stunning, the story doesn't quite make the required emotional impact.

Cocaine Bear
2023
*
Director: Elizabeth Banks
Cast: Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Margo Martindale, Ray Liotta, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Kristofer Hivju, Hannah Hoekstra

In 1985, a drug smuggler dumps bags of cocaine out of his plane. In the Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest in Georgia, an American black bear consumes some of the drugs and becomes an aggressive beast. Elizabeth Banks' horror comedy is loosely based on a true story, which only involved a bear that died after consuming large amounts of cocaine. This fictional version delivers plenty of coke-induced gore, but absolutely no laughs, surprises, or invention. Jimmy Warden's dreadful script introduces a dozen uninteresting characters (mother and two kids, drug dealers, cops, hikers, a park ranger and her love interest, and a group of hoodlums), whose respective problems are totally irrelevant. The CGI bear just looks awful. In the end, the movie has nothing to offer except a great title, very much like Snakes on a Plane back in 2006.

BlackBerry
2023
***
Director: Matt Johnson
Cast: Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Matt Johnson, Rich Sommer, Michael Ironside, Martin Donovan, Michelle Giroux, SungWon Cho, Mark Critch, Saul Rubinek, Cary Elwes

In 1996, nerdy Research in Motion owners Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin pitch their groundbreaking new cell phone that can send emails. The product doesn't take off until the ruthless new CEO Jim Balsillie takes over the business side. Following Air, Dumb Money, and Tetris, this is at least the fourth film released in 2023 that chronicles a real-life business endeavour from the recent past. This modest Canadian comedy covers the creation of the BlackBerry mobile phone, which was the hottest item for a brief moment until it crashed and burned when iPhone reshaped the industry. The story is interesting and intermittently funny, but the pacing is either too fast or too slow. The three main characters have no personality outside their professional roles, and perhaps that is why I struggled to care about any of them. The screenplay by Matthew Miller and Matt Johnson, who also directs and co-stars, is loosely based on Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff.

Barbie
2023
**½
Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Simu Liu, Helen Mirren, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell

When Stereotypical Barbie, who lives happily in the matriarchal Barbieland with other Barbies and Kens, begins to develop dark thoughts, she must venture out into the real world, where men seem to be in charge. Greta Gerwig's third solo feature is a light and bubbly feminist comedy, which is based on Mattel's iconic dolls. The screenplay by Gerwig and her husband Noah Baumbach offers clever satire, visual gags, and film references, and yet I was only mildly amused throughout. This is certainly not as funny and subversive as The Lego Movie, which was also an extended toy commercial. Nevertheless, the sets and costumes are delightful, and the songs are catchy. What Was I Made For? by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell won an Academy Award for best original song.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
2023
**
Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Newton, David Dastmalchian, Katy O'Brian, William Jackson Harper, Bill Murray, Michelle Pfeiffer, Corey Stoll, Michael Douglas

During the Avengers hiatus, Scott Lang has become a complacent, semi-retired superhero, who has written a memoir. Things take a sudden turn when Scott, his daughter Cassie, his girlfriend Hope, and her parents Hank and Janet Van Dyne are sucked into the Quantum Realm. In Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Quantum Realm was a weird, psychedelic, and dangerous dimension. This time it feels like the Langs and Van Dynes jump into the Star Wars franchise, as they discover a civilisation where an evil ruler (Kang the Conqueror) and his army fight a group of brave freedom fighters. Ever since Thanos was defeated in Avengers: Endgame, the MCU has noticeably dipped in quality, and this is one of the more disappointing releases. I was not really engaged or entertained at any point. It doesn't help that we spend almost the entire runtime in the CGI-created fantasy dimension. Why should I care about people and creatures I don't know, when I can't bring myself to care about Scott's stupid teenage daughter or his annoying mother-in-law. The whole purpose of the movie is to introduce Kang, the main villain of Phase 5, and he doesn't seem like much if Ant-Man without any superpowers can kick his ass.

Anatomie d'une chute (Anatomy of a Fall)
2023
****½
Director: Justine Triet
Cast: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado-Graner, Antoine Reinartz, Samuel Theis, Jehnny Beth, Saadia Bentaieb, Camille Rutherford, Anne Rotger, Sophie Fillières

When a man in Grenoble falls to his death under mysterious circumstances, his German wife is tried for murder and the couple's blind 11-year-old son is recruited as a witness. On the surface, Justine Triet's wonderfully ambiguous film is a conventional court drama. However, scratch the surface and you will find a brutal dissection of a multicultural marriage, with its joys, hopes, disappointments, resentments, and compromises. The brilliant Academy Award winning script by Triet and Arthur Harari illustrates that anyone will look like a monster when you expose all of their intimate and painful details without context. The performances are excellent throughout, but Sandra Hüller, Milo Machado-Graner, and Messi the dog are the standouts.

American Fiction
2023
****
Director: Cord Jefferson
Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Raymond Anthony Thomas, Adam Brody, Keith David, Okieriete Onaodowan

Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is a struggling black novelist. As a joke, he writes a trashy novel that he believes white people want to read, and it becomes an unexpected critical and commercial hit. Cord Jefferson's directorial debut is a smart, funny, and poignant satirical comedy that mocks the stereotypical depiction of the black experience. The satire is on the back burner in the second half, which concentrates more on Monk's family issues. Jeffrey Wright is terrific, and so is the rest of the cast. Jefferson's Academy Award winning script was adapted from Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure.

X
2022
**
Director: Ti West
Cast: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell, Stephen Ure, Scott Mescudi, Simon Prast, James Gaylyn

In 1979, three men and three women drive to a Texas farm owned by an old couple. While the visitors shoot an adult movie in the guest house, the elderly owners behave in an increasingly odd manner. The opening scene reveals that the visit didn't end well. Ti West's film has an interesting premise and a nicely slow build-up, and then it turns into a slasher by the numbers. The young people turn into idiots and the old folks gain super speed and strength, when required by the plot. Mia Goth, who appears in a dual role, returns in Pearl, which is a prequel.

The Wonder
2022
***
Director: Sebastián Lelio
Cast: Florence Pugh, Tom Burke, Niamh Algar, Elaine Cassidy, Dermot Crowley, Brían F. O'Byrne, David Wilmot, Ruth Bradley, Caolán Byrne, Josie Walker, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones, Kíla Lord Cassidy

In 1862, an English nurse travels to remote Ireland to examine and observe a fasting girl, who has allegedly not eaten for four months. Sebastián Lelio begins and ends his period film on a sound stage to show that this story is all fiction. This framing device is baffling, pointless, and pretentious. However, for most of the running time this is a well-acted and beautifully shot but incredibly slow-paced drama, which is gripping but not entirely believable. Based on Emma Donoghue's 2016 novel

The Woman King
2022
***
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Cast: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, John Boyega, Jordan Bolger, Jimmy Odukoya, Masali Baduza

The young and rebellious Nawi turns down an arranged marriage and is forced to join the Agojie, a female only army unit led by General Nanisca. Gina Prince-Bythewood's long but compelling historical action drama is set in the kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin) in 1823. The setting is intriguing and based on fact, but the story around it (by Maria Bello and Dana Stevens) is formulaic fiction. The film rewrites Dahomey's history with slave trade and Nawi's journey from a reckless youth to a fearless warrior offers very few surprises. However, the action scenes are gripping and Viola Davis gives another commanding lead performance.

White Noise
2022
*
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, André Benjamin, Sam Gold

College professor and his wife both suffer from a fear of death. Things come to a head when a derailed chemical train releases a toxic cloud and the family are forced to evacuate. Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don DeLillo's 1985 novel tells at least three separate stories, and I didn't like any of them. The characters, who all seem to be reciting their own monologue, make me want to pull my last hairs out. Adam Driver is just about the only positive thing about the film, while Greta Gerwig is just awful.

Where the Crawdads Sing
2022
**
Director: Olivia Newman
Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer, Jr., Jojo Regina, Garret Dillahunt, Ahna O'Reilly, David Strathairn

Even since her family members abandoned her, Kya has lived alone in the marshlands of North Carolina. In the late 1960s, she is a young woman who gets romantically involved with two different men. When one of them is found dead, the townsfolk immediately pin the blame on the Marsh Girl, because she is an unknown outcast. Delia Owens' bestselling 2018 novel was apparently as much a story about the marshlands as it was about the protagonist. Lucy Alibar's screenplay boils it all down to a cheesy YA romance, which is bookended by an irrelevant murder mystery. Kya may be an intriguing character on paper, but I didn't buy her screen version for one second, although Daisy Edgar-Jones gives a likeable performance. She is supposedly a semi-feral naturist who has taken care of herself since she was seven, but instead of being a Nell, she is the most ordinary person in the film. Her hair, skin, and teeth are perfect, her legs are shaved, and she always wears clean clothes. Has she actually suffered a moment of hardship during all the years alone? The men in her life are like chalk and cheese, but she loves them both. While the sensitive Tate teaches her to read and write, but refuses to sleep with her because he respects her too much, the selfish and manipulative Chase wants to have sex with her even if she doesn't.

The Whale
2022
***
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan

Ever since his boyfriend committed suicide, Charlie has become a morbidly obese recluse. As death looks imminent, he hopes to reconcile with his (insufferable) teenage daughter. Brendan Fraser won a deserved Academy Award for his physically gruelling performance as Charlie, and Hong Chau is terrific as his nurse and friend Liz. However, I am unsure what the film's message is. Charlie repeatedly tells us that people are amazing, and then we are shown them to be evil, selfish, and judgmental. In one scene, Aronofsky condemns people for being disgusted by Charlie's appearance. In the next scene, we watch him eat like a pig in close-up. Samuel D. Hunter adapted his own stage play, and this really looks like one. The protagonist and the camera stay inside the apartment, and the other characters enter through the door in the back. Fraser's incredible prosthetics earned an Oscar for best makeup and hairstyling.

Violent Night
2022
***
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Cast: David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Edi Patterson, Cam Gigandet, Leah Brady, Beverly D'Angelo

While three generations of the wealthy Lighthouse family gather for Christmas, a gang of criminals take them hostage in order to break into the mansion's vault. The only person who can save the family is the drunken and disillusioned Santa Clause. This seasonal action comedy throws together a clever and extremely violent mix of Die Hard, Home Alone, and Bad Santa, and it delivers decent entertainment, but the script is crying out for some snappy one-liners and a more memorable villain. The movie aspires to be subversive, but the ultimate message is that we should all believe in the spirit of Christmas.

Uncharted
2022
**
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle, Antonio Banderas, Rudy Pankow, Tieman Jones, Manuel de Bias, Nolan North

Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan, two treasure hunters who don't trust each other, team up to find the gold hidden by the Magellan expedition, but they have competition. This dull action adventure movie thinks of itself as a modern day Indiana Jones franchise, but unfortunately it doesn't even reach the modest National Treasure level. What it most reminds me of is Red Notice, another recent movie with undeveloped characters, forgettable performances, stupid script, ridiculous set pieces, constant double-crosses, and complete lack of jeopardy. The episodic structure is a giveaway that the whole thing is based on Sony's video game series.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
2022
**
Director: Tom Gormican
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan, Ike Barinholtz, Alessandra Mastronardi, Jacob Scipio, Neil Patrick Harris, Tiffany Haddish, Lily Mo Sheen, Katrin Vankova

After Nicolas Cage fails to secure his dream role, he agrees to take $1 million and make an appearance at a superfan's birthday party in Majorca. He ends up bonding with his host and the two plan a film together, but how well does he actually know his new friend? Many younger people know Nicolas Cage only as the overacting guy in Internet memes, but he is an Academy Award winning actor who now gets to play a fictional version of himself. This has been done before by Jean-Claude Van Damme in JCVD, by James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, and others in This Is the End, and obviously by John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich. The predictable film within the film plot is familiar from The Player. Tom Gormican's action comedy is filled with meta-humour, but the script is not nearly as clever and original as it thinks it is. There are some initially promising ideas, but the end result is smug, dull, and unfunny.

Turning Red
2022
**½
Director: Domee Shi
Cast: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Orion Lee, Wai Ching Ho, Tristan Allerick Chen, James Hong

Mei is an A+ student and a good girl who hides her true interests from her tiger mother. Now that she is 13, she discovers that losing control of her emotions transforms her into a big red panda. This disappointing Pixar animation depicts a Chinese immigrant family who live in Toronto in 2002. If this sound like an oddly specific time and place, it's because back then director Domee Shi was a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian growing up in Toronto. Everything Everywhere All at Once was a wonderfully original portrayal of a Chinese American mother and daughter, but I'm not sure Shi's personal story has a wider appeal. The film kicks off with an annoyingly chirpy character introduction. It does eventually improve a bit, but this animation is not funny or moving like Pixar's best. Is the red panda a metaphor for menstruation? At first it seems so, but then it just becomes a red panda. But what is the ultimate message of Mei's story? When your child turns 13, let her make all her decisions.


Top Gun: Maverick
2022
*****
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell returns to TOPGUN to train an elite team of fighter pilots for a mission, which requires them to fly through a canyon in order to destroy an uranium enrichment plant. One member of the team brings up Maverick's past trauma. This belated sequel to Top Gun is a massive upgrade on the original and way more fun than it has any right to be. It's definitely a movie made for the big cinema screen. The story is gripping, the performances are strong, the obligatory romance feels believable, and the 100% real flight scenes are simply breathtaking. It makes several callbacks to the 1986 original, sometimes through music, other times through characters, and occasionally recreating scene for scene. Academy Award winner for best sound.

To Leslie
2022
***
Director: Michael Morris
Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Andre Royo, Owen Teague, Stephen Root, James Landry Hebert, Marc Maron, Allison Janney,

Six years after winning \$190,000 in a lottery, Leslie has drunk it all away and alienated her friends and family in the process. With nobody to fall back on, she receives help from a kind stranger who runs a motel. Andrea Riseborough's Academy Award nomination raised some controversy, but there is no denying that she is very good as Leslie, who is not an easy person to like. This drama about her redemption is gritty and believable, apart from the ending, which leaves no problem unsolved.

Ticket to Paradise
2022
**½
Director: Ol Parker
Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, Maxime Bouttier, Billie Lourd, Lucas Bravo

David and Georgia were briefly married, but now they can't stand each other. When their daughter Lily is about to throw away her career to marry a seaweed farmer from Bali, they join forces to sabotage the wedding. This affable romantic comedy has an appealing cast and it was shot in beautiful locations in Queensland, Australia. However, the screenplay is maddeningly formulaic. One surprise or twist would be nice, but things play out exactly like I thought they would.

Three Thousand Years of Longing
2022
**½
Director: George Miller
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, Aamito Lagum, Sabrina Dhowre, Nicolas Mouawad, Ece Yüksel, Matteo Bocelli, Lachy Hulme, Megan Gale, Burcu Gölgedar

Alithea, a middle-aged scholar on a work trip to Istanbul, unleashes the Djinn trapped inside an antique bottle. While Alithea contemplates her three wishes, the Djinn describes his 3,000-year history through three separate stories. George Miller's romantic grown-up fantasy is based on A. S. Byatt's 1994 short story The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye. This is a silly and baffling film, and I'm not sure what to make of it. It's all about storytelling, but the three One Thousand and One Night stories are forgettable and drenched in second rate digital effects. As the Djinn recounts his past, Swinton and Elba spend half of the runtime in a hotel room dressed in bathrobes. There was to be no Academy Award for best costume design.

Thor: Love and Thunder
2022
**½
Director: Taika Waititi
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Jaimie Alexander, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe, Natalie Portman

In his fourth feature, Thor must deal with the return of Jane Foster, his old flame who now wields Mjolnir, and Gorr, a vengeful father who has vowed to kill all gods with the help of Necrosword. Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok (2017) injected a healthy amount of wacky humour into the franchise, and for many people it represents the highpoint of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In his second movie behind the camera, Waititi ups the comedy ante and turns the god of thunder into a total buffoon. While the bad guy is butchering gods and kidnapping children, and the ex-girlfriend is dying of cancer, Waititi cannot get through one scene without undercutting it with jokes. The cringy and awful Council of Gods scene takes silliness to a whole new level. When everything's a joke, nothing ends up being funny or moving. This tone-deaf superhero movie delivers passable two hours, but it doesn't seem to add anything to the overarching MCU storyline. With four songs, a renamed character, and background props, it looks like Guns n' Roses sponsored the production.

Tár
2022
***
Director: Todd Field
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong, Zethphan Smith-Gneist

Lydia Tár is a world-renowned conductor and composer. As she prepares to promote her autobiography and lead the recording of Mahler's Fifth Symphony in Berlin, she faces accusations of misconduct. Todd Field's subtle psychological drama starts with two important but overlong scenes. Lydia gives a long interview about her life and career, and then holds a confrontational lecture at Juilliard about separating art from the artist. These scenes and the first half in general spends an inordinate amount of time on snobbish academic discussions about classical music. The superior second half gets more personal, as it delves into Lydia's narcissism, vanity, and abuse of power. It goes without saying that Cate Blanchett is excellent through it all.

The Stranger
2022
***
Director: Thomas M. Wright
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Jada Alberts, Cormac Wright, Steve Mouzakis, Matthew Sunderland, Fletcher Humphrys, Alan Dukes, Ewen Leslie, Gary Waddell

Henry Teague meets a man on the bus who may have work for him in a shady criminal organisation. In reality, the man is an undercover police officer and Teague is the main suspect in a kidnapping and killing of a 13-year-old boy. Thomas M. Wright's moody crime drama was inspired by The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe's Killer by Kate Kyriacou, which chronicles a 2003 murder case in Australia. The film is atmospheric but slow-paced, and the good but extremely understated performances by Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris do not help.

Spiderhead
2022
**½
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, Jurnee Smollett, Mark Paguio, Tess Haubrich, Angie Milliken, Stephen Tongun, Daniel Reader, Sam Delich, BeBe Bettencourt

The remote Spiderhead Penitentiary and Research Center houses a small number of inmates, who have volunteered to act as medical test subjects in order to reduce their sentence. Is the brilliant and ridiculously handsome head scientist Steve Abnesti a good guy or a bad guy? Like the recent Swan Song, this psychological thriller features an interesting science fiction concept, but the resulting film feels like an overstretched episode of Black Mirror. As the story builds momentum, some plot holes begin to appear. Based on a short story Escape from Spiderhead by George Saunders.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2
2022
**
Director: Jeff Fowler
Cast: James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Adam Pally, Shemar Moore, Idris Elba, Jim Carrey

While Sonic makes a new friend in Tails, a two-tailed fox, Dr. Robotnik exploits Knuckles, a bad-tempered alien who is looking for the Master Emerald, an object of great power. The surprisingly entertaining Sonic the Hedgehog delivered 90 minutes of good-natured silliness. This overlong and mechanical sequel, where the characters zoom around searching for a jewel, offers a staunch reminder that this franchise is based on a video game after all. The laughs are few and far apart, and only when Jim Carrey is onscreen.

Sisu
2022
****
Director: Jalmari Helander
Cast: Jorma Tommila, Aksel Hennie, Jack Doolan, Paul Anderson, Mimosa Willamo, Onni Tommila

Like Rare Exports and Big Game, Jalmari Helander's third feature is set in the north of Finland. During the Lapland War in 1944, Finnish war hero turned gold prospector Aatami Korpi tries to mind his own business, but he is forced into a clash with a retreating Nazi squad. This is an entertaining and deliberately paced action drama, which doesn't outstay its welcome. The movie's brutal violence, Spaghetti Western esthetics, and cartoonish Nazis owe a thing or two to Quentin Tarantino, although he surely would have handed in a movie almost twice as long. Helander stretches credibility to the maximum, but provides an explanation in the dialogue: The hero is not immortal, he just refuses to die. However, the disappointing fact that the German characters speak English cannot be explained.

See How They Run
2022
***½
Director: Tom George
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson, Reece Shearsmith, Harris Dickinson, David Oyelowo, Charlie Cooper, Shirley Henderson

While the 1953 London stage adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap plays to packed houses, an abrasive Hollywood director, who is planning an unfaithful film version, ends up murdered backstage. Tom George's feature debut is a disposable but entertaining comedic murder mystery, which doesn't overstay its welcome. Mark Chappell's cleverly constructed screenplay mixes the events of the stage play, the hypothetical screenplay, and the onscreen murder case. Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan give very likeable performances as the Inspector and Constable on the case.

Scream
2022
*
Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Cast: Melissa Barrera, Mason Gooding, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Marley Shelton, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Neve Campbell

A new person puts on the Ghostface mask and embarks on a murder spree in Woodsboro. This time, the events revolve around two sisters, the older one of whom is the daughter of the original killer. The first Scream was an entertaining slasher movie, which was built around the idea how predictable and formulaic slasher movies are. So far, so clever. After three forgettable sequels, we get a trite and incredibly lazy requel (reboot + sequel), which scrapes the bottom of the barrel by being built around the idea how predictable and formulaic the Scream series is. It lost me in the opening scene, which offers a self-referential recreation of the iconic cold open of the 1996 original. Once again we are reminded how the killer operates, and after multiple mechanical and mind-numbing scenes we realise that everything played out just the way we were told in the beginning. Since this is a reboot, the remaining members of the original cast obviously return for cameos. The sixth episode is in production.

RRR
2022
*****
Director: S. S. Rajamouli
Cast: N. T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan, Ajay Devgn, Alia Bhatt, Shriya Saran,Samuthirakani, Ray Stevenson, Alison Doody, Olivia Morris

In 1920, two men who are both undercover in Delhi become great friends. Bheem is a Gond tribe warrior who hopes to find and rescue his sister from colonial authorities. Raju is an Indian Imperial Police officer who attempts to stamp out a potential threat against the Crown. S. S. Rajamouli's 3-hour action epic is something else. It tells a fictional story about two real-life people, which offers romance and bromance, musical numbers, and over-the-top action set pieces. The visual effects for the animals may not look that convincing, and the film perhaps doesn't need to be this long, but these are minor quibbles when there is so much verve and imagination on the screen. "Naatu Naatu" won an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and the dance off scene it appears in is pure joy.

Pearl
2022
****
Director: Ti West
Cast: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro, Alistair Sewell

During the Spanish Flu in 1918, Pearl lives on a Texas farm with her overbearing mother and catatonic father, while her husband is fighting in World War I. Pearl, who seems to take pleasure in inflicting pain, hopes to become a star and escape her miserable existence. This prequel tells the origin story of the villain of X, and I must say I much prefer the psychological horror here to the slasher pastiche in the original. It tells an original and twisted version of The Wizard of Oz (1939) and features a wonderfully nasty and vulnerable protagonist. Mia Goth, who co-wrote the script with Ti West, is excellent in the lead. Her extended confessional monologue towards the end is mesmerising.

The Pale Blue Eye
2022
**
Director: Scott Cooper
Cast: Christian Bale, Harry Melling, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Robert Duvall, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey, Simon McBurney, Hadley Robinson, Timothy Spall

Augustus Landor is a retired detective and widower whose daughter ran away. In October 1830, he is summoned to West Point Military Academy when a cadet is found hanged and his heart cut out. Landor gets help from another cadet by the name of Edgar Allan Poe. This murder mystery takes a real-life historical figure and places him in a fictional set-up. Although the film is beautifully shot, staged, and acted, it ultimately delivers a very disappointing shaggy dog story. Based on Louis Bayard's 2006 novel.

The Outfit
2022
**½
Director: Graham Moore
Cast: Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O'Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Simon Russell Beale, Alan Mehdizadeh

In 1956, an English cutter runs a tailor shop in a Chicago neighbourhood controlled by an Irish mob. Things come to a head one night when one of the gangsters takes refuge in the shop with a gunshot wound to his stomach. Graham Moore, whose screenplay for The Imitation Game won an Academy Award, makes his directorial debut with this very modest two-room drama. In fact, his film is so monotonously stagy and dialogue-driven that it wouldn't make any difference if I watched it with my eyes closed. The script includes twists and turns, but not much credibility. The performances range from good (Rylance and Deutch) to bad (Flynn and O'Brien).

The Northman
2022
***
Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Gustav Lindh, Ethan Hawke, Björk, Willem Dafoe

"I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir." These are the often repeated words of Prince Amleth, who witnesses his bastard uncle Fjölnir kill his father and abduct his mother. The Witch and The Lighthouse were highly original and unusual period films. In his third feature, Robert Eggers turns Norse mythology into a Viking action epic. The resulting film is entertaining, well-acted, visually stunning, but a bit silly, to be honest.

Nope
2022
***
Director: Jordan Peele
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Keith David, Wrenn Smith, Barbie Ferreira, Donna Mills

O.J. and his sister Em take over the family's horse wrangling business in California. Their father died under odd circumstances, and the mysterious and menacing occurrences continue around their farm. Jordan Peele's third feature is a horror-tinged science fiction film, which takes its sweet time to get going. It deals with the cost of animal exploitation and our obsession with capturing footage of spectacular events. In fact, it deals with many more ideas, but half of them don't seem to lead anywhere. Like Us and other intricate mysteries like Signs, Peele's latest is intriguing as long we don't know what's going on, but quite silly and underwhelming once we do.

Morbius
2022
*
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Cast: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, Tyrese Gibson, Corey Johnson

Brilliant but sickly scientist Michael Morbius uses experimental treatment involving bat DNA to cure himself, which transforms him into a bloodthirsty vampire. But no worries, the hero only drinks artificial or bad guy blood. Morbius exists in the same universe as Venom, and his origin story is as messy and rushed as Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The good news is that the whole thing is over in 100 minutes. The bad news is that this is a very generic comic book movie where stuff happens, but none of it seems to make sense or serve a purpose. Many of the crucial events happen off-screen and the only humour to be found is the unintentional kind. For the umpteenth time in the Marvel world, the villain is an evil version of the hero.

Moonfall
2022
**
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, Donald Sutherland

10 years after their Space Shuttle mission went mysteriously wrong, two former astronauts team up with an amateur scientist when the Moon leaves its orbit and heads towards Earth. While they are saving the planet, their family members cannot decide if they should run for their lives or stop and view the spectacle. Roland Emmerich has become known for his disaster and science fiction spectacles, which are often dumb and sometimes entertaining, and now he attempts to combine these two genres into one movie. The story starts with scenes of destruction, which are reminiscent of The Day After Tomorrow and 2012. The second half, on the other hand, is closer to Stargate and Independence Day. On the whole, this is a weird, occasionally confusing, and frequently stupid mishmash, which doesn't really work. That explains why the movie was such a massive box office flop.

Minions: The Rise of Gru
2022
***
Director: Kyle Balda
Cast: Steve Carell, Pierre Coffin, Taraji P. Henson, Lucy Lawless, Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Julie Andrews, Alan Arkin, Michelle Yeoh

In 1976, an 11-year-old Gru wants to join the Vicious 6, but instead he ends up being pursued by the very same supervillain team. The sequel to Minions is the fifth release in the Despicable Me universe. Gru has been a reformed villain for most of the main franchise, so his origin story seems pointless at this point. However, this short and adequately entertaining animation offers another scattershot collection of gags. The Minions remain irresistibly goofy characters.

Metsurin tarina (The Woodcutter Story)
2022
*
Director: Mikko Myllylahti
Cast: Jarkko Lahti, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Iivo Tuuri, Marc Gassot, Ulla Tapaninen, Katja Küttner, Armi Toivanen, Matti Onnismaa, Wanda Dubiel

Pepe lives a content life in Finnish Lapland, until one day he loses his job at the sawmill, and soon after, his wife, mother, and best friend. In his feature debut, Mikko Myllylahti takes all the worst aspects of his compatriot Aki Kaurismäki's work and tells an unoriginal story about miserable working class people who play no active role in their own lives. Pepe is another robotic and emotionless character who passively observes as misfortune piles up. The second half takes him on a surreal and episodic journey with his son, but this insufferable and overly stylised film lost me long before that.

Metal Lords
2022
**
Director: Peter Sollett
Cast: Jaeden Martell, Isis Hainsworth, Adrian Greensmith, Brett Gelman, Noah Urrea, Joe Manganiello, Sufe Bradshaw, Katie O'Grady, Michelle Mao

Hunter is a metalhead who convinces Kevin to play drums in his band. Now all they need is a bassist so they can take part in the school's Battle of the Bands. This comedic coming-of-age tale has a promising premise, but the story is formulaic, the characters are charmless, and the jokes are not landing. Hunter, the biggest asshole in the movie, has a long list of rules about what constitutes as being metal. To me it is about being real and authentic, and not about conforming to a set of rules, and the same should apply to the movie itself. It's all set in high school, so it must feature the obligatory bullies. However, these scenes are completely pointless because the victim is the biggest bully. The highlight of the movie is a scene which features cameos from real-life heavy metal musicians, although it makes no sense that they appear to Kevin, who wouldn't recognise them.

The Menu
2022
****
Director: Mark Mylod
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Hong Chau, Janet McTeer, Reed Birney, Judith Light, John Leguizamo

A group of people take a boat to Hawthorn Island to enjoy a highly exclusive six course meal meticulously planned by chef Julian Slowik. His menu includes some personal touches and shocking surprises. This deliciously nasty black comedy makes fun of arrogant chefs, pretentious foodies, self-important food critics, and ostentatious rich people. It also offers a critique of celebrity culture and social inequality. Whether you enjoy the entire menu on offer is up to your personal taste. Anya Taylor-Joy gives another compelling performance as a guest who was not meant to be there and Ralph Fiennes is wondefully smug as the celebrated chef who has lost the love for his craft.

Men
2022
****
Director: Alex Garland
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Zak Rothera-Oxley, Paapa Essiedu, Gayle Rankin, Sarah Twomey, Sonoya Mizuno

After a traumatic breakup, Harper retreats to a rented country house to process her husband's apparent suicide. Around the village, she encounters men, all of whom treat her with varying levels of hostility. Alex Garland's intriguing and allegorical horror film deals with Harper's deep-seated grief and guilt. The village men, all of them played by Rory Kinnear, appear to represent her dead husband's personality traits or, if you will, different forms of toxic masculinity. As if this wasn't abstract enough, Garland fills the screen with rich religious imagery (fertility figures, forbidden fruits, etc.). The graphic last third will definitely divide the audience. Nevertheless, the performances are great and the visuals are impressive.

Master Gardener
2022
***
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Quintessa Swindell, Esai Morales, Eduardo Losan, Victoria Hill, Amy Le, Erika Ashley, Jared Bankens, Matt Mercurio, Rick Cosnett

Narvel Roth is a methodical gardener who has a shady past in a neo-Nazi group. His employer and occasional lover asks him take her orphaned mixed-race grandniece on as an apprentice. Paul Schrader's quiet and meditative drama forms an unofficial trilogy with First Reformed and The Card Counter, and in terms of quality, it lands somewhere between the two. This is an interesting and well-acted film (Sigourney Weaver gives a deliciously nasty performance as the rich widow), but Schrader treads very familiar ground, until his story and characters stop making any sense in the last third.

The Man from Toronto
2022
**
Director: Patrick Hughes
Cast: Kevin Hart, Woody Harrelson, Kaley Cuoco, Jasmine Mathews, Lela Loren, Pierson Fodé, Jencarlos Canela, Ellen Barkin

Teddy Jackson is full of energy and industry, but he seems to mess up every promising idea with his ineptitude. During a weekend break with his wife, he is mistaken for a ruthless hitman/enforcer only known as the Man from Toronto. This formulaic buddy action comedy brings together two very different characters; one is a bumbling nincompoop who is black, the other is a grumpy and serious tough guy who is white. The premise is somewhat promising, but Hart and Harrelson lack chemistry and the movie is never as funny as it thinks it is.

M3GAN
2022
**½
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng, Jenna Davis, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Stephane Garneau-Monten, Lori Dungey

When robotics engineer Gemma cannot connect with her 8-year-old niece Cady, who is now in her care, she gives her M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android), an overly protective A.I.-powered robot doll. Akela Cooper's script mixes elements from I, Robot, A.I.– Artificial Intelligence, and a number of creepy doll horror movies. The story offers some nice satire on modern tech-dependent parenting, but otherwise it is maddeningly predictable. Once we see M3GAN's emotionless face, it is clear what is going to happen, and once we are introduced to the rest of the characters, it is obvious who will not have a happy ending.

The Lost City
2022
***
Director: Adam Nee, Aaron Nee
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Brad Pitt, Héctor Aníbal, Thomas Forbes-Johnson, Oscar Nunez

When a smart but reclusive romance-adventure novelist is kidnapped by a nasty treasure-hunting millionaire, her book's slow-witted cover model goes out to rescue her. This entertaining adventure comedy by the Nee brothers was heavily influenced by Romancing the Stone, the beloved 1984 classic about another lonely novelist who finds romance while trudging through the jungle with a man who couldn't be more different than she is. The movie is funny, and it sometimes fulfils and other times subverts expectations, although there are certainly no surprises in the will-they-won't-they stakes. Brad Pitt and Daniel Radcliffe appear in amusing supporting roles.

Living
2022
**½
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Cast: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke, Adrian Rawlins, Hubert Burton, Oliver Chris, Michael Cochrane

Mr. Williams is a drab and lifeless County Council bureaucrat, who must reassess his life choices when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Bill Nighy, as Mr. Williams, gives a dignified and understated performance, but the drama around him is as slow, dreary, and dull as the protagonist. The story is set in 1953, perhaps because this is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1952 film Ikiru.

Lightyear
2022
***½
Director: Angus MacLane
Cast: Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Taika Waititi, Dale Soules, James Brolin, Uzo Aduba, Mary McDonald-Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Alisha Hawthorne, Angus MacLane, Bill Hader

A Star Command exploration vessel is stuck on planet T'Kani Prime until a stable hyperspace fuel can be found. Buzz Lightyear, who blames himself for the deadlock, discovers that each of his 4-minute test flights causes a 4-year time dilation. The opening caption states that the Buzz Lightyear toy Andy got for his birthday in Toy Story (1995) was based on his favourite movie, which is this. Pixar's wonderful franchise about toys that come alive when the kids are not around had one sequel too many. This spin-off animation, which is not particularly funny, doesn't really have anything to do with the franchise, except that it provides an origin story for a fictional Space Ranger who inspired the toy. This is a perfectly entertaining and visually stunning space adventure, but why was it made and for who?

Kimi
2022
**½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Zoë Kravitz, Rita Wilson, India de Beaufort, Emily Kuroda, Byron Bowers, Derek DelGaudio, Betsy Brantley

Following an assault and the COVID-19 pandemic, Angela has become an agoraphobic hermit who works from home fixing code for the Kimi smart speaker. One day, she learns that someone's Kimi has recorded an assault and murder. Steven Sodenbergh's 90-minute film, which was scripted by David Koepp, has an intriguing high-tech set-up, but it quickly transforms into a predictable old-fashioned conspiracy thriller, in which an evil and omnipotent tech company will do anything to cover up their wrongdoings. In the process, the heroine, whose hair seems to be bright blue only so she can't hide from her pursuers, turns from a recluse to a ridiculous action hero.

Jurassic World Dominion
2022
**½
Director: Colin Trevorrow
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Isabella Sermon, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, BD Wong, Omar Sy

Four years after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, humans and dinosaurs attempt to coexist on Earth. That sounds like an intriguing premise, but what we get is the same old story about dinosaurs wreaking havoc in an enclosed area. Biosyn Genetics, an evil corporation that messes with nature, has establishes a dinosaur preserve in the Italian Dolomites. Claire and Owen travel there for a rescue mission, while Ellie and Alan (from the original Jurassic Park) are there to find proof of genetically engineered locusts. The third and final episode in the series brings together characters from the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World franchises for one last showdown. Although the movie is not as awful as its reputation would suggest, it is dumb and frustratingly predictable. The usual close calls and near escapes seem pointless, knowing that during the six movies the dinosaurs are yet to kill a character who didn't deserve to die.

Jerry & Marge Go Large
2022
***
Director: David Frankel
Cast: Bryan Cranston, Annette Bening, Rainn Wilson, Larry Wilmore, Michael McKean, Ann Harada, Jake McDorman, Anna Camp

Jerry is a bored pensioner who is good with numbers but bad with people. When he discovers a loophole in the WinFall lottery, Jerry and his wife Marge hope to exploit it to revive their dying community. This is a funny, affable, and warmly acted comedy drama, but do not expect any surprising twists or high dramatic stakes in this feelgood affair. The fact-based script by Brad Copeland is based on a 2018 HuffPost article by Jason Fagone.

Into the Ice
2022
***½
Director: Lars Ostenfeld
Cast:

This Norwegian documentary follows glaciologists who explore the Greenland ice sheet to assess the effects of climate change. Jason Box leads the film crew across the hostile surface and Alun Hubbard takes them down to a massive moulin. Lars Ostenfeld's images are mesmerising but his ability to weave a compelling narrative around them is not always on the same level.

Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front)
2022
**½
Director: Edward Berger
Cast: Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Brühl, Sebastian Hülk, Aaron Hilmer, Moritz Klaus, Adrian Grünewald, Edin Hasanovic, Thibault de Montalembert

In spring 1917, 17-year-old Paul Bäumer and three of his classmates volunteer for the Imperial German Army. However, the first night in the trenches is enough to shatter their idealistic view of the Great War. This war drama is based on Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel, which was previously filmed in 1930 and 1979. This German adaptation drops almost all of the character backstories, takes some liberties with the actual history, and focuses mostly on the gory trench warfare. The battle scenes are harrowingly realistic and the anti-war message is clear, but the film doesn't really offer anything I haven't seen in other recent releases set in this period, such as 1917, Tolkien, and War Horse. Nevertheless, the film won four Academy Awards, which include best cinematography, production design, and score.

Häät ennen hautajaisia
2022
*½
Director: Kari Ketonen
Cast: Iina Kuustonen, Antti Luusuaniemi, Pihla Penttinen, Risto Tuorila, Kaija Pakarinen, Ella Lahdenmäki

When Joanna, a single wedding planner, learns that she has terminal cancer, she decides to marry Sakke, a socially awkward funeral director she just met. Kari Ketonen's directorial debut is, strictly speaking, a romantic comedy. However, I found nothing romantic about this fake relationship between two disengaged people, and I probably chuckled once during the entire 90 minutes. In terms of plotting, dialogue and characters, there wasn't one moment when I felt like the film depicted real people in real-life situations.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
2022
***½
Director: Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson
Cast: Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Burn Gorman, Ron Perlman, John Turturro, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton

Stricken by grief, woodcarver Geppetto cuts down a pine tree and carves a wooden puppet name Pinocchio, who is brought to life by a wood sprite. Carlo Collodi's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio has been adapted to the screen dozens of times since it was published in 1883. This version is dark and not meant for small children like Disney's 1940 animation. Guillermo del Toro's stop motion animation sets the book's events in Fascist Italy, which means that it offers a mix of fascism and fairy tale elements, like Pan's Labyrinth. The film is a bit heavy-going in the first half, as the wide-eyed Pinocchio is susceptible to everyone's influence. It doesn't help that Alexandre Desplat's songs are bland and forgettable. However, the story does build to a moving and multi-layered portrayal of the bond between a parent and child. The film's rough visual look was inspired by Gris Grimly's illustrations in the book's 2002 edition. An Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature.

The Gray Man
2022
**
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick, Regé-Jean Page, Wagner Moura, Julia Butters, Dhanush, Alfre Woodard, Billy Bob Thornton

An unnamed prisoner is recruited as an assassin for the CIA's Sierra program. Several years later, someone from within the agency wants to end the program and eliminate the existing Sierra agents. This boring action movie cuts right to the chase. It introduces a skilled but emotionless hero we couldn't care less about. More than 30 minutes in, we suddenly get a flashback which attempts and fails to give the protagonist some human-like qualities. The Russo brothers directed some enthralling action in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, but here the set pieces range from mediocre to incomprehensible. The main issue, however, is that the script is utterly unoriginal. Ryan Gosling gives another stoic lead performance and Chris Evans fails to shine as a one-note villain. This is based on a book series by Mark Greaney, and a sequel is obviously in the works.

The Good Nurse
2022
****
Director: Tobias Lindholm
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Eddie Redmayne, Nnamdi Asomugha, Kim Dickens, Noah Emmerich, Malik Yoba, Maria Dizzia

Amy is a single mother with a heart condition who works as an ICU nurse at a New Jersey hospital. When one of her patients unexpectedly dies, the detectives on the case set their sights on her new colleague, Charles. This harrowing real-life story is based on The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder by Charles Graeber. The screenplay by Krysty Wilson-Cairns distills this scenario into a compelling no-nonsense thriller, which manages to avoid the usual genre tropes. Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne both give stellar performances.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
2022
***½
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista

A tech billionaire hosts a murder mystery game on his private island in Greece for a group of friends and business associates. Master detective Benoit Blanc is neither, but he also received an invitation. Knives Out was a disposable but entertaining Agatha Christie pastiche, which was loved by critics and audience. The first of the planned sequels is another enjoyable and delightfully funny murder mystery, which offers plenty of twists and a lovely cast.

Fresh
2022
**½
Director: Mimi Cave
Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Sebastian Stan, Jonica T. Gibbs, Charlotte Le Bon, Andrea Bang, Dayo Okeniyi, Brett Dier

Noa is a young woman who is frustrated with the dating scene. One day she meets Mr. Seemingly Right in a grocery store, but he is not the man he appears to be. Structurally Mimi Cave's directorial debut is bold like Takeshi Miike's Audition. It starts as a cute and sweet romantic comedy, but after a 30-minute cold open, it turns into something completely different. Apart from the cleverly constructed script (by Lauryn Kahn), good performances, and tasty twist, this turns out to be a formulaic and predictable thriller.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
2022
**
Director: David Yates
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Callum Turner, Jessica Williams, Katherine Waterston, Mads Mikkelsen

The third and hopefully final episode in the Fantastic Beasts series offers marginal improvement on the dreadful second film, The Crimes of Grindelwald. At least this time an actual fantastic beast (Qilin) plays a key role as Gellert Grindelwald (now played by Mads Mikkelsen) seeks political power in the wizarding world. His former lover Albus Dumbledore asks Newt Scamander to lead a team that aims to confound the dark wizard. J.K. Rowling, who wrote the first two episodes alone, now shares the writing credit with Steve Kloves, who adapted all but one of the seven Harry Potter books, but the end result is another overlong movie comprised of inconsequential scenes. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them introduced a cast of characters, who have struggled to find a meaningful part to play in the subsequent two releases. Newt leads the team, but what does he actually do? Jacob's contribution is to wave a fake wand in one scene. Credence walks around brooding and wondering who his daddy is. Queenie gives uncomfortable looks in Grindelwald's gang, and that's it. Her sister Tina, Newt's love interest, is not involved at all because she is busy. After three releases, it is still unclear to me what the overall story of this franchise is.

Everything Everywhere All at Once
2022
****½
Director: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis

Just as her family's laundromat business, her marriage, and her relationship with her daughter are in tatters, Chinese American immigrant Evelyn Wang learns that each of her life choices creates a parallel universe. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's second feature is a brilliantly inventive mixture of wacky comedy, kick-ass action, mindbending science fiction, and moving family drama. The relentless pace, genre hopping, movie references, and visual fireworks can get exhausting at times, but the complicated multiverse is ultimately just a tool for Evelyn to discover the best version of herself. Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis won Academy Awards for their performances, and the Daniels for writing, directing, and producing.

Enola Holmes 2
2022
***
Director: Harry Bradbeer
Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, David Thewlis, Louis Partridge, Susie Wokoma, Adeel Akhtar, Sharon Duncan-Brewster

The sequel to Enola Holmes continues in the same enjoyably light-hearted tone as the original. Enola has started her own detective agency, but the only case she is able to get is the mysterious disappearance of a young woman who worked at the match factory. Jack Thorne's screenplay, this time not based on Nancy Springer's novel, was inspired by the matchgirls' strike of 1888, but that's as close as this story gets to dealing with 19th century reality. Some films truthfully depict the racism and sexism that existed in the past, but this woke young adult series denies that such thing ever existed. The film is entertaining, but in all honesty feels like an extended episode of a detective show on TV. Nevertheless, Millie Bobby Brown gives another likeable performance in the title role.

Empire of Light
2022
***
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Monica Dolan, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke, Toby Jones, Colin Firth

This nostalgic drama centres around the fictional Empire Cinema on the Margate seafront in the beginning of the 1980s. Hilary is a lonely bi-polar 40-something, who is in a loveless sex affair with her boss. She finds a genuine connection in Stephen, a young black man who joins the staff. The film is beautifully shot by Roger Deakins and wonderfully acted by Colman and Ward, in particular. However, the first-time solo screenwriter Sam Mendes doesn't do as well. The mismatched couple lacks credibility and chemistry, and Mendes' attempts to deal with racism are extremely heavy-handed. It's all meant as a love letter to the magic of movies, but sadly this is no match to Cinema Paradiso.

Emily the Criminal
2022
***½
Director: John Patton Ford
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Gina Gershon, Jonathan Avigdori, Bernardo Badillo, John Billingsley, Brandon Sklenar

Emily is a college dropout who struggles to pay back her massive student loan. She decides to take part in a credit card scam, but are the gains worth the risk? The first half of John Patton Ford's feature debut takes a scathing look at the darker side of American capitalism. Emily's transition to a life of crime feels thoroughly believable, but the conclusion is pure wish fulfilment fantasy. The one with the biggest plans predictably falls hardest. Nevertheless, this is a short, snappy, and entertaining film, which doesn't outstay its welcome.

Emancipation
2022
**
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Will Smith, Ben Foster, Charmaine Bingwa, Steven Ogg, Mustafa Shakir, Jayson Warner Smith, Gilbert Owuor

Although President Lincoln has issued the Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery in January 1863, it's business as usual in Louisiana. A Haitian man named Peter and two other slaves flee a plantation and hope to navigate through the swamps to the Union Army in Baton Rouge. Antoine Fuqua's film offers an awkward and implausible mix of historical drama and action entertainment. The main character is loosely based on a former slave, whose scarred back was captured in a famous photograph. However, I doubt the real Peter wrestled any alligators on his way to freedom. No matter how deep Peter walks into the swamp, he always seems be just a few feet away from a path where the slave catchers wait on horseback. William N. Collage's script also has some structural issues. Just when I thought the story was over, there is another long and extremely violent Civil War section to sit through. Robert Richardson's washed-out visuals get boring pretty fast.

Elvis
2022
***
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr, David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Luke Bracey, Dacre Montgomery

Baz Luhrmann's Elvis Presley biopic is narrated by Colonel Tom Parker, the star's duplicitous manager who famously exploited his client throughout his career. The story focuses on three key moments in the singer's career: the breakthrough in the 1950s, the 68 Comeback Special, and the final years in Las Vegas. The film is long, yet it feels rushed and sanitised. Anything good that happens is due to Elvis' brilliance, anything bad that happens is someone else's fault. Amongst all of this, Priscilla barely registers as a character. Luhrmann clearly wants to focus on Elvis as a brilliant performer. The musical performances are admittedly impressive and there is no doubt that Austin Butler gives a very strong lead performance.

Don't Worry Darling
2022
**½
Director: Olivia Wilde
Cast: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Chris Pine, Sydney Chandler, Nick Kroll, Asif Ali, Kate Berlant, Timothy Simmons

Alice and her husband Jack live in the idyllic desert suburb of Victory in what appears to be the 1950s. While Jack goes out every day to his mysterious job, Alice tends to their home but gradually begins to suspect that everything is not as it seems. A seemingly perfect American suburb hiding dark secrets is a familiar theme from various films, such as Blue Velvet, Revolutionary Road, The Truman Show, and American Beauty. It is clear from the start that this stylish feminist thriller has a twist up its sleeve, but when the reveal comes, everything falls apart and the end titles roll before anything is explained properly. Nevertheless, Florence Pugh gives another terrific performance, which is in stark contrast to Harry Styles, who clearly is not an actor. The scene in which Styles dances for five minutes on stage is baffling and pointless.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
2022
***½
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Xochitl Gomez, Michael Stuhlbarg, Rachel McAdams

Following his first encounter with the multiverse in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange meets America Chavez, a teenager who is being hunted for her ability to travel between dimensions. Sam Raimi, who directed the original Spider-Man trilogy, returns to the Marvel franchise, and this time he can display the skills he honed in the horror genre with movies like Evil Dead 2 and Drag Me to Hell. This enjoyably unusual MCU movie features witches, zombies, and a high body count.

Decision to Leave
2022
***½
Director: Park Chan-wook
Cast: Tang Wei, Park Hae-il, Lee Jung-hyun, Go Kyung-pyo, Park Yong-woo, Kim Shin-young, Jung Yi-seo, Jung Young-Sook, Yoo Seung-mok, Park Jeong-min

A married detective investigates a death of a man who fell from a mountaintop, and begins to fall in love with the man’s enigmatic widow, who may have killed her husband. Park Chan-wook's mystery about duty and desire is visually striking and inventively directed, and it features two strong performances. However, the film is long and not always credible. I also wasn't adequately swept away by the central romance to appreciate the ending.


Death on the Nile
2022
**½
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Tom Bateman, Annette Bening, Kenneth Branagh, Russell Brand, Ali Fazal, Dawn French, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Rose Leslie, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo, Jennifer Saunders, Letitia Wright

In 1937, Hercule Poirot joins a luxurious cruise down the Nile with a group of duplicitous people who have gathered to celebrate the wedding of a wealthy heiress. Like the title suggests, one of the passengers is murdered. Kenneth Branagh's second Agatha Christie adaptation offers marginal improvement on Murder on the Orient Express. This is a good-looking but extremely mechanical murder mystery, which explains me the twists and turns rather than make me feel like I'm immersed in the story. As it's 2022, the script predictably adds racial and sexual diversity to the characters, even if it doesn't fit in the historical context. As if the film is not long enough, Branagh kicks off with a 10-minute origin story for Poirot's moustache.

Causeway
2022
**½
Director: Lila Neugebauer
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Linda Emond, Jayne Houdyshell, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Russell Harvard, Fred Weller

While Lynsey attempts to recover at home in New Orleans after suffering a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan, she befriends James, another mentally and physically scarred individual. Lila Neugebauer's feature debut looks good, and Lawrence and Henry give very respectable performances in the lead. The credits list three screnwriters but, in all honesty, this minimalistic and incidental mood piece doesn't have much of a script at all. Lynsey's terrible injury plays no part after the first fifteen minutes and the film never goes more than skin-deep into the characters.

Bullet Train
2022
**½
Director: David Leitch
Cast: Brad Pitt, Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Andrew Koji, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michael Shannon, Benito A. Martínez Ocasio, Sandra Bullock

A number of gangsters and assassins come together on board a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto. Some of them are seeking revenge while others are looking for a briefcase, which belongs to a famously ruthless crime boss. This action comedy feels like one of Guy Ritchie's cockney gangster flicks set onboard Snowpiercer. Zak Olkewicz adapted Kōtarō Isaka's novel to the screen, but he has replaced almost all of the Japanese characters with American, English, Russian or Mexican ones. In fact, the locals don't seem to feature even as passengers on the train, which runs empty through Japan. This is a light, brisk, and easily digestible movie, but I didn't find it funny or really care about any of its lowlife characters. David Leitch relies heavily on CGI effects, which look surprisingly poor.

The Bob's Burgers Movie
2022
***½
Director: Loren Bouchard, Bernard Derriman
Cast: H. Jon Benjamin, Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman, Larry Murphy, John Roberts, Kristen Schaal, Zach Galifianakis, Kevin Kline

The Belcher family - Bob, Linda, and their three children - run a struggling burger joint. Things go from bad to worse when a massive sinkhole, with a dead body in it, appears in front of their restaurant. This feature length animation is based on the wonderful Bob's Burgers, which returns for its 13th season in the second half of 2022. Much like The Simpsons Movie, this is an enjoyable movie (with maybe one too many songs), but these characters and their stories work better in short format.

Blue Jean
2022
***½
Director: Georgia Oakley
Cast: Rosy McEwen, Kerrie Hayes, Lucy Halliday, Lydia Page, Stacy Abalogun, Amy Booth-Steele, Aoife Kennan, Scott Turnbull, Farrah Cave, Lainey Shaw, Izzy Neish, Becky Lindsay

In 1983, Margaret Thatcher's government introduced Section 28, which prohibited the promotion of homosexuality. In the late 1980s, Jean, a closeted PE teacher at a Tyneside school in Newcastle, feels compelled to live a lie. Georgia Oakley's directorial debut sheds light on a dark period in British history. I might be tempted to ask why we must dwell on the depressing past when the present is thankfully much brighter. Nevertheless, Oakley's film tells a moving personal story and captures a grim slice of history. Rosy McEwen gives a very fine lead performance.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
2022
***½
Director: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Florence Kasumba, Dominique Thorne, Michaela Coel, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Martin Freeman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Angela Bassett

Following the death of T'Challa, Wakanda is under pressure to share their resources. When the CIA attempts to find vibranium deposits in the ocean, they incur the wrath of Talokan, an underwater kingdom ruled by Namor. Black Panther was not the most memorable MCU release, but it became a major milestone for black culture. After Chadwick Boseman's untimely death, the sequel must take the story forward without its hero, as T'Challa's baby sister Shuri takes the centre stage. The good news is that this is a perfectly entertaining (but needlessly long) superhero movie and a moving tribute to Boseman. Ruth Carter's costumes won an Academy Award. The visual effects look surprisingly poor.

Black Adam
2022
*½
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari, Quintessa Swindell, Pierce Brosnan, Bodhi Sabongui

As the good guys and the bad guys attempt to locate the Crown of Sabbac, an object of great power, in the modern day Kahndaq, they reawaken Teth-Adam, a former slave with the powers of Shazam!. The US government sends out Justice Society to deal with the situation. The 11th release in the DC Extended Universe is not able to revive this consistently underwhelming superhero franchise. Zack Snyder is no longer in charge, but this looks and feels like many of the previous movies in the series. The runtime is almost entirely dedicated to noisy, weightless, and stakeless CGI destruction. The script, if there is one, is inept and the characters are barely sketched. The main villain is forgettable and the Justice Society features four superheroes with impressive powers but zero personality. In fact, Hawkman, Atom Smasher, Cyclone, and Doctor Fate are just second rate versions of the well-established Marvel characters Falcon, Ant-Man, Storm, and Doctor Strange, respectively. Dwayne Johnson, usually such a charismatic screen presence, is a dull shadow of himself in this one.

Beast
2022
***
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Cast: Idris Elba, Sharlto Copley, Iyana Halley, Leah Jeffries, Naledi Mogadime

Just when the recently widowed Nate brings his two daughters to a safari in South Africa, where he originally met their mother, a rogue male lion has gone in an indiscriminate killing spree after its pride was killed by poachers. This silly and formulaic survival story is passable fun, and thankfully only 90 minutes long. As it turns out, the lion is indestructible and the humans are susceptible to making stupid decisions. Idris Elba is commanding in the lead and the CGI-created lions look surprisingly convincing.

The Batman
2022
**½
Director: Matt Reeves
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, Colin Farrell

It's only 10 years since Christian Bale wrapped up the Dark Knight trilogy and 5 years since Ben Affleck last played the Caped Crusader in Justice League. Both Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck are rumoured to play the character in the upcoming DC Extended Universe releases. And let's not forget that young Bruce Wayne also featured in Joker. Now Robert Pattinson puts on the batsuit for yet another Batman franchise, which is not connected to anything listed above. This stylish and assured but insanely long comic book movie fails to answer why the world needs another version of Batman? Once again, Bruce Wayne attempts to come to terms with the assassination of his parents, while a mysterious criminal known as the Riddler is eliminating the corrupt officials of rain-drenched Gotham City. Matt Reeves' epic is even darker than Christopher Nolan's trilogy, at least visually; I can remember just one scene shot in daylight.

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
2022
***½
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Iker Sanchez Solano, Jay O. Sanders, Andrés Almeida, Francisco Rubio, Rubén Zamora, Mar Carrera, Diego Tello de Meneses

Silverio Gama is a Mexican documentary filmmaker who is about to receive a prestigious award in the US, his adopted home country. A return to his country of birth throws him into an existential crisis. Alejandro González Iñárritu's deeply personal drama asks what it really means to be Mexican. Like Iñárritu, Silverio is a celebrated artist who has made a career outside Mexico, and he suffers simultaneously from success guilt and imposter syndrome. This is a long, arduous, and dreamlike film, which includes aome haunting images (starting with the opening scene), which are beautifully shot by Darius Khondji.

Barbarian
2022
**½
Director: Zach Cregger
Cast: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake, Kurt Braunohler

Tess arrives in her airbnb accomodation in the run-down part of Detroit, but finds it occupied by a man named Keith. Zach Cregger's directorial debut starts well, as Tess decides to stay in the house but is unsure if she can trust this stranger. However, when Cregger sends Tess down to the dark and creepy basement, the whole thing turns into a disappointingly familiar exercise in horror movie tropes.

The Banshees of Inisherin
2022
****
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Gary Lydon, Pat Shortt, Sheila Flitton, Bríd Ní Neachtain, Jon Kenny

While the Irish Civil War rages on the mainland, up to now things have been calmer on the island of Inisherin. Colm and Pádraic have been best friends for years, but one day Colm faces an existential crisis and decides to cut all ties to Pádraic. Martin McDonagh reunites with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, the stars of his overrated debut In Bruges. His fourth feature is a lovely character study, which is intermittently funny, tragic, and moving. McDonagh stretches the thin premise to the limit, but his film is beautifully shot and terrifically acted (Farrell and Keoghan are the standouts).

Babylon
2022
***½
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, P. J. Byrne, Lukas Haas, Olivia Hamilton, Max Minghella, Rory Scovel, Katherine Waterston, Tobey Maguire

Just as the movie industry is transitioning from silent to sound, a number of people attempt to make a life in Hollywood. These include a hard-working jack-of-all-trades Manny Torres, a supremely talented but uncontrollable rising star Nellie LeRoy, and a washed-out icon of the silent era Jack Conrad. Damien Chazelle's epic drama about the hedonistic excesses of Hollywood has no business being more than 3 hours long, although it looks and sounds fabulous and doesn't really include one dull moment. Chazelle's ambitious film includes some truly memorable set pieces, but also some cringey and blatantly over-the-top sequences. Too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. The most obvious reference point is Singin' in the Rain (1952), but it also draws influence from the likes of Sunset Boulevard, The Artist, and The Great Gatsby. Diego Calva gives a likeable breakthrough performance as Manny, but Margot Robbie's well-played character is exhausting, like Harley Quinn on steroids.


Avatar: The Way of Water
2022
***
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss

The sky people return to colonise Pandora and capture Jake Sully, the leader of the rebellion. To protect his family and the Omaticaya clan, Jake, Neytiri, and their four children flee their home and seek refuge with the Metkayina reef people. After Avatar became the highest grossing film of all time in 2010, James Cameron announced plans for four sequels. It took 13 years to release the first one. The film's visuals are once again immaculate. The motion capture technology is amazing and there isn't one shot above or under water that looks fake. However, it is astounding that it took five people to outline and three people to script a story, which just retreads the original film and pretty much resets at the end, again. The bad guys who died in the original return as human/Na'vi hybrids, and somehow two of the dead characters have left offspring. Instead of the rain forest, this time we spend the second act exploring the beauty of the underwater world and hunting for amrita, a rare and expensive anti-aging agent, which has taken the role of unobtanium. The gripping final hour, with callbacks to Titanic, is a great reminder that Cameron is still one of the finest action directors in the business. An Academy Award winner for best visual effects.

Armageddon Time
2022
***
Director: James Gray
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta, Jaylin Webb, Anthony Hopkins, Tovah Feldshuh, Ryan Sell, John Diehl, Jessica Chastain

In 1980 Queens, young Paul Graff finds himself torn between his friendship with an African-American classmate and the expectations of his Jewish family. Although James Gray's modest drama is heavily autobiographical, it tells a rather predictable coming-of-age story that deals with race, class, and privilege. The film is well-acted but the characters feel too familiar.

Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood
2022
*****
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Milo Coy, Jack Black, Glen Powell, Zachary Levi, Josh Wiggins, Bill Wise, Natalie L'Amoreaux, Jessica Brynn Cohen, Sam Chipman, Danielle Guilbot

Just as NASA are about to put a man on the moon in July 1969, 9-year-old Stanley joins a top secret Apollo 10½ mission, at least in his own head. Richard Linklater's nostalgic and loosely autobiographical film is an absolute delight. The story revolves around the space race, but for most parts this is a plotless but absolutely charming and detailed depiction of Stanley's childhood in Houston with his parents and five sibling. The film is a mix of full or partial animation and rotoscoped live-action footage, like Linklater's A Scanner Darkly.

Amsterdam
2022
***
Director: David O. Russell
Cast: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro

A doctor, a lawyer, and a nurse, who became good friends in World War 1, reunite 15 years later in New York City, where they attempt to figure out the conspiracy behind the murder of a retired general. David O. Russell's films are sometimes difficult to slot into a pre-defined category. This sympathetic but long and uneven period piece is a mix of slapstick comedy, war drama, and political thriller. This haphazard approach means that the end result is fresh, unpredictable, and tonally all over the place. The screenplay is partly inspired by a real-life conspiracy in 1933. The cast is amazing, and Christian Bale gives an unusually goofy and relaxed performance as Dr. Burt Berendsen.

Ambulance
2022
***
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Keir O'Donnell, Jackson White, Olivia Stambouliah, Moses Ingram, Colin Woodell, Cedric Sanders, A Martinez

Will is forced to ask money from his adoptive criminal brother Danny, who instead enlists him in a bank robbery. When the heist goes horribly wrong, the brothers end up carjacking an ambulance as their getaway vehicle. This remake of a 2005 Danish original is stupid and ridiculous, but probably the most entertaining directorial work in Michael Bay's career. The movie offers non-stop action, but as usual, it's at least 30 minutes too long. Bay's restless and exhausting visual style certainly doesn't make it feel any shorter. To call the camerawork hyperkinetic is a gross understatement. Jake Gyllenhaal's shouty performance seems to pay homage to Nicolas Cage in his heyday.

Against the Ice
2022
***
Director: Peter Flinth
Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Joe Cole, Charles Dance, Heida Reed, Gísli Örn Garðarsson, Sam Redford, Ed Speleers

In 1909, explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen and an inexperienced mechanic Iver Iversen embark on a dangerous quest across the northeast of Greenland to recover the records of an ill-fated expedition. This fact-based story was co-scripted by its star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Mikkelsen's book Two Against the Ice. This is a captivating survival drama, which deals with isolation and perseverance, but it is as much a story about its location as it is about the people who attempt to survive in it. In the last third, the film becomes a bit of a trudge when the men patiently wait for rescue and time seems to come to a standstill, so much so that as months turn to years, even hair and beard stop growing longer.

Aftersun
2022
****
Director: Charlotte Wells
Cast: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Sally Messham, Brooklyn Toulson, Spike Fearn, Harry Perdios, Ruby Thompson, Ethan James Smith, Kayleigh Coleman

Sophie reflects on a holiday trip to a Turkish resort, which she took with her father when she was 11 years old in the late 1990s. Through her grown-up eyes, the camcorder footage and her memories take on a new meaning. Charlotte Wells' directorial debut is a subtle but assured coming-of-age drama with strong autobiographical elements. Her film is a relatively plotless character study which only begins to come together in the final 30 minutes, but its conclusion didn't make a particularly strong emotional impact on me. Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio give very natural and believable performances.

The Adam Project
2022
***½
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner, Walker Scobell, Catherine Keener, Zoe Saldaña, Alex Mallari Jr.

In 2050, time travel is possible, but it has destroyed the world. Fighter pilot Adam Reed travels back in time to save his wife, but ends up in 2022, where he team up with his 12-year-old self. This time travel action adventure may not have a particularly original story or design, but it is funny, entertaining, and surprisingly moving. Ryan Reynolds is in likeable form in another typecast role.

West Side Story
2021
***½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Ansel Elgort, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Rita Moreno, Rachel Zegler, Brian d'Arcy James, Corey Stoll, Josh Andrés Rivera, iris menas, Ana Isabelle, Andréa Burns

While two rivalling gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, compete for control on the Upper West Side, Tony and Maria fall in love across gang lines. As their forbidden romance unfolds, deep-rooted prejudice and intolerance lead to tragic consequences. This is the second film adaptation of the 1957 stage musical, which was inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The film is beautifully shot by Janusz Kaminski, wonderfully directed by Steven Spielberg, and the songs by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim remain iconic. However, although it's set in 1957, the 24-hour love story is laughable rather than touching. The 1961 film was a massive hit which won 10 Academy Awards. Spielberg's version flopped at the box office and the only Oscar went to Ariana DeBose for her strong performance.

Verdens verste menneske (The Worst Person in the World)
2021
****½
Director: Joachim Trier
Cast: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum, Hans Olav Brenner, Helene Bjørneby, Vidar Sandem, Maria Grazia Di Meo, Lasse Gretland, Karen Røise Kielland

Following Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011), the third part of Joachim Trier's Oslo trilogy is a wonderfully poignant drama comedy that chronicles four years in the life Julie, a young woman in her late 20s. She goes through relationship and career changes, but struggles to grasp who or what she wants to be. Renate Reinsve is terrific as Julie, and Anders Danielsen Lie gives another heartbreaking performance as her partner Aksel. Trier stages a few unforgettable scenes.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage
2021
*
Director: Andy Serkis
Cast: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, Reid Scott, Stephen Graham, Woody Harrelson

Just before he is to be executed, serial killer Cletus Kasady meets Eddie Brock, bites him, and accidentally absorbs part of Venom. This transforms him into Carnage, another symbiote monster, which means that this is yet another Marvel feature where the hero faces off with an evil version of himself (in an overlong CGI climax). Venom was an uneven but partly enjoyable origin story. This follow-up is an absolute mess from start to finish, and one of the worst acted movies I can remember. The script by Kelly Marcel (and Tom Hardy) would fit on a postage stamp, and Andy Serkis rushes through it with breakneck speed and zero coherence. The interplay between Eddie and Venom, which was the best part of the original, now only produces some uncomfortably unfunny scenes. There is a lot of action, but not one memorable set piece. The movie is very short, which is something.

The Mauritanian
2021
***½
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Cast: Jodie Foster, Tahar Rahim, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zachary Levi, Saamer Usmani, Corey Johnson, Denis Menochet, David Fynn, Walter van Dyk

In 2002, a Mauritanian man named Mohamedou Ould Slahi was arrested and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay detention camp without charges. In 2005, American defense attorney Nancy Hollander agrees to defend him, but she is dismayed that all the evidence against her client is classified. Kevin Macdonald's real-life drama, which is based on Slahi's 2015 memoir Guantanamo Diary, shows the human cost of the U.S. government's unrelenting pursuit of justice after 9/11. The film is gripping but very matter-of-fact. Tahar Rahim gives a commanding performance.

Swan Song
2021
***
Director: Benjamin Cleary
Cast: Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Awkwafina, Glenn Close, Adam Beach

Sometime in the future, the terminally ill Cameron Turner agrees to secure his family's future by having himself cloned without their knowledge, but can he really go through with the procedure? Mahershala Ali gives another strong (dual) performance in this melancholic, atmospheric and beautifully designed scifi character drama. Although the premise is intriguing, in practice this is an episode of Black Mirror stretched over two hours.

The Suicide Squad
2021
**
Director: James Gunn
Cast: Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, Viola Davis, David Dastmalchian, Daniela Melchior, Michael Rooker, Jai Courtney, Peter Capaldi, Alice Braga, Pete Davidson

Amanda Waller assembles two new Task Force X teams for a suicide mission in the island nation of Corto Maltese. The first team is sacrificed as a decoy, while the second team attempts to enter a Nazi-era laboratory and destroy all evidence related to Project Starfish. Suicide Squad is so far the messiest and dullest release in the DC Extended Universe. For this sequel/reboot, DC have added a definite article and recruited James Gunn, whose light-hearted Guardians of the Galaxy became a massive MCU fan favourite. Gunn applies the same irreverent formula and adds a generous serving of carnage, but the whole thing feels forced and uninspired. I didn't laugh at the jokes or gasp at the violence. All in all, I don't see much improvement on the 2016 version. Comic book movies often end in a bloated and overlong fight between the hero and the villain, but this time the final 20 minutes are actually the best part.

Stillwater
2021
***½
Director: Tom McCarthy
Cast: Matt Damon, Camille Cottin, Abigail Breslin, Lilou Siauvaud, Deanna Dunagan, Idir Azougli, Anne Le Ny, Moussa Maaskri

Bill Baker, an unemployed oil rig worker from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille, where his estranged daughter Allison is serving time for murder. When her lawyer offers little hope, Bill decides to take matters into his own hands and prove her daughter's innocence. The screenplay is loosely based on Amanda Knox, who spent close to four years in an Italian prison. In the wrong hands, this could have become another Taken-like celebration of xenophobia and vigilantism, but Tom McCarthy's finely nuanced drama embraces cultural differences and tells a moving story of a reserved and unrefined man who gets a second chance at happiness. Matt Damon gives one of his better performances in the lead.

Spider-Man: No Way Home
2021
****
Director: Jon Watts
Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Benedict Wong, Tony Revolori, Marisa Tomei, Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire

Following Spider-Man: Far from Home, nothing is the same now that Peter Parker is outed as Spider-Man. When the reveal begins to affect the lives of his friends, Peter asks help from Dr. Strange, but his rushed and botched amnesia spell opens the door to the multiverse. The multiverse brings back heroes and villains from the earlier releases in the franchise. That includes Tobey Maguire's original trilogy (Spider-Man, 2, and 3) and Andrew Garfield's reboot (The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel). While this supremely entertaining walk down the memory lane checks every box in a fanboy's wish list, it also signals a lack of fresh ideas. Apart from introducing multiverse and turning Dr. Strange into an idiot, it adds very little new to the MCU in the big picture, and it makes absolutely no sense to someone who is watching this on its own.

Spencer
2021
**½
Director: Pablo Larraín
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Jack Farthing, Sean Harris, Sally Hawkins, Freddie Spry, Jack Nielen, Stella Gonet, Richard Sammel

While the British royal family gather together to spend Christmas in 1991, the mentally fragile Princess Diana attempts to deal with her life in the public eye and the imminent collapse of her marriage. Pablo Larraín's Jackie was an unconventional but dull portrait of Jackie Onassis, and I could use the same words to describe this psychological drama about the Princess of Wales. This is not a traditional biopic (neither was Diana), but a compelling portrayal of a woman having a nervous breakdown, but I'm not sure why that woman needs to be Diana. Nevertheless, Kristen Stewart gives a very fine lead performance. Jonny Greenwood's soundtrack is fitting but annoying as hell.

Sokea mies, joka ei halunnut nähdä Titanicia (The Blond Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic)
2021
****
Director: Timo Nikki
Cast: Petri Poikolainen, Marjaana Maijala, Samuli Jaskio, Rami Rusinen, Hannamaija Nikander, Lassi Poikolainen, Minttu Mustakallio, Tuomas Uusitalo

Jaakko, blind and disabled by MS, hates nothing more than being patronised. When he receives bad news from Sirpa, the girlfriend he has never met in person, he decides to travel to her with the help of strangers. Teemu Nikki's delightful comedy drama features a unique but absolutely wonderful protagonist. Jaakko is a movie buff who never loses his sense of humour. Nikki puts us in his shoes by using a shallow depth of field, which keeps everyone else out focus. Sadly his script throws an unnecessary dramatic twist, which takes the traveller on a long sidetrack.

Silent Night
2021
*½
Director: Camille Griffin
Cast: Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Roman Griffin Davis, Annabelle Wallis, Lily-Rose Depp, Sope Dirisu, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Lucy Punch, Rufus Jones

The British government has issued suicide pills for a quick and painless death in preparation for a toxic gas cloud which wipes out all life. A group of friends and their children gather to celebrate their last Christmas. Camille Griffin's feature debut follows in the footsteps of Don't Look Up, Melancholia, The Mist, and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the last of which also stars the incredibly unlucky Keira Knightley. This is supposedly an apocalyptic dark comedy, but I didn't find it captivating, thought-provoking, or funny. Good characters could go a long way, but these people all deserve a painful death. The end product is like a short Richard Curtis comedy set in hell.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
2021
***½
Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Cast: Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Meng'er Zhang, Fala Chen, Florian Munteanu, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh, Ben Kingsley, Tony Leung

Shang-Chi has led a low-key life in San Francisco ever since he ran away from his brutal father, who trained him as an assassin. In the present day, he travels to Macao to protect his sister, but is forced to confront his old man, the wielder of the mythical ten rings. Shang-Chi, the Marvel comic book character who was created by Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin in 1973, joins the MCU with this entertaining origin story. The main characters are well drawn and the first half delivers two terrifically physical action set pieces, on board a bus and on top a scaffolding. Awkwafina and Ben Kingsley provide the comic relief. However, the climactic showdown with the two massive CGI creatures is disappointingly messy and formulaic.

Red Notice
2021
**
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Ritu Arya, Chris Diamantopoulos, Ivan Mbakop, Vincenzo Amato, Rafael Petardi

FBI profiler John Hartley assists Interpol to catch Nolan Booth, the world's second best art thief, but they end up working together to reunite the mythical three eggs of Cleopatra before they get snatched by the world's best art thief, the Bishop. This thoroughly forgettable heist/con movie cost 200 million dollars, which buys you a terrible script, second rate CGI and performances which look like they were phoned in. Thurber's formulaic script introduces a new twist or double-cross every few minutes to keep the narrative in motion. This has a dual effect: every new twist reduces the element of surprise for the next one and every new double-cross reduces my sympathy for the two-faced characters. When it's time for the final big reveal, the preceding 110 minutes stop making any sense. Ryan Reynolds appears as the same wisecracking character he played in Deadpool and Free Guy, Dwayne Johnson plays the same likeable hulk he always does, and the wooden Gal Gadot brings back the Themysciran accent she perfected in Wonder Woman.

Punkkisota (The Red Ring)
2021
***
Director: Joonas Berghäll
Cast:

In this heavily autobiographical documentary, Joonas Berghäll documents his years-long fight against Lyme disease. He meets medical experts and fellow sufferers in Germany, Italy, France, and the US, and discovers that the disease is not always taken seriously. Berghäll's film offers an informative but not terribly captivating collection of stories that revolve around the topic, all of it drably narrated by him. He lets his interviewees speak and doesn't ask any follow-up questions, even if he disagrees with them.

The Power of the Dog
2021
**½
Director: Jane Campion
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie, Genevieve Lemon, Keith Carradine, Frances Conroy

Brothers Phil and George Burbank run a ranch together in 1920s Montana. When George marries Rose, a widow with a teenage son, Phil is determined to make their lives miserable. Jane Campion's psychological drama is subtle and beautifully shot (in New Zealand), which is another way to say that its long and slow-paced story left me unsatisfied. The characters are difficult to grasp. Phil is a cruel and petty bully, until one moment he isn't. George is mostly off screen but so oblivious to what's happening that he has to be told that his wife has become an alcoholic. The performances similarly range from great (Dunst and Smit-McPhee) to typecast (Plemons) and mixed (Cumberbatch). Looking back, the story elements do add up, but the climactic twist doesn't feel earned and it makes the whole feel less than the sum of its parts. Based on Thomas Savage's 1967 novel.

Peruna (The Potato Venture)
2021
**
Director: Joona Tena
Cast: Joonas Nordman, Mikko Penttilä, Alex Anton, Kari Hietalahti, Linnea Leino, Kari Ketonen, Petteri Pennilä, Mimosa Willamo, Linda Manelius, Lasse Karkjärvi, Antti Tuomas Heikkinen

Untamo is a resourceful young man who wants to start growing and selling potatoes, but nobody believes that his weird root vegetable could replace turnip in 17th century Finland. This Finnish comedy set in the world of start-ups has a clever and inventive pitch, but I didn't find the end product funny at all. It basically has one joke, characters doing and saying anachronistic things, which is repeated over and over for 100 minutes. That could work for a 15-minute skit but not for a feature length film.

Pelé
2021
***
Director: Ben Nichols, David Tryhorn
Cast:

Pelé is one of the most highly rated footballers in the history of the game. This informative matter-of-fact documentary focuses on the four World Cups in which he played for Brazil, winning three of them. The story starts in 1958, when a 17-year-old boy became a global football star, and ends in 1970, when Brazil were at their freescoring best. Outside the football pitch, Pelé provided little controversy or dissent, especially compared to Diego Maradona, but he did get some criticism for not using his power and position to speak against the dictatorship in Brazil.

Operation Mincemeat
2021
***
Director: John Madden
Cast: Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Penelope Wilton, Johnny Flynn, Jason Isaacs, Mark Gatiss, Hattie Morahan, Mark Bonnar, Paul Ritter, Alex Jennings

In preparation for the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily, British intelligence devises a daring plan to deceive the Nazis. They plant false documents on a corpse washed ashore, and hope that the enemy believes the invasion is taking place somewhere else. John Madden's likeable real-life WW2 drama delivers modest entertainment with a nice cast. The story is dry and workmanlike, and its only surprise is an unexpected handjob. Apart from the love triangle, Michelle Ashford's script is based on Ben Macintyre's book. The same events were previously depicted in The Man Who Never Was (1956).

Old Henry
2021
***½
Director: Potsy Ponciroli
Cast: Tim Blake Nelson, Scott Haze, Gavin Lewis, Trace Adkins, Stephen Dorff, Richard Speight Jr., Max Arciniega, Brad Carter

In 1906, a widower and his teenage son run a pig farm in a remote corner of Oklahoma Territory. One day, they take in a wounded stranger with a saddlebag full of cash, who is tailed by a group of dodgy lawmen. Potsy Ponciroli's short and moody but rather conventional Western provides a fictional end to a historical character. The story is set in a small world where the men all seem to know each other by name or face, and the only teenager on screen is reliably annoying. The climactic shootout is brutal but a bit dumb.

Old
2021
***
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen, Aaron Pierre, Embeth Davidtz, Emun Elliott

The Cappa family travel to a tropical holiday destination, where the four of them and half a dozen other people end up trapped on a secluded beach, where time seems to pass at a very rapid pace. Although this is based on existing material (a graphic novel titled Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters), the end result is a typical M. Night Shyamalan mystery with a twist ending. Shyamalan's recent output has been poor, but this is a silly and enjoyable (body) horror movie, as long as you don't pause for one second to think about all the plot holes and unanswered questions.

Nobody
2021
***
Director: Ilya Naishuller
Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Aleksei Serebryakov, Connie Nielsen, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Ironside, Colin Salmon, RZA, Billy MacLellan, Gage Munroe

Hutch Mansell is a mild-mannered and unassuming man, whose wife, son, and in-laws all think he is a loser. When two people break into his house, Hutch can no longer suppress his violent past. This story about a man who goes out to kill bad guys is not much of a stretch for Derek Kolstad, who also scripted the John Wick series. However, this short and snappy but highly implausible action movie features a hero who is a fallible and vulnerable everyman (Bob Odenkirk cast against type). The villains are mere caricatures.

No Time to Die
2021
****
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Cast: Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes

Daniel Craig's final appearance as 007 brings closure to the series, but most importantly to Casino Royale and Spectre. Craig's movies have not all been great, but they have been unlike anything else in this franchise. The flippant and detached super agent of old has been replaced with a human-like character with personal stakes, and the dramatic events in one movie have carried over to the ones that followed it. In Craig's fifth feature, James Bond reluctantly returns from retirement when a deadly bioweapon is stolen from a secret MI6 laboratory. He must reconcile with his girlfriend Madeleine Swann and confront his arch-enemy Blofeld and the villain of this piece, Lyutsifer Safin. This is a gripping and moving finale with some first class action set pieces. This is the longest release in the entire franchise, but it doesn't really feel like it.

Nightmare Alley
2021
***½
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, David Strathairn

In the late 1930s, a mysterious drifter joins a carnival, where he learns the tricks of mentalism. His new set of skills make him successful, but also arrogant and foolhardy. Guillermo del Toro's intriguing neo-noir drama brings the world of a traveling carnival to life in glorious detail. Everything is beautifully staged, framed, and shot, as you can expect. The drifter's slow-paced rise and fall has wonderful symmetry, but also frustrating inevitability. Bradley Cooper gives a commanding performance in the lead, but Cate Blanchett is disappointingly mannered as the femme fatale, whose true motivation never becomes clear. Based on William Lindsay Gresham's novel, which was previously filmed in 1947.

Munich: The Edge of War
2021
**½
Director: Christian Schwochow
Cast: Jeremy Irons, George MacKay, Jannis Niewöhner, Sandra Hüller, Liv Lisa Fries, August Diehl, Jessica Brown Findlay, Anjli Mohindra, Ulrich Matthes

Hugh and his German friend Paul studied together at Oxford. In 1938, when the continent is at the brink of war, Hugh works as prime minister Neville Chamberlain's secretary and Paul works at the Foreign Office in Berlin, and they both get embroiled in a plan to disclose Hitler's real plans for Europe. This pre-war drama tells a fictional story against a real-life background, but the end result is never as captivating as it should be. Ben Power's screenplay is based on a novel by Robert Harris, and it spends an awful lot of time on the difficulty of handing over a confidential document, which turns out be nothing but a MacGuffin. Christian Schwochow's restless camera is a needless distraction.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines
2021
***
Director: Mike Rianda
Cast: Danny McBride, Abbi Jacobson, Maya Rudolph, Mike Rianda, Eric André, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen, Beck Bennett, Chrissy Teigen, John Legend

A new line of AI-powered home robots plan to capture all humans and take over the world, but they forgot to factor in the Mitchells, a family of four on a road trip. Mike Rianda's directorial debut is an entertaining but disposable animation. The premise is funny and clever, but the characters are disappointingly clichéd, and the sentimental father/daughter relationship treads a familiar path. The film is long at 114 minutes, and yet it feels like it rushes from one scene to the next at breakneck speed.

The Matrix Resurrections
2021
*
Director: Lana Wachowski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Jada Pinkett Smith

The Matrix trilogy started with a bang and went out with a whimper. Now 18 years later, Thomas Anderson (Neo) is a renowned creator of a popular computer game trilogy who is haunted by odd memories. Is this his real life or is he back in the Matrix? After two pointless sequels, the last thing the world needed was another Matrix movie, and in that respect this reboot does not disappoint. The fourth feature is utterly useless and so boring throughout the 150 minute running time that I found myself constantly drifting in and out of its over-convoluted plot. Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are back, Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving knew better and stayed away.

Luca
2021
***½
Director: Enrico Casarosa
Cast: Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph, Marco Barricelli, Jim Gaffigan, Peter Sohn, Manna Massironi, Sandy Martin, Sacha Baron Cohen

For years, there has been unfounded fear between the people in the Italian coastal town of Portorosso and the sea creatures who live below the surface. A young sea creature named Luca runs away from home after his new friend Alberto shows him that he can transform into a human boy on dry land. This light and breezy Pixar animation is not original like Wall-E, groundbreaking like Inside Out, or irresistibly entertaining like Finding Nemo, but its writing and visuals maintain the studio's high quality standard. The heart-warming story tackles familiar but important themes (dealing with loneliness, overcoming prejudices, and being true to yourself). The wrap-up may be a bit too neat and swift, but it's good fun along the way.

The Lost Daughter
2021
***
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Cast: Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Dagmara Domińczyk, Jack Farthing, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Peter Sarsgaard, Ed Harris

Leda, a middle-aged college professor, goes on a solo holiday to a Greek island. As she is drawn to a young mother and her daughter, she is flooded with painful memories from her own past. Maggie Gyllenhaal's ambitious directorial debut explores the pressures of motherhood and the unspoken regret of having children. This adaptation of Elena Ferrante's 2006 novel sounds intriguing on paper, but the film is long and unsettling in a wrong way. Many of the supporting characters remain undeveloped and the story is set in one of those movie holiday resorts where the guests and staff all are native English speakers. Olivia Colman gives a wonderfully understated performance in the lead and Jessie Buckley is also good as the younger version of Leda, even if the two actresses look or sound nothing like each other. Or well, maybe that's the whole point.

Last Night in Soho
2021
*½
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Rita Tushingham, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, Diana Rigg, Synnøve Karlsen, Pauline McLynn

Ellie, who is frequently visited by her mother's ghost, moves to London to study fashion, but the big city is not a welcoming place. One night, she is mysteriously transported to the Swinging Sixties into the life of aspiring singer Sandy. Midnight in Paris meets The Sixth Sense in Edgar Wright's ambitious psychological horror movie, which is a ghost story, a murder mystery, a coming-of-age tale, a wish fulfilment fantasy, a depiction of sexism in the 1960s, and a portrayal of potential mental breakdown. It goes without saying that the resulting movie is all over the place and, once Ellie begins to experience her visions, one of the most infuriating and tedious watches I can remember. Thomasin McKenzie is annoyingly timid and aloof as Ellie (does that make it a good or a bad performance?) and Anya Taylor-Joy has very little to do as Sandy. On the plus side, the interaction between the two leading ladies is beautifully visualised and the soundtrack is filled with some nice tunes.

The Last Duel
2021
***½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck, Harriet Walter, Alex Lawther, Serena Kennedy, Marton Csokas, Željko Ivanek

When his wife Marguerite accuses Jacques Le Gris of rape, French knight Jean de Carrouges is compelled to challenge his old friend to a duel to the death. However, if he loses the fight, Marguerite will be burned at the stake for perjury. This fact-based historical drama is set in 14th century France. The screenplay by Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon is based on Eric Jager's book The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial by Combat in Medieval France, and it tells the same story from three different perspectives, like Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. With this structure, the film is inevitably long, but the story remains captivating throughout, thanks to Ridley Scott's safe pair of hands. The central performances are strong.

The King's Man
2021
***
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander, Harris Dickinson, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou, Charles Dance

As the Great War is about to break out, Duke of Oxford, who runs a secret network of spies, attempts to protect his only son, but he is up against a mysterious Scottish nemesis who manipulates the events of the war in order to undermine Britain. The prequel to Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle mixes fact and fiction to tell an origin story of the Kingsman organisation. This enjoyable but overlong and disposable movie is a bit more grown-up and a bit less action-packed that the first two releases. Tom Hollander gives an amusing triple performance as King George, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Tsar Nicholas.

King Richard
2021
***
Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green
Cast: Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis, Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton, Tony Goldwyn, Jon Bernthal, Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew, Danielle Lawson

Before they were born, Richard Williams drew up a step-by-step plan how his two biological daughters, Venus and Serena, would complete their education and train hard to become top professional tennis players. This long autobiographical story is engaging but, knowing what happened later, rather low on drama. Williams makes for a compelling lead character, but it is rather frustrating to watch a determined, controlling, and overbearing man being proved to be right. In any case, Will Smith is very good in his Academy Award winning lead performance.

Jungle Cruise
2021
**½
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Édgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Veronica Falcon

During the First World War, Dr. Lily Houghton and her brother McGregor travel to the Amazon, where they hire riverboat skipper Frank Wolff to take them to the mythical Tree of Life. However, they are not the only ones trying to find it. Disney's big budget adventure is silly and entertaining but terribly unoriginal. It starts as a combination of The African Queen and The Mummy. As the trio travel further down the river, the whole thing turns into a Pirates of the Caribbean on the Amazon. Incidentally, this franchise is also based on a Walt Disney theme park ride. The movie relies too heavily on CGI, especially in the second half, and some of it (for example, the jaguar) looks pretty awful. Johnson and Blunt have good chemistry, though.

Judas and the Black Messiah
2021
**½
Director: Shaka King
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons, Dominique Fishback, Ashton Sanders, Martin Sheen, Algee Smith, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Lil Rel Howery

In the late 1960s, FBI coerces petty criminal Bill O'Neal to infiltrate the Black Panther Party chapter of Chicago and get close to its chairman Fred Hampton. Like the recent Selma and The Trial of the Chicago 7, this fact-based drama sheds light on another shameful and racist episode in American civil rights history. Shaka King's film is interesting, if not exactly captivating, but it is let down by a muddled script and weak character work. The focus is on the two-faced O'Neal, who seems inadequately conflicted about his role. Hampton, on the other hand, talks about a revolution, but what exactly does he and the organisation he represents do apart from wearing berets and posing with guns? As for the other characters, I can barely remember their names. Although he is too old to play Hampton, Daniel Kaluuya is nevertheless a charismatic presence in his Oscar winning performance. Fight for You by H.E.R. also earned an Academy Award for best original song.

I Onde Dager (The Trip)
2021
****½
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Aksel Hennie, Atle Antonsen, Christian Rubeck, André Eriksen, Nils Ole Oftebro, Stig Frode Henriksen

Lars and Lisa are a couple who both have their own separate plan to kill the other during a stay at their cottage. However, the events take an unexpected turn when they are surprised by three intruders. Tommy Wirkola's pitch black comedy is a breath of fresh air. It starts as a darkly comic and intimate story, but then begins to add twists on twists and builds towards a hilarious and absolutely gruesome finale. The performances are great.

Hytti nro 6 (Compartment No. 6)
2021
****
Director: Juho Kuosmanen
Cast: Seidi Haarla, Yuri Borisov, Dinara Drukarova, Julia Aug, Galina Petrova, Konstantin Murzenko, Sergei Agafonov, Mihail Brašinski,Tomi Alatalo

In the late 1990s, Finnish student Laura embarks on a long train journey from Moscow to Murmansk, during which she is forced to share a small compartment with a blunt Russian man. This delightful Finnish (rail) road movie is loosely based on Rosa Liksom's novel. It offers an original but authentic premise, and fills it with laughs, heartfelt moments, and terrific performances.

The Guilty
2021
***
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ethan Hawke, Riley Keough, Christina Vidal Mitchell, Eli Goree, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Paul Dano, Peter Sarsgaard

A tarnished LAPD officer Joe Baylor has been demoted to 911 call center duty. The day before Joe's about to face trial, he takes a call from a woman who says she was kidnapped. This remake of the 2018 Danish film Den skyldige is a minimalistic thriller which relies heavily on a tight script and Jake Gyllenhaal's solid but slightly overdramatic performance. This is a short and enjoyable but disposable film which reminded me of Phone Booth.

Greyhound
2021
**
Director: Aaron Schneider
Cast: Tom Hanks, Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan, Elisabeth Shue, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Karl Glusman, Tom Brittney

In his first wartime mission, Commander Ernest Krause must escort a convoy of Allied ships to safety in Liverpool, but a wolf pack of German U-boats is not making the crossing easy. This short but monotonous World War II drama was adapted from C.S. Forester's 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by its star Tom Hanks. It delivers an action-packed sea adventure where the nameless and personality-free crew members shout orders at each other for about 80 minutes.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife
2021
***½
Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Logan Kim, Celeste O'Connor, Paul Rudd, Annie Potts, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver

After one of the legendary Ghostbusters dies alone, his estranged daughter and her two kids inherit his farm in Oklahoma, and learn the reason why the (grand)father left New York City and became a hermit. After two popular but mediocre classics, Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989), and a forgettable female reboot, my expectations were not high for another ghostbusting movie, but, lo and behold, this is a funny and entertaining science fiction comedy with nicely drawn characters. However, there is no escaping that if you have seen any of the previous three, the script does not offer any surprises. The 1980s cast appeared in different roles in the 2016 movie, but now they get to bring back their original characters.

The French Dispatch
2021
*½
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Christoph Waltz, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston

The final issue of The French Dispatch, a fictional magazine in the vein of The New Yorker, features three stories set in a French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. The Concrete Masterpiece is about a brilliant artist who is in prison for murder, Revisions to a Manifesto is about unusual student protests, and The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner is about a chef/police officer who solves a kidnapping. I have gradually fallen out of love with Wes Anderson. While his early works like Rushmore (1998) offered a nice story, well-drawn characters, and inventive visuals, his recent films like The Grand Budapest Hotel offer infuriating and beautiful-looking nothingness, where a famous actor with a twirly moustache and funny name passes as a character. It feels like Anderson squeezed a 400-page screenplay into 108 minutes for this collection of uninteresting vignettes. The visual overkill and non-stop narration certainly kept me busy, but there wasn't one moment when I felt invested in these people. The incredible cast fetures just about every white actor you can think of, and Jeffrey Wright.

Free Guy
2021
**½
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Lil Rel Howery, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Joe Keery, Taika Waititi, Britne Oldford, Camille Kostek

Guy is a lonely bank clerk who lives a mundane and repetitive life in Free City. Just when his luck is about to turn, he learns that he is not even a real person but a non-player character in a video game. This fantasy comedy is energetic, entertaining, and visually vibrant. What it is not is original or technologically believable. The script is a concoction of past movies. Guy's story starts as mix between Groundhog Day and The Truman Show. When the movie delves deeper into the gaming world, I was regularly reminded of Ready Player One, Wreck-It Ralph, and its sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Flugt (Flee)
2021
****½
Director: Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Cast:

This excellent animated documentary tells the incredible immigration story of Amin Nawabi and his family, which took them from Afghanistan to Denmark via Russia. During this traumatic journey, Amin must also come to terms with his homosexuality. Jonas Poher Rasmussen's film is at par with other captivating animated biographies, like Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir.

Finch
2021
***½
Director: Miguel Sapochnik
Cast: Tom Hanks, Caleb Landry Jones

In the near future, the ozone layer is in tatters, and the Earth has turned into a scorchingly hot wasteland. As the weather events become more and more extreme, engineer Finch Weinberg, one of the very few survivors, packs his dog and his robots in an RV and heads west. This post-apocalyptic drama lands somewhere between I Am Legend, Wall-E, The Road, and Cast Away, if you will. The story is not terribly original or particularly harrowing, but it is charming and entertaining. Jeff the robot is an amusing if very anthropomorphic character. The film is visually stunning.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye
2021
**½
Director: Michael Showalter
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Andrew Garfield, Cherry Jones, Vincent D'Onofrio, Mark Wystrach, Sam Jaeger, Louis Cancelmi, Gabriel Olds

Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye LaValley meet at a Bible College, drop out, and get married. They preach across the country, but get their big break on the Christian Broadcasting Network. This conventional and somewhat superficial biopic depicts the professional rise and fall of the Bakker empire, but if tends to forget the people behind the heavy, Oscar-winning hair and makeup. In the conservative world of televangelism, Tammy Faye was an unusually open-minded individual, so it is understandable that she gets off lightly in this story. Jessica Chastain's Academy Award-winning performance is big, showy, but finely nuanced. Abe Sylvia's script is based on a 2000 documentary.

Eternals
2021
**
Director: Chloé Zhao
Cast: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie

About 7000 years ago, Eternals, immortal superpowered beings, were sent to protect the population of Earth from monsters knowns as Deviants. After 500 years of peace, the Deviants return and the Eternals must regroup. Chloé Zhao earned a deserved Academy Award for her intimate drama Nomadland. Her follow-up is something totally different. This is the 26th Marvel Cinematic Universe release, and one of the weakest in the series, thanks to a messy script, non-existent characterisation, and forgettable special effects. The story drags in many places. Every time I feel the narrative pulls me in, there is another extended flashback or a massive exposition dump that puts me to sleep. The Eternals are a racially, sexually, and physically diverse group of superheroes, so much so that they could've been created by a committee. Their movie is way too long, but not nearly long enough to give adequate screen time to ten individual characters.

Dune: Part One
2021
****½
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem

Duke Leto of House Atreides accepts the stewardship of the harsh desert planet Arrakis, the sole source of the most valuable substance in the universe. For some time, the Duke's specially gifted son Paul has been haunted by visions of the future on the planet. Frank Herbert's Dune (1965) is the first novel in a highly regarded but challenging science fiction series. David Lynch's 1984 film adaptation was a dull and incomprehensible mess, which was liked by no one, and that includes the director. Denis Villeneuve's version doesn't let its audience off easy either. There is plenty of mythology and worldbuilding to get through in 150 minutes, which only covers the first half of the book, and I'm not sure if all the numerous characters get their fair due. However, Villeneuve stages some mind-blowing set pieces, which are on a scale I have never seen before, and they feature amazing cinematography, editing, music, set design, sound design, and visual effects, all of which won Academy Awards. Followed by Part Two.

Don't Look Up
2021
***½
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep

Two astronomers discover that a massive comet will end all life on Earth in little over six months unless the nations of the world act immediately, but they struggle to make anyone take them seriously. Adam McKay's long, bombastic, and unsubtle satire offers a dark and cynical look at today's polarised America, where facts are a matter of opinion and the media churns out an endless cycle of polished snapshots of reality. The film is clearly a commentary on the climate crisis in the real world, where no amount of scientific data is enough to make some people believe in global warming. The resulting comedy is bold and thought-provoking but often more cringey than funny. The cast is impressive, even if many of the characters are broadly drawn and played. Scripted by McKay and David Sirota.

The Dig
2021
***
Director: Simon Stone
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes, Lily James, Johnny Flynn, Ben Chaplin, Ken Stott, Archie Barnes, Monica Dolan

In 1939, a wealthy widow hires a self-taught archaeologist Basil Brown to excavate the large burial mounds in her estate. When the news of their discovery gets out, the leading experts in the country take over the site. This enjoyable drama tells the real-life story behind the Sutton Hoo excavation in Suffolk, England. The film starts as a warm and authentic character piece, with lovely performances from Mulligan and Fiennes. In the midsection, Basil Brown is pushed to the sidelines, as Moira Buffini's script introduces an entirely fictional pre-war romance between the younger cast members. Thankfully the wrap-up is satisfying. Based on John Preston's 2007 novel.

Cry Macho
2021
*½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Dwight Yoakam, Eduardo Minett, Natalia Traven, Fernanda Urrejola, Horacio Garcia Rojas

A retired rodeo star Mike Milo agrees to travel to Mexico City to bring back his ex-boss' son Rafo from the boy's unstable mother. Who better for this treacherous 2,000+ km round trip than a frail old man? N. Richard Nash's story started life as a screenplay in the 1970s, which he then reworked into a novel, and now it ends up on the screen. I'm tempted to ask what the was fuss about. This is an utterly unremarkable and drama-free story with ridiculous characters. Mike is the great white saviour who can kick bandito ass, comfort lonely Mexican ladies, heal animals, break horses, and fix cars. In The Mule, Clint managed to have not one but two threesomes, and here at the age of 91, he continues to be irresistible to women not even half his age. My guess is that this role was written for a much younger actor. Rafo, on the other hand, is a friendly and empathetic 13-year-old, despite being neglected by both of his parents. The story is set in 1980, probably so we don't need to think about mobile phones or border-crossing documents.

Cruella
2021
***½
Director: Graig Gillespie
Cast: Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser, Emily Beecham, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mark Strong, Tipper Seifert-Cleveland, Ziggy Gardner, Joseph MacDonald

In the early 1970s, orphaned Estella is a swindler who dreams of working in fashion. She eventually catches her break and is hired by the Baroness, a famous designer who may have been behind Estella's mother death. Cruella de Vil, the famously nasty villain of 101 Dalmatians, gets her origin story, and it's not at all what I expected. This is a very long but entertaining and wonderfully designed movie, although it doesn't really explain how this resourceful and likeable young lady becomes a woman wants to turns dogs into a coat. There are two strong performances: Emma Stone is commanding as Estella/Cruella and Emma Thompson is hilarious as the cocky Baroness. The lavish costumes earned an Academy Award.

CODA
2021
****½
Director: Sian Heder
Cast: Emilia Jones, Eugenio Derbez, Troy Kotsur, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Daniel Durant, Marlee Matlin, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Amy Forsyth, Kevin Chapman

As a hearing person, 17-year-old Ruby is an essential interpreter for her deaf parents and brother. During her last year of high school, she struggles to balance her family's needs with her own dreams of becoming a singer. This feelgood film is based on the 2014 feature La Famille Bélier. The story is formulaic and manipulative but irresistibly funny and warm-hearted. These wonderfully portrayed characters feel like authentic three-dimensional human beings. The picture, screenplay, and Troy Kotsur, who plays Ruby's father, won Academy Awards. The title refers to a child of deaf adults.

The Card Counter
2021
**
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, Willem Dafoe, Alexander Babara, Bobby C. King

William Tell is a gambler who served time in military prison for his role in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. He meets a young man who wants to kill a retired officer who trained William. This dull drama about another lonely self-loathing man who fights his demons feels like Paul Schrader by the numbers. For this one, he combines two parallel stories, professional gambling and personal redemption, which are both equally boring. Nevertheless, Oscar Isaac gives another fine performance.

C'mon C'mon
2021
***
Director: Mike Mills
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffmann, Scoot McNairy, Molly Webster, Jaboukie Young-White, Woody Norman, Deborah Strang, Sunni Patterson

Johnny is a radio journalist who travels across the country interviewing children about their thoughts about the future. When his estranged sister is overwhelmed by her husband's bipolar disorder, Johnny agrees to take their 9-year-old son Jesse off their hands for a while. Mike Mills' low-key drama portrays how these two people gradually bond and how Johnny learns to appreciate the challenges of parenthood. The film is likeable and well-acted, but to me it has an air of pretentiousness about it, especially every time the precocious kid recites dialogue written by a grown-up. Robbie Ryan's black and white cinematography looks great, though.

Boiling Point
2021
****
Director: Philip Barantini
Cast: Stephen Graham, Vinette Robinson, Alice Feetham, Hannah Walters, Malachi Kirby, Taz Skylar, Lauryn Ajufo, Daniel Larkai, Lourdes Faberes, Jason Flemyng, Ray Panthaki

The head chef of a high-end London restaurant must battle personal and professional demons, while he and his staff attempt to get through a stressful night when everything comes to a boil. Philip Barantini's relentless drama was shot in one continuous take. Its story doesn't add up to much more than 90 minutes in a pressure cooker, but the one take technique guarantees that the film is consistently gripping and entertaining. Stephen Graham and the rest of the cast are excellent. Followed by a TV mini series in 2023.

Black Widow
2021
***
Director: Cate Shortland
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, O-T Fagbenle, Olga Kurylenko, William Hurt, Ray Winstone, Rachel Weisz

Following the events of Captain America: Civil War, Natasha Romanoff lays low in Norway, but she is forced to come out of hiding and face the demons of her past by confronting her pretend family and the evil General Dreykov, who stole her life. Black Widow made her first Marvel Cinematic Universe appearance in Iron Man 2, and she gradually grew into a key member of the Avengers. She was always due her own spinoff, but now that the Infinity Saga was concluded in Avengers: Endgame (2019), the timing and relevance of this release seem highly questionable. Taken on its own, this is a fine superhero action movie. Florence Pugh and David Harbour give delightful performances as Natasha's fake sister and father, respectively.

The Black Phone
2021
**
Director: Scott Derrickson
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone, E. Roger Mitchell, Troy Rudeseal

In 1978, a man nicknamed the Grabber is abducting children in Denver. 13-year-old Finney finds himself locked in the man's basement room with a disconnected black phone that receives calls from the room's previous occupants. This overrated horror thriller delivers neither scares nor thrills. The kidnapper talks a lot but doesn't do anything and the victim is not scared at any point, so why should I be. The initial premise is intriguing, but the movie quickly becomes implausible and repetitive. The Grabber is too busy sitting menacingly on his kitchen chair to notice that Finney attempts to escape through the wall, floor, and window. The supernatural elements are poorly incorporated into the story. Based on a short story by Joe Hill, who is Stephen King's son.

Best Sellers
2021
**
Director: Lina Roessler
Cast: Michael Caine, Aubrey Plaza, Scott Speedman, Ellen Wong, Veronica Ferres, Cary Elwes

Lucy Stanbridge, the heir to a struggling publishing house, discovers that Harris Shaw, the celebrated but reclusive writer who hasn’t published anything in four decades, owes her a book and a book tour. However, the alcoholic and mean-spirited Shaw doesn't like being told what to do. Lisa Roessler's feature debut is a cringey and unfunny comedy in the first half, and a sentimental character drama in its second half. The poster seems to be from a different film altogether. Anthony Grieco's screenplay is unrealistic and mind-numbingly predictable, and while Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza try their best, their characters are poorly written. Shaw has been an obnoxious asshole for 40 years because he loved his wife so much, and the cough in the opening scene spells out that he will die at some point. Lucy, on the other hand, is supposedly a smart young woman, but she doesn't know one thing about marketing a book, running a business, or making a sensible decision.

Benedetta
2021
***½
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling, Daphné Patakia, Lambert Wilson, Olivier Rabourdin, Louise Chevillotte, Hervé Pierre, Clotilde Courau

In 17th-century Italy, nun Benedetta begins to experience mystical and physically devastating visions of Jesus. At the same time, she is sexually attracted to Bartolomea, a young and abused peasant woman who takes refuge in the convent. Paul Verhoeven is no stranger to courting controversy, so a story about a lesbian nun sounds like right up his alley. However, his fact-based story turns out to be an intriguing historical drama and compelling character portrait, which doesn't take a stand on whether Benedetta is a true mystic or just a con artist. Based on Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy by Judith C. Brown.

Belfast
2021
***½
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Caitríona Balfe, Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan, Ciarán Hinds, Colin Morgan, Josie Walker, Jude Hill

Kenneth Branagh's autobiographical feelgood film takes us to Belfast in 1969. His alter ego Buddy is a 9-year-old boy whose Protestant family faces a difficult decision when the Ulster loyalists begin to attack the Catholics living in their neighbourhood. Branagh's black and white nostalgia piece has relatively low dramatic stakes and it makes no attempt to explain the Troubles. Instead it offers a warm, funny, and sometimes clichéd (visits to the local cinema, Van Morrison soundtrack) trip down one man's memory lane. Branagh won an Academy Award for writing, but his directing style is a bit choppy. He feels compelled to cut every scene short, when this slice of life would benefit from a more relaxed flow. The performances are great, though.

Army of Thieves
2021
**
Director: Matthias Schweighöfer
Cast: Matthias Schweighöfer, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin, Guz Khan, Jonathan Cohen

In this prequel to Army of the Dead, we learn the backstory of Ludwig Dieter, German specialist who was brought in to crack the Las Vegas safe designed by the legendary Hans Wagner. Now he is recruited to a team who aim to open Wagner's three other safes in Paris, Prague, and St. Moritz. The zombies remain enclosed in Nevada, this a traditional heist movie with likeable performances and visuals. That is, however, not enough to compensate for an utterly stupid and implausible script. The team, which is entirely comprised of hot young adults, know they can't get away with the money, but they are happy to risk their lives to break into three banks for the thrill of it. In the silliest scene, the hero spins the dials of the safe and listens for a click on the back of a truck going down a curvy road.

Army of the Dead
2021
**½
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, Theo Rossi, Matthias Schweighöfer, Nora Arnezeder, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tig Notaro, Raúl Castillo, Huma Qureshi, Garret Dillahun

Zack Snyder takes a break from the DC universe to launch a new zombie heist movie franchise. The city of Las Vegas has been walled in after it was overrun by zombies. A few days before the government is about to nuke it, a ragtag group of mercenaries enter the city to break into a casino vault. Like he did with Watchmen, Snyder sets up the scene with a terrific title sequence, and it's all a slow downhill from there onwards. However, the movie is more entertaining than I expected, but it is terribly formulaic (simultaneously in two genres) and needlessly long. Followed by Army of Thieves, which is a prequel spin-off.

9/11: Inside the President's War Room
2021
***
Director: Adam Wishart
Cast:

This compelling documentary details the events of September 11th, 2001 from the perspective of President George W. Bush. The good news is that it includes exclusive interviews with Bush and other key members of his administration, apart from Donald Rumsfeld. The bad news is that these people try make us believe that they were in total control of the situation during the fateful day.

Wonder Woman 1984
2020
**
Director: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen, Lucian Perez, Amr Waked, Gabriella Wilde

Wonder Woman was an uneven but mostly enjoyable superhero movie. This sequel, which is set in 1984, continues in the same light-hearted fashion but ends up a bloated and poorly written mess. Max Lord, a wannabe oil tycoon, knows that one of the artefacts at the Smithsonian can make him an immensely wealthy figure. Diana, who works at the museum, and her timid new colleague Barbara have just unknowingly used the item to fulfill their own personal wishes. This wishing stone plot device becomes boring, repetitive, and illogical surprisingly fast. During the events, Wonder Woman discovers old and new powers in herself and her Lasso of Truth. Oddly she had forgotten all of those in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. Cold fact is that Gal Gadot cannot act. Pedro Pascal can, but he really chews the scenery as Max Lord, who turns out to be a greedy and self-deluded man rather than a proper villain.

Wolfwalkers
2020
****
Director: Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart
Cast: Honor Kneafsey, Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney, Tommy Tiernan, Jon Kenny, John Morton, Maria Doyle Kennedy

While a renowned English hunter Bill Goodfellow attempts to hunt down a pack of wolves near Kilkenny, his daughter Robyn befriends Mebh, a mythical wolfwalker, whose spirit can transform into a wolf. This delightful 2D animation is set in 17th century Ireland, and its story offers a nice mix or personal drama, Irish history and folklore, and pure fantasy. The film's visuals are a breath of fresh air alongside all the identical looking 3D animations.

The Willoughbys
2020
**
Director: Kris Pearn
Cast: Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, Alessia Cara, Terry Crews, Martin Short, Jane Krakowski, Seán Cullen, Ricky Gervais

Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby are so mad about each other that they have no time for their four children, who plan to orphan themselves by sending their parents on a treacherous vacation trip. This Canadian animation has a promising start, but by the second half it is all over the place, both literally and figuratively. On top of the Willoughbys, the script throws in an orphan baby, a candy factory owner and a singing nanny. The biggest problem is that all of the characters are forgettable, inconsistent, and visually dull. Based on the book by Lois Lowry.

The Trial of the Chicago 7
2020
****
Director: Aaron Sorkin
Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Sacha Baron Cohen, Daniel Flaherty, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, John Carroll Lynch, Eddie Redmayne, Noah Robbins, Mark Rylance, Alex Sharp, Jeremy Strong

In August 1968, thousands of anti–Vietnam War protesters come to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, where they inevitably clash with the police and National Guardsmen. Seven leaders of the organising groups (and one Black Panther) are tried for inciting riots. Aaron Sorkin's fact-based drama sheds light on this biased political trial, which made a mockery of justice. The resulting film is gripping, shocking, and bitingly funny. The cast is excellent and Sorkin's dialogue is reliably sharp.

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made
2020
**
Director: Tom McCarthy
Cast: Winslow Fegley, Ophelia Lovibond, Craig Robinson, Wallace Shawn, Kyle Bornheimer, Ai-Chan Carrier, Chloe Coleman, Kei, Caitlin Weierhauser

11-year-old Timmy Failure and his mom live in Portland. Instead of focusing on school work, Timmy runs a detective agency with Total, his imaginary polar bear. Tom McCarthy's previous film, Spotlight, was a brilliant grown-up drama. This follow-up seems like a potentially entertaining family movie, but ultimately it has very little to offer to both parents and children. The detective agency turns out to be a metaphor rather than a plot device, and Timmy is a less than sympathetic protagonist. On the one hand, he is a true original who refuses to fit to the norm (his catchphrase is "normal is for normal people"). On the other hand, he is a rude, uncompassionate, and delusional little brat. Or he has high functioning autism, which is never clearly stated. Based on a novel by Stephan Pastis.

Till Death
2020
*
Director: S.K. Dale
Cast: Megan Fox, Eoin Macken, Callan Mulvey, Jack Roth, Aml Ameen

On their wedding anniversary, Mark and Emma drive to a secluded lake house, where Mark handcuffs himself to his estranged wife, and shoot himself in the head. Gerald's Game, which was based on a Stephen King novel, had a somewhat similar premise, but it cannot be mentioned in the same breath with this contrived thriller, which gets stupider by the minute. The overelaborate revenge plot is ridiculous, the characters are dumber than a bag of hammers, and the winter setting doesn't look real for one second. Oh, and Megan Fox cannot act.

Tenet
2020
**½
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh, Martin Donovan, Aaron Taylor Johnson

An undercover agent is recruited to an organisation called Tenet. He learns that someone in the future has developed technology which allows its users to move backwards through time, and it could be used to destroy the world. With Inception and Interstellar, Christopher Nolan proved that he can transform complicated science fiction concepts into entertaining movies, but he fails miserably with this overegged spectacle. Almost every scene features a character who explains us what just happened, what is currently happening, or what is going to happen. These endless scenes of exposition provide information but are incredibly dull. Through all of this, it is still unclear what exactly is at stake and why we should care about these characters when we know nothing about them, in some cases not even their name. The action set pieces are nice but not spectacular enough to sit through them twice, first forwards and then backwards. An Academy Award winner for best visual effects.

Spaceship Earth
2020
**½
Director: Matt Wolf
Cast:

In 1991, four women and four men were sealed inside Biosphere 2, the largest manmade closed ecosystem in the world, where they planned to live the next two years studying its viability as a self-sustaining space colony. Matt Wolf's underwhelming documentary depicts this fascinating endeavour, but fails to squeeze a drop of tension out of the events, although even the briefest research reveals that there was plenty of drama. It certainly feels like some compromises were made to secure the exclusive film footage and interviews. Wolf shows that Biosphere 2 was frowned upon by the scientific community and ridiculed by the media, but he fails to ask any tough questions from the biospherians or the members of the counterculture group who initiated the entire project.

Soul
2020
***½
Director: Pete Docter
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Questlove, Angela Bassett

Joe Gardner is an aspiring jazz pianist who is forced to eke out a living as a middle school music teacher. One day, he suffers an accident that separates his soul from his body, and his soul ends up in the Great Before. Like Inside Out five years ago, this metaphysical Pixar animation deals with some big questions about birth, death, and the meaning of life. The movie delivers another inventive interpretation of an abstract concept, even if the characters and their eventual insights are not that groundbreaking. An Academy Award winner for best animated feature and best original score.

Sonic the Hedgehog
2020
***½
Director: Jeff Fowler
Cast: Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Jim Carrey, Natasha Rothwell, Adam Pally, Neal McDonough

Sonic, a blue and superfast extra-terrestrial hedgehog, escapes his home planet and hides in Green Hills, Montana. When he is exposed and the government hires Dr. Robotnik to catch him, Sonic gets help from a goodhearted local sheriff. The big screen adventure of the classic Sega video game character is like a mix between Pokemon Detective Pikachu and Bumblebee, two recent releases based on games or toys. The movie has no higher aspirations than to deliver 90 minutes of goofy fun, and that it does well. Jim Carrey gives an enjoyably over-the-top performance as the villain. Followed by Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

The Social Dilemma
2020
***½
Director: Jeff Orlowski
Cast:

This topical documentary delves into the world of data mining and surveillance capitalism. The former employees of Tech Giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter explain how the platforms have evolved from the noble origins into the ruthless user manipulation systems that they are today. Jeff Orlowski's compelling film doesn't provide any big shocks, but it does manage to illustrate how cleverly and intricately the social media sites are designed.

Se mieletön remppa (The Renovation)
2020
*½
Director: Taneli Mustonen
Cast: Sami Hedberg, Kiti Kokkonen, Rea Mauranen, Kari Ketonen, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Inka Kallén, Jukka Rasila

Maija and Jalmari are a childless and, by the looks of it, jobless couple who are forced to live with his overbearing mother. When Maija inherits a beautiful but totally dilapidated house, it is unclear whether it will be a blessing or a curse. This Finnish farce is directly based on the 2018 Norwegian film Norske byggeklosser and indirectly on The Money Pit (1986). The premise shows initial promise, but it quickly fades away when the main characters turn out be incompetent buffoons. The unfunny and implausible script wastes time on various irrelevant supporting characters (most of them played by Sami Hedberg), but fails to provide a proper conclusion to its main story.

Retfærdighedens Ryttere (Riders Of Justice)
2020
***½
Director: Anders Thomas Jensen
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Andrea Heick Gadeberg, Lars Brygmann, Nicolas Bro, Gustav Lindh, Roland Møller, Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt

After his wife dies in a train crash, a Danish soldier returns home, where he is approached by a group of computer nerds who are convinced that the crash was not an accident. This peculiar Danish film features oddball characters, dark comedy, and brutal violence, but disappointingly little plausibility. The story revolves around the nature of causality and vengeance, and it features men who struggle to deal with guilt, grief, or any other complex emotion. The performances are solid.

A Quiet Place Part II
2020
***½
Director: John Krasinski
Cast: Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Djimon Hounsou, John Krasinski, Scoot McNairy

A Quiet Place was a short and powerful horror movie with an original premise. The sequel first takes us to the day it all started, and then continues the story right where it ended last time. The remaining members of the Abbott family venture out into the dangerous unknown and learn that there may be other survivors on an island off the coast. Although the sequel retains the original's quality level in mood and thrills, it offers more of the same and doesn't advance the story all that much. The final part of the trilogy is set to be released in 2025.

Promising Young Woman
2020
*****
Director: Emerald Fennell
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Clancy Brown, Chris Lowell, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Connie Britton, Molly Shannon

After a traumatic event in college, Cassie dropped out of medical school. Now 30, she works in a coffee shop by day and goes out at nights to entrap men who are ready to take advantage of drunk women. Emerald Fennell's feature debut is a deliciously nasty and funny black comedy, which offers a rather cynical view of the male species and their sense of entitlement. They are all monsters, or are they? This is what Cassie must asks herself when she attempts to put the past behind her and embark on a relationship with her former classmate. Fennell's Academy Award winning screenplay unfolds like a Hitchcockian thriller. Carey Mulligan gives a terrific performance in the lead.

Palm Springs
2020
**½
Director: Max Barbakow
Cast: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons, Peter Gallagher, Meredith Hagner, Camila Mendes, Tyler Hoechlin, Chris Pang, Jacqueline Obradors

Nyles and Sarah meet at a wedding in Palm Springs. After a night of partying, they are stuck living this same day over and over again. Groundhog Day was a brilliantly dark, funny, and original comedy about a weatherman who was forced to relive the same day. This forgettable comedy offers very little originality, especially as it came out in 2020 like Boss Level, another disposable time loop movie. The original twist in Andy Siara's screenplay is that there is more than one person reliving the same day, but I guess he hasn't seen Edge of Tomorrow. I could ignore the lack of fresh of ideas to some extent if the characters were likeable, but Nyles and Sarah offer mothing.

Onward
2020
***½
Director: Dan Scanlon
Cast: Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Kyle Bornheimer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mel Rodriguez, Octavia Spencer, Lena Waithe, Ali Wong, Grey Griffin, Tracey Ullman

Two elf brothers, Ian and Barley, were brought up by their widowed mother in a magical world which has gradually forgotten how to use magic. On Ian's 16th birthday, the brothers embark on a quest in order to spend a brief moment with their dead father. This Pixar animation has a rather formulaic and uninspired start, but it gradually finds its feet and ends up being an entertaining and moving story of brotherly bond.

On the Rocks
2020
**
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Rashida Jones, Bill Murray, Marlon Wayans,Jessica Henwick, Jenny Slate, Liyanna Muscat, Alexandra Reimer, Anna Reimer, Barbara Bain, Juliana Canfield, Alva Chinn

While Dean pursues a business career, Laura is at home with their two young children. When she begins to suspect that Dean is unfaithful, Laura's womanising father is more than happy to feed her doubts and fears. Sofia Coppola reunites with Bill Murray in a story about an older man and a younger woman who form a bond during a night on the town, but Lost in Translation this is not. I'm not sure what this is. It's set in New York City and follows in the footsteps of Woody Allen, but doesn't have enough humour, drama, or poignant moments to leave a lasting memory. The trip to Mexico is the moment the film totally lost me.

Nomadland
2020
****
Director: Chloé Zhao
Cast: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Swankie, Bob Wells, Peter Spears

After losing her husband, job, and home, Fern takes her life on the road. She discovers a community of fellow modern days nomads, who live in their camper vans and take seasonal jobs to support themselves. Chloé Zhao's observational drama doesn't offer big and phony twists. It is a subtle but warm and fascinating depiction of a community who rarely get screen time. The central question is whether Fern is a prisoner of her economic circumstances or the master of her own destiny? Frances McDormand picked up her third Oscar for her understated lead performance, and many real-life nomads play themselves. Further Academy Awards for best picture and director. Based on Jessica Bruder's non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.

News of the World
2020
***
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Michael Angelo Covino, Ray McKinnon, Mare Winningham, Elizabeth Marvel, Fred Hechinger, Bill Camp

Following the Civil War, Captain Kidd, who ekes out a living reading newspaper stories to the people of Texas, agrees to bring a young white girl, who was kidnapped by Kiowa, to her aunt and uncle. This adaptation of a 2016 novel by Paulette Jiles delivers a combination of Western and odd-couple road movie. The story is not terribly original and its approach to some of the themes (racism and fake news) feels a bit too contemporary. However, this is a perfectly entertaining 2-hour drama. Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel have some nice interplay.

The New Mutants
2020
**½
Director: Josh Boone
Cast: Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt, Henry Zaga

Five young mutants are held captive in a secret facility, allegedly so they can learn to control their powers, but they all seem to be haunted by what they fear the most. The story is based on a Marvel comic and the whole thing looks like the first part of a reboot, but thanks to poor box office returns, this is in fact the final release in the X-Men series. It's a teen horror movie rather than a superhero movie, which is fine if it wasn't such a formulaic and unremarkable representative of its genre.

Mulan
2020
**½
Director: Niki Caro
Cast: Yifei Liu, Donnie Yen, Tzi Ma, Jason Scott Lee, Yoson An, Ron Yuan, Gong Li, Jet Li

When Rouran warriors, assisted by a powerful witch, attack the forces in the north, the Emperor of China orders every family to contribute one man to the fight. Hua Mulan is a young free spirited woman who runs away from home and disguises herself as a man in order to join the imperial army. Much like her breakthrough feature Whale Rider, Niki Caro's live-action remake of the 1998 Disney animation tells a story of a young woman who has to be better than anyone else just to be accepted as she is. This is a well-staged and visually rich but oddly lifeless and joyless spectacle, which lacks the required sense of wonder to lift is above passable entertainment. The flat performances and clunky dialogue do not help.

Minari
2020
***½
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Cast: Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, Will Patton

In the early 1980s, a Korean immigrant couple and their two children move to Arkansas to farm a piece of land. The economic hardship and various health issues in the family begin to take their toll on the parents and their marriage. Lee Isaac Chung's semiautobiographical drama is subtle, charming, and refreshingly free of clichés, even if it doesn't add up to anything earth-shattering. Youn Yuh-jung, who plays the grandmother, won an Academy Award for her warm performance.

Metsäjätti (Forest Giant)
2020
**½
Director: Ville Jankeri
Cast: Jussi Vatanen, Hannes Suominen, Sara Soulié, Anu Sinisalo, Tommi Korpela, Iikka Forss, Anna-Riikka Rajanen, Tomi Alatalo, Kuura Rossi

To secure a promotion at the forest company, Pasi is sent to his home town to improve productivity at the local plywood mill, which could affect the employment of his childhood friends. This sympathetic Finnish drama paints a cynical but very believable picture of the modern corporate world, where no profit is high enough. However, the film abandons realism somewhere along the way and the Hollywood ending feels compelled to solve all personal and professional conflicts. Based on Miika Nousiainen's 2011 novel.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
2020
**
Director: George C. Wolfe
Cast: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts, Jonny Coyne, Taylour Paige, Jeremy Shamos, Dusan Brown

In the 1920s, famous Blues diva Ma Rainey arrives in Chicago for a tumultuous recording session. From the get-go, there is tension between Ma and her cocky trumpeter Levee, who is dreaming of forming his own band so he can play his own songs. A few minutes in, it is clear that this tedious but beautifully staged period drama is based on a stage play, on August Wilson's 1982 play, to be exact. The central theme appears to be that black people can be successful, but only on white people's terms. This message gets somewhat lost in a film which is minimally cinematic and filled with big, broad, and wordy performances. Many of the characters deliver long and emotional monologues, which rang hollow to me. The dramatic twist in the end also feels forced. An Academy Award winner best makeup and hair and costumes. This is Chadwick Boseman's final film.

The King of Staten Island
2020
****
Director: Judd Apatow
Cast: Pete Davidson, Marisa Tomei, Bill Burr, Bel Powley, Maude Apatow, Steve Buscemi, Ricky Velez, Pamela Adlon, Moisés Arias, Lou Wilson

Scott is a sarcastic 24-year-old idler who lives with his mom. When his mom starts dating a fireman, like Scott's father who died on duty, things come to a head. Judd Apatow's delightful slice of life doesn't have much of a story, but it features a group of likeable characters in believable situations. The dialogue is funny and naturalistic and the performances are lively. This comedy provides a nice starring role for Pete Davidson, whose own father incidentally was a fireman who died in 9/11. Like most of Apatow's output, however, it goes on a bit too long.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things
2020
***½
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, David Thewlis, Guy Boyd

Jake takes his new girlfriend to meet his parents, unaware that she is planning to leave him. As soon as they arrive at their farm, she notices that something is a little off. This metaphysical mystery kicks off like Get Out, but that's where the similarities end. Although the story was adapted from Iain Reid's novel, this is a typical Charlie Kaufman mindbender, which once again deals with identity, loneliness and regrets. The film is bookended by two long, static, and dialogue-driven car journeys, but it is at its best during the intriguing and enjoyably weird visit.

I Care a Lot
2020
**
Director: J Blakeson
Cast: Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Eiza González, Chris Messina, Dianne Wiest, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Macon Blair, Alicia Witt, Damian Young, Nicholas Logan

Marla Grayson, a ruthless conwoman, manipulates the courts to gain legal guardianship over wealthy and vulnerable elderly people, who she then sedates and locks away in an assisted living facility. One day she exploits the wrong person's mother. J Blakeson's caper story is overlong, extremely cynical, and entirely inhabited by characters who have no redeeming features. The premise shows some initial promise, but I gave up on the film after the first 30 minutes due to complete lack of credibility. Everything comes too easily for Marla, who appears to be a superwoman. Her nemesis, on the other hand, is a stupid, ineffective, and very small Russian mob moss, played by Peter Dinklage. Despite all of this, however, Rosamund Pike follows Gone Girl with another deliciously nasty performance.

Greenland
2020
**½
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, David Denman, Hope Davis, Roger Dale Floyd, Andrew Bachelor, Merrin Dungey, Holt McCallany, Scott Glenn

When comet fragments start raining down on Earth and panic begins to spread among the population, a construction engineer receives a surprising message that his family have been selected for emergency sheltering. Like Deep Impact more than 20 years ago, this disaster movie asks what would happen if only a handful of people were saved from an extinction-level event. Most of the resulting on-screen drama comes from the people going bonkers rather than the comet fragments causing destruction. The end result is stupid and predictable but rather entertaining.

Freaky
2020
*
Director: Christopher Landon
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Katie Finneran, Celeste O'Connor, Alan Ruck, Uriah Shelton, Melissa Collazo, Dana Drori, Michelle Ladd

When a middle-aged serial killer nicknamed the Blissfield Butcher stabs Millie with an ancient dagger, the two swap bodies. Millie learns that she has just 24 hours to reverse the curse, or she is stuck in his body for good. Body-swap comedies are nothing new, but this slasher version is safe, formulaic, boring, and unfunny beyond belief. The real Millie is a nerdy high school student who is bullied by students and teachers alike. When the serial killer Millie puts on a red leather jacket, she becomes the most awesome girl in school, who obviously kills all the bullies and no one else. Vince Vaughn as a teenage girl is about as much fun as a real serial killer.

The Father
2020
****½
Director: Florian Zeller
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams, Mark Gatiss, Ayesha Dharker

This brilliant drama provides a first person view to dementia. While Anne is forced to hire another caregiver for her grouchy father, the 80-something Anthony tries to make sense of his increasingly confusing existence. Where does he actually live? Why do the names and faces around him seem to change? Who keeps taking his personal items? The Oscar winning screenplay by Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton is based on Zeller's stage play Le Père. Its disorienting structure beautifully reflects the character's memory loss. Anthony Hopkins' wonderfully nuanced performance earned him his second Academy Award.

Extraction
2020
**
Director: Sam Hargrave
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Rudhraksh Jaiswal, Randeep Hooda, Priyanshu Painyuli, Golshifteh Farahani, Pankaj Tripathi, David Harbour

Tyler Rake is a disillusioned mercenary who takes a job in Bangladesh to extract the kidnapped son of an Indian crime boss. The mission seems straightforward at first, but Rake eventually discovers that he's up against the entire city of Dhaka. John Wick meets Man on Fire in this relentless action flick about an ex-military man who has a chance to redeem himself by killing 183 people (official Netflix figure) just to keep one kid safe. In his directorial debut, former stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave stages some exciting and adrenaline-fuelled set pieces on the cramped and over-crowded streets of Dhaka, but the movie goes on too long in this monotonous fashion. Hell, even the end titles are more than 12 minutes long. Based on the graphic novel Ciudad by Ande Parks.

Enola Holmes
2020
***
Director: Harry Bradbeer
Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Sam Claflin, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Louis Partridge, Frances de la Tour, Burn Gorman, Adeel Akhtar, Fiona Shaw

Enola Holmes, the baby sister of Sherlock, is a self-taught and critically thinking 16-year-old girl. When Enola runs away from home to investigate the disappearance of her mother, she meets the young Viscount Tewkesbury, whose life seems to be at risk. This is an adaptation of the first book in The Enola Holmes Mysteries series by Nancy Springer. The movie is funny, enjoyable, disposable, and anachronistic. Millie Bobby Brown, who also co-produced, gives a commanding lead performance.

Druk (Another Round)
2020
***
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, Lars Ranthe, Maria Bonnevie, Helene Reingaard Neumann, Susse Wold, Magnus Sjørup, Silas Cornelius Van, Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt

Martin and his three teacher colleagues, who have lost their mojo, decide to test a theory that a slight level of intoxication will increase their social and professional performance. But what is the right level? Thomas Vinterberg's dark comedy has a bold and unusual premise, but I struggle to believe most of the events portrayed on screen. What is the ultimate message of this story, I don't really know. The film doesn't moralise, but it gives mixed signals. While some of the men lose control of their drinking, one of them expands the test to a student with resounding success. The only thing the men are able to prove is that watching drunk people is not funny when you're sober. Academy Award winner for best international feature film.

Dolittle
2020
**
Director: Stephen Gaghan
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, John Cena, Kumail Nanjiani, Octavia Spencer, Tom Holland, Craig Robinson, Ralph Fiennes, Selena Gomez, Marion Cotillard

Following the death of his wife, Dr. Dolittle, the renowned veterinarian who can speak to animals, has become a recluse. When Queen Victoria falls seriously ill, Dolittle must go on a quest with his animals and his new apprentice. Hugh Lofting's children's book was previously adapted in 1967 and 1998. This version looks like it started shooting before a page of the script was written. The end result is a plotless CGI mess which may appeal to small children, but not anyone else. Much like he did in Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey Jr. attempts another accent (Welsh) and ends up giving an incomprehensibly mumbly performance.

The Devil All the Time
2020
*½
Director: Antonio Campos
Cast: Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett, Eliza Scanlen, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson

In the decades following World War II, the lives of a handful of characters intersect in Ohio and West Virginia. These include a disturbed war veteran and his traumatised son, two duplicitous preachers, a corrupt sheriff, and husband and wife serial killers. This Southern Gothic drama is a right old mess. The confusing introduction of characters and the aimless rush through the decades are a clear giveaway that this is a literary adaptation. The dismal script by Antonio and Paulo Campos is based on a 2011 novel by Donald Ray Pollock, who himself occasionally provides unnecessary narration. The point of the story remains unclear. The events revolve around religion and violence, and it features nothing but miserable people, most of whom do not die of natural causes. While Tom Holland gives a believable performance as the troubled young man at the centre of events, Robert Pattinson is absolutely awful as the slimy and abusive preacher.

Da 5 Bloods
2020
**½
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Mélanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Pääkkönen, Jean Reno, Chadwick Boseman

The Three Kings meets black history week in this entertaining but preachy and endlessly long drama about four black veterans who travel to Vietnam to bring back the remains of their fallen comrade and a crateful of gold bars they buried during the war. Spike Lee and Kevin Willmott rewrote an old spec script, and to be frank, the resulting story feels somehow out of whack, like it was originally set in the 1990s. This first manifests itself in the opening 30 minutes when one of the Bloods tells that his son just graduated from high school and another one discovers that he fathered a child 50 years ago who now looks like she's 30. Credibility is further stretched when this group of 70-year-olds trek through the hot jungle with incredibly heavy backpacks. In any case, the performances are solid.

The Comeback Trail
2020
**
Director: George Gallo
Cast: Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, Morgan Freeman, Zach Braff, Emile Hirsch, Eddie Griffin, Kate Katzman, Blerim Destani

After Killer Nuns bombs at the box office, the movie's producer Max Barber struggles to pay back his loan to a mob boss. He decides to carry out an insurance scam, which requires the elderly star of his next movie to drop dead during the shoot. This comedy is set in 1974 and it is a remake of a 1982 film of the same name. The set-up is like a mix of The Ladykillers and The Producers. Despite the promising premise, the film is not funny and some of the performances are awful.

Call of the Wild
2020
***
Director: Chris Sanders
Cast: Harrison Ford, Omar Sy, Cara Gee, Dan Stevens, Karen Gillan, Bradley Whitford, Colin Woodell, Scott MacDonald, Abraham Benrubi

In the turn of the century, a large and clumsy but goodhearted mixed-breed dog named Buck is abducted from his home in California and taken to the Yukon, where it serves several masters but is gradually drawn to the wild. Disney's adaptation of Jack London's 1903 novel removes the unpleasant and potentially offensive parts and delivers an exciting and child-friendly but somewhat sterile adventure. Buck is a lovely character but overly anthropomorphic and fully computer-created.

Boss Level
2020
**
Director: Joe Carnahan
Cast: Frank Grillo, Mel Gibson, Naomi Watts, Annabelle Wallis, Michelle Yeoh, Ken Jeong, Will Sasso, Selina Lo, Meadow Williams, Rio Grillo

A former soldier is forced to relive the same day over and over. Each day, he attempts to stay alive long enough to figure out what is going on and why a group of professional assassins are out to get him. The script by Chris Borey, Eddie Borey, and Joe Carnahan unconvincingly manages to answer why it's all happening but not why the bad guy so badly wants to kill the hero. So we can have non-stop action is the answer, I suppose. This derivative time loop action movie is closer to the live-die-repeat scenario of Edge of Tomorrow than the smart comedy of Groundhog Day, which launched this entire subgenre. However, my problem is that the unpleasant protagonist is too cool and ironically detached to carry the weight of the story. He does eventually learn to become a better person, but there is little room for growth for a guy who is a seasoned killer already at the start of the story. Frank Grillo is charmless and Naomi Watts and Michelle Yeoh are completely wasted in their underwritten cameos.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
2020
***½
Director: Cathy Yan
Cast: Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ella Jay Basco, Ali Wong, Ewan McGregor

When the Joker breaks up with Harley Quinn, every wronged person in Gotham City wants to settle their personal score with her. This includes crime boss Roman Sionis, who agrees to spare her life in exchange for a diamond stolen by a teenage pickpocket. Harley Quinn was the sole bright spot in the utterly forgettable Suicide Squad. Nominally, this is the origin story of the Birds of Prey, a team of female superheroes, but really this is Harley's movie. Apart from Shazam!, the DC Extended Universe has not become synonymous with fun and entertainment. However, Cathy Yan's movie is pumped up with Harley's insane, anarchic energy, and the outcome is either wacky and unpredictable or all over the place. In any case, it is enjoyable. Margot Robbie is excellent in the lead.

The Banker
2020
***
Director: George Nolfi
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Nicholas Hoult, Nia Long, Jessie T. Usher, Samuel L. Jackson, Taylor Black, Michael Harney, Colm Meaney, Paul Ben-Victor, Scott Daniel Johnson

To circumvent racism in 1950s America, two black businessmen hire a white man to act as the front of their company. They discover that buying real estate in Los Angeles is a walk in the park compared to buying a small bank in Texas. This fact-based drama provides an interesting and little known slice of Black American history. The story of Bernard Garrett and Joe Morris is predictably shocking and surprisingly funny, but also somewhat formulaic and not always terribly exciting. Anthony Mackie (in an unusual leading role), Samuel L. Jackson, and Nicholas Hoult give commanding performances.

Alone
2020
**½
Director: John Hyams
Cast: Jules Willcox, Marc Menchaca, Anthony Heald

The recently widowed Jessica packs her stuff and goes on a long road trip to start over, but her journey takes an unexpected turn when she becomes the target of a relentless stalker. This relatively gripping thriller doesn't outstay its welcome, but it is not original or surprising enough to leave a lasting impression. It starts like Duel, then briefly turns into Room, before ending as Deliverance.

Zombieland: Double Tap
2019
**½
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Rosario Dawson, Zoey Deutch, Luke Wilson, Avan Jogia, Thomas Middleditch

While the relationships between Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock are becoming strained, the group run into other survivors and must face a new and more powerful mutant zombie. Zombieland was a disposable zombie comedy. The sequel arrives 10 years later, but it really has no reason to exist. The shtick between the old characters is getting old (Woody Harrelson really hams it up) and the new ones include a boringly one-dimensional blond bimbo, a stereotypically useless hippie, and doppelgängers for Columbus and Tallahassee.

Us
2019
***
Director: Jordan Peele
Cast: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop

As a child, Adelaide wandered away from her parents at a carnival and ran into a girl who looked exactly like her. More than 30 years later, she is wife and mother of two, but still haunted by this memory. One night, their holiday home is invaded by an entire family of creepy doppelgängers. Jordan Peele's follow-up to Get Out has an atmospheric, unsettling, and intriguing set-up. However, the payoff is somewhat inevitably underwhelming and nonsensical. Peele's script features some interesting subtext about a two-tiered American society, but the surface level of the story has so many unexplained plot holes that I couldn't fully embrace the film.

Uncut Gems
2019
****½
Director: Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie
Cast: Adam Sandler, Lakeith Stanfield, Julia Fox, Kevin Garnett, Idina Menzel, Eric Bogosian, Judd Hirsch, Keith Williams Richards, Jonathan Aranbayev, Noa Fisher, Abel Tesfaye

Howard Ratner is a self-destructive diamond dealer who runs a personal and professional high-stakes pyramid scheme. Whether Howard juggles between his wife and girlfriend, or attempts to pay off his gambling debts, he makes bad decisions, and then covers his tracks by making even worse ones. The only actor to play a character this awful and abrasive is Adam Sandler, who goes full Pacino in his finest performance to date. After I got past the auditory attack of the first few minutes when the soundtrack is cranked up to 11 and all the characters are talking and swearing at the same time, the two hours that follow left me breathless. This intense drama from the Safdie brothers is exhilarating, infuriating and definitely the most stressful watch I can remember.

Triple Frontier
2019
**½
Director: J.C. Chandor
Cast: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal, Adria Arjona, Sheila Vand

Five Delta Force veterans reunite for a lucrative mission in the South American jungle. They plan to break into a cartel hideaway, kill the drug lord, and steal his millions. Everything goes smoothly, until the sight of all the money turns these seasoned professionals into greedy idiots. This entertaining but derivative military heist movie was co-scripted by Mark Boal, the Academy Award winning writer of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. Boal adds credibility to the military details, but do not attempt to find the depth of his previous work in this escapist drama. Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods (2020) tells a similar story with comparable success.

Toy Story 4
2019
**½
Director: Josh Cooley
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Madeleine McGraw, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, Ally Maki, Jay Hernandez, Lori Alan, Joan Cusack

Toy Stories 1, 2 and 3 form one of the finest film trilogies ever made. Now, nine years later, the story continues regardless. Bonnie, who is anxious about starting kindergarten, can only find solace in Forky, a new friend she crafts from trash. When Forky comes to life, Woody feels compelled to protect him for Bonnie's sake. The fourth episode maintains Pixar's quality standard in terms of animation, writing, and characterisation, but it is a totally unnecessary addition to the series, which now replaces a perfect ending with a less perfect one. The franchise turns Buzz into a buffoonish sidekick and jumps the shark with Forky, who doesn't make any sense to me within the rules of this universe. Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature.

Tolkien
2019
***
Director: Dome Karukoski
Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Colm Meaney, Derek Jacobi, Anthony Boyle, Patrick Gibson, Tom Glynn-Carney, Craig Roberts, Genevieve O'Reilly

This drama about J.R.R. Tolkien attempts to capture the dramatic circumstances that turned an orphan Catholic boy with a keen interest in languages into one of the biggest selling fantasy writers of all time. Just as Tolkien falls in love with a Protestant girl and finds his true calling, he and his tight-knit group of friends must face the trenches of the First World War. Literary biopic is not the most exciting genre, and this conventional film does not offer surprises. There is certainly very little here for the casual fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is beautifully shot and well-acted, though.

Togo
2019
****
Director: Ericson Core
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Julianne Nicholson, Christopher Heyerdahl, Richard Dormer, Adrien Dorval, Madeline Wickins, Michael Greyeyes, Nive Nielsen, Nikolai Nikolaeff

In 1925, Leonhard Seppala is asked to take part in a dangerous 1000 km sled relay in order to collect antitoxin for a diphtheria outbreak in Nome, Alaska. This gripping and entertaining adventure film is a gruelling survival story and a moving tale of a bond between a man and his dog. Based on real events.

Terminator: Dark Fate
2019
*½
Director: Tim Miller
Cast: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, Diego Boneta, Tristán Ulloa, Alicia Borrachero, Enrique Arce

In the Terminator franchise, it is irrelevant what happened in the previous release, because the next one just starts over and tells the same story all over again. The sixth film in the series is a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), which ended with Sarah and John Connor safe and both Terminator models destroyed. Never mind, the prologue shows that John was killed just a few years later by a Terminator. In the present day, a cybernetically enhanced human comes from the future to protect a young Mexican woman from a Rev-9, a deadly new Terminator model, and she gets help from Sarah Connor. Ever since James Cameron's 1991 classic, this franchise has been going through the motions. This is another lazy and incredibly mechanical action movie, which has absolutely no reason to exist.

Tell Me Who I Am
2019
***
Director: Ed Perkins
Cast:

When Alex Lewis lost his memory in a motorcycle accident, his twin brother Marcus helped him to reconstruct the first 18 years of their lives, but decided to redact the deeply traumatic aspects of their childhood. This story is fascinating and unusual, but Ed Perkins' documentary feels simultaneously bloated and incomplete. He overstretches and overdramatises the big reveal, which in the end doesn't amount to much more than two sentences, and I'm sure was already disclosed in the 2013 book the Lewis brothers wrote with Joanna Hines. Disappointingly, the film sheds no light on the people who inflicted the trauma.

Stuber
2019
*½
Director: Michael Dowse
Cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Dave Bautista, Iko Uwais, Natalie Morales, Betty Gilpin, Jimmy Tatro, Mira Sorvino, Karen Gillan

LAPD detective Vic Manning receives a promising lead on the drug trafficker who killed his partner. However, he cannot see clearly after corrective eye surgery, so he must rely on the help of Uber driver Stu. This buddy action comedy, brought to you by Uber, has two contrasting leads who have good onscreen chemistry. Unfortunately, I have no other positive comments to make about this movie. The story about a half-blind cop who drags an innocent civilian on a personal revenge rampage doesn't include one believable moment.

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker
2019
**
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong'o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams

After Rian Johnson incurred the wrath of the Star Wars fans with his refreshingly subversive The Last Jedi (2017), J.J. Abrams, who directed the entertaining but derivative The Force Awakens (2015), returns to wrap things up with a fast-paced but disappointing spectacle which ignores most of Johnson's intriguing ideas and makes the third trilogy feel like three unrelated releases set in the same universe. The Resistance receive intel from a spy in the First Order that Emperor Palpatine has returned and built a massive fleet of Star Destroyers on Exegol. Rey, who is now closely bound to Kylo Ren through the Force, joins Finn, Poe, Chewbacca, and the droids to uncover a wayfinder which could lead them to the location of the Sith Lord. Never mind, the plot is of secondary concern to Abrams and Chris Terrio, whose script just seems to make things up as it goes along. Very often the story or character motives don't make any sense from one scene to the next, and even less so in the context of the trilogy and the Skywalker Saga. Occasionally it feels like some important scene was left on the cutting room floor. The stakes are supposedly high, but there are no big emotional payoffs because the movie doesn't dare to go through with any of its dramatic turns. If a villain we were sure died decades ago can suddenly resurface, it is clear that character deaths are meaningless in the Star Wars universe, especially if the Force can now be used to resurrect the dead and the old casualties hang around in spirit form anyway.

Spies in Disguise
2019
***
Director: Troy Quane, Nick Bruno
Cast: Will Smith, Tom Holland, Rashida Jones, Ben Mendelsohn, Reba McEntire, Rachel Brosnahan, Karen Gillan, DJ Khaled, Masi Oka

When Lance Sterling, a cocky super spy, is framed for stealing an attack drone he was supposed to retrieve, he must go on the run. He seeks help from Walter Beckett, a nerdy science wiz, who accidentally turns Lance into a pigeon. This unusual but entertaining animation offers a combination of The Incredibles and Valiant, if you will. The end result is not as clever and original as some of Pixar's best work, but neither is it as formulaic and predictable as many other movies in the animation genre. Based on the 2009 animated short Pigeon: Impossible.

Spider-Man: Far From Home
2019
***½
Director: Jon Watts
Cast: Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Zendaya, Cobie Smulders, Jon Favreau, J. B. Smoove, Jacob Batalon, Martin Starr, Marisa Tomei, Jake Gyllenhaal

Still processing the events of Avengers: Endgame, Peter Parker and his friends go on a study trip to Europe, where he plans to reveal his feelings to MJ. The trip doesn't go to plan when Nick Fury needs Peter's help to fight the destructive Elementals alongside Mysterio, an enigmatic superhero from a multiverse. Spider-Man: Homecoming was one of the most purely entertaining movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The sequel doesn't quite reach the same heights, but it offers a very solid combination of drama, humour, action, and sentiment. This is the final release in the Infinity Saga.

Sound of Metal
2019
***½
Director: Darius Marder
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric, Chris Perfetti, Michael Tow

Ruben is a reformed heroin addict who plays drums in a metal band fronted by his girfriend Lou. His world falls apart when he suddenly begins to lose his hearing. I understand that Darius Marder's film is ultimately a story about Ruben accepting his deafness, but after a captivating start his journey doesn't quite take the route I hoped and expected. Lou becomes irrelevant and when Ruben joins a remote commune for deaf recovering addicts, the loss of hearing ceases to be a medical issue. Nevertheless, Riz Ahmed and the rest of the cast are excellent. Academy Award winner for best sound and film editing.

Shazam!
2019
***½
Director: David F. Sandberg
Cast: Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou, Faithe Herman, Grace Fulton, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand, Marta Milans, Cooper Andrews, Adam Brody

Billy Batson is a troubled 14-year-old orphan who is desperate to find his mother. Just as he is moving into another foster home, Billy is swooped to the Rock of Eternity where an ancient wizard gives him powers that allow Billy to turn into a grown-up superhero every time he speaks out the name Shazam. So far, DC Extended Universe has failed to win me over. Apart from the OK Wonder World, the output has been drab. With this origin story, DC takes a leaf out of Marvel's book and attempts to create something that is actually entertaining. The early parts with the newly discovered superpowers are enjoyable, even if we've seen these types of scenes several times in the recent years. The latter parts are not as successful. The climactic battle is long and quite forgettable, and the villain never amounts to much.

The Secret Life of Pets 2
2019
**
Director: Chris Renaud
Cast: Patton Oswalt, Kevin Hart, Eric Stonestreet, Jenny Slate, Tiffany Haddis, Lake Bell, Nick Kroll, Harrison Ford

The Secret Life of Pets was a run-of-the-mill animation which consistently ripped off the Toy Story franchise. The only thing consistent with this sequel is that it's all over the place. The characters and their relationships to other pets and people seem to have no rules, and the script juggles three separate story strands which come together for one contrived moment. While Max spends a stressful weekend at a farm, Gidget must retrieve an item from a house full of cats, and Snowball is recruited to rescue a white tiger.

Rocketman
2019
****
Director: Dexter Fletcher
Cast: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Bryce Dallas Howard, Gemma Jones, Stephen Graham, Steven Macintosh, Tate Donovan, Charlie Rowe, Tom Bennett

In the late 1960s, a young piano prodigy named Reginald Dwight meets his life-long song-writing partner Bernie Taupin, changes his name to Elton John, and becomes one of the most recognisable pop stars of the 20th century. If last year's Bohemian Rhapsody was a likeable but very formulaic pop star biopic of Freddie Mercury, this entertaining biographical drama offers something more interesting. This is not really a depiction of the life and career of Elton John, but an intimate and subjective portrayal of a successful but increasingly lonely man who must come to terms with his emotionally distant parents, sexual identity, drug and alcohol addiction, and self-loathing before he can find happiness. We hear many of his best known tracks, but they are staged as musical numbers and cleverly used to illustrate his emotional state at any given time. A new cut named (I'm Gonna) Love Me Again won an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Taron Egerton gives an excellent performance in the lead.


Richard Jewell
2019
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Paul Walter Hauser, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Nina Arianda, Ian Gomez, Dylan Kussman, Mike Pniewski, Niko Nicotera

Richard Jewell, an affable security guard, saves hundreds of lives when he discovers a bomb during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. For a brief moment, he is rightly hailed as a hero, but his life becomes hell when the FBI and the media falsely brand him as the prime suspect in the bombing. Clint Eastwood is a reliably solid storyteller and this moving drama provides another fine example. This real-life story of one man's character assassination is consistently gripping and it features some excellent performances from Hauser, Bates, and Rockwell. My only wish is that the nasty journalist played by Olivia Wilde was a slightly less one-dimensional character. Billy Ray's screenplay is based on American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell by Marie Brenner and The Suspect: An Olympic Bombing, the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, the Man Caught in the Middle by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen.

Ready or Not
2019
*½
Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Cast: Samara Weaving, Mark O'Brien, Adam Brody, Elyse Levesque, Nicky Guadagni, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell

Grace is marrying to the wealthy Le Domas family, but her new husband Alex failed to mention that on her wedding night she must take part in a brutal game. This stupid and gory horror comedy is neither funny nor particularly scary. It is delightfully short, though, but that comes at a price. Grace transforms from a hysterical newlywed to a ruthless killer in a matter of minutes. As for the other members of family and staff, I still have no clue who is who.

Pokemon Detective Pikachu
2019
**½
Director: Rob Letterman
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, Suki Waterhouse, Omar Chaparro, Chris Geere, Ken Watanabe, Bill Nighy

After learning that his estranged father died in a freaky car crash, Tim Goodman travels to Ryme City, where humans and Pokémons live side by side. Tim reluctantly teams up with Pikachu, his father's Pokémon partner, to solve the mystery. The first live action Pokémon release is loosely based on a video game of the same name and it clearly attempts to cash in on the Pokémon Go mobile game craze that swept the world a few years ago. The movie is entertaining but instantly forgettable, and Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu provides the biggest laughs. On the other hand, the story is predictable, confusing, and repetitive, sometimes all in the same scene.

The Peanut Butter Falcon
2019
****
Director: Tyler Nilson, Michael Schwartz
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson, John Hawkes, Zack Gottsagen, Bruce Dern, Jon Bernthal, Thomas Haden Church, Yelawolf, Wayne Dehart, Jake Roberts

Zak, a young man with Down syndrome, runs away from the retirement home where he lives and teams up with Tyler, a reclusive man who is dealing with personal loss. Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz's directorial debut is a funny and moving feelgood film. It's a warm-hearted portrayal of an unexpected friendship, as Tyler is the first person who treats Zak as an equal. Unfortunately, Nilson and Schwartz, who also scripted, cannot resist ironing out all the issues for their three main characters.

Parasite
2019
*****
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Park So-dam, Lee Jung-eun, Jang Hye-jin, Park Myung-hoon, Jung Ji-so, Jung Hyeon-jun

The poor Kim family, who live in a dingy semi-basement apartment in Seoul, infiltrate themselves into the household of the wealthy Park family, who reside in a luxurious house up on the hills. Bong Joon-ho's thrillingly unpredictable film starts as a light social satire and ends as a tragic drama. In-between, it's funny, poignant, surprising, and shocking. It deservedly won four Academy Awards, which include best picture, director, and original screenplay.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2019
**½
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Al Pacino

Quentin Tarantino's ninth film is an homage to Hollywood of the late 1960s. Rick Dalton is a washed-up TV actor whose career is at a crossroads. His driver and best friend Cliff Booth is a former stunt man with a shady past. It's clear that Tarantino is a fan of every little detail about the movies and TV shows from this period (except the way a show like Lancer would have been shot and acted), but his script is unfocused and meandering, and the film seems to go on forever. For every 10-second shot, he gives us a full minute, and for every 2-minute scene, he gives us at least 10 minutes. About 15 minutes of the running time is dedicated just on people driving around in cars. Like all his works, this one includes some memorable scenes, which includes an extremely violent Hollywood ending. The film looks and sounds terrific, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have wonderful chemistry together. Margot Robbie, on the other hand, has a thankless role as Sharon Tate, who drives to the cinema to watch herself in The Wrecking Crew in the film's most pointless scene. An Academy Award winner for best supporting actor (Pitt) and production design.

Official Secrets
2019
***½
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans, Adam Bakri, Ralph Fiennes, Indira Varma, Conleth Hill, Tamsin Greig, Hattie Morahan

In 2003, CHHQ analyst/translator Katharine Gun unwittingly risks everything when she leaks a confidential memo about a plan to manipulate the United Nations Security Council members into supporting an invasion of Iraq. Gavin Hood's fact-based film offers a gripping and thought-provoking mix of personal drama and political intrigue. Katharine Gun is a brave and principled character, and Keira Knightley gives one of her strongest performances playing her. Based on the 2008 book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell.

Motherless Brooklyn
2019
**½
Director: Edward Norton
Cast: Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Cherry Jones, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Michael K. Williams, Leslie Mann, Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts

Edward Norton acquired the rights to Jonathan Lethem's 1999 novel as soon as it was published and then spent the next two decades trying get the adaptation to the screen. Now the film is here and Norton is credited as producer, director, writer, and actor. In the end, he took two characters from the book, moved the setting from the present day to 1957, and made up all the rest. What is the point of that? Norton plays Lionel Essrog, a private detective with Tourette's syndrome. As he investigates the murder of his mentor, he unravels a web of corruption surrounding the planning and building in New York City. This is a good-looking but long and convoluted neo-noir with an unusual main character who is full of ticks and shouts. However, nobody seems to care about his medical condition and it ultimately plays no role in the story.

Missing Link
2019
***
Director: Chris Butler
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Zach Galifianakis, Stephen Fry, Timothy Olyphant, Emma Thompson, Amrita Acharia, Matt Lucas, David Walliams

In the end of the 19th century, second rate explorer Sir Lionel Frost hopes to join the exclusive Society of Great Men by proving the existence of Sasquatch. He travels to North America, where the quest takes an unexpected turn. With releases such as Paranorman, Coraline, and The Boxtrolls, Laika has become synonymous with unusual and often creepy stop motion animations. In comparison, this is a safe, likeable, and conventional family film with a predictable message (a vain man learns what's truly important in life) and broadly drawn characters.

Midway
2019
*½
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Etsushi Toyokawa, Tadanobu Asano, Mandy Moore, Dennis Quaid, Woody Harrelson

Six months after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy emerges victorious from the Battle of Midway, which ends up being a pivotal turning point in the Pacific War. Roland Emmerich's film about these events features several characters who are based on real people. Or well, calling this parade of names and faces characters is a gross overstatement. Dive bomber pilot Dick Best is one of the few who is at least somewhat fleshed out, but Ed Skrein plays him with the worst American accent in the history of cinema. This is not a drama that makes you ponder the horrors of war, this is jingoistic war entertainment, where every few minutes one of the American soldiers performs a heroic deed. There is plenty of war action, but sadly Emmerich has recreated it all with fake-looking CGI.

Midsommar
2019
****½
Director: Ari Aster
Cast: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, Will Poulter, Gunnel Fred, Isabelle Grill, Lars Väringer, Henrik Norlén

Following a family tragedy, Dani joins her estranged boyfriend and his college buddies on a trip to rural Sweden. They hope to attend a traditional midsummer festival, but discover a secretive cult-like community who adhere to ancient rules and rituals. Ari Aster's Hereditary was an intriguing but ultimately disappointing horror movie. His second feature is an unsettling folk horror drama, which follows in the footsteps of The Wicker Man and Apostle (2018). This is a long but hypnotic break-up story steeped in Norse mythology. While I didn't care for some individual scenes along the way, in the end I was really impressed with the beautifully constructed script and flawless direction. Pawel Pogorzelski's gliding camerawork and Bobby Krlic's haunting soundtrack earn a special mention. Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor are the standouts in a great cast.

Men in Black: International
2019
*½
Director: F. Gary Gray
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Rebecca Ferguson, Kumail Nanjiani, Rafe Spall, Laurent Bourgeois, Larry Bourgeois, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson

Seven years after the belated third part, the franchise reboots with a new director and cast, but no new ideas whatsoever. The movie treats its audience as if Men in Black or its sequels never existed. It's simply enough to introduce another collection of wacky alien characters. Rookie MIB Agent M is dispatched to London, where she teams up with the supremely talented but increasingly cocky and sloppy Agent H. There is a generic A-plot about a global threat and an utterly predictable B-plot about a mole inside the agency. Both are so boring that I found myself drifting off at times. Hemsworth and Thompson were a wonderful pair in Thor: Ragnarok, but they don't have any chance with this material.

Marriage Story
2019
*****
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Julie Hagerty, Merritt Wever, Azhy Robertson, Wallace Shawn, Martha Kelly, Mark O'Brien

In The Squid and the Whale and The Meyerowitz Stories, Noah Baumbach told partly autobiographical stories about broken families. Now he deals with the actual breakup, and it results in his most powerful film so far. Nicole is an actress who put her own Hollywood career on a backburner when she married Charlie, a renowned New York theatre director. Now the couple are breaking up and Nicole moves to Los Angeles with their 8-year-old son. The divorce proceeding begin amicably, but turn nasty, petty, and personal when lawyers get involved. Baumbach's brutally honest and heart-breaking drama has utterly believable characters and a finely nuanced script. Johansson and Driver both give amazing performances, and Laura Dern won an Academy Award for her delicious supporting role as Nicole's affable but conniving lawyer.

Long Shot
2019
***
Director: Jonathan Levine
Cast: Seth Rogen, Charlize Theron, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Andy Serkis, June Diane Raphael, Bob Odenkirk, Alexander Skarsgård

Fred Flarsky is an idealistic journalist who quits his job on moral grounds. That same night, he runs into his childhood babysitter Charlotte Field, now U.S. Secretary of State, who offers him a job as a speechwriter as she gets ready to announce her presidential campaign. This is a funny and likeable, but highly implausible romantic comedy. Rogen plays the same drug-loving, foul-mouthed loser he always does, but he has great chemistry with Charlize Theron. However, the politics in the movie are total Hollywood wish fulfilment.

Little Women
2019
****
Director: Great Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk, James Norton, Louis Garrel, Chris Cooper

While their father is fighting in the Civil War and their mother tries to keep the family afloat, the four March girls (Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth) face big decisions regarding their professional, financial, and romantic aspirations. This is the seventh adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved 1888 novel. Greta Gerwig's version intercuts between two time periods, which is a bit disorienting at first. However, in the second half, the film really finds its groove and these wonderful characters all get their moment in the spotlight. The cast is amazing, so the performances are predictably great. Academy Award winner for best costume design.

The Lighthouse
2019
****
Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson, Valeriia Karamän, Logan Hawkes

In the end of the 19th century, a grizzled lighthouse keeper and his new assistant arrive in a remote lighthouse off the coast of New England. When a storm strands them on the island, the isolation and heavy drinking begin to take a heavy toll on their sanity and sense of reality. Like The Witch, Robert Eggers' second feature is an unusual and unsettling horror-tinted drama. This highly original film delivers a mix of shocks and laughs, some wonderfully archaic dialogue, and two towering performances. Jarin Blaschke's stunning cinematography, which uses an almost square aspect ratio, adds to the feeling of claustrophobia.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
2019
**½
Director: Mike Mitchell
Cast: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Charlie Day, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Maya Rudolph

The Lego Movie took the world by surprise. This sequel must not only try and match or top the fresh and inventive original, but make amends for the mediocre The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie, which badly diluted the franchise. Five years have passed and Bricksburg has become a post-apocalyptic ghost town. When Lucy, Batman, and his other friends are kidnapped and taken to the Systar System in the Duplo universe, Emmet must find the hero inside him. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who co-wrote and co-directed the first movie, are back with a script which offers a natural if somewhat predictable extension to the story. The good news is that the characters maintain their likeability and the soundtrack features another guaranteed earworm (titled Catchy Song). The bad news is that the franchise hasn't come up with anything new, and the old shtick has become way too familiar by now.

The Laundromat
2019
**½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright, Robert Patrick, David Schwimmer, Rosalind Chao, Sharon Stone, James Cromwell,

This dark comedy tells three separate personal stories that centre around the actions of Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that provided dubious offshore financial services until the company was exposed by the Panama Papers. After the likes of Ocean's Eleven, Out of Sight, and Logan Lucky, Steven Soderbergh doesn't really need to leave his comfort zone for this caper story. The movie is entertainingly informative, but the three story strands do not have equal pull. Just when I got invested in one set of characters, I was introduced to another set of characters. Scott Z. Burns scripted from Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein.

Koirat eivät käytä housuja (Dogs Don't Wear Pants)
2019
**
Director: J-P Valkeapää
Cast: Pekka Strang, Krista Kosonen, Ilona Huhta, Jani Volanen, Oona Airola, Iiris Anttila, Ester Geislerová

Seven years after his wife's drowning, a traumatised surgeon is still not over his grief. While his daughter is in a tattoo parlour, he makes a transformative visit to a BDSM dungeon. This extremely dark comedy has an intriguing premise, but the optimism is short-lived. The story dives into a world of pain and suffering, and never leaves it. In the process, the characters turn from three-dimensional human beings into walking and barely talking metaphors.

Knives Out
2019
***½
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell, Christopher Plummer

On the morning after his 85th birthday party, wealthy novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead with his throat slit. Was it suicide or was he murdered by someone in his family or staff? Rian Johnson has built a career out of creating genre exercises where style often comes before substance. Some of his films have been good (Looper - science fiction), some have been bad (The Brothers Bloom - caper comedy), and some have landed somewhere in the middle (Brick - film noir). This time Johnson takes on a whodunnit. He weaves a twisty, inventive and often funny murder mystery, but at the end I'm not sure if the whole amounts to anything more than a terrific looking diversion. The performances are strong, although Daniel Craig's comically hammy performance as the eccentric private detective Benoit Blanc sticks out like a sore thumb. Followed by Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

Klaus
2019
***
Director: Sergio Pablos
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, J. K. Simmons, Rashida Jones, Will Sasso, Neda Margrethe Labba, Sergio Pablos, Norm Macdonald, Joan Cusack

Jesper is a spoilt rich kid who must set up a postal service on a remote island of Smeerensburg, or risk losing his inheritance. The west of the island is divided between two feuding clans, and a lonely woodsman resides in the eastern parts. After a bumpy and somewhat boring start (Jesper is exhausting but not funny), this 2D animation gets its act together and ends up telling a moving but surprisingly materialistic origin story of the American version of Santa Claus and Christmas. The film's slogan is "A true act of goodwill always sparks another", but maybe it should actually be "When kids get stuff, everyone is happy".

The Kingmaker
2019
****½
Director: Lauren Greenfield
Cast:

An entertaining and captivating documentary on the stranglehold the Marcos family has on the Philippines, with the focus on Imelda Marcos, an almost comically unrepentant and oblivious prima donna. After 21 years as president/dictator, Ferdinand Marcos and his family fled the country in 1986. Five years later, the widowed Imelda Marcos and her children were welcomed back to the country, despite stealing an estimated 10 billion dollars of the state's money. The family's story comes full circle in 2016, when Imelda is campaigning for her son Bongbong, who is running to become vice president.

Jumanji: The Next Level
2019
***
Director: Jake Kasdan
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas, Awkwafina, Alex Wolff, Morgan Turner, Ser'Darius Blain, Madison Iseman, Danny Glover, Danny DeVito, Rory McCann

A few years after completing the game, Spencer longs back to Jumanji. When he ends up back in the game, his friends go on a rescue mission, but unintentionally take Spencer's grandfather and his former business partner along for the ride. The sequel to the highly enjoyable Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle delivers more of the same with some new twists. The first half reshuffles the real world characters and game avatars, which is not terribly funny and works only in the context of the previous episode. The movie is at its best in the second half when it sticks to the strengths of the original: the well-drawn characters, humour, and action.

Judy
2019
***
Director: Rupert Goold
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Finn Wittrock, Jessie Buckley, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Richard Cordery, Bella Ramsey, Royce Pierreson, Andy Nyman

This biographical drama is based on Peter Quilter's stage play End of the Rainbow and it is framed around Judy Garland's (1922-1969) last hurrah, as she performs a series of shows in London. Renée Zellweger won an Academy Award for her strong acting and singing performance. Apart from that, this is a rather formulaic show business biopic, which tells a familiar story about a brilliant talent who was ruined by manipulative people and substance abuse.

Joker
2019
*****
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy,Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Leigh Gill, Bill Camp, Shea Whigham

In the early 80s, Arthur Fleck, a mentally unstable clown-for-hire who lives with his mother and dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian, finds himself invisible to the world around him. When Arthur's personal frustrations finally reach a boiling point, the tension that has been brewing in Gotham City explodes into riots. Joker has featured as a villain in several DC comic book movies, but this is the first attempt to tell a credible origin story of the man under the painted face. Arthur starts as a pitiful loser, but history and circumstances gradually drive him mad. Todd Phillips, so far best known for his crude and immature Hangover trilogy, takes a massive professional leap by directing and co-writing a brilliantly gripping and terrific looking grown-up drama. The script was heavily influenced by Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, and it has nothing comic-booky about it. In the recent times, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Jared Leto have played Joker on screen. Now Joaquin Phoenix joins this list, and his Academy Award winning performance is hypnotic. Hildur Guðnadóttir's haunting score also won an Oscar.

Jojo Rabbit
2019
****½
Director: Taika Waititi
Cast: Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Taika Waititi, Rebel Wilson, Stephen Merchant, Alfie Allen, Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Archie Yates

Towards the end of World War II, the timid 10-year-old Johannes "Jojo" Betzler remains a devout Nazi. His dedication to the cause begins to crumble when he befriends a Jewish girl his mother is hiding in the attic, which doesn't make his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler very happy. A dark comedy about the Third Reich does not sound like an easy proposition, but somehow Taika Waititi pulls it off. Like La vita è bella, the film finds an awkward but just about perfect balance between the laughs and cries. The performances are all excellent. Waititi's Academy Award winning screenplay is loosely based on Caging Skies by Christine Leunens.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
2019
**
Director: Chad Stahelski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Laurence Fishburne, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, Lance Reddick, Anjelica Huston, Ian McShane

Following the events of Chapter 2 (2017), John Wick has a 14 million dollar price on his head for breaking the rules of the High Table. John attempts to remain under the radar, but it's difficult when every assassin on the planet is after him. One might be tempted to call Chapter 3 a more streamlined movie than the original because it strips away any resemblance of a story. There are two solid hours of shooting, stabbing, slashing, punching, and kicking. After the first 15 minutes, I lost interest in the non-stop CGI massacre of faceless, nameless, and brainless assassins. By the end, the death count is more than 150.

The Irishman
2019
***
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Harvey Keitel, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Kathrine Narducci, Welker White, Jesse Plemons, Domenick Lombardozzi, Gary Basaraba

Martin Scorsese's epic gangster biopic is based on Charles Brandt's book I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa, which may or may not depict the real events that led to the unsolved disappearance of Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1975. Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran starts as a hustling truck driver but becomes a hitman for the Northeastern Pennsylvania crime family and later a labour union official under the tutelage of the charismatic but uncompromising Hoffa. Although the film is 3½ hours long, it held me in its grip, although there is an endless flow of brief character introductions and an excessive amount of historical trivia. And yet, not enough time to flesh out the estranged relationship between Frank and his daughter Peggy to produce the necessary dramatic impact. The whole thing is beautifully orchestrated by Scorsese, but there is a distinct lack of freshness. I feel like I've seen every scene done better in Goodfellas, Casino, or The Departed. It is great to see Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci finally share the screen, but only the wonderfully understated Pesci gives a memorable performance. The unconvincing de-aging effects cannot hide the fact that these actors are in their seventies.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
2019
***½
Director: Dean DeBlois
Cast: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Cate Blanchett, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Kit Harington, F. Murray Abraham, Kristen Wiig, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Gerard Butler

When a ruthless dragon hunter named Grimmel the Grisly threatens to hunt down and kill Toothless at any cost, Hiccup leads his people and their dragons away from Berk in search of the illusive Hidden World, where they could all be safe. How to Train Your Dragon was a charming animation, followed by a disappointingly mechanical sequel. However, the third movie brings the storyline and the trilogy to a satisfyingly moving close.

The Highwaymen
2019
**½
Director: John Lee Hancock
Cast: Kevin Costner, Woody Harrelson, Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch, Kim Dickens, Thomas Mann, William Sadler

Despite killing several policemen and civilians during their crime spree, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are adored by the public. In 1934, the Governor of Texas hires two former Texas Rangers Tom Hamer and Manye Gault to hunt the pair down. While Arthur Penn's classic Bonnie and Clyde told a romanticised version of these famous lovers and outlaws, this conservative and matter-of-fact drama views the events from the other side. This is probably the more truthful version, but it certainly doesn't provide much entertainment.

Glass
2019
**
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Paulson, Samuel L. Jackson, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, Luke Kirby, M. Night Shyamalan

David Dunn and Kevin Wendell Crumb are about to face off, but are placed in a mental hospital which already holds Elijah Price, aka Mr. Glass. A renowned psychiatrist attempts to convince the three men that their special abilities are not real. Although the third part in M. Night Shyamalan's comic book inspired trilogy brings closure, he should have left the whole story at Unbreakable. This offers a marginal improvement on the middle part Split, but only because there is less of James McAvoy's grating performance. There is a decent twist towards the end, but ironically that it exactly what we've come to expect from Shyamalan.

Gemini Man
2019
**½
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, Benedict Wong, Ralph Brown, Linda Emond, Douglas Hodge, Ilia Volok

Henry Brogan is a US government sharpshooter who wants to retire. However, his employer believes he knows too much and sends out a highly skilled assassin who looks awfully lot like a young version of Henry. This science fiction premise was originally conceived more than 20 years ago, which is perhaps why the long-gestated script by David Benioff, Billy Ray, and Darren Lemke feels dated and predictable. Ang Lee stages some terrific set pieces, but ultimately this is a very ordinary globetrotting action movie with poorly drawn characters. Henry tells he is haunted by the lives he has taken, but Will Smith is not able to sell it. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays an odd platonic female sidekick whose motives remain blurry. The deaging special effects look surprisingly plasticky compared to Captain Marvel.

Frozen II
2019
****
Director: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Cast: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad, Jonathan Groff, Sterling K. Brown, Evan Rachel Wood, Alfred Molina, Martha Plimpton, Jason Ritter, Jeremy Sisto

A few years after the events of Frozen, Elsa hears the calling of a mysterious voice from the Enchanted Forest and unknowingly awakens the elemental spirits of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. She feels an urge to follow the voice, but Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven insist on joining her quest. This enjoyable sequel offers a natural progression to Elsa's story, in which the other characters, admittedly, don't have much to do. Although this animation is no match to the original, it offers a nice blend of drama and comedy, wonderful visuals, and moving songs by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

Ford v Ferrari
2019
****
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Jon Bernthal, Caitriona Balfe, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas, Noah Jupe, Remo Girone, Ray McKinnon

In the early 1960s, Ford Motor Company decides to challenge the hegemony of Ferrari at Le Mans. They hire Carroll Shelby to design a racing car, and the talented but difficult Ken Miles to drive it. This long but confidently entertaining drama is based on a true story (although the Ford executive played by Josh Lucas comes across as a clichéd movie villain). Damon and Bale give commanding performances in the lead and James Mangold stages the 1966 race with imagination and verve. Academy Award winner for best film and sound editing.

Fighting with My Family
2019
***
Director: Stephen Merchant
Cast: Florence Pugh, Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Jack Lowden, Vince Vaughn, Dwayne Johnson, James Burrows, Hannah Rae, Kim Matula, Aqueela Zoll, Ellie Gonsalves

The Knight family in Norwich, England live and breathe wrestling. 18-year-old Saraya and her older brother Zak both dream of wrestling professionally in the WWE, but only she makes it through the try-outs. Stephen Merchant's feelgood film is based on the documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family, and it offers a nice mix of English working class comedy and moving character drama. The film was produced by the WWE, so do not expect a balanced view on the merits of wrestling as a sport. Dwayne Johnson plays himself in an extended cameo.

Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie
2019
*****
Director: Will Becher, Richard Phelan
Cast: Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Amalia Vitale, Kate Harbour, David Holt

A spacecraft lands close to the Mossy Bottom Farm. While the Farmer plans to cash in on the sudden UFO craze, Shaun is determined to help the alien child return home. The second Shaun the Sheep Movie is as irresistible as the original. This lovingly created dialogue-free animation is consistently hilarious and deeply moving when it needs to.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
2019
***
Director: Vince Gilligan
Cast: Aaron Paul, Jesse Plemons, Scott MacArthur, Scott Shepherd, Charles Baker, Matt Jones, Robert Forster

This entertaining but thoroughly unnecessary spin-off movie serves as an epilogue to Breaking Bad, and it continues right where the series ended. Jesse Pinkman, on the run from the law, attempts to get his hands on some money, buy a fake passport, and leave the country, but he keeps running into obstacles. Jesse's redemption story offers familiar humour, violence, and pacing, so much so that it feels like an extended episode of TV rather than a film.

Dolor y gloria (Pain and Glory)
2019
***½
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Nora Navas, Julieta Serrano, Penélope Cruz, Asier Flores, César Vicente, Cecilia Roth

Salvador Mallo is a celebrated film auteur whose many medical problems have rendered him unable to work. As Salvador starts using heroin to numb his pain, he takes us on a walk down the memory lane. Like Bad Education (2004) and Broken Embraces (2009), Pedro Almodovar's deeply autobiographical drama deals with life, love, regrets, movies, and moviemaking. This may not be his strongest work, but it delivers a subtle and cleverly constructed personal story in beautiful vibrant colours. Antonio Banderas gives a very fine lead performance.

Dolemite Is My Name
2019
****
Director: Graig Brewer
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Keegan-Michael Key, Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Tituss Burgess, Wesley Snipes

Inspired by the local Los Angeles street poets, a wannabe comedian Rudy Ray Moore creates a stage persona named Dolemite, whose foul-mouthed rhymes become a hit. To introduce his character to a wider audience, Rudy bets his financial future on a Dolemite movie. This very enjoyable and refreshingly light-hearted autobiographical comedy does not tell your typical tale of a show business star who succumbs to a life of excess. I don't know how close to the truth this is, but Rudy is portrayed as an extremely driven but warm-hearted and unselfish entertainer, who never forgets where he comes from or who helped him to get where he is. As a filmmaker, Rudy is enthusiastic but untalented, much like Ed Wood, whose story was also written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who have scripted several biographical stories. The cast is excellent: Eddie Murphy gives one of his best performances in the lead and Wesley Snipes appears in a hilarious cameo as the movie's director D'Urville Martin.

Doctor Sleep
2019
**
Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff Curtis, Carl Lumbly, Zahn McClarnon, Emily Alyn Lind, Bruce Greenwood, Jocelin Donahue, Robert Longstreet, Carel Struycken, Alex Essoe, Zackary Momoh

The Shining, Stanley Kubrick's claustrophobic horror classic was based on Stephen King's 1977 novel. This belated sequel must strike a balance between Kubrick's loose adaptation and King's 2013 novel. The story revolves around a creepy cult who track down and kill children who have the shining in order to extend their own lives. Dan Torrance, now a recovering alcoholic, is compelled to protect a young girl with extremely strong psychic abilities. Almost 40 years have passed, so it is unfair to compare this to the 1980 film, but I must admit that I was captivated by this long and uninteresting story only when it returned to the Overlook hotel. The rest feels like a second rate X-Men movie.

Diego Maradona
2019
***
Director: Asif Kapadia
Cast:

Diego Maradona was one of the finest but most controversial footballers in the history of the game. He captained Napoli to their first and last Serie A titles in 1987 and 1990, and led Argentina to their second World Cup title in 1986, but wrecked the second half of his playing career with his cocaine addiction. He is described to have two different personalities. Diego is the nice boy from the slums of Buenos Aires who loves the ball, Maradona is the badly-behaved global footballing icon. Asif Kapadia's Senna was a riveting sports documentary which was assembled primarily from existing material. He uses the same method here, but his film does not have the same effect, perhaps because Diego Maradona is a more divisive and less relatable person.

Dark Waters
2019
***
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, Bill Pullman, William Jackson Harper, Louisa Krause

After a number of mysterious animal deaths, corporate defense attorney Robert Bilott is compelled to change sides and take on chemical giant Du Pont for poisoning the local waters in Parkersburg, West Virginia. This enjoyable but unspectacular drama about a real-life lawsuit against an industrial chemical polluter follows in the footsteps of A Civil Action and Erin Brockovich. Although the film doesn't offer many surprises, it spends delightfully little time in the court room. The script by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan is based on the 2016 New York Times Magazine article The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare by Nathaniel Rich.

Dark Phoenix / X-Men: Dark Phoenix
2019
**½
Director: Simon Kinberg
Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Jessica Chastain

The follow-up to X-Men: Apocalypse is set in 1992. During a rescue mission in space, Jean Grey absorbs the energy of an alien life force, which makes her the most powerful being on Earth. As her emotional state becomes unstable, Jean finds herself at odds with her X-Men friends and the shapeshifting aliens who have come to reclaim their powers. When assessed in isolation, the final release in this X-Men series seems like a perfectly entertaining superhero movie. However, the movie doesn't hold up to scrutiny so well when I began to wonder how many times I've seen any particular scene before, how all the events fit in the overall franchise timeline, or why Professor X and Magneto haven't aged at all in 30 years since X-Men: First Class.

Colectiv (Collective)
2019
*****
Director: Alexander Nanau
Cast:

In October 2015, a fire at Colectiv Club in Bucharest, Romania killed 27 people and left 180 injured. Over the coming months, 37 additional victims died in hospitals, many due to bacterial infections. This enthralling and harrowing documentary depicts the aftermath of the events from two different perspectives. In the first half, we follow the journalists of Gazeta Sporturilor, who investigate the fire and discover that the Romanian health care system uses diluted disinfectants. The second half concentrates on the new Minister of Health Vlad Voiculescu, who attempts to fix the system. However, both journalists and politicians are about to find out that corruption runs deep in Romania.

Celle que vous croyez (Who You Think I Am)
2019
****½
Director: Safy Nebbou
Cast: Juliette Binoche, François Civil, Nicole Garcia, Marie-Ange Casta, Guillaume Gouix, Charles Berling, Jules Houplain, Jules Gauzelin, Francis Leplay, Pierre Giraud, Claude Perron

A 50-year-old woman creates a fake social media profile to spy on her ex, and ends up developing an intense online relationship with his 20-something roommate. Her web of deception and identity play gradually and inevitably escalates out of control. Safy Nebbou's takes a Catfish-like premise and turns it into a terrifically tense, twisty, and erotic psychological drama with Hitchcockian vibes. Juliette Binoche gives a stunning multi-layered performance as a literature professor whose own actions blur the line between reality and fiction.

Captain Marvel
2019
****
Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Cast: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Annette Bening, Clark Gregg, Jude Law

After a botched mission, an amnesiac Kree soldier named Vers crashlands on Earth in 1995. While she attempts to restore her suppressed memories and steer clear of the shapeshifting Skrulls on her tail, she teams up with S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury. Marvel Cinematic Universe introduces another superhero, possibly the most powerful one in its roster. Like Doctor Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Black Panther, this is a highly entertaining origin story. The seemingly straightforward plot has a lovely twist halfway through and there is plenty of lively banter between Larson and Jackson, whose computer-aided deaging is incredibly believable. The heroine returns in Avengers: Endgame.

Booksmart
2019
***
Director: Olivia Wilde
Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein, Jessica Williams, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, Jason Sudeikis, Mason Gooding, Diana Silvers, Victoria Ruesga

Molly and Amy are best friends and studious high school seniors. The day before graduation, they realise that they should have stressed less and partied more. Olivia Wilde's feature debut is a likeable but frustratingly predictable high school comedy, which features two strong central performances. There is a long history of raunchy comedies about boys behaving badly. So, are the high school girls somehow different? Not really, Molly and Amy just want to take some drugs, watch porn, and have sex. Ultimately this is not much more than a female version of Superbad.

Bombshell
2019
***
Director: Jay Roach
Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Malcolm McDowell, Allison Janney

In 2016, a group of women set out to expose the culture of sexual harassment and misconduct at Fox News by chairman Roger Ailes and other men in power. Jay Roach's compelling but very conventional drama depicts the real-life scandal at Fox News. Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman play Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, respectively, but Margot Robbie's character is a composite of various women. This well-acted film convincingly explores the dynamics of power and gender inequality. An Academy Award winner for best makeup and hairstyling.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
2019
***½
Director: Marielle Heller
Cast: Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper, Maryann Plunkett, Enrico Colantoni, Wendy Makkena, Tammy Blanchard, Noah Harpster, Christine Lahti

Lloyd Vogel is a cynical journalist who is writing a piece on Fred Rogers, the squeaky clean host of a popular children's TV show. While Lloyd attempts to ignore his estranged father who is seeking redemption, he hopes to uncover the real Fred. Marielle Heller's fact-based drama was inspired by Tom Junod's Esquire article Can You Say ... Hero?. This is a warm, delightful, and surprising character drama which restores your faith in humanity. Tom Hanks and Matthew Rhys give great performances.

Avengers: Endgame
2019
*****
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Bradley Cooper, Josh Brolin, Gwyneth Paltrow

After the tragic climax of Avengers: Infinity War, the Avengers have split up and moved on with their lives. When Ant-Man returns from the Quantum Realm, there is suddenly hope that this magical dimension could hold the key to reverting the past events. Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2008. Now 11 years and 22 releases later, the Infinity Saga gets an epic finale. There is the inevitable final showdown with Thanos, but also a clever and unsentimental trip through some of the past movies in the saga. The three hours feature some of the most moving and funniest scenes in the studio's output. The movie is not perfect, but with this much to wrap up, it is probably as great as it can be.

Angel Has Fallen
2019
**½
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Cast: Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Jada Pinkett Smith, Lance Reddick, Tim Blake Nelson, Piper Perabo, Nick Nolte, Danny Huston

The years of service in the military and the Secret Service have taken their toll on Mike Banning's body. However, the health issues become irrelevant when Mike is framed for an assassination attempt on President Trumbull. This action movie sequel maintains the level of enjoyability, plausibility and stupidity of the previous releases, Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen. This is the longest movie in the series and it tones down the violence to a slightly less graphic level.

American Factory
2019
****½
Director: Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert
Cast:

Six years after General Motors shut down their factory in Dayton, Ohio, a Chinese Fuyao car glass company reopens the plant. The owners attempt to make the factory profitable, but it appears to be at the expense of safety and basic workers' rights. This terrific documentary was shot from 2015 to 2017, and it gives the audience a deliciously intimate and uncensored look at the culture clash that escalates between the Chinese owners and the American workers. Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature.

Alita: Battle Angel
2019
***
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, Keean Johnson

In 2563, 300 years after an apocalyptic event, wealthy people live in the floating city of Zalem. Down below in Iron City, where the poor masses reside, robotics specialist Dr. Dyson Ido discovers and rebuilds a disembodied female cyborg who has lost her memory. James Cameron bought the rights to Yukito Kishiro's Manga series Gunnm back in 1999, but he only takes writing and producing credit in this live action adaptation. Unfortunately the screenplay turns out to be the weakest aspect of this uneven science fiction action movie, which ranges from absolutely brilliant to utterly stupid, sometimes within seconds. Rosa Salazar gives a lovely performance as Alita, who is a wonderfully layered character, simultaneously strong, naive, and vulnerable. The set-up is compelling if not terribly original (Elysium and Ready Player One are just some of the recent releases that spring to mind), the action set pieces are thrilling, and the visual effects are stunning. On the downside, the story should spend more time on worldbuilding and character development and less time on the Twilight-style teen romance and long scenes of Motorball, a boring sport in which Rollerball meets Transformers. As a result, some of the supporting players, like the bad guy Vector (Mahershala Ali) and Ido's ex-wife Dr. Chiren (Jennifer Connelly) barely register as characters.

Aladdin
2019
**
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Will Smith, Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott, Marwan Kenzari, Navid Negahban, Nasim Pedrad, Billy Magnussen, Numan Acar, Nina Wadia

Aladdin, a kind-hearted but mischievous kid brought up in the streets of Agrabah, helps a beautiful young woman, unaware that she is Princess Jasmine. Jafar, the grand vizier to the Sultan, forces Aladdin to retrieve a magic lamp which could give him infinite power, but Aladdin summons the Genie himself. In the recent years, Disney has produced several live action remakes of their animated classics, such as The Jungle Book, The Lion King, Dumbo, and Beauty and the Beast. Now it's time for a totally pointless new version of their 1992 animation. There are minimal updates to the plot and the songs, and so much CGI on screen that this is, in essence, another animation. The original is best remembered for Robin Williams' hilariously wild voice performance as the Genie. Will Smith takes over that role, and there is very little to laugh about.

Ad Astra
2019
****
Director: James Gray
Cast: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland, John Ortiz, Greg Bryk, Loren Dean, Nataha Lyonne, John Finn

In the near future, man has colonies on the moon and Mars. Some 30 years earlier, an expedition commanded by H. Clifford McBride travelled further to look for signs of intelligent life, until it all went quiet near Neptune. Now Major Roy McBride is sent out to make contact with his long-lost father when the mission spacecraft is believed to be the source of mysterious power surges which threaten the entire solar system. Apocalypse Now meets Interstellar in James Gray's slow but hypnotic meditation on cosmic loneliness. Roy's trip to the heart of universal darkness includes some awe-inspiring ideas and stunning set pieces, even if its conclusion left me a bit underwhelmed. Brad Pitt gives a wonderfully understated lead performance.

21 Bridges
2019
***
Director: Brian Kirk
Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Sienna Miller, Stephan James, Keith David, Taylor Kitsch, J. K. Simmons, Alexander Siddig, Louis Cancelmi, Victoria Cartagena

A trigger-happy NYPD detective leads a citywide manhunt for two cop killers, but he is surprised that many of his colleagues want the men killed rather than caught. While the title and advertising of this action thriller stress that the detective closes all 21 bridges leading out of Manhattan, this plot point plays no part in the story that follows. Brian Kirk's film is adequately gripping and well-acted, but it is let down by a formulaic plot and a clean-cut hero who has no shades of gray.

1917
2019
****½
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch

During the First World War, Lance Corporals Blake and Schofield are tasked to cross no man's land and deliver a message which could save 1,600 men from certain death. Like Christopher Nolan's recent Dunkirk, this is a riveting war-set thriller rather than a thoughtful drama about war itself. Sam Mendes goes for the spectacle, sometimes at the expense of credibility. However, he delivers a truly cinematic experience. Roger Deakins' stunningly choreographed cinematography creates an illusion that the entire film is comprised of two long and continuous takes, which in this case turns out to be an incredibly immersive storytelling technique. The special effects blend in seamlessly and Thomas Newman's excellent score adds an icing on the cake. Mendes co-wrote the script, which is partly based on a true story recited by his grandfather Alfred Mendes. Academy Award winner for best cinematography, sound mixing, and visual effects.

Zimna wojna (Cold War)
2018
**
Director: Paweł Pawlikowski
Cast: Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cédric Kahn, Jeanne Balibar

After WW2 in Poland, music director Wiktor meets a young singer named Zula. For the next 15 years, we follow their turbulent relationship in Berlin, Yugoslavia, Paris, and back in Poland. Pawel Pawlikowski's bafflingly overpraised black and white drama was inspired by the lives of his parents. This is apparently a love story, but the cramped 4:3 aspect ratio, jumpy narrative, sketchy writing, and deadpan performances left me completely uninvested in the characters and their motivations. There are some nice musical numbers.

Widows
2018
**½
Director: Steve McQueen
Cast: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson

After stealing USD 2M from Chicago mob boss Jamal Manning, a gang of four men die in a police shootout. The gang leader's widow, Veronica, is forced to follow in her husband's footsteps when Manning, who runs an expensive election campaign, blackmails her for the money that he lost. Steve McQueen's adaptation of Lynda La Plante's TV series (1983-1985) is a stylish and entertaining crime drama. That is, if you can switch off your brain completely. Thinking about it reveals it to be feminist wish fulfilment where the (lack of) planning, execution, and aftermath of the heist do not include one believable moment. I still don't know why the notebook was needed. The men in this story are treacherous, corrupt, racist, or abusive monsters. Nevertheless, David, Rodriguez, and Debicki give terrific performances. Scripted by McQueen and Gillian Flynn.

Vice
2018
***
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry, Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Jesse Plemons, Justin Kirk, LisaGay Hamilton, Eddie Marsan

A darkly comic biopic of Dick Cheney, whose colourful political career reached its peak as vice president under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. Adam McKay's film argues that Cheney was a power-hungry and (in the last 10 minutes, literally) heartless operator, who orchestrated the War in Iraq. This is an entertaining but crass and one-sided account of Cheney's life and career. McKay keeps things lively with some unusual and enjoyable storytelling devices. Christian Bale gives a commanding but slightly mannered performance, and his impressive make-Up and hairstyling won an Academy Award.

Venom
2018
***
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, Reid Scott, Jenny Slate, Melora Walters

Investigative journalist Eddie Brock loses his job and girlfriend trying to prove that Carlton Drake and his Life Foundation are evil. Six months later he breaks into their research facility, where an alien symbiote takes over his body. Venom featured in Spider-Man 3, and now this Marvel character gets a reboot with the likeable Tom Hardy in the starring role. This origin story takes forever to get going, but the second half transforms it into a nicely weird, darkly funny, and enjoyable superhero action movie. Unfortunately the climactic fight between Venom and Riot is a big CGI mess. The post-credits scene from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse left me baffled. Followed by Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

Under the Silver Lake
2018
****
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Topher Grace, Callie Hernandez, Don McManus, Jeremy Bobb, Riki Lindhome, Zosia Mamet, David Yow, Patrick Fischler

Sam is a 30-something wastrel who lives in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. When his pretty new neighbour disappears, he feels compelled to find out what happened. Everywhere Sam goes, he runs into the same mysterious people and discovers cryptic clues, coded messages, and conspiracy theories. It Follows was a taut horror movie. David Robert Mitchell's follow-up is a long and sprawling Lynchian neo-noir, which can feel aimless, misogynistic, and self-indulgent, but there is something hypnotic about Sam's surreal and totally unpredictable journey down the rabbit hole. Ultimately this is a story about Sam's self-discovery and about Hollywood. The film looks and sounds great, and Andrew Garfield gives a great performance in the lead.

Tyhjiö (Void)
2018
****½
Director: Aleksi Salmenperä
Cast: Laura Birn, Tommi Korpela, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Matleena Kuusniemi, Minna Haapkylä, Kaija Pakarinen, Kari Heiskanen, Tomi Lindfors, Pihla Viitala

Pihla is an actress whose career is on the up. Her partner Eero is a writer who hasn't produced anything publishable for five years. This story about a relationship between two creative people with opposite career trajectories sounds like the Finnish version of A Star Is Born. However, Aleksi Salmenperä's terrific film is not a tragic drama but a funny and well-observed tragicomic satire that deals with artistic and personal ambitions and pretensions, among many other things. What is more important, the work or the recognition? Salmenperä wrote the script as he went along and shot the mostly black and white film with a small cast and crew on a shoestring budget over more than four years. And yet, the finished product feels poignant and coherent.

Tully
2018
****
Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Mark Duplass, Ron Livingston

After giving birth to her third child, Marlo is overwhelmed by exhaustion. Her brother offers to pay for a night nanny so she can get some sleep, and she quickly forms a close bond with this young care-free woman. Diablo Cody, who wrote Juno (and Young Adult) reunites with Jason Reitman to tell another smart and insightful story about motherhood. There are laughs and tears, and a twist that worked for me. Charlize Theron and Mackenzie Davis give excellent performances.

Three Identical Strangers
2018
****
Director: Tim Wardle
Cast:

In 1980, three 19-year-old men accidentally discover that they are identical triplets who were adopted by three different families. Their reunion becomes a minor media sensation, but the heartwarming story takes a dark turn when the brothers uncover the real reason why they were separated at birth. This very captivating documentary tells a rollercoaster ride of a story, which is alternately exhilarating, joyous, moving, sad, disturbing, and infuriating.

Tag
2018
**½
Director: Jeff Tomsic
Cast: Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Annabelle Wallis, Hannibal Buress, Isla Fisher, Rashida Jones, Leslie Bibb, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner,

Ever since they were kids, Hoagie, Chilli, Sable, Bob, and Jerry have played tag during the month of May. After years of failed attempts, four of the guys hope to tag Jerry, who might be distracted by his own wedding. This fact-based comedy is based on the Wall Street Journal article It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being 'It' by Russell Adams. The real friends appear over the end credits, and their shenanigans are actually more fun and heartwarming than anything in the preceding 90 minutes. The set-up is very promising, but the story quickly becomes dull and repetitive when Jerry turns out to be a cross between Hawkeye and Aaron Cross, two other action heroes Jeremy Renner has played on screen. The resulting movie should be a funny and moving depiction of lifelong friendships, but it's neither.

A Star Is Born
2018
*****
Director: Bradley Cooper
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Andrew Dice Clay, Dave Chappelle, Sam Elliott, Anthony Ramos, Rafi Gavron, Greg Grunberg

Jackson Maine, a popular rock musician who drowns out his tinnitus with drugs and alcohol, helps the talented Ally to become an overnight sensation. The two fall in love, but as Ally's star is on the up, Jackson spirals deeper into self-destructive behaviour. This classic Hollywood story was previously filmed in 1937, 1954, and 1976. Bradley Cooper makes an incredibly assured directorial debut with this excellent 21st century version, which is gritty and utterly believable. Cooper, who co-wrote the script and some of the songs, also gives a career best performance as the dejected hero. Lady Gaga is a revelation in the female lead; she can play the ordinary and the glamorous with equal ease. "Shallow" won an Academy Award for best song.

Stan & Ollie
2018
***
Director: Jon S. Baird
Cast: Steve Coogan, John C. Reilly, Shirley Henderson, Nina Arianda, Rufus Jones, Danny Huston, Joseph Balderrama, John Henshaw, Richard Cant

By 1953, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are obsolete movie stars who struggle to get new projects off the ground. In financial straits, the duo embark on a music hall tour of the UK and Ireland, which takes a toll on them both. This unusual but likeable biopic is steeped in nostalgia, which feels a bit odd as it does not cover the years when these wonderful comedians were two of the most recognisable faces on the planet. This melancholic film does, however, paint a moving portrait of a long-standing professional friendship. Coogan and Reilly give very fine performances as Laurel and Hardy, and so do Henderson and Arianda as their wives.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
2018
*****
Director: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman
Cast: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, Liev Schreiber

In the recent times, we have seen Spider-Man launch his own franchise, come back in a pointless reboot, and then join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now the superhero gets a new lease of life as an animated character who somehow shares the same spider-verse with Venom. Miles Morales is a troubled teenager who is bitten by a radioactive spider. As Miles attempts to harness his newfound powers, he is joined by five other incarnations of Spider-Man from parallel universes. Although Spider-Man fatigue is a realistic prospect, this turns out to be a terrifically funny, moving, creative, and entertaining animation. It won an Academy Award for best animated feature. Followed by Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Solo: A Star Wars Story
2018
***½
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, Paul Bettany

On the planet Corellia, young Han Solo is separated from his lover Qi'ra, but he vows to come back for her. Three years later, Han is still trying to scrape enough money together to buy his own ship. When he joins a band of criminals who are planning to steal a valuable shipment of coaxium, his path unexpectedly crosses with Qi'ra. Rogue One was a grim space drama that grossed a billion dollars worldwide. The second movie in the Star Wars Anthology series is an enjoyable action romp which tanked at the box office. Go figure! Although the movie doesn't feature any usual Star Wars tropes, such as Jedis and lightsabers, the script by Jonathan and Lawrence Kasdan doesn't spring many surprises. We learn Han Solo's backstory and see how he meets Chewbacca and acquires Millennium Falcon. Ron Howard replaced the original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and he stages several terrific action set pieces; the train heist is my personal favourite. Alden Ehrenreich gives a nice performance as the roguish hero.


Skyscraper
2018
**½
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, Hannah Quinlivan

After a botched hostage rescue mission left him crippled, Will Sawyer quit the team and set up his own security consultancy firm. While he is in Hong Kong to approve the safety systems of The Pearl, the world’s tallest skyscraper, a group of criminals set the 96th floor on fire, with Will's family above it. Rawson Marshall Thurber, best know for his comedies, has written and directed an entertaining but extremely derivative action movie in which Die Hard meets Towering Inferno. The script is as formulaic as they come, but the action set pieces are gripping and Dwayne Johnson gives another likeable performance in the lead.

A Simple Favor
2018
**
Director: Paul Feig
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Linda Cardellini, Dustin Milligan, Jean Smart, Rupert Friend, Eric Johnson

Single mother Stephanie begins to spend time with Emily, the mother of her son's classmate, who then suddenly disappears. The peppy and productive Stephanie somehow makes a living running a vlog and the snarky and inaccessible Emily drowns her unhappiness in alcohol. Only in Hollywood would these two sketchy characters become friends. This second rate Gone Girl rehash is loosely based on Darcey Bell's 2017 novel. The book was a thriller, but Jessica Sharzer's tonally confused screenplay cannot decide if it wants to be a drama or a comedy. The resulting film is implausible, mechanical, and dull.

Roma
2018
****
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Fernando Grediaga, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa, Diego Cortina, Carlos Peralta, Nancy García, Verónica García

Alfonso Cuarón's semi-autobiographical black and white drama is set in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City in 1970-1971. Cleo is a live-in maid who works for a middle-class family with four children. While the country is going through great upheaval, Cleo finds herself pregnant and the mistress of the household must break the news to her children that their father is not coming back home. This beautifully shot film takes a while to get going, but it eventually amounts to a very moving depiction of two strong women. The male protagonists (or the men in entire Mexico), however, don't come off looking that good. Alfonso Cuarón won Oscars for directing, cinematography, and for best foreign language film.

Ready Player One
2018
***
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Lena Waithe, Philip Zhao, Win Monsaki

In 2045, people escape their dystopian existence to the OASIS, a virtual reality gaming world co-created by James Halliday. Before his death, Halliday offered full ownership of the OASIS to the player who solves three riddles and finds an Easter Egg. This challenge attracts individual gamers, like the 17-year-old orphan Wade Watts, and big corporations like IOI, who will stop at nothing to rule the gaming market. In the recent years, the screens have been flooded with dystopian science fiction movies, many of them based on popular young adult fiction. Steven Spielberg's stab at the genre is adapted from Ernest Cline's 2011 novel. After all the movies in this genre, and the likes of Inception, Total Recall, and Tron: Legacy, the story doesn't feel terribly original. However, at its best, this is an enjoyably funny and suspenseful adventure which pays homage to 80s pop culture. At its worst, it's like watching someone play a video game.

RBG
2018
***
Director: Betsy West, Julie Cohen
Cast:

Throughout her legal career, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) was a strong advocate of equality and women's rights, and in her later years she became something of a pop icon. This biographical documentary is informative but not exactly captivating. There is not much to tell about Ginsburg apart from her dedication to law, so the film occasionally feels like a filmed CV.

Rampage
2018
**½
Director: Brad Peyton
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Åkerman, Jake Lacy, Joe Manganiello, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Marley Shelton

A primatologist and geneticist attempt to avert disaster when a wolf, crocodile, and albino gorilla are exposed to a secretly developed pathogen which turns the animals into massive aggressive beasts. This silly and formulaic but surprisingly enjoyable action movie is loosely based on a video game series. Apart from great casting and the bombastic actions scenes, there's not much to write home about. The clunky dialogue is mostly used to provide exposition, the villain is laughably one-dimensional, and some of the visual effects are not top quality.

Ralph Breaks the Internet
2018
***½
Director: Rich Moore, Phil Johnston
Cast: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Gal Gadot, Taraji P. Henson, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk, Alfred Molina, Ed O'Neill

Lately Vanellope has become bored with her mundane life, much to the dismay of her happy and content BFF Ralph. Now the two must venture out to the Internet, but is their friendship strong enough to survive the trip? Wreck-it Ralph was a clever but derivative animation about the gaming world. This smart and highly enjoyable sequel actually tops the original. The various layers of the online world (search engines, trending, online shopping, virus threats, etc.) are inventively visualised and wonderfully incorporated into a moving story which argues that friendship is a two-way street.

A Quiet Place
2018
****
Director: John Krasinski
Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward, Leon Russom

In the near future, bloodthirsty aliens with hypersensitive hearing have taken over the planet. You'd imagine there would be numerous ways to exploit the fact that they are blind and attracted to sound, but the armoured creatures have managed to wipe out most of human and animal life. The Abbott family (father, pregnant mother and their two children) attempt to stay alive on their farm by remaining quiet. This tense and mostly dialogue-free horror film has a simple premise, which just about holds together as long as you don't think about it. Krasinski creates suspenseful set pieces and the story doesn't outstay its welcome. Followed by a sequel.

Operation Finale
2018
**½
Director: Chris Weitz
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Mélanie Laurent, Lior Raz, Nick Kroll, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Aronov, Joe Alwyn

In 1960, Israeli authorities receive reliable intel that Adolf Eichmann is hiding in Argentina. A team of Mossad and Shin Bet agents devise a plan to find, capture, and fly the infamous Nazi war criminal to Israel to be tried for his role in the Holocaust. This dramatically embellished real-life story is like a cross between The Debt and Argo. The story is compelling, and Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley give interesting multi-layered performances. However, the film drags badly in the middle when the team are forced to lay low in Buenos Aires for 10 days until they can fly Eichmann out in a predictably over-dramatic finale.

Oma maa (Land of Hope)
2018
***
Director: Markku Pölönen
Cast: Oona Airola, Konsta Laakso, Helmi Linnosmaa, Antti Virmavirta, Marjaana Maijala, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Arto Heikkilä, Marja Packalén, Mika Nuojua, Henri Tuominen, Sanna-Kaisa Palo, Olli Riipinen, Elina Saarela

At the end of World War 2, Anni falls in love with Veikko, a wounded veteran, and decides to leave her cushy life behind. The newlywed couple plan to clear a farm in a remote forest plot in Eastern Finland, but is love enough to carry them through the hardship? After a 9-year hiatus, Markku Pölönen returns to what he is best known for. This is another charming and well-acted romantic drama drenched in nostalgia. Although the script by Pölönen and Antti Heikkinen is quite predictable, their story is a moving tribute to love, perseverance, and hard labour.

The Nightingale
2018
***
Director: Jennifer Kent
Cast: Aisling Franciosi, Sam Claflin, Baykali Ganambarr, Damon Herriman, Harry Greenwood, Ewen Leslie, Charlie Shotwell, Michael Sheasby

In 1825, an Irish ex-convict teams up with an aboriginal tracker to seek revenge through the Tasmanian wilderness against an English officer who took everything from her. Jennifer Kent's follow-up to The Babadook is a different type of horror film. The story is set in a period of horrific sexism, racism, abuse, and violence. The prevailing air of lawlessness in the depicted era reminded me of Deadwood, and like the TV show, this is extremely unpleasant viewing at times. All in all, however, this is a powerful and well-acted drama with layered main characters, who share a mutual hatred of the English.

The Mule
2018
**½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Dianne Wiest, Andy García

Earl Stone has spent his life working at the expense of his family. When Internet destroys his flower business, this 80-something becomes a drug courier for a Mexican cartel. You can't really call a story about an old man who has nothing to lose a drama, but this is a likeable but forgettable (road) movie. The 88-year-old Clint Eastwood is the star here. Everyone seems to like the chatty and affable Earl, no matter how grumpy, insufferable or racist he is. Earl is a believable hero, but many of the supporting characters are poorly or barely written. Based on The New York Times article The Sinaloa Cartel's 90-Year-Old Drug Mule by Sam Dolnick.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2018
****
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Alec Baldwin

In order to recover three stolen plutonium cores, Ethan Hunt and his team must track down an extremist known as John Lark. However, after a recent botched mission, they are closely monitored by a no-nonsense CIA agent August Walker. The sixth movie in the M:I franchise brings back characters from Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, also written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, to create a somewhat convoluted and predictable series of double-crosses and extended chases. However, these relentless chase scenes, which probably consume two thirds of the running time, are some of the most gripping and visceral ones I have seen in recent times.

Mid90s
2018
***½
Director: Jonah Hill
Cast: Sunny Suljic, Lucas Hedges, Na-Kel Smith, Olan Prenatt, Gio Galicia, Ryder McLaughlin, Alexa Demie, Katherine Waterston

13-year-old Stevie lives in Los Angeles with his mother and brother. He finds a new alternate family in a group of older boys, who initiate him to skateboarding, alcohol, drugs, and sex. Jonah Hill's directorial debut is set in 1996, when he would have been Stevie's age. This gritty coming-of-age story is a mostly plotless slice of life, but the characters are well-drawn and well-played by the young cast.

The Meg
2018
**½
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy, Winston Chao, Jessica McNamee, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Robert taylor, Sophia Cai, Masi Oka

Five years after he lost part of his crew under mysterious circumstances, rescue diver Jonas Taylor aims to save a submersible crew who are trapped in the deeper reaches of the Mariana Trench with a megalodon, a gigantic shark believed to have gone extinct millions of years ago. This suspenseful and entertaining but utterly stupid action adventure offers a little bit of science and a whole lot of fiction. The end result lands somewhere between Jaws, Deep Blue Sea, and Sharknado. The locations and the cast list announce that this is a Chinese-American co-production. The performances vary between decent and awful, the dialogue is just awful throughout. Based on Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten.

Mandy
2018
*
Director: Panos Cosmatos
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Ned Dennehy, Olwen Fouéré, Richard Brake, Bill Duke, Olwen Fouéré, Hayley Saywell, Line Pillet, Clément Baronnet

In 1983, Red Miller and his wife Mandy live a peaceful life in the Pacific Northwest. One day, a deranged cult leader takes an interest in Mandy and hires a demonic biker gang to kidnap her. In terms of story and look, Panos Cosmatos' artsy and gory cult horror movie is a true original. What it cannot offer, however, is cohesive storytelling, compelling characters, fun and entertainment, or intelligible visuals. I didn't think any movie could be redder than Suspiria, but Cosmatos paints the screen in murky red, black, or purple for two solid hours.

Leave No Trace
2018
****
Director: Debra Granik
Cast: Ben Foster, Thomasin McKenzie, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey, Dana Millican, Michael Prosser, Derek John Drescher, Isaiah Stone

A traumatised war veteran and his 13-year-old daughter live totally off grid in a forest park in Oregon. The father and daughter slowly begin to drift apart after the authorities force them to abandon their isolated existence. Debra Granik's follow-up to Winter's Bone is another subtle, slow-burning, and powerful drama about marginalised people. Based on Peter Rock's novel My Abandonment, which is based on a true story. Despite her tender age, Thomasin McKenzie gives a terrific performance.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
2018
**½
Director: J.A. Bayona
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, BD Wong, Isabella Sermon, Geraldine Chaplin, Jeff Goldblum

The sequel to Jurassic World picks up the story a few years later when a massive volcanic eruption is threatening to destroy the abandoned Isla Nublar. Claire and Owen are recruited to travel to the island and rescue a selected few of the dinosaurs, but they soon realise that they are only pawns in a bigger game. The fifth movie in the series takes elements from all the previous releases and then wraps it up with a surprising but nonsensical ending which takes the franchise into Planet of the Apes territory for the concluding part, Jurassic World Dominion. J. A. Bayona stages some exciting individual set pieces, but this is yet another frustratingly formulaic episode in this series. Children and good guys are put in jeopardy again, but the outcome is a foregone conclusion, as always. It doesn't help that the plot doesn't make much sense on its own and even less in the context of the entire franchise.

Johnny English Strikes Again
2018
**½
Director: David Kerr
Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Ben Miller, Olga Kurylenko, Jake Lacy, Emma Thompson, Adam James, Vicki Pepperdine, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Miramnda Hennessy

When somebody hacks into the MI7 computer system and exposes all active field agents. Johnny English must return to action to find the culprit. Following Johnny English and Johnny English Reborn, nothing much has changed. As before, the hero alternates between being incompetent and unstoppable. The script is skeletal, but there are a few enjoyable gags in the 90 minutes.

Isle of Dogs
2018
**½
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Kunichi Nomura, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe

Following an outbreak of canine flu, all the dogs of Megasaki, Japan are banished to Trash Island. 12-year-old Atari flies a plane to the island in order to find his beloved Spots. Wes Anderson's second stop-motion animation is marginally better than Fantastic Mr. Fox, his unbearably whimsical adaptation of Roald Dahl's book. Like all of his work, it is meticulously designed and shot, but the story didn't grab me at any point.

Incredibles 2
2018
***½
Director: Brad Bird
Cast: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Huckleberry Milner, Eli Fucile, Samuel L. Jackson, Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keener, Bill Wise, Brad Bird, Jonathan Banks

Although 14 years have passed, this belated second movie continues right where The Incredibles ended. Superheroes are illegal again, but a wealthy businessman and his techy sister offer to make them popular again. While Elastigirl gets to fight the mysterious villain Screenslaver, Mr. Incredible must stay home and look after the kids. Since the inventive original came out, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and to lesser extent DC Extended Universe) releases have swamped the screens and broken numerous box office records. In this context, the predictable and unnecessary sequel comes too late. However, as an animation this is still smart and highly entertaining.

If Beale Street Could Talk
2018
**
Director: Barry Jenkins
Cast: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Michael Beach, Dave Franco, Diego Luna, Pedro Pascal, Ed Skrein, Brian Tyree Henry, Regina King

Tish discovers that she's pregnant just as her boyfriend Fonny is wrongly sent to prison for rape. Tish and her family are determined to prove his innocence. For his follow-up to Moonlight, Barry Jenkins adapts James Baldwin's 1974 novel to tell a moving and visually impressive story about love, injustice, and systemic racism. Unfortunately this story only warrants a 30 minute short, not a full 2-hour feature. The pacing is dead slow, and many of the individual scenes drag on for an eternity. Regina King won an Academy Award for her supporting performance.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls
2018
**½
Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Owen Vaccaro, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Sunny Suljic, Kyle MacLachlan, Colleen Camp, Lorenzo Izzo, Vanessa Anne Williams

In 1955, 10-year-old Lewis loses his parents in a car crash. He goes to live with his magically inclined uncle whose spooky house hides something sinister. This likeable but lukewarm fantasy movie is based on the 1973 novel by John Bellairs. It has a nice story with a good cast, but (when Lewis learns to cast complicated spells in a matter of minutes) it fails to produce a proper sense of magic and wonder.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
2018
**
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Cast: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, David Spade, Steve Buscemi, Keegan-Michael Key, Molly Shannon, Fran Drescher, Kathryn Hahn, Jim Gaffigan, Mel Brooks

Mavis misinterprets his father's loneliness as stress, so she books the entire gang on a cruise to Atlantis. However, the sea voyage is all an elaborate set-up concocted by Dracula's old nemesis Professor Van Helsing and his great-granddaughter. This animation franchise has never achieved greatness, but it has been consistent in its mediocrity. However, the third movie is even more mechanical and derivative than parts 1 and 2. Family has always been at the centre of Hotel Transylvania, but this is now the third time the central plotline revolves around Dracula and Mavis keeping secrets from each other.

Hereditary
2018
**½
Director: Ari Aster
Cast: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Gabriel Byrne

Following the death of her estranged mother, Annie and her two children suffer strange visions. Are these supernatural occurences or symptoms of the mental illness running in the family? Ari Aster's feature debut is a powerful and unsettling horror film. That is, up to the point when we find out what is actually happening. After that it gets silly. Toni Collette gives a physically draining performance.

Green Book
2018
****½
Director: Peter Farrelly
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini, Sebastian Maniscalco, Dimiter D. Marinov, Mike Hatton, Von Lewis, Brian Stepanek

In the early 1960s, the short-tempered Italian American Tony Vallelonga takes a job as a driver and bodyguard for Dr. Don Shirley, a black classical pianist whose band is about to embark on a concert tour which takes them to Deep South. The two men are very different, but they have a lot to learn about themselves and about each other. This true story, which is based on interviews and letters, treads lightly on the racism of the period and its characters, but it delivers an utterly charming and laugh out loud funny, not to mention crowd pleasing portrayal of an unlikely friendship. At the center of it are two towering performances by Mortensen and Ali. Academy Award winner for best picture, original screenplay, and supporting actor (Mahershala Ali).

The Girl in the Spider's Web
2018
*½
Director: Fede Álvarez
Cast: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, LaKeith Stanfield, Sylvia Hoeks, Stephen Merchant, Vicky Krieps, Claes Bang, Christopher Convery

A guilt-ridden computer programmer hires Lisbeth Salander to hack into the NSA's servers and steal Firefall, a program which allows access to all the nuclear weapons around the world. A crime organisation known as the Spiders wants the same software for less humanitarian reasons. This unnecessary sequel to/reboot of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo turns Lisbeth Salander into a Jason Bourne-style action hero and all-around genius, who can fight men twice her size and hack into the car in front of her while driving. While Lisbeth's abilities may be laughable, the Firefall MacGuffin is just stupid beyong belief. One might say that Claire Foy as the heroine perfectly embodies the overall drabness and joylessness of this silly movie. Loosely based on a novel by David Lagercrantz, who took over the Millennium series after Stieg Larsson's death.

Generation Wealth
2018
***
Director: Lauren Greenfield
Cast:

During her 25-year career, photographer Lauren Greenfield has documented the lives of the rich and famous and the wannabe rich and famous. In preparation for a book release, she looks at her back catalogue and discovers the dark underbelly of the American Dream, blind pursuit of wealth by any means necessary. Greenfield's documentary starts as a captivating depiction of consumerist decadence. She then veers off to look at topics like sexualisation and plastic surgery, and then comes around to focus on herself, her relationship with her parents and her children. The resulting film is interesting but unfocused and overlong.

Game Night
2018
***½
Director: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein
Cast: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemons, Michael C. Hall, Kyle Chandler

Max and Annie are a childless couple who regularly host game nights for their friends. This time Max's obnoxious brother Brooks organises a staged kidnap mystery game, which feels strangely authentic. This silly comedy starts with a rather predictable premise, but it slowly wore down my resistance with its numerous laughs, clever twists, and likeable characters.

Free Solo
2018
****
Director: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin
Cast:

Alex Honnold is a rock climber best known for free soloing, that is, climbing without protective equipment. This captivating and beautifully shot documentary follows the preparation and eventual attempt to be the first to ascend the 975 m face of the El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Honnold and his girlfriend, climbing colleagues, and camera crew must weigh the risks, which are enormous. One small slip and he falls to his death in front of the cameras. Academy Award winner for best documentary.

First Man
2018
***
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Christopher Abbott, Ciarán Hinds, Olivia Hamilton, Lukas Haas, Pablo Schreiber, Shea Whigham

A biopic of Neil Armstrong (1930-2012), the first man to walk on the moon. The story starts in 1961, when his 2-year-old daughter dies. Armstrong joins NASA but throughout his career as a test pilot and astronaut, which leads up to the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, he is haunted by this personal loss. Damien Chazelle's well staged film compellingly shows that death was an ever-present threat hanging over the lives of Armstrong, his wife, his children, his friends, and his colleagues. However, despite the highs (space exploration successes) and lows (expected and unexpected deaths), Chazelle's drama remains oddly detached and emotionless, very much like its protagonist who doesn't seem to get pleasure in anything. It doesn't help that the performances are understated to the extreme. Linus Sandgren's cinematography is also a matter of taste. On board the planes and space modules, I can accept that he sticks his camera close to the face and shakes it until you don't know which way space is, but he uses the same approach in earthbound conversations. However, the sound design with all the creaks and clanks is very effective. The impressive visual effects won an Academy Award. Based on the book First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen.

The Favourite
2018
***½
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn, James Smith, Mark Gatiss, Jenny Rainsford

In 1711, two women vie to be the favourite of Queen Anne of Great Britain, who is physically and mentally frail. Lady Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, is the queen's lover and the de facto ruler. Her tainted cousin Abigail Hill arrives at the palace as a scullery maid, but quickly climbs the ranks through her wits and charm. This entertaining dark comedy is based on real events, but its details have been embellished. The film gives us an interesting look at one brief moment in history, but it doesn't add up to much more. The sets and costumes are stunning, but Robbie Ryan's camerawork draws a bit too much attention to itself. Although the entire cast is superb, Olivia Colman was singled out with an Academy Award for her brave performance as Queen Anne.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
2018
*½
Director: David Yates
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Zoë Kravitz, Callum Turner, Claudia Kim, William Nadylam, Kevin Guthrie, Jude Law, Johnny Depp

In the first thirty minutes, the second release in the Wizarding World franchise undoes all of the dramatic events from the climax of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Gellert Grindelwald, the powerful dark wizard who was arrested, breaks out in the first few minutes and heads to Paris to find Credence, who I thought died but is now alive and desperate to find his parents. They are joined by Newt Scamander and Jacob, whose memory wipe is shrugged off with one line of dialogue. The Goldstein sisters are in France as well, but they seem to have different personalities now. The first movie suffered from J.K. Rowling's plotless and rambling screenplay, but it was at least somewhat likeable. However, Rowling totally drops the ball with this boring, confusing, and often nonsensical fantasy sequel which spends more than two hours exploring subplots that lead nowhere, introducing characters who add nothing and then disappear or die, or providing fan service with a familiar name, even if it contradicts established Harry Potter lore. In the end, I was left with more questions than answers. What is this movie about? Why is Newt involved in any of it and what does he actually do to advance the plot? When do we get to see the crimes of Grindelwald? Hopefully it all makes sense when the series is complete. For now, this feels like a totally irrelevant detour to the next episode, The Secrets of Dumbledore.

The Equalizer 2
2018
***
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Ashton Sanders, Bill Pullman, Orson Bean, Melissa Leo, Jonathan Scarfe, Sakina Jaffrey, Kazy Tauginas, Garrett Golden, Tamara Hickey, Andrei Arlovski

The vengeful former black-ops operative Robert McCall is now a Lyft driver in Boston, who occasionally smashes some heads for the less fortunate. When his close friend is murdered in Brussels, McCall is forced back in action. While The Equalizer was a mindless kill-fest, the sequel adds some depth to the main character, who attempts to steer a young black man clear of trouble. The murder plot, however, is incredibly predictable (I could foretell the events just by looking at the cast), but all in all, the film is quite entertaining and Denzel Washington is always worth the money, although McCall seems incapable of putting a foot wrong. Followed by The Equalizer 3 in 2023.

Driven
2018
***
Director: Nick Hamm
Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Lee Pace, Judy Greer, Isabel Arraiza, Michael Cudlitz, Erin Moriarty, Iddo Goldberg, Tara Summers, Justin Bartha, Corey Stoll

In the early 1980s, Jim Hoffman, a drug smuggling pilot, is forced to become an informant for the FBI. His new next door neighbour turns out to be John DeLorean, who is running out of legal funding for his ambitious car project. This enjoyable but forgettable fact-based caper comedy depicts the peculiar circumstances which brought these real-life characters together for a brief moment, which is now just a footnote in history. Jason Sudeikis and Lee Pace give strong but contrasting performances.

Deadpool 2
2018
**½
Director: David Leitch
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, T.J. Miller, Brianna Hildebrand, Jack Kesy

Wade Wilson is just about to start a family with Vanessa, when she is killed. He tries to kill himself but instead ends up protecting a powerful 14-year-old mutant boy from a time-travelling cyborg soldier. Deadpool introduced us to this irreverent, motormouthed, and frankly exhausting superhero. Now that I know the character, he doesn't get on my nerves as much. The sequel delivers more of the same anarchic, self-referential gags and gory action scenes. The movie is perfectly watchable but a bit too long.

Can you Ever Forgive Me?
2018
***
Director: Marielle Heller
Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells, Jane Curtin, Ben Falcone, Tim Cummings, Anna Deavere Smith

Marielle Heller's second feature tells an enjoyable but rather trivial real-life story of Lee Israel, down on her luck biographer who realised in the early 1990s that there is money to made in forging letters from famous writers. Jack Hock, a pitiful gay hustler, becomes her friend and partner in crime. Lee and Jack are delicious characters, and McCarthy and Grant give worthy performances in their respective roles. Based on Israel's memoir.

Bumblebee
2018
***½
Director: Travis Knight
Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., John Ortiz, Jason Drucker, Pamela Adlon, Stephen Schneider, Len Cariou

B-127 escapes the collapsing Cybertron and ends up on Earth in 1987, with its voice box and memory damaged. An estranged teenager Charlie Watson discovers the Autobot disguised as a yellow VW Beetle, unaware that the U.S. Army and a pair of Decepticons are looking for it. This spin-off and reboot of Transformers is easily the most enjoyable episode in the series (I have seen). Apart from the obligatory big robots smashing each other, there is an actual story and characters I can care about. Admittedly, the screenplay is formulaic and heavily influenced by E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, but the resulting movie is thoroughly watchable.

Bohemian Rhapsody
2018
***
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joe Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Allen Leech, Tom Hollander, Mike Myers

This formulaic but foot tapping biopic of Freddie Mercury covers the musician's life from 1970 when he joins Queen to 1985 when the band regroup and memorably perform at Live Aid. Inbetween, Freddie attempts to come to terms with his own sexuality and his diagnosis of AIDS. Like Walk the Line, Ray, and many other biographies of artists, Freddie's captivating story follows a familiar story arc; the early success is followed by the inevitable years of excess and the late-career redemption. To enable this, Anthony McCarten's script makes up characters and reinvents the chronology of the songs and events. Rami Malek gives a fine lead performance. He won one of the film's four Academy Awards.

BlacKkKlansman
2018
***½
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Jasper Pääkkönen, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Hauser, Ashlie Atkinson, Corey Hawkins

In the early 1970s, a young black officer joins the Colorado Springs PD and is quickly assigned to undercover work. He establishes contact over the phone with the local Ku Klux Klan and convinces his white (Jewish) colleague to impersonate him. Spike Lee has never shied away from dealing with racial issues, but unfortunately this darkly comic drama doesn't have the subtlety or quality of Do the Right Thing. The characters are broadly drawn and the plot relies on too many coincidences, even if it is based on Ron Stallworth's 2014 memoir Black Klansman. The film is often funny, but when the Klan begins to take action and the undercover operation is in jeopardy, there is never any sense of danger. The performances are great, though. The epilogue reminds us that racism is raising its head once again in Trump's America. The screenplay by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Spike Lee won an Academy Award.

Black Panther
2018
***½
Director: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis

To the outside world, Wakanda seems like another poor African country. In reality, however, it has been a technologically advanced nation for centuries thanks to its vast resources of vibranium. Now the country's secret prosperity is at risk when a mysterious outsider challenges T'Challa, the newly crowned king and Black Panther, a superhero powered by the heart-shaped herb. Following the death of his father, Black Panther made a brief appearance in Captain America: Civil War, and now he gets his own moment in the sun. He is one of the more intriguing and unusual characters in the Marvel roster, and Ryan Coogler's movie is slick and assuredly entertaining. However, Marvel should introduce some new ideas to their origin stories. We've seen Iron Man, Hulk, and Ant-Man fight evil versions of themselves in their first outings, and now it's inevitably Black Panther's turn. An Academy Award winner for costume design, production design, and score. The character returns in Avengers: Infinity War.

Bird Box
2018
***
Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Danielle Macdonald, Sarah Paulson, Jacki Weaver, Rosa Salazar, Lile Rel Howery

The world is suddenly taken over by mysterious entities who compel anyone who sees them to commit suicide. Malorie, who is heavily pregnant, takes refuge inside a house with a handful of other people. This derivative but gripping post-apocalyptic thriller delivers a cross between A Quiet Place and The Happening, with similar strengths and weaknesses. The group features a rather formulaic cast of survival story characters, who each have only one personality trait, be it brave, stupid, paranoid, naive, selfish, or heroic. Adapted from Josh Malerman's novel.

Beautiful Boy
2018
**½
Director: Felix van Groeningen
Cast: Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan, Jack Dylan Grazer, Kaitlyn Dever, LisaGay Hamilton, Timothy Hutton, Andre Royo

This biographical drama depicts journalist David Sheff's attempts to help his teenage son Nic overcome drug addiction. The screenplay is based on their respective books Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction and Tweak: Growing Up on Methaphetamines. Felix van Groeningen's first film in English tells a moving but sanitised personal story about the effects of addiction. It's mostly told from David's perspective, which weakens the impact of the drama as we see Nic when he's clean but rarely when he's at his lowest ebb. Although Timothée Chalamet gives a strong performance, at no point does he look like he is a drug addict. At times, the soundtrack drowns out the dialogue in a distractingly loud volume.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
2018
**½
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: Tyne Daly, James Franco, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Heck, Grainger Hines, Zoe Kazan, Harry Melling, Liam Neeson, Tim Blake Nelson, Jonjo O'Neill, Chelcie Ross, Saul Rubinek, Tom Waits

Eight years after True Grit, the Coen brothers return to the Wild West with this long and uneven collection of vignettes. The common denominator between the six stories seems to be that life on the American frontier was deadly and unpredictable. The first two parts, about a cocky gunslinger and an unlucky outlaw, are short, light, and funny. The next three feature a ruthless impresario, a lonely prospector, and an insecure woman in a wagon train, and they are all initially captivating but ultimately overstretched shaggy dog stories. The concluding episode is the least cinematic one. Five people travel in a stagecoach in a short piece, which doesn't seem to a have a beginning, middle, or end. On the plus side, the performances are excellent and, as always, the Coens write terrific dialogue. Four of the stories are original and two of them are based on All Gold Canyon by Jack London and The Girl Who Got Rattled by Stewart Edward White.

Bad Times at the El Royale
2018
***
Director: Drew Goddard
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman, Chris Hemsworth, Nick Offerman, Shea Whigham

In 1969, a Catholic priest, a black singer, a salesman and a crude hippie arrive at the El Royale, a run-down hotel on the border of California and Nevada, which is staffed by one man. All these people have something to hide, but the hotel has a few secrets of its own. The Cabin in the Woods was a terrifically inventive horror genre exercise. Drew Goddard's follow-up is a Tarantinoesque crime mystery. The first half takes its sweet time to introduce the characters and the location, and it really grabbed me with its relaxed pacing, excellent performances, atmospheric visuals, and a few genuine shocks. In the second half, the secrets begin to unravel as we get more flashbacks, but the main storyline sadly leads to an underwhelming and overlong finale. The singer sings one too many songs and the movie simply goes on too long. Goddard saves the final flashback for the final scene, which seems like a baffling choice.

Avengers: Infinity War
2018
*****
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Josh Brolin, Chris Pratt

In the last ten years, the world has witnessed an unprecedented, meticulously coordinated release of Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero movies. It began with the origin stories of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America. The indivual characters first came together in The Avengers, and now, a few more new franchises later, all the characters prepare for the final confrontation with evil. Thanos is determined to acquire all six Infinity Stones in order to complete his Infinity Gauntlet and wipe out half the universe; Dr. Strange and Vision possess one each. While Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange travel to Thanos' homeworld, the Guardians of the Galaxy rescue Thor and the remaining Avengers prepare for the battle in Wakanda. This is by far the biggest, boldest, and grimmest movie in the series. The Russo brothers must juggle dozens of characters and stage action set pieces in several locations at once, and yet the end results is a funny, moving, thrilling, and totally coherent spectacle. The story concludes in Avengers: Endgame.

Arctic
2018
***½
Director: Joe Penna
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Maria Thelma Smáradóttir, Tintrinai Thikhasuk

A man has crashed his plane somewhere in the Arctic. Just when he's about to reach the end of his tether, he must also take care of an injured and unconscious rescue helicopter pilot. Joe Penna's directorial debut is a gripping and believable survival story. Mads Mikkelsen is put through a grinder in a physically challenging role. The brutally hostile environment is the second protagonist.

Aquaman
2018
**½
Director: James Wan
Cast: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole Kidman, Ludi Lin, Temuera Morrison, Randall Park

Arthur Curry is the love child of a lighthouse keeper and the late Queen of Atlantis. While the grown-up Arthur would like to mind his own business, it becomes increasingly difficult when his half-brother Orm plans to unite Atlantis and attack the surface world. Aquaman made a brief and somewhat baffling appearance in Justice League, and now he gets his full length origin story. However, I can't say that I understand the character or the universe he inhabits any better. Aquaman appears to be Thor of the DC Extended Universe. He is an all-powerful superhero with a sinister half-brother whose home world is a candy-coloured CGI wonderland. The rule of thumb seems to be that name actors can breathe in the water and on dry land, the common people in Atlantis and on the surface can only do one of the two. The movie is long and silly, but intermittently enjoyable, and Jason Momoa is a good fit for the title role. The character is based on a comic book by Paul Norris and Mort Weisinger.

Apostle
2018
**
Director: Gareth Evans
Cast: Dan Stevens, Lucy Boynton, Mark Lewis Jones, Bill Milner, Kristine Froseth, Paul Higgins, Michael Sheen

At the start of the 20th century, a man travels to a remote island of Erisden to rescue his sister, who was kidnapped by a cult that rules the community with an iron hand. Thís period horror film has an intriguing and atmospheric set-up, which owes a debt to The Wicker Man (1973). Unfortunately the rest of the story is not what I wanted to see. The apostate protagonist has an extremely disappointing character arc, and the brutal cult and their medieval methods actually come out in positive light. In the second half, the whole thing nosedives into supernatural nonsense and Evans fills the screen with overexaggerated gore to the tune of loud grunting. The score by Fajar Yusekemal and Aria Prayogi is clichéd and almost laughably creepy. Dan Stevens' performance, on the other hand, is 95 % brooding.

Ant-Man and the Wasp
2018
****
Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Walton Goggins, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Tip "T.I." Harris, David Dastmalchian, Hannah John-Kamen, Abby Ryder Fortson, Randall Park, Michelle Pfeiffer, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Douglas

Following the events of Captain America: Civil War, Scott Lang is under house arrest. However, Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne need Scott's help to rescue Hank's wife and Hope's mother, who they believe is still alive in the quantum realm. Ant-Man was a clever but slightly formulaic origin story. The sequel can cut straight to the chase, and the result is fast-paced, playful, and very funny. Instead of a traditional villain, the story provides an array of well-defined characters, and the movie is all the better for it. The ending brings the franchise in the same timeline with Avengers: Infinity War.

Annihilation
2018
****
Director: Alex Garland
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac, Benedict Wong, Sonoya Mizuno, David Gyasi

Lena's husband returns with his memory and body in tatters from a disastrous mission inside the Shimmer, an expanding force field that has a strange effect on all living organisms. Lena, a cellular biologist, and a team of female scientist attempt to travel to the source of the Shimmer. Like his debut Ex Machina, Alex Garland's second feature is a smart and atmospheric science fiction drama. This one is based on Jeff VanderMeer's novel. The film has a consistently oppressive mood and it offers a lovely combination of brainy sciency plotting and lowbrow scares.

Alpha
2018
***½
Director: Albert Hughes
Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Natassia Malthe, Marcin Kowalczyk, Jens Hultén, Leonor Varela

Some 20,000 years ago in Europe, young Keda is about to prove his manhood by hunting a bison, but he suffers an accident and is left for dead by his tribe. Keda attempts to makes his way back home through the hostile environment with an injured wolf as his companion. The Hughes brothers are best known for their gritty urban dramas like Menace II Society and Dead Presidents. However, Albert Hughes' first solo effort is a prehistorical epic, which is consistently gripping if not always believable. Like Quest for Fire almost 40 years ago, the characters communicate in an invented language. The film looks absolutely stunning.

22 July
2018
***½
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Jon Øigarden, Thorbjørn Harr, Jonas Strand Gravli, Ola G. Furuseth, Ulrikke Hansen Døvigen, Isak Bakli Aglen, Maria Bock, Tone Danielsen, Turid Gunnes, Monica Borg Fure, Ingrid Enger Damon, Seda Witt

On July 22, 2011, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb in Oslo and then opened fire on teenagers attending a summer camp on the island of Utøya. These horrific attacks resulted in the death of 77 people. With excellent films like Bloody Sunday, United 93, and Captain Phillips, Paul Greengrass has proven himself to be a master in dramatising tense real-life events. This long but captivating film begins with the violent attacks, but it spends most of its running time dealing with the effect they had on the country, the survivors, and the perpetrator. The Norwegian cast all speak English, which takes some time to accept. The director scripted from the book One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway - and Its Aftermath by Åsne Seierstad.

You Were Never Really Here
2017
***
Director: Lynne Ramsey
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alex Manette, John Doman, Judith Roberts

Joe is a traumatised war veteran who is specialised in tracking down sex trafficked teenagers and punishing their captors. A state senator hires him to find his daughter, but Joe is about to discover that there are bigger things at play. Lynne Ramsey's fourth feature was scripted by Jonathan Ames from his own novel. The set-up sounds like a classic paranoia thriller, but in practice this is an introspective study of an unhinged person. Joaquin Phoenix gives a very compelling performance, but Joe's story is never as gripping as you would hope and often difficult to watch, but not for the right reason.

Wonder Woman
2017
***
Director: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Connie Nielsen, Elena Anaya, Lucy Davis, Said Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock

An Amazonian warrior princess named Diana leaves the all-female island of Themyscira to find and kill Ares, the Greek god of war, to bring peace to the world. The brave but naive woman enters our world at the end of the First World War, just when a German General and his chemist attempt to delay the inevitable by deploying a new deadly gas. Wonder Woman briefly appeared in the dreadful Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Her own movie is a major improvement on the previous releases in the DC Extended Universe, but far from a masterpiece. This is a long and unevenly paced origin story, but at the end of it, I'm still not sure I understand who the character is and what her powers are. I'm not sure Diana knows it herself. However, at its best the movie offers a nice mix of humour, romance, drama and action. The climactic battle is very disappointing, though. Patty Jenkins was clearly tutored by Zack Snyder in her overuse of the speed up and slow down effect. Gal Gadot is a gorgeous statuesque screen presence, but I'm not sure she can act. Based on the DC Comics character created by William Moulton Marston. Followed by Wonder Woman 1984.

Wonder Wheel
2017
**½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Jim Belushi, Juno Temple, Justin Timberlake, Kate Winslet, Jack Gore, Tony Sirico, Steve Schirripa

The lives of a number of people intertwine in 1950s Coney Island. These include an actress turned waitress, her much older husband, her fire-obsessed young son, his troubled grown-up daughter, and a lifeguard/aspiring writer who is drawn to both of the ladies. Woody Allen's forgettable and predictable period drama is not better or worse than most of his recent modest output. The central love triangle lacks romance and passion, and the whole thing feels like a filmed stage play, and not a very good one. The performances range from good (Winslet and Temple) to awful (Belushi and Timberlake). Like Café Society (2016), it is partially rescued by Vittorio Storaro's warmly tinted cinematography.

Wind River
2017
****
Director: Taylor Sheridan
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Graham Greene, Kelsey Chow, Gil Birmingham, Julia Jones, Martin Sensmeier, Althea Sam, Teo Briones, John Bernthal

The past comes back to haunt a seasoned game tracker when he discovers the body of a teenage girl in the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. The FBI sends an inexperienced agent to investigate the murder. Taylor Sheridan's fictional story sheds light on a real-life tragedy, namingly the high rate of missing and murdered indigenous women. This is a gritty, captivating, and nicely paced neo-Western where the harsh landscape is one of the main characters. Jeremy Renner gives a gruffy and wonderfully understated lead performance.

War for the Planet of the Apes
2017
***
Director: Matt Reeves
Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Toby Kebbell, Judy Greer, Karin Konoval, Terry Notary, Gabriel Chavarria, Amiah Miller, Roger Cross

The prequel trilogy kicked off with the surprising and captivating Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but the story has since taken a more predictable and disappointing direction. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes introduced a dystopic future, where the remaining apes and humans would inevitably clash. The third part is about the survival of the species, and it's like a cross between Apocalypse Now and The Great Escape. Two more years have passed and the apes are engaged in an extended battle with military troops led by the Colonel (Kurtz?). Caesar must decide whether he seeks personal revenge or leads his tribe to safety. Caesar remains a wonderful character throughout the trilogy, and the special effects are amazing. However, there was potential for more. This is the longest and most static of the films.

Tuntematon sotilas (The Unknown Soldier)
2017
****
Director: Aku Louhimies
Cast: Eero Aho, Johannes Holopainen, Jussi Vatanen, Aku Hirviniemi, Hannes Suominen, Paula Vesala, Samuli Vauramo, Joonas Saartamo, Arttu Kapulainen, Andrei Alén, Juho Milonoff, Matti Ristinen, Diana Pozharskaya

Väinö Linna's 1954 novel, which follows soldiers of a Finnish machine gun company during the Continuation War (1941-1944) against the Soviet Union, has been adapted to the screen roughly every 30 years. This gripping and visually rich third adaptation, which was scripted by Aku Louhimies and Jari Olavi Rantala, adds more realism to the fighting and shows its effects on the men and the home front. Other than that, it features characters, scenes, and lines of dialogue, which are overly familiar from the 1955 and 1985 versions. Eero Aho is terrific in the lead, and the rest of the cast are not bad either.

Tom of Finland
2017
***
Director: Dome Karukoski
Cast: Pekka Strang, Lauri Tilkanen, Jessica Grabowsky, Taisto Oksanen, Seumas F. Sargent, Jakob Oftebro, Niklas Hogner, Werner Daehn, Christian Sandström, Martin Bahne, Kari Hietalahti

Touko Laaksonen is a gay man who must hide his true self in post-war Finland, but his controversial homoerotic drawings, eventually published under the name of Tom of Finland, turn him into a worldwide icon in the gay community. Dome Karukoski's well staged but frustratingly formulaic biographical drama only goes skin deep. Laaksonen was gay and he drew some pictures, and that's as much as we learn about him. At times, the dialogue sounds anachronistic and the timeframe stops making sense, especially as it's unclear which decade we are in at any point. Although Pekka Strang gives a strong performance, the character he plays seems to be permanently in his 30s, until he is suddenly an old man. Lauri Tilkanen plays his life partner, but this relationship is so ambiguous that it doesn't leave any impression.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
2017
****
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Željko Ivanek, Caleb Landry Jones, Samara Weaving, Kerry Condon

Mildred Hayes is an embittered mother who rents three billboards outside the town of Ebbing to bring attention to the unsolved rape and murder of her 17-year-old daughter. This brings her at loggerheads with Jason Dixon, a heavy-drinking and short-tempered redneck cop. Martin McDonagh's entertaining and foul-mouthed dark comedy offers a lovely slice of small town americana. The film features a terrific collection of characters, most of whom are capable of both good and evil. Although many of these characters are based on stereotypes, they are wonderfully drawn and played, apart from Abbie Cornish, who is just miscast (the script doesn't explain how a small town sheriff ended up marrying a beautiful foreign woman 20 years his junior). Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell both won Academy Awards for their stellar performances.

Thor: Ragnarok
2017
***½
Director: Taika Waititi
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins

After learning about a prophesied apocalypse, Thor returns to Asgard, where he must face Hela, his big sister and the goddess of death. Taika Waititi, offbeat Kiwi director, brings some much needed lightness and humour to this Marvel franchise. I've always found Thor a wonderful character, especially in The Avengers movies, but I have never warmed up to Asgard, a fantasy universe which resembles a cheap video game whenever the characters are not at the centre of events. Cate Blanchett, an intriguing casting choice for Hela, gives a disappointingly clichéd performance.

Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
2017
***½
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong'o, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, Benicio del Toro

While Rey hopes to convince Luke Skywalker to join the fight for good, she discovers a Force connection to Kylo Ren. In the meanwhile, Finn and Poe attempt to stop the First Order from tracking the last fleeing Resistance vessels. If J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens was an entertaining but derivative reboot, Rian Johnson's follow-up offers so many surprises that it upset thousands of hard core Star Wars fans across the world. His movie is definitely too long, but it provides an impressive mix of character development and stunning set pieces. Like The Empire Strikes Back, this is the dark middle part of the trilogy and one of the better episodes in the entire series. The third trilogy concludes in The Rise of Skywalker.

Spider-Man: Homecoming
2017
****½
Director: John Watts
Cast: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Jon Favreau, Zendaya, Donald Glover, Tyne Daly, Marisa Tomei, Robert Downey Jr.

Although Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man isn't more than 15 years old, this is now the third reboot of Marvel's much-loved superhero franchise. This reincarnation skips the origin story and finds Peter Parker as an insecure 15-year-old high school kid who dreams of becoming a regular member of the Avengers. However, it doesn't help that he defies the exact wishes of Tony Stark and goes out to confront a dangerous villain who trades in alien weaponry. It's not like the world needed yet another Spider-Man, but this does feel like a fresh start. The excellent Tom Holland plays Peter Parker as an awkward teenager who tries to come to terms with his strengths and weaknesses, and learn the quirks of his fancy new Spider-Man suit. The movie is laugh out loud funny throughout and possibly the most purely entertaining one in the entire series.Spider-Man returns in Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: Far From Home.

The Shape of Water
2017
***½
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer, Nick Searcy, David Hewlett, Nigel Bennett, Stewart Arnott, Martin Roach

Elisa is a mute cleaner who unexpectedly forms a close bond with an amphibious creature who is held captive in a secret government facility in Baltimore in 1962. After the forgettable Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro returns to form. Like Pan's Labyrinth (2006), his best work to date, this is a gripping and visually rich story that seemlessly mixes fantasy and historical drama. However, like he did with his 2006 film, del Toro ruins the dramatic stakes with a one-note villain, who is evil and sadistic even to his own wife. However, the performances are great and the film looks spectacular. An Academy Award winner for best picture, director, score, and production design.

Power Rangers
2017
**
Director: Dean Israelite
Cast: Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler, Becky G, Ludi Lin, Bill Hader, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Banks

In the city of Angel Grove, five troubled teenagers discover prehistoric Power Coins that give them superpowers. They also discover an ancient spaceship and learn that they are to form a team of Power Rangers in order to save the world. This silly and lackluster superhero movie, which is based on a long-running TV and merchandising franchise, comes in the wake of umpteen Marvel, DC, and other comic book adaptations. Therefore it comes as no surprise that everything feels second-hand. The five young actors give commanding performances, but Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Banks are completely wasted as a talking screen and one-note villain, respectively. Most comic book movies end in a long and dull climactic battle, but the face-off between the Zords and Goldar takes boredom to Transformers level.

The Post
2017
***½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Michael Stuhlbarg

In 1971, Katharine Graham, the owner of Washington Post, is about to list the newspaper on the stock exchange. When the Post acquires classified government reports that could expose a far-reaching cover-up related to the war in Vietnam, Katharine must decide if she is willing to risk the paper's and her own future. Steven Spielberg's no-nonsense drama celebrates the First Amendment right to free speech, which has become an extremely topical issue under the Trump administration. This true story proceeds pretty much as expected, but thanks to assured directing and wonderful acting, the film is consistently captivating. Meryl Streep as the timid heroine and Tom Hanks as the principled editor are great. This is a lovely companion piece to All the President's Men, which charted the newspaper's further heroics in journalism.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales / Salazar's Revenge
2017
*
Director: Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg
Cast: Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario, Kevin McNally, David Wenham, Golshiften Farahani, Stephen Graham, Martin Kiebba

Henry Turner (the son of Will and Elizabeth) teams up with Captain Jack Sparrow to locate the Trident of Poseidon, which could lift the curse on his father. However, he is in competition with Captains Barbossa and Salazar who desire the same divine object in order to rule the seas. The fifth movie in the series starts over again with some fresh faces behind and front of the camera, and yet, nothing has really changed. The plot is still needlessly complicated, the action scenes are as murky and incomprehensible as ever, and the characters are props again. Captain Jack Sparrow, the best thing in The Curse of the Black Pearl, has become an infuriating and unfunny bore. Johnny Depp, now without a shred of professional pride, plays him as though he is permanently drunk. On a more positive note, this is the shortest movie in the series.

Phantom Thread
2017
****½
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville, Camilla Rutherford, Gina McKee, George Glasgow, Brian Gleeson, Harriet Sansom Harris

Reynolds Woodcock is an esteemed fashion designer with a highly controlling personality. He meets young Alma Elson, a young woman who becomes his assistant, muse, and lover. Paul Thomas Anderson's latest period film is set in London in the 1950s. It is a beautifully staged and subtly acted Hitchcockian drama about an unusual and intense relationship between two obsessive people. Daniel Day-Lewis is wonderful in (possibly) his last screen performance. Mark Bridges won an Academy Award winner for his costume design.

Paddington 2
2017
*****
Director: Paul King
Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Brendan Gleeson, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Hugh Grant, Ben Whishaw

Paddington Brown has settled in his life in London. Aunt Lucy's birthday is approaching, and Paddington plans to buy her an expensive pop-up book, but when the book is stolen, the framed little bear is sent to prison. The 2014 adaptation of Michael Bond's stories offered a perfect blend of live action and CGI for the entire family, and this irresistible sequel improves that incredibly high quality level. The film is beautifully scripted and consistently funny, and Paddington must be one of the loveliest screen characters of all time. Hugh Grant gives a hilarious performance as a self-absorbed actor.

Only the Brave
2017
****
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Connelly, Andie MacDowell, James Badge Dale, Taylor Kitsch, Alex Russell, Dylan Kenin, Scott Foxx, Ryan Busch

Eric Marsh is superintendent of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite crew of wildland firefighters. Eric and his troubled young recruit Brendan are not the only members of the crew who struggle to balance their dangerous and all-encompassing work with their family lives. Joseph Kosinski blends real life events, good old-fashioned storytelling, great character work, strong performances, and seamless special effects into a gripping and moving 2-hour drama. Based on the GQ article No Exit by Sean Flynn.

Okja
2017
***½
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Ahn Seo-hyun, Byun Hee-bong, Steven Yeun, Lily Collins, Yoon Je-moon, Shirley Henderson, Daniel Henshall, Devon Bostick, Choi Woo-shik, Giancarlo Esposito, Jake Gyllenhaal

Ten years ago, Mirando Corporation gave a batch of super pigs to farmers across the world, and now the largest specimen is about to be crowned winner in New York. Mija, a young South Korean girl, has developed a close bond to her super pig, Okja, and refuses to give her up. Bong Joon-ho's impressive fantasy film is firmly rooted in reality. It starts as a light-hearted adventure about a girl and her best friends, but ends as a brutally frank drama that deals with GMO food, industrial meat production, and animal rights. Okja is beautifully and believably created with digital effects, but some of the human performances are distractingly awful, particularly Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Murder on the Orient Express
2017
**
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley

The Orient Express, en route from Istanbul to London, gets stuck in snow just as one of the passengers, a shady conman named Ratchett, is found stabbed to death. Thankfully Hercule Poirot, the greatest detective in the world, is onboard. Kenneth Branagh's pointless and lifeless murder mystery is the fourth adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1934 novel or, if you will, a remake of Sidney Lumet's 1974 version. The train appears to carry only a dozen passengers, all of whom are under suspicion. Branagh has assembled an impressive ensemble cast to play these people, but he takes the centre stage himself with his enormous moustache and the murder suspects are each left with a 30-second character description and a few lines of dialogue. This Christie story is famous for its unexpected ending, but do not stop and think about it or you discover that the entire mystery is contrived and implausible. Cinematography, sets, and costumes are very good, though. Followed by Death on the Nile.

Mudbound
2017
***
Director: Dee Rees
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan, Jonathan Banks

The McAllans (white) and the Jacksons (black) farm the same land in the unforgiving Mississippi Delta. Jamie McAllan and Ronsel Jackson both return home from World War II in Europe and struggle to readjust to their former lives. This well-acted period drama tells a classic tale of you can never go home again. The returning war heroes must deal with PTSD, which is something new, and racism, which has always been there. Dee Rees creates a wonderful and thoroughly believable sense of place and time, but the world she paints and the characters she inhabits it with are not only racially but also dramatically black and white, without a hint of grey. Based on Hillary Jordan's novel.

Mother!
2017
*
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, Kristen Wiig

On the surface, Darren Aronofsky's ambitious drama tells a story of a self-obsessed poet whose wife spends the days restoring their country house. One day, their tranquil lives are ruined by a mysterious couple who would like to stay over. If these events and characters do not fully make sense, it's because the whole thing turns out to be a religious allegory, which features God, Mother Earth, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and hundreds of worshippers. While the subtext may add up, as a viewing experience this is unpleasant and infuriating, like a horrible dream that refuses to end. Amidst all this madness, Jennifer Lawrence gives a decent central performance.

Molly's Game
2017
**½
Director: Aaron Sorkin
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong, Chris O'Dowd, Bill Camp

For his directorial debut, Aaron Sorkin has adapted the memoirs of Molly Bloom, who transformed herself from an Olympic-level skier to an organiser of high-stakes underground poker games. Sorkin's long and formulaic drama provides passable entertainment, but he fails to convince me why I should feel sorry for a young woman chasing quick riches, when she inevitably receives her comeuppance.

The Meyerowitz Stories
2017
****
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Marvel, Grace Van Patten, Candice Bergen, Adam Driver, Sigourney Weaver, Judd Hirsch, Rebecca Miller

Harold Meyerowitz has not been a great success as an artist or as a father to his three grown-up children. Danny and Jean are dedicated to their father, but get nothing in return. Their half-brother Matthew gets more love but resents his old man. Like in The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach's cinematic breakthrough, this dysfunctional family feels painfully real and bitingly funny. The performances are very enjoyable, especially Dustin Hoffman as the amusingly self-centred father and Adam Sandler as the shiftless but loving Danny. My only major complaint is that Jean's part in the Meyerowitz stories is disappointingly brief.

Logan Lucky
2017
****
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Seth MacFarlane, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston, Dwight Yoakam, Sebastian Stan, Brian Gleeson, Jack Quaid, Hilary Swank, Daniel Craig

Jimmy Logan is an unemployed construction worker with a bad knee and his brother Clyde is a bartender who lost his lower arm in Iraq. These two West Virginian brothers plan to change the family's fortunes by robbing the Coca-Cola 600 race. There's only one hitch, the explosives expert they need is currently serving time. Steven Soderbergh returns from his brief retirement to direct a working class version of Ocean's Eleven, and it turns out to be one of the most purely enjoyable movies he has ever made. The script is snappy and the cast is terrific.

Logan
2017
****
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Dafne Keen, Eriq La Salle, Elise Neal, and Elizabeth Rodriguez

In 2029, the weakened and disillusioned Logan takes care of the elderly Professor Xavier, who is having dangerous seizures. It is believed that no new mutants have been born in years, but could the young Laura be Logan's offspring? James Mangold's grim drama was inspired by Old Man Logan by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven, which depicted an alternative X-Men future. This bleak and violent comic book movie is closer to something like Joker, and not for the same target audience as the rest of the X-Men franchise. Hugh Jackman gives possibly his best performance as Wolverine.

Life
2017
**
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare, Olga Dihovichnaya

The International Space Station, with a crew of six onboard, pick up a space probe which carries extraterrestrial life from Mars. While the crew members study the organism, they throw a Re-Animator (1985) reference, but for some odd reason they haven't seen Alien, which would have explained everything that is about to unfold. This science fiction movie offers good performances, impressive visuals, and a screenplay so unoriginal that it's embarrassing. Even in this context, Ryan Reynolds manages to play the same wisecracking character he always does.

The Lego Ninjago Movie
2017
**
Director: Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan
Cast: Dave Franco, Justin Theroux, Fred Armisen, Abbi Jacobson, Olivia Munn, Kumail Nanjiani, Michael Peña, Zach Woods, Jackie Chan

Angsty teenager Lloyd Garmadon is not a popular figure in the city of Ninjago due to his absent father Lord Garmadon, who regularly attemps to destroy the place. If only the citizens knew that Lloyd is a key member of the special ninja team who protect the city. Lego's big screen franchise stumbles onwards with diminishing results. The Lego Movie was a breath of fresh air, The Lego Batman Movie was beginning to feel stale, and the third one, based on the Lego Ninjago toy line, has run out of ideas. The story offers no surprises, the fast-paced comedy style has worn out its welcome, and Lord Garmadon feels like Batman v2.0.

The Lego Batman Movie
2017
***
Director: Chris McKay
Cast: Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes, Hector Elizondo, Channing Tatum

Batman has become cocky, narcissistic, and disconnected from the world around him. When Gotham City's new police commissioner no longer requires Batman's services, and the caped crusader unwittingly adopts a fanboy, it's time for serious introspection. The Lego Movie was an unexpected surprise. This spin-off continues with the same breakneck speed and, if possible, ups the gags per minute ratio. It brings the DC Comics superheroes into the Lego universe, or maybe it's the other way around since Lego blocks play hardly any role in this. By the end, the list of baddies also include Sauron, Voldemort, Gremlins, Agent Smith, King Kong, and many others. So, there is a lot going on, probably too much. The movie is consistently funny but visually cluttered.

Lady Bird
2017
****½
Director: Great Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith

Greta Gerwig's full directorial debut is a deeply personal coming of age story about a 17-year-old Sacramento girl who is in her last year of high school. Christine, who would like to be known as Lady Bird, dreams of going to college on the East Coast, but can she pull it off academically and financially? Gerwig's snappy script doesn't offer anything groundbreaking, but she has created utterly believable and wonderfully nuanced characters and found a terrific cast to play them. At the centre of it all are Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, and their moving portrayal of a complicated mother-daughter relationship.

Kong: Skull Island
2017
**
Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Jing Tian, Toby Kebbell, John Ortiz, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, Terry Notary, John C. Reilly

Peter Jackson's King Kong remake was a smart and moving science fiction drama. This reboot checks its brain at the door early. Fresh from the demoralising defeat in Vietnam, Sky Devils helicopter squadron are assigned to escort a team of explorers to the mysterious Skull Island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Upon arrival they are attacked by a gigantic ape. However, the squadron patiently remain airborne and take the punches until Kong has killed half of the team and destroyed all of their helicopters. I gave up on the movie at this point. The remaining 90 minutes offer nothing I haven't seen in Jurassic Park, Aliens, Lost, and all their pale imitations.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle
2017
***
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Halle Berry, Pedro Pascal, Elton John, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Edward Holcroft, Hanna Alström, Bruce Greenwood, Emily Watson

When a sinister drug kingpin kills most of the Kingsman agents, Eggsy and Merlin seek out Statesman, an American branch of the organisation, where they make an unexpected discovery. The follow-up to Kingsman: The Secret Service delivers another entertaining but instantly forgettable mix of locker room humour and cartoonish violence. However, this time the script is all over the place and the movie ends up being about 30 minutes too long. Vaughn could have easily trimmed the running time by cutting out 75 % of a needlessly long celebrity cameo.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer
2017
**
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone, Bill Camp

A successful surgeon, who is happily married with two children, has become something of a father figure to a teenager ever since the boy's father died on the operating table. However, the boy's true intentions are far more sinister. Yorgos Lanthimos follows up The Lobster with another unusual mind-bender. Although the creepy story and Kubrickian camera work create a consistently unsettling atmosphere, the script (inspired by Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripide) is too conceptual, anachronistic, and preoccupied with symbolism to work as a drama about living and breathing human beings. I couldn't believe anything the characters said or did.

Justice League
2017
**
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J.K. Simmons

Following the death of Superman, Bruce Wayne assembles a team of superheroes, which includes Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. They take on Steppenwolf, who plans to unite the powers of the three Mother Boxes, which were once divided between the Amazons, Atlantaen, and humans. After the entertaining anomaly of Wonder Woman, the DC Extended Universe is back to its underwhelming self. Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice were artistic and commercial flops, but for some reason Zack Snyder is still at the helm. To his credit, this boring mess was partly reshot by Joss Whedon, the man behind The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, possibly two of the clunkiest spectacles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The superhero team and their respective abilities are poorly defined, the villain lacks any personality, the dialogue is mostly a collection of big rousing speeches, and Ben Affleck's performance is terribly wooden (Batman is so permanently depressed that even his mask has frown lines). Wonder Woman and Flash provide the few enjoyable moments during the two hours. Like he has demonstrated before, Snyder's idea of an action set piece is to create a murky and artificial CG world, and then smash things up for what seems an eternity. It's more than ten years since he made his name with 300, but he still overuses the speed up and and slow down trick as though it was invented yesterday. Warner released the director's original vision as Zack Snyder's Justice League in 2021.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
2017
****
Director: Jake Kasdan
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas, Bobby Cannavale, Alex Wolff, Madison Iseman, Ser'Darius Blain, Morgan Turner, Mason Guccione

While serving their detention, four high school students are teleported into an old video game named Jumanji, where they appear as the characters they selected in the beginning of the game. They soon discover that to return to the real world, they must successfully complete all the levels. The original Jumanji was an entertaining but mechanical family movie. This belated sequel/reboot is also somewhat episodic, but it puts a fresh modern twist on the old story and juices it up with inventive humour and action. The game cast is great. Followed by Jumanji: The Next Level.

Jane
2017
***
Director: Brett Morgen
Cast:

In 1960, Jane Goodall, a 26-year-old woman without scientific background, began to study the behaviour of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Her work led to groundbreaking discoveries. Jane Goodall is a captivating subject, a passionate primatologist and a strong female role model, but I'm not sure if there is enough substance here for a 90-minute film. Brett Morgen's documentary features previously unseen footage shot by Hugo van Lawick, a famous wildlife filmmaker and Goodall's first husband. Philip Glass provides the overdramatic score.

It
2017
**
Director: Andy Muschietti
Cast: Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgård, Jeremy Ray Thomas, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan, Grazer. Wyatt Oleff, Nicholas Hamilton, Jackson Robert Scott

In the town of Derry, people are six times more likely to die or disappear than anywhere else. In the summer of 1989, Bill and his group of high school friends all share visions of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, a scary being who could be behind the disappearings. Although Stephen King's 1986 novel was an obvious influence on Strange Things, after two wonderful seasons of Netflix's 1980s throwback series, this adaptation feels awfully derivative, not least because it moves the book's events from the 1950s to the 1980s so that the sequel can take place in the present day. After more than two boring hours of doors creaking and slamming, and character venturing alone into dark basements, creepy abandoned houses, or dripping underground sewers, I must assume that director Andy Muschietti has never watched a horror film in his life. The novel was previously adapted to a miniseries in 1990.

Ingrid Goes West
2017
***½
Director: Matt Spicer
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, Billy Magnussen, Wyatt Russell, Pom Klementieff, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Meredith Hagner

Ingrid Thorburn is an unstable young woman who moves to Los Angeles to befriend a popular social media influencer and immerse herself in the woman's glamorous but vacuous lifestyle. Matt Spicer's enjoyable darkly comic drama is like a cross between Single White Female and The Talented Mr. Ripley, but set in the age of social media. As Ingrid's obsession spirals out of control, the film explores identity, authenticity, and the consequences of obsessive behavior. Aubrey Plaza is terrific in a more dramatic and demanding role.

Ikitie (The Eternal Road)
2017
***½
Director: Antti-Jussi Annila
Cast: Tommi Korpela, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Irina Björklund, Ville Virtanen, Helen Söderqvist, Lembit Ulfsak

One night in 1930, far-right extremists are about to shoot Jussi Ketola as a suspected socialist, but he escapes across the border to Soviet Union. Jussi hopes for a swift return home to his family, but instead he is sent to Helmi, a state farm where a group of North American immigrants have arrived to build a worker’s paradise. This captivating Finnish drama is based on the novel by Antti Tuuri, which in turn was inspired by the true story of Nestori Saarimäki. Dreams and reality crash in Helmi, and the consequences are harrowing. The performances are great, but I wish there was at least one native speaker playing the North Americans.

Icarus
2017
***
Director: Bryan Fogel
Cast:

Bryan Fogel is a filmmaker and an avid amateur cyclist who decides to use performance-enhancing drugs on camera. He consults Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Russian anti-doping laboratory, who plans the doping programme and helps him pass the tests. Fogel's personal experiment turns into an international drama when Rodchenkov's role in Russia's state-run doping programme becomes global news. This is a captivating but flawed documentary. Rodchenkov is a clever and very entertaining character, but Vogel's close personal friendship with his subject blurs the film's objectivity. In the second half, the director turns the mastermind of the doping programme into a hapless victim. An Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature.

I, Tonya
2017
**½
Director: Craig Gillespie
Cast: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Julianne Nicholson, Bobby Cannavale, Caitlin Carver, Bojana Novakovic, Paul Walter Hauser

Tonya Harding was a talented figure skater whose successful career ended in a scandal. Before the 1994 Winter Olympics, her ex-husband orchestrated an attack on Nancy Kerrigan, her biggest domestic rival. This darkly comic biopic plays hard and loose with facts. It depicts Tonya as a poor little white trash girl who is abused physically by her husband and mentally by her mother. In the end, nobody seems to be guilty of the attack, it just sort of happens. Tonya's story is probably worth telling, but fictionalising her life and playing her as a victim didn't work for me. Margot Robbie is excellent in the title role, and her scenes on ice are wonderfully created. Allison Janney is disappointingly one-note in her Academy Award winning performance as the mother.

The Hitman's Bodyguard
2017
**½
Director: Patrick Hughes
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Salma Hayek, Élodie Yung, Joaquim de Almeida, Kirsty Mitchell, Richard E. Grant

A discredited bodyguard must transport a renowned hitman from the UK to the International Criminal Court in The Hague so he can testify against the brutal dictator of Belarus. This disposable action comedy combines the buddy comedy of Midnight Run with the hands-on Euro action of The Bourne Identity. However, the movie is too long and its script doesn't deliver enough jokes to compensate for all the violence. The action scenes are well directed and edited, though. Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson are both on auto pilot, and Gary Oldman's ridiculously evil Eastern European villain feels like a throwback to the 1980s. Followed by Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2021).

Happy End
2017
***
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Mathieu Kassovitz, Franz Rogowski, Fantine Harduin, Laura Verlinden, Toby Jones, Loubna Abidar

Michael Haneke's subtle and biting social satire follows three generations of the wealthy Laurent family, who live in Calais, close to a migrant encampment. The voyeuristic story of these damaged people is captivating and well acted, but Haneke has covered similar ground in superior films like Benny's Video, Caché, and Funny Games.

Happy Death Day
2017
**
Director: Christopher Landon
Cast: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken, Laura Clifton, Jason Bayle, Rob Mello, Rachel Matthews

A selfish and arrogant college student finds herself living the same day in a loop in which she is brutally killed by someone in a mask. She hopes that finding the killer will restore normality. This horror comedy gives us yet another version of Groundhog Day, which is at least acknowledged in the final scene. I kept waiting for Scott Lobdell's script to add a new twist to the old formula, but it never does. Followed by Happy Death Day 2U (2019).

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
2017
***½
Director: James Gunn
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Elizabeth Debicki, Chris Sullivan, Sean Gunn, Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell

Guardians of the Galaxy was a curiously well-liked movie which left me a bit cold. The second time around, I could accept this universe with all its flaws, and found it rather enjoyable. The sequel features relationships that I can care about, dialogue that actually made me laugh, and action set pieces which are big and bombastic but nicely comprehensible. As the Guardians attempt to steer clear of the enraged golden High Priestess of the Sovereign, they run into Ego, a god-like being who claims to be Peter's Quill's long lost father. The characters return in Avengers: Infinity War.

God's Own Country
2017
**½
Director: Francis Lee
Cast: Josh O'Connor, Alec Secăreanu, Gemma Jones, Ian Hart, Harry Lister Smith, Melanie Kilburn, Liam Thomas, Patsy Ferran

Johnny is a young sheep farmer who struggles to find happiness amidst the harsh Yorkshire landscape and his family's high expectations. His life takes a turn when he meets Gheorghe, a Romanian migrant worker. Francis Lee's gritty drama is well-acted, but I wasn't exactly swept away by its central romance. This is no Brokeback Mountain, that's for sure. My main issue is with Johnny, a duplicitous and unpleasant boor, who deserves neither Gheorghe nor a happy ending.

Gifted
2017
***½
Director: Mark Webb
Cast: Chris Evans, Mckenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Jenny Slate, Octavia Spencer, Glenn Plummer, John Finn, Elizabeth Marvel, Jon Sklaroff

Frank is an acting guardian of his 7-year-old niece Mary. Frank is determined to give her a normal upbringing, but it becomes a struggle when Mary turns out to be a math wiz like her late mother. This smart and moving melodrama about a child prodigy joins the likes of Little Man Tate and Searching for Bobby Fischer. Its greatest strength is the believable and well defined characters. Chris Evans takes a break from playing Captain America. His performance is nicely grounded, and the rest of the cast are doing a fine job as well.

A Ghost Story
2017
****
Director: David Lowery
Cast: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham, Liz Cardenas Franke, Sonia Acevedo, Rob Zabrecky

A recently deceased man, now a ghost draped in a white sheet, lingers in the home he once shared with his grieving partner in David Lowery's drama, which explores loss, grief, and the passage of time. The short but static film includes only a few lines of dialogue. Even if some of the individual scenes, like the infamous six-minute pie-eating shot, tested my patience, this dreamy and deliberately paced film has a very strong atmosphere.

Get Out
2017
****½
Director: Jordan Peele
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Catherine Keener, Lakeith Stanfield, Lil Rel Howery

Chris, a young black man, is nervous about meeting the parents of his white girlfriend Rose. However, while her parents seem overly friendly and liberal, their black staff behave in a very odd manner. Jordan Peele's wonderfully assured directorial debut is a darkly comic horror film which takes a totally fresh approach to dealing with racism. Peele's Academy Award winning screenplay sprinkles subtle clues along the way to its tense climax.

Gerald's Game
2017
***½
Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Carel Struycken, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel, Chiara Aurelia

Jessie and Gerald travel to a remote cabin to spice up their marriage, but things take a dark turn when Gerald suffers a heart attack while Jessie is handcuffed to the bed. This gripping and intense thriller escapes its confined setting inside Jessie's head, as she looks back on her failed marriage and her childhood traumas. Based on Stephen King's 1992 novel.

Geostorm
2017
**½
Director: Dean Devlin
Cast: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Alexandra Maria Lara, Daniel Wu, Eugenio Derbez, Amr Waked, Adepero Oduye, Robert Sheehan, Richard Schiff, Ed Harris, Andy García

In the near future, when climate change has reached the tipping point, a weather-controlling satellite system known as Dutch Boy keeps the world habitable. When Dutch Boy begins to develop a mind of its own, its chief designer Jake Lawson is sent into space to fix it. Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich's long-time writing and producing partner, makes his directorial debut with this utterly stupid but surprisingly watchable The Day After Tomorrow meets Gravity scifi disaster spectacle. Its science is dubious, its dialogue is dreadful, but there is some fun to be had. Sadly Devlin spoils the big plot twist with his casting.

Forgotten
2017
***½
Director: Jang Hang-jun
Cast: Kang Ha-neul, Kim Mu-yeol, Moon Sung-keun, Na Young-hee, Choi Go, Kim Hyun-mok, Yoo In-soo, Nam Myeong-ryeol

It's 1997 and Jin-seok, a 21-year-old man, moves to a new house with his parents and older brother, but something doesn't seem right. The house makes spooky noises and he begins to feel like a stranger in his own family. This gripping Korean thriller starts as one type of a story, but ends as something completely different. There may be one twist too many on the way to the dramatic conclusion, but the film is consistently entertaining and definitely unpredictable.

The Florida Project
2017
**
Director: Sean Baker
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite, Valeria Cotto, Christopher Rivera, Caleb Landry Jones

6-year-old Moonee and her young and feckless mom Hallee live in a cheap motel in Kissimmee, Florida. While the mother struggles to make ends meet, the daughter is left to her own devices. Set in the shadow of Walt Disney World, Sean Baker's plotless social realist drama delivers a brutally believable contrast of dreams and reality in modern day America. It's all good and well, but the problem is that Baker fails to evoke any empathy from me for Moonee and Hallee, who are some of the most irritating characters I have ever seen on screen. Willem Dafoe's performance as the motel manager is just about the only bright spot in the film.

First Reformed
2017
****
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Kyles, Victoria Hill, Philip Ettinger, Michael Gaston, Bill Hoag

Pastor Toller of the First Reformed Church counsels a young man who is completely overwhelmed by the implications of climate change. This drives the ailing and troubled pastor to question his own beliefs and purpose in the world. Paul Schrader has written some terrific screenplays about desperately lonely and self-destructive men (Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), but his directorial track record is a bit hit and miss. However, this intriguing and powerful drama is one of his best. Ethan Hawke is excellent in the lead.

The Emoji Movie
2017
**
Director: Tony Leondis
Cast: T.J. Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris, Maya Rudolph, Steven Wright, Jennifer Coolidge, Christina Aguilera, Sofía Vergara, Sean Hayes, Patrick Stewart

Tony Leondis' animation is one of the worst reviewed movies in the recent years. It tells a story of a malfunctioning meh emoji who feels out-of-place in Textopolis, inside the smart phone of a teenage boy. The premise is definitely far-fetched and incredibly stupid, but the movie as a whole is instantly forgettable rather than offensively awful.

Dunkirk
2017
****½
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy

In the end of May 1940, the German Army has cornered the remaining British, French, and Belgian troops to Dunkirk, in northern France, where roughly 400,000 men wait to be shipped to safety in the UK. Christopher Nolan's captivating film covers this miraculous evacuation from the land, air, and sea. In the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, the German U-boats and dive bombers make sure that getting on the boat is as hazardous as staying on the shore. In and over the English Channel, a number of civilian vessels and three Spitfires and are on their way to assist in the rescue effort. These three story strands seem unconnected, but they play out in different time frames, which allows Nolan to weave another beautifully constructed non-linear narrative. This is a film about war, but not really a traditional war film. We don't see the military leaders masterminding the operation, we don't really learn anything about the central characters, and the enemy is a deadly but invisible presence. Although Nolan cannot quite recreate the scale of the actual events, as he is averse to using CGI, he does create an enthralling cinematic experience.

Downsizing
2017
**½
Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis, Maribeth Monroe, Udo Kier, Rolf Lassgård, Ingjerd Egeberg

Sometime in the future, Norwegian scientists invent a method to downsize an average-sized man to a height of five inches, which they hope will solve overpopulation and save the planet. Paul and Audrey Safranek, a married couple from Omaha who struggle to make ends meet, decide to go through with the procedure and spend the rest of their lives in Leisureland, a biodomed miniature community in New Mexico. Alexander Payne's social satire has a freakishly fascinating premise. The first 45 minutes explore the scientific details and emotional ramifications of this irreversible procedure. The cynical conclusion is that downsizing is not so much about reducing the cost of living as it is about increasing the spending power. However, once we're in Leisureland, size no longer matters, and the initial high concept turns into a character study, which is far less original or interesting. Hong Chau gives a lively performance as a Vietnamese activist who was shrunk against her will.

The Disaster Artist
2017
***½
Director: James Franco
Cast: James Franco, Dave Franco, Seth Rogen, Alison Brie, Ari Graynor, Josh Hutcherson, Jacki Weaver

In the late 1990s, Greg Sestero befriends the mysterious, eccentric, and oddly wealthy Tommy Wiseau. The two move to L.A., but when their acting careers deservedly fail to take off, Tommy decides to fix this by writing, directing, and producing his own movie. James Franco's enjoyable comedy depicts the making of The Room (2003), a critical and commercial bomb which has since become a cult classic. Although the film doesn't quite hit the same heights as Tim Burton's brilliant Ed Wood, which offered a perfect blend of humour and pathos, this is another lovingly detailed portrayal of a talentless filmmaker who has a high opinion of himself. James Franco gives an irritating but wonderfully nuanced lead performance. Adapted from the book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Long Haul
2017
***
Director: David Bowers
Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Charlie Wright, Chris Coppola, Dylan Walters, Jason Ian Drucker, Joshua Hoover, Mira Silverman, Owen Asztalos, Tom Everett Scott, Wyatt Walters

The fourth movie introduces a new cast, and the story is mostly based on the ninth and tenth books in the series. The Heffley family go on a long road trip to attend Meemaw's 90th birthday, but Greg hopes to divert their route to a gaming expo in Indianapolis. The mood gets tense right from the start when Greg's mother confiscates all of the family's cell phones. This family comedy doesn't offer anything we haven't seen in dozen other road movies, but it provides 90 minutes of good-natured fun and a few amusing gross-out moments.

Despicable Me 3
2017
**½
Director: Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda
Cast: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, Miranda Cosgrove, Steve Coogan, Jenny Slate, Dana Gaier, Julie Andrews

Gru and Lucy are outwitted by an 80s-obsessed supervillain Balthazar Bratt, which costs them their jobs in the AVL (Anti-Villain League). Now jobless and aimless, Gru learns that he has a twin brother named Dru who wants him to return to villainy. This franchise was beginning to run out of steam in Despicable Me 2 but felt refreshed in the hilarious Minions spin-off. My expectations were low for the third episode, and they were met. The Minions return in a smaller role, and they go off on a story tangent that has nothing to do with what Gru is doing. However, what the movie lacks in storytelling, it makes up with the high quality and quantity of the gags.

The Death of Stalin
2017
**½
Director: Armando Iannucci
Cast: Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Paul Chahidi, Dermot Crowley, Adrian McLoughlin, Paul Whitehouse, Jeffrey Tambor

When Stalin, the long-serving leader of the Soviet Union, suffers a stroke and dies in 1953, a mad scramble for power ensues between the first secretary of Moscow Committee Nikita Khrushchev and the head of NKVD Security Forces Lavrentiy Beria. This very bleak comedy paints a picture of a regime which is both incredibly brutal and totally ridiculous, and it nicely captures the paranoia among the members of the Council of Ministers, who know that one misplaced word to a wrong person can put them on the purge list. Armando Iannucci has made his name with scathing, hilarious and sometimes exhausting political satires like In the Loop and The Veep on HBO. Despite a promising start, his second full feature is tedious rather than funny. At best, Iannucci writes razorsharp and deliciously obscene dialogue, but this time it doesn't have its usual pizazz. Loosely based on facts and mostly on the French graphic novel La Mort de Staline by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin.

Darkest Hour
2017
**½
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Ronald Pickup, Ben Mendelsohn, Stephen Dillane, Samuel West

In May 1940, when the British troops are forced to retreat to Dunkirk, Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister. His first job is to decide whether the country should go to war against Nazi Germany. We all know what happened next. When the predictable story goes through the motions (with a few blatantly fictional embellishments) and Joe Wright has shot it almost entirely on a sound stage, the only possible excitement comes from the performances, and they are indeed good. In his Academy Award winning turn, Gary Oldman plays Churchill as a fragile man filled with doubts. His makeup also won an Oscar.

The Dark Tower
2017
*½
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Cast: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Claudia Kim, Fran Kranz, Abbey Lee, Katheryn Winnick, Jackie Earle Haley

The mythical dark tower protects all life in the universe. 11-year-old Jake has visions of gunslinger named Roland Deschain, who protects the tower from the Man in Black. This 90-minute movie attempts to distill the essence of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which spanned over eight books and one short story. Needless to say, this plan does not end well. This feels like middle of the road science fiction without any fresh ideas or compelling characters. Elba and McConaughey are wasted in their underwritten roles. On the plus side, the rushed story is over soon and I don't expect this to start a franchise.

Coco
2017
****
Director: Lee Unkrich
Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renée Victor, Ana Ofelia Murguía, Edward James Olmos, Alfonso Arau

Ever since young Miguel's great-great-grandfather abandoned his family to pursue musicianship, the Rivera family has banned music from their lives and concentrated on making shoes. Miguel is desperate to become a musician, but after a peculiar Day of the Dead, he is transported to the Land of the Dead. Pixar's latest animation is an original and unusual but ultimately charming tribute to Mexican culture. The story, which deals with family and memories, offers laughter and tears. An Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song (Remember Me).

Cars 3
2017
**
Director: Brian Fee
Cast: Owen Wilson, Cristela Alonzo, Chris Cooper, Armie Hammer, Larry the Cable Guy, Bonnie Hunt, Nathan Fillion, Lea DeLaria, Kerry Washington

Pixar abandons the bizarre spy plot of the second movie and returns to the world of racing of the original Cars. Lightning McQueen, a successful racer for years, suddenly finds himself outmoded and outperformed by the new hi-tech models. With the help of a new trainer, Cruz Ramirez, he prepares himself for the new season, knowing that it's a case of win or retire. You could argue that the third part offers a marginal improvement, but this really is another lifeless and joyless animation. This middling franchise has always been aimed at the younger children, so it is odd that instead of a snappy, witty, and funny movie, we get a slow-paced, overlong, and weirdly earnest feature.

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
2017
***
Director: David Soren
Cast: Kevin Hart, Ed Helms, Thomas Middleditch, Nick Kroll, Jordan Peele, Kristen Schaal, Dee Dee Rescher, Brian Posehn, Mel Rodriguez

George and Harold are best friends who draw comics to escape the tedium of school. One day they accidentally turn the school's cruel principal Krupp into Captain Underpants, one of their comic book heroes. This enjoyable but disposable animation brings Dav Pilkey's wonderful children's book series (1997-2015) to the screen. Although the adaptation is faithful, it cannot quite reproduce the restless energy and outrageous humour of its source material.

Call Me by Your Name
2017
***
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, Victoire Du Bois

During the summer of 1983, 17-year-old Elio gradually falls for Oliver, an American graduate student who works as his father's research assistant in their summer house in Northern Italy. This coming-of-age story is well-acted and shot, but as a drama it feels like much ado about nothing. I understand that when you’re young and heartbroken, the whole world seems to revolve around your heightened emotions, but the central romance (more of a fling, to be honest) fails to resonate with me or tug at my heartstrings. Incidentally, Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty (1996) covered similar ground. James Ivory adapted André Aciman's 2007 novel for his Academy Award winning screenplay.

Bright
2017
***
Director: David Ayer
Cast: Will Smith, Joel Edgerton, Noomi Rapace, Lucy Fry, Édgar Ramírez, Ike Barinholtz, Happy Anderson, Dawn Olivieri, Matt Gerald, Margaret Cho

David Ayer has written (and sometimes directed) several crime dramas about LAPD cops (for example, Training Day, Dark Blue, and End of Watch), but not one like this. Racial tensions run high in modern day Los Angeles, where humans, orcs, and elves live side by side. Veteran police officer Daryl Ward is forced to patrol the streets with his orc partner Nick Jakoby. One night they stumble on a crime scene and find an injured elf in possession of a magic wand. The set-up is intriguing and original, but I wish Ayer, who rewrote Max Landis' script, would spend more time on exploring the universe and developing the characters, and less time on foul-mouthed macho posturing and empty-headed action scenes. As it stands, this is a bog standard cop movie with a twist.

The Boss Baby
2017
*
Director: Tom McGrath
Cast: Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Miles Bakshi, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow, Conrad Vernon, James McGrath, David Soren

Somewhere an assembly line is churning out babies which are either sent to families or to work in management. 7-year-old Tim Templeton gets a bossy baby brother who perhaps should have become a bureaucrat at Baby Corp. Like Storks, this painfully exhausting animation provides its own wacky theory of where babies come from. It is unclear whether it is all just an extended dream sequence fueled by Tim's fears, but in any case the story doesn't make any sense to me at any point on any level. For me to appreciate the jokes and references, I must be at least partially onboard. The premise may be original, but clever or funny it isn't. Based on Marla Frazee's picture book.

Borg (Borg vs McEnroe)
2017
**½
Director: Janus Metz Pedersen
Cast: Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny, Robert Emms, Jason Forbes, Björn Granath, Scott Arthur, Tom Datnow

In the summer of 1980, ice-cool Swedish tennis ace Björn Borg is looking to win his fifth consecutive Wimbledon title, but first he must defeat his abrasive American rival John McEnroe. Like the original title says, this Scandinavian sports biopic focuses mainly on Borg, but McEnroe gets his share of the screen time as well. Although the men seem very different, the film attempts to show that deep down they are very similar. The story about the rivalry is interesting, but compared to something like Rush, it creates very little drama or excitement.

Blade Runner 2049
2017
**
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Dave Bautista, Jared Leto

K is a Nexus-9 model replicant and LAPD officer who is tasked with putting down the obsoleted older android models. He learns that almost 30 years ago one of them gave birth to a child, which was thought to be impossible. While K is haunted by memories which could be real or implanted, he is determined to find this child. Denis Villeneuve's belated sequel to Ridley Scott's influential Blade Runner is as stylish and reverent as one could hope. Every scene, shot, set, prop, sound, and piece of costume is designed to within an inch of its life. The 1982 film didn't exactly tuck at my heartstrings, but it was compelling and original. The sequel is derivative, self-important, and insanely slow-paced, with each individual scene dragging on twice as long as necessary. With a cast featuring cybernetically enhanced villains, replicants, AI holograms, and robotic humans, it is hard to connect with any of the characters. Harrison Ford reprises his role as Rick Deckard, but he adds nothing apart from continuity. The visual effects and Roger Deakins' atmospheric cinematography won Academy Awards.

The Big Sick
2017
***½
Director: Michael Showalter
Cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher, Zenobia Shroff, Adeel Akhtar, Bo Burnham, Aidy Bryant, Kurt Braunohler

Kumail's traditionalist Pakistani-American parents want him to go to college and marry a Pakistani woman. What Kumail wants is to make it as a stand-up comedian and date whomever he wants. Things come to a head when his white ex-girlfriend Emily falls seriously ill. This comedy was scripted by its star Kumail Nanjiani and his real-life wife Emily V. Gordon. Although their script is highly autobiographical, the romantic twists seem somewhat formulaic. The more original and interesting part of the story is Kumail's relationship with his own parents and those of Emily, warmly portrayed by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano.

The Beguiled
2017
***
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence, Angourie Rice, Addison Riecke, Emma Howard

During the Civil War, a wounded Union soldier finds refuge in an all-girls Southern boarding school. The womenfolk initially welcome him, but his presence begins to stir jealousy, rivalry, and lust. This intriguing story is based on the 1966 novel by Thomas P. Cullinan, which was previously filmed in 1971 with Clint Eastwood in the lead. Sofia Coppola's gripping version has a very impressive international cast and high production values, but the story feels a bit rushed at 94 minutes.

Battle of the Sexes
2017
***
Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Cast: Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Andrea Riseborough, Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming, Eric Christian Olsen, Elisabeth Shue

In the early 1970s, Billie Jean King fights to win respect and fair pay for female tennis players. A gambling-addicted former pro Bobby Riggs playfully challenges her to an exhibition match to prove that even an out-of-shape 55-year-old man can beat the best female player in the world. The tongue of Bobby Riggs, as played by Steve Carell, is firmly in the cheek, so it feels odd that this easily digestible but formulaic biopic attempts to turn a silly show business moment into a great triumph for feminism. As for Billie Jean's personal life, Simon Beaufoy's screenplay takes great liberties with the time frame and views the gay rights of the 1970s through 21st century eyes.

Baby Driver
2017
*****
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Jon Bernthal, C.J. Jones, Flea, Lanny Joon, Sky Ferreira, Lance Palmer

Baby is a quiet getaway car driver who hides behind his shades and drowns out his tinnitus with his iPod. The young man wants to leave the life of crime and have a fresh start with his new girlfriend, but his ruthless boss has other plans. Edgar Wright's self-penned action film put a joyful grin on my face and had my pulse racing and foot tapping from the first moment to the last. Music is as important to Baby as it is to Wright's cinematic storytelling. He has meticulously choreographed many of his scenes to the soundtrack. The exhilarating opening post-heist car chase (Bellbottoms by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) and the aftermath of the climactic heist (Hocus Pocus by Focus) are my personal favourites. This technique could become gimmicky, but the script adds enough emotional heft to the story and its characters. There are some fine performances along the way; Elgort, Spacey, Hamm, and Foxx, to mention a few.

Atomic Blonde
2017
**
Director: David Leitch
Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Til Schweiger, Eddie Marsan, Sofia Boutella, Toby Jones, Roland Møller, Jóhannes Jóhannesson, James Faulkner

Towards the end of the Cold War, MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton is sent to Berlin to retrieve a list of undercover agents before it ends up in the wrong hands. Although this style-over-substance action movie is based on the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City, it takes cartoonishness a bit too literally. The script is predictable and boring, and the characters are sketchy and implausible. Charlize Theron does look cool and striking, which would make her the worst possible candidate to blend in in the crowd and do spy stuff. The only bright spot are the brutal action set pieces, which follow in the footsteps of Jason Bourne and John Wick.

Armomurhaaja (Euthanizer)
2017
**
Director: Teemu Nikki
Cast: Matti Onnismaa, Hannamaija Nikander, Alina Tomnikov, Jari Virman, Heikki Nousiainen, Ilari Johansson, Santtu Karvonen

Veijo Haukka is a misanthropic car mechanic who runs a side business as a pet euthanizer. When a troubled young man wants to put down his family's dog for financial reasons, events slowly escalate to tragedy. This grim and darkly comic drama offers Finnish miserablism at its purest. It starts with everyone being miserable and ends with everyone being miserable, injured, or dead. Even the first romantic scene ends in a near-death experience. The film would perhaps be more bearable if any of the characters were believable three-dimensional human beings. The performances range from the charismatic (Onnismaa) to the irritating (Virman).

American Made
2017
****
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright Olsen, Jesse Plemons, Caleb Landry Jones, Jayma Mays, Lola Kirke, Connor Trinneer, Mauricio Mejía, Alejandro Edda, Benito Martinez

In the late 1970s, the CIA recruits Barry Seal, a commercial airline pilot, to fly reconnaissance missions in Central America. A few years later, he is running guns to the Nicaraguan Contras, transporting drugs from Colombia for the Medellin Cartel, and making so much money that he doesn't know where to put it. This light-hearted and entertaining caper story is based on true events. Gary Spinelli's script doesn't spend one second questioning whether we should really be rooting for this represehensible man. Nevertheless, Tom Cruise gives an unusually relaxed performance in the lead. The HBO documentary series The Invisible Pilot tells a similar story of a different unapologetic aviator.

All the Money in the World
2017
**½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris, Timothy Hutton, Charlie Plummer, Charlie Shotwell, Andrew Buchan

In 1973, the 16-year-old grandson of J. Paul Getty, the richest person in the world, is kidnapped in Rome, but the billionaire is reluctant to pay the ransom because it might encourage future kidnappings. This dry fact-based drama is based on Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty by John Pearson. The story is fascinating, but the script spends too much time on the twisty details of the events. As a result, the film feels much longer than it actually is. Christopher Plummer gives a nicely understated performance as the famously heartless oil tycoon, but Michelle Williams is the real star here as the heartbroken mother who is determined to get his son back alive.

Zootopia / Zootropolis
2016
****
Director: Byron Howard, Rich Moore
Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Tommy Chong, J. K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, Shakira

Judy Hopps becomes the first rabbit police officer in the history of Zootopia, a modern metropolis where predators and prey live happily side by side. Her career stutters and flounders until she is allowed to investigate a number of mysterious disappearances with the help of a street hustler fox named Nick Wilde. Disney's follow-up to the excellent Frozen and Big Hero 6 is another highly entertaining animation with a worthy message (believe in yourself and don't judge others before you get to know them). The film offers likeable characters, great storytelling, and an endless stream of amusing pop culture references.

Zoolander 2
2016
†
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Penélope Cruz, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Kyle Mooney, Milla Jovovich, Cristine Taylor, Cyrus Arnol, Justin Theroux, Benedict Cumberbatch

Following family tragedy, Derek Zoolander withdrew from the world of fashion, but now he is reunited with his old nemesis Hansel. The out-of-date male model duo travel to Rome just when someone is killing famous pop singers. Zoolander was a needlessly wacky but modestly funny comedy. For this belated sequel, Ben Stiller turns zaniness to 11, and the resulting movie is a total disaster. The story, in the loosest sense of the word, lost me within the first ten minutes. Never mind, the whole project is just an excuse for dozens of celebrities to appear as themselves. Thankfully, most of them do not outstay their welcome, but it would have been nice if these few second cameos produced something funny. I didn't even smile once during the 100 minutes.

X-Men: Apocalypse
2016
**
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn, Lucas Till

Following the events in X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mystique has become a globetrotting mutant heroine and Magneto lives a quiet life in Poland with a wife and child. Things return to normal when the reawakened En Sabah Nur, one of the world's first mutants, plans to destroy and rebuild the world. The final part of the prequel trilogy is tired and awfully familiar. Magneto kills a bunch of people again but he is ultimately a good guy. How many times have we seen this storyline by now? Days of Future Past was confusing at times, and Simon Kinberg's script takes more liberties with the internal logic of the X-Men universe. En Sabah Nur, with his rigid costume and long-winded monologues, is an incredibly boring villain, and the numbing CGI-heavy action set pieces never concern themselves with the heavy death toll taking place in the background. The series concludes in Dark Phoenix.

War Dogs
2016
**
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, Ana de Armas, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Pollak, Patrick St. Esprit, Shaun Toub, JB Blanc

David Packouz teams up with his childhood friend Efraim Diveroli to sell arms to the US government. They eventually secure a massive 300 million dollar Afghan deal, but how low are they willing to stoop to deliver the products? This dark comedy is based on Guy Lawson's 2015 book Arms and the Dudes. Like Lord of War, it tells an intriguing fact-based story which features utterly uninteresting characters. David and Efraim are two empty-headed and unpleasant young guys who don't care what they need to do as long they make a lot of money. Ana de Armas (way too glamorous for the role) plays David's wife, who appears to be the moral backbone of the story, but turns out not to have a backbone at all.

Under the Shadow
2016
***½
Director: Babak Anvari
Cast: Narges Rashidi, Avin Manshadi, Bobby Naderi, Ray Haratian, Arash Marandi

As the Iran-Iraq War escalates, Shideh's husband is sent to the front line and she foolishly decides to stay in Tehran with their daughter Dorsa. As the days pass, Shideh begins to suffer from horrific nightmares/hallucinations while Dorsa is convinced that the house is haunted by an evil spirit. Babak Anvari's directorial debut is a short and powerful horror film. The haunted house and a mother who begins to doubt her own parenting skills bring back memories of The Babadook. However, what makes this film stand out is Shideh, a wonderfully drawn and acted protagonist, who is caught between a potential demon and a very real religious police.

Trolls
2016
**
Director: Mike Mitchell
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Zooey Deschanel, Russell Brand, James Corden, Gwen Stefani

The small, colourful, and jolly Trolls like to sing, dance, and hug. One moment their lives are cupcakes and rainbows, the next they are captured by the Bergens, their ancient nemeses, who believe they must eat a Troll to become happy. Poppy and her paranoid friend Branch venture out to save the others. Unlike The Lego Movie, which was also based on a toyline, this candy-coloured animation doesn't offer inspiration, only extremely formulaic storytelling and characters who burst into song every few minutes.

La Tortue Rouge (The Red Turtle)
2016
***½
Director: Michaël Dudok de Wit
Cast: Emmanuel Garijo, Tom Hudson, Baptiste Goy, Axel Devillers, Barbara Beretta

After a shipwreck, a lonely man is stranded on a desert island. While the man builds a raft to sail away, he encounters a mysterious red turtle who wants him to stay. Michaël Dudok de Wit's feature debut is a visually stunning animation, which explores the cycle of life and man's relationship with nature entirely without dialogue. However, I cannot say that I could completely wrap my head around this meditative fairy tale, which is loaded with symbolism. The film was co-produced by Studio Ghibli.

Toni Erdmann
2016
****
Director: Marin Ade
Cast: Peter Simonischek, Sandra Hüller, Ingrid Bisu, Michael Wittenborn, Thomas Loibl, Trystan Pütter, Hadewych Minis, Lucy Russell, Vlad Ivanov, Victoria Cocias

Ines Conradi is a high-flying career woman who has no life outside her work. Her father Winfried, an insatiable practical joker, travels to Bucharest to cheer her up, whether she wants it or not. Marin Ade's third feature is unusual but genuinely original. Her film is at once heart-warmingly moving and uncomfortably funny. This long and slow-paced gem derives its humour from awkward social moments, which may not be everyone's cup of tea. Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller give wonderful performances.

Sully
2016
***½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Tom Hanks, Blake Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Anna Gunn, Autumn Reeser, Ann Cusack, Holt McCallany, Mike O'Malley, Jamey Sheridan

In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 hit a flock of birds right after take-off from LaGuardia airport, and was forced to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River, with no casualties. In the aftermath, Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger attempts to come to terms with his actions while the National Transportation Safety Board investigates whether he could have brought the plane safely back to an airport. As a director, Clint Eastwood is first and foremost a great storyteller who is not known for superfluous visual fireworks. This is not the most exciting film in the recent memory, but it is a tightly scripted drama with a wonderful lead performance from Tom Hanks. Todd Komarnicki scripted from Highest Duty by Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow.

Suicide Squad
2016
*
Director: David Ayer
Cast: Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ike Barinholtz, Scott Eastwood, Cara Delevingne

Following the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, government agent Amanda Waller assembles a sinister task force. Suicide Squad is comprised of dangerous but dispensable criminals, they're The Dirty Dozen of the comic book world, if you will. Even before the team is properly assembled, one of the members goes rogue and threatens to destroy mankind. The third movie in the DC Extended Universe is an unmitigated disaster. The story is stupid, muddled, and formulaic, and the climactic threat to mankind is indistinguishable from Man of Steel, The Avengers, or any other recent Marvel/DC blockbuster. Superhero movies live or die by their characters. The fans of the comic books may be able to appreciate the ones featured here, but I cannot get my head around them at all. I don't understand how an unstable woman with a baseball bat, an Ozzie who throws boomerangs, and a guy who looks like a reptile are effective in fighting threats on a global scale. However, the worst crime is that David Ayer's movie is just so unforgivably boring. Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn is pretty much the only source of fun in the two hours. James Gunn quickly rebooted this franchise in The Suicide Squad (2021).

Storks
2016
**
Director: Nicholas Stoller, Doug Sweetland
Cast: Andy Samberg, Katie Crown, Kelsey Grammer, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Danny Trejo

Storks used to deliver babies, but now run an impersonal parcel service. A stork named Junior is about to earn a promotion, but first he must secretly deliver a newly created baby with Tulip, an undelivered human child who grew up with the birds. There are plenty of animations with a story so distractingly stupid that they lost me in the first few minutes (Happy Feet and Turbo, to mention a few). This premise with a baby factory in the sky is right up there. There are also plenty of poorly scripted animations which were saved by lovely characterisation, but this is not one of them. The movie is fast-paced and tiresome, and the characters are wacky, loud, and formulaic.

Star Trek Beyond
2016
***½
Director: Justin Lin
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Joe Taslim, Sofia Boutella

A long three year expedition has worn out the crew of USS Enterprise. No wonder that they are easily ambushed near the planet Altamid. Kirk and Spock, who both have doubts about their future in the Starfleet, must rescue part of the crew and find a way off the planet. J.J. Abrams set the bar high with Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. Justin Lin, who made his name directing (so far) four of the brainless but stupendously popular Fast & Furious blockbusters, takes the helm for the third movie. Thankfully this is another highly entertaining scifi action movie, even if the script by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung doesn't offer too many surprises. It is filled with scientific mumbo jumbo, though.

Split
2016
*½
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Brad William Henke, Sebastian Arcelus, Neal Huff, M. Night Shyamalan

Kevin Wendell Crumb, who has 23 different personalities, kidnaps three teenage girls as offerings to the Beast, the emerging 24th personality who is a psychopathic monster. After his breakthrough with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, M. Night Shyamalan has made a number of incredibly stupid and predictably twisty horror films. The good news is that this one reveals its secrets early on and gets silly only when the Beast arrives. The bad news is that the film is mind-numbingly boring from start to finish. It starts like any low budget exploitation flick, with the three girls imprisoned in an underground hideout and taking turns in shedding their clothes, but the story drags from one boring conversation to the next. As impressive as James McAvoy is in his multiple roles, the repetitive personality switches eventually wore me down. The very last scene links the whole thing to Shyamalan's back catalogue. Followed by Glass.

Snowden
2016
***
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Scott Eastwood, Logan Marshall-Green, Timothy Olyphant, Ben Schnetzer, LaKeith Lee Stanfield, Rhys Ifans, Nicolas Cage

In 2013, Edward Snowden became an international outlaw when he leaked information on how the U.S. government spies its own citizens. The story is framed with scenes in Hong Kong, where Snowden has a secret rendezvous with journalists. In between we learn how he slowly became disillusioned with his work for the CIA and NSA. Oliver Stone's biopic is a captivating and well-acted but somewhat one-sided portrayal of one of the most controversial figures of the 21st century. Laura Poitras' documentary Citizenfour is a superior film. Based on the books The Snowden Files by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena.

Sing
2016
***
Director: Garth Jennings
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Scarlett Johansson, John C. Reilly, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly, Nick Kroll, Garth Jennings

Buster Moon's lifelong dream was to own a theater, but he struggles to make ends meet. The resilient koala hopes that a singing competition could reverse his fortunes. Hundreds of animals take part in the auditions, but only two pigs, a mouse, a gorilla, a porcupine, and an elephant make it through to the end. Like the recent Zootopia, this is another animation set in a city where all kinds of animals live happily side by side. The main characters are well-drawn and voiced, but the first half is a bit heavy-going, perhaps because the story needs to divide its focus between the various contestants. However, things do pick up in the second half, and the climactic show is very moving and foot-tapping.

Silence
2016
**
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Ciarán Hinds, Liam Neeson, Shinya Tsukamoto, Issey Ogata, Yoshi Oida, Yōsuke Kubozuka

In the 17th century, two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to Japan to find their mentor, who is rumoured to have renounced his faith. They discover a country where Christians are systematically persecuted and tortured until they agree to commit apostasy. Following The Last Temptation at Christ and Kundun, this adaptation of Shūsaku Endō's 1966 novel completes Martin Scorsese's unofficial trilogy on faith. He spent several decades bringing this deeply personal project to the screen, but the resulting drama appears to be for believers only. The film is visually arresting but the story is a painfully long, slow and monotonous slog through misery, and it didn't engage me at any point. The narration, for the most parts, is unnecessary.

The Secret Life of Pets
2016
**½
Director: Chris Renaud, Yarrow Cheney
Cast: Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Ellie Kemper, Bobby Moynihan, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Hannibal Buress, Jenny Slate, Albert Brooks, Steve Coogan

A Jack Russell Terrier named Max has the perfect life with his loving owner Kate, until she decides to adopt a second dog, Duke. During their first day together, Max and Duke accidentally end up as stray dogs on the streets of New York City. This typical modern day animation delivers a safe mix of action, humour, noise, wacky characters, and a script which unashamedly rips off Pixar's flagship franchise. What the pets do when people don't see them is taken straight from Toy Story, and so is the story arc about the two heroes who see each other as competition but end up as friends. When the neighbouring pets form a group and go out to find Max, we're in the Toy Story 2 territory.

Sausage Party
2016
†
Director: Conrad Vernon, Greg Tiernan
Cast: Michael Cera, James Franco, Bill Hader, Salma Hayek, Jonah Hill, Anders Holm, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Danny McBride, Edward Norton, Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Kristen Wiig

The shelves in the Shopwell's supermarket are filled with anthropomorphic grocery items, who all believe that a customer's shopping cart offers a passage to the Great Beyond. A returned and traumatised jar of honey mustard attempts to convince everyone that the truth is way more horrific. This adult animation takes its inspiration from Pixar movies like Toy Story and Cars, but it actually has more in common with the likes of Storks and The Boss Baby, where the entire premise was so stupid and ill-conceived that they lost me within minutes. Like previous comedies written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (for example, Pineapple Express and The Interview), this one relies on a continuous stream of sex and drug references and obscenities for laughs. I didn't laugh once.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
2016
**½
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Jiang Wen, Forest Whitaker, Jimmy Smits

This is the first movie in the Star Wars Anthology series, a standalone feature set in a serialised universe. The events take place just before Episode IV - A New Hope. The Rebel Alliance learns that the Galactic Empire has built a weapon capable of destroying entire planets. Jyn Erso, a criminal turned rebel, ends up leading a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star. Anyone who is potentially going to watch this movie knows what happened, so why do we need to see it? 130 minutes to explain why Death Star was so easy to destroy? If the story is irrelevant and the characters rather forgettable, is it at least entertaining? While Episode VII - The Force Awakens brought the fun back to the franchise, Rogue One is the grimmest and most grown-up feature in the franchise. K-2SO is just about the only source of humour.

Rock Dog
2016
**½
Director: Ash Brannon
Cast: Luke Wilson, Eddie Izzard, J. K. Simmons, Lewis Black, Kenan Thompson, Mae Whitman, Jorge Garcia, Matt Dillon, Sam Elliott, Liza Richardson, Ash Brannon, Will Finn

Bodi is a Tibetan Mastiff who is expected to follow in his father's footsteps and become a village guard, but he is drawn to rock music and wants to become a musician instead. This Chinese-American animation is harmless and quite enjoyable but terribly formulaic. The story is based on Zheng Jun's book Tibetan Rock Dog, but the script is basically a mix between How to Train Your Dragon and Coco.

Patriots Day
2016
***½
Director: Peter Berg
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, J. K. Simmons, Michelle Monaghan, Alex Wolff, Themo Melikidze, Michael Beach, Vincent Curatola

Following Deepwater Horizon, Peter Berg stages another real-life American tragedy. On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs explode close to the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Two Chechen brothers are quickly identified as the culprits and a massive manhunt is launched to catch them. Mark Wahlberg plays a fictional everyman cop who takes part in the police operation. This is a gripping no-nonsense action thriller and a moving tribute to the city of Boston.

Paterson
2016
***
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Barry Shabaka Henley, Cliff Smith, Chasten Harmon, William Jackson Harper, Masatoshi Nagase, Rizwan Manji, Kara Hayward

Paterson, who lives in Paterson, New Jersey with his wife and dog, is a professional bus driver and an amateur poet. This subdued and slow-paced slice of life by Jim Jarmusch offers some mild foreboding but absolutely no drama whatsoever. It depicts a week in the life of its protagonist, who seems perfectly content with his mundane Groundhog Day-like existence. I cannot decide whether I'm charmed or bored by this minimalism.

Passengers
2016
***½
Director: Morten Tyldum
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, ichael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Andy García

The Avalon is on a 120-year journey to a far-off planet, with 5,000 passengers and more than 250 crew members on board. Some 90 years before arrival, one of the hibernation pods malfunctions and mechanical engineer Jim Preston wakes up. This captivating science fiction drama deals with loneliness on a cosmic scale, and it asks the audience what they would do in Jim's shoes. The resulting story is either incredibly romantic or disgustingly misogynistic, depending on your viewpoint. Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence give strong performances. The Avalon is beautifully designed.

Nocturnal Animals
2016
****
Director: Tom Ford
Cast: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Andrea Riseborough, Michael Sheen

An art gallerist receives a manuscript for a novel written by her ex-husband about a family whose road trip turns into a nightmare. The disturbing novel forces her to look back at their relationship, which ended in a dramatic break-up. Tom Ford's follow-up to A Single Man is another visually striking and unsettling drama where the past haunts the present. Whether the two parallel stories add up to a meaningful whole is a matter of opinion. Adams, Gyllenhaal, Shannon, and Taylor-Johnson all give very fine performances. Adapted from Austin Wright's 1993 novel Tony and Susan.

The Nice Guys
2016
****
Director: Shane Black
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley, Keith David, Kim Basinger, Yaya DaCosta, Beau Knapp, Lois Smith

It's 1977 in Los Angeles. Jack Healy and Holland March are a pair of second rate private eyes who team up to find a young woman who has left a trail of bodies behind her. Shane Black went on a short but very successful sidetrack with Iron Man 3, but now he's back to doing what he does best or playing it safe, depending on your viewpoint. Like, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, his directorial debut, this is a twisty neo-noir with quick bursts of violence and plenty of wisecracking humour. Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling have great chemistry. Crowe plays the sharper one of the two detectives, but even he becomes oddly dumb when the plot demands it.

Moonlight
2016
*****
Director: Barry Jenkins
Cast: Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Alex Hibbert, Janelle Monáe, Ashton Sanders, Jharrel Jerome, Jaden Piner, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali, Patrick Decile

A terrific coming-of-age story of Chiron, a withdrawn and bullied black gay boy who struggles with his own sense of self growing up in a tough Miami neighbourhood. Chiron's story is told in three parts (childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood) and he is played by three different actors. Richard Linklater's Boyhood (2014) is an obvious recent comparison, but Barry Jenkins' second feature is a different beast and a wonderfully assured film in its own right. The story is gripping, the performances are great, the visuals are stunning, and the soundtrack is subtle but powerful. An Academy Award winner for best picture, best adapted screenplay (from Tarell Alvin McCraney's play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue), and best supporting actor (Mahershala Ali).

A Monster Calls
2016
***
Director: J.A. Bayona
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Toby Kebbell, Lewis MacDougall, Liam Neeson

One night a massive tree-like monster appears to 13-year-old Conor. The monster promises to tell three separate stories which Conor hopes can help him explain his recurring nightmare about his mother's serious illness. J.A. Bayona's second feature in English is based on a 2011 novel by Patrick Ness. This is a wonderfully acted fantasy flavoured drama about grief and anguish. Although the film is consistently captivating, it cannot deliver the required emotional payoff.

Moana / Vaiana
2016
***
Director: Ron Clements, John Musker
Cast: Auli'i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Jemaine Clement, Nicole Scherzinger, Alan Tudyk, Oscar Knightley, Troy Polamalu

According to ancient Polynesian mythology, a cocky demigod named Maui stole and lost the heart stone of goddess Te Fiti. Years later, the ocean gives the heart to Moana, a brave young girl from the island of Motunui, who ventures out to return it to its rightful owner. This formulaic but entertaining Disney animation attempts to recapture the magic of Frozen, but it doesn't have the story or the songs for it. As the musical interludes disrupt the action every ten minutes, the first third is a bit of a drag. However, when the movie begins to focus on the story and its two main characters, it turns out to be rather delightful.

Manchester by the Sea
2016
*****
Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, Lucas Hedges, Gretchen Mol, C.J. Wilson, Tate Donovan, Kara Hayward, Anna Baryshnikov, Heather Burns

Lee Chandler is a quiet but volatile janitor who lives a lonely life with his painful memories. When his brother dies, Lee must return to his hometown of Manchester-by-the-Sea, only to find out that he is now the legal guardian of his nephew. Like You Can Count on Me and Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan's third directorial effort is a wonderfully understated but incredibly hard-hitting drama, and the strongest of the three. It tells a gut-wrenchingly believable story of grief, and Casey Affleck gives a beautifully nuanced performance as a man who has been crippled by it. Lonergan's original screenplay and Affleck won Academy Awards.

The Lost City of Z
2016
**½
Director: James Gray
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen, Ian McDiarmid, Franco Nero, Edward Ashley, Clive Francis, Harry Melling, John Sackville

After his first survey trip to the Amazon in 1905, major Percy Fawcett becomes fixated with finding evidence of an ancient civilization. In the following 20 years, this British explorer makes personal sacrifices to embark on several expeditions to the Amazon jungle to find the Lost City of Z. With this adaptation of David Grann's 2009 non-fiction book, James Gray attempts to create his own Apocalypse Now or Fitzcarraldo. Unfortunately, this fact-based drama and its protagonist do not have the scope, ambition, madness, or obsessiveness to match those iconic works. I blame the episodic and occasionally baffling script, which is unable to hold my sustained attention. One moment, Fawcett is deep in the jungle, the next scene he's safely at home, and before he returns to the Amazon, he does a bit of fighting in the First World War. The members of the Royal Geographical Society ridicule him for his fanciful theories, but when he returns from another expedition without any additional proof, they hail him as a hero. Gray is clearly at awe of the character, but I fail to see what his actual accomplishments are. Charlie Hunnam feels too contemporary for the role.

London Has Fallen
2016
**½
Director: Babak Najafi
Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Alon Moni Aboutboul, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Jackie Earle Haley, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Sean O'Bryan, Waleed Zuaiter

Mike Banning is back on the presidential detail as President Asher and other world leaders gather in London to attend the British Prime Minister's funeral. All hell breaks loose when terrorists attack the dignitaries and the city's landmarks. The sequel to Olympus Has Fallen turns everything to 11. The explosions are bigger, the body count is higher, and the script is even dumber and more far-fetched than before. Now the hero can't turn a street corner in London without running into another member of the terrorist group. Nevertheless, the movie is short and snappy, and oddly enjoyable. Followed by Angel Has Fallen.

Lion
2016
***½
Director: Garth Davis
Cast: Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, Abhishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Priyanka Bose, Deepti Naval, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Benjamin Rigby

In 1986, five-year-old Saroo lives with his mother, older brother, and baby sister in Khandwa, India. One day, he gets separated from his family and ends up thousands of miles away from home. In his directorial debut, Garth Davis chronicles Saroo's incredible true story in two distinct halves. The first half in India is engrossing and heartbreaking, and it features a wonderfully natural performance by Sunny Pawar. The syrupy second half is set in Australia some 20 years later, and it is less gripping, although Dev Patel is good as the grown-up version. Based on Saroo Brierley's 2013 non-fiction book A Long Way Home.

The Light Between Oceans
2016
**½
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson

A lighthouse keeper, who has just returned from World War I, marries a local woman. After two traumatic miscarriages, the couple experience a miracle when a rowboat carrying a dead man and a newborn baby strands on the island. Derek Cianfrance's adaptation of M. L. Stedman's 2012 novel starts well, but the contrived story then takes some laughable turns on the way to its overly melodramatic conclusion. The story is supposedly set in Australia, but as good as Fassbender, Vikander, and Weisz are in their roles, they don't sound like they're from that part of the world.

The Legend of Tarzan
2016
**
Director: David Yates
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent, Christoph Waltz, Casper Crump, Hadley Fraser, Genevieve O'Reilly

Tarzan, now known by his birth name John Clayton III, has left Africa and settled in England with his wife Jane. He agrees to return to the Congo to investigate claims of enslavement, unaware that Léon Rom, envoy to the nearly bankrupt King Leopold II of Belgium, plans to capture Tarzan and exchange him for the illustrious diamonds of Opar. Every few years, Edgar Rice Burroughs' iconic hero returns to the big screen, and this latest retelling is one of the most bizarre ones. One moment, it depicts Europe's colonial past in Africa with authenticity and solemnity, the next it delivers a ridiculous CGI set piece that defies gravity and common sense. So, what is the target audience? The movie doesn't tell a traditional origin story, which becomes a problem when it repeatedly needs to interrupt the narrative flow with flashbacks, sometimes in the middle of an action scene. Alexander Skarsgård looks the part but he doesn't seem to enjoy himself at all.

La La Land
2016
*****
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, Jessica Rothe, Snoya Mizuno, Callie Hernandez, J.K. Simmons, Tom Everett Scott

Mia is an aspiring actress and Sebastian is an idealistic jazz pianist. The two fall in love while they pursue their dreams in Los Angeles. Like New York, New York (thankfully without the verbal and mental abuse Martin Scorsese made us sit through), this is a story about two ambitious creative people who have trouble finding time for each other and about the city in which they live. Damien Chazelle kicks off his romantic musical with an in-your-face music and dance number set in a freeway traffic jam. However, after this bold and somewhat alienating opening, I was totally swept along by the central characters, the beautifully woven story, and the catchy tunes. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are excellent in the leading roles, and Chazelle stages a few unforgettable set pieces, such as the what if? scene towards the end. The film won Academy awards for directing, acting (Stone), cinematography, production design, score, and best original song (City of Stars).

The Jungle Book
2016
***½
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Walken, Neel Sethi

A young boy named Mowgli was raised by wolves. Now he is forced to leave his home in the Indian Jungle when Shere Khan, a nasty tiger who was scarred by a human, seeks vengeance on the "man cub". This is the third time Disney has adapted Rudyard Kipling's book. The 1967 animation has become an enduring classic, the 1994 movie starring Jason Scott Lee less so. This one lands somewhere between those two; it appears to be live action but, apart from Neel Sethi's performance, it's all CGI. It's good fun, though. In this version, some of the animals pose a real threat so it's not for small children. However, I'm not quite sure the jolly songs from the animation fit in.

Julieta
2016
***½
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Emma Suárez, Adriana Ugarte, Daniel Grao, Inma Cuesta, Darío Grandinetti, Michelle Jenner, Rossy de Palma, Susi Sánchez, Pilar Castro, Joaquín Notario

Julieta is about to move away from Madrid, when she receives news about her estranged daughter Antia. Through a series of flashbacks and present-day encounters, we learn Julieta's story, as she deals with guilt and grief, and attempts to reconcile with her past. Pedro Almodóvar's captivating melodrama was adapted from three short stories, Chance, Silence, and Soon, by Alice Munro. Although the film is not based on Almodóvar's original material, it bears all the hallmarks of the director's work (flashback structure, strong female characters, and vivid colour palette). The performances are great.

Jättiläinen (The Mine)
2016
****
Director: Aleksi Salmenperä
Cast: Joonas Saartamo, Jani Volanen, Peter Franzén, Saara Kotkaniemi, Elena Leeve, Leea Klemola, Pertti Sveholm, Jussi Nikkilä, Pirjo Lonka

This compelling docudrama depicts the highs and lows of the Talvivaara nickel mine in central Finland. The story, which starts in 2003, has two protagonists who never meet: a ruthless businessman who runs the mining company and a young and principled civil servant who is pressured to approve the mine's environmental permit. The sharp and witty fact-based script by Pekko Pesonen reveals the depressing circumstances that led to an environmental disaster. The performances are excellent and Pesonen' dialogue, often the weak point of Finnish films, is terrific.

Jason Bourne
2016
**½
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed, Ato Essandoh, Scott Shepherd, Bill Camp

In his third Bourne film with Matt Damon, Paul Greengrass brings the Bourne series to the age of Edward Snowden and Wikileaks. Other than that, absolutely nothing has changed since the duo bowed out with The Bourne Ultimatum in 2007. After laying low for years, Jason Bourne comes out of hiding. The CIA, with the exception of one cybersecurity specialist, is immediately out to assassinate him. They chase him through Athens, Berlin, London, and Las Vegas, with as much luck as before. It's incredible that this franchise can put out the same exact movie every few years with commercial success. While Greengrass and Damon were doing other projects, Tony Gilroy and Jeremy Renner filled the gap with The Bourne Legacy, which was - yes, that's right - exactly the same. On the plus side, the series still doesn't include any truly awful movies. On the down side, it hasn't offered one single surprise in years.

Jackie
2016
**
Director: Pablo Larrain
Cast: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, John Hurt, Richard E. Grant, Caspar Phillipson, John Carroll Lynch

The good news is that this is not a conventional and linear biopic of Jacqueline "Jackie" Kennedy. The bad news is that Noah Oppenheim's scrambled screenplay, which focuses on the days before, during and after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, never translates into a captivating drama. Jackie attempts to come to terms with her personal tragedy, but the events on the screen feel more philosophical than personal. The decision to dwell on the gory details of the JFK shooting is a gross misjudgment, as far as I am concerned. Although Natalie Portman is commanding in the lead, her vocal performance is distractingly unnatural. Mica Levi's monotonous score drowns out the dialogue in almost every scene.

The Infiltrator
2016
***
Director: Brad Furman
Cast: Bryan Cranston, Diane Kruger, John Leguizamo, Benjamin Bratt, Yul Vazquez, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs, Joe Gilgun, Daniel Mays, Yul Vazquez

In the 1980s, U.S. Customs special agent Robert Mazur goes undercover as a corrupt businessman to uncover a money laundering operation that involves an offshore bank and the Medellín Cartel. This interesting but predictable drama shows that infiltrating a crime organisation is extremely dangerous and all-consuming business. Like Donnie Brasco, Mazur begins to enjoy the life of his undercover persona a bit too much. Ellen Brown Furman's script, which is based on Mazur's autobiography, is occasionally confusing as it attempts to juggle all the numerous underworld characters. Bryan Cranston gives a solid lead performance, though. Incidentally, the story is set in the same era as American Made, and Barry Seal is briefly mentioned on TV news.

Ice Age: Collision Course
2016
*½
Director: Mike Thurmeier
Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Josh Peck, Simon Pegg, Seann William Scott, Jennifer Lopez, Queen Latifah, Keke Palmer, Adam DeVine

Buck, the one-eyed weasel from Dawn of the Dinosaurs, returns to warn the others that an asteroid is about to kill them all unless they do something about it. Ice Age began as a story of three mismatching animals who were forced to work together. By the fifth movie, these animals have been totally anthropomorphized (they plan weddings and fret about anniversary gifts). The original animation now seems incredibly clever and inventive compared to the sequels that have got worse with every new installment. The entire franchise ran out of ideas years ago; this is now the third time that the central plot revolves around the characters attempting to survive a cataclysmic event. The ever-present Scrat is in space this time.

Hymyilevä mies (The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki)
2016
****
Director: Juho Kuosmanen
Cast: Jarkko Lahti, Oona Airola, Eero Milonoff, John Bosco Jr., Joanna Haartti

In the summer of 1962, Olli Mäki is about to fight for the Featherweight World Championship title in front of 20,000 Finnish fans in Helsinki. His manager would like his protégé to concentrate on training and entertaining his wealthy sponsors, but Olli struggles to focus as he is falling in love. Juho Kuosmanen's feature debut, which is based on real events, is a lovely black and white biopic that steers clear of clichés. This fresh and confidently directed film concentrates on a few weeks in the character's life, and it's all the better for it. The three main actors give wonderful performances.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople
2016
****
Director: Taika Waititi
Cast: Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, Rhys Darby, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley, Stan Walker, Taika Waititi

Ricky Baker, a troubled 13-year-old moves in with new foster parents in a remote corner of New Zealand. After tragedy strikes, Ricky and his grumpy foster father end up at the centre of a national manhunt. Taika Waititi's delightful comedy drama is based on Barry Crump's novel Wild Pork and Watercress, but the film has the director quirky humour all over it. The script feels fresh and the characters are broadly but wonderfully drawn. Sam Neill and Julian Denison make a terrific odd couple.

Hidden Figures
2016
****
Director: Theodore Melfi
Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, Glen Powell, Kimberly Quinn, Olek Krupa

In 1961, three black female mathematicians are in a daily struggle against race and gender prejudices as they attempt to make headway in their careers at NASA. Katherine hopes to get credit for her pivotal work in analytic geometry, Mary aspires to become an engineer, and Dorothy is eager to secure an official supervisory role. This delightful feelgood film is based on Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race. This little known true story doesn't really offer a single surprise, but the wonderful writing and terrific performances turn it into an irresistibly compelling drama.

Hell Or High Water
2016
***
Director: David Mackenzie
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham, Marin Ireland, Katy Mixon, Dale Dickey, Kevin Rankin, Melanie PapaliaAmber Midthunder

Two Texan brothers, Toby and Tanner Howard, carry out several small bank robberies in order to secure the financial future of Toby's two boys. The hot-headed and trigger-happy Tanner seems to be in it for the thrills. In the meanwhile, two Texas Rangers are closing in on them. This atmospheric modern day Western tells an entertaining cops and robbers story against the backdrop of West Texas, where the once-bustling communities have turned into ghost towns and farming has become a dying way of life. There are some very good performances and the dialogue is sizzling, but the brothers are needlessly dumb and the formulaic events pan out exactly like I thought they would.

The Handmaiden
2016
****½
Director: Park Chan-Wook
Cast: Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong, Kim Hae-sook, Moon So-ri, Lee Yong-nyeo, Lee Dong-hwi, Jo Eun-hyung, Rina Takagi

During the Japanese occupation of Korea, a con man hires a young pickpocket to pose as a handmaiden and encourage a wealthy Japanese heiress to marry him. But who is actually conning who in this intriguing scenario? Park Chan-Wook's erotically charged thriller was Inspired by the 2002 novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. This is a visually lavish and fabulously entertaining tale of desire and deception.

Hacksaw Ridge
2016
****
Director: Mel Gibson
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Vince Vaughn, Ryan Corr, Richard Roxburgh, Richard Pyros, Luke Pegler, Ben Mingay

When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, Desmond Doss wants to become a combat medic. However, it's an upward struggle because Desmond refuses to carry a firearm or kill a man due to his religious convictions. This true story of an unlikely war hero is based on the book The Conscientious Objector by Terry Benedict. Mel Gibson's drama is consistently gripping, whether Desmond is enjoying a tender moment in the home front, challenging his comrades and superiors in the training phase, or facing the horrors of war in the Battle of Okinawa. Andrew Garfield gives a very strong lead performance. Academy Award winner for best film editing and sound mixing.

Grimsby / The Brothers Grimsby
2016
***
Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, Rebel Wilson, Penélope Cruz, Isla Fisher, Gabourey Sidibe, Annabelle Wallis, David Harewood, John Thomson

The Butcher brothers are reunited after 28 years. While Nobby, a football-obsessed working class dimwit, stayed in Grimsby and fathered about 10 children, Sebastian became a suave globetrotting MI6 agent. Sacha Baron Cohen's buddy comedy is thinly scripted and formulaic, but much funnier than it has any right to be. The jokes remain consistently tasteless, and some of the gags had me in stitches by their sheer outrageousness. Louis Leterrier, the French director behind The Transporter and its first sequel, brings wonderful energy to the action set pieces.

The Girl with All the Gifts
2016
**½
Director: Colm McCarthy
Cast: Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, Glenn Close, Sennia Nanua, Anamaria Marinca, Fisayo Akinade, Anthony Welsh, Dominique Tipper

In a dystopian future, a parasitic fungus has turned most of the population into cannibalistic hungries. A small group of people, which includes a young girl who could provide the cure to the infection, manage to escape and head towards London. Mike Carey's science fiction story, which he scripted from his own novel, offers a slight variation on the old zombie movie formula, at least in the beginning and in the end. The middle part is very familiar creeping-silently-among-zombies stuff. I'm slightly bothered by the characterisation of the hungries, who sometimes eat their victims, and other times only bite and infect them. Visually, this is television standard.

Ghostbusters
2016
**
Director: Paul Feig
Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth, Andy Garcia, Bill Murray, Neil Casey, Charles Dance, Cecily Strong

Four ladies form Ghostbusters, a team that captures and studies ghosts in New York City. Abby and Erin are friends who have been obsessed with paranormal activity since high school, Holtz is an eccentric tech whiz who builds their equipment, and the street smart Patty has great knowledge of the city and its history. Apart from its all-female cast, this remake of the overrated 1984 comedy springs no surprises. On the contrary, the plot deviates very little from the original and rattles along as if on auto pilot. Even the special effects haven't made big leaps in more than 30 years. The movie does include some nice comedy moments, but Chris Hemsworth's pointless role as a bimbo receptionist is not among them. The remaining key members of the original cast all make brief cameo appearances.

The Fundamentals of Caring
2016
***
Director: Rob Burnett
Cast: Paul Rudd, Craig Roberts, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Ehle, Megan Ferguson, Frederick Weller, Bobby Cannavale, Julia Denton

Ben's life fell apart after he lost his young son. Now he takes a job as a caregiver for Trevor, a young sarcastic man with muscular dystrophy. The two embark on a transformative road trip. Rob Burnett's comedy drama has likeable characters and performances, but the story is frustratingly mawkish and formulaic. Ben and Trevor pick up two hitchhikers and, wouldn't you know, the car trip fixes the lives of all four troubled individuals. Based on Jonathan Evison's 2012 novel The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving.

The Founder
2016
****
Director: John Lee Hancock
Cast: Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Linda Cardellini, B. J. Novak, Laura Dern, Patrick Wilson, Justin Randell Brooke

In 1954, travelling salesman Ray Kroc goes to San Bernardino, California to eat at the groundbreaking restaurant set up by the McDonald brothers. With dollar signs in his eyes, Kroc wants to take the business national. This fact-based drama depicts the creation of the McDonald's franchise, and the story is gripping, fascinating, and unexpectedly depressing. Michael Keaton gives an excellent performance as Kroc, who becomes less and less likeable as the story goes on.

Florence Foster Jenkins
2016
***
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson, Nina Arianda, Stanley Townsend, Allan Corduner, Christian McKay

In 1944, Florence Foster Jenkins is a wealthy and respected New York socialite and music connoisseur who cannot sing to save her life. When she wants to perform at Carnegie Hall, her devoted husband is determined to protect her from the truth. This feelgood movie is based on a real person. Her story is trivial and not terribly believable, but it is likeable and entertaining. Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant give excellent performances as a very unusual but loving couple.

Finding Dory
2016
***½
Director: Andrew Stanton, Angus MacLane
Cast: Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Hayden Rolence, Ed O'Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy

This belated sequel to Finding Nemo is set one year later. Dory, who still suffers from shot-term memory loss, suddenly remembers her parents and sets out to find them with the help of Marlin and Nemo. Their adventure takes them to the coast of California. In the early stages, it looks like this Pixar animation is out to repeat the original beat for beat, but it really comes to life in the Marine Life Institute where the action picks up and the script throws in new, clever twists. The new characters are as lovable as the old ones, and the end result is very entertaining.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
2016
**½
Director: David Yates
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton, Jon Voight, Carmen Ejogo, Ron Perlman, Colin Farrell

In the 1920s, English magizoologist Newt Scamander arrives in New York and misplaces a suitcase full of magical creatures just as a mysterious Obscurus terrorises the city. This fantasy prequel is a spin-off from the Harry Potter franchise (Newt was briefly mentioned in one of the books), and this is the first of five planned releases. J.K. Rowling wrote the screenplay herself, but she clearly should have left the job to a professional. There is plenty of worldbuilding and CGI magic, but no story, character development, or coherence. When Newt spends the first half trying to recover his fantastic beasts one by one, the pace feels even slower than it is. The movie does kick into gear in the second half, but there are ultimately very few surprises. The costumes won an Academy Award. Followed by Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Elle
2016
****
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny, Charles Berling, Virginie Efira, Judith Magre, Christian Berkel, Jonas Bloquet, Alice Isaaz, Vimala Pons, Arthur Mazet, Raphaël Lenglet, Lucas Prisor

Michèle Leblanc is a divorcée, a ruthless CEO of a gaming company, and the daughter of a famed mass murderer. One day, she is raped and assaulted in her Paris apartment, but her reaction to the ordeal is not what you would expect. Paul Verhoeven's grown-up drama is a breath of fresh air. From the first scene onwards, it is unclear where the unsettling story is heading. The characters are all wonderfully drawn and portrayed, but Isabelle Huppert as Michèle stands out with her wonderfully layered performance. David Birke scripted from Philippe Djian's novel Oh....

Doctor Strange
2016
****
Director: Scott Derrickson
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt, Scott Adkins, Mads Mikkelsen, Tilda Swinton

Stephen Strange is a brilliant neurosurgeon but a terrible human being. After car crash injuries render him unable to work, he has nothing to live for. He decides to travel to Kamar-Taj in the Himalayas in one last desperate attempt to regain the use of his body with the help of mystical powers. Doctor Strange, a comic book character who made his first appearance in 1963, joins the bottomless Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thankfully this mind-bending superhero movie is unlike most of the studio's recent output. Doctor Strange bends time and reality to create a supremely entertaining origin story which feels like a cross between The Matrix and Inception. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a great performance in the lead. The mid-credit teaser shows that the character will return in Avengers: Infinity War.

Deepwater Horizon
2016
***½
Director: Peter Berg
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O'Brien, Kate Hudson, Ethan Suplee, Trace Adkins, Brad Leland

Peter Berg's tense drama depicts the events of April 20th, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, when an explosion and fire on Deepwater Horizon, a semi-submersible oil rig, caused the largest oil spill in history. Mike Williams is an electronics technician, husband, and father who starts his three-week shift on the platform just when things come to a head. This captivating disaster movie is based mostly on fact, although the script cannot resist setting up a traditional clash between the money-grubbing corporate thugs and the honest hardworking blue-collar workers. Based on Deepwater Horizon's Final Hours by David Barstow, David Rohde, and Stephanie Saul.

Deadpool
2016
**½
Director: Tim Miller
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano, Leslie Uggams, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapičić

Wade Wilson, a wisecracking soldier-turned-thug, is about to get married when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. A mysterious organisation puts him through experimental treatment, which gives him healing powers but leaves him disfigured. Wade hides himself behind a mask and becomes Deadpool. The titular hero is a Marvel comic book character who ties in with the X-Men franchise (Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson made a brief appearance in X-Men Origins: Wolverine). However, unlike most of Marvel's output, this one is not for kids. Deadpool is a crude and flippant brute who is aware that he is a fictional character. He appears cold and emotionless on the outside, but has a soft spot for his girl, so deep down he's not that different from all the other superheroes. The movie is fast-paced and it offers a steady stream of dick jokes, graphic violence, and flashy speed up/slow down action scenes. 15-year-old me would have loved it. However, the movie covers the same ground as Kick-Ass and I find the protagonist exhausting. When the main villain manages to shut up this motormouth for a few minutes, I felt like cheering. Followed by Deadpool 2.

A Cure for Wellness
2016
*½
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth, Harry Groener, Celia Imrie, Adrian Schiller, Ivo Nandi, Ashok Mandanna, Tomas Norström, David Bishins, Carl Lumbly, Lisa Banes

A young overworked executive is sent to retrieve his company's CEO from a wellness center in the Swiss Alps. He discovers a mysterious facility that uses questionable practices on its patients, yet they have no wish to leave. Gore Verbinski's psychological horror film is visually stunning (apart from the awful CGI eels) and it features a lovely soundtrack by Benjamin Wallfisch. However, the story by Verbinski and Justin Haythe is the bastard son of Shutter Island and The Road to Wellville, and it's frankly stupid, ridiculous, and disgusting. Dane DeHaan is out of his depth as the young stockbroker, who begins to question his own sanity.

Certain Women
2016
***½
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone, James Le Gros, Jared Harris, René Auberjonois, John Getz, Sara Rodier, Ashlie Atkinson, James Jordan

Kelly Reichardt's slice-of-life drama depicts the lives of four different women in Montana. These include a lawyer who is dealing with a difficult client, a woman who is building a new home with her undermining husband, and a lonely ranch hand who is becoming infatuated with a young lawyer who is teaching a night class. This quiet and understated film is based on Maile Meloy's short stories Native Sandstone, Travis, B., and Tome. The third story is the pick of the bunch and it features a lovely breakthrough performance from Lily Gladstone. However, I failed to wrap my head around the midsection about a pile of sandstone.

Central Intelligence
2016
**½
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast: Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, Amy Ryan, Aaron Paul, Danielle Nicolet, Timothy Johnson Smith, Thomas Kretschmann, Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy

In high school, Calvin Joyner was deemed most likely to succeed, while the overweight Robbie Wheirdicht was the favourite target of bullies. 20 years later, Calvin is an unfulfilled accountant and Robbie a beefed up action man. This is a silly and derivative but rather enjoyable buddy comedy. Dwayne Johnson is seriously hamming it up in the early stages, but once he tones it down, he has good chemistry with Kevin Hart.

Captain Fantastic
2016
****
Director: Matt Ross
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, George MacKay, Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks, Charlie Shotwell, Frank Langella, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Ann Dowd

Ben Cash and his wife Leslie have raised their six children to be physically fit critical thinkers who are at one with nature. Now the family are forced to leave the wilderness in the Pacific Northwest and enter the mainstream society when Leslie commits suicide in a mental hospital. Matt Ross' second feature draws influence from The Mosquito Coast, Into the Wild, and Little Miss Sunshine to create a captivating and entertaining indie drama comedy. The script does a wonderful balancing act of assessing whether Ben is the best or the worst father in the world. His children may be smart and self-sufficient, but totally unprepared for the outside world. The film is funny and poignant but occasionally smug and not entirely believable. The cast is great.

Captain America: Civil War
2016
****
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Cast: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd, Emily VanCamp, Tom Holland, Frank Grillo, William Hurt, Daniel Brühl

Following the destruction of New York City and Sokovia, the nations of the world want to place the Avengers under UN supervision. The team are torn into two factions when Captain America and his allies are not willing to surrender control. The Marvel Cinematic Universe takes a turn for the darker as its characters begin to fight each other. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is an example how not to tell a story like this. Despite the grim storyline and the overabundance of superheroes, the Russo brothers stage a surprisingly entertaining and coherent action movie. The plot is heavily linked to Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron, and won't make much sense to anyone who hasn't seen them. As if there weren't enough superheroes vying for screentime, Ant-Man and Spider-Man join the cast.

Café Society
2016
**½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Jeannie Berlin, Steve Carell, Jesse Eisenberg, Blake Lively, Parker Posey, Kristen Stewart, Corey Stoll, Ken Stott, Sheryl Lee

Young Jewish man from New York moves to Hollywood to work for his talent agent uncle, but he ends up in a complicated relationship with his uncle's assistant. Woody Allen's 47th film is a passable romantic comedy drama, which offers no surprises if you are familiar with the director's recent works. The characters fall in love, break-up, and long for each other, but I'm not moved one way or another. Like Magic in the Moonlight (2014), this uncomfortably autobiographical story features a middle-aged man who is dating a young woman. The film was shot by Vittorio Storaro, and it looks terrific.

Die Blumen von gestern (The Bloom of Yesterday)
2016
*½
Director: Chris Kraus
Cast: Lars Eidinger, Adèle Haenel, Jan Josef Liefers, Hannah Herzsprung, Sigrid Marquardt, Bibiane Zeller, Rolf Hoppe, Eva Löbau

Toto is a tightly wound Holocaust historian, whose own grandfather was a famed Nazi. Just when Toto is about to reach his breaking point due to work and marriage stress, he must look after a new intern, an opinionated French Jewish woman named Zazie. This chaotic German comedy deals with the Holocaust and collective guilt, but it looks like director/writer Chris Kraus made it all up as he went along. The film is certainly unpredictable, but I have no idea what the genre or tone is going to be in the next scene or what the supposed narrative glue is that holds it all together. As if that's not enough, the characters are absolutely infuriating. Toto is a volatile hothead whose guilt runs so deep that he can't get it up and Zazie is a classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl who goes from a sweet girl to a suicidal wreck overnight. The serendipitous epilogue is the final straw.

The BFG
2016
***
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton, Jemaine Clement, Rebecca Hall, Rafe Spall, Bill Hader

One night, 10-year-old Sophie is swooped away from a London orphanage to Giant Country by Big Friendly Giant, who spends his days catching, mixing, and delivering dreams. Steven Spielberg's fantasy movie from Roald Dahl's 1982 book delivers a visually rich mix of live action performances, motion capture, and digital effects. The characters are charming and the dialogue of the giants offers delightfully butchered English and made-up words. However, there isn't much of a story, so a 2-hour running time is literally a bit of a stretch. Scripted by Melissa Mathison.

Before the Flood
2016
****
Director: Fisher Stevens
Cast:

For this thought-provoking documentary, Leonardo DiCaprio and his film crew traveled across the globe to document evidence of man-made climate change. The host shows us how the carbon emissions from human activity are responsible for the shrinking glaciers of Greenland, the flooding street of Miami, and the dying coral reefs of the Caribbean, among many other devastating effects. These events are interconnected and ever increasing. It's a gloomy picture with a small glimmer of hope. Global warming is nearing the irreversible tipping point, but there are things we can do. DiCaprio is mockingly aware that his celebrity status is a double-edged sword for this important cause, but at least you cannot accuse him for jumping on the band wagon. He has been a vocal environmentalist from the late 1990s when he met vice-president Al Gore, who starred in the Oscar winning An Inconvenient Truth. This documentary presents more or less the same arguments, only with more cinematic verve.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
2016
*½
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Gal Gadot

Following the destructive climactic battle in Man of Steel, Bruce Wayne and many others have doubts whether Superman's intentions are purely benevolent. Young Lex Luthor manipulates this situation to pit the two superheroes against one another. The Marvel Cinematic Universe releases have made billions in the recent years. Now DC Comics joins the game with its DC Extended Universe. The second movie in the franchise is no better than the first one, although it brings together two of its biggest superheroes, with guest appearances from the likes of Wonder Woman and Flash. It's plot-heavy, bloated and seemingly endless at 150 minutes, and it continues in the same murky style as Man of Steel and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. There are a few powerful dramatic moments along the way, but the action set pieces are by and large forgettable. The inevitable fight scene between Batman and Superman is just stupid.

Arrival
2016
****½
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, Mark O'Brien, Abigail Phlowsky, Julia Scarlett Dan, Jadyn Malone

After alien spacecrafts appear in twelve locations around the world, the U.S. Army brings in linguist Louise Banks, who is trying to come to terms with the death of her daughter. She joins a team of scientists who attempt to find a way to communicate with the visitors. Denis Villeneuve's thinking man's science fiction drama follows in the footsteps of Contact and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but also offers something entirely original. The film is intriguing and wonderfully atmospheric, not least because of Jóhann Jóhannsson's haunting score. Amy Adams gives yet another brilliant performance in the lead. Based on Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. Academy Award winner for Best Sound Editing.

The Angry Birds Movie
2016
**½
Director: Clay Kaytis, Fergal Reilly
Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, Kate McKinnon, Sean Penn, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Peter Dinklage, Bird Island

A boat full of friendly green pigs land on the shores of Bird Island, which is inhabited by birds who cannot fly. Only Red, who has serious anger issues, is convinced that the visitors are up to no good. Great video games do not generally translate to great movies, and this adaptation of the incredibly popular Angry Birds does not make an exception. This is a nicely paced and occasionally funny but utterly disposable animation. The main characters are broadly sketched and the story is pretty much non-existent. The finale on the Piggy Island comes closest to resembling the game itself.

Allied
2016
**½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Jared Harris, Simon McBurney, Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Betts, Matthew Goode, Daniel Betts, Camilla Cottin

During World War II, a Canadian intelligence officer and a French resistance fighter fall in love while posing as a couple. But do they even really know each other? This romantic drama is based on an original screenplay by Steven Knight. The set-up shows promise, but the film is oddly lifeless. The first third of the story takes place in Morocco, but this is no Casablanca. Marion Cotillard is lively in the female lead but Brad Pitt gives an incredibly wooden performance.

The Accountant
2016
*
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Cast: Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J. K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Tambor, John Lithgow, Seth Lee, Jake Presley, Cynthia Addal-Robinson, Jeffrey Tambor, Jean Smart, Andy Umberger

This dumb action drama was a surprise hit, although it features one of the most ridiculously incoherent scripts I have ever seen. Go figure! At one-hour mark, I still had no clue who the main character was or what this film was about. When the end credits rolled, I was none the wiser. Let's start with the protagonist Chris, who is an autistic math wiz. With his glasses on, he's a brilliant forensic accountant who has made millions from his work for criminal organisations. When the glasses come off, however, he's a deadly marksman and martial arts specialist. A robotics company hires him to uncover a potential embezzlement, and when he does, the embezzler thinks the best way to keep it under wraps is to assassinate Chris, a few members of the senior management, and the company's junior accountant, who looks to be the female lead but then disappears because this movie is not really about her. What is this movie about? In the meanwhile, a treasury agent assigns his analyst to search Wikipedia in order to discover the identity of the mysterious accountant, although it seems he already knows it. During the course of the movie, the flashbacks and expositions reveal the trauma in Chris' past, which is nothing short of stupid. Ben Affleck plays this autistic hero as a man who is unable to show emotions. Frankly, this is not much different from his performance as Batman.


The 5th Wave
2016
**
Director: J Blakeson
Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Ron Livingston, Nick Robinson, Maggie Siff, Alex Roe, Maria Bello, Maika Monroe, Zackary Arthur, Liev Schreiber

One day, the aliens arrive and begin to wipe out the human race with devastating force. Children are to play a key role in the final fifth wave of attacks. Cassie Sullivan is a regular high school kid who must suddenly fend for herself and protect her little brother Sam. This romantic teen dystopia is based on the first book in Rick Yancey's trilogy, but, in all honesty, it could have been written by a committee. The story takes elements from The Hunger Games, Twilight, The Host, and any other recent work in this genre, although this is one of the least threatening post-apocalyptic worlds I've seen on screen. The fact that the aliens are known as the Others pretty much sums up the story's originality. The first 30 minutes, when the aliens ravage the Earth with electromagnetic pulses, earthquakes and tsunamis, are actually quite gripping, but then the movie becomes increasingly formulaic and tiresome, leading to an ending that is a baffling mess.

13th
2016
****
Director: Ava DuVernay
Cast:

The thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime. Ava DuVernay's scathing documentary argues that slavery exists to this day, only in different form. Richard Nixon's War on Drugs, Ronald Reagan's crusade against crack cocaine, and Bill Clinton's three-strikes laws resulted in a massive increase in prison population, 60 % of whom are people of colour. These days, every third black man can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Although DuVernay's film is persuasive and moving, its central hypothesis was first presented in the superior The House I Live in (2012).

10 Cloverfield Lane
2016
***½
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr.

Following a car crash, a young woman wakes up in a locked underground bunker occupied by two men. The older man who built the bunker, claims that the country is under attack and it is not safe to go outside. Despite the confined setting, this is a tense and gripping psychological drama, which is slightly spoiled by the fact that we know it's part of the Cloverfield franchise.

The Witch / The VVitch: A New England Folktale
2015
***
Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson

Following their banishment from the Calvinist community, an English settler family sets up a farm next to a dark ominous forest. Although the family leads an extremely pious life, they are repeatedly visited by misfortune. Robert Eggers' feature debut is set in the mid-17th-century New England, and it was inspired by the fairy tales and folk tales of the time. The end result is an original and deeply unsettling but not particularly scary or gripping horror film. The visuals and the performances are very impressive, the story and the characters are not quite up to the same standard.

Where to Invade Next
2015
***½
Director: Michael Moore
Cast:

Michael Moore hopes to fix the social ills in the US by traveling to Italy, France, Finland, Slovenia, Germany, Portugal, Norway, Tunisia, and Iceland to claim their best ideas (many of which originate from his home country). These include improvements to education, labor rights, women' rights, and the prison system. As usual, Moore paints a rosy picture which completely ignores any negative aspects, but at least he acknowledges that in the beginning of this thought-provoking and enjoyable documentary.

The Walk
2015
***½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Kingsley, Charlotte Le Bon, James Badge Dale, Clément Sibony, César Domboy, Ben Schwartz, Benedict Samuel, Steve Valentine

In 1973, a French street artist named Philippe Petit becomes determined to walk a tightrope between the newly-built Twin Towers in New York City. James Marsh's 2008 documentary Man on Wire was based on Petit's book to Reach the Clouds. Robert Zemeckis and his co-writer Christopher Browne have adapted the same book, taken some poetic license, and created an entertaining live action feature film. Having seen the documentary, the story is familiar and its dramatic twists have very little impact. However, Zemeckis turns the events into a fully enjoyable cinematic experience. The setting, planning, preparation, and execution are wonderfully staged with the help of special effects. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives a delightfully kinetic performance in the lead. The decision to have the international cast speak (mostly) English with a French accent is questionable, though.

The Visit
2015
***
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn, Cella Keenan-Bolger, Benjamin Kanes

15 years ago, Loretta had a falling out with her parents. In the present, her teenage children Becca and Tyler shoot a documentary as the two go visit their grandparents for the first time in their lives. The old folks are welcoming at first, but begin to behave oddly, especially at nights. M. Night Shyamalan's stripped down small budget horror film jumps on the found footage band wagon. This subgenre can be clever and captivating at best, and totally infuriating at worst. Even if Shyamalan's script scores low on credibility, this is nevertheless his most watchable movie since Unbreakable.

Trumbo
2015
***
Director: Jay Roach
Cast: Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Louis C.K., Elle Fanning, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg

In the early 1940s, Dalton Trumbo is one of the highest paid screenwriters in Hollywood. A few years later, he is blacklisted for his Communist sympathies and forced to churn out scripts under pseudonyms for any film project he can get. This is a compelling and entertaining but disappointingly conventional and adulatory biopic, which fails to shed any critical light on it protagonist. Bryan Cranston gives a charming lead performance as Trumbo and Helen Mirren is delightfully nasty as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Based on Dalton Trumbo by Bruce Cook.

Trainwreck
2015
**
Director: Judd Apatow
Cast: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson, Colin Quinn, John Cena, Tilda Swinton, LeBron James

Amy is a 30-something journalist who likes to drink hard and sleep around. But what happens when she's assigned to interview a sensitive and single sports doctor? This comedy marks the screenwriting debut of Amy Schumer, but it's very much a Judd Apatow movie (that is, the jokes revolve around sex and substance abuse, and it's too long). As a romantic comedy, it offers nothing new. No matter how original or subversive the set-up may seem, you know exactly how it's going to end. The ending feels particularly unearned when Amy behaves like a selfish asshole throughout the story. There are at least some amusing cameos, such as Tilda Swinton as Amy's obnoxious editor and LeBron James as a more stingy and romantic version of himself.

Tomorrowland / Tomorrowland: A World Beyond
2015
****
Director: Brad Bird
Cast: George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key

While the world is going to hell in a handbasket, young science enthusiast Casey Newton finds a pin which briefly transports her into Tomorrowland, a futuristic parallel universe which seems to have solved the problems facing our planet. As Casey tries to find her way back to Tomorrowland, Brad Bird takes us on an adventure which is filled with wit and wonder. The lightning-paced first half is wonderfully creative and unpredictable, and certainly one of the most entertaining hours of cinema I can remember. The second half must slow down to bring the shaky plot into focus, and it is inevitably a bit of a let-down. The movie as a whole is beautifully designed.

Straight Outta Compton
2015
****
Director: F. Gary Gray
Cast: O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Paul Giamatti, Neil Brown Jr., Aldis Hodge, Marlon Yates Jr., R. Marcos Taylor, Lakeith Stanfield, Alexandra Shipp, Corey Reynolds, Tate Ellington

In the late 1980s, a handful of young and angry black men in Compton California form N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitudes), a controversial and influential rap group. This supremely entertaining biographical drama focuses on Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube and their respective relationships with the group's manager Jerry Heller. The film offers a terrific mix of drama and comedy, and it paints a believable portrait of the lack of options a young black man has when he grows up in a tough neighbourhood, much like Boyz N' the Hood, which incidentally starred Ice Cube. In addition, the story covers the highs and lows of show business: the excitement of creative work and live performances, the adoration by fans, and the inevitable aftermath of living a life of excess. The young cast is very imprressive.

Steve Jobs
2015
***
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Katherine Waterston, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sarah Snook, Perla Haney-Jardine

Aaron Sorkin's brilliant script for The Social Network managed to make the creation of Facebook fascinating. He is not able to repeat the feat with this unusual but mostly uninspired biopic of Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple. His story is told through three products launches: Apple Macintosh in 1984, the NeXT Computer in 1988, and the iMac in 1998. The three segments feature many the same characters, which include Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), John Sculley (CEO of Apple), Lisa Brennan (daughter), Chrisann Brennan (Lisa's mother), and Joanna Hoffman (marketing executive/voice of reason). There is no mistaking that the film was penned by Sorkin. There are people pacing the corridors, talking fast, and throwing catchy one-liners. Danny Boyle withholds his usual visual pyrotechnics to let the script do the work for him. If only something interesting was happening on screen. The film doesn't cover iPod and iPhone, which were real game changers. Instead it focuses on three archaic personal computers, two of which were mostly sitting on stock shelf. Jobs comes across as a stubborn and uncompromising businessman and an unpleasant human being. Like its protagonist, I formed no emotional attachment to anything. The performances are very good, though. Based on Walter Isaacson's authorised biography.


Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
2015
***
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Max von Sydow

Ten years after George Lucas' hamfisted prequel trilogy, J.J. Abrams brings back the fun to the Star Wars franchise. The seventh episode is an entertaining spectacle with charismatic performances, thrilling action set pieces, and plenty of laughs. The only thing missing is an original story. The script by Lawrence Kasdan, Michael Arndt, and Abrams throws together a greatest hits collection of the previous six episodes which gave me a constant sense of déjà vu. Some 30 years after the Galactic Empire was defeated, the Resistance is fighting the First Order, led by the Supreme Leader Snoke. The First Order, who have constructed Starkiller Base, a superweapon capable of destroying entire planets, wants to track down and kill Luke Skywalker, who disappeared years ago. Some of the old characters return, and the new ones have a very familiar ring to them. There's Kylo Ren (a Jedi trainee who was drawn to the dark side), Rey (a parentless scavenger with hidden depths), and Finn (a former stormtrooper). Followed by The Last Jedi.

Spy
2015
***
Director: Paul Feig
Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Jason Statham, Rose Byrne, Miranda Hart, Bobby Cannavale, Allison Janney, Jude Law, Peter Serafinowicz, Morena Baccarin

Following the success of The Heat, Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy return with another amusing collaboration. This time she plays a CIA desk jockey, who becomes a field agent overnight in order to recover a lost nuke. Like Johnny English back in the day, this comedy parodies James Bond and other spy movies. It offers some funny moments, especially in the first half, but Feig needlessly drags out a simple premise to a 2-hour movie. There are some nice performances, though. McCarthy is reliably energetic, Jason Statham makes good fun of his macho tough guy image as a fellow CIA agent, and Rose Byrne is hilariously obnoxious as the entitled villain.

Spotlight
2015
*****
Director: Tom McCarthy
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian D'Arcy James, Billy Crudup, Jamey Sheridan, Len Cariou

In 2001, Father Geoghan, a Roman Catholic priest, is accused of molesting several children. The new editor of the Boston Globe assigns the Spotlight team, who specialise in writing expansive investigative pieces, to explore the claims that the Boston Archdiocese covered up the abuse for years. This excellent drama offers no-nonsense storytelling at its best. The twists of this real-life story are so horrific and riveting that there is no need for Hollywood hyperbole or flashy performances. An Academy Award winner for best picture and best original screenplay by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer. The Spotlight team's work earned them a Pulitzer Prize.

The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
2015
**½
Director: Paul Tibbitt, Mike Mitchell
Cast: Tom Kenny, Antonio Banderas, Clancy Brown, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Mr. Lawrence, Matt Berry

When the secret Krabby Patty formula disappers, life in Bikini Bottom falls into chaos. SpongeBob SquarePants teams up with his friends and enemies to restore normality. Like The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), the second big screen adaptation of the long-running TV show throws its drawn characters in a live action setting, this time using computer animation. The title, poster and advertising strongly suggest that this is an adventure on dry land. It is, for about 20 minutes. For 75% of the time this is like a regular but extended episode, alternately silly, inventive, hyperactive, loud, and exhausting.

Spectre
2015
***
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott, Monica Bellucci, Ralph Fiennes

Just as the British intelligence services are about to replace the field agents with global surveillance technology, 007 goes on a personal mission and discovers a sinister criminal organisation with far-reaching influence across the world. Sam Mendes, who directed Skyfall, possibly the most overrated movie in the series, returns to the director's chair for Daniel Craig's fourth performance as James Bond. He kicks off the action with a brilliantly shot pre-credit scene in Mexico City, but it's all slow downhill from there. The sketchy plot treads the same ground as Skyfall, the action set pieces are entertaining but mechanical, the Bond girl is charmless, and the main villain has too little screen time to make any real impact. All of this hardly warrants a 150-minute spectacle. The theme song Writing's on the Wall by Sam Smith won an Academy Award.

Slow West
2015
**
Director: John Maclean
Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Caren Pistorius, Rory McCann, Andrew Robertt, Kalani Queypo

16-year-old Scotsman Jay travels to America and hires a bounty hunter to track down Rose, the object of his affections, unaware that there is a USD 2,000 price on her head. John Maclean, better known as a member of The Beta Band, makes his directorial debut with a poorly scripted but visually arresting Western. This short and modest mood piece shows the Wild West first and foremost as an unpredictable and violent territory, and the dreadful ending takes this idea a bit too literally. Considering that Jay travels halfway across the world and then makes his way through vast expanses of uninhabited wilderness to find the one person he knows, Small West would be a much better title.

Sicario
2015
***
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Daniel Kaluuya, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan, Raoul Trujillo, Julio Cesar Cedillo, Bernardo Saracino, Maximiliano Hernández

FBI agent Kate Macer is invited to join a special task force that aims to make a real difference in the fight against Mexican drug cartels. The deeper she gets into the mysterious mission, the less she seems to understand who she is working with and what their ultimate objective is. Like Steven Soderbergh's Oscar winning Traffic, Denis Villeneuve's confusing and surprisingly dull drama shows that there is no winner in the war on drugs. Although Macer is a victim of manipulation, the overegged plot makes the entire character seem irrelevant to the story. However, Villeneuve stages a few brilliant set pieces along the way. Followed by Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018).

Shaun the Sheep Movie
2015
*****
Director: Richard Strazak, Mark Burton
Cast: Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Omid Djalili, Kate Harbour, Richard Webber, Tim Hands, Simon Greenall, Emma Tate, Henry Burton

After the forgettable The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists!, Aardman Studios make a glorious return to form. Shaun the Sheep's stop motion shorts have entertained us since 2007 and now these lovely characters make a smooth transition to the big screen. The TV show is famous for being dialogue-free, and the same style works amazingly well over an 85-minute feature. The story is simple: Bitzer, Shaun, and the rest of the flock leave Mossy Bottom for the Big City in order to rescue the Farmer who has lost his memory. The ensuing adventure is action-packed and filled with inventive hilarity. Followed by Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie.

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!
2015
*½
Director: Anthony C. Ferrante
Cast: Ian Ziering, Cassie Scerbo, Bo Derek, Mark McGrath, Frankie Muniz, Ryan Newman, Mark Cuban, Jack Griffo, David Hasselhoff, Tara Reid

The first Sharknado hit Los Angeles, The Second One hit New York City, and the third one pummels the entire east coast in an unpredictable manner. FIn Shepard's family and friends are once again in the wrong place at the wrong time. This ridiculous but likeable franchise hit its peak in the second movie which offered an enjoyable mix of splatter and laughs. Now, however, the joke has run its course and seeing it repeated over and over again doesn't make it any funnier. Even the outrageous sharks in space finale cannot remove the overwhelming feeling of déjà-vu. The third movie takes the use of product placement and celebrity cameos to a whole new level.

Saul fia (Son of Saul)
2015
*****
Director: László Nemes
Cast: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn, Todd Charmont, Sándor Zsótér, Amitai Kedar, Uwe Lauer, Christian Harting, Jerzy Walczak, Marcin Czarnik, Levente Orbán, Attila Fritz

Saul Ausländer is a Sonderkommando, a prisoner who is forced to work at the gas chambers. One day in 1944 when the Auschwitz prisoners are preparing an uprising, Saul sees a dead boy he believes to be his son, and begins a desperate scramble to find a rabbi to give the boy a proper burial. László Nemes' directorial debut is a stunningly assured and original drama about Holocaust. This is one subject matter that is too horrific to imagine, let alone show on screen. Even great films like Fateless and Schindler's List have moments when the entire endeavour begins to feel exploitative or just plain wrong. Nemes' masterplan is to give a subjective view to the horrors. The tight 4:3 frame is mostly focused on Saul's expressionless face, with the atrocities out of focus or out of frame, as the protagonist goes through various layers of hell with the help of astonishing sound design. An Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film.


San Andreas
2015
***
Director: Brad Peyton
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Ioan Gruffudd, Archie Panjabi, Paul Giamatti, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Art Parkinson, Will Yun Lee

When the San Andreas Fault begins to shift and a series of massive earthquakes hit the west coast, air rescue pilot Ray Gaines is determined to save at least his soon-to-be ex-wife Emma and his resourceful daughter Blake, who are in Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. Never mind the millions dying, only these few lives matter. Brad Peyton's entertaining disaster movie has no higher aspirations than to tell a dramatic story of one family's struggle amidst spectacular destruction. The script is utterly formulaic and the performances are predictably wooden, but this movie is all about the special effect set pieces, and they are gripping.

Room
2015
***½
Director: Lenny Abrahamson
Cast: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Sean Bridgers, Tom McCamus, William H. Macy, Amanda Brugel, Joe Pingue

Seven years ago, 17-year-old Joy was abducted by a man she calls Old Nick. Joy has given birth in captivity and she is determined to protect her 5-year-old son Jack, who has never experienced the world outside the Room. Apart from some issues with pacing and plausibility, this is a poignant and moving drama, which convincingly deals with complex psychological trauma and maternal guilt. Brie Larson earned an Academy Award for her strong lead performance. Emma Donoghue scripted from her own novel.

The Revenant
2015
*****
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck, Duane Howard, Arthur Redcloud, Melaw Nakehk'o, Grace Dove, Lukas Haas

In 1823, a party of fur trappers on the Missouri River are attacked by Ree Indians. During the retreat, their guide is mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead by his treacherous companion. Alejandro González Iñárritu's thoroughly captivating drama tells the real-life story of Hugh Glass (1783–1833), who, severely injured, made an incredible 200 mile trek through hostile elements to settle the score with his wrongdoer. The script is partly fiction (and based on Michael Punke's novel), but even the actual events have been embellished along the years, so who knows what actually happened. This is understandably a long and arduous film with literally hours of suffering on screen, but it offers 2½ hours of pure cinematic magic. The locations are stunning and Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography captures them beautifully, Leonardo DiCaprio gives an extremely physical lead performance, and Iñárritu pulls the strings to perfection. All three were rewarded with an Academy Award.

The Peanuts Movie
2015
***
Director: Steve Martino
Cast: Noah Schnapp, Hadley Belle Miller, Mariel Sheets, Alex Garfin, Francesca Angelucci Capaldi, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, Kristin Chenoweth, Bill Melendez

Charlie Brown is desperate to impress the Little Red-Haired Girl who moves across the street, but nothing seems to go his way. At the same time, Snoopy imagines himself as a WW1 flying ace who is out to rescue a girl from the Red Baron. The adaptations of Charles M. Schulz's wry comic strip have been a regular feature on television since the mid-1960s. This one-off 3D animation was co-scripted by Schulz's son and grandson, so it is understandably respectful and surprise-free. However, there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes than with these charming characters.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
2015
****
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin

When a Senate committee shuts down the IMF, Ethan Hunt goes rogue to prove that a secret crime organisation known as the Syndicate truly exists: He ends up cooperating with a female MI6 agent who may or may not be on his side. The fifth part follows in the footsteps of the wonderful Ghost Protocol, and it another entertaining action movie. The plot never gets in the way of the exciting but predictably distributed action set pieces (the opera and underwater scenes are my personal favourites). Followed by Mission: Impossible – Fallout.

Minions
2015
****
Director: Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney, Steve Coogan, Jennifer Saunders, Pierre Coffin

The Minions, the adorable comedy sidekicks from the likeable Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 animations, get their own movie. The hilarious opening scene shows how the yellow little creatures have unsuccessfully searched for a villain to serve since the beginning of time. The rest of the movie cannot quite maintain the same laughs per minute ratio, but it is admirably entertaining throughout. In the main story, the present day Kevin, Stuart and Bob go in search of another master and become embroiled in a plot to steal the crown of Queen Elizabeth.

Miekkailija (The Fencer)
2015
***
Director: Klaus Härö
Cast: Märt Avandi, Ursula Ratasepp, Hendrik Toompere, Liisa Koppel, Joonas Koff, Lembit Ulfsak, Piret Kalda, Egert Kadastu, Ann-Lisett Rebane, Elbe Reiter, Jaak Prints, Kirill Käro

In the early 1950s, Endel Nelis escapes the clutches of the KGB and arrives in the small town of Haapsalu in Estonia. He takes a job as a teacher and ends up running a fencing club for the children, but how long will he be able to remain incognito? Although Anna Heinämaa's script is based on a real person, her version of Endel's story loses impact by relying on too many formulaic tropes. However, the performances are good and Tuomo Hutri's cinematography is wonderfully atmospheric.

The Martian
2015
****½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Chiwetel Ejiofor

When struck by a dust storm, the crew of Ares III abort their mission on Mars and leave behind astronaut Mark Watney, who they presume is dead. Watney must use his botanical skills and rely on his overall resourcefulness in order to survive until he can be rescued, which could take months or years at best. This great looking science fiction drama is a funny and tense survival story, and a very enjoyable celebration of human endeavour. The scenario owes more than a little to Gravity, but it is nevertheless Ridley Scott's best work in years. Matt Damon, alone for most of the screen time, gives a great lead performance. Drew Goddard scripted from Andy Weir's novel.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
2015
*½
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Jared Harris, Hugh Grant, Luca Calvani, Sylvester Groth

It's 1963 and a nuclear scientist Udo Teller, a former Nazi who works for the U.S. government, has disappeared. To solve the mystery, CIA agent Napoleon Solo must first smuggle Teller's daughter out of East Berlin and then grudgingly partner with KGB agent Illya Kuryakin. After two forgettable but highly lucrative Sherlock Holmes movies, Guy Ritchie gives us a good looking but incredibly dull big screen adaptation of the popular TV series which ran from 1964 to 1968. It features two charmless heroes played with impressive woodenness by Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. In A Game of Shadows, Ritchie wasted Noomi Rapace in a thankless supporting role, and now he repeats the feat with another fine Swedish actress, Alicia Vikander, who is nevertheless the best thing in the movie along with the groovy soundtrack. There is plenty of action, romance, and international intrigue, and obviously a nuclear weapon since it's the Cold War, but Ritchie cannot produce anything original or even half interesting out of the material.

Mad Max: Fury Road
2015
****
Director: George Miller
Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton

In one corner of a futuristic wasteland, a ruthless tyrant Immortan Joe keeps the survivors in a stranglehold by controlling the supply of water. One of his trusted soldiers, Furiosa, betrays him and smuggles out Joe's five enslaved wives in an armoured tanker truck. They are joined by Max Rockatansky, a loner held captive by Joe's army. After the enjoyable Mad Max (1979) and its brilliant sequel (1981), I thought the series went out with a whimper in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). But now, 30 years later, George Miller returns to the franchise that launched his career. This is not a sequel but a reboot. Max is not only played by a different actor, but he is a completely different character. The old Max was a fragile, self-serving bastard, the new Max is a bulked-up, indestructible action hero. In the intervening years, post-apocalyptic survival stories have become a regular event at the cinemas, so while the punky vehicles and costumes were ahead of their time in the 1980s, they don't have the same impact in 2015. What's left is a brilliantly made two-hour chase scene which probably consumes the remaining fuel stocks on the planet. If you like non-stop action, you're in heaven. The pace is relentless, the set pieces are inventive and the stunts are spectacular. The film won six Academy Awards for costume design, production design, makeup and hairstyling, editing, sound editing, and sound mixing.

The Lobster
2015
**½
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden, Olivia Colman, Ashley Jensen, Ariane Labed, Angeliki Papoulia, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, Michael Smiley, Ben Whishaw

In a totalitarian future, coupledom is mandatory. A cuckold named David arrives in a remote hotel (pairing facility) where he has 45 days to find a perfect match or face being transformed into an animal of his choosing (lobster). In contrast, the nearby woods hide escaped loners who fanatically forbid any kind of intimate contact between individuals. Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos makes his English language debut with this clever but flawed dystopian comedy which works as a parable but not as a story. The initial premise is captivating, at least on a conceptual level, but once Lanthimos and his co-writer Efthimis Filippou finish introducing their robotic characters and filling in the details of their world, I felt increasingly angry and disappointed. In the dating game, it is common to hide your flaws. In this fictional world, you must have the same exact physical defect as your ideal partner. Nevertheless, there are some wonderfully weird scenes in the first half, but the film slowly loses its way when David heads to the woods. The performances are so mannered that I felt like watching an Aki Kaurismäki film in English.


Kätilö (The Midwife)
2015
**
Director: Antti J. Jokinen
Cast: Krista Kosonen, Lauri Tilkanen, Pirkka-Pekka Petelius, Leea Klemola, Seppo Pääkkönen, Elina Knihtilä, Tommi Korpela, Johannes Brotherus

Towards the end of World War II, when Finland is close to accepting the peace terms set by the Soviet Union, a young Finnish woman who works as a nurse at a German POW camp in Lapland falls in love with an SS officer. This adaptation of Katja Kettu's 2011 novel is visually striking, which is sadly the only positive comment I can make about this laboured effort. Thanks to the confusing and unfocused script and the poorly defined characters, I was not swept along by the drama or the romance at any point. I could also not get over the fact that the characters communicate in Finnish, whether they are Finns, Germans, or Russians.

Jurassic World
2015
***
Director: Colin Trevorrow
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Omar Sy, B. D. Wong, Irrfan Khan, Katie McGrath, Jake Johnson, Lauren Lapkus

More than 20 years after the disaster in Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar houses another theme park, Jurassic World. Its owners have developed a new horrific hybrid dinosaur, Indominus rex, which breaks out of its paddock before they can unveil it. The fourth movie in the franchise is more a reboot than a sequel. Like Jurassic Park, it features a couple of kids whose fun trip to the theme park turns into a nightmare. And when all hell breaks loose, the bad guys get killed and the good guys mostly get spared. Nevertheless, this is an entertaining and suspenseful disaster movie, especially when you compare it to parts II and III. Followed by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Jupiter Ascending
2015
*
Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Cast: Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton, James D'Arcy, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Samuel Barnett

Jupiter Jones, an unhappy cleaner from Chicago learns that she's intergalactic royalty. And off she goes to space to reluctantly stake her claim as the rightful owner of the Earth. For a decade and a half now, the Wachowskis have failed to meet the high expectations set by The Matrix. A movie that doesn't suck would be a good start. Here comes another over-designed science fiction epic with a terrible script. The story is just ridiculous, and the events unfold over two dull hours in a mix of long scenes of exposition and instantly forgettable CGI action set pieces. The performances are at par with the laughable characters. The gullible heroine repeatedly puts herself in danger so the stone-faced gravity-surfing action hero can save her. How romantic.

Joy
2015
****
Director: David O. Russell
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Édgar Ramírez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rossellini, Bradley Cooper, Dascha Polanco, Elisabeth Röhm

Joy runs a household that includes her two young children, her grandmother, her mentally fragile mother, her jobless ex-husband, and now also her homeless father. No wonder she struggles to make ends meet. Joy invents a self-wringing mop and hopes that it can change her fortune. David O. Russell's moving and entertaining celebration of the American Dream is loosely based on the life of Joy Mangano, who launched the Miracle Mop in 1990. Russell fills this story of inspiration and perseverance with the same insane energy he employed in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. The characters are unusual and the ensemble cast do a wonderful job in portraying them. Jennifer Lawrence's lead performance as Joy offers a perfect mix of guts and vulnerability.

The Intern
2015
***½
Director: Nancy Meyers
Cast: Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo, Anders Holm, Andrew Rannells, Adam DeVine, Zack Pearlman, Jason Orley, Christina Scherer

Ben, a bored 70-year-old widower, joins a senior intern programme at a booming fashion e-commerce company, whose overstressed founder and CEO Jules attempts to juggle the demands and needs of her work, husband, and child. Nancy Meyers' romantically flavoured feelgood film begins as an amusing fish out of water story but quietly evolves into a heart-warming comedy about friendship, respect, and empowerment. The two hours offer undemanding but entertaining wish fulfilment.

Inside Out
2015
****
Director: Pete Docter
Cast: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Richard Kind, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan

Riley is a happy 11-year-old girl whose mind is governed by Joy and four other emotions - Sadness, Disgust, Fear and Anger. Just when the girl must cope with a stressful move across the country, Joy and Sadness find themselves locked outside the control room and Riley's emotional state becomes unstable. This lovely and original animation arrives from Pixar's bottomless treasure trove of imagination, and it is certainly clever and inventive, almost to a fault. The studio is convinced that the concepts of the mind (emotions, memories, dreams, subconscious) are not too abstract for the little ones to grasp. I'm not sure I fully agree, but grown-ups can certainly appreciate the level of detail in this funny and moving film. Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature.

In the Heart of the Sea
2015
***
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson, Michelle Fairley, Gary Beadle, Frank Dillane

In search of inspiration for his novel Moby-Dick, Herman Melville interviews the last remaining survivor of Essex, a whaling ship which was sunk by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific Ocean 30 years earlier. Ron Howard's historical drama is heavy on CGI, but it offers some gripping and believable depiction of life at sea. While the second half is the more harrowing part of the story, it does drag a bit. Charles Leavitt's screenplay is based on Nathaniel Philbrick's non-fiction book, although this Essex crew is curiously full of stock characters.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
2015
****
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland

As the rebels are approaching the Capitol, Katniss plans to assassinate Snow but is forced to join a propaganda unit, which also includes the brainwashed and potentially dangerous Peeta. The final part of the series is possibly the weakest of the four movies, but still a tense and enjoyable finale. The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, the first two books in Suzanne Collins' trilogy concentrated on the games, and they translated into very gripping and unpredictable movies. As the fight between good and evil turns into an all-out war in the third book, the two Mockingjay movies (should it have been only one?) offer a different and slightly more conventional experience. Nevertheless, Jennifer Lawrence gives a stunning performance throughout the series.

Hotel Transylvania 2
2015
**½
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Cast: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, David Spade, Steve Buscemi, Keegan-Michael Key, Molly Shannon, Fran Drescher, Mel Brooks, Asher Blinkoff

Five odd years later, Dracula is growing increasingly worried when his half-human grandson Dennis still hasn't developed any vampire traits. The sequel to Hotel Transylvania is a very ordinary animation mostly aimed at children. While it can be likeable and entertaining at times, it is ultimately too derivative and predictable to turn into an enduring classic. Followed by Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.

He Named Me Malala
2015
***
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Cast:

Malala Yousafzal, a Pakistani student who transformed into an advocate for women's right to education, survived an assassination attempt by the Taleban and became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17. Davis Guggenheim's hagiographic and respectful documentary uses interviews, media footage, and animated dramatisation to tell the story of Malala the activist (and to depict the close relationship she has with her father Ziauddin Yousafzai). The film spends disappointingly few minutes to humanise its heroine or to question if this extraordinary teenager skipped her childhood.

The Hateful Eight
2015
**
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, James Parks

Shortly after the Civil War, a stagecoach carrying two disparate bounty hunters, a woman to be hanged, and a brand new sheriff pulls up to Minnie's Habberdashery in Wyoming. The travellers are forced to take refuge from a blizzard with a group of men, who may or may not be in the same place by coincidence. Quentin Tarantino's eight movie and the second Western in a row was shot on 65 mm film like the historical spectacles of the 1950s and 1960s. However, this epic is basically a a filmed three-hour stage play. The uneventful events indoors unfold s-l-o-w-l-y, obviously in chapters and in scrambled chronology. The director's trademark verbose dialogue and some mannered performances, by Goggins and Roth in particular, make it all seem even longer. There is one surprise, though. It's close to halfway point before there's any actual gore, but eventually the heads begin to pop and, by the end, the set and the characters are covered in blood. Instead of borrowing an old Spagetti Western soundtrack, Tarantino has commissioned a new one from Ennio Morricone, who won an Oscar for his troubles.

Hail, Caesar!
2015
**
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum

In 1951, Eddie Mannix, an all-around problem solver for the Capitol Pictures, is having a particularly tough day. On top of the daily challenges of motion picture production, he must deal with the unexpected pregnancy of one movie star and the kidnapping of another, all the while keeping nosy newspaper columnists in the dark. This plot summary actually makes this Coen brothers comedy sound way more coherent than it is. In reality, it is a messy and frustratingly unfunny collection of unconnected vignettes. The Coens have made several films set in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. They clearly love this period, and now they also get an excuse to tell a story about Hollywood and stage a biblical epic, an aquamusical, a song and dance number, a Western, and a chamber drama in one film. It's all lovingly staged, if only it amounted to something meaningful or entertaining.

Goosebumps
2015
***
Director: Rob Letterman
Cast: Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush, Amy Ryan, Ryan Lee, Jillian Bell, Halston Sage, Ken Marino

Zach and his mother move to Madison, Delaware, next door to Hannah and her overprotective father, who turns out to be R. L. Stine, a famous horror novelist. One night, Zach breaks into their house and unwittingly unleashes all the author's scary characters from the locked manuscripts. This horror comedy puts a clever fictional twist on the life of a real-life author whose books have sold hundreds of millions of copies. The movie is formulaic and very Jumanji-like, but it offers an entertaining mix of scares and jokes for the whole family.

The Good Dinosaur
2015
***
Director: Peter Sohn
Cast: Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin, A.J. Buckley, Steve Zahn, Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand

A family of Apatosauruses farm their land and prepare for the coming winter. Arlo, the youngest of the three boys, doesn't have the strength or courage of his older brothers. When Arlo accidentally ends up far away from home, he must finally prove his mettle in order to return to his family. This Pixar movie is set in an alternate reality where dinosaurs avoided extinction and coexist with humans. This is a Disney production, so carnivores and herbivores live happily side by side, and nobody gets eaten. Although the central storyline of Arlo's personal growth is awfully formulaic, this is still an entertaining and visually stunning animation.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
2015
***
Director: Alex Gibney
Cast:

Alex Gibney's documentary tells the brief history of Scientology. The movement was founded by L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), a science fiction writer whose theory of Dianetics formed the base for the religion. Former members (including film director Paul Haggis) describe what made them join and what ultimately made them leave the church. The last third describes the reign of the current leader David Miscavige, who turned the Church of Scientology into a multi-billion dollar business, but is accused of exploiting, intimidating, and abusing the members in the process. The film is thought-provoking, disturbing, and (probably) truthful in depicting the controversial aspects of Scientology, but it fails to illuminate why people are drawn to the church and why more people have not abandoned it under these horrendous circumstances. Based on the book of Lawrence Wright, who is one of the talking heads.

Focus
2015
**
Director: Glenn Ficarra, John Cena
Cast: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Rodrigo Santoro, Gerald McRaney, B.D. Wong, Robert Taylor, Dominic Fumusa, Brennan Brown, Griff Furst, Adrian Martinez

Nicky is a weathered con man who takes Jessie, an aspiring con woman, under his wing. They fall in love, or do they? Can they ever really trust one another? This Will Smith vehicle joins a long line of unoriginal con movies which feature a cast of duplicitous, uninteresting characters and ridiculously implausible cons. The proceedings become dull and predictable when every dramatic twist is part of an elaborate con and each scene that appears to have some emotional heft turns out to be fake.

Fifty Shades of Grey
2015
*
Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eloise Mumford, Jennifer Ehle, Marcia Gay Harden, Victor Rasuk, Luke Grimes, Rita Ora, Max Martini, Callum Keith Rennie

Anastasia Steele is a pretty lit student who interviews the handsome 27-year-old entrepreneur Christian Grey. Sparks fly immediately, but Christian admits outright that he will not date, make love, cuddle, or sleep over. He prefers hard BDSM sex and and would like Anastasia to sign a non-disclosure agreement before he starts inflicting pain. This incredibly boring and untitillating adaptation of E. L. James' controversial novel is unlikely to offend anyone apart from people who like their movies well scripted and acted. Sam Taylor-Johnson delivers a snail-paced two-hour foreplay which alludes to something kinky and unusual, but ends just when it gets to the heart of the matter. Nudity is limited to T&A and the characters are just laughable: Anastasia is a strong-willed virgin and Christian is an unsympathetic bully, but she just cannot resist a billionaire who can afford to take her on awe-inspiring helicopter and glider flights. Sadly this is only the first part of a trilogy.

Eye in the Sky
2015
***
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, Barkhad Abdi, Jeremy Northam, Iain Glen, John Heffernan, Babou Ceesay, Monica Dolan, Richard McCabe

While a group of wanted terrorists plot a suicide bombing, British and American military and government officials are forced to weigh the legal and political repercussions of a potential drone strike on a house in Nairobi. When a young Kenyan girl strays in the danger zone, this interesting but slightly implausible drama becomes a story about the moral and ethical problems of remote-controlled warfare. At times, the film is almost comically dry, as the decision makers discuss around big tables and shun responsibility. Is there a legal argument for letting the girl sell her bread? is not the snappiest line of dialogue.

Ex Machina
2015
****
Director: Alex Garland
Cast: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Sonoya Mizuno, Oscar Isaac

Nathan, the eccentric CEO of Bluebook, invites a talented programmer named Caleb to carry out a Turing test on an android named Ava to assess whether she passes as human. However, things are not as they appear, but who is playing who? Is Caleb playing Ava, Ava playing Caleb, or Nathan playing them both? Alex Garland's directorial debut is a stylish psychological science fiction film which owes a great thematic debt to the likes of A.I. and Blade Runner. This may not be the most original work in its genre, but it deals with some interesting ideas, and the central performances are great. Academy Award winner for Best Visual Effects.

Everest
2015
***½
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Cast: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Jake Gyllenhaal

In May 1996, various groups are preparing to climb the summit of Mount Everest. Climbing the world's tallest mountain is an extremely dangerous feat on any day, but when an excessive number of climbers are hit by a sudden storm, it becomes a nightmare. This horrific true story has been documented in various books, most famously in Jon Krakauer's riveting Into Thin Air. The film version cannot do justice to all the details or all the individuals involved in this disastrous day, but it probably benefits from focusing on a handful of people and their struggle against the elements. The end result is a gripping, well-acted, and beautifully staged drama.

En man som heter Ove (A Man Called Ove)
2015
***
Director: Hannes Holm
Cast: Rolf Lassgård, Bahar Pars, Filip Berg, Ida Engvoll, Tobias Almborg, Klas Wiljergård, Chatarina Larsson, Börje Lundberg, Stefan Gödicke, Johan Widerberg, Anna-Lena Bergelin

Ove is a grumpy and confrontational 59-year-old widower, who has lost his will to live following the death of his beloved wife. When a lively young family moves in next doors, Ove slowly begins to break out of his shell. This Swedish drama comedy is quite enjoyable but highly implausible. The way these characters fall in love, suffer injuries, or take abuse does not reflect reality. Nevertheless, Rolf Lassgård is great in the lead. Remade in Hollywood as A Man Called Otto (2022).

The Dressmaker
2015
**
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Cast: Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Sarah Snook, Olivia Sprague, Sacha Horler, Caroline Goodall, James Mackay, Rebecca Gibney, Shane Bourne

In 1951, Myrtle "Tilly" Dunnage returns to her hometown of Dungatar, whose inhabitants blame her for a death that occurred 25 ago. Tilly is determined to unravel the secrets of her past, while she uses her dressmaking skills to manipulate the women of the community. Australia has produced some memorably eccentric comedies, such as Muriel's Wedding (1994) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), but this is not one of them. Jocelyn Moorhouse's film is a tonal mess. It jumps from slapstick to high drama, from revenge to unconvincing romance, and from tragic events to comical deaths. It obviously features a crossdressing policeman and some gorgeous outfits. Moorhouse and her husband P.J. Hogan scripted from Rosalie Ham's 2000 novel, which deals with hypocrisy, malice, prejudice, and small-town small-mindedness.

The Danish Girl
2015
**½
Director: Tom Hooper
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Ben Whishaw, Sebastian Koch, Amber Heard, Matthias Schoenaerts

In 1930, when the concept of transsexuality was fairly unknown, Danish painter Einar Wegener (later Lili Elbe) became one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment surgery. In the mid-1920s, the happily married Einar begins to feel increasingly uncomfortable in his own body. His supportive wife Gerda has turned into a celebrated artist by painting portraits of Lili, but now she must come to terms with losing her husband. This beautifully staged but somewhat risk-free biopic was adapted from David Ebershoff's book. Just why the author felt compelled to take real-life characters and heavily fictionalise their lives, is beyond my understanding. However, the lack of authenticity is not the film's only flaw. Considering how edgy and groundbreaking Lili was at the time, the events unfold with a surprising lack of drama. Eddie Redmayne, who is conveniently pretty for the role, gives a great performance, even if it includes a bit too much sighing and grinning to my liking. The Oscar winning Alicia Vikander is wonderful as Gerda.

Daddy's Home
2015
***
Director: Sean Anders
Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Linda Cardellini, Scarlett Estevez, Owen Vaccaro, Thomas Haden Church, Hannibal Buress, Bobby Cannavale

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg combined well in The Other Guys, and here they play another odd couple. The mild-mannered Brad (Ferrell) loves to be a dad, even if the children are not his own. Just when he's starting to bond with his wife's son and daughter, their manly and laid-back biological father Dusty (Wahlberg) returns to the family's lives. Once you know the set-up, this family comedy really doesn't offer any surprises. It may be formulaic, but there are enough amusing scenes and performances (Thomas Haden Church is hilarious as Brad's boss) to keep you entertained for 90 minutes. Amidst all this, the wife character is very poorly written. Followed by a 2017 sequel.

Crimson Peak
2015
**½
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver, Burn Gorman, Jonathan Hyde, Leslie Hope

In the turn of the 20th century, a mysterious English baronet comes to Buffalo with his frosty sister and woos Edith Cushing, the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Could this man be what Edith's mother's ghost has warned her about? You bet. Guillermo del Toro's gothic romantic ghost story is wonderfully acted and visually spectacular, but its script is disappointingly predictable. The audience is always a few steps ahead of Edith, who is supposed to be a smart and educated young woman. Although this ignorance feeds the central mystery, it becomes tiresome in the long run.

Concussion
2015
**½
Director: Peter Landesman
Cast: Will Smith, Alec Baldwin, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Arliss Howard, Paul Reiser, Luke Wilson, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, David Morse, Albert Brooks

When a Nigerian-born forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu concludes that a number of former football players died as a result of repeated head trauma during their playing careers, the news does not go down well with the National Football League. Peter Landesman's fact-based drama is based on Game Brain, a 2009 GQ article by Jeanne Marie Laskas. The topic is compelling and eye-opening, but the resulting film is long and laborious. The side plot tells us how Dr. Omalu met his wife, but the couple seem to spend all their time talking about the case.

Chappie
2015
***½
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Ninja, Yolandi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Sigourney Weaver, Hugh Jackman

After the excellent District 9 and the awful Elysium, Neill Blomkamp returns to form with another science fiction story set in Johannesburg. In the near future, robots known as Scouts enforce the law in the city. Their creator now hopes to test his next generation artificial intelligence in a scrapped Scout body, but he is kidnapped by a group of thugs who want something else. Chappie turns out to be like a human child: curious, susceptible to influence, and in want of love and care. Blomkamp's third feature is either wonderfully unpredictable or all over the place, I can't quite decide which. It starts off like RoboCop, as a grim depiction of a future where humanity fights crime with machines. The competing remotely controlled Moose robot even looks like ED-209 from Paul Verhoeven's classic. Once Chappie is activated, the film becomes a different beast, something that is closer to A.I., a moving story of an unorthodox family. Can people care about machines? Can machines care about people? Do we like these characters enough to care about the questions? Chappie is definitely a cute and funny character, but it's harder to relate to the people on screen.

Carol
2015
*****
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy, Kyle Chandler

Therese, a young aspiring photographer, works in a department store, where she meets Carol, an older woman who is going through a nasty divorce. Todd Haynes' exquisite drama about forbidden love in the 1950s is pretty much perfect in all departments. The screenplay by Phyllis Nagy (from Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt) is excellent, the performances are superb, the sets and costumes are beautiful, and the score by Carter Burwell is hauntingly moving.

Brooklyn
2015
***
Director: John Crowley
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters, Jessica Paré, Bríd Brennan, Fiona Glascott, Jane Brennan

In the early 1950s, a young Irish woman Eilis Lacey leaves her mother and sister behind and emigrates to Brooklyn, New York. Just when she is over her homesickness and begins to find her feet, she is forced to return home, where things are not as they were. This romantic coming-of-age story is likeable and well-acted, but its dramatic stakes are extremely low on both continents. Immigration stories traditionally depict hardship, but Eilis deals purely with first world problems. Visually, John Crowley's film looks like a cheap TV production. Nick Hornby scripted from Colm Tóibín's 2009 novel.

Bridge of Spies
2015
***
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda, Sebastian Koch, Scott Shepherd, Austin Stowell, Billy Magnussen, Eve Hewson, Jesse Plemons, Mikhail Gorevoy

In the early 1960s, a few years after defending a convicted Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, insurance lawyer James B. Donovan is sent to East Berlin to negotiate a prisoner exchange between his former client and Gary Powers, US pilot who was shot down over the USSR. This fact-based drama was scripted by Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen. Much like Lincoln, Steven Spielberg's previous work, this is a fascinating look into one brief moment in history, but the film itself is long and not terribly exciting. Tom Hanks is reliably good in the lead, but he could play this type of role in his sleep. Mark Rylance won an Academy Award for his warm and laconic performance as Abel.

Black Mass
2015
**½
Director: Scott Cooper
Cast: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rory Cochrane, Kevin Bacon, Jesse Plemons, Corey Stoll, Peter Sarsgaard, Dakota Johnson

James "Whitey" Bulger's ruthless crime organisation ruled South Boston from the mid 70s to the mid 90s, thanks to an unusual agreement with the FBI who agreed to leave Bulger alone in exchange for information on the rivaling Italian mob. Just because this gritty crime story is based on fact, doesn't mean it makes for a believable drama. I can accept the FBI looking away for a year, but not for 20 years. As a result, the film turns dull and repetitive, and the two-faced FBI agent/Bulger's childhood friend John Connolly becomes an incredibly irritating character. The narrated autobiographical style owes a great debt to GoodFellas, the benchmark for all modern gangster movies. I wish I could report that Johnny Depp makes a return to form, but I found his hair and makeup so distractingly awful that I couldn't concentrate on his performance. Based on the book Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill.

The Big Short
2015
**½
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Melissa Leo, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Finn Wittrock, Marisa Tomei, Tracy Letts

Prior to the global financial crisis in 2008, a number of disparate Wall Street traders make a cynical but extremely profitable move and put their money on the collapse of the housing market. In the recent years, Margin Call (fiction) and Inside Job (documentary) have dealt with the topic, and Martin Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street turned the world of high finance into an outrageous black comedy. Adam McKay's uneven concoction, which aims to inform and entertain, lands somewhere between these three. We find ourselves laughing at the complete systemic failure, being disgusted about the moral corruption displayed by the banks, and feeling conflicted about the central characters who play the system. The epilogue reveals that many of them felt bad about their actions, right after pocketing millions of dollars. McKay has made his name with a series of dumb Will Ferrell comedies, so it is no surprise that he bites more than he can chew with this fact-based grown-up film, especially with his distracting stylistic choices. Several characters break the fourth wall and a handful celebrities (for example, Selena Gomez and Anthony Bourdain) appear as themselves to explain difficult financial concepts. McKay and Charles Randolph won an Academy Award for their adaptation of Michael Lewis's book.

Beasts of No Nation
2015
****
Director: Gary Fukunaga
Cast: Idris Elba, Abraham Attah, Kurt Egyiawan, Jude Akuwudike, Emmanuel "King King" Nii Adom Quaye, Ama K. Abebrese, Kobina Amissa-Sam, Grace Nortey

As civil war rages somewhere in West Africa, Agu's family members go into exile or get killed, and the young boy himself is forced to join a rebel batallion led by the charismatic Commandant. Cary Fukunaga's gripping and unfliching drama about a child soldier who is robbed of his childhood was adapted from a novel by Uzodinma Iweala. Fukunaga's film doesn't hide any deeper meaning, he simply tells a harrowing straightforward story rarely seen in mainstream cinema. Idris Elba, the only familiar face in the cast, gives a very commanding performance as Commandant, but the 14-year-old Abraham Attah is the real star of the film. His transformation from an innocent child to a killer is quite extraordinary.

Avengers: Age of Ultron
2015
**½
Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders, Anthony Mackie, Hayley Atwell, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgård, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson

The Avengers from three years ago seems like a distant memory. The story here picks up from the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. After the Avengers retrieve Loki's sceptre, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner secretly experiment with the highly developed artificial intelligence they discover within its gem. Needless to say, it doesn't end well. Ultron takes control, builds an army and sets out to destroy humanity in order to save the world. Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America all get their moment in the spotlight, Black Widow and Hawkeye are given meatier backstories, and Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch make their first appearances. The events depicted here have long-reaching repercussions in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the movie itself is one of the more mechanical ones in the Marvel roster. Joss Whedon could have partly saved this with some first-rate set pieces, but his fastly edited CGI overload drains all the fun and credibility, not to mention gravity, out of the run-of-the-mill action scenes.

Ant-Man
2015
***½
Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Peña, Tip "T.I." Harris, Anthony Mackie, Wood Harris, Judy Greer, David Dastmalchian, Michael Douglas

Scott Lang is a good-hearted ex-con who tries to reconnect with his daughter. To make ends meet, he breaks into the house of Dr Hank Pym, only to find a mysterious suit. And hence, Ant-Man is born. Not only can the suit shrink and grow him at the push of a button, but he can speak to ants. The adventures of Marvel's newest superhero bring back memories from films such as The Incredible Shrinking Man, Fantastic Voyage, and Innerspace. The premise is goofy and outlandish, the hero is funny and likeable, and the franchise seems like one of the studio's more original ones. However, like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, the movie ends with a battle in which the hero fights an evil version of himself. Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish wrote the original script, which was then rewritten by Adam McKay and Paul Rudd.

Anomalisa
2015
****½
Director: Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson
Cast: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan

Michael Stone is a renowned customer service guru who seems to have lost all joy in his life. He has grown distant from his wife and son, and every man and woman around him appears to look and sound the same, except for Lisa, one of the guests in his hotel in Cincinnati. This captivating stop motion animation was written and co-directed by Charlie Kaufman. Like his previous work in Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it deals with memories and identity. Do the hours that Michael and Lisa spend together symbolise a failed romantic relationship in microcosm? Is Michael having a mental breakdown or is some or all of it his hallucinatory dream? Kaufman and Johnson's funny and unsettling film doesn't offer easy answers.

X-Men: Days of Future Past
2014
***
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart

In 2023, robots knows as Sentinels are wiping out the entire mutant population. Using her powers, Kitty Pryde sends Wolverine's consciousness back in time to 1973 to halt the development of the Sentinels. The follow-up to X-Men: First Class brings together the casts of the original X-Men series and the prequels. Before I could figure out how Professor X is alive in the future and how Magneto has restored his powers, my head went spinning from the alternate timeline which wipes out most of what I have seen in the original trilogy and The Wolverine. Taken as a standalone movie, this is an entertaining time travel adventure, even if the plot rips off Terminator. However, as part of the X-Men franchise, this is a confusing bundle of contradictions. Followed by X-Men: Apocalypse.

Wild
2014
***
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Keene McRae, Michiel Huisman, W. Earl Brown, Jan Hoag, Gaby Hoffmann, Kevin Rankin

Following the death of her mother, Cheryl Strayed's life and marriage fell apart. In 1995, without any prior experience, she embarked on a gruelling 1,100 mile solo hike from the Mojave Desert to the Oregon–Washington state border along the Pacific Crest Trail. This autobiographical drama is based on Strayed's book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which Nick Hornby adapted to the screen. On a conceptual level, the film delivers a fascinating journey into self-discovery. In practice, however, it depicts a long and slightly underwhelming walk, which occasionally moves as slow as the protagonist. The story sadly cannot offer the dramatic impact and spiritual weight of Into the Wild. Reese Witherspoon gives a brilliant performance, though.

Whiplash
2014
*****
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist, Austin Stowell, Nate Lang, Chris Mulkey

Andrew Neiman is determined to become the best jazz drummer in the world. He hopes to realise his dream in the Shaffer Conservatory under the gruelling and abusive counsel of Terence Fletcher. The young drummer is willing to sacrifice everything else in his life to focus on his goal and his mentor is prepared to push his students beyond their comfort limit. Damien Chazelle's partly autobiographical film is a wonderfully dynamic character drama which plays out like a thriller and makes your foot tap at the same time. Miles Teller showed great promise in The Spectacular Now and he is excellent here. And so is Simmons, who won an Oscar for his ferocious performance. The film won additional Academy Awards for editing and sound mixing.

While We're Young
2014
****
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Grodin, Brady Corbet, Ryan Serhant, Maria Dizzia, Adam Horovitz, Peter Yarrow

Josh and Cornelia, a childless couple in their 40s, appear to have nothing in common with their long-time friends who have a baby. A sudden and surprising friendship with 20-somethings Jamie and Darby feels all the more like a breath of fresh air. Josh is a struggling documentary filmmaker who begins to regain his confidence when he helps Jamie shoot a Catfish-like personal documentary about his old high school friend. After the grating Greenberg and Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach makes his most accessible film to date. This is a funny and well-observed comedy about getting old and about authenticity in life and art. Being roughly the same age as Baumbach, I find it is easy to relate to his depiction of the joys and humiliations of middle age. His film is peppered with several lovely sight gags about generational differences. For example, what Josh and Cornelia consider as outdated and impractical relics (typewriters, VHS tapes, and LPs), Jamie and Darby cherish as hipster treasures.

Unbroken
2014
***
Director: Angelina Jolie
Cast: Jack O'Connell, Domhnall Gleeson, Miyavi, Garrett Hedlund, Finn Wittrock, Jai Courtney, Luke Treadaway, Spencer Lofranco, Travis Jeffery, Jordan Patrick Smith, John Magaro

Before WW2, Louis Zamperini was a promising athlete who ran in the Berlin Olympics. A few years into the war, he was a bombardier who survived a plane crash at sea, only to be sent to a POW camp in Japan. This inspirational true story about perseverance and determination is based on Laura Hillenbrand's 2010 book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, and it took four screenwriters (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese, and William Nicholson ) to adapt it to the screen. Angelina Jolie's harrowing drama is beautifully staged and well-acted, but overlong and somewhat monotonous. It becomes clear that Zamperini endured a tremendous amount of physical pain and suffering, but we never get inside his head to understand what he was thinking or how he managed to survived his ordeal. The film is divided into three distinctive sections, which could be described as Chariots of Fire, Life of Pi, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Transcendence
2014
***
Director: Wally Pfister
Cast: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Morgan Freeman, Cliff Collins, Jr., Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy, Cole Hauser, Xander Berkeley

A scientist couple Will and Evelyn Caster are on the brink of developing a sentient computer, when Will is poisoned by anti-technology extremists. Just before he dies, Evelyn uploads Will's consciousness to a computer and connects it to the Internet. Cinematographer Wally Pfister's directorial debut is a stylish and thoughtful science fiction film, which is easier to admire than to like. What his debut, adapted from Jack Paglen's much-hyped original screenplay, lacks in action and proper characterisation, it makes up for in smarts. Although the story takes the occasional dumb or melodramatic turn, it remains consistently intriguing and ambivalent. Who is on the side of good here? Is it the artificial intelligence that wants to control everything or the terrorists who see the same machine as a no-turn-around point for humanity?

The Theory of Everything
2014
**½
Director: James Marsh
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, David Thewlis, Maxine Peake, Harry Lloyd, Guy Oliver-Watts, Abigail Cruttenden

In 1963, Stephen Hawking is working on his thesis and falling in love with Jane Wilde, when he is diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given two years to live. We now know that Hawking became a celebrated theoretical physicist and died at the age of 76. Hollywood traditionally churns out tragic but uplifting biopics about brilliant artists and scientists whose lives are burdened or cut short by a) a crippling illness, b) prejudice, c) substance abuse, or d) premature death. This one belongs firmly in category a) together with the likes of A Beautiful Mind or My Left Foot. Anthony McCarten's script is based on Jane Wilde Hawking's book Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, and it shows how Jane has to put her own life on the back burner in order to see to the needs of her husband, which eventually takes its toll on the marriage. While James Marsh doesn't tell the usual love-heals-all-wounds story, his film lacks edge and originality. Once again a brilliant mind overcomes adversity and triumphs, but what makes Hawking so important? Marsh fails to answer the question, so the end result is not much more than a disease-of-the-week movie. It is extremely well acted, though. Eddie Redmayne's incredible physical transformation earned him an Oscar.

Tales of the Grim Sleeper
2014
***½
Director: Nick Broomfield
Cast:

In 2010, Lonnie Franklin Jr., 57-year-old mechanic from South Central Los Angeles was arrested. Franklin, nicknamed Grim Sleeper, was charged with ten counts of murder but had possibly killed more than a hundred women over a twenty-five-year period. Nick Broomfield and his camera crew interview Franklin's friends, neighbours, community members, and surviving victims to profile the killer and to paint a grim picture of police ineptitude and institutional racism. The documentary argues that the LAPD was indifferent to his murder spree because the victims were prostitutes and drug addicts from the poorest part of the city, and the authorities could have saved numerous lives by merely letting the public know that a serial killer was operating in the neighbourhood.

Still Alice
2014
****
Director: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland
Cast: Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish

Alice Howland is a 50-year-old lingustics professor who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. Alice gradually loses words, memories and her cognitive abilities, but desperately attempts to hang on to her personality and her dignity. In the meanwhile, her husband and three grown-up children deal with their feelings of guilt and helplessness. This sounds like prime material for a disease-of-the-week TV movie, but as heartbreaking as this drama is, it never threatens to become a manipulative weepy. Alice's deterioration is depicted in a subtle fashion with cinematic tools. Julianne Moore gives a terrifically nuanced lead performance, which earned her an Academy Award. The directors adapted their screenplay from Lisa Genova's novel.

Sharknado 2: The Second One
2014
***
Director: Anthony C. Ferrante
Cast: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Vivica A. Fox, Kari Wuhrer, Mark McGrath, Robert Hays, Kelly Osbourne, Judah Friedlander

Fin, the heroic bar keeper from the first shark attack, is flying to New York City with his ex-wife when another freak storm hits the east coast. This time his sister and her family are in need of rescue. The sequel to the cleverly stupid Sharknado offers more of the same, and then some. During the year between the releases, the special effects have not suddenly become special and the performances have not improved one bit. However, The Second One offers a number of amusing cameos, better sight gags, funnier jokes, and more inventive carnage. Followed by Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No.

Selma
2014
***½
Director: Ava DuVernay
Cast: David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, Carmen Ejogo, Giovanni Ribisi, Alessandro Nivola, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Tim Roth, Oprah Winfrey

In 1965, civil rights activists attempt to stage a non-violent voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. One of the leaders of the movement, Martin Luther King, struggles with an awful paradox; the more police brutality the demonstrators face, the more likely they are to reach their ultimate goal. Ava DuVernay's conventional but captivating real-life drama depicts one of the key moments in the African American history. David Oyelowo gives a commanding performance as Dr. King, who is portrayed as a vulnerable human being but as a saintly and infallible political leader. The moving Glory by John Legend and Common won an Academy Award for best original song.

Rio 2
2014
*½
Director: Carlos Saldanha
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, Leslie Mann, Bruno Mars, Jemaine Clement, George Lopez, Jamie Foxx, will.i.am

Some time after the events of Rio, Blue, Jewel and their three children travel to the Amazon where Jewel is reunited with her father. To call this animation sequel formulaic and mechanical is an understatement. It not only repeats the beats of the first movie but of all the movies that came before it. It transports the same cast of characters to the jungle where they have nothing to do because the song and dance numbers take so much time. Blu is once again out of his comfort zone, this time in the scary wilderness where he must try to beat his romantic rival and impress his grumpy father-in-law.

Red Army
2014
***
Director: Gabe Polsky
Cast:

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country's national ice hockey team had comprehensively dominated the sport for more than 30 years. The team was a division of the Red Army and they could train together all year round, which helped them to win nearly every World Championship and Olympic title during this period. Gabe Polsky's interesting documentary tells the story of the Red Army team from the early 1970s to the early 1990 through the eyes of its long-time captain Slava Fetisov. Although Fetisov is a charismatic athlete, he is not the easiest person to interview, but his life includes some moving twists. The film is inevitably also a story about the Cold War. In fact, I would have liked to see more ice hockey and less politics on the screen.

Planes: Fire & Rescue
2014
*½
Director: Roberts Gannaway
Cast: Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Brad Garrett, Danny Mann, Teri Hatcher, Julie Bowen, Ed Harris, Wes Studi, Dale Dye

The sequel to the highly unoriginal Planes is not only computer-animated but computer-scripted and computer-directed. Following the first film and Cars before it, it is simply incredible that Disney has the audacity to tell the same exact story for the third time in eight years. Now Dusty Crophopper is forced to withdraw from racing due to a broken gearbox. He ends up travelling to Piston Peak National Park to be trained as a firefighter. Once again the cocky hero is mentored by a gruffy old timer who is haunted by a personal tragedy.

Phoenix
2014
***
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf, Michael Maertens, Imogen Kogge

After the war, a disfigured Holocaust survivor returns to Berlin with a new face to look for her husband, who turned her in to the Nazis. He doesn't recognise the woman, but instead wants to use her to get his hands on the (believed to be) dead wife's money. The fifth collaboration between Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss is an interesting but flawed film noir which follows in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. This heartbreaking story cries out for big emotions, but Petzold treats it as a purely intellectual exercise. The central premise that a man does not recognize his own wife when only her face has changed stretches credibility to its limits. Nevertheless, Nina Hoss gives another stellar performance and the final scene is very powerful. Loosely based on Hubert Monteilhet's 1961 novel Le Retour des Cendres, which was previously filmed as Return from the Ashes (1965).

Paddington
2014
****½
Director: Paul King
Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Nicole Kidman, Ben Whishaw

A British explorer discovers a rare and intelligent species of bears in the darkest regions of Peru. Years later, a young bear arrives in London to seek the explorer, but he finds the city less hospitable than he imagined. This lovely British family film seamlessly mixes live action and digital animation to bring the world of Michael Bond's Paddington Bear books to life. The film is funny and inventive, and the characters - the family Brown, the nosy neighbour, the evil taxidermist, and obviously Paddington himself - are all wonderfully drawn. Followed by Paddington 2.

The November Man
2014
**½
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey, Olga Kurylenko, Eliza Taylor, Caterina Scorsone, Bill Smitrovich, Will Patton, Mediha Musliovic, Amila Terzimehic

A disillusioned CIA agent Peter Devereaux comes out of retirement to extract an asset who has damning intel on a Russian General who is likely to become the country's next president. When things go pear-shaped, Devereaux has both the Russians and the CIA on his heels. This political thriller updates Bill Granger's 1979 novel There Are No Spies to the present day. The resulting film is believable and adequately entertaining but too derivative to leave a lasting impression. Roger Donaldson, the veteran behind No Way Out and Thirteen Days, is no stranger to the genre, and Pierce Brosnan can play the role of a weathered agent with his eyes closed.

Non-Stop
2014
**½
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Scoot McNairy, Michelle Dockery, Nate Parker, Jason Butler Harner, Anson Mount, Linus Roache, Corey Still, Lupita Nyong'o

Liam Neeson continues in the action hero mode and this time his plane is Taken. He plays Bill Marks, a semi-alcoholic air marshal, who receives a threatening text during a transatlantic flight. A passenger dies every 20 minutes unless \$150M are wired to an offshore bank account. As Marks attempts to find the sender on board, his increasingly erratic behaviour begins to turn the crew and passengers against him. This claustrophobic thriller follows in the footsteps of Flightplan. It is set almost entirely inside an aircraft and it features a plot which is absolutely ridiculous, to say the least. Jaume Collet-Serra builds suspense very capably, but when the big reveal comes, the questions Why? and How? remain poorly answered?

Noah
2014
**
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Madison Davenport

Noah learns of God's plan to wipe the wickedness from the Earth with a great flood and embarks on a project to build a massive ark which can save his family and two of every living creature, but doom the rest of humanity to extinction. He gets help from the Watchers, fallen angels who look like the stone giants in The Hobbit. Darren Aronofsky's retelling of the legend of Noah's Ark is a fantastical rather than a biblical epic. The script by Aronofsky and Ari Handel mixes elements from the Book of Genesis, the Book of Enoch, and pure fiction to imagine how this well-known myth could have literally happened. The screenwriters even manage to throw in some anachronistic contemporary issues like environmentalism and vegetarianism. The resulting spectacle is big, bombastic, stupid and ridiculous, but it is not totally without entertainment value.

Nightcrawler
2014
****
Director: Dan Gilroy
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, Bill Paxton, Ann Cusack, Kevin Rahin, Kathleen York, Eric Lange

A lowlife thief named Louis Bloom buys a police radio scanner and a camcorder and begins to shoot graphic footage of accidents and crime scenes, which he sells to a local news station. As Bloom's morally corrupt business is blooming, his ruthless methods become increasingly questionable. Screenwriter Dan Gilroy's directorial debut is a stylish and gruesome noir thriller set in Los Angeles. The nocturnal setting (beautifully shot by Robert Elswit) shares a visual kinship with Collateral and Drive, and the script offers an Information Age variation of the story in The Public Eye. This is a captivating but extremely cynical film with a terrific central performance by Jake Gyllenhaal. Bloom, who has no character arc, is a creep in the beginning, a creep in the middle, and a creep in the end.

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
2014
**
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Dan Stevens, Ben Kingsley, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais, Rebel Wilson, Skyler Gisondo, Rami Malek, Patrick Callagher, Mizuo Peck

Night at the Museum was good harmless fun, but it didn't cry out for a sequel. No surprise then that Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian turned out to be an utterly boring retread of the first movie. The third and final part of the series offers one or two enjoyable gags, but it is unable to make a case for its existence, just like the first sequel. Now the Tablet of Ahkmenra, which brings the museum exhibits to life, is starting to lose its powers. Larry the night watchman, his son, and some of the exhibits must take the tablet to the British Museum in London.

Neighbors
2014
*
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Cast: Seth Rogen, Zac Efron, Rose Byrne, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Dave Franco, Ike Barinholtz, Carla Gallo, Jerrod Carmichael, Craig Roberts, Lisa Kudrow

Mac, Kelly, and their baby girl Stella live in a quiet neighbourhood, but one day Delta Psi Beta, a fraternity known for excessive partying, moves next door. This is a fruitful premise, but this painfully unfunny and predictable comedy doesn't come up with anything inventive, just the usual drink, drug and sex-related gags. It's superficially about growing up, but Mac and Kelly would rather just party along if it wasn't for the kid. Zac Efron may be a man of many talents, but comedy is not one of them. Followed by Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016).

Muppets Most Wanted
2014
**
Director: James Bobin
Cast: Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey, Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz, Bill Barretta, David Rudman, Matt Vogel, Peter Linz, Jemaine Clement, Ray Liotta, Salma Hayek

After wrapping their funny big screen comeback, the Muppets plan a sequel which they know won't be quite as good as the original. Oh boy, were they right. James Bobin returns to the director's chair but the follow-up is a lazily plotted and rarely amusing series of star cameos. Bret McKenzie has penned the songs again, but they have lost their spark. This time the Muppets hire a new manager Dominic Badguy who takes them on a European tour. It is a scheme to replace Kermit with Constantine, the most dangerous frog in the world, so they can use the show as a front to steal the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman
2014
***½
Director: Rob Minkoff
Cast: Ty Burrell, Max Charles, Ariel Winter, Leslie Mann, Stephen Colbert, Allison Janney

Mr. Peabody is a super-smart dog, and an inspiring but somewhat over-protective adoptive father to a seven-year-old human boy named Sherman. Their relationship is put to a test when Sherman creates chaos by taking their time machine for a spin without permission. These likeable characters made their first appearance in the 1960s in an animated TV series The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Now they return in a feature length computer animation. Their film is not terribly original, but it delivers 90 minutes of smart and educational fun for children and parents alike. During the wacky time travels, there are amusingly anachronistic encounters with the likes of Marie Antoinette, George Washington, Leonardo da Vinci and King Tut.

A Most Wanted Man
2014
**
Director: Anton Corbijn
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Homayoun Ershadi, Nina Hoss, Daniel Brühl

While the German authorities are eager to detain a suspected Chechen terrorist who has just arrived in Hamburg, covert intelligence agent Günther Bachmann wants to use the man to catch a bigger fish. Like the criminally overrated Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, this is another dull and slow-paced espionage drama based on a John le Carré novel. The story, which is predictably cynical and disappointingly uneventful, drags itself slowly towards its inevitable conclusion. Bachmann is a brooding, disillusioned, hard smoking, and heavy drinking spy who attempts to make amends for past mistakes. In other words, he is a walking talking cliché. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays him with a mumbly German accent in one of his final and least memorable performances.

A Most Violent Year
2014
***½
Director: J.C. Chandor
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Alessandro Nivola, Albert Brooks, Elyes Gabel, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ashley Williams, Jerry Adler, Christopher Abbott

J.C. Chandor's understated New York drama tells a fictional story, which feels totally authentic. It's set in 1981, which had one of the highest crime rates in the city's history. Against this backdrop, Oscar Isaac gives a commanding performance as an idealistic heating-oil dealer whose entire livelihood hangs in the balance when his fuel trucks get repeatedly hijacked. Like All Is Lost, Chandor's previous film, this is another tale of one man against the elements, which in this case are crime, corruption, and prejudice.

The Monuments Men
2014
*½
Director: George Clooney
Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, Cate Blanchett, Sam Hazeldine, Dimitri Leonidas

Towards the end of WW2, the Allies form a special unit who are sent to Europe and tasked to autheticate and rescue priceless works of art from the Nazis before the pieces are forever hidden or destroyed. George Clooney's fifth directorial work brings to light a little known and interesting footnote of history, and that's just about the only positive thing I can say about his film, which is tonally all over the place. This is primarily a lighthearted caper, but every now and then this group of curators and art historians come face to face with the horrors of war. Unfortunately the characters are so poorly sketched and so drably played that when someone dies, my first thought is that they were known as the Monuments Men because they were so lifeless. Clooney and Grant Heslov scripted from the book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter.

A Million Ways to Die in the West
2014
**½
Director: Seth MacFarlane
Cast: Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman, Liam Neeson

Albert Stark is a nerdy sheep farmer who hates living in the Wild West. To add insult to injury, Albert's girlfriend dumps him and he unwittingly falls for a gunslinger's wife. Seth MacFarlane's follow-up to Ted is another gross-out comedy, which rolls out a predictable collection of sex, drug, and fart jokes. There are some funny and clever observations and anachronisms, but the script is formulaic and the film is about 30 minutes too long. MacFarlane, who gives his first live action lead performance, is not a terribly charismatic screen presence.

Mielensäpahoittaja (The Grump)
2014
**
Director: Dome Karukoski
Cast: Antti Litja, Petra Frey, Mari Perankoski, Iikka Forss, Viktor Drevitski, Kari Ketonen, Mikko Neuvonen, Bruno Puolakainen, Janne Reinikainen, Alina Tomnikov

The elderly nameless protagonist is an old school hick who is permanently at odds with the modern world. After injuring himself in a fall, he is forced to live with his son's family in the city. In Tuomas Kyrö's enjoyable radio plays and books, this old grump was a lonely disgruntled voice who vented out his frustrations in several comically observed letters. The film adaptation attempts to turn this subjective observer into a believable three-dimensional character, and the end result is like a reverse Mr. Chance, an old man who is blissfully unaware how rude, annoying, and politically incorrect he is. In the process, Dome Karukoski has changed the genre from comedy to drama. However, I didn't find myself laughing or touched. Maybe the books are simply unfilmable.

Maps to the Stars
2014
***½
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Olivia Williams, Evan Bird, Sarah Gadon, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Kiara Glasco, Jonathan Watton

A mysterious burn-scarred young woman secures a job as a PA to a fading actress, who is desperate to star in remake of a film which made her late mother famous. At the same time, a 13-year-old star of a hit movie is struggling with the sequel, his addiction, and his controlling parents. David Cronenberg's creepy satirical drama takes a scathing look at the dark underbelly of Hollywood. The screenplay by Bruce Wagner, who has turned this topic into a career, deals with the desires, obsessions, and insecurities of the inbred Hollywood elite, and it reveals the ugly truth behind the glamorous facade. There really isn't a single likeable character on screen, but this is a funny and deliciously nasty film with some first class performances (Moore, Wasikowska and Bird).

Maleficent
2014
**½
Director: Robert Stromberg
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, Kenneth Cranham, Hannah New, Brenton Thwaites

In a world where humans and magical creatures live in isolation from one another, a kindhearted fairy Maleficent and a human boy Stefan form a rare bond. When the grown-up Stefan betrays Maleficent to become King, she turns dark and curses his daughter Aurora to fall into deep sleep on her 16th birthday. Maleficent was the villain in Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959), and now the studio gives her a proper backstory. Robert Stromberg's directorial debut retells the same fairy tale, this time with a twist. If only that twist wasn't exactly the same one Frozen used last year. That feeling of familiarity extends to the candy-coloured visuals which could be from Alice in Wonderland, Avatar, Oz: The Great and Powerful, Snow White and the Huntsman, or any other recent fantasy film. Thanks to Jolie's strong screen presence, Maleficent at least becomes a compelling main character; It's her movie after all. Stefan, on the other hand, is a dull plot device whose personality is as unstable as his Scottish accent (I could swear it was Irish in the beginning). Aurora comes across as a slow-witted teenager who spends her days rolling in the grass or staring at the wonders of Moors with her mouth open.

The Magnificent Seven
2014
***
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Peter Sarsgaard, Haley Bennett

When a ruthless gold mining tycoon attempts to seize control of Rose Creek and its inhabitants, the townsfolk hire a group of gunmen to protect the town. This remake of the 1960 Western, which itself was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) puts a 21st century twist on the old story. That is, the group of seven are now a diverse group of men in terms of age, race, and ethnicity. The resulting Western is predictable and unspectacular, but it builds towards a long and entertaining climactic shootout.

Magic in the Moonlight
2014
**½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Hamish Linklater, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, Erica Leerhsen, Eileen Atkins, Simon McBurney

In the 1920s, a renowned magician is asked to travel to the French Riviera to expose a psychic medium as a fraud before she manages to take advantage of a wealthy American family. The magician is a skeptic misanthrope, but ultimately helpless to the charms of the beautiful clairvoyant. After the excellent Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen churns out another forgettable Europe-set romantic comedy. It brings together many of his recurrent themes (magic tricks and atheism, to mention a few), but the story and the characters are just too familiar to leave a lasting impression. Colin Firth and Emma Stone give likeable performances, but their 28-year age difference kills the romance.

Lucy
2014
***½
Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Choi Min-sik, Amr Waked, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Pilou Asbaek, Analeigh Tipton

Lucy is forced to become a drug mule and smuggle a bag of CPH4 from Taiwan to Europe. However, massive quantities of the drug end up in her blood stream and give access to suppressed mental and physical powers. Like the awful Limitless, Luc Besson's philosophical scifi action movie speculates what a person could do with full brain power. Besson's take on the subject offers extremely dubious science but entertaining fiction. Although the plot gets increasingly preposterous, this short, playful and fast-paced film kept a smile on my face throughout. Scarlett Johansson gives a terrific performance, which conveys both the pure terror of the first fifteen minutes and the cool confidence thereafter.

Love Is Strange
2014
***½
Director: Ira Sachs
Cast: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Charlie Tahan, Cheyenne Jackson, Harriet Sansom Harris, Darren Burrows, Christian Coulson, John Cullum

Ben and George, an elderly gay couple from New York, finally tie the knot. Their bliss is short-lived when George loses his job as a direct result of the marriage. The men are forced to sell their apartment, move apart, and lodge with their friends and relatives. This sweet romantic drama depicts a long-term grown-up relationship, which is refreshing when the cinema screens are usually occupied with young and beautiful people and their first rush of attraction. Ben and George must face new circumstances, but the love between them is never in doubt. On the contrary, when they are forced to live with their friends, they get to know them better than they would care to. The film is wonderfully acted but a bit slow-paced for its own good.

The Look of Silence
2014
**½
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Cast:

Joshua Oppenheimer's critically overpraised 2012 documentary The Act of Killing introduced us to some of the men behind the mass murder of Indonesian communists in the 1960s. This companion piece gives a voice to the victims, which was glaringly missing from the first film. A 44-year-old optometrist goes around the region to talk to the killers, who are now old men in need of an eye check (is the director telling me something?). During the process, he learns the grim fate of his older brother, who was stabbed, mutilated and thrown in the river. He also hears how the killers drank the blood of their victims so they could go on butchering without going insane. Oppenheimer's overlong and snail-paced second film offers more of the same, casual depiction of gory details without any emotional impact. The perpetrators show no signs of remorse, their families are proud rather than shocked, and the relatives of the victims do not seem that affected either. Oppenheimer keeps churning out documentaries, but the entire sociopathic nation would rather just forget the whole event.

Life Itself
2014
****
Director: Steve James
Cast:

A moving documentary about Roger Ebert (1942-2013), a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. The film is framed around the last few months of his life after his lower jaw had been surgically removed due to cancer. We learn how Ebert grows up and becomes the celebrated film writer, how he meets his wife Chaz, and how he turns into a household name with the TV show At the Movies, that he co-hosted with his fellow critic/favourite nemesis Gene Siskel (1946-1999). Very often documentaries about great artists reduce their subjects to a string of platitudes (for example, Lemmy and Altman). However, Steve James' warts and all film is a character portrait rather than a life and career overview. Ebert comes across as a resilient man who never loses his sense of humour.

The Lego Movie
2014
****
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Cast: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman

Emmet is a construction worker who lives in the city of Bricksburg. A prophecy claims that this uncreative and nondescript everyman is a special Master Builder who is destined for greatness. The famous Danish block manufacturer gives us 100 minutes of product placement, but thankfully also great entertainment for the whole family. Everything in this universe is made of Lego, and the twitchy visuals make it look like a stop motion animation. All the characters are wonderfully drawn and played, and they offer some suprising franchise cross-overs. The action moves at breakneck speed, which can be overwhelming and exhausting at times, but it also enables the film to squeeze in loads and loads of gags which demand repeated viewings.

The Legend of Hercules
2014
*
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Kellan Lutz, Gaia Weiss, Scott Adkins, Roxanne McKee, Liam Garrigan, Liam McIntyre, Johnathon Schaech, Rade Šerbedžija

Queen Alcmene hopes to end the warring ways of King Amphitryon by bearing a son to Zeus, who is to bring peace to Tiryns. (But before that we must watch 90 minutes of mechanical action scenes). Twenty years later, Hercules and his half-brother Iphicles are locked in a battle for the heart of the nation and of Hebe, princess of Crete. Renny Harlin's big budget action fantasy is ineptly scripted straight-to-DVD material which steals freely from recent hit films. In the midsection, Hercules becomes a slave who fights his way to freedom. This is lifted straight from Gladiator, and some of the scenes with Kenneth Cranham (who takes over the Oliver Reed role) copy the original almost frame to frame. And if the frequent battle scenes of skimpily dressed men with their spears, swords and shields are not enough to bring back memories of 300, Harlin's overuse of the speed up and and slow down effect certainly is. Kellan Lutz makes for a wooden Hercules, and the rest of the cast do not fare much better. Admittedly, the dialogue is so clunky that even the most accomplished thespian would fail to polish this turd.

Kingsman: The Secret Service
2014
***½
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Taron Egerton, Michael Caine, Sophie Cookson, Sofia Boutella, Samantha Womack, Mark Hamill, Jack Davenport

Just as Internet billionaire Richmond Valentine is getting ready to carry out his diabolical plan, a smart but troubled young man named Eggsy is offered a chance to follow in his father's footsteps and join Kingsman, a privately financed organisation of gentleman spies. Like Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn's latest subversive action romp is based on a comic book by Mark Millar (and Dave Gibbons). The set-up with the Kingsman organisation reminded me of the Fraternity in the awful Wanted, which was incidentally also based on Millar's work, but thankfully not too much. Vaughn's movie is a perfectly entertaining way to spend two hours, but apart from a memorably gruesome action set piece inside a church, it doesn't really offer anything I haven't seen before. Followed by Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

John Wick
2014
**
Director: Chad Stahelski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Adrianne Palicki, Bridget Moynahan, Dean Winters, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Willem Dafoe

John Wick is an ex-hitman. When the reckless son of a Russian mobster steals his car and kills his dog, the last gift from his dead wife, John must come out of retirement and wipe out the entire crime family. Chad Stahelski is a former stunt man. His monotonous directorial debut follows in the footsteps of Taken and other similar revenge fantasies. This is an old school action movie without a single properly drawn character. The bad guys are stupid and evil, and the hero is an emotionless badass. They have one thing in common: they are all unpleasant and charmless. Inventive action scenes would help, but there is nothing new at display. As far as I can tell, John's special skill is shooting in the head from point blank range. Followed by three sequels.

It Follows
2014
****½
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Cast: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe, Debbie Williams

Jay learns that she has contracted a sexually transmitted demon that shapeshifts and follows her at a walking pace wherever she goes. The thing will kill her unless she can pass it to the next person. Numerous entries in the horror genre have used vampires or zombies as a metaphor for AIDS, and any kind of sexual relations traditionally lead to an early grave. David Robert Mitchell's clever and creepy movie turns these expectations on their head. Although sex is the cause and cure for the predicament, promiscuity is the only way out.

The Interview
2014
*½
Director: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Cast: James Franco, Seth Rogen, Lizzy Caplan, Randall Park, Diana Bang, Timothy Simons, Reese Alexander, Anders Holm, James Yi, Paul Bae

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a massive fan of Skylark Tonight, a popular but meatheaded American talk show. When Dave Skylark and his producer Aaron Rapaport secure an exclusive interview with Kim, the CIA persuade the duo to assassinate the dictator while they're at it. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's second movie is cut from the same cloth as their disappointing debut This Is the End. There is a clever if outlandish premise which is quickly thrown aside to make way for the usual jokes about dicks and anal penetration, intercut with scenes of violent diarrhea and comically severed body parts. Despite the fruitful set-up, Rogen and Goldberg do not make the faintest attempt to create a political satire, instead they settle for the lowest common denominator humour. James Franco gives a career low performance as the talk show host. This poor man's Spies Like Us will probably be best remember for the cancelled theatrical release when Sony Pictures received a number of online threats.

Interstellar
2014
*****
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, David Gyasi, Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn, Matt Damon, Michael Caine

As the ravaged Earth is running out of food, NASA sends a space ship to a wormhole near Saturn in order to discover a potentially habitable planet. Cooper, an astronaut-turned-farmer, gets back to what he knows best, but he must leave his son and daughter behind to go on a long mission, which may create a massive time dilation in relation to Earth. This long and complex science fiction scenario, scripted by Christopher Nolan together with his brother Jonathan, deals with some massive global and cosmic issues, but it's ultimately a moving story about the people at the centre of it all. It is recognisably a Nolan film with a bit of M. Night Shyamalan thrown in for good measure. However, one film it most resembles is James Cameron's The Abyss, another insanely ambitious and awe-inspiring spectacle with an ending you either love or hate. The performances are excellent, Hans Zimmer's score is haunting, the visuals are stunning, and the director stages several nail-biting set pieces on the ground and in space. The harrowing dust storms in the beginning were inspired by the Dust Bowl, and Nolan incorporates real interviews from Ken Burns' 2012 documentary on the subject. An Academy Award winner for best visual effects.

Inherent Vice
2014
**
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio del Toro, Jena Malone, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short

It's 1970 in Los Angeles. Larry "Doc" Sportello is a full-time stoner and part-time shrink and private investigator. His latest case is set in motion by Doc's ex-girlfriend who suspects that her lover's wife and her lover are going to have the husband, a wealthy real estate mogul, committed to a mental institution. Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel follows in the footsteps of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. It's one of those mood pieces where the journey is more important than the destination. Unfortunately the journey is way too long and frankly dull. The film looks and sounds terrific, though.

The Imitation Game
2014
***½
Director: Morten Tyldum
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Charles Dance, Mark Strong, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, James Northcote

During WW2, Alan Turing joins the Bletchley Park cryptography team who are in a race against time to crack the German Enigma machine and win the war. Turing has a brilliant mind but a difficult personality, not least because he is forced to conceal his homosexuality in order to avoid criminal prosecution. This biopic is loosely based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. Graham Moore's Academy Award winning script takes some liberties with the truth to create a conventional but gripping period drama which spends more time on Enigma than Turing. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a very fine lead performance.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
2014
****
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland

In the end of Catching Fire, Katniss Everdeen was rescued from the 75th Hunger Games and taken to District 13. Now she becomes the symbol of the rebellion in a (media) war against the Capitol, who hold Peeta Mellark captive. The third part of the series leaves the games world behind and takes the story into new and unexpected direction. The third part is mostly set-up for the finale, but it is consistently gripping and intense. The series concludes in Mockingjay - Part 2.

How to Train Your Dragon 2
2014
***
Director: Dean DeBlois
Cast: Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plassem, T.J. Miller, Kristen Wiig, Djimon Honsou, Kit Harington

In Berk, humans and dragons now live happily side by side. In the outside world, however, Hiccup and Toothless discover a mysterious dragon sanctuary, which they must attempt to protect from Drago Bludvist who is about to build an army. How to Train Your Dragon was a fresh and inventive animation with a nice set of characters. The sequel is perfectly enjoyable but somewhat mechanical. Hiccup enjoys deeply personal high and lows, but the story delivers very few surprises otherwise. Almost everyone rides a dragon now and the last third introduces us to another big one, very much like the first movie. Followed by How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
2014
***
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee, Billy Connolly, Ian Holm

Following An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug, the concluding part kicks off with Smaug's last stand, a visceral action set piece which offers the most thrilling fifteen minutes in the entire saga. When the smoke settles, the Dwarves reclaim the Lonely Mountain, but Thorin Oakenshield is struck by dragon sickness and goes against his own word to protect the gold. As the Elves and the people of Lake-town are about to take what's theirs by force, Gandalf brings news that vast armies of Orcs are on their way. If the first two parts were a series of captures and escapes, the final movie, the shortest of the three, is repetitive in a different way. The titular battle, which J.R.R. Tolkien described in two sentences, takes about two hours of screen time. To Jackson's credit, the entire Hobbit series ties in nicely with the original LOTR trilogy to form a narratively and stylistically cohesive body of work. However, that is also the drawback, as the last three movies only offer about eight hours of the same with diminished emotional impact. The familiar thematic beats (bravery, sacrifice, honour, friendship) are there, and so are the numerous large-scale battle scenes. After six CGI-heavy fantasy epics, I would be happy to close the book on Middle-earth.

Guardians of the Galaxy
2014
***
Director: James Gunn
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, Benicio del Toro

Peter Quill, who was abducted from Earth as a young boy, is a wisecracking intergalactic swindler who gets his hands on a powerful orb and ends up leading a ragtag group of extraterrestrials, which includes a green Kung fu hottie, a slow-witted ruffian, a sarcastic raccoon, and a monosyllabic space Ent. These characters are lovely, but I've never been totally won over by this enjoyable franchise launch, which has become one of the best loved releases in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although the world depicted here owes more to Star Wars than to the studio's Earth-bound superheroes, the end result offers very few surprises. There is a hero with mommy/daddy issues and a one-note villain whose sole motivation is to be evil. Followed by Vol 2 (2017).

The Grand Budapest Hotel
2014
*½
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman, Léa Seydoux, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, Tony Revolori

The otherworldly Moonrise Kingdom now seems delightfully grounded compared to Wes Anderson's latest treasure trove of nothingness. It depicts the glory days of the Grand Budapest Hotel in the fictional European country of Zubrowka. The main part of the story takes place in the 1930s when the country is at the brink of war and the hotel's resourceful concierge Gustave H is framed for murder. As always, Anderson's film is wonderfully designed and shot, which qualifies this as a well-polished turd. His fast-paced comedy is excruciatingly flippant and unbearably whimsical, and filled with oh-so quirky characters who deliver beautifully eloquent lines which amount to nothing. The cast is incredible but their performances are 99% about the Oscar-winning costumes, make-up and facial hair. Even Alexandre Desplat's soundtrack is annoyingly chirpy. I didn't care for one second and didn't laugh once. The story was inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig and the titular locale was clearly influenced by Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain.

Gone Girl
2014
***
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Patrick Fugit, Missi Pyle, Emily Ratajkowski, Casey Wilson, Lola Kirke, Boyd Holbrook

On his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne's wife Amy goes missing. No body is found but the cops and the media become convinced that Nick killed his wife. The excerpts from Amy's diary describe a troubled and violent marriage, but is that the whole truth? Gillian Flynn's cleverly structured 2012 novel is a page turner. Her screen adaptation compresses the book to a trashy and twisty thriller which still feels too long at 2½ hours. The entire story is essentially about keeping up appearances, but since Nick and Amy are such unpleasant characters, the missing backstories become an issue. Nevertheless, David Fincher delivers a stylish and perfectly gripping drama. Rosamund Pike gives a strong central performance.

Godzilla
2014
**
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston, Carson Bolde, Richard T. Jones

15 years after a mysterious disaster at a Japanese nuclear power plant, the desolated area experiences the same seismic activity, and a Muto (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) emerges from the ruins. The gigantic creature heads towards the west coast of the US, with Godzilla on its heels. Gareth Edwards, who broke through with the charming and unusual Monsters, cannot breathe life into this latest franchise reboot. Although his movie may be fractionally smarter than Roland Emnmerich's disastrous 1998 version, as a piece of entertainment it offers no improvement. The first half an hour are gripping and Godzilla's backstory is interesting, but the remaining 90 minutes offer nothing but boring clichés. Godzilla barely features in its own movie and the human characters are a familiar mix of scientists and military personnel, all of them without personality. The final battle between the monsters is slow, dull and, thanks to the murky setting, incomprehensible.


A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
2014
**½
Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
Cast: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh, Dominic Rains, Mozhan Marnò, Rome Shadanloo

A young man, whose father is a heroin addict, loses his beloved car to a drug dealer. Walking on the city's nocturnal streets, he meets a mysterious lonely woman, unaware that she is a vampire. Ana Lily Amirpour's dreamy Iranian vampire spaghetti western is set in an unspecified time and place. Everyone on screen speaks Persian but this city, with a population of about six, looks nothing like Iran. The film has a quiet and melancholic mood, a quirky soundtrack, and carefully designed black and white visuals, which reminded me of the works of Aki Kaurismäki and Jim Jarmusch. Although Amirpour's unusual concoction has an attractive surface, it has no substance whatsoever. When the characters move in stylised slow motion for 90 minutes, the lack of a proper story becomes glaring, not to mention sleep-enducing.

Fury
2014
***
Director: David Ayer
Cast: Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, Scott Eastwood

In the last days of WW2, a Sherman tank named Fury, part of the 2nd Armored Division, makes its final push into the heart of Germany. The tank holds a crew of five, which includes a wise and weathered commander, a bible-quoting philosopher, a brutish hillbilly, a token ethnic crew member, and a youngster who is about to lose his innocence. David Ayer's war drama aims for gritty realism but comes short already with its cast of clichéd characters. Roughly the same men featured in Saving Private Ryan, and so did the washed out colour palette which seems to be the benchmark for every war film these days. Nevertheless, the film is consistently gripping and well-acted if you can accept the occasional bouts of pure fiction, which includes the ridiculous final battle.

Frank
2014
****
Director: Lenny Abrahamson
Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy, Michael Fassbender, Carla Azar, François Civil

Jon is an aspiring musician who is invited to record an album with the Soronprfbs, an experimental band fronted by the talented but unpredictable Frank, who wears a large fake head at all times. Weeks quickly turn to months as the recording session is at the mercy of Frank's eccentricities. Lenny Abrahamson's fourth feature was inspired by Frank Sidebottom, a character created by comedian Chris Sievey. This delightful and uncategorisable film moves seamlessly from sweet comedy to moving drama. The performances are great and the music (by Stephen Rennicks) is lovely.

Foxcatcher
2014
**½
Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Michael Hall, Guy Boyd, Brett Rice, Samara Lee, Jackson Frazer

Mark and Dave Schultz, gold medal winners in wrestling at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, are invited to train and live at the private Foxcatcher Farm training facility. Mark takes on the offer but his older brother Dave is harder to persuade. Their sponsor, John E. du Pont, is a millionaire wrestling enthusiast who likes to see himself as a mentor and father figure, but can money buy respect? Following Capote and Moneyball, this is Bennett Miller's third real-life story in a row. This one deals with some big themes (feelings of inferiority, delusions of grandeur, and sense of entitlement), but it amounts to little more than a curious historical anecdote. The film cannot get under the skin of its three main characters, especially that of Du Pont. The end result is a somber, slow-moving drama with a shock ending, which seems to come out of nowhere. Carell, Tatum, and Ruffalo, each with a prosthetic nose, give wonderfully understated performances.

The Fault in our Stars
2014
**
Director: Josh Boone
Cast: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Nat Wolff, Willem Dafoe, Lotte Verbeek, Mike Birbiglia

Hazel's thyroid cancer has spread to her lungs and Gus has lost his leg to osteosarcoma. As Hazel falls into depression, Gus deals with the situation with a devil-may-care attitude. These two teenagers meet in a support group and gradually fall in love. In this 21st century Love Story, both of the star-crossed lovers are seriously ill. This set-up should provide plenty of material for a moving tragic romance, but this derivative film left me cold, perhaps because everything feels so inevitable. Shailene Woodley is very good, but Elgort lost me in the first few seconds with his annoyingly flippant performance. Adapted from John Green's 2012 novel

The Equalizer
2014
*½
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo, Johnny Skourtis, Vladimir Kulich

Robert McCall is an unassuming mystery man who keeps mostly to himself. As it turns out, some years ago this black ops veteran made his dying wife a promise that he would not use his skills again, but when a prostitute he knows is beaten up, he cannot help but start smashing some heads. This loose adaptation of the 1980s TV series starring Edward Woodward gets to a surprisingly subdued start. For the first intriguing fifteen minutes, it is unclear where the story is heading, but then it takes the path well trodden by Taken and stubbornly stays on it for two incredibly dull and monotonous hours. It is impossible to care about anything when the hero is a stone-faced, sadistic vigilante who'll use any tool available (cork screw, drill, barb wire, nail gun) to inflict maximal pain on his enemies, who in turn are slimy Russian mobsters without any detectable human qualities. Followed by The Equalizer 2 (2018).

Edge of Tomorrow
2014
****
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson, Kick Gurry, Dragomir Mrsic, Charlotte Riley, Jonas Armstrong, Franz Drameh, Masayoshi Haneda, Tony Way, Noah Taylor

As continental Europe is overrun by aliens known as Mimics, the cowardly PR officer Major Cage is put in the frontline against his will. He is killed on a French beach and thrown in a time loop which takes him back to the day before the battle every time he dies. Doug Liman's science fiction action movie is not terribly original, but it is wonderfully entertaining and darkly funny for the first two thirds. It's Groundhog Day all over again as Cage has multiple chances to develop as a soldier and find a weakness in the Mimic defence. Or Starship Troopers meets Source Code, if you want me to define it in scifi terms. Like the latter film, this one doesn't have the guts to take its death-filled premise to its inevitably grim conclusion. I would also question the collective intelligence of the humanity in this version of the future if it believes that the best way to fight overwhelmingly strong aliens is to wear an exoskeleton suit and engage in a hand-to-hand combat. Adapted from a 2004 Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.

Død snø 2 (Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead)
2014
***½
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Cast: Vegar Hoel, Orjan Gamst, Martin Starr, Ingrid Haas, Jocelyn DeBoer, Stig Frode Henriksen, Kristoffer Joner

Dead Snow was a wacky but tiresome horror comedy, but this sequel is far superior. Martin, the sole survivor of the Nazi zombie attack, has a new arm which seems to have a mind of its own. As Martin attempts to uncover the Nazis' ultimate goal, he gets help from an American amateur group of zombie hunters. The second movie offers a familiar mix of humour and gore, but this time the gags are fresh, clever and surprising. Just because you're a cute child or an innocent baby, doesn't guarantee that you make it out alive. After all the bloodshed, Wirkola provides a disgustingly romantic ending.

Dumb and Dumber To
2014
**
Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Cast: Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden, Kathleen Turner, Don Lake, Steve Tom, Rachel Melvin

Dumb and Dumber (1994) was a long and tasteless but sweet comedy about two dimwits, which became a massive hit. 20 years later, Harry and Lloyd go on another cross-country road trip when Harry learns that he fathered a child 22 years ago. This unnecessary and mechanical sequel includes numerous callback to the original, but very few fresh ideas. There are a few jokes that land, but just too many that don't.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
2014
***½
Director: Matt Reeves
Cast: Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Nick Thurston, Kirk Acevedo, Enrique Murcian, Terry Notary

Ten years after the Simian Flu wiped out most of humanity, the ape colony come across a group of human survivors, who hope to fix the nearby hydroelectric dam and restore power in the city. Caesar, the leader of the colony, reluctantly allows access to maintain peaceful relations, but some of the other apes are not equally open-minded. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a terrifically gripping and intimate character portrait of Caesar. The sequel is a more traditional science fiction spectacle which deals with racism with big showy battle scenes. However, these scenes are low in drama because I am not terribly invested in the characters on either side of the warring parties. Technically the movie is flawless. The mix of motion capture and digital effects is impressive. Followed by War for the Planet of the Apes.

Citizenfour
2014
****
Director: Laura Poitras
Cast:

In early 2013, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras receives encrypted emails from a user known as citizenfour, who offers to leak classified information about illegal surveillance activities. In June, Poitras and journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill travel to Hong Kong to meet the mystery contact who turns out to be Edward Snowden, a disillusioned National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who has decided to become a whistleblower. During the four-day interview, Snowden reveals the true extent of the digital surveillance programs overseen by the intelligence agencies in the US and Europe with the help of telecom operators and major technology companies. This fascinating, paranoid documentary reveals the harsh reality of the information age where truth is often stranger than fiction. The film unfolds like a tense conspiracy thriller. While Snowden exposes sensitive material and the journalists publish it, the authorities in the US are closing in on the source of the leak. An Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2014
****
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Cast: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Emily VanCamp, Hayley Atwell, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson

At the end of The First Avenger, Steve Rogers woke up in the modern world and in The Avengers he tried to come to terms with his current surroundings. Some time has passed and he works for S.H.I.E.L.D., who are developing a new preemptive weapons system. When the agency is compromised and its director Nick Fury attacked, the hero suddenly cannot trust anyone. The second Captain America movie offers a simple story and plenty of enjoyably physical action set pieces. The Russo brothers, who I know only for the appalling Welcome to Collinwood, are a revelation. The finale sets up the story for Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War.

Boyhood
2014
*****
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Libby Villari, Marco Perella, Jamie Howard, Andrew Villarreal, Brad Hawkins, Jenni Tooley

Richard Linklater's intimate epic tells the story of Mason Evans from the age of six to his first day in college. The director got the same cast and crew together annually and shot his film over a period of 12 years. This is an astonishing logistical achievement, but more importantly a brilliant creative device which captures the passage of time like no film before it. Linklater attempted something similar with the Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy, where each time jump was nine years. The free-flowing narrative follows one family and doesn't include any big shocks or dramatic twists. As Mason and his sister Sam see their mom repeatedly marry the wrong guy or their dad mature from an aimless slacker to a solid family man, life reveals itself to be a series of trials and errors. The characters are wonderfully drawn and the performances are warm. Ellar Coltrane is a natural in front of the camera and Patricia Arquette, who plays the mother, won a deserved Academy Award.

The Boxtrolls
2014
***
Director: Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi
Cast: Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Elle Fanning, Ben Kingsley, Toni Collette, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade, Tracy Morgan

A ruthless exterminator Archibald Snatcher is hired to rid the Victorian town of Cheesebridge of boxtrolls, scary little monsters who are believed to eat small children. In reality, these cute creatures and one human boy come out at night to gather building material for their inventive machines underground. The third feature-length stop motion animation from Laika follows in the footsteps of Coralie and ParaNorman. It tells a scary and gruesome story with quirky and grotesque visuals, but doesn't exactly stand out from the mass. Umpteen family films have spoken against unwarranted fear and prejudice, and the boxtrolls are not dissimilar to the Minions from the Despicable Me series. Based on Alan Snow's book Here Be Monsters!.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
2014
****½
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Cast: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts

Riggan Thomson, who used to star in a popular Hollywood superhero franchise, attempts a comeback on Broadway. While the opening night of his stage play draws closer, his mental state becomes increasingly fragile. Alejandro G. Iñárritu's brilliant dark comedy takes a swipe at Hollywood, fame, narcissism, pretentiousness, social media, and critics, among other things, and Michael Keaton gives a strikingly intense performance in the lead. Iñárritu and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki have shot the entire film as if it was one continuous take. It is an incredible technical achievement, but as a storytelling device it can be exhausting. An Academy Award winner for best picture, director, original screenplay, and cinematography.

Big Hero 6
2014
****
Director: Don Hall, Chris Williams
Cast: Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, Daniel Henney, T. J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans, Jr., Génesis Rodríguez, Alan Tudyk, James Cromwell, Maya Rudolph

At the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology Science Fair, Hiro Hamada, a 14-year-old prodigy, presents his amazing microbots which can be collectively thought-controlled to perform any tasks the user can think of. Following a tragic explosion, the invention ends up in the wrong hands and Hiro, a group of nerds and Baymax, an inflatable healthcare robot invented by his brother, form a team of unlikely superheroes. This enjoyable Disney animation was inspired by Marvel's lesser-known comic book series. It's funny, touching and original, especially in the first half, and Baymax is an irresistibly sweet character. The second half turns the film into a more familiar superhero affair, which brings back memories of The Incredibles and umpteen Marvel franchises. An Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature.

Big Game
2014
***
Director: Jalmari Helander
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Onni Tommila, Felicity Huffman, Victor Garber, Ted Levine, Jim Broadbent, Ray Stevenson, Jaymes Butler, Jorma Tommila

Just as 13-year-old Oskari is about to perform the traditional rite of passage to prove his manhood, Air Force One is shot down over Finland and the young hunter is the only person who can protect the U.S. President. Jalmari Helander's follow-up to the delightful Rare Exports is also set in his native Finland, albeit shot entirely in Germany. This time the budget is bigger and the cast features international stars. The plot is often silly and the dialogue is occasionally clunky, but this is still a likeable and entertaining action movie. Onni Tommila is incredibly natural in front of the camera and Samuel L. Jackson has fun playing the slightly cowardly POTUS.

Big Eyes
2014
***
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Jon Polito, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp, Madeleine Arthur, Delaney Raye

In the late 1950s, Margaret and her young daughter move to San Francisco. Margaret, who loves to paint, meets and marries Walter Keane, another wannabe artist. When her paintings of big eyed children become a runaway success, she does all the work while Walter takes all the credit. This is a compelling real-life drama, but the fact that Margaret is complicit in this scam diminishes the dramatic impact and leads to some grating scenes in the second half. It was scripted by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who have specialised in biographical stories, such as The People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, and Auto Focus. The end result is the most understated film Tim Burton has made since Ed Wood, which was incidentally penned by the same duo. Amy Adams gives another great lead performance but Christoph Waltz hams it as Walter.

The Babadook
2014
****
Director: Jennifer Kent
Cast: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Hayley McElhinney, Daniel Henshall, Barbara West, Ben Winspear

Amelia is close to a breaking point trying to raise her difficult and demanding 6-year-old son Sam all by herself. The boy is convinced that there are monsters in the house, and reading a creepy pop-up book called Mister Babadook only makes things worse. Jennifer Kent's directorial debut is an extremely creepy and powerful psychological horror film about a woman who is afraid of losing her mind and what she might do to her own child. Kent offers sustained tension in place of easy jump scares. Essie Davis gives a stunning performance as Amelia.

American Sniper
2014
***½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Max Charles, Luke Grimes, Kyle Gallner, Sam Jaeger, Jake McDorman, Cory Hardrict, Navid Negahban, Sammy Sheik

United States Navy Seal Chris Kyle became a legendary sniper during his four tours of duty in Iraq. This biographical drama portrays Kyle as a conflicted man who is at ease protecting his brothers in arms, but like a fish out of water during the rare moments at home with his wife and kids. Clint Eastwood's film is consistently gripping, but it walks a fine line between thought-provoking realism and patriotic propaganda. On the one hand, Eastwood depicts the horrors of the battle and the terrible decisions Kyle must make in a blink of an eye. On the other hand, he turns the protagonist into a bona fide war hero. Eastwood does not question the legitimacy of the war, he merely shows that nothing compares to the intimacy a group of men develop in a combat situation. Bradley Cooper gives a strong central performance. Jason Hall scripted from the book American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen, and Jim DeFelice.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2
2014
**½
Director: Mark Webb
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz, Colm Feore, Paul Giamatti, Sally Field

While Peter Parker attempts to uncover the truth about his late father and keep away from the woman he loves, two new enemies emerge. Max Dillon, a nondescript engineer, transforms into Electro and Peter's childhood friend and CEO of Oscorp Harry Osborn becomes Green Goblin. The follow-up to The Amazing Spider-Man offers more of the same with diminished returns. Garfield and Stone continue to inhabit their roles with charm, but the two villains are poorly conceived. Electro's superpower also appears to be his kryptonite. What's that all about? Green Goblin, on the other hand, only shows up for the final battle and makes no impression whatsoever. Well, at least his mouth moves, which must be considered an improvement on Spider-Man. The stakes never seem terribly high when Spidey jokes his way through each and every adversity or flies about in the CGI-heavy action scenes.

Altman
2014
***
Director: Ron Mann
Cast:

A very ordinary documentary about the maverick filmmaker Robert Altman (1925-2006). Altman began his career on TV, and hit his artistic peak in the 1970s with the likes of Mash (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and Nashville (1975). The 1980s passed in relative obscurity as he filmed a number of low-budget stage play adaptations, but The Player (1992) helped him to a late-career comeback. This is an informative but typically adulatory documentary in which no one has a bad word to say about the man or his admittedly patchy oeuvre. Inbetween the film clips, home movies, and interviews, the director's collaborators offer their interpretation of the word altmanesque.

22 Jump Street
2014
***½
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Cast: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Peter Stormare, Wyatt Russell, Amber Stevens, Jillian Bell, Ice Cube, Jillian Bell, Jimmy Tatro

In the follow-up to the enjoyable 21 Jump Street, Schmitty and Jenko go to college in search of another drug supplier. Their latest undercover operation puts their strong friendship to a test when Jenko is distracted by college football and his new frat boy buddies. From early on, this self-aware comedy points out that the second time is never as good as the first time, even if you use more money. However, unlike Muppets Most Wanted, which used the same exact gag, this sequel actually is as fresh and inspired as the original. By now, the characters have become nicely familiar and their old bickering (gay) couple shtick produces a great many laughs. The hilarious end title scene takes the sequel gag to a whole new level.

The World's End
2013
****
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, Pierce Brosnan, David Bradley

Gary wants to relive the best night of his life and persuades four of his old mates to reattempt an epic 12-pub crawl, which they were too drunk to complete 20 years earlier. The gang discover that their hometown Newton Haven is not the same place they left behind, in more sense than one. Shaun of the Dead was a lovely horror spoof, Hot Fuzz made great fun of the buddy cop movies, and the third part in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's so-called Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy is an enjoyable science fiction satire. The jokes are a bit more hit and miss this time, but the supernatural twist halfway through gives this comedy a nice shot of adrenaline, even if the whole may become a bit messy and convoluted. All three films feature grown men who refuse to act their age. We all know people like Gary (played by Simon Pegg), a loser whose life has refused to move on since late teens, and this human type is at once easy-going, enviable, irritating, and pitiful.

World War Z
2013
**½
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, Matthew Fox, Daniella Kertesz, Fana Mokoena, David Morse, Ludi Boeken

Gerry Lane is a retired UN investigator who is called back into action. One moment Gerry is making pancakes for his family, the next the planet is overrun by a zombie virus and he is travelling the world in search of the source of the infection. This family-friendly horror drama lands somewhere between 28 Day Later and Contagion, but never fully convinces at any point. Marc Forster's film seems more concerned whether Gerry's family is thrown out of their temporary accommodation than it is with the fate of humanity. Based on the novel by Max Brooks, at least nominally.

The Wolverine
2013
***
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, Famke Janssen, Will Yun Lee, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Brian Tee, Haruhiko Yamanouchi

Following the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, Wolverine/Logan is feeling sorry for himself until he is invited to Tokyo to say goodbye to Mr. Yashida. Logan saved Yashida's life during the bombing of Nagasaki, and now the dying man asks Logan to protect his granddaughter. The sixth instalment in the X-Men series is a bog-standard Marvel movie, enjoyable but unremarkable. The plot is thin and the titular hero is an oddly helpless underdog for most of the running time after he is temporarily stripped of his healing powers. However, there are some well-crafted action set pieces. The ridiculous but entertaining fight on top of a speeding train is the highlight.

The Wolf of Wall Street
2013
****½
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin

After losing his job on Wall Street, Jordan Belfort co-founds Stratton Oakmont, a respectable-sounding company which makes millions from selling overvalued stocks, which is not strictly legal. Martin Scorsese has made several masterpieces about real or fictional characters who are difficult to like, and Belfort must be one of the most despicable individuals he has put on screen. The protagonist turns from an idealistic and happily married stockbroker to a toxic, debauched, sex and drug-addicted lowlife who would sell his own mother if it was beneficial for him. Leonardo DiCaprio captures the transformation beautifully in one of his most bombastic performances to date. Behind the camera, Martin Scorsese operates at the top of his game. This is not a didactic Wall Street story where the bad guys learn their lesson, but more like a stock market GoodFellas, which is fuelled with insane energy. The film certainly doesn't need to be three hours long, but it is solidly entertaining and Scorsese's funniest work by far. There are several set pieces which I'm sure will become enduring classics. Belfort was the inspiration behind Ben Younger's Boiler Room, and Terence Winter's script is based on the man's memoir.

White House Down
2013
***½
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins, James Woods, Joey King, Nicolas Wright, Michael Murphy

After terrorists take over the White House, the only thing standing between them and President Sawyer is John Cale, U.S. Capitol Police Officer who is touring the building with his 11-year-old daughter. 17 years after Independence Day, Roland Emmerich returns to destroy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this time brick by brick through gun fights and explosions. This action film is nothing but an unauthorised remake of the first Die Hard, but it keeps the tongue firmly in the cheek and wears its influences proudly on its sleeve. James Vanderbilt's script, which builds the plot from a hostage crisis situation to a potential World War 3 horror scenario, is absolutely ridiculous at every turn, but the movie is good dumb fun for two hours.

We're the Millers
2013
****
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Emma Roberts, Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, Ed Helms, Molly Quinn, Tomer Sisley

A small-time drug dealer agrees to pay back his debt by picking up a large shipment of marijuana from Mexico. To cross the border without a hassle, he rents an RV and hires a ragtag group of losers to pose as his all-American family, the Millers. At the moment, Hollywood seems to produce only one type of comedy. This type has subversive characters, offensive jokes, but ultimately very conservative family values. This one is no different, but at least it has a solid premise, great performances, and a lot of laughs.

The Way, Way Back
2013
**½
Director: Nat Faxon, Jim Rash
Cast: Liam James, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Allison Janney, AnnaSophia Robb, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, Rob Corddry, Amanda Peet

14-year-old Duncan is forced to go on a summer holiday with his delicate mother, her overbearing boyfriend, and his snarky daughter. There's moping galore until Duncan lands a job in the local water park and finally finds people who acknowledge and even appreciate his existence. Actors and Academy Award winning screenwriters (for The Descendants) Nat Faxon and Jim Rash make their directorial debut with this likeable but disappointingly clichéd coming-of-age story. Each character has one trait that defines their entire personality, and Faxon and Rash make no effort to understand anyone apart from Duncan. As a result, the film is monotonous and surprise-free. The performances are good, though.

Turbo
2013
**½
Director: David Soren
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Michael Peña, Snoop Dogg, Maya Rudolph, Michelle Rodriguez, Samuel L. Jackson

Theo the garden snail fantasises about racing in the Indy 500. This crazy dream comes within his grasp when he is exposed to nitrous oxide and becomes Turbo, a supercharged speed machine. As if Cars, Pixar's least likeable franchise, wasn't enough, now Planes and this, two thoroughly unoriginal but surprisingly entertaining carbon copies, come out at the same time. Once again the story deals with the same don't-let-anyone-tell-you-what-you-can-or-can't-do theme. All three are undemanding, child-friendly animations with outlandish premises, but this concoction about a thumb-sized snail who races against human-driven cars surely must be the dumbest of the trio.

Trance
2013
**
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, Rosario Dawson, Danny Sapani, Matt Cross, Wahab Sheikh, Mark Poltimore, Tuppence Middleton

A gang of criminals attempt to steal an expensive Goya painting at a London auction house, but a young auctioneer puts the work in a safe place. If only he could remember where that is after a serious head trauma. The gang plan to extract the information with the help of a hypnotherapist. The flashy visuals and the infernally loud soundtrack cannot cover up the emptiness of Danny Boyle's twisty but dull thriller, which was heavily influenced by Inception. The script's dubious view of the powers and techniques of hypnotherapy renders the entire story implausible, but the poor characterisation is the film's ultimate undoing. Who do I root for in a battle of wits between a violent gangster, a psychopath and a swindler?

Thor: The Dark World
2013
**½
Director: Alan Taylor
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo

When Jane Foster is possessed by Aether, an ancient weapon that turns matter to dark matter, Thor brings her to Asgard, which is subsequently attacked by Malekith and his army of dark elves who need the very same Aether. The first Thor was an uneven superhero movie whose best scenes were all set on Earth. Sadly the sequel spends hardly any time there. The story picks up from The Avengers, with Loki now in custody. The events that unfold are important for the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe story arc, but as a standalone piece this is murky and unremarkable. A forgettable villain doesn't help matters. The hero returns in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Thor: Ragnarok.

This Is the End
2013
**
Director: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Cast: James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, Emma Watson, Mindy Kaling, David Krumholtz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Rihanna

A group of celebrities are having a party at James Franco's luxurious house, when the apocalypse arrives. As the city turns into a literal inferno, a handful of vain movie stars hole up in the house and weigh their options. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who-co-wrote Pineapple Express and Superbad make their directing debut with this end-of-the-world comedy. It gets off to a good start as the cast members either make fun of their public image (Franco's pretentious art or Rogen's lack of acting range) or turn them on their head (Michael Cera is the most abrasive person in Hollywood). However, it doesn't take long until we're back in the usual Rogen territory and the jokes begin to revolve around drugs, masturbation, movie references and a high volume of obscenities. As the plot gets increasingly stupid, the cheap special effects do not help the matters.

Star Trek Into Darkness
2013
****
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Alice Eve, Peter Weller, Leonard Nimoy

J.J. Abrams follows up the excellent Star Trek reboot with another wonderfully entertaining and even more action-packed science fiction blockbuster. When a rogue officer John Harrison launches a series of attacks on Starfleet, Captain Kirk and Spock must put aside their differences in order to capture the terrorist. The story is more straightforward this time, or is it really? One thrilling set-piece follows another, and inbetween Abrams somehow manages to explore the friendship between Kirk and Spock with very moving results.

The Spectacular Now
2013
****
Director: James Ponsoldt
Cast: Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Brie Larson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kyle Chandler, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Masam Holden, Andre Royo

Sutter is a laid-back high school senior who lives one day at a time. While he hopes to woo back the ex who got tired of his aimless ways, Sutter settles for the shy and unassuming Aimee, but is he about to break the poor girl's heart? James Ponsoldt's romantically flavoured drama comedy was adapted from Tim Tharp's novel by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber who wrote the sweet but overly quirky (500) Days of Summer. This one takes a while to find its groove, especially as its hero is an unlikeable semi-alcoholic motormouth, but it all eventually adds up to a charming little film with believably three-dimensional teenage characters. The story goes through many familiar situations, but more often than not it manages to stay fresh and steer clear of clichés. The central performances are very good. Miles Teller is thoroughly convincing as the carefree but self-deluding Sutter, and Shailene Woodley (who is maybe a bit too pretty to play the unpopular nerd) is lovely as Aimee, who is happy for any attention she can get.


Snowpiercer
2013
**
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner, Ko Asung, John Hurt, Ed Harris, Go Ah-sung; Luke Pasqualino

17 years after an experiment with climate control turned the planet into a frozen wasteland, the rest of humanity reside inside Snowpiercer, a high-speed train powered by a perpetual-motion engine. A class division has emerged inside the train, but now the scum in the tail end are about to revolt and take over one car at a time. Korean director Bong Joon-ho's English language debut is based on a French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette. The recent years have brought us some terrific (The Road and The Book of Eli) and some dreadful (I Am Legend) post-apocalyptic survival stories. This one belongs firmly in the second group. It is so consistently stupid and distractingly implausible that I couldn't concentrate on the story from all the questions in my head. Where do all the people in the front section sleep? Where do they keep all the animals that they eat? Why is the population comprised of only English, American and Korean people? Does the hero learn Korean during the revolt or why does he not need the interpretation gizmo after the first five minutes? Are the train and the tracks indestructible? As if that wasn't enough, the movie's social commentary is heavy-handed and its constant graphic violence in murky interiors is numbing.

Sharknado
2013
**
Director: Anthony C. Ferrante
Cast: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Chuck Hittinger, Aubrey Peeples, John Heard, Cassie Scerbo, Jaason Simmons, Diane Chambers

A freaky storm develops in the Northeast Pacific and massive waves full of hungry sharks hit Los Angeles. The owner of a beach bar goes out to save his family, unaware that things are about to get much worse. This trashy low budget TV movie offers exactly what the title suggests, in fact more. Not only does it give us a shark hurricane but also a shark tornado. The premise alone is worth one star. The end product, however, looks as cheap as its budget suggests: the script is awful, the special effects are terrible, and the acting is hammy. It has its moments but it's not as enjoyably stupid as one might hope. Followed by Sharknado 2: The Second One, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No, and numerous other sequels.

Sel8nne
2013
**½
Director: JP Siili
Cast:

The Finnish ice hockey legend Teemu Selänne broke the rookie scoring record in his debut season in the NHL in 1993, and went on to have a 20+ year career which reached its peak in 2007 with the Stanley Cup win. You can just about make out these details from this messy documentary which jumps back and forth in time, and leaves anyone apart from hard core fans completely baffled. In fairness, JP Siili's hagiographic film concentrates more on its hero's activities outside the rink; his family, his charity work and his general nice guy image. Unfortunately, these parts are less interesting.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
2013
***
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn, Patton Oswalt, Adrian Martinez, Sean Penn

Walter Mitty is a mousy single man who works at Life magazine, which is about to go fully digital. When he cannot locate the negative to the final cover picture, Walter goes on an adventure the like of which he hasn't even imagined in his regular daydreams. Steve Conrad's screenplay is loosely based on James Thurber's 1939 short story. Walter's narrative journey is a bit of a shaggy dog story, to be honest. It is predictably uplifting and inspirational, but also a rather funny and entertaining one. The scenes shot in Greenland and Iceland look terrific.

Saving Mr. Banks
2013
**½
Director: John Lee Hancock
Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Whitford, B.J. Novak, Colin Farrell, Ruth Wilson, Rachel Griffiths

Walt Disney makes one final attempt to sign the movie rights to Mary Poppins by flying the defiant author P.T. Travers to Los Angeles to go through the script. We all know Disney succeeded, but this fictionalised true story shows us how it all transpired. Travers, as portrayed here by Emma Thompson, seems incapable of basic human interaction and the frequent flashbacks to her childhood in Australia reveal how she became so withdrawn. However, these sections are the downfall of a perfectly enjoyable drama comedy. Firstly, their dramatic impact does not justify the amount of time we spend there. And secondly, jumping back and forth constantly breaks the flow of the Hollywood scenes, which are (repetitive but) the true meat of the story. The performances are good, though.

Rush
2013
****
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Brühl, Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara, Pierfrancesco Favino, Christian McKay, David Calder, Natalie Dormer

Ron Howard's entertaining motor racing movie depicts the clash of James Hunt and Niki Lauda during the 1976 Formula One season when Lauda was famously involved in a life-threatening crash in the German Grand Prix. Peter Morgan's script creates great drama from exaggerating the rivalry between two opposing personalities. James Hunt is a handsome playboy who takes great pleasure in the perks that come with the job. The "rat-faced" Lauda is a focused and boring professional. Howard uses a mixture of real cars, replicas and digital effects to create thoroughly believable Formula One races from 35+ years ago. Hemsworth and Brühl both give very enjoyable performances.

Red 2
2013
***
Director: Dean Parisot
Cast: Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Byung-hun Lee, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Neal McDonough

Frank Moses wants to settle down with Sarah, but the mysterious Operation Nightshade from the Cold War era once again puts him and anyone close to him in harm's way. The quest to find the truth takes the team to Paris, London, and Moscow, and it brings back some familiar faces and introduces some new ones. The sequel to Red doesn't offer anything new, but it has a wonderful cast of characters, nice twists to keep us hooked, and some terrifically entertaining action scenes.

The Railway Man
2013
**
Director: Jonathan Teplitzky
Cast: Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jeremy Irvine, Stellan Skarsgård, Sam Reid, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tanroh Ishida, Micheal Doonan

Eric Lomax, a self-confessed train enthusiast, meets his future wife Patty on the train. Their happiness seems short-lived when Eric's painful memories from his time as a prisoner of war come back to haunt him. Will he be able to deal with his past or open up to his wife? This real life horror story sheds light on a harrowing period of history, it features a wonderful international cast, and it is based on Lomax's award winning 1995 book. And yet, it just doesn't work as a drama. The flashback structure jumps between the 1980s and the 1940s, and the two timelines seem to decrease each other's impact. Everything is capped off with a dignified but underwhelming ending.

The Purge
2013
*½
Director: James DeMonaco
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Adelaide Kane, Max Burkholder, Arija Bareikis, Tom Yi, Chris Mulkey, Edwin Hodge, Rhys Wakefield

In the near future, for one night every year, all crime (including murder) is legal. During these 12 hours, a wealthy family faces threats from the outside and from within their fortified home. James DeMonaco's horror movie has a clever premise, but sadly he is not interested in exploiting any of its intriguing and potentially thought-provoking possibilities. Instead he gives us a conventional and predictable home invasion story with characters who have no psychological depth whatsoever. No person appears to use the Purge for financial gain, but only for an indiscriminate killing spree. The 85-minute running time is pretty much the only positive. Followed by The Purge: Anarchy (2014) and Purge: Election Year (2016), The First Purge (2018), and The Forever Purge (2021).

Prisoners
2013
****
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano

Two small girls, Anna and Joy, go missing. When the police release their main suspect, Anna's father decides to take the law into his own hands. Denis Villeneuve's first feature in English is a powerful, slow-burning thriller, which follows in the footsteps of In the Bedroom and Mystic River. Aaron Guzikowski's script questions whether ends can ever justify the means. It deals with a deeply personal tragedy, but is set in a post-9/11 America that is riddled with fear and paranoia. The performances are great and Roger Deakins' atmospheric cinematography makes this Pennsylvania neighbourhood look like the most miserable place in the world.

Planes
2013
**½
Director: Klay Hall
Cast: Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Priyanka Chopra, Brad Garrett, Cedric the Entertainer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Roger Craig Smith, John Cleese, Carlos Alazraqui, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards

Dusty Crophopper's dream comes true when he enters the Wings Across the Globe race, but can this simple cropduster challenge the real racing planes? Disney's cynical spin-off of Pixar's Cars transfers the same plot and practically the same characters to a new setting to create a new franchise. However, this actually works in the film's favour as I've come to terms with the flaws of the source material. If you can ignore the total lack of originality, this is a rather likeable children's animation. Followed by Planes: Fire & Rescue.

Philomena
2013
****
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Michelle Fairley, Barbara Jefford, Anna Maxwell Martin, Mare Winningham

A jobless journalist Martin Sixsmith discovers Philomena Lee's tragic story. In the 1950s she was forced to work in an Irish convent which sold her infant boy for adoption. The two travel to America in an attempt to track down the son. This lovely fact-based drama is based on Sixsmith's book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope's script wonderfully juxtaposes the world view of a cynical and embittered Oxford graduate with that of a charitable working class woman. The results are funny, heartbreaking and surprising. Dench and Coogan are both excellent.

Pacific Rim
2013
**
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, Ron Perlman

In the near future, gargantuan sea-dwelling aliens known as Kaijus lay cities to waste around the Pacific Rim. Mankind responds to the threat by building Jaegers, skyscraper-sized robots co-piloted by two people whose minds work as one, who challenge the beasts in a one-on-one fist fight. The premise is moronic, but there is no denying that the robots + aliens x size scenario has great potential. Unfortunately the end result is just as stupid as it sounds. Although Guillermo Del Toro has a far more impressive CV than Michael Bay, there is ultimately very little difference between this science fiction action blockbuster and Transformers. Both films have incredibly formulaic scripts, bunch of characters I couldn't care less about, and action set pieces which are indecipherable, repetitive, and dull.

Oz the Great and Powerful
2013
**½
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, Zach Braff, Bill Cobbs, Joey King, Tony Cox

Like The Wizard of Oz, this unofficial prequel begins in black and white Kansas. A selfish and womanising traveling circus magician Oscar Diggs is magically transported to the colourful Land of Oz. There he is mistaken for a great wizard and ends up in the middle of a power struggle between three witch sisters. Sam Raimi's fantasy film is quite likeable but utterly disposable, and way too long. The 1939 classic has endured for more than 70 years. Sam Raimi can count himself lucky if anyone recalls this the next day. The problem is that all of the film's mythology (from L. Frank Baum's books) is recycled, and Raimi's main contribution to the franchise are the 21st century special effects. He does create some imaginative visuals, but everything in Oz looks so over-saturated and artificial that it brings back painful memories of the plasticky world in Tim Burton's terrible Alice in Wonderland.

Only God Forgives
2013
**
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm, Ratha Phongam, Gordon Brown, Tom Burke

Drive was a beautifully directed mood piece which ended in a numbing orgy of graphic violence. The latest collaboration between Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling continues the same style-over-substance approach, with one little difference; this pulpy and silly crime flick is sadistically violent from beginning to end. Now Gosling plays Julian, an American whose family runs a drug business in Bangkok. When his brother rapes and kills a 16-year-old prostitute and dies in a retribution attack organised by a (sword-wielding karaoke-loving) cop, Julian is prepared to let it pass, but the boys' mother isn't. There is no denying that the film looks spectacular. All the people appear to walk in slow motion, and everything in the frame is designed to within an inch of its life. Blood flows and the picture is permanently hued in red, like the finale of Taxi Driver streched over 90 minutes. If only there was a script to go with all the eye candy, or a character who was recognisably human. Well, at least Cliff Martinez provides another wonderfully powerful soundtrack.

Olympus Has Fallen
2013
**½
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Cole Hauser, Finley Jacobsen, Ashley Judd, Melissa Leo, Dylan McDermott, Radha Mitchell, Rick Yune

Mike Banning, a tainted Secret Service agent who was removed from the presidential detail, is the only hope when a North Korean terrorist group attacks the White House and takes the President hostage. This entertainingly hard-boiled and violent action movie about one good guy against a gang of bad guys proves that the Die Hard formula is alive and well. The script here is dumb and implausible, not to mention similar to the superior White House Down, which was released only a few months later. Followed by London Has Fallen and Angel Has Fallen.

Oblivion
2013
***
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Morgan Freeman, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo

Following a war which destroyed the Earth, the human population has fled to space and left two people in charge of the drones which protect the vital energy resources from the invaders. During the last weeks of the mission, Commander Jack Harper, whose memory was wiped before staying behind, begins to doubt the official truth. Joseph Kosinski's follow-up to Tron: Legacy is another beautifully designed science fiction movie, which puts the Icelandic locations and the state-of-the-art special effects into perfect use. While the film is moderately entertaining, the story (from the director's own unpublished graphic novel) is too derivative. Kosinski draws influence from some recent (Moon, Wall-E, and Source Code) and some older scifi movies (The Matrix, Total Recall, and Planet of the Apes). Tom Cruise gives a forgettable performance in the lead.

Nymphomaniac
2013
***
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stacy Martin, Stellan Skarsgård, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Connie Nielsen, Michaël Pas, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier

A well-read single man gives refuge to a bruised and battered woman named Joe, a self-confessed nymphomaniac who spends the evening and night recounting her sexual history. It's a story filled with pain, pleasure, shame, and loneliness. The only constant in Joe's life is Jerôme, who takes her virginity and reappears several times along the way. Whatever you think of Lars von Trier's work, it rarely leaves you cold. Following Antichrist and Melancholia, this is the final part in his so-called Depression Trilogy. The 4-hour film (released in two parts) is funny and heartbreaking, as well as academic and artificial, but well worth the watch. The constant stream of emotional and physical violence, and (porno)graphic sex scenes do not make it an easy watch, though.

Nebraska
2013
*****
Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Stacy Keach, Bob Odenkirk, Mary Louise Wilson, Missy Doty, Angela McEwan, Devin Ratray, Tim Driscoll

Woody Grant, who is in the early stages of dementia, is determined to travel from Montana to Nebraska to collect the \$1M he believes he has won in the sweepstakes. His son David agrees to drive him there and use this chance to spend some time with him. Woody is not a loving father or even a remotely likeable person, but the long stopover in his hometown Hawthorne at least helps David to understand how his old man became the man he is. Alexander Payne's excellent black and white film is one of the most poignant character dramas and one of the funniest comedies of recent times. Like About Schmidt, it's a road movie which depicts Middle America with affection and vitriol in equal measure. The fictional Hawthorne is hit by economic hardship and an aging population, and the entire community is permeated by a sense of meaninglessness. Bob Nelson's script deals with dreams, disappointments and compromises, with fond and painful memories, and with the inevitability of death. It shows familial bonds at their warmest and at their ugliest. The characaters are wonderfully drawn. Bruce Dern as the grouchy Woody and June Squibb as his angry and outspoken wife Kate give the standout performances.

Monsters University
2013
***
Director: Dan Scanlon
Cast: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Joel Murray, Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, Peter Sohn, Charlie Day, Helen Mirren, Alfred Molina

The prequel to Monsters, Inc. takes us back in time to when Mike and Sulley attend the Monsters University. Mike is a resourceful and hard-working student with poor practical skills. Sulley, on the other hand, is lazy and cocky, but a naturally gifted scarer. The mismatching buddies end up in an unpopular fraternity in order to contest in the Scare Games. This Pixar animation shows how the familiar characters, who seem more likeable here than in the original, end up working at the factory. It also gives us a handful of new amusing creatures. All in all, this is an unnecessary but enjoyable addition to the series.

Man of Steel
2013
**
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne, Antje Traue, Ayelet Zurer, Christopher Meloni, Russell Crowe

Following the commercial disappointment of Superman Returns, the DC Comics franchise reboots once more. Warner Bros. has hired David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, whose dark and gritty trilogy revitalised the flagging Batman series, to breathe new life into the character, and Nolan does his best to suck all fun out of another superhero. This is a long, boringly angsty, laughably earnest and utterly joyless superhero action blockbuster. The story starts on Krypton, where Scientist Jor-El sends his newborn son Kal-El to safety just before the planet implodes. Some thirty years later on Earth, Kal-El (now Clark Kent) has become a reclusive loner in his attempts to hide his superhuman abilities, but his cover is blown with the arrival of the Kryptonian bad guy General Zod (who proves that English truly is a universal language). Henry Cavill, with only a few lines of dialogue, makes no impression whatsoever as Superman, the always reliable Amy Adams has nothing to work with as Lois Lane, and the chemistry between the two never materialises. For the rest of the time, Zack Snyder swamps the screen with CGI to stage repetitive set pieces of insane destruction. When the hero and the baddies duke it out, it is not enough that they fly against the walls, they crash through them, bringing the buildings down in the process.

The Lone Ranger
2013
**½
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, William Fichtner, Tom Wilkinson, Ruth Wilson, Helena Bonham Carter, James Badge Dale, Barry Pepper, Bryant Prince

The Lone Ranger and Tonto made their first appearance in a 1933 radio show, and since those days they have featured in all types of media. This origin story attempts to reintroduce the characters to a new generation of moviegoers. The story is set in 1869, when an idealistic lawyer John Reid returns to his home town of Colby. When an escaped outlaw kills his brother, John becomes the masked lawman, accompanied on and off by his flaky Comanche sidekick. Despite an homage to the genre's best, Once Upon a Time in the West, where the arrival of the railroad also brought misery and not prosperity, the script is clunky and formulaic, and the characterisation is all over the place. With Gore Verbinski directing, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio co-writing the script, and Johnny Depp goofing in the lead, it is no surprise that this big budget action blockbuster is little more than a Western version of Pirates of the Caribbean. However, it's not all bad news. The film is bookended with two inventively choreographed and wonderfully entertaining train chases, the best ones since Buster Keaton's The General.

Kick-Ass 2
2013
**½
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jim Carrey, Clark Duke, Morris Chestnut, Donald Faison, John Leguizamo, Augustus Prew, Garrett M. Brown, Iain Glen, Lindy Booth, Robert Emms, Steven Mackintosh

When Hit-Girl goes on hiatus, Kick-Ass finds kinship in a team of amateur superheroes. At the same time, Red Mist rebrands himself and assembles a group of nasty villains. The sequel to Kick-Ass offers more of the same. What was clever in the original, now feels overly familiar. Thankfully the movie is funny, subversive, offensive, and violent. Based on Hit Girl and Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

Kaappari (The Hijack That Went South)
2013
*½
Director: Aleksi Mäkelä
Cast: Kari Hietalahti, Aake Kalliala, Jussi Vatanen, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Elina Keinonen, Merja Larivaara, Miitta Sorvali, Armi Toivanen, Ville Myllyrinne, Pirjo Määttä

In 1978, an unhinged Finnish businessman Aarno Lamminparras hijacked a flight from Oulu to Helsinki at gunpoint and held the crew and passengers for ransom. Aleksi Mäkelä's fictionalised dramatisation cannot decide whether it's a thriller or a farce, not that it's any good as either one. The events on the plane do not feel mildly threatening thanks to laid-back cockpit humour and Kari Hietalahti's manic-depressive performance in the lead. The authorities who attempt to deal with the situation on the ground are all portrayed as incompetent idiots, but I didn't find myself laughing at their buffoonery. The sum total of these parts is a mess. On the plus side, the period details are lovingly recreated. The script by Elias Koskimies and Mika Karttunen is based on Lauri Puintila's book Kaappari Lamminparras.

Joe
2013
*½
Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Heather Kafka, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Brian Mays, Sue Rock, Adriene Mishler, Gary Poulter, Dana Freitag

Joe is a lonely and miserable ex-con with a lot of bottled-up rage. He sees something of himself in the troubled but hard-working 15-year-old Gary, who attempts to break free from his abusive father. The poor, rural Texas setting in this adaptation of Larry Brown's novel brings back memories of Winter's Bone. However, Debra Granik's gloomy surprise hit was a barrel of fun compared to the oppressive ugliness served by David Gordon Green. Towards the end of the aimless first hour, it is still unclear who or what the story is about. It does find focus in the second half, but the accumulation of misery becomes overwhelming. It starts with men killing trees, but by the end a man has repeatedly beaten up his son, solicited his daughter for \$30, and bashed another man's head in for a bottle of wine. And that's all before the violent climax. In this world, even the dogs kill each other. Nicolas Cage gives a rare restrained performance, which goes to waste.

Iron Man 3
2013
****
Director: Shane Black
Cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Stephanie Szostak, James Badge Dale, Jon Favreau, Ben Kingsley

While Tony Stark attempts to come to terms with the events of The Avengers, a mysterious terrorist known as the Mandarin catches him off guard. He must pick up the pieces, and hunt down the bad guy(s). Shane Black takes over the directing duties from Jon Favreau for Iron Man's third solo outing. His directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was a very enjoyable action comedy, and he gives an injection of that same comic energy to this Marvel franchise, which was getting tired already in the second film. Black turns the wisecracking to eleven and his inventive action scenes put a fresh twist on the formula, as the hero is constantly in and out of his armoured suit. Robert Downey Jr. with his motormouth is the deserved star again, but Ben Kingsley is close to stealing the show with his wonderful turn as the Mandarin.

Inside Llewyn Davis
2013
****
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham, Justin Timberlake, Adam Driver, Stark Sands, Ethan Phillips, Robin Bartlett

Following the death of his musical partner, folk singer Llewyn Davis' solo career doesn't seem to take off. He has made a series of poor personal and professional choices, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. This delightfully understated film by the Coen brothers is like a cross between A Serious Man and O' Brother Where Art Thou?. Like the former, it's a story set in the 1960s about a man who is down on his luck. Like the latter, Llewyn's dreamy journey echoes Homer's Odyssey - there's even a cat named Ulysses. All the characters are beautifully drawn, but Oscar Isaac gives a standout performance in the title role. The actors perform their own songs, which gives the film added rawness and authenticity.

In a World...
2013
**½
Director: Lake Bell
Cast: Lake Bell, Demetri Martin, Fred Melamed, Rob Corddry, Michaela Watkins, Ken Marino, Nick Offerman, Tig Notaro

Lake Bell's directorial debut is set in the world of voice artists. She plays a vocal coach who tries to break away from the shadow of her father, a narcissistic man whose deep voice has graced many a film trailer. The setting is unusual and the characters sympathetic, but the resulting comedy is thoroughly inconsequential. A bunch of stuff happens for 90 minutes and then it's over. There are two romantic subplots which add nothing to the main story, and in the last ten minutes, the film's smart and dryly cynical tone makes way for a terribly sentimental ending.

Identity Thief
2013
**
Director: Seth Gordon
Cast: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, Jon Favreau, Amanda Peet, Génesis Rodríguez, T.I., Morris Chestnut, John Cho, Robert Patrick, Eric Stonestreet

Sandy Patterson is a hard-working and mild-mannered family man from Denver who struggles to make ends meet. Just when he is about to catch a break, an obnoxious woman wrecks his life by stealings his identity. Sandy travels to Florida to bring the culprit to justice. The set-up is ridiculous and the subsequent twists that force the pair to go on a cross-country drive are more than a little contrived. Midnight Run and Planes, Trains & Automobiles used a similar premise to great results, but this odd couple comedy cum road movie is short on laughs. Like many recent comedies, it's crass and offensive but ultimately sentimental. The central performances are likeable but the lazy and frustrating script makes up stuff as it goes along.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
2013
****½
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland

Francis Lawrence takes over the directing duties for the second book in the trilogy by Suzanne Collins. The good news is that Lawrence maintains the high standard set by Gary Ross in The Hunger Games, although the story picks up from the middle and ends without resolution. Following their defiant win, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark go on a victory tour which inspires acts of rebellion across the twelve districts. President Snow does not view this kindly, and decides that the 75th Hunger Games will be a contest between previous victors. The middle part in the series continues to develop the characters and the grim futuristic setting, which is wonderfully visualised. Katniss was a great heroine to begin with, and now she becomes increasingly conflicted about the choices she must make. Jennifer Lawrence plays this to perfection. This is a long film but so terrifically gripping that it never feels like one. Followed by Mockingjay - Part 1.

Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann (The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared)
2013
**
Director: Felix Herngren
Cast: Robert Gustafsson, Iwar Wiklander, David Wiberg, Mia Skäringer, Jens Hultén, Bianca Cruzeiro, Alan Ford, Sven Lönn, David Shackleton, Georg Nikoloff, Kerry Shale, Algirdas Paulavicius, Koldo Losada

On his 100th birthday, Allan Karlsson walks away from the retirement home. On his eventful journey, he stumbles on a suitcase full of dirty money and draws a group of misfits around him. He also recounts his earlier life as an explosives expert who had encounters with Franco, Truman, and Stalin, among others. This darkly comic and insanely popular Swedish farce is all over the place. The present day story is built around broad characterisation and a series of preposterous coincidences. The Forrest Gump-flavoured flashbacks feel forced and don't seem to add anything but length. Even if the film is a disappointment, Robert Gustafsson plays Allan convincingly from age 20 to 100. Based on a 2009 novel by Jonas Jonasson.

Hours
2013
***
Director: Eric Heisserer
Cast: Paul Walker, Génesis Rodríguez, Tj Hassan, Nick Gomez, Judd Lormand, Kerry Cahill, Yohance Myles

Just as his wife dies in childbirth, hurricane Katrina cuts power in New Orleans and Nolan is stranded in an evacuated hospital with his incubator-bound daughter. Eric Heisserer, in a smart directorial debut, makes the most of his minimalist scenario without having to resort to cheap thrills. Although the story about one man in one room with a hand-cranked generator inevitably gets a bit repetitive, it helps to illustrate the hero's entrapment in a desperate situation and creates an effectively claustrophobic drama. Paul Walker, best known for the brainless The Fast and the Furious series, shows surprising depth in a role which requires him to create tension mostly alone. The actor died two months before the film premiere.

The Host
2013
**
Director: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel, Diane Kruger, William Hurt, Chandelr Canterbury, Boyd Holbrook, Scott Lawrence, Rachel Roberts

An alien race has planted themselves inside human bodies and erased the minds of their hosts. These hosted bodies are recognisable by their fluorescent eyes. A feisty young woman named Melanie Stryder is an exception; her body was taken over but her human consciousness remains very much alive. As she makes her way to a rebel base, an alien seeker is on her trail. This science fiction romance is based on the novel of Stephenie Meyer, who wrote the popular Twilight books. She has plans to write another trilogy, but the box office failure probably put an end to any cinematic sequels. This is an odd little movie. The scifi elements are interesting but not terribly original (see Invasion of the Body Snatchers). The romance is meant to be moving but becomes unintentionally funny when the two halves of Melanie's mind fall in love with two different guys. The lack of action, however, is the biggest problem, as one conversation inside a murky cave is followed by another.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
2013
***
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Orlando Bloom

In An Unexpected Journey, the first part of Peter Jackson's bloated fantasy trilogy, Bilbo Baggins and the Dwarves were captured by trolls but managed to escape, then they were captured by goblins but managed to escape, and finally found themselves sieged by Orcs but managed to escape. Now Gandalf goes out to investigate the Necromancer and the others continue their journey towards the Lonely Mountain. And wouldn't you know, they are captured by spiders but manage to escape, then they are captured by Elves but manage to escape, and finally they are captured by the Master of Lake-town but manage to talk themselves out of it. Peter Jackson's mechanical adventure movie drags out the events of J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, invents new characters, and brings back familiar faces from the LOTR trilogy who were never part of the source material. The second movie is a few minutes shorter than the first one and Jackson does improve the overall tone and pacing, but it only really comes to life in the last 30 minutes when Bilbo faces the dragon. And then it ends abruptly. The story concludes in The Battle of the Five Armies.

Her
2013
***
Director: Spike Jonze
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Pratt, Matt Latscher

Spike Jonze's fourth film offers another clever and fantastical premise, which doesn't veer too far from his two collaborations with Charlie Kaufman, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, who ghost writes personal letters for other people but is poor at articulating his own emotions. Theodore is about to divorce his wife when he purchases a new voiced operating system, named Samantha. Samantha starts as his personal assistant, but gradually becomes his advisor, friend, and lover. Is this a commentary on modern people, who prefer capturing precious moments to experiencing them, and who love their gadgets more than they love their fellow human beings? These questions become somewhat irrelevant when the OS has more personality than the hero of the story. This drama comedy offers an interesting concept and strong performances, but it doesn't exactly engage the heart or the mind. The stylishly futuristic Los Angeles was created by shooting some parts in Shanghai. Jonze won an Academy Award for his screenplay.

The Heat
2013
***½
Director: Paul Feig
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demián Bichir, Marlon Wayans, Michael Rapaport, Dan Bakkedahl, Taran Killam, Michael McDonald, Jane Curtin, Michael B. Tucci

To catch a mysterious drug lord, an uptight FBI agent is forced to team up with a Boston PD detective, who is not so particular about rules and regulations. This buddy action comedy is not terribly original, but it has great lead and supporting characters and, most importantly, it's very funny. Bullock and McCarthy work well together.

The Great Gatsby
2013
**
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Elizabeth Debicki, Jack Thompson, Amitabh Bachchan

In 1922, narrator Nick Carraway rents a house on Long Island next door to an enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby. Gatsby hosts famously pompous parties in a bid to impress Daisy Buchanan, his former lover and Nick's cousin, who is now married to wealth. This is the fourth big screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel about the underbelly of the American Dream. Jack Clayton's 1974 version was respectful but dull. For his vision of the book, Baz Luhrmann adopts the same razzle-dazzle style he made famous in Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge. Swooping camera moves - check, lavish sets and costumes - check, operatically orchestrated group scenes - check, heavy use of digital effects - check, an anachronistic soundtrack - check. Although Luhrmann's stylistic palette has become very predictable, the visual fireworks usually don't allow his films to get boring. However, he cannot get under the skin of these people any more than Clayton, and the pleasures of this romantic spectacle are mostly aesthetic (the production design and costumes won Academy Awards). The performances are fine, but the characters are so narrowly defined that their plight rarely engaged me.

Gravity
2013
*****
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris, Phaldut Sharma, Amy Warren, Basher Savage

A space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Telescope goes horribly wrong when the team is hit by a cloud of debris from a destroyed Russian satellite, and the two surviving astronauts are stranded in space. This groundbreaking, incredibly tense and fabulously entertaining thriller delivers a perfect marriage of stunning images, dynamic sound design, powerful score, and state-of-the-art special effects. Although the film is technically brilliant, it is ultimately an intimate portrayal of human resilience. Alfonso Cuarón, who co-wrote the screenplay with his son Jonás, does a perfect job in the director's chair. To sustain a believable sense of zero gravity for 90 minutes is one thing, to do so with long and flowing tracking shots is something else. Sandra Bullock provides the story's emotional core in a career-best performance. The seven Academy Awards include Best Directing, Best Cinematography and Best Original Score.

Frozen
2013
*****
Director: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Cast: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Santino Fontana, Alan Tudyk, Ciarán Hinds, Chris Williams, Maurice LeMarche

The King's daughters were inseparable until Elsa accidentally hurt Anna with her magic and then isolated herself from her sister. When Elsa, now the Queen of Arendelle, makes the entire kingdom fall under an eternal winter, she flees to the mountains with Anna on her trail. This is a wonderfully entertaining animation in the traditional Disney mould. The visually superb film has magic, a handsome prince and a beautiful princess, a strong working class hero and his comedy sidekick, nasty opportunistic villains, lovely song and dance numbers, touching love stories, moments of danger, hilarious gags and a happy ending with a twist. The adorable Olaf the snowman, who loves warm hugs and dreams of summer, steals the show. The story was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen. Followed by Frozen II.

Frances Ha
2013
**
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Zegen, Charlotte d'Amoise, Adam Driver, Grace Gummer, Patrick Heusinger, Michael Zegen

Frances is a 27-year-old dreamer who lives in Brooklyn. She wants to be a dancer and live with her best friend, but neither one of the plans seems to be working out. Noah Baumbach is a specialist in telling lightly plotted stories about people who are not easy to like. The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding featured awful people, but they worked as keenly observed family portrayals. However, the whiny and annoying Greenberg began to test my patience, and this collaboration between Baumbach and his girlfriend Greta Gerwig bored and disengaged me completely. Frances, as played by Greta Gerwig, is exhaustingly flaky, chirpy and chatty, and the film around her is aimless but thankfully short.

Epic
2013
***
Director: Chris Wedge
Cast: Colin Farrell, Josh Hutcherson, Amanda Seyfried, Christoph Waltz, Aziz Ansari, Chris O'Dowd, Pitbull, Jason Sudeikis, Steven Tyler, Beyoncé Knowles

M.K. moves in with her father, a scientist who is convinced that tiny people run the ecosystem. M.K. think her father has gone mad until she is magically transported to the hidden world of Leafmen and Boggans, whose ongoing battle decides the future of the forest. Chris Wedge's first computer animation since Robots tells an enjoyable, ecological fantasy story for children who are too old to watch the movies that influenced it, namely Avatar and The Lord of the Rings. The film doesn't break new ground, but it is visually striking and it has well-drawn characters. Loosely based on William Joyce's book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs.

Enemy
2013
**½
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini, Kedar Brown, Joshua Peace

Adam Bell is a sad-sack history teacher who is in a loveless relationship. One day he discovers Anthony Claire, a failed movie actor with a pregnant wife, who looks and sounds exactly like him. Is the man his twin brother or is he going insane? And what's with all the spiders? Javier Gullón's screenplay is based on The Double by José Saramago. Like Blindness, also based on Saramago's book, this is an intriguing parable but an incredibly frustrating drama. The script is such a tightly constructed psychological puzzle that the people at the centre of it never get a chance to resemble actual human beings. The female characters get the shortest shrift and I must admit I had trouble telling Adam and Anthony apart.

Ender's Game
2013
**½
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, Abigail Breslin, Ben Kingsley, Moisés Anas, Aramis Knight

Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel has taken its time to be adapted to the screen, but ironically its premise will probably go down better with the current crop of kids. In Card's futuristic Harry Potter in space scenario, the entire future of humanity has turned into a cosmic computer game. 50 years after Formics killed millions on Earth, the International Fleet prepares for a counter-attack by enlisting specially gifted children in its Battle School. The 12-year-old Ender Wiggin, the most brilliant cadet, attempts to cling to his true self during the grueling training programme. Gavin Hood's science fiction movie is reasonably entertaining but its story cries out for something more tangible. As it stands now, the characters and events feel abstract and only virtually real. And what do the repeated zero gravity exercises have to do with saving the planet? The powerful twist ending just about validates these long scenes. Asa Butterfield, who felt so natural in Hugo, is a wooden Ender.

Elysium
2013
*½
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, William Fichtner

Neill Blomkamp's second feature is another self-penned science fiction story set in a deeply segregated world. Where District 9 was a brilliantly funny, clever and fresh genre piece, the follow-up is a complete stinker. In 2154, the rich and powerful live on Elysium, a man-made habitat in space, and the poor remain on the polluted and overcrowded Earth. In order to get urgent medical help on Elysium, a lethally injured ex-con agrees to steal confidential data which has the power to change the course of the world. This scenario is grim and thought-provoking, even if it retreads the steps laid down by Wall-E, Oblivion, After Earth and other recent movies, but Blomkamp's awful script doesn't provide proper backstories to any of the characters. The hero and his childhood friend have a special relationship because the very first scene tells us so. Her young daughter is the emotional center of the story, not because we get to care about her but because she is terminally ill. The sketchy main villain, who has a plan that doesn't make any sense, disappears from the picture just when the plot thickens, and her right-hand man is a thoroughly uninteresting one-note baddie whose dialogue is barely intelligible. In the first third, this seems like a film with bold ideas. By the last third, it's become a boring and predictable action blockbuster where nothing of importance is at stake. Matt Damon comes through it with his dignity intact, but Jodie Foster gives a career-worst performance.

Don Jon
2013
**½
Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Rob Brown, Glenne Headly, Brie Larson, Tony Danza

In his writing and directing debut, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Jon, a New Jersey lothario who regularly sleeps with beautiful women but would really just prefer to masturbate to Internet porn. This drama comedy doesn't get to a great start. The dopey macho protagonist, his grating narration, and the repetitive visual ticks have an alienating effect. The events do, however, improve when Jon tries to kick his secret habit for the gorgeous but controlling Barbara (Scarlet Johansson). The script makes some poignant observations about the sexual objectification of men and women, but the funny and clever parts cannot paper over the fact that Jon begins and ends the story as a complete personality vacuum. There is nothing to him and his relationships to women, even the meaningful ones are pure carnality with no substance. This also doesn't speak well for the female characters (the superficial Barbara and the sympathetic fellow student Esther), both of whom are attracted to Jon.

Diana
2013
**
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Cast: Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, Cas Anvar, Laurence Belcher, Harry Holland, Douglas Hodge, Geraldine James, Charles Edwards, Mary Stockley, Juliet Stevenson

Diana, Princess of Wales, lived in the spotlight and died in a tragic Paris car crash in 1997. This odd biopic concentrates on the final two years of her life, and reduces them to a story of love and landmines. We see her dedicate her time to humanitarian work and fall in love with a Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, who is never fully committed to the relationship for the fear of losing his privacy. There is no room in this drama for Prince Charles or other members of the Royal Family, and her cherished children feature for about ten seconds. This is simply an overegged romance, but not as awful as its reputation would suggest.

Despicable Me 2
2013
***
Director: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Cast: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Benjamin Bratt, Miranda Cosgrove, Elsie Fisher, Dana Gaier, Russell Brand, Steve Coogan, Ken Jeong

Now that Gru has three adopted daughters, he has given up mischief. However, he cannot resist the allure of danger when he's asked to catch a villain who stole a dangerous serum. The sequel to Despicable Me puts the Minions on centre stage. Admittedly, they were always the funniest thing in this animation franchise, but their increased presence also illustrates the lack of fresh ideas in the script. Gru softened up halfway through the first film and now he even gets to have a romance. The nasty edge is gone from the story; what's left is perfectly enjoyable but safe family entertainment.

Dallas Buyers Club
2013
****
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Denis O'Hare, Steve Zahn, Michael O'Neill, Dallas Roberts, Griffin Dunne, Kevin Rankin

In 1985, Ron Woodroof is diagnosed with HIV and given 30 days to live. It's the early days for AIDS, and he is shocked to discover that he does not have access to all available medication. To circumvent the FDA rules, he sets up a club and begins to import more effective drugs to himself and his fellow patients. Matthew McConaughey continues his comeback from romcom hell with another brilliant performance. Woodroof is a redneck macho, who gradually transforms from an antagonistic homophobe to an open-minded pragmatist. Jared Leto, as his transsexual business partner Rayon, turns a potential caricature into a heartbreaking figure. Both actors deservedly won Academy Awards. The story is based on real-life events (Garner and Leto's characters are composites of actual people), and in the wrong hands it could have ended up as a syrupy feelgood film. However, Jean-Marc Vallée's drama is nicely edgy, consistently gripping, and often really funny.

The Croods
2013
***
Director: Kirk DeMicco, Chris Sanders
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Cloris Leachman, Clark Duke, Chris Sanders, Randy Thom

While the people around them have perished, the conservative and overprotective Grug Crood has navigated his family through the hazards of stone age. But now the earth is beginning to shift ominously and they must leave their secure cave and venture out into the unknown. This enjoyable animation doesn't offer anything groundbreaking, but it is good fun for 90 minutes. The premise is clever, the characterisation is lovely and the story is wrapped in a worthy message: living and staying alive are not the same thing.

The Counselor
2013
*½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Rosie Perez, Natalie Dormer

An unnamed lawyer hopes to score big by taking part in a drug deal, although everyone tells him that the Mexican cartel shows no mercy should things go wrong. And things go wrong. Cormac McCarthy's novels have been turned into films, which range from awful (All the Pretty Horses) to brilliant (The Road). Ridley Scott's adaptation of McCarthy's first original screenplay lands firmly in the first category. It tells an unoriginal story about uninteresting characters, who cite pretentious and over-dramatic dialogue through some bizarre scenes which seem to exist only to signpost upcoming events.

The Conjuring
2013
**½
Director: James Wan
Cast: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor, Ron Livingston, Shanley Caswell, Hayley McFarland, Joey King, Mackenzie Foy, Kyla Deaver, Shannon Kook, John Brotherton, Sterling Jerins

Ed and Lorraine Warren are professional demonologists who are called to Rhode Island, where a family of seven recently moved to a farmhouse which is inhabited by evil spirits. This religious horror movie is allegedly based on true events in 1971. Seems to me like it's mostly based on The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror (1979). The first thirty minutes are subtle and creepy, but James Wan gradually turns this into another tired trudge through jump scares and horror tropes. These include falling down the stairs to a dark basement, doors slamming shut all over the house, ghosts hiding in an old wardrobe, and possessed characters levitating in the air. Followed by two direct sequels and several spin-offs.

Coherence
2013
****
Director: James Ward Byrkit
Cast: Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, Lorene Scafaria, Hugo Armstrong, Elizabeth Gracen, Alex Manugian, Lauren Maher

Four couples are having a dinner party just when a comet is passing the Earth in close proximity. Their evening takes an odd turn with a series of unusual events. James Ward Byrkit's directorial debut is a tightly scripted and mindbending drama which was shot on a shoestring budget. This is science fiction about ideas, not about special effects. It all starts like a Woody Allen film, but as the neighbourhood is paralysed by a blackout, Byrkit squeezes wonderful tension from minimal action.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
2013
**½
Director: Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn
Cast: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Will Forte, Andy Samberg, Benjamin Bratt, Neil Patrick Harris, Terry Crews, Kristen Schaal

After the mayhem of the original Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Flint's greatest idol Chester V and his Live Corp evacuate Swallow Falls, allegedly to clean up the mess. However, some time later Flint and his friends are sent back to the island where his destructive food machine is still in operation, now producing monstrous food-animal hybrids, such as shrimpanzees and tacodiles. This mechanical and repetitive sequel has very little to add to the original, apart from some inventively silly hybrids/puns. The character arcs were covered in the first one and now they have no room to develop. On the contrary, the second film not only turns Flint into an irritating dummy and his friends into tiresome comedy sidekicks but also introduces a charmless and creepy villain.

Clear History
2013
**
Director: Greg Mottola
Cast: Larry David, Bill Hader, Jon Hamm, Kate Hudson, Michael Keaton. Danny McBride, Eva Mendes, Amy Ryan, J. B. Smoove, Liev Schreiber

Nathan Flomm became a national joke after he gave up his stake in a hugely successful electric car start-up. 15 years later, he lives incognito in Martha's Vineyard, until one day he runs into his old boss. Larry David has become a household name by playing a fictionalised version of himself in the HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. This feature length comedy is sadly nothing but a lazy and overstretched episode of his TV show. The film is not awful, but it offers exactly the same type of observational humour and features the same protagonist, who cannot let even the most minor grievance go without opening his mouth. Even some of the cast members are familiar from his show.

Captain Phillips
2013
****
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Catherine Keener, Michael Chernu, Yul Vazquez

After the underwhelming Green Zone, Paul Greengrass returns to what he's best at. As with the excellent Bloody Sunday and United 93, he takes a real-life scenario and uses his directorial skills to turn it into a riveting nailbiter. The events here are set in April 2009 when Maersk Alabama, an American container ship helmed by Captain Richard Phillips, was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Billy Ray's script is based on the book A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea (by Richard Phillips and Stephan Talty) but it doesn't tell a traditional good guys vs. bad guys story. The pirates also get their backstory which establishes the motivation for their desperate mission. Tom Hanks and the newcomer Barkhad Abdi give very strong performances.

The Butler
2013
**½
Director: Lee Daniels
Cast: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack, Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Terrence Howard, Lenny Kravitz, James Marsden, David Oyelowo, Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber, Robin Williams, Clarence Williams III

Cecil Gaines is a mild-mannered black man who overcomes his tragic upbringing to build a long and successful career as a White House butler under seven different Presidents. While Cecil humbly accepts his place in a society run by white men, his eldest son Louis becomes a devout civil rights activist. Danny Strong's screenplay is loosely based on the true story of Eugene Allen, but the film's long series of chronological coincidences feel extremely scripted. Like Forrest Gump, Cecil stands passively in the Oval Office whenever history is being made, and his son's passage from peaceful protests to violent resistance plays out like the A to Z of the 1960's civil rights movement. Predictably, JFK is a saint and Nixon is a sweaty slimeball. However, it's not all bad. The drama does provide an interesting history lecture and its central relationship between Cecil and his wife Gloria is movingly portrayed and played by Whitaker and Winfrey.

The Book Thief
2013
**½
Director: Brian Percival
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Sophie Nélisse, Emily Watson, Ben Schnetzer, Nico Liersch, Sandra Nedeleff, Hildegard Schroedter, Rafael Gareisen, Barbara Auer, Levin Liam, Roger Allam

In 1938, young Liesel arrives in a small German village to live with her adoptive parents, who are a bit of a mixed bag. Liesel, who is drawn to books and storytelling, is shaped by the rise of National Socialism and the subsequent war when her family shelters a Jewish man named Max in their basement. This adaptation of Markus Zusak's novel is well-acted and handsomely mounted, but terribly captivating or believable it is not. Brian Percival must tackle the age old question: how to make an English language film about events which occur in German. Should the cast just speak English with their own accents, English with German accents, English with the occasional German word, or actual German? Percival's solution is to use all of these options simultaneously. That is a silly and distracting choice for a WW2 drama which is flat and uneventful to begin with. This must also be one of the most non-horrific portrayals of the Nazi era. It's an awful period of history, but Liesel, her family, her best friend, and Max all get off lightly, at least as far as the Nazis are concerned.

Blue Jasmine
2013
****
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Louis C.K., Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg

Jasmine falls on hard times when her millionaire husband is jailed for financial fraud. She is accustomed to high life, but without wealth or marketable professional skills she finds herself at the mercy of her sister's charity. Cate Blanchett won a deserved Oscar for her wonderfully layered performance. Jasmine is an egotistical, self-deluding and abrasive semi-alcoholic whose plight is at once thoroughly deserved and heartbreaking. In fact, the acting is excellent throughout. This is a less comedic film than Woody Allen's recent output, but alongside Midnight in Paris, it is his best work of the 21st century.

Behind the Candelabra
2013
***
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Dan Aykroyd, Scott Bakula, Rob Lowe, Boyd Holbrook, Cheynne Jackson, Paul Reiser Debbie Reynolds

In 1977, young Scott Thorson meets Liberace, who is publicly and officially an unmarried bachelor, and becomes his personal assistant and live-in lover. Scott is enthralled by the flamboyant entertainer and is ready to do anything for him, even have plastic surgery to look like him, but is it all going to be worth it? Steven Soderbergh's dark comedy is funny, entertaining and extremely gay, like its protagonist. Sadly it is also a terribly ordinary and predictable show business biopic filled with the usual sex, drugs, debauchery, and heartbreak. Nevertheless, Michael Douglas and Matt Damon both give terrific performances. Richard LaGravenese scripted from the book Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace by Scott Thorson and Alex Thorleifson.

Before Midnight
2013
****½
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Jennifer Prior, Charlotte Prior, Xenia Kalogeropoulou, Walter Lassally, Ariane Labed, Yiannis Papadopoulos, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Panos Koronis

It's 18 years since Jesse and Celine met in Before Sunrise and 9 years since they were reunited in Before Sunset. They now live together in Paris with their twin daughters. During a holiday in Greece, their relationship runs into trouble. Jesse feels guilty about not being part of his teenage son's life, Celine feels guilty about not enabling it. Like his Boyhood, Richard Linklater's excellent trilogy creates a heightened sense of realism by using the same actors to play the same characters over an extended period of time. The series beautifully captures the evolution of an intercultural relationship. Once again, it's mostly people talking, but the dialogue is fresh, poignant, and truthful.

August: Osage County
2013
**½
Director: John Wells
Cast: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Nicholson, Sam Shepard, Misty Upham

When their alcoholic father disappears, his three daughters return to their Oklahoma home to wait for news. Their pill-popping mother has mouth cancer, probably due to her venomous tongue. In the days that follow, the family's many dysfunctions come to a head as the members exchange insults with each other. Tracy Letts transferred his own Pulitzer Prize winning 2007 stage play to the screen. Like his previous adaptation Killer Joe, this features some utterly despicable human beings. However, while last time I was entertained by their ghastliness, now I am not convinced I need to watch these people, except maybe to appreciate my own family. It doesn't help that John Wells cannot provide a cinematic experience. The cast is incredible, and the performances are predictably big.

American Hustle
2013
***½
Director: David O'Russell
Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K., Alessandro Nivola, Michael Peña, Jack Huston

In 1978, Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser become lovers and small-time con artists. They're busted by FBI agent Richard DiMaso, who offers to release them if they help to entrap corrupt politicians. David O'Russell's overlong but entertaining caper comedy is driven by mad energy and larger than life performances. Christian Bale as Irving takes his physical transformation to a new level of ugly, Bradley Cooper is hilariously kinetic as the curly-haired FBI agent Di Maso, Amy Adams is great as the complex and conflicted Sydney, and Jennifer Lawrence as Irving's flamboyant wife Rosalyn is one of the few who doesn't pretend to be anyone else. This is a quite traditional con film, but not one of those smug sleights of hand that pulls the rug out of from under us at the last moment. The hair, make-up and costume departments do a great job with the big hairdos and colourful outfits. The music department does less well with the by-the-numbers soundtrack. I am not sure if O'Russell is going for the full 1970's authenticity, but his camera constantly lingers on Sydney's ass, tits, and legs. Loosely based on Abscam, a real-life FBI sting operation, which ran from the late 1970 to the early 1980s.

All Is Lost
2013
*****
Director: J.C. Chandor
Cast: Robert Redford

An elderly man is on a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean when a shipping container rips a hole in the hull of his boat. With the vessel, radio and navigational equipment damaged, the man faces a storm. J.C. Chandor's second film follows in the footsteps of Life of Pi, but offers a different type of survival story. With a cast of one at sea from beginning to end, Chandor employs purely cinematic tools to create a stripped-down drama which is deliberately paced but absolutely riveting. We learn very little about the nameless protagonist other than that he is a resourceful and resilient man. Robert Redford has about two lines of dialogue, but he commands the screen.

After Earth
2013
**
Director: M.Night Shyamalan
Cast: Jaden Smith, Will Smith, Sophie Okonedo, Zoë Kravitz, Glenn Morshower, Jaden Martin, Sincere L. Bobb, Kristofer Hivju, Sacha Dhawan

1,000 years from now, a military ship crash-lands on the uninhabitable Earth. General Raige, his estranged teenage son Kitai and the monster that was on board survive the crash. Kitai must prove his mettle by retrieving the distress beacon from the tail section of the ship. In M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, the plants exacted their revenge on the human population. This time the entire planet has become hostile. This is a fascinating idea but never properly explored. The jungle set-up feels like a mix of Lost and Avatar, but Will Smith's (un)original story is solely interested in its two main characters, not in the world around them. The film is not quite as bad as its reputation, but it is definitely one dull affair. Scenes of extremely slow and clunky dialogue alternate with CGI action set pieces which look like the levels of a computer game. Will Smith and his son Jaden give contrasting but equally terrible performances.

About Time
2013
***½
Director: Richard Curtis
Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Margot Robbie, Lydia Wilson, Lindsay Duncan, Vanessa Kirby, Tom Hughes, Richard Cordery

Tim learns on his 21st birthday that the men in his family have the ability to travel back in time, which will come handy in his search for Miss Right. Apart from the science fiction twist, Richard Curtis, the writer/director of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually, treads familiar ground in his third directorial work. This is another foulmouthed romantic comedy about a bumbling Englishman who falls in love with an American girl in a modern day Britain inhabited solely by wealthy white people with vague jobs. Curtis draws influence from Groundhog Day and The Time Traveler's Wife (also starring Rachel McAdams) to tell a funny, moving, and occasionally creepy story about a man who is so busy tweaking his life that he forgets to stop and enjoy what he has. The rules on time travel are dubious, to say the least, but this is a character- and not concept-driven film full of sparkly dialogue.

21 tapaa pilata avioliitto (21 Ways to Ruin a Marriage)
2013
***½
Director: Johanna Vuoksenmaa
Cast: Armi Toivanen, Essi Hellén, Riku Nieminen, Aku Hirviniemi, Pamela Tola, Hannele Lauri, Jarkko Niemi

Sanna, a cynical single woman who doesn't believe in monogamy, is conducting a PhD study on the most important reasons why marriages fail. This Finnish romantic comedy is smart and sympathetic. It features some romcom stock characters, but also some enjoyably unique creations. Johanna Vuoksenmaa writes fresh and funny dialogue.

2 Guns
2013
***
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Cast: Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Paula Patton, Bill Paxton, James Marsden, Fred Ward, Edward James Olmos, Robert John Burke

Bobby and Stig, two small time crooks, loot the safety deposit boxes of a bank in Las Cruces, unaware that the money belongs to some very nasty people. What the two don't know about each other is that they are both undercover agents, Bobby for the DEA and Stig for the navy intelligence. This adaptation of a comic book by Steven Grant is an entertaining but by-the-numbers crime caper. On the plus side, the film has a good cast, nicely drawn characters, and refreshingly comprehensible actions scenes which do no cause headache and nausea. On the minus side, the duo's respective undercover operations and the ensuing crosses and double-crosses make very little sense come the end. Baltasar Kormákur also demonstrates a Tarantinoesquely casual attitude to on-screen violence.

12 Years a Slave
2013
****
Director: Steve McQueen
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Lupita Nyong'o, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard, Adepero Oduye

In 1841, Solomon Northup, a free and educated black man from New York state, is kidnapped and sold as a slave to Louisiana. He spends the next 12 years stripped of his name, family, freedom, and human dignity. Steve McQueen's film, which is based on the man's memoir, is an unflinching first-hand depiction of slavery, one of the most shameful periods in the US history. It's a beautifully staged, consistently heartbreaking, and - I do not mean to sound disrespectful - somewhat predictable drama in which Solomon's fate under three different white owners (portrayed as either saints or monsters) goes from bad to worse. The performances are excellent across the board. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon carries most of the weight with his wonderfully subtle work, and Lupita Nyong'o strong big screen debut as the tragic Patsey earned her an Oscar. The picture and the adapted screenplay by John Ridley also picked up Academy Awards.

Zero Dark Thirty
2012
****½
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Édgar Ramírez, James Gandolfini, Chris Pratt, Callan Mulvey, Fares Fares, Reda Kateb

After 9/11, the U.S. government leaves no stone unturned to find Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks. In 2003, an inexperienced analyst joins the CIA field office in Pakistan, and she spends the next eight years hunting the world's most wanted terrorist. Kathryn Bigelow's drama is a gripping and fascinating depiction of this massive manhunt. The film's nonjudgmental and matter-of-fact portrayal of the legwork (including torture) involved in capturing an ultimately symbolic target may not be everybody's cup of tea, but as a piece of dramatic filmmaking, it is pretty much faultless. Scripted by Mark Boal, who also penned Bigelow's previous work The Hurt Locker. Academy Award winner for Best Sound Editing.

Wreck-It Ralph
2012
***
Director: Rich Moore
Cast: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk, Mindy Kaling, Joe Lo Truglio, Ed O'Neill

Wreck-It Ralph, the villain of 1980s arcade game Fix-It Felix, Jr., is sick of being the unpopular bad guy, so he leaves the game to become a hero. Inside Sugar Rush he meets another outsider, Vanellope von Schweetz. This entertaining but derivative animation tells a funny and moving story of their friendship. The movie is a treasure trove for gaming fans as it mixes real and invented characters and displays them in different screen resolutions (although it is unclear to me why Ralph and Felix look different from the rest in their game). However, those are the clever little details. On the whole, the story is anything but original. Ralph is a brute with a heart of gold, like Shrek, and when the virtual characters come alive and move between different worlds, the parallels to Toy Story and, to a lesser extent, Monsters, Inc. are inevitable. The entire concept of the movie is steeped in nostalgia, which is never entirely believable. The screenplay by Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee takes product placement to a whole new level. Followed by Ralph Breaks the Internet.

The Woman in Black
2012
***
Director: James Watkins
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, Janet McTeer, Liz White, Roger Allam, Tim McMullan, Jessica Raine, Shaun Dooley, Mary Stockley

In the early 20th century, a widowed father and attorney Arthur Kipps travels from London to Crythin Gifford to sort out the sale of the remote Eel Marsh House. Once there, he discovers an extremely inhospitable community and an estate which appears to be haunted. James Watkins follows up the contemporary chills of Eden Lake with an old-fashioned ghost story which was produced by Hammer Films. Jane Goldman's script, loosely based on Susan Hill's 1982 novella, is skeletal. If Kipps just asked outright why everybody is so hostile, the film would be about an hour shorter. Nevertheless, with his deliberately slow pacing Watkins creates a scary and atmospheric but slightly monotonous gothic horror story with a rather anticlimactic ending. Daniel Radcliffe is good in his first post-Harry Potter starring role, although it is questionable whether a 22-year-old should play this part. Followed by The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, which features a new cast and director.

Wanderlust
2012
***½
Director: David Wain
Cast: Paul Rudd, Jennifer Aniston, Justin Theroux, Joe Lo Truglio, Kathryn Hahn, Lauren Ambrose, Alan Alda, Malin Åkerman, Ken Marino

George and Linda are forced to sell their new apartment and move out of New York. On the way to Atlanta they end up in Elysium, a free-spirited hippie commune whose members have abandoned the trappings of material life, such as doors. The ensuing fish-out-of-water comedy is broadly characterised and predictably plotted, but irresistibly funny. There are some lovely performances in the supporting roles, like Justin Theroux as the charismastic leader, Alan Alda as the scatterbrained property owner and Joe Lo Truglio as the naturist winemaker.

Upside Down
2012
**
Director: Juan Solanas
Cast: Jim Sturgess, Kirsten Dunst, Timothy Spall, Jayne Heitmeyer, Blu Mankuma

Somewhere in a different solar system, two adjacent twin planets have opposing gravitational pulls. The rich people live Up Top and the poor people Down Below, and the only connection between the two are the headquarters of TransWorld, which oversees the segregation of the worlds. This evil corporation now employs Adam and Eden, two lovers who were forcibly separated in their teenage years. Juan Solanas opens his science fiction romance with a comprehensive five minute introduction to the laws of his universe. Then he spends the rest of the running time breaking his own rules. The concept is ambitious and intriguing but it's obvious from the start that it's not going to hold up to scrutiny. The nonsensical plot raises so many questions that it takes all attention away from the interplanetary Romeo and Juliet story, which is probably a good thing because the romance is bland, the characters are dumb and the ending they get is simply wrong. Solanas in far more interested in the visuals, which are admittedly striking. The topsy-turvy office floors on top of each other and Adam's plunge from one ocean to another are awe-inspiring. It's a shame there is no movie to go with the images.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
2012
***
Director: Bill Condon
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning

Bella is now the strongest vampire in the Cullen family, and her daughter Renesmee, who grows at lightning speed, is at the center of the family's final confrontation with the Volturi. Now that Bella has made her choice, the franchise spends very little time on teenage angst or cheesy declarations of love. The final movie is very action-packed and the most enjoyable one in the series since Twilight. The final 30 minutes include a surprisingly gory battle and a nice twist.

Trouble with the Curve
2012
*½
Director: Robert Lorenz
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, Matthew Lillard, Jack Gilpin, Robert Patrick, Scott Eastwood, Ed Lauter, Chelcie Ross

In his late stage acting career, Clint Eastwood has specialised in playing grumpy old men who get to prove the validity of their old school ways. This time he plays an aging baseball scout whose career is about to come to an end due to his failing eye-sight and outdated methods. While he must review a top prospect, his estranged daughter reenters the picture. Randy Brown's awful script compels me to feel sorry for this curmudgeon, because he is crying on the grave of his late wife who died 28 years ago and he may now be forced into early retirement in his 80s by the Moneyball men. Robert Lorenz's directorial debut is a boring and painfully predictable crowdpleaser. While the performances are decent, the characters are all painted with broad strokes.

Total Recall
2012
***
Director: Len Wiseman
Cast: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, John Cho, Bill Nighy, Bokeem Woodbine, Steve Byers, Dylan Scott Smith

By the end of the 21st century, Britain and Australia, connected by a lift through the planet's core, are the last two habitable places on Earth. Douglas Quaid is a married factory worker who suffers from recurring dreams. His visit to Rekall, a company that can implant artificial memories, forces him to reassess everything he knows about himself. Paul Verhoeven's 1990 movie was a noisy and confusing science fiction spectacle which hasn't aged well. Len Wiseman's remake strips away the complexities of the story and cranks up the action, and it's all the better for it. This is no masterpiece either, but it is a fast-paced, relatively entertaining, and nicely designed scifi action movie. Inspired by Philip K. Dick's We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, like the original.

To Rome With Love
2012
**
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Antonio Albanese, Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Alessandra Mastronardi, Ellen Page, Alison Pill, Riccardo Scamarcio

After the inspired Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen returns to his poor recent form in these four forgettable vignettes set in Rome. In the first one, a retired opera director discovers a talent from an unexpected place. In the second one, young newlyweds from the countryside lose their innocence in the big city. In the third one, a boring bureaucrat becomes an overnight celebrity for no reason. In the last one, a middle-aged architect becomes a young student's voice of conscience. The film intercuts between the stories, but there is no overlap; the action doesn't even take place in the same time-frame. There doesn't appear to be a common theme either, although some of the parts deal with the pros and cons of fame. Apart from a few funny oneliners and several likeable performances, this overlong concoction is by turns predictable, pointless, uneventful, repetitive, and baffling.

Tie pohjoiseen (Road North)
2012
***
Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Cast: Samuli Edelmann, Vesa-Matti Loiri, Peter Franzén, Irina Björklund, Mari Perankoski, Rea Mauranen, Aake Kalliala

Timo is a celebrated concert pianist whose obsessive perfectionism has driven his wife and daughter away. One day, Timo's father Leo, who has been absent for 35 years, turns up at his door and tricks him to take a road trip together. In true Kaurismäki fashion (see, for example, Rosso), they get in a vintage car and head on down the road. Father and son bicker, bond, and get to know each other, and the rest of the family. Their journey is funny and touching, but a bit melodramatic towards the end. The film stars two actor/singers and it seems inevitable that they sing at some point. Belting it out in the car is one thing, but having a gratuitous scene where they perform on stage is pushing it.

This Is 40
2012
***
Director: Judd Apatow
Cast: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, John Lithgow, Megan Fox, Chris O'Dowd, Jason Segel, Melissa McCarthy, Graham Parker, Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Maude Apatow, Iris Apatow

Pete and Debbie, who we first met in Knocked Up, turn 40. At this stage, they should enjoy the best years of their lives in financial and familial security, but instead they have to deal with the demands of their failing business endeavours, daughters and fathers, and try to find some time for each other. Judd Apatow's melancholic comedy is autobiographical (the cast includes his own wife and two daughters) and it offers some poignant observations about families and long-term relationships but, oh boy, are these characters irritating. Like Apatow's previous works, this is a long and sprawling film which could easily lose several supporting characters (for example, Megan Fox and Jason Segel) and about 30 minutes of its running time. Melissa McCarthy has a hilarious cameo.

Ted
2012
**
Director: Seth MacFarlane
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Seth MacFarlane, Joel McHale, Giovanni Ribisi, Patrick Warburton, Matt Walsh

In 1985, an 8-year-old boy's wish made his beloved teddy bear come alive. In the present day, John is a 35-year-old manchild who is still inseparable from his stoner friend Ted, but his long-suffering girlfriend Lori is starting to run out of patience. However, this is not a story about an immature, deadbeat loser who grows up, but a story about an immature, deadbeat loser whose smart and incredibly gorgeous girlfriend regresses to his level so they can live happily ever after. Seth MacFarlane made his name on television as the creator of Family Guy and American Dad. His feature film debut is a fantasy comedy (in many senses of the word) which follows in the footsteps of Judd Apatow, Kevin Smith and, it seems, almost every modern comedy filmmaker who believe that mixing rude jokes and mushy family values is the only way to go about it. The idea of a pot smoking, dirty-talking stuffed animal is hilarious for a few minutes, although Paul pulled the same exact gag with an alien a year earlier, but Ted's offensive behaviour is the film's one and only source of humour. The thriller subplot and the car chase are dispensable distractions. Followed by a sequel.


Snow White and the Huntsman
2012
**½
Director: Rupert Sanders
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin, Sam Spruell, Ian McShane, Bob Hoksins, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, Johnny Harris, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost

Queen Ravenna seizes power by killing King Magnus and locking up his beautiful daughter Snow White. When Snow White, who holds the key to eternal youth, manages to escape, the vain Queen coerces a widowed huntsman to track her down. Rupert Sanders' feature debut is another reimagining of the classic fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. This version does not put a modern spin on the story, but turns it into a typical post-LOTR/Harry Potter/Narnia fantasy movie. Every character (be it princess, warrior, troll, or dwarf), magical spell, enchanted setting, or battle scene feels second-hand. The film is visually rich but oddly somber and joyless throughout its running time. Followed by a prequel/sequel The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016) without Snow White.

Skyfall
2012
**½
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Bérénice Marlohe, Albert Finney

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. No, the 23rd James Bond movie offers a respectful mix of old and new. The gritty realism of the Daniel Craig era continues, but Sam Mendes also sheds light on the hero's childhood and pays homage to the history of the series (the Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger makes a return, for example). In the opening minutes, M sacrifices her field agents to secure a leaked list of embedded operatives. 007 returns from the brink of death to discover that another discarded spy - now a supremely skilled cyberterrorist and computer animator - is hungry for vengeance. If Quantum of Solace was needlessly complicated, this one stretches a simple revenge plot over 143 long minutes. The action scenes are good, but the pacing is all over the place. It's halfway point before the villain appears and, in the franchise tradition, he doesn't simply kill his target when he has the chance, he does it in the most elaborate and implausible manner. James Bond has always been about machismo, but this time the female characters receive particularly rough treatment. All three are treacherous or incompetent, and must be killed or put in their place. On the plus side, Roger Deakins' camera work ensures that the film looks terrific. Adele's powerful title song won an Academy Award.

Den skaldede frisør (Love Is All You Need)
2012
****
Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, Kim Bodnia, Paprika Steen, Sebastian Jessen, Molly Blixt Egelind, Christiane Schaumburg-Müller, Micky Skeel Hansen

Just when Ida has finished her breast cancer treatment, she walks in on her cheating husband Leif. With her life is turmoil, she travels to Italy to her daughter's wedding, where her gentle and eternally optimistic personality begins to work its magic on the groom's disgruntled widower dad Philip. On the surface, this Danish romantic comedy is pretty much as predictable and formulaic as its Hollywood counterparts, but it charmed me with its believable grown-up love story. The characters are human with warts and all, and the script tackles various real-life issues without prejudice, which give the film added credibility. The exception to this is Leif, who is sadly just a plot device rather than a person Ida could have spent 20 years with. Trine Dyrholm and Pierce Brosnan are both excellent.

Sinivalkoinen valhe (When Heroes Lie)
2012
****
Director: Arto Halonen
Cast:

The 2001 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Lahti have become synonymous with the doping scandal that rocked the host nation Finland. Four male and two female members of the country's cross-country skiing team tested positive for a banned blood plasma expander. This, however, was not an isolated incident. Director Arto Halonen, who appears on-screen, begins his investigation in Lahti but goes further back to reveal the details of a well-organised and all-encompassing doping programme that was authorised by the top dogs in the Finnish Ski Federation. In the early 1970s, banned substances became an integral part of skiing, not only in Finland but across the continent. This is a captivating, depressing and catharctic documentary about fallen sporting heroes.

Sinister
2012
**½
Director: Scott Derrickson
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Thompson, James Ransone, Clare Foley, Michael Hall D'Addario, Nick King, Vincent D'Onofrio

In preparation for his next book, a true crime writer moves his family to a house where four people were killed. In the attic, he discovers a box of old home movies, which depict the gruesome murders of different families. Scott Derrickson's horror movie has an intriguing if not terribly original premise, but it's all slow downhill from there onwards. Every night, the writer experiences spooky and mysterious events in the dark nooks of the house, but during the day he fails to go out and buy a decent flashlight. His wife would probably sleep through nuclear holocaust. Once it's clear that something supernatural is involved, the outcome becomes inevitable and irrelevant. In the end, only Ethan Hawke's performance maintains the initial promise. Followed by a 2015 sequel.

Silver Linings Playbook
2012
*****
Director: David O. Russell
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Anupam Kher, Julia Stiles, Shea Whigham, John Ortiz

Eight months ago, Pat beat up his wife's lover and he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Now he is released from a mental institution to his parents' care. As Pat dreams of making peace with his estranged wife, he meets Tiffany, an eccentric young widow with neuroses of her own. This unusual story begins as a credible portrayal of mental illness, but it slowly tranforms into an endearing romantic comedy. You could say that the script abandons the difficult mental health issues in favour of a crowd-pleasing romance, but it's hard to be cynical when the film is so irresistibly funny and touching. The characterisation is pitch perfect and the cast is terrific across the board. Bradley Cooper is a revelation as Pat, Jennifer Lawrence earned a deserved Oscar for her portrayal of the tough but fragile Tiffany, Robert De Niro gives his warmest performance in decades as Pat's obsessive compulsive dad, and Jack Weaver is wonderfully subdued as the mom who holds the family together. Hell, even Chris Tucker delivers a likeable turn as a fellow mental patient. Adapted from Matthew Quick's novel.


Seven Psychopaths
2012
*
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken, Harry Dean Stanton, Tom Waits, Brendan Sexton III, Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko, Željko Ivanek, Linda Bright Clay

Struggling screenwriter has a snappy title, Seven Psychopaths, but no story. However, he is about to get inspired by some real-life psychopaths. Martin McDonagh follows up In Bruges with another awful dark crime comedy. Like Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, this is a smug and self-referential story about the mechanics of storytelling, which attempts to excuse its clichéd plotting and weak female characters by pointing them out. McDonagh's message is that everybody thinks they have a movie in them, but nobody seems to have an original story to tell, which perfectly sums up his own work. These are some of the dullest 110 minutes I can remember.

The Sessions
2012
***½
Director: Ben Lewin
Cast: John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy, Moon Bloodgood, Annika Marks, Adam Arkin, Rhea Perlman, W. Earl Brown, Robin Weigert

The polio-stricken poet Mark O'Brien, who can only move his head, spends most of his days in an iron lung. Now approaching the late 30s, O'Brien hires a sex surrogate to help him lose his virginity, but he is unprepared for the emotional impact the sessions will have on him. Ben Lewin's fact-based feelgood comedy was adapted from O'Brien's article On Seeing a Sex Surrogate. The story is unusual but somewhat formulaic, and some of the characters seem too good to be true, namely the Catholic priest played by William H. Macy. Nevertheless, the performances are uniformly great and the film provides solid though-provoking entertainment for 90 minutes.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
2012
***½
Director: Lorene Scafaria
Cast: Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Adam Brody, Derek Luke, William Petersen, Connie Britton, Rob Corddry, Melanie Lynskey, Martin Sheen

As a massive asteroid is about to hit the Earth, Dodge is abandoned by his wife. While the clock is ticking, the forlorn Dodge ends up on a road trip with Penny, his next-door neighbour. Lorene Scafaria's directorial debut is dark romantically flavoured comedy about the end of the world. The subject matter is grim, but her film offers some laughs on the way to the moving finale. Steve Carell and Keira Knightley give likeable performances in the lead.

Searching for Sugar Man
2012
***
Director: Malik Bendjelloul
Cast:

Sixto Rodriguez, a Mexican American singer-songwriter from Detroit, released two well-reviewed but poorly received albums in the early 1970s, and subsequently vanished from the music scene. Unbeknownst to him, the first album Cold Fact (1970) became a massive hit in South Africa, where the fans were shocked to learn that the disillusioned artist had committed suicide. Malik Bendjelloul's Academy Award winning documentary tells the story of two South African men who in the pre-internet era attempted to find out who Rodriguez was and where he came from. This search is fascinating; the discovery, not so much. The first half offers a rare glimpse into apartheid-governed white South Africa, and tells a sad tale about the fleeting nature of fame and success. The sentimental second half turns the feel-good factor up to eleven; the film paints Rodriguez as a saint-like figure and becomes a somewhat self-congratulatory celebration of his rediscovery. I cannot help but be reminded of Anvil! The Story of Anvil. Their songs had less substance, but their story had more grit.

Safe House
2012
**½
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Cast: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard, Rubén Blades, Nora Arnezeder, Robert Patrick

A junior CIA agent is bored with his job as the housekeeper of a Cape Town safe house. However, he gets more than he bargained for by having to protect a former agent who has gone rogue. This perfectly entertaining but utterly predictable action movie stands out only by virtue of being set and shot in South Africa. Denzel Washington could play this smartest-guy-in-the-room role in his sleep. Ryan Reynolds unexpectedly keeps his wisecracking to a minimum.

Ruby Sparks
2012
***½
Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Cast: Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Annette Bening, Antonio Banderas, Steve Coogan, Elliott Gould, Chris Messina

Calvin Weir-Fields, whose debut was a hit, is an introverted young novelist who finally rediscovers his creative mojo when he begins to write about Ruby, the woman of his dreams. One morning he finds her downstairs in the flesh and learns that he can define her personality with his typewriter. Zoe Kazan, who gives a lovely performance as Ruby, also scripted this likeable romantic dramedy, which is like a cross between Stranger than Fiction and Woody Allen's more fantastical output. The premise feels odd and flimsy at first, and the narrative takes its time to get going, but the film ultimately offers a nice mix of light comedy (Calvin testing what his text can do) and unsettling drama (Calvin trying to shape Ruby into an ideal woman).

De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone)
2012
**
Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdure, Corinne Masiero, Céline Sallette, Bouli Lanners, Mourad Frarema, Jean-Michel Correia, Yannick Choirat

Ali, who is put in charge of his five-year-old son Sam, moves to southern France where he becomes a bare-knuckle street fighter and forms an unusual relationship with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer who loses both of her legs in a horrific accident. Jacques Audiard's follow-up to the terrific A Prophet is a well-acted but deeply disappointing drama with big structural problems and an incredibly uninteresting protagonist. As a boyfriend, Ali is so unpleasant and self-centred that the supposed romance never comes alive. As a father, he is so abusive and negligent that the climactic dramatic twist left me completely cold. Adapted from Craig Davidson's short stories.

Room 237
2012
***½
Director: Rodney Ascher
Cast:

The Shining is the odd one out in Stanley Kubrick's back catalogue. Why would a director known for his intellectual and artistic output make a pulpy genre film? Or did he? On the surface, his Stephen King adaptation is a story about a man who goes insane and attempts to kill his family. This captivating documentary brings together a handful of obsessives who have spent way too much time overanalysing every frame of the film to discover its hidden subtext. Is The Shining really about the Native American genocide, or about forbidden sexuality, or maybe about the Holocaust, or is it a public admission by the director that he helped to fake the Apollo 11 moon landing? Kubrick was a famous perfectionist who allowed nothing on the screen by accident. So, why does his horror film have blatant continuity errors and a set whose layout doesn't make any logical sense? Are these oversights or subliminal clues? Some of the outlandish theories presented here are fascinating, and some others are laughable. All of them cannot be true at the same time, but they create a mystery full of wonderful contradictions.

Robot & Frank
2012
****
Director: Jack Schreier
Cast: Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, James Marsden, Liv Tyler, Peter Saarsgard, Jeremy Sisto, Jeremy Strong, Anna Gasteyer

The elderly Frank lives alone in Upstate New York. When his memory is starting to go, his son buys a robot to take care of the old man and his household. The former burglar gradually warms up to the robot, especially when he realises that his new companion can help him to come out of retirement. Jack Schreier's feature debut is a dry and sweet scifi-flavoured comedy with a melancholic undertone, and it features a warm lead performance from Frank Langella. There are no frills or tricks, the film simply tells a warm, low-key story about friendship between a man and a machine. The script by first-timer Christopher D. Ford celebrates the value of memories.

Quartet
2012
**
Director: Dustin Hoffman
Cast: Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, Michael Gambon, Sheridan Smith, Andrew Sachs, Trevor Peacock, David Ryall

Beecham House, a retirement home for former musicians, is preparing to stage its annual gala concert. Everyone is hoping that four retired opera singers, two of whom were briefly married, can come to an agreement and recreate their famous quartet from Rigoletto. Dustin Hoffman makes a late directorial debut with this utterly forgettable comedy drama, which Ronald Harwood scipted from his own play. Like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, this is a rare film which features a cast of characters who are mostly pensioners. However, that's where the similarities end. Will the old couple make up? Will she sing? Will the Beecham House survive? All dramatic obstacles are quickly overcome, with minimal charm and humour. The cast is lovely, but they're left with nothing to do.

Puhdistus (Purge)
2012
***
Director: Antti Jokinen
Cast: Laura Birn, Liisi Tandefelt, Amanda Pilke, Peter Franzén, Krista Kosonen, Tommi Korpela, Kristjan Sarv, Jarmo Mäkinen, Jaanika Arum, Tomi Salmela

Sofi Oksanen's brilliant 2008 novel uses tragic personal stories to chart Estonia's recent history from the Soviet rule to independence and to admonish sexual violence against women. Antti Jokinen's screen adaptation removes the historical context (he gives us no clue when any of the events take place) and scales down the ambitious narrative to a story of two generations of women who have more in common than they think. As a young woman, Aliide would stop at nothing to secure the man she loved. Some 50 years later she meets Zara, a young woman who was forced into sex trafficking by the Russian Mafia. This stripped version obviously cannot match the book's impact but it offers a visually striking and occasionally powerful drama. However, for a film which depicts the horrors of sexual exploitation, there's an awful lot of gratuitous nudity. Laura Birn gives a solid lead performances, even if she rarely looks or dresses like an Estonian peasant from the 1940s.

Promised Land
2012
**½
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand, Rosemarie DeWitt, Hal Holbrook, Scoot McNairy, Titus Welliver, Terry Kinney

Steve Butler and his colleague travel to a rural farming town to convince the local landowners to lease their land for fracking, a controversial method of extracting oil and natural gas, but they encounter unexpected resistance from an environmental activist. Through Steve's personal journey, this interesting but ultimately disappointing drama attempts to deal with the potential environmental and health risks of fracking. Steve is a well-drawn if slightly oblivious character, and the story builds up nicely. However, the stupid and predictable twists in the last 15 minutes leave a bad aftertaste. Matt Damon and John Krasinski, the stars of the film, also wrote the screenplay.

Prometheus
2012
***
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green, Charlize Theron, Rafe Spall, Sean Harris

21st century archaelogists draw a connection between cave paintings in Scotland and the ancient forefathers in a different star system. A few years later a group of scientists arrive on the distant moon LV-223 to meet their makers, in more senses than one. Ridley Scott returns to the world of Alien with this prequel/reboot, which is predictably not up to the standard of his brilliant breakthrough 33 years earlier. He also references another one of his classics, Blade Runner, with the android character David who longs to be human yet feels superior to them. The film is strongly acted, beautifully designed and visually striking, as expected, and it has a consistently oppressive atmosphere. The story, however, gets progressively stupider as the film goes on, and by the end you can't tell this one apart from all the other Alien sequels and rip-offs.

Premium Rush
2012
***½
Director: David Koepp
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Jamie Chung, Wolé Parks, Aasif Mandvi

Wilee is a bicycle courier who prefers the daily adrenaline rush to a static, well-paid desk job. What's more, he's a purist who rides his bike without gears or brakes. One day a routine assignment turns into a life and death chase through Manhattan when a corrupt NYPD detective wants his hands on the delivery. This simple scenario results in a snappy, no-nonsense action thriller which pushes credibility to the limit. Never mind when the movie is this much fun. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is typically understated in the lead, which Michael Shannon counterbalances with an enjoyably over the top performance.

The Place Beyond the Pines
2012
****½
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ray Liotta, Ben Mendelsohn, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Bruce Greenwood, Harris Yulin

Derek Cianfrance's follow-up to the raw simplicity of Blue Valentine couldn't be more different. This is an epic crime and family drama in which the sins of the fathers come back to haunt the new generation, and vice versa. It's set in the city of Schenectady (Mohawk word for a place beyond the pine planes). Luke Glanton, a traveling stunt-bike rider, learns that he has fathered a child, and decides to stick around and support his "family". He uses his biking skills to rob banks, and his path inevitably crosses with that of Avery Cross, a young police officer with political aspirations. It all starts as a simple story of a man who tries to make amends, but during the 140 minutes, the characters drop out and return, and the narrative twists and turns, and comes around again. The film is long and perhaps a bit episodic, but Cianfrance keeps it all in control with incredible confidence, and the unpredictable nature of the script keeps things fresh and gripping throughout. There are some first rate performances (Gosling and Cooper, to mention a few) and wonderfully shot and directed scenes.

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists! / The Pirates! Band of Misfits
2012
**½
Director: Peter Lord, Jeff Newitt
Cast: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant, Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek, Lenny Henry, Brian Blessed

The Pirate Captain and his crew compete for the annual Pirate of the Year Award. If only they weren't so inept at what they do. A run-in with scientist Charles Darwin, however, could turn their luck around. The latest stop-motion animation from the Aardman studios doesn't reach the heights of Chicken Run or Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. This is an adaptation of the first volume in Gideon Defoe's book series. Its premise is clever, but the story and the characters are disappointingly unoriginal. The film is perfectly watchable, but apart from a few nice sight gags, it's never more than mildly amusing.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
2012
***
Director: Stephen Chbosky
Cast: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Mae Whitman, Paul Rudd, Nina Dobrev, Johnny Simmons, Kate Walsh

Stephen Chbosky debut feature is adapted from his own autobiographical novel. The story is set in the 1990s, and the protagonist (rather arrogantly, I must say) is the only smart and open-minded kid in the class, and an aspiring writer who is blessed with an exquisite taste in all things cultural. In his freshman year in high school, the 14-year-old Charlie feels like an outsider until he befriends two cool senior students, the adorable Sam and her gay stepbrother Patrick. The characters are well drawn and nicely played, and the film is perfectly enjoyable. However, don't expect to find any great insight into teenage life in the hero's somewhat clichéd experimentations with sex, drugs and heartbreak. Charlie's history with mental problems adds an original twist to the proceedings, but Chbosky seems to remember this story strand only when he needs it to serve the coming-of-age plot.

Passion
2012
*
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, Karoline Herfurth, Paul Anderson, Rainer Bock, Benjamin Sadler

Christine is a charming but ruthless ad agency executive who likes to put her lovers and underlings in their place. However, usurping and humiliating her subordinate Isabelle seems to be a step too far. With this remake of Alain Corneau's 2010 film Love Crime, Brian De Palma makes a crushingly disappointing return to the Hitchcockian thrillers of his early career. He has toned down his trademark visual flamboyance (apart from a seemingly endless split-screen murder scene), but when the script is overcooked but thuddingly boring, and the performances by McAdams and Rapace some of worst in living memory, the resulting film is simply awful. To make matters worse, the screen is filled with characters who do not resemble human beings and the events take place in a weird English-speaking movie Berlin.

Paranorman
2012
****
Director: Sam Fell, Chris Butler
Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jodelle Ferland, Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Leslie Mann, Jeff Garlin, Bernard Hill, Elaine Stritch

Norman is a young boy who can see dead people. His ability has turned him into a bullied loner, but when an ancient curse puts his home town in danger, his skills could save the day. This charming stop-motion animation pays a loving homage to the history of horror cinema. Although the film tells a familiar story of an outsider who seeks acceptance, with traditional witches and zombies, the script by Chris Butler is sprinkled with wonderful twists which keep things fresh. And when the characters are quirkily designed and the gags consistently funny, the end result is very enjoyable.

Mud
2012
***
Director: Jeff Nichols
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Sam Shepard, Michael Shannon, Joe Don Baker, Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson, Paul Sparks, Jacob Lofland, Reese Witherspoon

Ellis and Neckbone are 14-year-old boys who discover a fugitive hiding on a small island in the Mississippi River. The boys form a bond with the elusive man and want to help him flee with his girlfriend. This interesting drama captures an authentic sense of place and inhabits it with believable well-drawn characters. However, the film's questionable message appears to be that if you put your trust in women, be prepared for disappointment. Nevertheless, Tye Sheridan and Matthew McConaughey shine in their roles.

Moonrise Kingdom
2012
***½
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Bob Balaban

Wes Anderson is an acquired taste. When he gets it right, his mix of vacuous whimsy and otherwordly visuals can produce delightful results, like The Royal Tenenbaums. When he drops the ball, he gives us boring and self-indulgent twaddle like The Darjeeling Limited. This rather charming comedy is set in 1965 on the fictional island of New Penzance. Just as a storm is approaching the sheltered community, two misunderstood preteens carry out their plan and run away together. Anderson's movies always look fabulous, but often add up to nothing. This one actually looks to be about something, namely the transition from youth to adulthood, and from fantasy to reality. However, even when the events turn grim (kids stabbing each other or getting hit by lightning), he plays it for laughs, and never lets me forget that this is just cinema.

Metsän tarina (Tale of a Forest)
2012
***½
Director: Ville Suhonen, Kim Saarniluoto
Cast:

This enjoyable nature documentary attempts to disclose the secrets of a primeval Finnish forest through a combination of stunning cinematography and ancient mythology. The footage was shot by Hannu Siitonen and Mikko Pöllänen, who spent years assembling the material. In the narration, a father explains to his son the ancient beliefs about the plants, animals and spirits of the woods. The images are gorgeous and the old folktales fit in surprisingly well, but the film could've used some structural tweaking. Now the season changes from scene to scene and the story returns to the same wildlife time and again.

Men in Black 3
2012
***
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Michael Stuhlbarg, Bill Hader, David Rasche, Emma Thompson

Ten years have passed since the dismal Men in Black II. The good news is that the third film is a major improvement. The bad news is that it's another totally unnecessary sequel which cannot spring surprises like the original did back in 1995. Now Agent J must travel back in time to 1969 to save the young Agent K from alien baddie Boris the Animal. J's trip to the past may also shed some light on K's chronic dourness in the present day. The resulting comedy is disposable but quite funny. Will Smith is on autopilot but Josh Brolin, with the help of makeup, makes an uncanny impersonation of Tommy Lee Jones. The franchise restarts in Men in Black: International.

The Master
2012
****½
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Ambyr Childers, Jesse Plemons, Rami Malek, Laura Dern, Madisen Beaty, Lena Endre

A traumatised World War 2 veteran struggles to adjust back to life. In the early 1950s, this aimless and explosive alcoholic stumbles on a cult known as the Cause, and develops an unusual codependent relationship with its charismatic leader (inspired by Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard). Like There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up is majestic cinema. His long character study offers spectacular visuals, impeccable period details, stunning performances (by Phoenix, Hoffman and Adams), and a weird and wonderful Jonny Greenwood soundtrack. However, this subtle and hypnotic psychological drama is intriguing but not easy to read. The servant needs his master as much as the master needs his servant. Or is it all a story about unrequited love?

Marvel's the Avengers
2012
***
Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson

When Loki steals Tesseract, an unstable energy source, and threatens to destroy the world, his brother Thor joins forces with Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye to form a team of superheroes. This is one of the key releases in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but sadly not one of the best ones. Joss Whedon seems like the perfect choice to helm a fanboy's wet dream, but his trademark wit and humour are largely absent in this remarkably average action adventure. He does, however, allow all the team members to have their moment in the spotlight. The CGI-heavy climactic battle is bombastic but underwhelming. The team reassembles in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Magic Mike
2012
***½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Matt Bomer, Olivia Munn, Joe Manganiello, Matthew McConaughey, Adam Rodriquez, Kevin Nash

Mike is a 30-something jack-of-all-trades who makes most of his money as a male stripper in Tampa, Florida. While he attemps to get his furniture business off the ground, he takes the 19-year-old Adam under his wings at the club. Stephen Soderbergh's entertaining film defies easy categorisation. It has both comedy and drama, plenty of drinking, drug taking and nudity, warm bromance and romance, social commentary, and plenty of male stripping, but all the while the narrative keeps you guessing where exactly it's heading. The script by Reid Carolin (which is based on Channing Tatum's personal experiences) doesn't sneer at stripping. It shows the men as a tightly-knit group of friends who make the most of their frowned-upon profession. However, somewhat disappointingly there is a cautionary side plot about the sleazy side effects of the industry, and a strong suggestion that no one should make a career out of stripping. Soderbergh cuts steadily between the plot and the performances, which becomes a bit mechanical in the long run. Channing Tatum as Mike is a revelation as a dramatic actor and as a stage performer, and Matthew McConaughey makes great fun of himself as the egomaniacal Dallas, who runs the club.

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
2012
**
Director: Eric Darnell, Conrad Vernon, Tom McGrath
Cast: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Tom McGrath, Jessica Chastain, Bryan Cranston, Martin Short, Frances McDormand

The first film in this popular series was about domesticated circus animals trying to cope in the wild, the second one about them discovering their origins in Africa. This one is about them, er, operating a traveling circus. The script by Eric Darnell and Noah Baumbach completely rejects the notion that these character are supposed to be animals. Now the homesick New Yorkers cross continents without explanation and dash through Europe with no human being in sight apart from an obsessive(ly clichéd) French Animal control officer on their trail. It sounds ridiculous to accuse a 3D animation of being implausible and illogical, but it's sad to see everything that was good about the franchise, namely the lovable characters and their conflict between freedom and comfort, being replaced with nonsensical plotting and non-stop wackiness. The movie has plenty of action to keep the smaller kids happy, but very few memorable gags to keep their parents entertained.

The Lorax / Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
2012
**
Director: Chris Renaud, Kyle Balda
Cast: Zac Efron, Danny DeVito, Ed Helms, Taylor Swift, Rob Riggle, Betty White, Jenny Slate

To impress a girl, 12-year-old Ted ventures outside the artificial town of Thneedville to find a real truffula tree. There he meets Once-ler, who tells him a sad story of the time when all the trees were cut down. This animation is expanded from Dr. Seuss' 1971 children's book, and it has a strong ecological and anticonsumerist message. However, this grim doom-mongering doesn't sit well next to the cutesy slapstick and chirpy songs. In fact the film itself is a prime example of a disposable consumer product that nobody needs. It has some enjoyable comedy moments, but the title character is oddly useless. Lorax is a magical creature who speaks for the trees, and that is all he does for them.

Looper
2012
***½
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Noah Segan, Piper Perabo, Jeff Daniels, Pierce Gagnon, Qing Xu

In 2044, time travel has been invented and used by future crime bosses to send people back in time to be killed by loopers such as Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Things become complicated when Joe needs to close the loop. That is, eliminate his older self (Bruce Willis), who comes back from 2074. Writer/director Rian Johnson doesn't delve too deep into his futuristic dystopia; it's merely a cool backdrop for a gimmicky science fiction premise. The narrative initially moves at a relentless pace, then slows down to a crawl in the midsection, before the action picks up again towards the end. The story goes to surprisingly dark places and the climax is powerful. Overall, the film is entertaining but derivative. Almost every scene seems to nod at an earlier film (12 Monkeys, Terminator, Witness and The Omen are only few of the obvious influences).


Lincoln
2012
***
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Tim Blake Nelson, John Hawkes, Hal Holbrook, Tommy Lee Jones, Gloria Reuben, Gulliver McGrath, Bruce McGill

As the Civil War rages on in 1865, President Lincoln is determined to pass the 13th Amendment and abolish slavery. Alongside this monumental political task, he is locked in domestic battles with his fragile wife and his grown-up son who is eager to enlist. Rather than attempting to tell a sketchy life story from birth to death, Steven Spielberg's long and ambitious biopic wisely concentrates on a few key moments in Abraham Lincoln's career. The end result is consistently interesting but never terribly captivating. The passing of an amendement doesn't make for great entertainment, but Spielberg has put together one handsome looking film. Daniel Day-Lewis once again immerses himself fully into the titular role. His commanding performance secured him his third Academy Award. Tony Kushner's script is based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

Life of Pi
2012
*****
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Adil Hussain, Rafe Spall, Gérard Depardieu, Vibish Sivakumar

A middle-aged Pi Patel tells an incredible story from his teenage years. His family ran a zoo in India, and as a young boy he was intrigued by religions and the question whether animals have souls. At the age of 16, his father decided to move the family and the animals to Canada, but the freighter sank in a storm and Pi was stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger. Yann Martel's 2001 novel was deemed unfilmable, and filmmakers as varied as as M. Night Shyamalan and Jean-Pierre Jeunet were attached to the project at one point or another. Ang Lee finally brings the book to the screen in a perfect blend of smart, cinematic storytelling and state-of-the-art special effects. The film's amazing visuals serve a riveting, philosophical survival story. Suraj Sharma delivers a star-turning performance in the title role. Academy Award winner for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score.

Les Miserables
2012
**½
Director: Tom Hooper
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, Aaron Tveit, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen

Victor Hugo's 1862 novel was previously brought to screen by Bille August in his decent 1998 film. Tom Hooper's version is adapted from the 1980 stage musical by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. Inspired by the charity shown to him, Jean Valjean, a prisoner on parole, begins a new life under a concealed identity. Javert, a prison guard turned chief of police, is not convinced that a criminal can reform, and spends years trying to capture the fugitive. The acting and singing performances are by and large solid, and the 19th-century France is beautifully recreated on screen, although with disappointingly few location shots. The Oscar winning Anne Hathaway plays the tragic Fantine whose daughter is a key figure in the story. Hathaway's rendition of I Dreamed a Dream is the musical and emotional high point of the film. Sadly there is still about two hours and dozens of forgettable tunes until this insanely long sung-through musical is over.

Kuningas Litmanen (The King - Jari Litmanen)
2012
***
Director: Arto Koskinen
Cast:

Jari Litmanen, arguably the best footballer to come out of Finland, made his first-team debut in Lahden Reipas in 1987, aged 16, and his career peaked early in 1995 when he led Ajax Amsterdam to the UEFA Champions League title. Litmanen was a player of superb technical ability and an incredible eye for the game, but extremely injury-prone. The frustrating second half of his career in Barcelona and Liverpool was filled with disappointments. Arto Koskinen's documentary is interesting and emotionally charged. It has no grander ambition than to paint an idolising portrait of a sporting hero, and that it does well.

Kovasikajuttu (The Punk Syndrome)
2012
****
Director: Jukka Kärkkäinen, Jani-Petteri Passi
Cast:

Pertti and Kari have autism, Sami and Toni have Down syndrome. Together these Finnish guys form the punk band Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät. They may not be great musicians, but they play with attitude and sing about things close to their heart, such as their dislike of living in a group home or having pedicures. This laid-back and enjoyable documentary doesn't explain anything through voiceover or formal interviews. It simply follows the band on and off stage, and shows how these four men with learning disabilities deal with everyday issues, like moving away from home, finding a girlfriend, and making babies. The film doesn't patronise the quartet, it shows them full of life. Followed by Tokasikajuttu in 2017.

En kongelig affære (A Royal Affair)
2012
****
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Alicia Vikander, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Trine Dyrholm, Cyron Melville, David Dencik, Søren Malling

In 1766, Caroline Matilda of Great Britain marries the half-witted King Christian VII of Denmark. German doctor and freethinker Johann Friedrich Struensee becomes the King's personal physician and uses his position to introduce radical social reforms but he undermines his own work by falling in love with the unhappy Queen. This stylish Danish costume piece tells a captivating fact-based story whose socialist/atheist protagonist feels almost contemporary. The film has a great cast and it offers an entertaining mix of political and personal drama.

Killing Them Softly
2012
*½
Director: Andrew Dominik
Cast: Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Sam Shepard, Slaine, Vincent Curatola

When a shady businessman hires two deadbeats to rob a mob card game, the crime syndicate is not ready to shrug the incident off, and instead hire a hitman who has a peculiar moral code. This tough and cynical crime drama is based on the 1974 novel Cogan's Trade by George V. Higgins. The adaptation moves it to New Orleans and updates it to 2008 when the American economy is in meltdown. Even the business of killing is hit by the downturn. Dominik hammers home his topical subtext with constant background soundbites where the incumbent and future President attempt to restore confidence in the American people. All of this would be fine, if the crime story wasn't so formulaic, slow-paced and boring, and the film so completely pointless. James Gandolfini has a long and meaningless role as the hitman's associate who is too screwed up to do anything. The script is incredibly misogynistic and Dominik shoots some of the violence in super slow motion so that we can see every drop of blood for the longest possible amount of time. What do these elements have to do with his thought-provoking portrayal of America, I ask. However, the pointlessness reaches its nadir in one of the most irritating scenes in recent memory in which one of the robbers drifts in and out of drug-induced stupour during a conversation.

Killer Joe
2012
***½
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church, Marc Macaulay

Chris, a drug-dealing loser who owes money to the wrong people, conspires with his father to hire a dirty cop to kill his mother so he can collect her \$50,000 life insurance policy. However, Killer Joe demands payment in advance or, alternatively, Chris' baby doll sister Dottie as a retainer. This dark comedy from Tracy Letts's stage play presents people rarely seen on screen. The family Smith are the worst kind of trailer trash scum: incredibly stupid, utterly despicable but curiously entertaining to watch. Ironically, the only intelligent person in this scenario is the suave and menacing contract killer, wonderfully played by Matthew McConaughey in his first memorable role in years. Friedkin is skillful at building tension, which inevitably and somewhat disappointingly erupts into full-fledged violence.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
2012
**½
Director: Brad Peyton
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Vanessa Hudgens, Luis Guzmán, Kristin Davis

Four years have passed since the events in Journey to the Center of the Earth. With the help of his stepfather Hank, 17-year-old Sean deciphers the coordinates of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, and the two travel to the location. Like the original, this sequel is a preposterous and formulaic but surprisingly entertaining family movie. Enjoy it while it last, but don't think about it for one second.

John Carter
2012
**
Director: Andrew Stanton
Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Willem Dafoe

John Carter, a Civil War veteran from Virginia, is miraculously transported to Mars (or Barsoom in the local lingo) which is at war. The planet's gravitational characteristics give him superhuman strength and agility, which comes in handy when he helps Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Helium, who has become a pawn in a planetary conflict. In 1912, A Princess of Mars, the first book in Edgar Rice Burroughs' science fiction series came out. In 2012, the big screen adaptation finally hits the screens. The book's fantastical premise may have been original 100 years ago, but in the intervening years we've seen all possible permutations of this same story. Andrew Stanton, the man behind the brilliant Finding Nemo and Wall-E makes his live action debut, but he cannot breathe life into this material. His film is a somewhat likeable but instantly forgettable scifi action blockbuster.

Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet
2012
***½
Director: Jess Vile
Cast:

In the late 1980s, teenage guitar prodigy Jason Becker broke to the heavy metal scene with his fast playing and high technical ability. At the age of 20, he joined David Lee Roth's band, but just when his career was about to move to the next level, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This debilitating muscle disease would render him completely immobile and kill him within five years. And yet, in 2012 Becker is still alive and composing music through a combination of eye-communication and computer technology. Jess Vile's captivating documentary celebrates Becker's mental strength and creative spirit, and the incredible dedication of his family and carers. It's a hagiographical rather than a biographical film, but a moving one all the same.

Jagten (The Hunt)
2012
****
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Alexandra Rapaport, Thomas Bo Larsen, Susse Wold, Lars Ranthe, Anne Louise Hassing, Annika Wedderkopp, Lasse Fogelstrøm

Lucas is a divorced kindergarten teacher with strong ties to his community. When one of his pupils mistakenly alludes that he exposed himself to her, the incident snowballs out of control and Lucas' life turns into a nightmare. Like Andrew Jarecki's brilliant 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans, Thomas Vinterberg's terrifically subtle and disconcerting thriller/drama shows how even a possibility of child abuse can send an entire community into mass hysteria and destroy an individual's life in the process. Nevertheless, the script by Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm does not feature bad guys, only a group of over-sensitive, cynical, reactionary and politically correct grown-ups. Mads Mikkelsen gives another stellar performance in the lead.

Iron Sky
2012
**½
Director: Timo Vuorensola
Cast: Julia Dietze, Christopher Kirby, Götz Otto, Peta Sergeant, Stephanie Paul, Udo Kier, Tilo Prückner

In 2018, U.S. astronauts discover a swastika-shaped colony on the dark side of the moon. The Nazis, who moved there in 1945, are now preparing to return to Earth with their gigantic war machine, and the colony's idealistic schoolteacher is about to learn that the National Socialist philosophy is not all about love, peace and understanding. This outlandish comedy delivers a totally wacky premise and some nice gags in its opening 30 minutes. However, when the initial excitement dies down, all the attention is drawn to the terrible performances, leaden dialogue, and enormous plot holes. There is inevitably a massive space battle towards the end, but the story thankfully doesn't wrap up quite as you'd expect. This Finnish-German-Australian co-production was made for less than \$10 million, and it was partly funded by online fans, but the design and special effects look amazingly good. Followed by Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019).

The Imposter
2012
***
Director: Bart Layton
Cast:

Nicholas Barclay, a 13-year-old Texas boy, disappeared in 1994. Three years later, his family were informed that the boy was found in Spain. It seemed too good to be true, and sadly it was. French imposter Frédéric Bourdin, 23 years old at the time, explains to the camera how and why he transformed himself into Nicholas, and managed to fool (almost) everyone. Bart Layton's documentary is fascinating but uncomfortable viewing. Bourdin is clearly unhinged but Layton shows him more sympathy than the grieving Barclays, who come across as idiots. Although the story may be true, it feels so insanely preposterous that it made me angry. The twist in the end provides more intrigue but, frustratingly, no closure.

The Impossible
2012
***½
Director: J.A. Bayona
Cast: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast, Marta Etura, Sönke Möhring, Geraldine Chaplin, Ploy Jindachote, Jomjaoi Sae-Limh

In 2004, Henry and Maria Bennett and their three boys travel to Khao Lak in Thailand. The family's idyllic Christmas holiday turns into a nightmare when the Boxing Day tsunami hits the resort. J.A. Bayona's follow-up to the brilliant The Orphanage is another grim family tragedy. The script is based on the true story of a Spanish family and their incredible struggle for survival. This is a gripping and moving if a bit predictable drama which celebrates the strength of the human spirit. The performances are strong and the special effects are stunning.

The Iceman
2012
**
Director: Ariel Vromen
Cast: Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, James Franco, Ray Liotta, Chris Evans, David Schwimmer, Stephen Dorff, Erin Cummings, Robert Davi

The wife and daughters of Richard Kuklinski (1935-2006) were blissfully unaware that the husband and father they loved and admired killed more than 100 people in his 20-year career as a mob hitman. In the right hands, this intriguing premise would make a great movie. Sadly this dull, aimless, and misjudged biopic is not it. Ariel Vromen cannot decide whether he wants to tell a story of a soulless, two-faced monster or a cool-as-ice mobster. The end result feels like a poor man's Goodfellas, which is not diminished by the presence of Ray Liotta. In the end, I feel nothing for Kulinski, his family, or his victims, which I don't think was Vromen's aim. Michael Shannon is a terrific actor, but either his performance is terrible or he is miscast. The role calls for an actor I believe could be a loving family man, not one who looks like he's ready to chop up his own family any minute. Based on The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer by Philip Carlo.

Ice Age: Continental Drift
2012
**
Director: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Jennifer Lopez, Queen Latifah, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad

The Ice Age franchise keeps coming back with ever-diminishing returns. The fourth part gets to a hilarious start when Scrat causes a rapid continental shift. It acts as a catalyst to the main plot, which is not up to scrat(ch). In The Meltdown, the characters fled the melting ice caps, now the ground beneath their feet is shifting. In the ensuing chaos, Manny is separated from his wife and teenage daughter and stranded at sea with Diego, Sid and his senile grandmother. As if the imminent end of the world wasn't enough to scare the kids, this family film also introduces (in a lackluster crossover attempt with the Pirates of the Caribbean series) Captain Gutt, a sadistically cruel and wholly unpleasant villain. Followed by Ice Age: Collision Course.

The Hunger Games
2012
****
Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Wes Bentley

In a post-apocalyptic future, the annual Hunger Games are the TV event of the year. All twelve districts of Panem (former North America) are forced to select a boy and a girl aged 12 to 18 to fight for survival until only one of them is left standing. Jennifer Lawrence follows Winter's Bone with another impressive performance as Katniss Everdeen, a strong but principled 16-year-old who volunteers to represent District 12. This adaptation of the first book in Suzanne Collins' popular trilogy doesn't really break new ground. The gruesome teenage death fight is taken from Battle Royale, the extreme reality TV is familiar from films like Running Man and The Truman Show, and, if you will, the cliffhanger sets the stage for a Twilight-like teenage love triangle. However, Collins has created a really charismatic protagonist and she combines the various influences to an entertaining story. The film takes its time to get going, but it's ultimately a powerful dystopia with a genuine sense of dread. Followed by Catching Fire.


The House I Live in
2012
*****
Director: Eugene Jarecki
Cast:

Eugene Jarecki's stunning documentary delivers a scathing indictment of the War on Drugs. In 1971 President Richard Nixon singled out drug abuse as the public enemy number one in the United States. More than 40 years later, narcotics are cheaper, stronger and freely available, but the U.S. now houses 25% of the world's prison population, many of whom are serving ridiculously unproportionate sentences for nonviolent drug offences. The Nixon administration initially understood that apart from punishing the offenders, it was essential to treat the addiction. However, this compassionate approach didn't go down well with the voters, and every subsequent President has appeared first and foremost tough on crime. The incarcerated offenders are predominantly blacks and poor people in general, and the film very convincingly argues that the campaign has contributed to the destruction of an entire social class ("a Holocaust in slow motion") and to the success of the private prison industry. Jarecki adds a moving personal touch to the story by telling how drugs ravaged the family of his childhood nanny.


Hotel Transylvania
2012
**½
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Cast: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, Steve Buscemi, Molly Shannon, David Spade, CeeLo Green

Count Dracula builds a massive hotel in Transylvania to accomodate a variety of monsters and to keep her daughter Mavis safe from evil humans. As Mavis grows up, she is eager to venture into the outside world. Things come to a head when an unsuspecting human traveller strays into the hotel on the girl's 118th birthday. Genndy Tartakovsky's feature debut throws together two old Pixar movies, Finding Nemo (overprotective father) and Monsters, Inc. (imaginative creatures). It is not a surprise that this modest animation doesn't bristle with originality. The set-up sounds dark for a children's film, but the protagonist turns out to be a figuratively toothless vampire and the rest of the monsters are anything but scary. Followed by Hotel Transylvania 2.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
2012
**½
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Graham McTavish, Manu Bennett, Barry Humphries, Sylvester McCoy, Lee Pace, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Serkis

Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy transformed J.R.R. Tolkien's three volume novel into a brilliant film series. The news that Jackson was to turn The Hobbit, Tolkien's short and simple children's book, into yet another epic trilogy (by including parts of Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings Appendices) smelled like a business decision rather than an artistic one, and this bloated first part sadly confirms my prejudices. The story is set in Middle-earth 60 years earlier. The young Bilbo Baggins reluctantly joins Gandalf and a company of Dwarves who want to reclaim their stolen gold from Smaug the Dragon. During the first third of their adventure, which runs nearly three hours, they have dangerous encounters with Trolls. Goblins, Orcs, Wargs and Stone Giants, and Bilbo meets Gollum and the Ring. There's even time for a stopover in Rivendell to meet old familiar faces, Lady Galadriel, Lord Elrond and Saruman. Jackson's wonderful visual imagination is still on display, but now he seems too occupied with the spectacle at the expense of the story. This is a somewhat mechanical action adventure which struggles to find a satisfactory balance between the dark fantasy and the slapstick comedy. It also doesn't help that the stakes are low. Frodo's quest was about saving the world, Bilbo's quest is about repossessing property. Bilbo and Gandalf are familiar, well-drawn character and Thorin Oakenshield is a compelling new one, but the other twelve Dwarves are interchangeable. Followed by The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies.

Hitchcock
2012
***
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collette, Danny Huston, Jessica Biel, James D'Arcy, Michael Wincott

Fresh out of North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchock decides to adapt Robert Bloch's novel Psycho, but Paramount refuses to bankroll what they see as a vulgar slasher movie. Hitchcock and his wife/collaborator Alma Reville finance the picture themselves, which puts immense strain on a marriage already fraught with jealousy and suspicion. Sacha Gervasi's feature debut is based on Stephen Rebello's book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. This is a light biopic which provides disappointingly little insight into the great director's working methods. Hitch's obsession with his leading ladies has been well documented, but the script doesn't really delve into that either. During the course of the story, the Master of Suspense has recurring visions of Ed Gein, the killer who inspired Bloch's book, but that idea doesn't turn out to be fruitful. The central thesis of the piece is that Alma Reville played an important, uncredited role in her husband's celebrated directing career, and the two had a strong and loving relationship. If you want to see a story about that, this is an entertaining and well-acted film.

Hannah Arendt
2012
***
Director: Margarethe von Trotta
Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Janet McTeer, Klaus Pohl, Nicholas Woodeson, Axel Milberg, Julia Jentsch, Ulrich Noethen, Michael Degen

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), a Jewish writer and philosopher, fled Germany after Hitler's rise to power. In the early 1960s, she wrote a controversial New Yorker article on the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Unlike the rest of the Jewish world, she refused to see Eichmann as an evil monster but instead as a dangerously robotic bureaucrat who blindly carried out his orders. Margarethe von Trotta's biographical drama of this period in Arendt's life is consistently interesting but never exactly captivating. A story about the importance of thinking doesn't sound like a very cinematic proposition and, indeed, very often this feels like a filmed essay rather than a piece of cinema. Nevertheless, Barbara Sukowa gives a fine performance, be it in German or in English.

Frankenweenie
2012
****
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Charlie Tahan, Atticus Shaffer, Winona Ryder

Young Victor loves science, moviemaking, and his dog Sparky. When Sparky is killed, Victor uses lightning to resurrect his faithful companion. The twist is that there is no twist: Sparky returns as his usual self, it's the response of the kids and grown-ups around the dog that creates the drama. Tim Burton's black and white stop motion animation is a nicely creepy and enjoyably funny gothic horror comedy which pays loving homage to Frank Whale's classics Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Burton's film, which he expanded from his own 1984 short, makes a good visual and thematical companion piece to his 2005 animation Corpse Bride.

Four Horsemen
2012
***
Director: Ross Ashcroft
Cast:

Ross Ashcroft' debut is a documentary which predicts the decline of the Western civilisation, and more specifically the end of American imperialism. He interviews a number of great thinkers who explain how greed has crippled the free markets, how poverty has given rise to terrorism, and how the mankind has ruthlessly pillaged the natural resources and destroyed the environment in the process. The film not only explains how things stand, it suggests corrective measures, which for the most part sound like a pipe dream. Ashcroft presents a fine summary on the various topics, but frankly many of the details he brings forth are familiar from earlier films like Inside Job, Capitalism: A Love Story, and An Inconvenient Truth.

Flight
2012
**½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, Bruce Greenwood, John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Tamara Tunie, Nadine Velazquez, Brian Geraghty, Peter Gerety, Justin Martin

Despite a late night of sex, drugs, and booze, Whip Whitaker pilots a flight from Orlando to Atlanta. When the flight suffers a technical failure midair, Whip saves numerous lives by bringing down the plane with a bold and confident manoeuvre, because or regardless of being intoxicated. After years of family-friendly, special effects-heavy output, Robert Zemeckis makes his first grown-up drama, which is well-acted but long, and ultimately disappointing. The first 30 minutes are terrific, but the remaining two hours are a drag, as the reluctant hero is gradually consumed by guilt and alcoholism. You can always trust Denzel Washington to deliver a commanding lead performance, but the script doesn't give me any reason to like Whip or to care whether or not he gets away with his actions. Kelly Reilly plays a heroin addict named Nicole who acts as a love interest/reference point. Two thirds into the film, she quietly disappears, which tells you exactly how superfluous her character is.

End of Watch
2012
***
Director: David Ayer
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Peña, Anna Kendrick, Natalie Martinez, America Ferrera, Frank Grillo, Cody Horn, David Harbour

Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala are young police officers who patrol the perilous streets of South Central Los Angeles. They are also close friends, who are both starting a family. When John Ford was asked about his profession, he famously said that he makes Westerns. David Ayer writes and directs movies about LAPD cops. This is a gritty and believable story about the men in blue, at least initially. Ayer attemps to convince us that his movie is edited from camcorder, body cam and dash cam footage, but this doesn't hold water for very long. His script sadly telegraphs the (implausible) climactic events.

Dredd
2012
**
Director: Pete Travis
Cast: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Wood Harris, Lena Headey, Domhnall Gleeson, Warrick Grier

In the post-apocalyptic future, 800 million people live within the walls of the crime-infested Mega-City One where street judges uphold the law and provide swift justice with their firearm. Judge Dredd and a rookie with psychic abilities are dispatched to a murder scene, but end up playing cat and mouse with a ruthless drug cartel in a locked down tower block (in a scenario which is almost identical to the one in The Raid a year earlier). This is the second adaptation of the 2000 AD comic strip series created in 1977 by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra. The terrible Judge Dredd (1995), which starred Sylvester Stallone, was a major disappointment to the fans. This one was scripted by Alex Garland, and it is surprisingly faithful to the gritty, violent and nihilistic worldview of the source material. Although the comic was terrific (at least as a teenager reader), it doesn't mean that the film is any good. The whole concept in fact seems silly, nonsensical and completely fascistic, and Dredd - untouchable and lacking in any human characteristics - is not a very compelling (anti)hero. The slow-paced and clunky set pieces, totally one-dimensional characters and cheesy oneliners make this feel like an action movie from the 1980s. The constant CGI splatter, however, reminds us when it was made.


Django Unchained
2012
***½
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, Michael Parks, Don Johnson

Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were a breath of fresh air, but the recent years have turned Quentin Tarantino into one of the most predictable filmmakers in the industry. Each new release is an overlong, ultra-violent, expletive-heavy and utterly pointless revenge fantasy full of film references, overwrought dialogue and quirky 70s songs. This Spaghetti Western-meets-blaxploitation flick certainly isn't a stretch for him. The story is set in 1858, when Dr. King Schultz, a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter, frees Django, a slave who can help him identify three wanted brothers. The two strike an unlikely partnership, which eventually takes them to Mississippi to liberate Django's wife. The 165 minute running time is more than excessive, although there are several terrific scenes and wonderful performances, which include the Academy Award winning Christopher Waltz as the suave bounty hunter, Leonardo DiCaprio as the nasty plantation owner and Samuel L. Jackson as his servile elderly slave. James Remar appears in a baffling double role, probably just to misdirect our expectations. Once again the whole adds up to nothing. This is not a story about slavery any more than Inglourious Basterds is a story about World War 2. The setting provides a nice backdrop for cool and brutal violence, and this is indeed the director's bloodiest movie since Kill Bill, Vol. 1. Tarantino's screenplay won an Academy Award.


The Dictator
2012
**
Director: Larry Charles
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley, Jason Mantzoukas, John C. Reilly, Bobby Lee, Sayed Badreya, Adeel Akhtar

In his third collaboration with Larry Charles, Sacha Baron Cohen abandons the mockumentary style of Borat and Brüno, but otherwise sticks close to the formula. This is another scattershot comedy about an obnoxious foreigner who causes an outrage on the US soil. Now Cohen plays Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen who rules the African country of Wadiya with an iron fist. He is in the process of building a nuclear weapon, but the growing diplomatic pressure forces him to address the international community at the UN. The early moments in Wadiya are enjoyably offensive and genuinely funny, but once the story moves to New York the satire quickly loses its bite, and so does the beloved oppressor. Aladeen begins to soften up and even gets to have a romance with a hirsute feminist activist. In the second half, the jokes become desperately scatological and each new gag has less and less to do with the original premise.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
2012
**
Director: David Bowers
Cast: Zachary Gordon, Robert Capron, Devon Bostick, Rachael Harris, Karan Brar, Peyton List, Steve Zahn, Melissa Roxburgh

Greg hopes to spend the summer holiday playing video games, but his parents have other ideas. So, he pretends to have a job in order to hang around the country club with his best friend Rowley and Holly, his crush from Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules. Throughout this episodic series, Greg has been an extremely selfish kid, but the consequences of his actions have been funny and humiliating mostly to himself. In the third movie, Greg transforms into a stupid, nasty and unpleasant brat who lies his ways through every situation, but he's a good kid because he admits to his mistakes when he is found out. This time the comedy vignettes are cringeworthy and predictable. Based on the third and fourth books in Jeff Kinney’s series. Followed by Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Long Haul (2017), which features a new cast.

Dark Shadows
2012
***
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloë Grace Moretz, Bella Heathcote

In 1796, a jealous witch named Angelique turns Barnabas Collins into a vampire and locks him in a coffin for roughly 200 years. In 1972, Barnabas returns home to find his one true love reincarnated and his family legacy destroyed by the witch who is still alive. This is a quintessential Tim Burton movie. It has a darkly comic story (based on a TV series which ran from 1966 to 1971), a beautifully visualised gothic setting, and it stars Johnny Depp as yet another cute but ultimately tragic freak. The end result is enjoyable but disposable entertainment. The hero, as played by Depp, is a lovely fish out of water character who produces a great many laughs. The main problem is that the central romance lacks spark. The twisted love story between Angelique and Barnabas is far more compelling.

The Dark Knight Rises
2012
**½
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Morgan Freeman

Eight years on, Batman has vanished and Bruce Wayne has become a mentally and physically crippled recluse. He's forced to come out of hiding when Bane, an enigmatic terrorist, holds Gotham City to ransom. Christopher Nolan builds plot on plot on plot, and goes back to The Dark Knight and Batman Begins to bring his ambitious trilogy to a conclusion. If Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher's inane adaptations turned the Caped Crusader into a goofy comic book hero with no human characteristics, Nolan's unrelentingly dark view sucks all the fun out of the franchise. This third part is a colossal and seemingly endless superhero action film, which suffocates under its own weight(iness). Nolan knows how to stage spectacle, though. Scenes like the opening plane jacking or the destruction of Gotham City are absolutely awe-inspiring, but the human drama fails to make an impact. Bane, in his megaphone mask, is a hulky and intimidating villain without any depth. Batman, on the other hand, has new, fancy gizmos and gadgets, but he ultimately settles the score in a lumbering fist fight.

Contraband
2012
**½
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Caleb Landry Jones, Giovanni Ribisi, Lukas Haas, J. K. Simmons, Diego Luna, Robert Wahlberg

Chris Farraday is an ex-smuggler gone legit who is forced to bring a shipment of counterfeit money from Panama to New Orleans when his idiot brother-in-law Andy screws up and the local drug lord threatens to kill him, Chris, his wife, and his two kids. Baltasar Kormákur's violent, foul-mouthed, and forgettable caper is a remake of the 2008 Icelandic film Reykjavík-Rotterdam, in which he starred. The scenes on the ship and in Panama are perfectly enjoyable, but the parts set in New Orleans are unconvincing or unpleasant. Giovanni Ribisi doesn't cut it as a crime boss, especially when Chris beats him up on several occasions. Kate Beckinsale, the sole female presence in the movie, appears in a thankless role as the helpless wife and mother who is repeatedly terrorised and physically abused by friend and foe alike.

Cloud Atlas
2012
***
Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
Cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Keith David, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant

It took three directors to adapt David Mitchell's unfilmable 2004 novel. This hugely ambitious epic tells six thinly connected stories which range from the mid-1800s to the distant post-apocalyptic future. Each strand follows individuals who deal with oppression in one form or another. Tykwer and the Wachowskis each filmed three of the sections, but they blend beautifully together through inventive transitions. The resulting film is nearly three hours long, consistently mystifying and often gripping. Whether the six parts make a cohesive and poignant whole is another question entirely. Characters from one story reincarnate in another, but it feels like a mistake to have a small cast play multiple parts. I would prefer to be immersed in the dramatic events rather than chuckle every time I recognize a familiar face behind a silly wig, fake nose or just blatantly obvious movie makeup.

Chronicle
2012
****
Director: Josh Trank
Cast: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Kelly, Ashley Hinshaw, Anna Wood, Bo Petersen

Three high school kids - the shy and bullied Andrew, his cousin Matt, and the popular Steve - discover a mysterious object which gives them telekinetic abilities. They first use them for private fun, but the true extent of the powers gradually begins to weigh on the boys, especially Andrew, whose family is going through crisis. Josh Trank's feature debut is presented as a mix of found footage, mostly from Andrew's video camera. Trank and his co-writer Max Landis manage to convince us why the camera is always there, but as the tension builds, the gimmick makes less and less sense. Even if the storytelling technique is not original, the premise thankfully is. This is a tightly directed and very entertaining scifi thriller. The special effects are subtle but superb.

The Cabin in the Woods
2012
****
Director: Drew Goddard
Cast: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford

This clever and self-aware horror movie starts off like The Evil Dead or Cabin Fever: five college students head out to a remote cabin for a weekend, which ends up being anything but fun. However, Drew Goddard and his co-writer Josh Whedon turn this formulaic premise on its head: these five friends unknowingly turn into stock characters and seem to be part of a twisted and cynical Hunger Games-type reality show. Goddard and Whedon's wonderfully fresh script doesn't stop there either. Their multileveled nightmare world keeps springing new surprises and by the end it feels like a very dark version of Lost. There are some nasty and gruesome scenes, which are counterbalanced with enjoyable comedy.

Brave
2012
****
Director: Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, Steve Purcell
Cast: Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, Julie Walters, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, Robbie Coltrane

Finding Nemo is a lovely tale of father and son who don't see eye to eye. With this animation set in ancient Scotland, the Pixar Studios give the female folk their own version of the same premise. Queen Elinor is determined to prepare her daughter for marriage to one of the ruling clans, but the tomboyish, strong-willed and flame-haired Merida wants to be in charge of her own future. The story appears to be heading down a familiar romantic path, until Merida's encounter with a witch gives it an unexpected and refreshing twist, and turns it into a moving portrayal of the bond between mother and daughter. King Fergus and the three younger brothers provide the comedy relief.

The Bourne Legacy
2012
**½
Director: Tony Gilroy
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach, Dennis Boutsikaris, Oscar Isaac, Louis Ozawa Changchien

Operations Treadstone and Blackbriar are exposed and Jason Bourne is out of the picture, although the timeframe here overlaps with The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Now the operation is titled Outcome, and it aims to develop chemically enhanced super agents. When the project becomes compromised, CIA decides to kill all its assets. One of them, Aaron Cross, outsmarts the agency, escapes, and teams up with an Outcome biochemist. Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass have left the franchise, Jeremy Renner takes the starring role, Tony Gilroy is promoted from a screenwriter to a director, but the fourth part offers more of the same, again. The plot is needlessly complicated and very slow to draw me in. The oveplotting seems particularly futile when it leads to the same old series of fight and chase scenes as the hero attempts and fails to remain below the radar. The film is way too long, but it ends somewhat abruptly.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
2012
***
Director: John Madden
Cast: Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Dev Patel, Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, Tena Desae, Lillete Dubey

Seven English senior citizens, some for personal and some for financial reasons, move to India to live in an attractive retirement resort. The hotel in question turns out to be a poorly run, dilapidated old building, but the new location presents a chance for a new start for many in the group. Although this comedy drama is formulaic, it is thankfully not a conventional culture clash story. However, when the elderly Brits come to India and teach the locals how to sort out their love and business affairs, it's hard to judge whether that is post-colonial arrogance or just wisdom brought on by old age. In any case, the film tones down the Indian accent to a minimum and offers pure, unadulterated wish fulfilment, but as wish fulfilment goes, this is smart and enjoyable. The cast obviously oozes charm.

Berberian Sound Studio
2012
*½
Director: Peter Strickland
Cast: Toby Jones, Antonio Mancino, Fatma Mohamed, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Susanna Capellaro, Cosimo Fusco, Suzy Kendall

Sometime in the 1970s, an English sound engineer begins work on an Italian production which to his shock turns out to be a gruesome horror flick. The foreign surroundings, the hostile working environment and the film's increasinly graphic content slowly begin to take its toll on the timid soundman. Peter Strickland's confounding second feature offers nothing to the average moviegoer. His vanity project seems to be aimed solely at the fans of obscure Italian giallo movies and vintage audio equipment. Is it a drama, a dark comedy, or a psychological horror story? All and none of the above. It doesn't have a traditional narrative, interesting characters or arresting visuals. This would all be well if Strickland's film was somewhat captivating. The overall vibe and the soundscape in particular owe a great deal to David Lynch. But where Lynch's work, even at its most obscure (Inland Empire, anyone?), has a weird hypnotic pull, I couldn't wait for this one to end.

Beasts of the Southern Wild
2012
***
Director: Behn Zeitlin
Cast: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly, Philip Lawrence, Gina Montana, Lowell Landes, Jonshel Alexander, Marilyn Barbarin

Six-year-old Hushpuppy and her angry, ailing father Wink live in the Bathtub, a dirt-poor community on the Louisiana coast. When a Katrina-like storm breaks the levee, the Bathtub is flooded and poisoned, but the disaster is not able to destroy the will and spirit of its inhabitants. Behn Zeitlin's magic realist debut follows in the footsteps of Terrence Malick. It's an environmentally conscious and visually arresting portrayal of the delicate bond people have with their habitat. The non-professional cast gives this story a heightened sense of authenticity. What the film lacks, though, is a strong narrative pull. The dreamy drama drifts along and features a less than believable cast of characters who all seem to speak in little nuggets of wisdom. Based on Lucy Alibar's play Juicy and Delicious.

Barbara
2012
***½
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Mark Waschke, Rainer Bock, Christina Hecke, Claudia Geisler

Some time in the 1980s, a doctor from East Berlin is transferred to a small rural hospital and placed under close Stasi surveillance. She plots a swift defection to the West, but her ambiguous colleague and her patients make her question her priorities. Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss return to the German Baltic coast in their follow-up to Jerichow. This is a much better film, although the large shadow of The Lives of Others looms over the entire storyline. Nevertheless, this stylish and slow-burning drama reminds us that there was no private life in the totalitarian GDR.

Argo
2012
***
Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Christopher Denham, Scoot McNairy, Kerry Bishé

Following the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, six American citizens find refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador. CIA operative Tony Mendez has a plan to bring them home. He pretends to be a Canadian movie producer on a location scout in Iran for a science fiction flick called Argo, and the six are members of his crew. Ben Affleck's third directorial effort is a mechanical but perfectly enjoyable thriller, and an underwhelming political drama. The curious fact-based premise sounds almost too good to be true, but truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Well, except for the climactic airport scene which is clearly latter. Sadly Affleck's Iran doesn't have individuals, only one angry, hostile mob. The six embassy workers don't come off much better. They're a faceless and uninteresting group of people in peril, yet we're compelled to care about their fate because they're American. This feelgood mix of real-life drama and politics appealed to the Academy who awarded the film three Oscars for Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. Chris Terrio's script is adapted from Mendez's book The Master of Disguise and the Wired magazine article The Great Escape by Joshuah Bearman. For a proper portrayal of Iranian people before and after the Islamic Revolution, see Persepolis.

Anna Karenina
2012
***
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Johnson, Kelly Macdonald, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Alicia Vikander, Olivia Williams, Emily Watson

In 1874, Anna Karenina, a mother and wife to a stodgy bureaucrat, meets the handsome cavalry officer Alexei Vronsky and embarks on a passionate but foolish love affair which ruins her marriage and her reputation. Leo Tolstoy's 1877 novel has been adapted to the screen at least once every decade for the past century. Tom Stoppard's screenplay attempts to give the story a fresh twist by turning it into a filmed stage play. Sometimes within one uncut shot the actors and sets move to a different part of the stage to create the next scene. But not always, which seems odd. While I admire the bold artistic choice and its beautifully orchestrated execution, at times the whole approach feels like a convenient way to overcome budgetary constraints. What this gimmick doesn't do, however, is help me understand the archaic social norms of Imperial Russia or feel Anna's pain as her actions destroy her societal standing. Or maybe it's just Joe Wright. Like his earlier films Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, this is another well-acted and skillfully directed literary adaptation which left me cold.

Amour
2012
****
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert, Alexandre Tharaud, William Shimell, Ramón Agirre, Rita Blanco, Carole Franck, Dinara Droukarova

Georges and Anne, now in their 80s, are retired Parisian piano teachers who still have a loving, respectful relationship. When Anne suffers a stroke, Georges promises to take care of her in their own home until the bitter end. Michael Haneke's subtle, heartbreaking drama delves into the essence of love. This is not a romantic story, but a depiction of complete and utter dedication. Georges must turn from a partner and soul mate to a caregiver and protector, as Anne's undignified demise becomes a humiliating and deeply private endurance test. This powerful and wonderfully acted film won several awards, which include the Palme D'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The Amazing Spider-Man
2012
***
Director: Marc Webb
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Irrfan Khan, Martin Sheen, Sally Field

A mere ten years after Sam Raimi's massively successful Spider-Man, it is time for another origin story. Raimi and his cast have moved on, and the franchise reboots with Marc Webb at the helm and Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. Peter's late father's research takes the teenager to Oscorp, where the old man's ex-colleague attempts to regenerate amputated limbs. As Peter tries to deal with the effects of a bite from a genetically modified spider, he is drawn to his smart and attractive classmate Gwen Stacy. This is a thoroughly entertaining but somewhat pointless comic book movie. There is an unavoidable sense of déjà vu, even if Webb creates a very satisfying mix of action and sentiment. Andrew Garfield's strong lead performance helps immensely. Followed by The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

The Act of Killing
2012
***
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Cast:

Following a coup attempt in 1965, more than 500,000 suspected communists and ethnic Chinese were killed by death squads in Indonesia. The Western world remained silent, and the purge remains a sensitive subject in the country to this day. In his documentary, Joshua Oppenheimer convinces some of the perpetrators to reenact their atrocities on camera. One of them, Anwar Congo, is now an old man who became somewhat of a celebrity after killing about 1,000 people. Congo casually recollects the gory details on a TV talk show or in front of his grandchildren, but during the process his hardened facade slowly begins to crack. Unfortunately this feels like too little, too late. Oppenheimer's film is hard to watch, but not always for the right reasons. It's hard to stomach old men cracking jokes on mass murder, but at least they have names and faces. The actual victims of the tragedy remain nameless and faceless. The reenacted scenes, which take the shape of Congo's favourite movie genres, are baffling and grotesque. Followed by The Look of Silence.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
2012
**½
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Cast: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rufus Sewell, Marton Csokas

As a young man, Abraham Lincoln learns that America is infested with vampires, one of whom killed his mother. Armed with a silver-tipped axe, the future President goes out to kill these monsters. This amusing premise was invented by Seth Grahame-Smith, who adapted his own novel to the screen. He creates his own version of the vampire mythology and blends it beautifully with the story of Lincoln's presidency during the Civil War. And yet, the film doesn't exploit its comic possibilities and is never as much fun as it should be. It doesn't help that Timur Bekmambetov uses fast motion-slow motion-fast motion on a loop, and all his action scenes end up looking the same. His philosophy on CGI seems to be that if he's going use it, he might as well overuse it. This results in some absolutely ridiculous, gravity-defying set pieces, like the horse stampede.

21 Jump Street
2012
***½
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Cast: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Brie Larson, Dave Franco, Rob Riggle, DeRay Davis, Ice Cube, Chris Parnell, Ellie Kemper, Jake Johnson

Due to their youthful looks and immature behaviour, two second-rate rookie cops are reassigned to a special unit which sends them undercover in a high school to find the source of a lethal synthetic drug. 21 Jump Street was a TV show that ran from 1987 to 1991 and made Johnny Depp a household name. Like Charlie's Angels and Starsky & Hutch, this big screen adaptation turns a crime procedural into an all-out comedy. Whether someone is shot or stabbed, I'm meant to laugh, and I do. Like most current comedies, the humour relies heavily on coarse language and crude gags. but the script generates some genuinely funny moments by reversing Hill and Tatum's initial roles and throwing them in a high school environment which is drastically different from the one they remember. Followed by 22 Jump Street.

2 Days in New York
2012
**½
Director: Julie Delpy
Cast: Julie Delpy, Chris Rock, Albert Delpy, Alexia Landeau, Alex Nahon, Malinda Willliams, Dylan Baker, Kate Burton, Vincent Gallo

A few years have passed since those 2 Days in Paris. Marion's mother has died, and her father, sister, and her uninvited boyfriend pay a return visit to New York City. Marion now lives with Mingus (a radio DJ/journalist played by Chris Rock), and they both have a child from their previous relationships. The second film is a disappointingly scattershot collection of humorous vignettes, with very little substance to tie them together. The only worthy observation the comedy makes is that Marion is a different person around her family than she is around Mingus, but Delpy does not explore the subject. Marion's family, who were loveably eccentric when we first met them, are now irritably obnoxious. There are still plenty of funny moments, though, but way too many scenes worthy of a facepalm.

Your Sister's Sister
2011
*½
Director: Lynn Shelton
Cast: Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mark Duplass, Mike Birbiglia

One year after his brother's death, Jack is still in the doldrums. The brother's ex-girlfriend Iris, who is secretly in love with Jack, sends him to her father's remote cabin to clear his head. Once there, Jack finds Hannah, Iris' lesbian sister who is in a vulnerable place. Things begin to get weird when Iris arrives the next morning. At the cabin, these three people (who seem to have nothing but time at their hands) talk through the days and, since they can't sleep, talk through the nights. They talk about relationships, about relationships, and about the ethics of vegan cooking. The dialogue is plentiful but not meaningful or memorable, and the natural performances cannot hide the emptiness of the characters. And just when I settled in to watch 90 minutes of pointless waffle, the story takes a turn to silly romantic melodrama two-thirds through the film.

Young Adult
2011
****
Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser, Collette Wolfe, Hettienne Park, J. K. Simmons, Louisa Krause

Mavis Gary, an aimless, alcoholic divorcee who writes fiction for young adults, decides to travel back to her home town of Mercury, Minnesota to woo back her high school sweetheart who is happily married with a young baby. Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody broke to the scene with Juno, a refreshing drama comedy about a precocious teenager. Now Cody flips this scenario around by giving us a deluded 37-year-old protagonist who feels nostalgic about her time in high school. Stories about going back home to recover from current crisis or to face past demons are familiar Hollywood material, but Cody puts a fresh twist on the formula. Her characters are full of surprises and Mavis' trip is in turn funny, poignant, cringe-inducing, and sad. The performances are great.

You've Been Trumped
2011
****
Director: Anthony Baxter
Cast:

In 2006, Donald Trump announced his plans to build a luxury golf resort over a Site of Special Scientific Interest on the west coast of Scotland. The Aberdeenshire Council rejected the planning permission, but the Scottish government overrode the decision on economic grounds. The project caused wide outrage, particularly among environmental groups and the local community. Anthony Baxter's absorbing documentary made my blood boil. It tells a David and Goliath story, in which the little guy doesn't stand a chance. Here David is a poor farmer/fisherman, who refuses to sell his home (or, as his nemesis calls it, pigsty), and Goliath is a ruthless American tycoon with deep pockets. Donald Trump comes across as a pompous and arrogant bully, which probably makes him proud. The real bad guys in this tragedy are the spineless Scottish authorities who were blinded by money. Some parts of the story bear uncanny resemblance to Local Hero, which Baxter uses as a framing device.

X-Men: First Class
2011
****
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Kevin Bacon, Caleb Landry, Lucas Till, January Jones, Oliver Platt

The first X-Men movie was kind of an origin story, but this reboot goes further back to show how Professor X and Magneto became friends and how their paths inevitably diverged. They face a common enemy, a powerful mutant and former Nazi who orchestrates the Cuban Missile Crisis in order to start World War III. Matthew Vaughn follows up Kick-Ass with another entertaining comic book adaptation. The action set pieces feel fresh and the X-Men characters have always had more layers than some of the other Marvel franchises. The whole is a bit long and CGI-heavy, though. Followed by X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse.

Wuthering Heights
2011
**
Director: Andrea Arnold
Cast: Kaya Scodelario, James Howson, Shannon Beer, Solomon Glave, Oliver Milburn, Nichola Burley, Eve Coverley, James Northcote, Lee Shaw, Amy Wren

Some time in the 19th century, Mr. Earnshaw brings a homeless dark-skinned teenager back to his Yorkshire farmhouse, and names him Heathcliff. The boy feels like an unwanted outsider, but forms a strong bond with his adoptive sister, Catherine. As the years pass, their codependent friendship develops into a tumultuous love story. In spite of the restrictive 4:3 aspect ratio, Robbie Ryan's low-light camera work really captures the harshness of life on the foggy, muddy and windy moors. Overall, Andrea Arnold's adaptation of the first half of Emily Brontë's classic novel is atmospheric, but terribly long. All the mood comes at the expense of the characters who never truly come alive. Especially Heathcliff (for the first time played by a black actor), who remains an unsympathetic and undecipherable brooder. Halfway through the film, Arnold alienates us from the characters even further by changing her leading actors, who bear very little resemblance to their younger counterparts.

Winnie the Pooh
2011
****
Director: Stephen J. Anderson, Don Hall
Cast: Jim Cummings, Travis Oates, Tom Kenny, Bud Luckey, Craig Ferguson, Jack Boutler, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Wyatt Hall

This charming old school animation takes us back to A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books. The film is based on three of his stories, and the words literally jump off the screen. The animals of the Hundred Acre Wood try to locate Eeyore's missing tail when Christopher Robin disappears mysteriously, with only a note left behind. One hour of good innocent fun.

We Need to Talk About Kevin
2011
****
Director: Lynne Ramsey
Cast: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, Ashley Gerasimovich, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Alex Manette

Kevin looks to have been born evil. Growing up, the boy treats his dad with kindness but seems to take pleasure in making his mom suffer. Kevin's final act of cruelty reveals his true nature. This harrowing drama unfolds in intriguing flashbacks, as Eva, now a human wreck consumed by guilt and shame, looks back and attempts to understand if there was anything she could have done differently with her son. As the story focuses almost purely on Kevin and his mother, the successive scenes of emotional violence become exhausting, and Eva's lonely struggle against her son doesn't feel entirely believable. Nevertheless, these minor gripes aside, this is a very captivating film which rather disturbingly suggests that mother's love is an overrated commodity. Tilda Swinton gives a towering performance in the lead. Adapted from Lionel Shriver's novel, which described the events in the form of letters.

We Bought a Zoo
2011
**½
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, Thomas Haden Church, Patrick Fugit, Elle Fanning, Colin Ford, John Michael Higgins

A widower and his two kids buy a beautiful house in the California countryside. The catch is that the property comes with a zoo and a staff of five. This story is loosely based on the 2008 memoirs of English journalist Benjamin Mee, who bought the Dartmoor Wildlife Park in Devon, England. Matt Damon's character name is as close as this adaptation comes to reality, the rest is pure Hollywood wish fulfilment. Cameron Crowe's family film lacks any kind of edge. It's incredibly syrupy, formulaic, and empty, but somewhat likeable all the same. Here are the life lessons I picked up during its 2-hour running time: If you're grieving the death of your wife, buy an animal park, preferably one with a single zookeeper who looks like Scarlett Johansson. If you have a mopey and depressed 14-year-old, remember to give him a hug. If you have a 7-year-old girl, do nothing, she raises herself. If your crazy schemes run into financial woes, don't worry, money will miraculously fall in your lap.

Water for Elephants
2011
***
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz, Hal Holbrook, Mark Bovinelli, Scott MacDonald, Jim Norton, Richard Brake

During the Great Depression, a veterinary student suffers a family tragedy and ends up joining a travelling circus. While he works as the trainer of the new star attraction, an elephant named Rosie, he falls in love with the boss' wife. This adaptation of Sara Gruen's novel is an old-fashioned romantic melodrama. Its love triangle is cheesy, corny and predictable, but the film is handsomely mounted and perfectly enjoyable fluff. Christoph Waltz gives another enjoyable performance as the ringmaster, who is a charming gentleman with a very nasty streak, which is pretty much the same role he played in Inglourious Basterds. Robert Pattinson, on the other hand, seems out of his depth. Or maybe it just seems so because there are so many reaction shots of his goofy amazement.

Warrior
2011
***
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Jennifer Morrison, Frank Grillo, Nick Nolte, Kevin Dunn, Vanessa Martinez, Noah Emmerich, Laura Chinn, Capri Thomas, Lexi Cowan, Denzel Whitaker

Tommy and Brendan were estranged years ago when their parents broke up. Now the brothers are forced to face their past and each other as they enter the same high-stakes mixed martial arts tournament. Gavin O'Connor's crowd-pleasing family/sports drama has become an audience favourite. This is a well-acted and infinitely watchable film, but there is no denying that the screenplay is predictable and the characters are walking clichés. The redemption arc is familiar but compelling, but we spend way too much time in the octagon watching buff men bash each other to pulp.

War Horse
2011
***
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, David Thewlis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Marsan, Toby Kebbell, Niels Arestrup, David Kross

The son of a Devon farmer loves his young thoroughbred Joey, but his destitute father is forced to sell the horse to a British officer. During the ensuing First World War, Joey changes hands between the British, the Germans and the French, who all cannot help but admire the beauty and strength of this noble animal. Steven Spielberg's fable is grounded in reality, but I never once forgot that I was watching a movie. There's an odd contrast between, on the one hand, the anthropomorphic protagonist and the otherworldly rural setting(s), and, on the other hand, the gritty and hyperrealistic scenes of war. Joey's story is long and episodic. It's rarely dull but never exactly captivating, either. The screenplay by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis is based on Michael Morpurgo's 1982 novel and Nick Stafford's 2007 stage adaptation.

Tyrannosaur
2011
*½
Director: Paddy Considine
Cast: Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan, Paul Popplewell, Sally Carman

An unemployed middle-aged widower Joseph is filled with anger. The only person who doesn't judge him outright is Hannah, a religious shopkeeper, whose own life is hell. Paddy Considine's writing and directing debut is a gut-wrenchingly unpleasant kitchen sink drama. Joseph kicks his dog to death in the opening minutes. Hannah is married to a monster who, at his kindest, urinates on her while she sleeps. Their lives are miserable and it's everybody's fault but their own. The film deals with such extreme situations and marginal characters that it's hard to care about anyone and even harder to see a point to their story. The great performances by Mullan and Colman are the saving grace.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
2011
**½
Director: Bill Condon
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene

The last book in Stephenie Meyer's series is spread over two films. By now the love triangle is settled, but Jacob continues to be fiercely protective towards Bella, which doesn't go down well with his pack. Nevertheless, Edward and Bella have their wedding, and Bella is determined to consummate the marriage on the honeymoon, no matter the risks. Bill Condon takes over the directing duties for the finale, but he doesn't attempt to put his own stamp on the franchise; he's a safe pair of hands who provides a familiar mix of overheated romance, cheesy dialogue, and dodgy special effects. The first hour is slow-paced and uneventful, but the pace picks up in the second half as the events turn enjoyably weird and the story arc of the entire series begins to come together. Stephenie Meyer's vampire saga ends in Breaking Dawn - Part 2.

The Tree of Life
2011
****½
Director: Terrence Malick
Cast: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan

A man in his fifties reflects on his brother's premature death years ago. This takes him back to his childhood in Texas in the 1950s, when he was torn between the clashing philosophies of his authoritarian father and permissive mother. However, Terrence Malick's expansive, meditative, and astonishingly ambitious fifth film doesn't stop there. It goes back to the birth of the universe and the creation of life on Earth, perhaps to illustrate how insignificant one family's worries are in the larger context. The first 45 minutes provide dreamy images and whispery narration, the next hour follows a more traditional narrative, and the ending is somewhat confounding and unashamedly Christian. Malick asks some big questions, but he doesn't feel compelled to explain himself. Whatever your feelings are towards the aim and scope of his drama - the abstract imagery and spiritual pondering will no doubt alienate many people - there is no denying that as a piece of cinema this is mesmerising. The camera glides and swoops like the wind in the trees, and Malick conducts this visual and auditory symphony to the tiniest detail.

Tower Heist
2011
**½
Director: Brett Ratner
Cast: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick, Téa Leoni, Michael Peña, Gabourey Sidibe

The Tower is a luxury apartment block in Manhattan. When its hardworking employees lose their pension savings overnight to a Ponzi scheme operated by one of the building's wealthiest residents, they plan an audacious heist to get their money back. Brett Ratner's modern day Robin Hood story is set in a world which is coming to terms with the effects of the global financial crisis and the actions of fradulent individuals like Bernie Madoff. This caper comedy ignores all of that and offers likeable but instantly forgettable wish fulfilment. However, the jokes are not terribly sharp and the heist itself doesn't have a believable moment.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
2011
**½
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Cast: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Dencik, Ciarán Hinds, Simon McBurney

George Smiley is a senior intelligence officer who is recalled from his forced retirement to uncover a Soviet mole at the top level of MI6. This intricate and confusing story, from John le Carré's novel, offers none of the fun, sex, and excitement usually associated with the spy genre. The pacing is dead slow and the scenes mostly feature somber men in suits talking in smoke-filled rooms. The Cold War era of 1973 seems like ancient history and the film is not able to convey what was at stake, or persuade that the events are relevant in 2011. However, the overall atmosphere feels authentically drab, and Tomas Alfredson stages a few eye-catching set pieces. His cast is very impressive and the performances are subtle but strong.

Thor
2011
***
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Colm Feore, Ray Stevenson, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Rene Russo, Anthony Hopkins

King Odin banishes his erratic son Thor from Asgard to teach him humility. While the younger brother Loki waits in the wings, Thor ends up an average joe in modern day New Mexico, where he must prove himself worthy of Odin's throne. Marvel Cinematic Universe introduces one of its funniest superhero characters. Thor's movie kicks off with a backstory set in Asgard, which is not my favourite location in the universe due to its oversaturated CGI visuals. The fish out of water comedy on Earth feels like a breath of fresh air in comparison. Thor returns in Marvel's the Avengers (2012) and Thor: The Dark World (2013).

Take Shelter
2011
****
Director: Jeff Nichols
Cast: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Katy Mixon, Shea Whigham, Kathy Baker, Ray McKinnon, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Tova Stewart, Stuart Greer

An Ohio blue collar worker experiences disturbing dreams and waking visions, and is determined to prepare his family and the backyard tornado shelter for the impending storm. Does he have second sight or is he paranoid schizophrenic like his mother? In the wrong hands (M. Night Shyamalan, anyone?) the film could have been a series of cheap scares which all make beautiful sense in the end. Jeff Nichols' approach is thankfully more ambiguous and interesting. His apocalyptic family drama is carefully paced and it sustains a terrifically foreboding atmosphere all the way through to its unsettling conclusion. Michael Shannon's performance as a man with a fragile mental state is believable and intense, as always.

Super 8
2011
****
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Ron Eldard, Gabriel Basso, Noah Emmerich, David Gallagher

This old fashioned science fiction adventure is a throwback to the days of E.T., Gremlins, The Goonies and Back to the Future, and like the movies above, it was produced by Steven Spielberg. It's another story of a small town teenager, who finds himself in the middle of extraordinary circumstances. In the summer of 1979, Joe and his friends are shooting a zombie film with a Super 8 camera when they witness a horrendous train crash, which reveals a well-kept government secret. This secret is not difficult to guess and it mostly acts as a plot device that provides the thrills. Nevertheless, the film is good fun. There are some exciting set pieces and for a modern blockbuster, it's refreshingly light on CGI.

Source Code
2011
****½
Director: Duncan Jones
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright, Russell Peters, Michael Arden

An army helicopter pilot wakes up on a Chicago commuter train which is shortly after blown up by a terrorist. He soon learns that he plays a key role in a military experiment which enables him to go back on the train for eight minutes at a time in order to locate the bomb and identify the bomber. Ben Ripley’s script combines The Matrix, Inception and Groundhog Day into one tight science fiction story. Duncan Jones’ second film is extremely entertaining, although it doesn’t quite have the courage to go through to its inevitably grim conclusion.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
2011
**
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris, Rachel McAdams, Eddie Marsan, Stephen Fry, Kelly Reilly, Paul Anderson

A series of anarchist bombings terrorise Europe and the clues point to Sherlock Holmes' arch nemesis Professor Moriarty. This takes Holmes and Watson, who just got married, on a trip across the continent. Guy Ritchie revived his career with Sherlock Holmes, which introduced a 21st century version of the 19th century detective. The film was a mess, and now we get more of the same. The plot is secondary to the visually flashy but hopelessly mechanical action set pieces. After another two hours of incomprehensible mumbling, I am convinced that Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock Holmes is one of the worst cases of miscasting in recent memory.

Shame
2011
****
Director: Steve McQueen
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie

Steve McQueen's second film is a powerful contemporary drama about addiction and loneliness. Brandon is a single and successful New York professional, and an emotionally crippled sex addict whose desperate existence is exposed when his troubled sister comes for a visit. These two dysfunctional souls carry unspecified scars from their childhood, the repercussions of which are heartbreaking. There are two towering performances at the heart of the film. The excellent Michael Fassbender once again throws himself full-on into the role without repeating the cruelling physical transformation he went through for McQueen's Hunger. Carey Mulligan, often typecast in the same quiet ethereal part, is a revelation as Sissy.

Sanctum
2011
**
Director: Alister Grierson
Cast: Richard Roxburgh, Rhys Wakefield, Alice Parkinson, Daniel Wyllie, Ioan Gruffudd, Cramer Cain, Allison Cratchley

A group of adrenaline junkies explore a partially underwater cave system in Papua New Guinea, when the island is hit by a storm and the caves begin to flood. The group includes a cold and arrogant veteran explorer, his resentful son, a jarring millionaire, his naive girlfriend, and a few immediately expendable supporting players. This small-scale disaster movie has a promising, deliciously claustrophobic set-up. However, after a few minutes with these clichéd characters and their dreadful dialogue, my optimism began to fade quickly. Unlike in The Descent or The Abyss, there is nothing supernatural at play here, only the terrifying collective stupidity of this group of people. James Cameron could possibly have turned this story into something gripping, but sadly he is only credited as executive producer.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
2011
**½
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Kristin Scott Thomas, Amr Waked; Rachael Stirling, Catherine Steadman, Tom Mison

When the Prime minister's press secretary, who is desperate for some positive news about the Middle East, learns that a wealthy sheikh wants to introduce salmon into the Yemen, she pressures a Scottish fisheries specialist to consult on the matter. The stern academic, whose marriage has gone stale, slowly begins to warm up to this insane project and to the sheikh's pretty advisor. Lasse Hallström's adaptation of Paul Torday's novel is a cross between a toothless political satire and a fluffy romantic comedy. Despite the outlandish premise and promising start, it doesn't take long before the film turns into a formulaic and tiresome wish fulfilment fantasy. Its views on international politics, salmon fishing, romance and Islam are all equally implausible. Ewan McGregor, who gets to use a more natural accent for a change, and Emily Blunt are quite likeable, but Kristin Scott Thomas, as the cartoonish press secretary, gives a performance to forget.

The Rum Diary
2011
**½
Director: Bruce Robinson
Cast: Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Rispoli, Amber Heard, Richard Jenkins, Giovanni Ribisi

This drama comedy was adapted from Hunter S. Thompson's autobiographical novel, which was written in 1961 but published only in 1998. Johnny Depp played Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and now he plays the writer's alter ego, Paul Kemp. In 1960, this semi-alcoholic writer takes a job at a newspaper in Puerto Rico, which is boiling under the surface. He kills his time drinking and writing the odd trivial article, until an American businessman asks him to help with an elaborate real estate scam. The performances are solid, the setting is captivating and the period is wonderfully recreated, which is another way to say that the whole is not very good. The film is never exactly boring, but it is long and pointless.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
2011
****½
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Cast: James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, David Oyelowo, Andy Serkis, Tyler Labine, Jamie Harris, David Hewlett

Rupert Wyatt's franchise reboot erases the memory of Tim Burton's dismal 2001 remake of the original Planet of the Apes. This wonderfully entertaining action drama tells a smart and gripping origin story, which is loosely based on Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972). James Franco plays a scientist who is desperate to find a cure to Alzheimer's in order to heal his own father. When the research is terminated, he adopts a very special baby chimp and names it Caesar. The film's human characters may not be fully three-dimensional, but Caesar's development from a highly intelligent and deeply conflicted primate to a key figure in the future uprising seems organic and thoroughly believable. His story even draws some uncanny parallels to Nim Chimpsky, whose life is chronicled in the documentary Project Nim. Andy Serkis, who helped to bring Gollum and King Kong to life, gives another nuanced motion capture performance as Caesar. Followed by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.


Rio
2011
***½
Director: Carlos Saldanha
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, Leslie Mann, Jemaine Clement, George Lopez, Jamie Foxx, Rodrigo Santoro

A rare blue macaw Blu grows up in Minnesota, and never learns to fly. When the future of his species is in jeopardy, Blu's loving owner Linda takes him to Rio to mate with the last known living female. A funny, dangerous and colourful adventure in Brazil ensues. Carlos Saldanha, the director behind the Ice Age series, has made a rather formulaic but very likeable animation. This culture shock comedy has lovely characters and many enjoyable fish out of water moments. Rio 2 followed in 2014.

Red State
2011
****
Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Michael Angarano, Kerry Bishé, Nicholas Braun, Kyle Gallner, John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Michael Parks, Kevin Pollak, Stephen Root

Three horny teenagers go on a group sex date, which turns out to be a trap set by Albin Cooper and his extremist religious group Five Points Trinity Church, who take the kids hostage. Kevin Smith has made a career out of dialogue-heavy, pop culture-obsessed comedies which have never really appealed to me. This self-distributed exploitation flick is a total departure for him, and his finest work to date. During the snappy and refreshing 90 minutes, the story pulls the rug out from under us time and time again. One moment it's a conventional horror film, then a pitch black comedy, the next it's a family drama and a hostage thriller where you root for the bad guys. The latter sections throw in shootouts, government conspiracies and a religious twist with a twist. The performances are great, and Smith directs the whole thing like he's just graduated from film school. The cult leader Cooper is clearly influenced by Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, and the second half events brings back memories of the 1993 siege in Waco, Texas.

Red Riding Hood
2011
*½
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas, Julie Christie, Michael Shanks

Valerie is a young woman who is torn between Peter, the love of her life, and Henry, the nice young man she is to marry. One of them may or may not be the werewolf who terrorises the dreamy village of Daggerhorn. Catherine Hardwicke's follow-up to Twilight tells pretty much the same story under a different name. She goes as far as to recast Billy Burke as the heroine's father. This is nominally a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, but apart from the main players (girl, grandmother and wolf), this clunky fantasy movie bears no resemblance to the fairy tale. David Leslie Johnson throws elements of religious fanaticism, mass hysteria and paranoia into his script, but it is no help when the visual look is so unoriginal, the characters so uninteresting, and the performances so consistently hammy.

Real Steel
2011
***
Director: Shaw Levy
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, Evangeline Lilly, Anthony Mackie, Kevin Durand, Olga Fonda, Karl Yune, Hope Davis, James Rebhorn

In the near future, robot boxing has become very popular entertainment. Charlie Kenton is a former fighter who tries to scrape a living as a robot handler, and now he is forced to spend time with his estranged 11-year-old son Max. It is an initially tumultuous partnership, but when the boy turns a discarded sparring bot into a fighter, the two slowly begin to bond. This noisy and schmaltzy family movie combines the metal on metal action of Transformers with the underdog elements from Rocky into a story so formulaic it could have been written by a scripting robot. However, it's all charmingly stupid and adequately entertaining for two hours. Loosely based on Steel, a short story by Richard Matheson.

Rango
2011
**
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Stephen Root, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, Timothy Olyphant

Stranded in Mojave Desert, a pet chameleon pretends to be a tough guy named Rango and becomes the sheriff of Dirt, a western town which is running short of water. John Logan's script takes the water supply plot straight from Chinatown and beefs it up with numerous other movie references. The hero is a narcissistic phony, and the supporting characters feature various exotically ghastly desert creatures. Gore Verbinski's unusual animation is too weird and clever-clever for children, but it looks like great fun for the parents, at least on paper. The story is ultimately nonsensical and formulaic, and the humour is too reliant on injokes. It all goes on too long, and especially Rango's machine gun dialogue (voiced by Johnny Depp) becomes increasingly exhausting. An Academy Award winner for Best Animated Film.

The Raid / The Raid: Redemption
2011
***
Director: Gareth Huw Evans
Cast: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Donny Alamsyah, Yayan Ruhian, Pierre Gruno, Tegar Setrya, Ray Sahetapy

The Jakarta police SWAT team, which includes a rookie officer who is on a partly personal mission, raid a 15-storey apartment building in order to eliminate a ruthless crime lord, but end up trapped inside with hordes of criminals and tenants out to kill them. Regular corridors and apartments (which are oddly large and conveniently unfurnished) turn into fierce battle grounds. This exhilarating Indonesian martial arts action film, which was helmed by the Welsh director Gareth Huw Evans, has a a skeletal plot. 90% of the running time is taken by fights, first with guns, then with knives and machetes, and eventually with bare fists. The action scenes are inventive, acrobatic and thankfully not edited to death. However, the relentless barrage of violence gets monotonous, especially towards the end when each individual duel seems to take longer than the one that came before it.

Pussikaljaelokuva (Sixpack)
2011
*½
Director: Ville Jenkeri
Cast: Eero Milonoff, Jussi Nikkilä, Ylermi Rajamaa, Marjut Maristo, Tytti Junna, Niilo Syväoja, Veera Tapper, Timo Tuominen, Tuukka Huttunen

During one summer day, three aimless layabouts wander through Helsinki, mostly drinking and talking. Their day includes encounters with friends and strangers, various shenanigans, and the occasional run-in with the police. What it doesn't include, however, is a moment which is poignant, funny, or even a bit interesting. The plodding story, dull characters, dreary visuals, and self-consciously playful dialogue add up to nothing, but in the final scene the film suddenly paints itself as an emotional portrayal of friendship. Adapted from Mikko Rimminen's 2004 novel Pussikaljaromaani.

Project Nim
2011
****
Director: James Marsh
Cast:

In 1973, a Columbia University Professor Herb Terrace commenced an ambitious study to determine whether primates could learn to communicate. The plan was to raise a baby chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky in a human family, where it would be taught sign language. As the months and years passed, this pseudo-scientific project took increasingly absurd turns and, at the centre of it all, the chimp was first treated like a family member and then like a lab rat. Was Nim an anthropomorphic miracle or a wild beast? By the end it probably didn't know what it was itself. James Marsh's fascinating documentary, which is a good companion piece to Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, is a sad portrayal of the corrupt nature of humanity. The story is visualised through interviews, archive footage and dramatisation, very much like Marsh's previous film, Man on Wire. Based on the book Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
2011
*½
Director: Rob Marshall
Cast: Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Kevin R. McNally, Geoffrey Rush, Richard Griffiths, Greg Ellis, Damian O'Hare, Sam Claflin, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Stephen Graham

Ever since the The Curse of the Black Pearl, Disney's mindboggingly successful franchise has been one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent desperation. Now it starts afresh with a new director at the helm. However, this new leaf looks awfully lot like the old one. The shipless and crewless Jack Sparrow is forced to team up with Captain Blackbeard, who has occasional magical powers, and his daughter Angelica, who is Jack's old flame. They enter a race against the English, the Spanish and time to discover the fountain of youth. The fourth movie is less dependent on CGI than the previous two, and thankfully about 30 minutes shorter than the interminable At World's End, but it still feels long. The main problem once again is the characterisation, or lack thereof. Nobody trusts nobody, so the plot is comprised of a series of predictable and long-winded double-crossings, and I couldn't care less who comes on top. Add to this Rob Marshall's flat action set pieces (the mermaid attack is just about the only memorable scene), and what you have is an extremely dull action-adventure blockbuster. The Blackbeard part of the story is loosely based on the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. Followed by Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Piranha 3DD
2011
**
Director: John Gulager
Cast: Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, David Koechner, Chris Zylka, Katrina Bowden, Gary Busey, Christopher Lloyd, David Hasselhoff

A year after the events in Piranha 3D (2010), a college student returns home for the summer to discover that her step-father has turned part of her family's water park into an adult-themed Big Wet, with stripper life guards. At the same time, the deadly piranhas move closer through sewage pipes and underwater waterways. Based on the advertising campaign, this horror comedy promises nudity and gore, and in those terms it does not disappoint. Predictably, the script is stupid, formulaic and incoherent. Nevertheless, this incredibly silly and wonderfully short movie left a smile on my face, although the overlong end credit sequence almost wiped it away. David Hasselhoff turns up in the second half in an amusing cameo to make fun of himself and his public image.

La piel que habito (The Skin I Live in)
2011
****½
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, Jan Cornet, Roberto Álamo

Ever since his wife suffered severe burns in a horrific car crash, plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard has experimented on a durable artificial skin. His research is deemed unethical, but he continues to hold a mysterious test subject captive in his own home. Pedro Almodovar's thriller-cum-melodrama is completely bonkers but fabulously entertaining. The twisty mystery, spectacular visuals and lovely performances make this an irresistible treat. The story is based on Thierry Jonquet's novel Tarantula.

Perfect Sense
2011
**½
Director: David Mackenzie
Cast: Eva Green, Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Stephen Dillane, Connie Nielsen, Denis Lawson, Alastair Mackenzie

A global epidemic kills the senses one by one. As the world slowly falls into chaos, two troubled souls put their selfish needs aside and seek solace in each other. This frustrating but somewhat intriguing apocalyptic love story is set in Glasgow and was scripted by the Danish writer Kim Fupz Aakeson. The film works fine as a parable, but for a drama about the end of the world, the plotting and characters are just too ridiculous. Eva Green plays a barren epidemiologist who couldn't detect a virus in a petri dish and Ewan McGregor plays a chef who cooks his heart out for people who have lost their sense of smell and taste.

Pearl Jam Twenty
2011
***
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast:

Pearl Jam, one of the most popular rock bands of the 1990s, rose from the ashes of Mother Love Bone in the booming Seattle music scene. Through rare footage, Cameron Crowe's documentary shows how the band broke through and how its singer Eddie Vedder turned from a shy outsider to a consummate leader. The band's members are portrayed as idealistic musicians who were uncomfortable with overnight success. However, they used their popularity to avoid making music videos and to challenge the monopoly of Ticketmaster in North America. Crowe's film is an interesting historical record, but he has assembled it through fanboy glasses. He stresses the band's longevity, but pretty much shrugs off the forgettable second half of their career. And yet, it seems to go on forever, and looks to be ending for the last 30 minutes. Incidentally, Crowe's Seattle-set second film Singles features members of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.

Paul
2011
****
Director: Greg Mottola
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Blythe Danner, Joe Lo Truglio, John Carroll Lynch, Jane Lynch

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost follow up Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz with another clever spoof. They play two science fiction geeks and best friends who take a road a trip in a rented RV. The men plan to visit the famous UFO sites in the Western United States, but end up harbouring Paul, a sarcastic, foul-mouthed and pot-smoking alien. This sweet-natured comedy mixes Frost and Pegg's fanboy humour with Seth Rogen's trademark filth. The film pokes great fun at the science vs. religion debate and it pays warm homage to scifi classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., with a particularly hilarious voice cameo by Steven Spielberg.

Pariah
2011
****
Director: Dee Rees
Cast: Adepero Oduye, Aasha Davis, Charles Parnell, Kim Wayans, Pernell Walker, Sahra Mellesse

Alike, a 17-year-old black girl, has come to terms with her lesbianism. As she is about to embark on her first actual sexual experience, she must find a way to break the news to her parents. Dee Rees' second feature is a gritty coming-of-age story, which offers a believable set-up, plenty of heartbreak, but no easy answers. It's a gloomy but gripping drama, mainly thanks to Adepero Oduye, who gives a very fine performance as Alike.

Oslo, 31. august (Oslo, August 31st)
2011
****
Director: Joachim Trier
Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Hans Olav Brenner, Ingrid Olava, Tone B. Mostraum

On a leave from rehab, recovering drug addict Anders spends a day in Oslo. He attends a job interview, meets old friends and tries to speak with his ex. But most of all he attempts to find a reason to live after years in the doldrums. This moody and melacholic Norwegian drama gives Scandinavian miserablism a good name. Anders' story is predictably gloomy, but refreshingly truthful and poignant. Anders Danielsen Lie is excellent in the lead.

My Week with Marilyn
2011
***
Director: Simon Curtis
Cast: Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson, Judi Dench, Dougray Scott, Michael Kitchen, Julia Ormond, Toby Jones

Young graduate Colin Clark gets a dream job as third assistant director (read: errand boy) on Laurence Olivier's 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl. During the arduous shoot, he grows closer and closer to its glamorous star, Marilyn Monroe. Adrian Hodges scripted this fact-based comedy drama from Clark's books The Prince, The Showgirl and Me and My Week with Marilyn. It starts as a light and funny comedy of manners, as Olivier and Monroe clash amusingly on the set. In the second half, the increasingly fragile screen icon struggles with the cost of fame and Clark comes of age. The film gets gloomier and less interesting as a result. Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh are the standouts in a great cast.

The Muppets
2011
****
Director: James Bobin
Cast: Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Peter Linz, Chris Cooper, Rashida Jones, Jack Black, Stevie Whitmire, Alan Arkin, Emily Blunt, James Carville, Bill Cobbs

Walter, the world's biggest Muppet fan, tours the Muppet Studios in Los Angeles with his human brother Gary and the latter one's girlfriend Mary. To his shock, Walter discovers that his heroes have become historical relics and their legacy is about to be erased, so he tracks down Kermit and inspires him to regroup the gang and stage a comeback show to save the Muppet Theatre. The seventh Muppets film doesn't feature the original sound cast (Frank Oz is the most conspicuous absentee) and the story is taken from Blues Brothers, but it's nevertheless an irresistibly warm and funny comedy. A new generation of children will hopefully fall in love with these characters, but the film's hilarious metafictional gags and frequent references to the 1980s are clearly directed at the parents who grew up with the original show. Bret McKenzie (one half of Flight of the Conchords) won an Academy Award for his song "Man or Muppet".

Moneyball
2011
****
Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Pratt, Casey Bond, Stephen Bishop, Royce Clayton, David Hutchison, Nick Porrazzo, Robin Wright. Kerris Dorsey

After a disappointing 2001 postseason, Billy Beane, the general manager of Oakland Athletics, loses three of his star players and needs to build a new team on a tight budget. He decides to try a radical approach and hires a new number two who has developed a statistical analysis to uncover undervalued players. The details of baseball are alien to me, but this is nevertheless a very enjoyable drama comedy, with an unusually laid-back and likeable Brad Pitt performance. Like all sports films, this one champions the underdog, but the narrative doesn't adhere to the predictable "first you lose, then you win" formula. The story is about something bigger. Namely, one man's ambition to change the way teams are built. Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin adapted Michael Lewis' 2003 non-fiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
2011
****
Director: Brad Bird
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Samuli Edelmann, Vladimir Mashkov, Anil Kapoor, Josh Holloway

After the IMF (Impossible Missions Force) team is blamed for a bombing in Kremlin, they must go underground to track down a stolen Russian nuclear launch device and its activation codes before it's too late. The fourth film in the franchise doesn't make any radical tweaks to the formula. Ethan Hunt is still an admirably skilled action hero without any personality whatsoever. Nevertheless, the new director, Brad Bird, makes by far the best film in the series by telling a streamlined story with cool gadgetry and some spectacular action set pieces. The mid-section in Dubai is the highlight: first Hunt climbs the outside wall of Burj Khalifa and then chases the bad guy through a sandstorm. The downside of this fabulously entertaining scene is that everything that follows feels somewhat underwhelming.

Miss Bala
2011
**½
Director: Gerardo Naranjo
Cast: Stephanie Sigman, Irene Azuela, Miguel Couturier, Gabriel Heads, Noe Hernandez, James Russo, Jose Yenque

Laura is a young woman from Tijuana who dreams of taking part in the Miss Baja California beauty contest. One day, she is in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up trapped between the competing drug cartels and corrupt officials. Laura is a clever metaphor for Mexico, whose drug war has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the recent years. What she isn't is an interesting heroine for a film. Her utter helplessness in the face of escalating abuse and exploitation becomes numbing, and an initially promising thriller turns dull and monotonous. Loosely based on a true story. Remade in the US in 2019.

Midnight in Paris
2011
****
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Tom Hiddleston, Léa Seydoux, Michael Sheen, Corey Stoll, Owen Wilson

For now, Woody Allen returns to form with this lovely mix of comedy, fantasy and romance about a man who lives in nostalgia. Gil Pender is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who dreams of becoming a serious novelist. During a trip to Paris with his fiancée, each midnight he is magically transported back in time to his favourite era, the 1920s, where he can seek advice from some of his biggest writing idols, such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and T.S. Eliot. Allen's Academy Award winning screenplay features his trademark selection of intellectual, over-privileged people, but this time they are likeable. The characters inhabit a sweet and tightly plotted story which doesn't rely on zingy oneliners.

Melancholia
2011
***
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Stellan Skarsgård, Brady Corbet, Udo Kier

In the visually arresting prologue, planet Melancholia collides with the Earth and the story of two sisters follows in flashback. In the first half, Claire and her husband John host a disastrous wedding reception for Justine at their country mansion. When they later prepare for the impending doom, the deeply depressed Justine seems at ease and the mentally sound Claire comes apart. Lars von Trier's disaster film is a fascinating allegory but a slightly unconvincing character drama. Justine and Claire represent the polarities of the human psyche, but Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, although both excellent, do not look or sound anything like real-life sisters. The climactic events at the mansion are beautifully staged yet oddly self-contained.

Meine Familie, die Nazis und ich (Hitler's Children)
2011
***½
Director: Chanoch Zeevi
Cast:

This short but captivating documentary brings forward some of the descendants of the famous Nazi leaders, who have all taken a different approach to dealing with their inheritance. The grandniece of Heinrich Himmler married a Jew, Hans Frank's son denounced his father in a controversial book, and Herman Göring's niece and nephew decided to sterilise themselves. The grandson of Rudolph Höss, who was in charge of Auschwitz, returns to the camp in the film's emotional climax.

Martha Marcy May Marlene
2011
****½
Director: Sean Durkin
Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy, Brady Corbet, Christopher Abbott, Maria Dizzia, Louisa Krause

Martha escapes from a cult and finds refuge with her sister and her husband, but continues to be haunted by her memories of the commune and its charismatic leader. Sean Durkin's feature debut is a wonderfully atmospheric horror-tinged drama which leaves an uneasy feeling. The fluid editing beautifully weaves together Martha's past and present into a mystifying narrative. The heroine (along with the viewer) questions whether she can tell the difference between a dream and a memory. Can we even trust that the present day reality is for real? Elizabeth Olsen gives a very strong breakthrough performance.

Margin Call
2011
***
Director: J.C. Chandor
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Mary McDonnell, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci

After another round of layoffs in a fictional Wall Street investment bank, a senior analyst discovers that the entire company is about go under. The analysts and executives spend the night deciding whether to sell the firm's toxic assets at the risk of crippling the global economy. J.C. Chandor's feature debut is a well-acted, well-researched, and thought-provoking drama, which paints a grim and cynical picture of the financial meltdown in 2008. The events bear some resemblance to those at Goldman Sachs during the crisis. The film is slow-paced and not exactly a barrel of fun. It mostly involves men in suits talking and making heavy-handed "we used to make things, now we just make money" statements.

Margaret
2011
****
Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Anna Paquin, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, Kieran Culkin, Olivia Thirlby, Rosemarie DeWitt, J. Smith-Cameron, Matthew Broderick, Allison Janney, Jean Reno, Jeannie Berlin

Lisa Cohen, a 17-year-old New Yorker, inadvertedly causes a terrible bus accident. Although the tragedy fuels the narrative, the film is in fact about Lisa, who is forever changed by her guilt. She's a typically thin-skinned and self-absorbed teenager who is yet to lose her innocence and idealism towards life. Kenneth Lonergan's follow-up to the excellent You Can Count on Me finished shooting back in 2006. It took another five years for the director and the studio to agree on a cut. The released 2½ hour version feels incomplete, particularly towards the end, but this brutally honest and rough-around-the-edges drama compels you to take a journey with these characters, no matter how impulsive, imperfect or infuriating they can be. Anna Paquin gives a feisty central performance, and J. Smith-Cameron as the mother and Jeannie Berlin as the new friend give excellent support.

Mama Africa
2011
***½
Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Cast:

Miriam Makeba (1932-2008) made African music popular with the western audience from the 1960s onwards. The South Africa-born singer was also a passionate civil rights activist which led to a 30-year exile from her home country. Her extraordinary life was full of triumphs and hardship, both personal and professional, and this straightforward documentary presents them in chronological order and without frills. The film wears you out a bit towards the end as the concert clips keep interrupting the flow of the story with predictable regularity. Or if you're only watching this for the music, you may think that too often Makeba's life gets in the way of a good song.

The Lincoln Lawyer
2011
***
Director: Brad Furman
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, Josh Lucas, John Leguizamo, Michael Peña, Bob Gunton, Bryan Cranston, William H. Macy

Michael Haller, a sly L.A. lawyer known for defending blatantly guilty clients, is hired by a rich guy who is charged with assaulting a prostitute. It looks like a case that could raise Haller's profile, but instead it forces him to reassess his entire view of the law. Brad Furman's slick and entertaining but rather formulaic court drama was adapted from Michael Connelly's novel. The hero is a clever, cocky and cynical lawyer who gets his comeuppance, and a chance to redeem himself. It is a somewhat clichéd part but Matthew McConaughey pulls it off with an uncharacteristically strong performance.

Limitless
2011
**
Director: Neil Burger
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish, Anna Friel, Johnny Whitworth, Robert John Burke, Tomas Arana, T.V. Carpio, Patricia Kalember

Eddie Morra is a procrastinating wannabe writer whose girlfriend runs out of patience. His life takes a dramatic turn when an experimental drug allows him to tap into his full brain power. Leslie Dixon's awful script turns this mouthwatering science fiction premise (from Alan Glynn's novel The Dark Fields) into a thriller which gets progressively dumber. In the real world, nobody likes Mr. Know-It-All, but in this fictional scenario Eddie becomes irresistible to women and talent seekers. He could do anything he wants and have any woman he chooses, but the deeply uninteresting hero decides to make money and woo back his frigid on/off girlfriend. While he is busy making millions, he neglects to pay back the measly thousands he owes to a ruthless loan shark. But don't wait for a comeuppance, this is not a morality tale; Neil Burger's film sweeps an entire murder subplot under the carpet. The spineless ending comes out of the blue and leaves a very bad aftertaste.

Le Havre
2011
**½
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Blondin Miguel, Elina Salo, Evelyne Didi, Quoc Dung Nguyen, François Monnié

Marcel Marx is a former bohemian who now makes a modest living as a shoeshiner in the port city of Le Havre, where he lives with his loving wife. One day, Marcel runs into an illegal immigrant boy from Africa, and finds himself playing the good samarithan. Following his Loser Trilogy, Aki Kaurismäki continues to explore the lives of the down-trodden, but his one-trick pony act is getting old by now, especially when the results here are closer to the terrible Lights in the Dusk than the inspired Drifting Clouds and The Man Without a Past. He turns another topical issue (immigration) into a magic realist fable, which doesn't include one believable character or situation. Everything is set in French cinema-inspired movie reality. The irony is that a prospective celebration of humanity becomes a handsome artifice with no emotional impact whatsoever. Kaurismäki's typically dry humour is still present, but it makes disappointingly few appearances. All of the above would still be fine if I hadn't seen him do this a dozen times before. This is the first part of another trilogy.

Larry Crowne
2011
**
Director: Tom Hanks
Cast: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Bryan Cranston, Cedric the Entertainer, Taraji P. Henson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wilmer Valderrama, Pam Grier, Rita Wilson, George Takei, Grace Gummer

Larry Crowne, a valued and enthusiastic U-mart store employee, is let go, allegedly for not having a college degree. With work hard to come by, this divorced ex-Navy cook enrolls in community college. Tom Hanks' second directorial work, which he co-scripted with Nia Vardalos of the My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame, paints a realistically grim picture of the post-2008 economy. The amiable hero not only loses his job but also his home, and there is no easy way out. It's all fine and well, but this is as far as this bland romantically flavoured comedy comes to dealing with real-life people with real-life issues. The characters are sketched with broad strokes. Larry is a complete cipher who doesn't know what he wants, his teacher is an unhappily married semi-alcoholic who either mopes or beams, her porn surfing husband is a soulless plot obstacle, and Larry's moped-driving fellow students seem like aliens from a different planet. The budding romance between Hanks and Roberts remains tastefully asexual and inoffensive. The film occupied me for 90 minutes, but left no impression whatsoever.

Kill List
2011
*½
Director: Ben Wheatley
Cast: Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley, MyAnna Buring, Emma Fryer, Harry Simpson, Ben Crompton, Struan Rodger

Ben Wheatley's muddled film is all over the place. It begins as a conventional English kitchen sink drama about a jobless former soldier who grows frustrated sitting idly at home with his wife and kid. When he and his partner/best friend accept an assignment to kill three men, it becomes a gritty but insanely violent crime drama. The outlandish final third turns it into a hallucinogenic occultist horror story. There are some subtle hints as to where the story is heading - the hit targets are oddly grateful - but nothing could prepare me for the incredibly stupid and highly unpleasant final fifteen minutes, which pretty much erase the memory of the passable first hour.

Johnny English Reborn
2011
**½
Director: Oliver Parker
Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Gillian Anderson, Dominic West, Rosamund Pike, Daniel Kaluuya, Richard Schiff

Since his massive cock-up in Mozambique (D'ohzambique!), Johnny English has been hiding and training in Tibet. Now MI7 brings him back to prevent the assassination of the Chinese premier. Johnny English was a modestly funny James Bond parody, and the sequel provides decent entertainment for 90 minutes. One moment the hero is a bumbling idiot, the next he's a bona fide action hero. Some comedy and action set pieces work, while others feel a bit laboured. Followed by Johnny English Strikes Again.

Jodaí-e Nadér az Simín (A Separation)
2011
****½
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhadi, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, Shirin Yazdanbakhsh

This terrific Iranian drama shows how a rather amiable separation ends up having devastating ripple effects. Simin wants her family to leave the country, but her husband Nader refuses to abandon his Alzheimer's-stricken father. The couple's 11-year-old daughter and the father's new caretaker and her family find themselves caught in the middle. This sharply scripted film provides an eye-opening view to life in present day Iran, but its dissection of humanity, morality, religion, truth and justice is universal. Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

J. Edgar
2011
**½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, Judi Dench, Ed Westwick, Dermot Mulroney, Damon Herriman, Jeffrey Donovan

J. Edgar Hoover served as the Director of FBI from 1924 to 1972 under eight different Presidents. He transformed the Bureau into a powerful and effective tool against domestic threats, but turned himself into a feared and loathed figure by keeping secret files on anyone who could pose a risk to his position. Although Clint Eastwood's biopic doesn't attempt to cover Hoover's entire life and career, it delivers a disappointingly baggy and shapeless drama, which fails to delve beyond the surface. As with his Oscar winning screenplay for Milk, Dustin Lance Black takes a controversial real-life character and concentrates almost solely on the myth at the expense of the man. With Hoover this is easier, because he has no personal life. The film portrays him as a paranoid control freak and closeted homosexual who has two meaningful relationships: with his overbearing mother and with his co-worker and possible lover Clyde Tolson. Leonardo Di Caprio gives an impressive if somewhat mannered titular performance.

The Iron Lady
2011
**
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Alexandra Roach, Harry Lloyd, Iain Glen, Olivia Colman, Anthony Head, Nicholas Farrell, Richard E. Grant

Margaret Thatcher, arguably the most powerful woman of the 20th century and the longest serving British Prime Minister, divides opinions to this day. Her supporters argue that she forced through the necessary economic reforms and re-established Britain as a major power. Her detractors, on the other hand, blame her for destroying the British working class. This biopic of sorts is a massive wasted opportunity and worth seeing mainly for Meryl Streep's incredibly nuanced, Oscar-winning performance. Abi Morgan's screenplay ignores all the contradiction and controversy surrounding the Iron Lady, and portrays her as a feminist icon who succeeded in a male-dominated world through her sheer determination. The film frames the highs and lows of her political career with present-day segments, which depict Thatcher as a senile old woman who converses with her dead husband. These tedious scenes consume almost half of the running time. Phyllida Lloyd's second film is a major improvement on the amateurish Mamma Mia!, though. This one actually resembles cinema.

The Intouchables / Untouchable
2011
****
Director: Olivier Nakache, Éric Toledano
Cast: François Cluzet, Omar Sy, Audrey Fleurot, Clotilde Mollet, Anne Le Ny, Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi, Cyril Mendy, Christian Ameri

Philippe is a quadriplegic millionaire who hates pity. Driss, his new Senegal-born caregiver, is a happy-go-lucky idler who is not about show any. The two come from very different backgrounds, but they share an irreverent sense of humour and a dislike of stuffiness. This French drama comedy, which is based on a true story, is an irresistibly funny and heartwarming bromance, which is greatly boosted by the delightful leading performances by François Cluzet and Omar Sy. This massive sleeper hit is a genuine feelgood film which only briefly delves into darker aspects of the pair's lives.

In Time
2011
*½
Director: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Vincent Kartheiser, Olivia Wilde, Matt Bomer, Johnny Galecki, Collins Pennie, Alex Pettyfer

In this alternate reality, time is money. All men stop aging at 25, which is when the time counter on their forearm begins to count down to death unless they manage to earn, buy, steal, or prostitute more time. Justin Timberlake plays an everyman who turns into a gun-wielding Robin Hood-like action hero overnight when an old man gifts him more than a hundred years. Andrew Niccol's film is a terribly heavy-handed critique of capitalism. In this world, the rich get richer, and the rest literally die of poverty. Niccol has penned some wonderful science fiction stories (Gattaca and The Truman Show) and some terrible ones (S1mone). This time, he has devised one extremely gimmicky idea...and nothing else. He expects the audience to accept his creation at face value, and makes no attempt to explain how this alternate universe (which seems incredibly small and self-contained) came to be or how it would ever function. In fact, everything stops making sense early on. If Niccol establishes any rules about the world, he is certain to break them in the next scene. One thing is for sure, though; after 109 minutes, I have seen enough forearms to last me a lifetime.


If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
2011
***½
Director: Marshall Curry, Sam Cullman
Cast:

A compelling documentary about the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and how it developed from a bunch of hippies to a well organised group of environmental activists. In the 1990s, the group members felt that talking wasn't getting results, so they moved to direct action and began to burn down business properties. The story is told through Daniel McGowan, one of its key figures in the US, who waits for sentencing in the beginning of the film. McGowan knew the organisation had run its course when only their destructive arsons, and not their motives, made the headlines. The FBI labelled them as terrorists, but were they if no one got killed? Although the film attempts to offer a balanced view by giving the lumber industry their say, it would be nice to know more about the live(lihood)s the group destroyed in their attacks.

The Ides of March
2011
***½
Director: George Clooney
Cast: Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, Max Minghella, Jennifer Ehle

Ryan Gosling gives another strong performance as Stephen Meyers, a junior campaign manager who hopes to secure Governor Mike Morris' nomination as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. During the crucial Ohio primary, this idealistic but naive young man learns the rules of the political game. George Clooney's fourth film behind the camera is a political drama which follows in the footsteps of The Candidate and Primary Colors, with a bit less humour and a bit more cynicism. The screenplay is adapted from Beau Willimon's play Farragut North, and it takes its sweet time to get going. The plot machinery is clearly at work in the first thirty minutes, but it's unclear where we're headed. The story eventually comes into focus, and the second half twists turn this into a very gripping thriller.

Hugo
2011
****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helen McCrory, Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Jude Law, Christopher Lee

Hugo is a 12-year-old orphan boy who in 1931 lives inside a Paris railway station, where he attends to the clocks and tries to remain unseen by the ruthless Station Inspector. What he really wants is to fix his late father's broken automaton, and the secretive grandfather of his new friend may hold the key to the mystery. This adaptation of Brian Selznick's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret is simultaneously the most commercial and most personal work in Martin Scorsese's illustrious career. It tells a classic tale of an outcast who just wants to fit in, but Hugo's personal journey gradually builds into a beautiful and moving tribute to film preservation and the birth of cinema, both of which are very close to the director's heart. The dreamy, saturated visuals do not look real for one moment, but they serve the fantastical story perfectly. The film won five technical Oscars, which include awards for best cinematography, art direction and visual effects.

Horrible Bosses
2011
**
Director: Seth Gordon
Cast: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx

Nick, Dale and Kurt are three friends who enjoy their jobs but loathe their bosses, who include a sadistic bully, a predatory nymphomaniac and an obnoxious cokehead. This comedy starts off as an Office Space-like workplace satire, and the opening 30 minutes include some genuine laughs. When the trio decides to emulate Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train by killing each other's bosses, it all falls apart. The film abandons the grown-up audience and targets its lazy plotting and filthy humour at teenage boys. The story does feature four female parts, though; there are two sexy and horny babes, a chaste off-screen girlfriend, and a fat woman. The three men, incidentally, live an oddly gynophobic and self-contained existence, where they only have their jobs and each other. Followed by a 2014 sequel.

The Help
2011
***½
Director: Tate Taylor
Cast: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Allison Janney, Jessica Chastain, Mary Steenburgen, Mike Vogel, Ahna O'Reilly, Chris Lowell

A feelgood drama about a young and strong-willed white graduate who wants to become a writer. Just as the Civil Right movement gathers pace, she decides to defy the wrath of her racist Mississippi community by chronicling the lives of black maids. The first two of the ladies, Aibileen and Minny, become the real heroines of the film; the men are kept firmly on the sidelines. This crowdpleaser gives us literally and figuratively black and white characters, who are all either saints or sinners. The story is manipulative, its historical accuracy and overall credibility are questionable, but the touching human drama and the wonderful performances inevitably disarmed me. Octavia Spencer, who plays Minny, won an Academy Award for her performance. Adapted from Kathryn Stockett's novel.

Haywire
2011
**½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Michael Angarano, Mathieu Kassovitz, Eddie J. Fernandez

Mallory Kane is a Special Ops professional - the female version of Jason Bourne if you will - who hijacks a car and its owner, and recounts to him how she ended up in this pickle. She was double-crossed after her assignment in Barcelona, and now she's out for revenge. Gina Carano, a former mixed martial artist and TV performer, makes a striking acting debut. The rest of the cast also looks impressive, but the trivial characters around Mallory never come alive. Soderbergh's no-nonsense genre movie is built around the fight and chase scenes, which do feel refreshingly physical and unchoreographed. However, Lem Dobbs' script is purely incidental. The film held my interest for 90 minutes, but left me with a strong feeling of meh!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
2011
*****
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, John Hurt, Jason Isaacs, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gambon, Warwick Davis, Julie Walters, Maggie Smith

Just about every episode in the Harry Potter series has struggled to compress the long and plot-heavy books to the screen. This adaptation of the second half of J.K. Rowling's last book has the advantage that at this point there is very little plot left. Harry, Ron and Hermione attempt to locate the remaining horcruxes (objects with fragments of Voldemort's soul) in order to defeat the Dark Lord for good. There are two major set pieces: a break-in to the Gringotts Vault and the final battle between good and evil in Hogwarts, and not much else, and the movie is all the better for it. This is an excitingly action-packed and emotionally satisfying finale, and the best of the eight films.

Hanna
2011
**
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng, Cate Blanchett, Jesica Barden, Michelle Dockery

Joe Wright's artsy action film about a young female assassin draws influence from fairy tales and films such as Leon, Nikita and, if you will, The Ballad of Jack and Rose. 16-year-old Hanna has been brought up in seclusion in the Finnish wilderness where her father, an ex-CIA agent, has trained her into a multilingual killing machine with literally encyclopaedic knowledge of life. Now she feels ready to face the real world and the evil witch who killed her mother. This promising but preposterous set-up leads to a lifeless, confusing and self-important film which regularly takes liberties with logic. Wright creates an unusual atmosphere for an ultimately conventional story that never gets under the skin of its intriguing heroine. Saoirse Ronan gives another commanding performance in the title role, but Cate Blanchett is terribly hammy as the villainess. The Chemical Brothers are responsible for the thumping soundtrack

The Hangover Part II
2011
*½
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Ken Jeong, Jeffrey Tambor, Justin Bartha, Paul Giamatti, Sasha Barrese, Jamie Chung

The Hangover, which had some enjoyable moments, became a surprise hit. Todd Phillips and his new writing partners take no risks with the sequel and instead deliver a carbon copy of the first film. Not only does it use the same exact plot and structure, but also the same individual scenes, gags, character arcs and celebrity cameos. The location changes from Las Vegas to Bangkok, and this time it's Stu about to get married. The morning before the wedding, the trio once again wake up without memory, and now they have misplaced Stu's 16-year-old brother-in-law to be. The baby is replaced with a monkey, the tiger with a silent monk, the pulled-out tooth with a tattoo, and so on. If the film was had some good jokes like the first one, it wouldn't seem such a cynical moneymaking operation.

Hall Pass
2011
*
Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Cast: Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate, Stephen Merchant, Joy Behar, Alexandra Daddario, Nicky Whelan

Rick and Fred are best friends who have become sexually frustrated in their married lives. Their wives allow them to take a week off marriage and behave like single men. This conservative gross-out comedy from the Farrelly brothers is astoundingly formulaic. It's yet another story about grown men who think they want to act like adolescents, only to find out that what they really want is what they already have. I could momentarily close my eyes to the lack of fresh ideas, if the movie was funny at all.

The Grey
2011
***½
Director: Joe Carnahan
Cast: Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, James Badge Dale, Ben Bray, Anne Openshaw

When their plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness, a team of oil-rig workers are left at the mercy of extreme weather conditions and hungry wolves. Luckily the group includes John Ottway, a professional wolf hunter. The survivors predictably get picked off one by one in a scenario which mixes Alive with The Edge. This is a metaphysical survival story with an enigmatic hero (charismatically portrayed by Liam Neeson), which Carnahan turns into a gripping but implausible thriller. Based on a short story Ghost Walker by Ian MacKenzie Jeffers, who co-scripted.

Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
2011
***½
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Cast:

An entertaining documentary about product placement in Hollywood, or more accurately about Morgan Spurlock's efforts to raise the entire \$1.5M budget through product placement deals. He talks to various people in the industry (legal advisers, advertising agents and artists, among others) about the legal, moral and artistic implications of his plan, and simultaneously plugs his sponsors. This metatextual concept is gimmicky and like his breakthrough Super Size Me, the whole thing revolves around Spurlock himself. Ultimately the film is about nothing, which doesn't mean that it's not good fun.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
2011
**
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright, Yorick van Wageningen, Joely Richardson

A discredited journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired by a wealthy magnate to investigate the disappearance of his 16-year-old niece 40 years earlier. Blomkvist, assisted by the troubled computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, discovers a gruesome cycle of violence against women. The Scandinavian adaptation of the first book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy was a smash hit across Europe. David Fincher's version follows two years later and seems completely superfluous. It remains faithful to the source material with all of its structural problems, but comes short in authenticity when the international cast speaks English in a colourful array of accents. Fincher, famous for his masterful visual storytelling, cannot make the proceedings any more cinematic than Niels Arden Oplev. The second viewing of the same material does, however, reveal the shortcomings of Larsson's writing. His characterisation is all over the place and his story clears Sweden of rapists, serial killers and corrupt businessmen with implausible ease.

Fast Five / Fast & Furious 5
2011
**
Director: Justin Lin
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Matt Schulze, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Elsa Pataky, Joaquim de Almeida

By the fifth episode in this unfathomably popular street racing action series, the antagonists of the original film, ex-FBI agent Brian O'Conner and career criminal Dominic Toretto, have become best buddies. Their latest caper in Brazil angers the local drug overlord and the American DSS agents, but it won't stop them from attempting an audacious robbery in Rio. Things kick off with two exciting action scenes, a prison bus escape and a car theft on a moving train, which are good dumb fun. The remaining two hours are just dumb. The heist plot is predictable, implausible, over-elaborate and dull. The men in the film are pumped up and brave, the women are incredibly hot and preferably quiet. This sexist and xenophobic celebration of machismo follows in the tradition of the abominable Bad Boys 2.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
2011
**
Director: Stephen Daldry
Cast: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Thomas Horn, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright

9-year-old Oskar loses his father in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. A year later, he goes to his dad's room and discovers a key in an envelope addressed to Black. He decides to track down every person named Black in New York City to find the lock that fits the key, and perhaps make some sense in the senseless tragedy that destroyed his family. Eric Roth scripted this somber drama from Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. Its story is clearly a parable on the city's collective grief after the Worst Day, but it would help if the two hours of contrivances and coincidences included one believable moment. Oskar is wise beyond his years and annoying beyond words, his father is a perfect saint, his mother is the embodiment of dignified grief, and the rest of New Yorkers are just incredibly supportive and understanding. The film contains some genuinely moving moments, but it feels weirdly creepy and manipulative at every turn.

Drive
2011
***
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, Oscar Isaac, Albert Brooks

A quiet and nameless getaway/stunt driver grows close to a woman and her young son next door. When her husband returns from prison and puts the family in danger, the driver offers his help. Nicolas Winding Refn's cool and hypnotic film is deliberately paced and beautifully shot, and its electronic soundtrack is just about perfect. The first half is an intriguing romantically flavoured drama about two lonely souls. When things begin to fall apart at halfway point, it turns into a pulpy and frankly stupid crime story, which becomes so needlessly violent that I had to look away at times. The gruesome carnage could be justified if it served a point, but instead, it made me completely lose my investment in the main character. Ryan Gosling doesn't say much, but he's an intense presence in the lead. Adapted from a novel by James Sallis.

Dreams of a Life
2011
**½
Director: Carol Morley
Cast: Zawe Ashton, Neelam Bakshi, Cornell John, Alix Luka-Cain

In January 2006, a 38-year-old woman was found dead in her flat in North London. She had died more than two years earlier, and the body was too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death. Who was this desperately lonely woman and how could her death go unnoticed by everyone for so long? The story of Joyce Carol Vincent is intriguing and heartbreaking, but Carol Morley fails to turn it into a gripping documentary. The film pieces Joyce's life together, but the answers Morley provides are frustratingly contradictory and inconclusive. The people who (thought they) knew the victim describe her as lively and attractive, but somewhat aimless and elusive; her four sisters are conspicuous by their absence. Apart from the talking heads, which are never explicitly identified, the film relies heavily on speculative dramatisation, which becomes irksome towards the end.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
2011
***
Director: David Bowers
Cast: Zachary Gordon, Devon Bostick, Rachael Harris, Robert Capron, Steve Zahn, Peyton List, Karan Brar, Fran Kranz, Grayson Russell, Laine MacNeil

As he enters the 7th grade, Greg Heffley develops an immediate crush on the new girl in school. However, every time he attempts to make a move or just act cool, his older brother Rodrick ruins it all. The follow-up to Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the adaptation of the second book in Jeff Kinney's series puts the supporting characters on the sidelines and concentrates on the fractious relationship between the two Heffley brothers. The movie offers (more of the same) good-natured fun. Followed by Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days.

Detachment
2011
***½
Director: Tony Kaye
Cast: Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, Christina Hendricks, William Petersen, Bryan Cranston, Tim Blake Nelson, Betty Kaye, Sami Gayle, Lucy Liu, Blythe Danner, James Caan

Henry Barthes is a high school substitute teacher who doesn't want to tie himself down to anything permanent in order to keep his personal demons at bay and to shield himself from the toxicity of the public-school system. This grim and dreary drama from Carl Lund's first time script takes a scathing look at the broken American education system, where the students are out of control and unmotivated, the teachers are prison guards rather than educators, and the parents don't care what's going on as long as their kid stays out of trouble. Tony Kaye, who destroyed his Hollywood career by disowning American History X (1998), is not familiar with the concept of subtlety. His film is gripping and believable but also overdramatic and utterly depressing. There isn't a single character who is remotely happy. Nevertheless, the cast is impressive and Adrien Brody gives a solid lead performance.

The Descendants
2011
****
Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Robert Forster, Amara Miller, Patricia Hastie

There's trouble in the Hawaiian paradise. A wealthy Honolulu lawyer must deal with the imminent death of his wife who is on life support, reconnect with his two daughters, and decide whether to sell his family inheritance to property developers. It all sounds rather familiar and sentimental, and it is, but Alexander Payne keeps it all wonderfully bittersweet. His family drama is funny, sad, and messy like real life. George Clooney gives one of his finest and warmest lead performances, but the entire cast is great. The Academy Award winning screenplay by Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash is based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings.

The Deep Blue Sea
2011
**½
Director: Terence Davies
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale, Harry Hadden-Paton, Ann Mitchell, Sarah Kants, Barbara Jefford, Oliver Ford Davies

This leisurely paced adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1952 play takes place during one day in 1950s London, where Hester Collyer's romantic troubles have brought her to the brink of suicide. She is married to a reliable but dull judge, but passionately in love with a reckless ex-RAF pilot who doesn't return her feelings. Terence Davies' film is beautifully mounted and strongly acted, but cold as ice. It deals with big emotions without arousing any. Since Hester is the architect of her own misfortune, it's difficult to sympathise with her plight, let alone understand the desperation that leads to the opening scene. This stuffy love drama is not to be confused with Renny Harlin's Deep Blue Sea, which was occasionally entertaining.

The Debt
2011
**
Director: John Madden
Cast: Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, Jesper Christensen, Marton Csokas, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Wilkinson

More than thirty years later, three former Mossad agents are still haunted by the memories of their mission in 1965 when they were sent to East Berlin to capture a wanted Nazi war criminal and bring him to justice in Israel. Following in the footsteps of Steven Spielberg's Munich, this remake of an Israeli film Ha-Hov (2007) deals with Israeli operatives who find themselves in the moral grey area between justice and revenge. John Madden's film, however, turns this thought-provoking scenario into a conventional thriller. There are a few exciting action set pieces, an uninteresting romantic triangle, an unrepentant one-dimensional villain, and a dreadful feelgood finale which leaves a bad aftertaste.

A Dangerous Method
2011
***
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Vincent Cassel, Sarah Gadon, André Hennicke

At the turn of the 20th century, Doctor Carl Jung applies Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis to treat Sabina Spielrein, a hysterical medical student. As Jung's approach to therapy becomes literally hands-on (unlike Jung, Freud only talks about sex), the mentor and his apprentice begin to drift apart. David Cronenberg's interesting but stagy and talky drama was adapted from Christopher Hampton's play The Talking Cure, which is based on John Kerr’s non-fiction book A Most Dangerous Method. It's beautifully staged, and Fassbender and Mortensen are wonderfully understated as Jung and Freud, respectively. Knightley, however, is a different case. Her exaggerated ticks and facial contortions may be medically accurate, but they feel terribly actorly. The story deals with big emotions, but it fails to establish an emotional connection to the characters. This is perhaps the only genuinely Cronenbergian touch in a film which otherwise seems like a departure for him.

Crazy, Stupid, Love.
2011
****
Director: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Cast: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, John Carroll Lynch, Analeigh Tipton, Marisa Tomei, Kevin Bacon, Jonah Bobo

A delightfully fresh, enjoyably sweet, and consistently funny drama comedy about the complicated nature of love. Cal and Emily are high school sweethearts whose 25-year marriage is on the rocks. Jacob is a suave ladies' man whose emotions come into play when he meets a sassy lawyer named Hannah. In the meanwhile, Cal and Emily's 13-year-old son Robbie and the family's 17-year-old babysitter Jessica deal with their respective romantic delusions. These multiple story strands twist and turn, and eventually come together. If you're a romantic, you'll find the wrap-up clever. If you're a cynic, you'll find it contrived. The big emotional speech in the end is pure Hollywood fantasy, though. Nevertheless, the performances are lovely and lively.

Cowboys & Aliens
2011
***
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach, Paul Dano, Noah Ringer, Keith Carradine, Walton Goggins

An amnesiac cowboy wakes up in the desert with a mysterious metal gadget around his wrist. What is it and how did it get there? He is about to find out in the nearby town of Absolution, which is attacked by demons in their flying machines. This entertaining genre crossover takes a typical alien abduction premise and sets it in the 19th century West. The resulting science fiction comedy is incredibly silly and formulaic but surprisingly likeable. In its more inspired moments, the movie feels like a Western version of Men in Black. At its worst, it's a special effect muddle like Wild Wild West. The story is loosely based on Scott Mitchell Rosenberg's graphic novel.

Coriolanus
2011
***
Director: Ralph Fiennes
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Cox, Jessica Chastain, Paul Jesson, James Nesbitt

The victorious Caius Martius returns to Rome, where he is honoured with the agnomen Coriolanus. The general plans to run for consul, but his contempt for the common people is his undoing, and he ends up switching allegiances. Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut is an initially cold but ultimately powerful film about a fearsome soldier with terrible people skills. The performances are strong all around. Fiennes brings William Shakespeare's lesser known play to a modern day setting. It helps to give the story more relevance, but mostly as a metaphor. Strictly as a drama, the implausible plotting, the primitive character psychologies and the Shakespearean English never allowed me to forget that the source material is 400 years old.

Contagion
2011
***½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Ehle, Elliot Gould

A business woman from Minneapolis contracts a deadly virus, which quickly spreads death and chaos across the world. Apart from her husband, who attempts to protect what's left of the family, the story follows a WHO scientist who travels to the source of the infection, a government agent who tries to contain the outbreak on the U.S. soil, a handful of virologists who attempt to develop a vaccine, and a blogger who is convinced of a conspiracy. All of these story strands do not come together in a fully satisfying fashion, but this thriller is never less than gripping. It all starts like your average disaster film. There's an A-list cast and a catastrophe which threatens their lives. However, Steven Soderbergh doesn't offer overblown melodrama like The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno, or silly chase scenes and last minute miracle cures like Outbreak. His approach to the drama and his big name stars is pragmatic and unsentimental. The film is bookended with two dialogue-free scenes which brilliantly convey the outbreak of the virus.


Cars 2
2011
**
Director: John Lasseter
Cast: Larry the Cable Guy, Owen Wilson, Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Jason Isaacs, Thomas Kretschmann, Joe Mantegna, Peter Jacobson, Eddie Izzard, John Turturro

Cars, Pixar's most bankable and least likeable animation returns with a messy sequel. Now Lightning McQueen is challenged to race in the World Grand Prix series, which is a showcase for a new biofuel. He's joined by his bumbling best friend Mater who stumbles on a conspiracy to sabotage the races. This franchise is targeted at the younger children, but even grown-ups will struggle to follow the confusing and needlessly over-elaborate spy story, which promotes a comedy sidekick into a starring role. The film is overlong, but there are some exciting action scenes.

Carnage
2011
***½
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly

When two 11-year-old boys get in a fight, their respective parents get together to talk things out. What starts as a civilised and amicable meeting, ends as an ill-natured exchange of opinions. Roman Polanski's adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s stage play God of Carnage is not exactly cinematic. The four characters and the action are confined into one New York City apartment. Thankfully the performances are excellent and the text delivers a nasty and funny satire on parental nepotism and middle-class correctness.

Captain America: The First Avenger
2011
***½
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, Stanley Tucci

In 1942, the scrawny, asthmatic Steve Rogers enters WW2 through the back door by becoming Captain America through Dr. Erskine's super soldier experiment. In the meanwhile, his future nemesis Red Skull attempts to harness the powers of Tesseract to reshape the world. Marvel Cinematic Universe introduces one of its most pivotal superheroes. In his first movie, which is likeable and entertaining, Captain America is still a clean-cut all-American war hero who fights against cartoonish Hydra nazis. Steve Rogers returns in Marvel's the Avengers and his own 2014 sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Bridesmaids
2011
****
Director: Paul Feig
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Chris O'Dowd, Jill Clayburgh

The 30-something Annie is always a bridesmaid, but never a bride. Now that her best friend is about to get married, Annie struggles to put on a brave face when her own life is falling to pieces. This sounds like a horribly formulaic setting for a romantic comedy, but the screenplay by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig steers clear of clichés. Unlike most films in this genre, this one doesn't feel compelled to fix all of its heroine's financial, professional and romantic problems. By the end, Annie still doesn't quite know what she wants. But most importantly, this comedy is wonderfully acted and laugh-out-loud funny. For the most part, the jokes are smart and poignant, but since it's produced by Judd Apatow, the film cannot avoid the occasional gross-out moment.

Bernie
2011
***½
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey, Brady Coleman, Richard Robichaux, Rick Dial, Brandon Smith

In the 1990s, Bernie Tiede was an assistant mortician in a small town of Carthage in Texas. He was known as a kind and caring man who got along with everyone. When his unorthodox friendship with a wealthy but misanthropic widow ended as a murder case, the townsfolk refused to believe the facts. Richard Linklater transforms this unusual true life story into a dark comedy. The script by Linklater and Skip Hollandsworth is based on the latter one's article Midnight in the Garden of East Texas in the Texas Monthly magazine. The film is enjoyable, although its mix of dramatisation and mock plus real interviews doesn't always flow well. Jack Black is uncharacteristically toned down in the title role, and the performance is heartbreaking.

Battle of Los Angeles
2011
†
Director: Mark Atkins
Cast: Kel Mitchell, Nia Peeples, Theresa Jun-Tao, Dylan Vox, Gerald Webb, Edward DeRuiter, Darin Cooper, Rober Pike Daniel

Aliens arrive over Los Angeles in their massive spaceship and begin to destroy military targets, just as a mysterious pilot flies in from year 1942. However, this dismal low budget science fiction flick makes no pretensions to having an original story; it amounts to a series of poorly staged action scenes and not-at-all-special effects. There are no character introductions or any kind of context to the scale of the attack. The future of humanity appears to be at stake, but the movie follows a handful of faceless soldiers who try to survive the destruction. They attempt to bring down the alien destroyers with bullets, not realising that a samurai sword is a much more effective weapon. The film is indescribably silly and awful, but not bad enough to be entertaining. The whole alien invasion seems to play out in real time, so it's conveniently over in less than 90 minutes. This mockbuster was released simultaneously with the more prestigious Battle: Los Angeles.

Bad Teacher
2011
*½
Director: Jake Kasdan
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Lucy Punch, Jason Segel, Phyllis Smith, John Michael Higgins, Molly Shannon, Eric Stonestreet, Thomas Lennon

An unpleasant comedy about Elizabeth Halsey, a blonde bombshell who became a middle school teacher because of the short working days and long holidays. How this shallow bimbo managed to get the qualifications for the job, is left unanswered. Nevertheless, the job is just a stopgap solution until she can find herself a rich husband. Cameron Diaz is a good fit for the lead, but her character is selfish and unscrupled, and the script around her is nasty, tasteless and somewhat racist. All of the above could be swept under the carpet if the film was funny at all.

Attack the Block
2011
**
Director: Joe Cornish
Cast: Jodie Whittaker, John Boyega, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Luke Treadaway, Jumayn Hunter, Nick Frost

A young nurse is mugged by a group of teenager hoodlums in a south London council estate. When aliens attack the neighbourhood, the very same kids look to be her best bet for survival. Joe Cornish's directorial debut wants to be a horror comedy, but the film is neither scary nor funny. It's just another dull, formulaic and predictably gory monster movie, this time with creatures that look like gorilla wolves in ultraviolet lighting. In Mars Attacks!, video game-obsessed boys saved the planet, so a scenario in which deadbeats turn into heroes is nothing new. Lack of originality aside, it would help immensely if I could care about these deadbeats, or even tell them apart from one another. Cornish adds some social commentary into his pulpy mix, but the attempt is heavy-handed and ill-advised.

The Artist
2011
****
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Missi Pyle, Penelope Ann Miller, Malcolm McDowell, Bitchie Tulloch

This delightful black and white (mostly) silent film set in the late 1920s Hollywood pays loving homage to the history of cinema. George Valentin is a proud and cocky star of the silent era, and Peppy Miller is a bright young talent waiting for her break. Sparks fly between them as her star is on the up and his is on the down with the introduction of sound. Their sweet but slow burning romance forms the backbone of the story, but this is also very much a movie about movies. The attention to detail is incredible and Hazanavicius references numerous silent and more recent classics like Citizen Kane and Singin' in the Rain. Dujardin is excellent whether he plays a suave charmer or a suicidal wreck, and Bejo is absolutely lovely as a lady with the biggest of hearts. A winner of five Academy Awards, which include best film, director and actor.

Arthur Christmas
2011
***
Director: Sarah Smith
Cast: James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, Ashley Jensen, Marc Wootton, Laura Linney, Eva Longoria, Ramona Marquez, Michael Palin

In Aardman's computer animation, Christmas has become a super-slick high-tech military operation of which Santa is only symbolically in charge. When one girl's present is left undelivered, only Santa's youngest son Arthur finds this error unacceptable. What follows is a modestly entertaining collection of comical action scenes set across the world, as Arthur attempts to correct the mistake. There are some enjoyable gags on the way, but the story is a conservative celebration of Anglo-American Christmas traditions, and the characters in it are disappointingly one-dimensional.

Another Earth
2011
**½
Director: Mike Cahill
Cast: Brit Marling, William Mapother, Jordan Baker, Robin Lord Taylor, Flint Beverage, Kumar Pallana

A planet, which appears to be an exact copy of ours, appears in the sky. The same evening, 17-year-old Rhoda ruins her promising future in a reckless car crash. Four years later, the world is obsessed with Earth 2, and the guilt-ridden Rhoda decides to approach the man whose family she killed in the crash. Documentary filmmaker Mike Cahill co-scripted his debut feature with the film's star, Brit Marling. The good news is that their unusual script doesn't take the direction you'd expect from the intriguing premise. The bad news is that the direction it does take is not terribly interesting or original. The story stays firmly grounded on Earth 1 and on the personal level, the second planet is merely a plot device which enables the final twists. The films it mostly resembles are the psycho-philosophical science fiction dramas like Solaris or Lars Von Trier's Melancholia. Speaking of Von Trier, Cahill's grainy, handheld visuals adhere to the Dane's Dogme 95 aesthetics.


Anonymous
2011
**
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Xavier Samuel, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, Edward Hogg, Jamie Campbell Bower, Mark Rylance, Trystan Gravelle, Derek Jacobi

Roland Emmerich takes a break from global destruction to rewrite the history of English literature. John Orloff's fictionalised screenplay builds on the conspiracy theory that William Shakespeare did not write his own work. In the alternate reality, the true author is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and former lover of Queen Elizabeth, who cannot put his name on the plays. When a proud playwright Ben Jonson refuses to take the credit for Edward's work, an illiterate and buffoonish young actor Will Shakespeare steps in. This ahistorical drama offers a mix of sex, murder, treason, blackmail, betrayal and incest like the Bard's most famous works. What the film doesn't provide is one person I could care about. The events unfolded in front of my eyes, but none of the melodramatic twists made me feel anything, regardless whether a character lost his or her reputation, wealth, sanity, lover, child or head. The visuals and the performances are impressive, though.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
2011
***
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Enn Reitel, Tony Curran, Toby Jones

Young but fearless reporter Tintin purchases a model of the ship Unicorn, which is subsequently stolen, with only a cryptic scroll left behind. It leads Tintin and his dog Snowy on a rip-roaring adventure and introduces them to Captain Haddock. Steven Spielberg is a long-term fan of Hergé's comic book hero, and his adaptation is very respectful to the source material. He has created the characters through motion capture technology, which gives them a slightly unreal look. In fact, the whole thing feels more like a computer animation than a live action film. The screenplay by the British writer trio (Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish) combines elements from three different stories, The Secret of the Unicorn, The Crab with the Golden Claws and Red Rackham's Treasure, but the irony is that there really isn't much of a story here at all. However, there are some highly entertaining action set pieces.

The Adjustment Bureau
2011
**½
Director: George Nolfi
Cast: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, Michael Kelly, Terence Stamp, Donnie Keshawarz, Anthony Ruivivar

On the eve of a failed election campaign, David Norris meets Elise, who changes the course of his life. The agents of the mysterious Adjustment Bureau, however, are adamant that he stays with the original life plan. George Nolfi's directorial debut is a silly but somewhat likeable romantic science fiction thriller which is loosely based on Philip K. Dick's short story Adjustment Team. The script deals with the author's favourite themes - blurred identity, the loss of free will and general paranoia - but in a very family friendly way. The stakes are low and the events on screen are never more than mildly threatening. The conclusion is terribly lame, and the film loses the bigger picture on the way there. The problems of the rest of the universe don't amount to a hill of beans when these two people need to get together.

50/50
2011
**
Director: Jonathan Levine
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston, Serge Houde, Andrew Airlie

27-year-old Adam is diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his spine, and his survival chances are 50/50. As he tries to come to terms with the illness and the treatment, he discovers who is truly there for him in the hour of need. Will Reiser based the screenplay on his personal experiences, but there is no evidence of authenticity up on the screen. This is a bog-standard romantic comedy plot inconvenienced by cancer, and the film is neither funny nor touching enough. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is typically subdued in the lead and Anna Kendrick is likeably bubbly as Adam's therapist. Bryce Dallas Howard, however, has a thankless role as the one-note girlfriend, and Seth Rogen gives yet another Seth Rogen Performance™.

5 Days of War / 5 Days of August
2011
**
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Andy García, Val Kilmer, Richard Coyle, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Rupert Friend, Johnathon Schaech, Dean Cain, Rade Šerbedžija, Antje Traue, Heather Graham, Mikheil Gomiashvili, Mikko Nousiainen

American journalist and his cameraman are in Georgia just as the 2008 war breaks out with Russia over the region of South Ossetia. The men attempt to survive the Russian onslaught so they can make the rest of the world aware of the atrocities carried out on the civilians. This real-life tragedy seems to provide Renny Harlin a showcase for his first thought-provoking directorial effort, but the film sadly doesn't turn out to be another Salvador or Under Fire. Despite the good intentions, this is just another dumb action movie. Here war is not hell exactly, it's exciting and entertaining. This was made with Georgian money and filmed on authentic locations, which makes it one-sided propaganda. However, in order to have universal appeal, the story needs an American hero, which just seems plain stupid. And since this an international co-production, everyone speaks English, at least when it forwards the plot. Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili even uses it to address his own advisors, but the hero needs an interpreter to speak to the civilians.

5 Broken Cameras
2011
****½
Director: Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi
Cast:

Emad Burnat, whose family lives in a small Palestinian village of Bil'in, loves to shoot video. His youngest son Gibreel is born in 2005, just as the Israelis begin to build the West Bank barrier across the local farmlands. The modest home video project becomes something bigger when he takes his camera(s) in the thick of the protests against the oppressors. This moving documentary is assembled almost entirely from Emad's footage which he edited together with Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi. Their film is terrific because it operates on so many levels. On the one hand, it tells a deeply personal story, on the other hand, it makes a strong political statement. It's also a warm depiction of a small tight-knit community and a classic David versus Goliath story, as the unarmed villagers repeatedly clash with the Israeli Defense Forces. Moreover, it's a story of Emad's five cameras which aid and sometimes even protect the owner in his quest for justice. And lastly, it's a story of young and innocent Gibreel who develops a thick skin growing up in this hostile environment.

4 Tage im Mai (4 Days in May)
2011
*½
Director: Achim von Borries
Cast: Paul Wenzel, Alexei Guskov, Ivan Shvedov, Andrew Merzlikin, Sergei Legostaev, Gerald Alexander Held, Martin Brambach, Angelina Henchy, Petra Kelling

World cinema knows many poignant and gripping stories about the Second World War. This irrelevant and extremely uneventful footnote of history is not one of them. It's set in the last few days of the war when a small Soviet recon squad takes over a German orphanage by the Baltic Sea, while a Wehrmacht unit on the nearby beach waits for the inevitable capitulation. The events are seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old German boy who conveniently speaks fluent Russian (which he learned from his aunt whose own language skills are so poor that she had to be dubbed). This German/Russian co-production is like few other WW2 movies: sweet, inoffensive, non-threatening and ultimately uplifting. It claims to be based on a true story, but it depicts nothing I've come to know about the occupation of Germany.

360
2011
*
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Cast: Lucia Siposová, Gabriela Marcinkova, Johannes Krisch, Jude Law, Moritz Bleibtreu, Jamel Debbouze, Dinara Drukarova, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Rachel Weisz, Juliano Cazarré, Maria Flor, Ben Foster, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Ivanir

Multi-narrative films can provide brilliantly complex and creative storytelling or deliver disjointed and fragmented narratives that fail to hold my attention. For every Magnolia and Crash, you may get something like Babel and Love Actually. This tapestry of interconnected lives deals with love, infidelity, and chance encounters, and its events unfold in Vienna, Paris, London, Berlin, and Colorado. Although there is plenty of talent behind and in front of the camera, this rancid and incredibly boring collection doesn't include a single character or story strand that is worth my while. I learned nothing about these people through their accidental encounters, especially as many of their stories seem to end after the first act. Peter Morgan's dismal script is loosely based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play Reigen.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
2010
**½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones, Freida Pinto, Lucy Punch, Naomi Watts, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Pauline Collins, Anna Friel

Woody Allen returns to the UK for another incidental drama comedy about a group of people who are all deluding themselves. When their long marriage ends in divorce, Alfie marries a young bimbo and Helena finds solace in a fortune teller. Their daughter Sally feels professionally and personally unfulfilled, and her husband is a struggling writer who is attracted to his next-door neighbour. For good and bad, this is a typical Woody Allen movie. There's the usual cast of cultured characters, but these people do not leave a lasting impression. The film is bookended with an apt Shakespeare quote which describes this as a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

You Dont'k Know Jack
2010
***½
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Al Pacino, Danny Huston, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, Brenda Vaccaro, James Urbaniak, Eric Lange, Richard E. Council, Cotter Smith

Dr. Jack Kevorkian (1928-2011) was an advocate for euthanasia, who earned the nickname Dr. Death. In the 1990s, he ended up in legal trouble after carrying out numerous assisted suicides on terminally ill patients. This compelling but obviously one-sided autobiographical drama is based on Between the Dying and the Dead by Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie. The story concentrates on a few years in Kevorkian's life, and the film is all the better for it. Al Pacino gives a wonderful and unusually understated performance.

Winter's Bone
2010
****
Director: Debra Granik
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garret Dillahunt, Shelley Waggener, Lauren Sweetser, Kevin Breznahan, Ron Hall

A powerful, low-key drama set in rural Missouri which is riddled with poverty and methamphetamine. 17-year-old Ree cares for her two younger siblings and her catatonic mother. Her drug-dealing father has vanished while out on bail and the family are about to lose their home if he doesn't show up. Jennifer Lawrence is wonderful as the gutsy, resourceful and persistent Ree who tries to get help from her family, friends and neighbours, but faces hostility every step of the way. John Hawkes is equally strong as her ambiguous uncle. This grim and gritty family drama cum crime mystery flawlessly captures the claustrophobia of a closed community; it looks, sounds, feels and smells of authenticity. This illusion is broken only by the occasional familiar actor, and the final scene which feels like a needless cop-out. Based on Daniel Woodrell's novel.

The Way Back
2010
***
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan, Dragos Bucur, Gustaf Skarsgård

In 1941, a group of prisoners break out from a Siberian gulag. They attempt to survive the hostile landscape and make their way to Mongolia, but they're forced to continue their journey through the Gobi Desert and over the Himalayas. The story is based on The Long Walk, Slawomir Rawicz's autobiographical book, whose authenticity has been brought into question in the recent years. However, the incredible 4,000 mile trek is not the only doubtful aspect of the story. The mix of nationalities and personalities (and genders, once a teenage girl joins them) in the group feels scripted, and they all speak English, rather conveniently. Peter Weir stages a beautifully shot and well-acted drama, but most of his characters are not fleshed out enough. It's intended as an epic story of human endurance against the forces of nature, but the finished film is a bit monotonous and oddly unmoving.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
2010
**½
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan, Frank Langella, Eli Wallach, Susan Sarandon, Austin Pendleton, Sylvia Miles

Jacob Moore is an ambitious but naive trader who is about to marry the daughter of Gordon Gekko, the charismatic villain of Wall Street (1987), who has served his time in prison. He approaches Gekko and hopes to pick his brain, and repair the relationship between his future wife and father-in-law. The original was a Faustian morality play and a strong condemnation of greed; the financial wheeling and dealing came with a human price. The sequel is set against the global crisis in 2008, but, even with the benefit of the hindsight, Oliver Stone seems to have nothing to say about the financial markets. Now we're to feel sorry for over-priviledged millionaires who make losses on a bad investment. However, even if the film is trivial, it's perfectly watchable. That is, until the incredibly stupid feelgood ending. Shia LaBeouf in the lead is charmless and wooden, but the wonderful Michael Douglas thankfully lights up every scene he is in.

Unstoppable
2010
**½
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson, Lew Temple, Ethan Suplee, Kevin Dunn, T.J. Miller

A freight train carrying hazardous chemicals accidentally leaves a Pennsylvania rail yard unmanned, and it slowly gathers momentum as it approaches a dangerously sharp curve in a densely populated area. A veteran engine driver and his new partner are determined to avert the disaster. The story pits these hard-working blue collar heroes against the railroad company pen pushers, and the nosey and implausibly informed media hounds. This entire scenario sounds ludicrous, but it's actually based on a real-life incident in Ohio in 2001. Tony Scott's final directorial work moves forward with such irresistible force that it papers over many of the plot contrivances. Whenever the film stops for a second, the clichés hit you like an oncoming freight train.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
2010
**½
Director: David Slade
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Bryce Dallas Howard, Billy Burke, Dakota Fanning, Ashley Greene

Following Twilight and New Moon, the third episode in the saga is about the battle for our heroine's heart. Bella accepts Edward's marriage proposal, which means that she must become a vampire. Jacob offers an option which doesn't involve self-sacrifice - himself. This overheated teenage love triangle goes through the motions for two hours but doesn't seem to get any closer to resolution. The film is silly and often monotonous, but it's saved by some self-deprecating humour ("Let's face it, I am hotter than you", says Jacob to Edward) and some decent action scenes. The story concludes in Breaking Dawn - Part 1 and Part 2.

True Grit
2010
****
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Hailee Steinfeld, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, Paul Rae, Domhnall Gleeson

The Coen brothers have adapted Charles Portis' novel (or remade the 1969 John Wayne film, if you will) for their first Western. This is not one of their twisty and quirky dark comedies but an earnest and delightfully straight-forward genre piece, and the first one of theirs to actually tug at your heartstrings. It tells a story of a feisty 14-year-old girl who hires and joins an old drunken U.S. Marshal to capture the man who shot her father. The three lead performances are excellent: Bridges is hilarious with his throaty drawl and wonky posture, Steinfeld is a revelation as the precocious motormouth, and Damon is warm and charming as a pompous Texas Ranger who chases the same man for another crime. The Coens have not reinvented the genre, but they've made a very enjoyable and very disposable Western.

Tron: Legacy
2010
***
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner, Michael Sheen, James Frain, Beau Garrett

Sam Flynn, the aimless majority share holder of video gaming company Encom, follows a potential message from his long lost father, when he is teleported to the Tron system. As he tries to find a way out, he discovers that the programme has seized control of the Grid from its creator, his dad Kevin Flynn. Like the original Tron, this belated sequel is not a showcase for brilliant storytelling or compelling characterisation. It is, however, an interesting audio-visual experience. The multi-layered Grid is meticulously designed and beautifully animated but surprisingly clear and comprehensible. The young digitally rendered Jeff Bridges may not be on the same level with the rest of the special effects, but I can accept his plasticky look in this context. Daft Punk's thumping electronic soundtrack is a perfect fit.

Trolljegeren (Troll Hunter)
2010
***½
Director: André Øvredal
Cast: Otto Jespersen, Hans Morten Hansen, Tomas Alf Larsen, Johanna Mørck, Knut Nærum, Robert Stoltenberg, Glenn Erland Tosterud

André Øvredal's darkly comedic mockumentary begins with a text which explains that it was assembled from found footage. This does not bode well for the people who appear on screen, but there are some nice twists on the way to the grim conclusion. The film was shot by three university student who follow a suspected poacher. The man turns out to be a troll hunter who works for a hush-hush government agency, and he agrees to take the trio on one of his hunting trips. After The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, and numerous others, the found footage gimmick is getting pretty tiresome. What saves this Norwegian version is the dry, dark humour, the detailed and inventive troll mythology, and, if you will, the stunning scenery. The characters are foolhardy but not as stupid or annoying as in those other movies.

Toy Story 3
2010
****½
Director: Lee Unkrich
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, Wallace Shawn

Andy is about to head off to college and plans to store his beloved toys in the attic. However, after a mix-up they end up in the Sunnyside Daycare Centre, which is not as perfect as it first seems. Woody, Buzz, and co arrive at another turning point in their lives (or life spans) and their inventive adventure has laughs, cries, and scares for the children and their parents alike. Pixar maintains the high quality of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 to conclude one of the finest trilogies ever made. Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.

The Town
2010
***½
Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall, Blake Lively, Jeremy Renner, Pete Postlethwaite, Chris Cooper

The Boston neighborhood of Charlestown is famous for its high crime rate. Doug, Jem, Gloansy and Dez are lifelong friends and professional bank robbers who play cat and mouse with the FBI. Doug wants to ensure that the hostage from their last heist doesn't know too much, but he falls in love with her instead. Ben Affleck's follow-up to Gone Baby Gone is another gripping crime film, this time based on Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves. The story is gritty and authentic, if not terribly original. The bank robbery reminds me of Point Break, the street shootouts hark back at Heat, and the climactic heist follows in the footsteps of The Killing.

The Tourist
2010
**
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Steven Berkoff, Rufus Sewell

A vengeful gangster wants to capture Alexander Pearce, a former banker who robbed him clean. Scotland Yard wants the same man for his massive tax debts. The two parties follow Pearce’s lover to Venice, and hope that she leads them to him. If only they knew what he looks like after plastic surgery. Since the mobsters are ruthless and the detectives are incompetent, our sympathies lie with the thief, which immediately destroys any sense of jeopardy or suspension. The ensuing caper comedy is light, frothy and funny (particularly when Johnny Depp mixes Italian and Spanish) but hopelessly mechanical. The plot is a stupid and ridiculous sleight of hand which doesn’t include a believable moment; the final big twist is at once predictable and utterly nonsensical. Von Donnersmarck’s camera adores Angelina Jolie. Too bad it cannot create any sparks between her and Depp. This is a remake of a French film Anthony Zimmer.

Tangled
2010
****
Director: Nathan Greno, Byron Howard
Cast: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy, Brad Garrett, Ron Perlman, Jeffrey Tambor, Richard Kiel, M. C. Gainey, Paul F. Tompkins

Rapunzel, a young princess with magical long hair, has been locked in a tower by a vain woman she thinks is her mother. When a cocky thief named Flynn Rider climbs into her tower, Rapunzel forces him to show her the world outside. This Disney animation is based on Rapunzel, an 1812 fairy tale written by the Brothers Grimm. It's a familiar story which gets the Disney treatment. There's romance, adventure, songs, and reliable comedy sidekicks. The film doesn't really include one surprise, but it's entertaining and likeable nonetheless.

Tamara Drewe
2010
**
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Gemma Arterton, Dominic Cooper, Luke Evans, Tamsin Greig, Roger Allam, Bill Camp, Jessica Barden, Charlotte Christie

Tamara Drewe left the sleepy village of Ewedown as an ugly duckling. Now, some years and one nosejob later, she returns as a sexy columnist who casts a spell on three different men: her old flame, an empty-headed rock musician, and a philandering crime novelist whose farm functions as a writers' resort. This adaptation of Posy Simmonds' comic strip, which was inspired by Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, starts as a potentially charming and old-fashioned English country comedy, but it soon becomes clear that it's a complete mess. The comedy parts are not funny, the dramatic parts have no impact, and the stupid ending seems like it was scripted by a different person. What kind of a film is this and what is it about? The dull plot runs on auto-pilot and each cardboard character has a single trait that defines their entire personality. Tamara herself is the most unpleasant and uninteresting person on screen, not helped by Gemma Arterton's wooden performance.

Tabloid
2010
***
Director: Errol Morris
Cast:

In 1977, Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen from Wyoming, hired some goons and travelled to the UK to rescue the love of her life from a cult. However, according to the young Mormon missionary in question, she abducted and raped him. Errol Morris tells Joyce's incredible story and shows how the competing British tabloids turned a nobody into a celebrity and portrayed her either as a saint or as a sinner. McKinney is a self-absorbed eccentric and her life is full of unbelievable twists, but this somewhat trivial documentary is rather conventionally told.

Stone
2010
**
Director: John Curran
Cast: Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Milla Jovovich, Frances Conroy, Rafael Souza, Enver Gjokaj, Pepper Binkley

After serving eight years, Gerald "Stone" Creeson, a convicted arsonist, hopes to be released on parole. But first Stone and his beautiful wife must persuade parole officer Jack Mabry, who is trying to come to terms with his own sins. The set-up doesn't sound like much and John Curran's film certainly doesn't exceed my expectations. While I waited for something to happen or the film to have a point, this slow-burning psychological drama plodded to its flat and frustrating conclusion. Norton feels actorly in the title role but De Niro gives one of his least awful performances in years.

The Social Network
2010
****½
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Rooney Mara, Brenda Song, Joseph Mazzello

A compelling and entertaining film about the creation of Facebook. Back in 2003 Mark Zuckerberg is an arrogant and socially inept 19-year-old Harvard nerd whose subsequent work leads the way for the social media revolution. But was it his work entirely? The Academy Award winning screenplay, which is based on Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires, is framed around two separate law suits which disputed Zuckerberg's intellectual property rights and ownership rights. It is unclear how much poetic license has been used, but at least all the main players come out of it looking equally selfish. Aaron Sorkin's machine-gun dialogue is sharp, witty and breathtaking, and it seems like he crammed two or even three movies into these two hours. This doesn't leave much room for flashy visuals, and David Fincher has indeed directed the whole thing with appropriate precision and economy. The predominantly young cast are excellent. Oscar winner for Best Film Editing and Best Original Score.

Skyline
2010
*½
Director: The Brothers Strause
Cast: Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, Crystal Reed, David Zayas, Donald Faison, Neil Hopkins, J. Paul Boehmer

Jarrod and his girfriend Elaine travel to a birthday party in Los Angeles. The birthday boy is caught cheating, Jarrod gets a contentious job offer, and Elaine reveals that she's pregnant. Only the last part matters when hypnotic blue light beams appear in the skyline during the night. By the morning, the city is under a full-fledged alien attack. The second time directors Greg and Colin Strause have a background in special effects, and their ambition here doesn't extend beyond creating a good looking science fiction blockbuster on a shoestring budget. They succeed in that part but only because they've pinched a penny by recycling the alien designs from District 9 and War of the Worlds. The clichéd and derivative script by Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell steals freely from the films above and from the likes of Cloverfield, Independence Day, and The Matrix. The story is centred around a group of uninteresting 20-somethings who bicker whether they should hide inside the highrise or try their luck on the outside. The aliens feast on the human brain but it doesn't seem like they would get their stomachs full with this dumb lot. The film is not unbearably awful, it is just boringly unoriginal.


Shutter Island
2010
***½
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Max von Sydow, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, Ted Levine

In 1954, a US marshal and his new partner travel to a hospital for the criminally insane on the rugged Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a patient. While things on the island are not as they seem, the marshal seems preoccupied with his war memories and his wife's tragic death. Martin Scorsese's gripping neo-noir is stylish, well-acted, and visually rich, but I am not convinced that this pulpy story requires such a pompous and self-important 140-minute film. Based on Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel.

Senna
2010
****½
Director: Asif Kapadia
Cast:

A terrific film about Brazilian racing car driver Ayrton Senna. He was an explosive talent known for his uncompromising driving style and he went on to win three Formula 1 titles. This gripping real-life drama doesn't offer any of the usual documentary clichés, such as narration or interviews. Apart from a few sound bytes from the people who knew Senna personally or profesionally, his story is told entirely through available film footage and rare home movies. However, Kapadia cannot quite avoid canonising his protagonist.

Secretariat
2010
***
Director: Randall Wallace
Cast: Diane Lane, John Malkovich, Dylan Walsh, James Cromwell, Kevin Connolly, Scott Glenn, Otto Thorwarth, Margo Martindale, Amanda Michalka, Drew Roy, Nestor Serrano

When her mother dies and her father succumbs to senility, housewife Penny Chenery takes charge of the family's horse racing and breeding operations. She gambles everything on a promising foal who grows up to be Secretariat, one of the greatest racehorses of all time. This biographical drama is based on William Nack's 1975 book Secretariat: The Making of a Champion. The screenplay by Mike Rich and Sheldon Turner takes some liberties with the true events to create a formulaic and manipulative but entertaining portrait of a strong-willed woman and a strong-legged stallion. There are some strong performances, but also a number of cardboard characters and cringy clichés.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
2010
**½
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Alison Pill, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman

This unusual comedy mixes indie quirkiness with CGI superhero action, and it looks like a cross between a comic book and an old school arcade game. Scott Pilgrim is a layabout rock musician who falls for the beautiful and cool Ramona Flowers, but he must fight the nasty ex-boyfriend to win her over. So far, so good, but there are six more evil exes to defeat before Game Over. Ultimately the story goes nowhere and the repetitive battles get so tiresome that it's irrelevant who wins in the end. It would probably help if Scott and Ramona looked like they actually cared for one another. Based on Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim graphic novels.

Salt
2010
**
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl, Hunt Block, Andre Braugher, Olek Krupa

When CIA operative Evelyn Salt is implicated as one the Russian sleeper agents planted in the U.S. 20 odd years ago, she goes on the run. But will she try to clear her name or carry out her mission? Kurt Wimmer's script lifts the central conceit directly from the Cold War conspiracy thrillers such as The Manchurian Candidate and Telefon (1977), and adds a female version of Jason Bourne in the lead. The sum of these parts is a derivative and preposterous action drama, which feels about 25 years behind its time. After an intriguing first 15 minutes, the film throws all credibility out the window. The cartoonish action scenes take over and the plot twists and turns for the hell of it. Come the end, nothing in the story bears scrutiny.

The Runaways
2010
***
Director: Floria Sigismondi
Cast: Dakota Fanning, Kristen Stewart, Stella Maeve, Scout Taylor-Compton, Michael Shannon

An entertaining biopic of the Runaways, an all-girl hard rock band who spent 15 minutes in the spotlight in the late 1970s. Michael Shannon is wonderfully flamboyant as Kim Fowley, an eccentric record producer who introduces two teenage misfits, Cherie Currie and Joan Jett, to one another and helps to shape the band. As expected, rock stardom is not all it's cracked up to be. However, this clichéd tale of sex, drug and rock n' roll is rescued by a compelling personal story about a young woman who cannot handle the hangover of fame. Based on Currie's book Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway.

Route Irish
2010
**½
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Mark Womack, Andrea Lowe, John Bishop, Geoff Bell, Jack Fortune, Talib Rasool, Craig Lundberg, Trevor Williams, Russel Anderson, Jamie Michie

Fergus is a former SAS soldier who works as a security contractor in Iraq. When his best mate Frankie is killed on Route Irish, the road from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone, Fergus refuses to believe the official truth and begins his own investigation. The left-wing director Ken Loach and his screenwriting partner Paul Laverty are known for their provocative oeuvre which repeatedly tackles social injustice. Their latest work is set in a black and white world where the good guys are angry working class men who shout expletives in a thick Liverpudlian accent and the bad guys speak calmly with an uppity accent and play golf. In fairness, this film begins as a gritty conspiracy thriller which takes a scathing look at the commercialisation of war. Towards the end, however, it turns into a flat story about personal retribution and redemption which is not far from the usual Hollywood dross.

Robin Hood
2010
**½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Matthew Macfadyen, Mark Strong, Oscar Isaac, Kevin Durand, Mark Addy, William Hurt, Danny Huston, Max von Sydow

When Richard the Lionheart dies in the Third Crusade, a common archer named Robin Longstride returns the King’s crown to England and ends up impersonating the late Lord Locksley from Nottingham. When King John's close advisor plots an invasion with the French, Robin develops into a genuine leader of men. Ridley Scott’s film provides a historically authentic backstory for a historically inauthentic character, who by the end becomes a reluctant Robin Hood. This epic is gritty and well-made, but oddly lifeless and joyless. Russell Crowe’s accent is all over the map, apart from England, and he cannot turn Robin into another Maximus. His three sidekicks, on the other hand, are indistinguishable from one another. There are echoes of Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan in the impressive battles scenes, which is to say that they offer very little new.

Remember Me
2010
**
Director: Allen Coulter
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin, Chris Cooper, Lena Olin, Tate Ellington, Pierce Brosnan, Peyton List, Kate Burton, Gregory Jbara

Tyler and Ally are two 21-year-old New Yorkers and probably the unluckiest lovers in the world. Tyler's brother committed suicide, his 12-year-old sister is brutally bullied in school, and their father has no time for either of them. Ally's mother was shot in front of her eyes and her father is an alcoholic, overprotective, and occasionally abusive cop. This romantic drama offers so much misery that it becomes almost comical. However, the stupid and ill-judged ending, which feels like an outtake from another film, wiped away my smirk. Although Pattinson and de Ravin give good performances, there is very little chemistry between them.

Reindeerspotting
2010
**½
Director: Joonas Neuvonen
Cast:

A Finnish documentary about a group of young drug addicts in the town of Rovaniemi in Lapland. The focus is on Jani, an unemployed 19-year-old, who supports his habit with petty thefts. When he's about to face jail time, he flees to Central Europe. The video footage was shot in 2003 and 2004 by the director, who was a junkie himself. The film offers a fascinating inside view to substance abuse in all its grim detail, but as a viewing experience this is like watching paint dry. The protagonist moves from fix to fix but doesn't have anything particularly funny, witty or insightful to say about himself or his addiction. As a sad epilogue, Jani committed suicide in Cambodia a few months after the film came out.

Red
2010
***
Director: Robert Schwentke
Cast: Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Karl Urban, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Rebecca Pidgeon, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Julian McMahon, Ernest Borgnine, James Remar

Frank Moses is a retired black ops agent who likes to speak to Sarah, who works at the Pension Office. When someone tries to kill Frank, he must bring her to safety, go underground and put together his old team of fellow pensioners. This geriaction comedy is far more entertaining than The Expendables, which was released almost simultaneously. The plot is utterly ridiculous and predictable, but this self-aware movie is good fun in spite or because of it. Bruce Willis phones in another po-faced performance, but Parker, Freeman, Mirren, Cox, and Malkovich are all charming. Inspired by a comic book by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner. Followed by a 2013 sequel.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
2010
***½
Director: Jalmari Helander
Cast: Tommi Korpela, Per Christian Ellefsen, Jorma Tommila, Jonathan Hutchings, Onni Tommila, Risto Salmi, Peeter Jakobi, Rauno Juvonen, Ilmari Järvenpää

This short and entertaining dark comedy turns the traditional Christmas mythology on its head. Thousands of years ago, the Sami people froze and buried the real Santa Claus, a nasty creature who punished naughty children, inside a mountain in northern Finland. In the present day, a foreign mining crew unleashes the old foe on the local community of reindeer herders and their children. Jalmari Helander expanded his feature debut from the YouTube shorts Rare Exports Inc. (2003) and Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions (2005). His low-key horror film relies on subtle scares rather than outright gore. The story does not always make sense, nor does it add up to much, but the fresh premise and lively visuals make this a perfectly enjoyable Xmas treat.

Rabbit Hole
2010
**½
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, Miles Teller, Tammy Blanchard, Sandra Oh, Patricia Kalember, Mike Doyle

Becca and Howie lost their 4-year-old son in a tragic accident. Eight months later, he is eager to move on, but she cannot get over her grief and guilt. David Lindsay-Abaire adapted his 2005 play to the screen, and the result is a well-acted and well-meaning but underwhelming drama, which remains stuck on safe and familiar territory. The way the couple responds to the situation (leaving the boy's room untouched, watching old family videos, and dreading to see other people's children) may be realistic, but it is also how all the past films have dealt with the loss of a child. While struggling with grief, Becca and Howie both embark on unusual relationships outside their marriage, but these sidetracks never really lead anywhere. In the end, all the soft-pedaling undermines the story's emotional impact.

Paha perhe (Bad Family)
2010
**½
Director: Aleksi Salmenperä
Cast: Ville Virtanen, Lauri Tilkanen, Pihla Viitala, Vera Kiiskinen, Niki Seppälä, Ismo Kallio

An overbearing father has begun to alienate his teenage son. When the boy's mother dies, he is reunited with his long absent sister. The siblings immediately form an uncomfortably intimate relationship, which drives their father mad. Aleksi Salmenperä's follow-up to A Man's Work is a disappointment. Like the previous film, this is a story of a man whose life is getting beyond his control, but this one works only as a metaphor. The three main characters are all extremely irritating, and without a backstory, it's never clear what makes them tick.

The Other Guys
2010
**½
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Steve Coogan, Michael Keaton, Ray Stevenson, Lindsay Sloane, Anne Heche, Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne Johnson

While two reckless super cops (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson in brief but amusing cameos) hog all the headlines, second-tier detectives Gamble (a nerdy police department accountant) and Hoitz (a disgraced hot-head) fail to land even a proper case. That is, until they investigate a construction permit violation and uncover a potential multi-billion dollar fraud. Buddy cop movies have become a popular subgenre. Unfortunately, for every gem like 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon 2 or Hot Fuzz, you must sit through rubbish like Bad Boys 1 and 2. The fourth collaboration between Adam McKay and Will Ferrell falls somewhere inbetween. Their comedy has a bright start but it begins to feel long and drawn out when the laddish jokes become increasingly hit and miss.

The Next Three Days
2010
***
Director: Paul Haggis
Cast: Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks, Brian Dennehy, Olivia Wilde, Liam Neeson, Lenny James, Ty Simpkins, Helen Carey

This remake of a 2008 French film Pour Elle (Anything for Her) is a conventional thriller about a mild-mannered schoolteacher who is forced to transform into an action hero. When his wife is jailed for murder, he decides to bust her out, but is he willing to also lose his son if the plan fails? And what if she's guilty? The film raises some interesting questions, but there's never really any doubt how the story is going to end. The unnecessary coda also removes any ambiguity regarding the wife's guilt.

Never Let Me Go
2010
**
Director: Mark Romanek
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling, Isobel Meikle-Small, Ella Purnell, Nathalie Richard, Charlie Rowe, Domhnall Gleeson, Andrea Riseborough

In the 1970s, a group of British children are brought up in isolation in Hailsham, in an unusual boarding school-like facility. One day they learn the horrific truth about their purpose. This stately drama takes a timely and fascinating topic (which was also explored in The Island), and tells a gloomy but disappointingly unaffecting story of three of the Hailsham kids. The central question is whether Kathy, Ruth and Tommy are like normal people. The film attempts to argue yes, but looking at the submissive trio succumb to their fates without any resistance, my feeling is no. Alex Garland scripted from Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel.

Napapiirin sankarit (Lapland Odyssey)
2010
*½
Director: Dome Karukoski
Cast: Jussi Vatanen, Jasper Pääkkönen, Timo Lavikainen, Pamela Tola, Kari Ketonen, Miia Nuutila, Ulla Tapaninen, Anna-Leena Härkönen

In remote wintery Lapland, jobs and money are scarce. Janne is a layabout whose fed-up girlfriend gives him one more chance to get his act together. Janne and his two friends go out to buy a digibox, but the simple task turns into an epic nocturnal misadventure. This Finnish comedy kicks off with a rather enjoyable prologue, which uses dark humour to depict the plight of the Lappish men. When the actual story begins, the film runs into two gigantic stumbling blocks. Firstly, it expects me to root for these three dim-witted deadbeats. Secondly and most importantly, their misfortunes are not remotely funny. Pekko Pesonen's script mixes ethnic clichés (Finnish gloom, Swedish beauty and Russian wealth) with the current Hollywood trend, which has made deadbeat losers irresistible to beautiful women. The concoction is incredibly dull and occasionally infuriating. Followed by numerous sequels.

Nanga Parbat
2010
**
Director: Joseph Vilsmeier
Cast: Florian Stetter, Andreas Tobias, Karl Markovics, Steffen Schroeder, Sebastian Bezzel, Lena Stolze, Horst Kummeth

In 1970, the Messner brothers Reinhold and Günther joined a German expedition to Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas. The climb was successful but it ended tragically. This German film depicts Reinhold's version of the events. The story unfolds in flashbacks and the expositional dialogue is used almost entirely to create a sense of foreboding. Since the outcome is a foregone conclusion, director Joseph Vilsmeier is left with a job to turn the incident into a nail-biting drama, much like Touching the Void. He fails with flying colours, probably because he sticks too close to the facts. The weather-delayed opening is long and dull, the actual climb to the summit is over too soon, and the trudge down the mountain is endless. When the descent reaches its dramatic conclusion, Vilsmeier completely drops the ball.

Monsters
2010
***½
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Whitney Able, Scoot McNairy

A large area in northern Mexico is occupied by extra-terrestrial creatures and the U.S. military has attempted to defeat them with biological weapons. An American photojournalist agrees to escort his boss' daughter through the infected zone to safety across the border. If you're expecting an action-packed monster movie, you're in for a disappointment. Gareth Edwards' unusual feature debut is more like a romantic road movie. Sure, there are some gigantic tentacled creatures, but the emphasis is on the two human characters. The scares are subtle, low-key, and very effective. Admittedly, the story is quite uneventful. The film was made on a shoestring budget. Edwards directed, wrote, and shot it, and created the impressive special effects.

Miesten vuoro (Steam of Life)
2010
****
Director: Joonas Berghäll, Mika Hotakainen
Cast:

A very affecting documentary about Finnish men, who famously don't share their emotions. However, when this group of men go to sauna, they strip all of their clothes and all of their inhibitions and one by one open up to the camera. They talk about loves and losses and share some heartbreaking personal stories. A minimalistic film which is beautifully shot and lit.

Megamind
2010
***
Director: Tom McGrath
Cast: Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, David Cross, Brad Pitt, J.K. Simmons, Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux, Christopher Knights

Years ago, two alien beings landed on Earth. The one with the superpowers turned into a bona fide superhero named Metro Man. The hyper-intelligent one evolved into a supervillain named Megamind. When Megamind finally defeats his archenemy for good, his existence seems oddly pointless. Tom McGrath, who co-directed the Madagascar trilogy, pokes fun at the superhero franchises in this enjoyable animation. However, the movie suffers from following in the footsteps of the superior Despicable Me, another story of a bad guy who may be not be that bad after all. To make matters worse, Megamind's sidekick's name is Minion.

Meek's Cutoff
2010
**
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Cast: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Bruce Greenwood, Shirley Henderson, Neal Huff, Zoe Kazan, Tommy Nelson, Will Patton, Rod Rondeaux

In 1845, a wagon train of three families are heading towards the green valleys of Oregon. Without water in sight for weeks, the settlers become divided on who to trust to guide them out of the desert, their boastful guide or the native they captured. Kelly Reichardt's snail-paced feminist Western has no beginning and no end. We don't know where these people are coming from or where they end up. We see the middle part where they slowly trudge through the desert to the tune of the squeaky wagon wheel. It doesn't sound terribly exciting, and it certainly isn't at any point. The unforgiving Oregon landscape is the film's biggest draw, but Reichardt has bafflingly decided to shoot it in a 4:3 aspect ratio.

Little Fockers
2010
*
Director: Paul Weitz
Cast: Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Jessica Alba, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand

Some things have changed, but mostly they've stayed the same. Greg and Pam Focker now have twins who are about to turn five. The grandparents come to Chicago for the birthday party, and the famously suspicious father-in-law Jack finds new reasons to question his son-in-law's credentials as a member of his extended family. Meet the Parents was a likeable and well-observed comedy, and Meet the Fockers was a repetitive but surprisingly funny sequel, which introduced the other half of the family. To call the third episode formulaic, would be an insult to formulas everywhere. This is a mechanical and uninspired studio product, which makes it to 90 minutes by padding up the usual son-in-law vs. father-in-law scenario with aimless side plots, in which Greg is incompetent as a parent, provider, or as the man of the house. This time the jokes revolve around poop, vomit, erectile dysfunction, and the word Focker. Not particularly funny. Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand briefly reprise their roles to provide continuity, and Harvey Keitel appears in a new thankless role as a laid-back contractor. Jessica Alba, on the other hand, is terrible as a bubbly drug company rep.

Lemmy
2010
***
Director: Greg Olliver, Wes Orshoski
Cast:

This adulatory documentary about Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister (1945-2015), the sole constant member of rock band Motörhead since 1975, was clearly made for his fans. It becomes somewhat cringy to watch Lemmy's peers and admirers describe him as the most authentic rock musician in the business, the coolest guy in the history of man, and the nicest guy on the planet to have worn a Nazi uniform. The film is entertaining, but we don't end up learning much new about Lemmy. Or maybe there's not more to the man since he has been stubbornly doing the same thing for more than 40 years.

L'Illusionniste (The Illusionist)
2010
***
Director: Sylvain Chomet
Cast: Jean-Claude Donda, Eilidh Rankin

A melancholic grown-up animation about a down-and-out French illusionist who travels to remote Scotland in the late 1950s. On the way back, a young girl follows him to Edinburgh, where they share a hotel room. She is dazzled by her kind benefactor, but unaware what he needs to do to make ends meet. These two characters are wonderfully drawn, in more senses than one, almost entirely without dialogue, but the nature of their relationship remains frustratingly ambiguous. Sylvain Chomet's follow-up to The Triplettes of Belleville retains his beautiful and distinctive animation style. This short but slow-paced film is based on an unproduced screenplay by the late Jacques Tati, but the story is more sad than funny.

Knight and Day
2010
***
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Jordi Molla, Viola Davis, Paul Dano, Falk Hentschel, Marc Blucas, Maggie Grace

June rediscovers her zest for life when she's swept away by Roy, a charming but mysterious spy who attempts to protect a precocious genius and his invention. This groundbreaking product is a classic plot device; it runs the narrative and ties the standalone chase scenes together, but it's ultimately irrelevant. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have good comic timing but very little sexual chemistry. The film around them is incessantly flippant and, as a result, the characters never turn into fully fleshed human beings. And yet, despite all these problems, this romantic action comedy is thoroughly enjoyable. The action scenes are funny and completely bonkers, and the film is all the better for it.

The King's Speech
2010
****
Director: Tom Hooper
Cast: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Michael Gambon, Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi

George VI ended up in power when his older brother Edward VIII ascended the throne in 1936. He was a reluctant king who dreaded public speaking due to his severe stammer. This conventional but very enjoyable British drama tells his story from 1925 to 1939, when he was coached by an unorthodox and controversial Australian speech therapist. It's a funny and touching depiction of friendship that transcends class boundaries and national borders. Oscar winner Colin Firth is the deserved star of the show, but there are several terrific performances (Rush, Bonham Carter, Gambon and Pearce, to mention a few). The film won Academy Awards also for best film, best director and best original screenplay (David Seidler).

The Kids Are All Right
2010
**½
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Cast: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson, Yaya DaCosta, Eddie Hassell

A conventional comedy-drama about an unconventional family. A middle-aged lesbian couple (Nic is a controlling breadwinner and Jules a fanciful dreamer) have two teenage children (Joni is at the brink of womanhood and Laser is an exploratory 15-year-old), who track down their biological father. The anonymous sperm donor turns out to be an easygoing bachelor who upsets the family's delicate balance. The premise is fresh but this well-acted film is ultimately quite conservative. Replace Bening with a male actor and it wouldn't make any difference. Although these characters are subversive, at least on the surface, they all behave just like you'd expect.

Kick-Ass
2010
***½
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Mark Strong, Nicolas Cage, Lyndsy Fonseca, Michael Rispoli

An inconspicuous high school kid Dave Lizewski, whose only superpower is being invisible to girls, decides to become a real-life superhero Kick-Ass, with painful results. At the same time a father and daughter duo, Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, have the same plan with a more serious intent. This action comedy adaptation of the comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr starts as a tongue-in-cheek satire that asks what would happen if normal people became superheroes. The second half answers the question with a rather formulaic action-packed finale with stunts and gadgets out of this world. The story of Dave is pretty much that of Peter Parker; the ending even sets up the sequel exactly like Spider-Man did. Followed by Kick-Ass 2 (2013).

Kaboom
2010
***½
Director: Gregg Araki
Cast: Thomas Dekker, Juno Temple, Haley Bennett, Roxane Mesquida, Brennan Mejia, James Duval, Kelly Lynch, Chris Zylka

Smith, an 18-year-old film student, and his circle of friends are preoccupied with sex, whether it's gay, straight or bi. Smith also has a weird, recurrent dream, but is it somehow linked to the shady figures who move around the campus wearing animal masks? Gregg Araki's wonderfully unpredictable film moves fluidly from sex comedy to gory horror to paranoia thriller to goofy science fiction. One moment it deals with teenage angst and sexual identity, the next it has a witch giving cunnilingus. The conclusion is totally ridiculous, but until then it's good fun.

Jūsannin no Shikaku (13 Assassins)
2010
**½
Director: Takashi Miike
Cast: Koji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada, Yusuke Iseya, Ikki Sawamura, Hiroki Matsukata, Matsumoto Koshiro Ix, Goro Inagaki, Masachika Ichimura

Takashi Miike's samurai movie is a remake of Eiichi Kudo’s 1963 film. In the 1840s, a politician assembles a team of assassins to stop the sadistic lord Naritsugu before he manages to rise to a more prominent position. A group of 12 samurai (and one hunter) draw up a plan to ambush and murder Naritsugu. The first half is spent assembling the group and discussing the essence of honour. The second half is nonstop action. Just because Miike has more numbers does not mean that his film is a match to Seven Samurai. There are many problems: the villain is one note, the group is a faceless bunch, the build-up is long and boring, and the monotonic climactic battle cannot make up for it.

Iron Man 2
2010
**½
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke, Jon Favreau, Clark Gregg, Leslie Bibb, Samuel l.Jackson

Six months after Tony Stark revealed that he is Iron Man, the U.S. government wants him to hand over his armoured suit, while the arms manufacturers and rogue nations across the globe are in a race to duplicate it. While this is happening, the life-sustaining arc reactor in Stark's chest is slowly killing him. Iron Man was an enjoyable origin story. This sequel is a more mechanical superhero action film. Once again Iron Man battles second rate copies of himself. The story is busy setting up future franchise entries, such as The Avengers. However, Robert Downey, Jr gives another enjoyably silky performance.


Into Eternity
2010
***½
Director: Michael Madsen
Cast:

Onkalo is an underground repository that is under construction in Western Finland. Upon completion it will store thousands of tons of nuclear waste which must remain undisturbed for 100,000 years. This thought-provoking documentary ponders the practical and philosophical implications of this staggering plan. Danish artist Michael Madsen poses engaging questions, but he weighs down the film with his overdramatic visuals.

Inside Job
2010
****
Director: Charles Ferguson
Cast:

This captivating, Academy Award winning documentary describes the circumstances which led to the financial crisis in 2007-2009. Charles Ferguson compellingly explains how deregulation and inflated incentive programmes encouraged the finance industry to take ever bigger risks, which eventually brought down the entire sector and triggered a global recession. This bleak story is told with traditional methods - talking heads and descriptive graphs - but in narrative terms it feels like a heist movie. Only this time the figures are astronomical and the bad guys walk free.

Inception
2010
*****
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine

Dom Cobb runs a team who are able to share and manipulate other people's dreams in order to steal secrets. This time, they are hired to plant an idea in the head of a man who is about to inherit a massive business empire. Cobb himself is a troubled man, whose dead wife continues to populate his subconscious. Christopher Nolan trained himself with two Batman movies and gives us big budget moviemaking at its best. This is an incredibly smart and entertaining spectacle with an audacious concept, stunning set pieces and special effects, and an emotional core that binds it all together. Academy Award winner for best cinematography, sound, and visual effects.

Incendies
2010
***
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Rémy Girard, Abdelghafour Elaaziz, Allen Altman, Mohamed Majd, Nabil Sawalha

Jeanne and Simon receive cryptic letters and instructions from their recently deceased mother Nawal. The letters lead them on a transformative journey to the Middle East, where they unravel a haunting family tragedy entwined in the region's war-torn history. Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Wajdi Mouawad's 2003 play is a personal and political tragedy set in Lebanon, although the country is never explicitly mentioned. Lubna Azabal gives a brilliant performance as Nawal, whose hard-hitting story is told in gripping flashbacks. However, it's all for nothing in the end. The central mystery leads to a shocking twist, which requires a ridiculous amount of contrivances and coincidences on two different continents. I also struggle to understand why Nawal thinks her children should learn the truth.

I'm Still Here
2010
*
Director: Casey Affleck
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Sean Combs, Casey Affleck, Antony Langdon, Mos Def, Ben Stiller, Edward James Olmos

In late 2008, Joaquin Phoenix announced that he would retire from acting. During the subsequent months, his best friend Casey Affleck filmed the actor as he tried to launch a rapping career, the failure of which led to a gradual breakdown. After the premiere, the whole thing was revealed to be an elaborate hoax. As a documentary, this would have been tedious and totally pointless. As a mockumentary, it's unfunny and uninteresting. The film is about 106 minutes too long and it offers swearing, fighting, sex, drugs, vomit, bad hair, and bad rapping. I don't know whether to admire Phoenix for setting himself up for ridicule, or loathe him for exposing me to this skull-crushingly boring and over-indulgent self-promotion.

How to Train Your Dragon
2010
****
Director: Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois
Cast: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plassem, T.J. Miller, Kristen Wiig

Vikings and dragons are traditionally each other's worst enemies. When a nerdy teenager Hiccup gets to know one of the creatures, he realises that things could be very different. This delightful animation is based on Cressida Cowell's book. The premise is refreshingly original, even if the story deals with some very traditional themes (don't judge a book by its cover, don't force anyone to be something they're not, don't be afraid of change). The film is very funny, surprisingly dark, and excitingly action-packed. Followed by How to Train Your Dragon 2 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

Hot Tub Time Machine
2010
*
Director: Steve Pink
Cast: John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Crispin Glover, Lizzy Caplan, Chevy Chase, Collette Wolfe, Sebastian Stan

Adam, Lou, and Nick, whose lives didn't pan out quite like they expected, take a nostalgic trip to a ski resort, where the three friends and Adam's slacker nephew Jacob are transported back to 1986. This is the set-up for a formulaic, misogynistic, and depressingly unfunny gross-out comedy, which features three unpleasant and uninteresting man-children. Paying homage to the Back to the Future trilogy is one thing, ripping it off at every turn is a different matter. Jacob runs into his horny mother, Nick sings a song from the future, Lou puts money on future events he knows are going to happen, and Crispin Glover appears in a quirky supporting role. The ending made me want to throw up. Followed by a 2015 sequel.

Des hommes et des dieux (Of Gods and Men)
2010
***
Director: Xavier Beauvois
Cast: Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach, Jacques Herlin, Loïc Pichon, Xavier Maly, Jean-Marie Frin

This thoughtful but overrated drama is based on the events that played out in Algeria in 1996. A Trappist monastery is the backbone of the poor Muslim community, but when Islamic extremists begin to terrorise the area, the monks must decide whether to flee to safety or stand firm and face whatever comes. The story is subtly told and it shows how eight individuals transform into one like-minded collective. However, the film is very leisurely paced and it portrays the monks and their actions in rather saintly light.

Hereafter
2010
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Matt Damon, Cécile de France, Frankie McLaren, Bryce Dallas Howard, Lyndsey Marshal, Thierry Neuvic, Jay Mohr

Clint Eastwood defies expectations with this multistrand story about life after death; it's maybe the first time his film has dealt with the supernatural. A French TV journalist suffers a near death experience in Thailand, a 12-year-old boy cannot get over the death of his twin brother in London, and a psychic feels cursed by his extraordinary gift in San Francisco. The stunning opening scene grabs you by the throat, then the narrative settles on a more sedated tone as it alternates between the three characters. Their paths eventually intersect in the contrived but moving climax. All in all, this is a powerful drama, that is, if you can accept its version of the afterlife.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
2010
***½
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Imelda Staunton, Brendan Gleeson, John Hurt, Rhys Ifans, Jason Isaacs, Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gambon

Harry Potter's story is coming to its conclusion. Harry, Hermione and Ron learn about the three Deathly Hallows, which play a key role in their final showdown with Lord Voldemort. J.K. Rowling's final book is split in two movies, and the trio spend the first half of the finale mostly in hiding. This tense waiting game is interspersed with snappy action set pieces for a long but gripping film. The angsty mood and the deliberate pacing (especially in the midsection) create a feeling that the series has matured with its characters. The saga concludes in Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

Greenberg
2010
**½
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Merritt Wever, Chris Messina, Brie Larson

Roger Greenberg is a former musician who threw his career away in a moment of self-doubt. Now he's recovering from a breakdown in his brother's house in Los Angeles, and feels drawn to his assistant. This is a romantic comedy by a very loose definition. There are some darkly comic moments, but is there something romantic about a will they/won't they between a self-absorbed prick and a wide-eyed young woman who has no self-respect? Only in movie reality would these two people end up together. Baumbach's film deals with growing old and coming to terms with your disappointments, but the protagonist is so unpleasant that his self-discovery never seems important. Nevertheless, Stiller, Gerwig, and Ifans all give great performances. The soundtrack was written by James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem).

Green Zone
2010
***
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Khalid Abdalla, Jason Isaacs, Yigal Naor

Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller leads a squad assigned to locate Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, the reason behind the entire war, but they keep drawing blanks. They come into contact with a wanted Iraqi General who may be connected to their so-far fruitless mission. Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon continue on the path they forged in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum with another epileptically edited action thriller about a lonely, idealistic hero who wants to uncover the truth. This time the central conspiracy is rooted firmly in reality, so much so that the plot revelations hardly come as a surprise this many years after the fact. Inspired by Rajiv Chandrasekaran's non-fiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

The Ghost Writer
2010
****
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, James Belushi, Eli Wallach, Jon Bernthal, David Rintoul, Robert Pugh

A gripping and enjoyable conspiracy thriller about a ghost writer who agrees to finish the memoirs of a controversial former British Prime Minister, who has just been indicted for war crimes. The writer's predecessor drowned mysteriously and he begins to suspect that it may not have been an accident. The story, which is adapted from Robert Harris' 2007 novel The Ghost, alludes to Tony Blair's term as PM and to Polanski's own long-running legal troubles. This old-fashioned no-frills thriller is sharply written and strongly acted, and it runs like a well-oiled machine.

From Paris with Love
2010
*
Director: Pierre Morel
Cast: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Kasia Smutniak, Richard Durden, Amber Rose Revah

The personal aide to the U.S. Ambassador in France runs occasional errands for the CIA. One day he gets to do some real spy work when he's asked to assist an eccentric field operative. This agent is a loose cannon who shoots his way through Paris. He kills roughly 30 Chinamen and a dozen Pakistanis, by which stage it's still unclear what the film is actually about. One moment the duo investigates a drug ring, the next they pursue a terrorist cell. Monotonous action scenes follow one another, but the story doesn't make any sense at any point on any level. Pierre Morel's previous film, Taken, which was also co-scripted by Luc Besson, set a new benchmark for racism, xenophobia and hand-to-hand killing in modern mainstream cinema. This time the body count is a notch higher, and once again any person not in possession of a U.S. passport is untrustworthy scum.

Four Lions
2010
***
Director: Chris Morris
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Kayvan Novak, Nigel Lindsay, Arsher Ali, Adeel Akhtar

Is there a subject matter which is too taboo to make fun of? Probably not. For example, Dr. Strangelove made us laugh at nuclear war, and Life Is Beautiful explored Holocaust with humour. Mere nine years after 9/11, Chris Morris uses islamic extremism as a source material for his black comedy. The story follows a group of young British muslim men who want to become suicide bombers. After a disastrous trip to an Al Qaida training camp in Pakistan, these four dimwits pursue their cause alone and attempt to agree on a target. When you deal with a topic like this, the balance between the funny and the tragic must be just right. For the most part, Morris gets it right, although his film loses much of its poignancy by portraying the terrorists as complete idiots. In the last fifteen minutes, however, I found my smiles and laughs getting increasingly laboured.

The Fighter
2010
***
Director: David O. Russell
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Jack McGee, Frank Renzulli, Erica McDermott, Sugar Ray Leonard

David O. Russell's real-life story about two working class brothers from Lowell, Massachusetts mixes sports movie clichés and kitchen sink realism into an entertaining whole. Micky is a promising welterweight boxer whose overbearing family seems to stand in the way of greatness. His older brother Dicky is a fighter turned crack addict who lives in his past glories. The boxing half of the story treads a very familiar path from a humiliating defeat to a glorious win. The family drama, on the other hand, is refreshingly gritty. The boys' obnoxious mother and sisters are presented with warts and all. Mark Wahlberg plays it down, but Christian Bale and Melissa Leo give Big performances, which predictably earned them both Academy Awards.

Fair Game
2010
**½
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, Noah Emmerich, Ty Burrell, Sam Shepard, Bruce McGill, Khaled El Nabawy

When diplomat Joseph C. Wilson reveals that the Bush administration manipulated his intelligence report to justify war in Iraq, the White House retaliates by exposing Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Doug Liman's fact-based story is based on the couple's respective books, Fair Game by Plame and The Politics of Truth by Wilson. The film provides an interesting historical document but, thanks to a muddled script, never becomes a particularly captivating drama. The first half makes a noble attempt to illustrate the human cost of war on the US military and the Iraqi civilian population. In the second half, it becomes a story of whether the marriage of the wronged couple can survive the media attention.

The Expendables
2010
**
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis

The Expendables are a group of battle-hardened mercenaries. Their latest mission is to assassinate the corrupt leader of an imaginary South American island Vilena, but things aren't quite as straightforward as that. This action movie is a throwback to the 1980s, when the good guys were good, the bad guys were bad, the men were manly, the women were helpless, the music was loud, and the explosions were big. The cast includes a number of stars from the yesteryears and the 60-something Sylvester Stallone gets to show off his action chops and impress a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. The film is dumb fun in the first half, but the last 30 minutes of overkill wore me down completely. Thanks to the choppy editing, it's difficult to tell who's who. Followed by three sequels.

Exit Through the Gift Shop
2010
****½
Director: Banksy
Cast:

Thierry Guetta, a Frenchman who lives in Los Angeles, doesn't go anywhere without a video camera. After filming his own life for years, he begins to document the lives of street artists and manages to capture all the big names in action, with the exception of one - Banksy. However, when he finally meets the elusive graffiti artist, the film turns on its head and becomes a story about Thierry, as he pursues his own (or mostly borrowed) artistic vision. Although nobody's credited in the titles, this is Banksy's directorial debut. The first half is a fascinating celebration of the wit, creativity and anarchy of street art, the second half a scathing commentary on commercialisation. Is it a documentary or an elaborate practical joke at our expense? Who cares when it's this funny and interesting.

Everything Must Go
2010
**½
Director: Dan Rush
Cast: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Michael Peña, Christopher Wallace, Glenn Howerton, Stephen Root, Laura Dern

Nick Halsey has a very bad day. After getting sacked, he discovers that his wife has thrown his stuff out and changed the locks in their house. Nick, a latent alcoholic, decides to stay on his front lawn until he can figure out what to do with his life. This likeable but rather modest comedy is based on Raymond Carver's short story Why Don't You Dance?. The premise is unusual, but everything that follows is rather predictable. An unnecessary twist regarding Nick's personal life towards the end threatens to derail the entire film. Will Ferrell gives a nicely subdued performance, although I am not quite convinced that he has the acting chops to carry off the more dramatic moments in the story.

Edge of Darkness
2010
***
Director: Martin Campbell
Cast: Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Bojana Novakovic, Jay O. Sanders, Shawn Roberts, Gbenga Akinnagbe

This is an adaptation of the excellent 1985 British miniseries, which was written by Troy Kennedy Martin. The action is transferred to Boston, where a detective's daughter is gunned down in front of his house. The immediate reaction is that the killer was after him, but it turns out that she was the target due to her work at the secretive Northmoor research facility. Martin Campbell, who also directed the original, struggles to squeeze a five hour serial into a two-hour movie. The original was as much a crime drama as it was a story about a father who tries to get to know his daughter posthumously. The film is a gripping but conventional conspiracy/revenge thriller with clearly identifiable villains. However, after Lethal Weapon, Mad Max and Braveheart, Mel Gibson of all people knows how to play a guy with nothing to lose who doesn't give a shit, and Campbell is one of the most reliable action directors in the business. Ray Winstone gets the best lines of dialogue, but his mysterious government consultant is a plot device rather than a meaningful and plausible character.

Easy A
2010
**½
Director: Will Gluck
Cast: Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Cam Gigandet, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Lisa Kudrow, Malcolm McDowell, Aly Michalka, Stanley Tucci, Dan Byrd

In a weak moment, Olive Penderghast pretends that she lost her virginity. Before long, every kid in her high school knows it. With her reputation compromised, she proceeds with her ill-fated plan to give the gossipers something to feast on. Will Gluck's teen comedy is not terribly funny but it is smarter than most films in this formula-bound genre. Bert V. Royal's script was inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and he makes clever references to 1980s comedies like Say Anything, Can't Buy Me Love and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Olive is a gutsy young woman, her love interest is bland and sweet, and her parents are understanding but annoyingly flippant. Everyone else in the story is a hysterical caricature of a human being. The tainted heroine's fight against hypocrisy seems pretty pointless without credible opposition. Emma Stone gives a likeably energetic leading performance, though.

Due Date
2010
**
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan, Juliette Lewis, Jamie Foxx, Matt Walsh, Rza, Danny McBride

Peter is a short-tempered architect who wants to get home in time to witness the birth of his first child. Ethan is a naive wannabe actor who is on his way to Hollywood. This odd couple end up on the no-fly list and are forced to drive together from Atlanta to Los Angeles. If the premise sounds awfully familiar, it's because John Hughes told more or less the same story in his classic Planes, Trains & Automobiles. The baby's due date takes the place of Thanksgiving, Robert Downey, Jr. takes the role of the thin uptight guy (I feel sorry for the baby) and Zach Galifianakis plays the likeable but destructive stocky guy. Todd Phillips' contribution to the formula is to upgrade the gross-out humour and general offensiveness to the 21st century level. The resulting comedy is lazy, predictable and contrived, but with a few enjoyable moments.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
2010
**½
Director: Troy Nixey
Cast: Bailee Madison, Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, Jack Thompson, Alan Dale, Julia Blake, Garry McDonald, Nicholas Bell, Trudy Hellier

8-year-old Sally moves into an old house, which her father and his young girlfriend are trying to restore and resell. She hears pleas of help from the basement and foolishly decides to unleash whatever is trapped down there. Comic book artist Toy Nixey's directorial debut is a remake of a 1973 TV movie. The original apparently made a big impact on Guillermo del Toro, who co-scripted this remake with Matthew Robbins. The setting bears resemblance to other works del Toro has directed (Pan's Labyrinth) or produced (The Orphanage). It is another story set in a spooky house, which mixes grim reality and fairytale elements. Like many ghost/horror stories before it, this one is gripping and enjoyably creepy until we see who called out for Sally. Then the film becomes increasingly silly and predictable. The visuals are impressive, though.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid
2010
***
Director: Thor Freudenthal
Cast: Zachary Gordon, Robert Capron, Devon Bostick, Chloë Grace Moritz, Karan Brar, Grayson Russell, Laine MacNeil, Rachael Harris, Steve Zahn

Greg Heffley, a scrawny 11-year-old boy, is determined to become one of the more popular kids in middle school, but his first year turns out to be a painful series of abject failures. This comedy is based on Jeff Kinney's popular children's books. The characters (or caricatures, rather) are drawn with extremely broad strokes, but they are funny and well-played by the young cast. The plot is quite episodic, but there is a steady 90-minute flow of good gags. Followed by Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules.

Devil
2010
**½
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Cast: Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Geoffrey Arend, Bojana Novakovic, Jenny O'Hara, Bokeem Woodbine, Jacob Vargas

Three men and two women are trapped inside a broken lift, and one of them appears to be the devil incarnate. As the trapped sinners drop dead one by one, the survivors and the detectives at the scene struggle to understand what they are witnessing. Producer M. Night Shyamalan planned this as the first part of The Night Chronicles trilogy. He also concocted the story, which has his fingerprint all over it. This is a short, neat and modestly entertaining horror movie which, as usual, is sure not to leave any loose ends. While the religious ingredients add a nice twist to an Agatha Christiesque murder mystery, the omnipotent devil pretty much removes the element of surprise from the proceedings.

Despicable Me
2010
***½
Director: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Cast: Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Miranda Cosgrove, Russell Brand, Kristen Wiig, Will Arnett, Danny McBride, Jemaine Clement, Jack McBrayer, Julie Andrews

Not to be upstaged, super-villain Felonious Gru ups his ante and plots to steal the moon from the sky with the help of a shrink ray. If only his new nemesis Vector and three adorable orphan girls were not standing in the way of his diabolical plan. This lightly plotted but enjoyably funny animation has a deliciously nasty protagonist, but the cute kids inevitably melt his heart. As a consequence, the film loses some of its subversiveness, but the development helps to establish an emotional connection to the characters. Minions, Gru's yellow henchmen, are hilarious. Followed by two sequels, Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3, and two prequels, Minions and Minions: The Rise of Gru.

Death at a Funeral
2010
†
Director: Neil LaBute
Cast: Loretta Devine, Peter Dinklage, Danny Glover, Regina Hall, Martin Lawrence, James Marsden, Tracy Morgan, Chris Rock, Zoë Saldaña, Columbus Short, Luke Wilson, Keith David, Ron Glass, Kevin Hart

An African-American family in Los Angeles gathers for the patriarch's funeral. However, the arrival of an uninvited guest and the unexpected effects of a hallucinogenic drug turn this respectful event into a chaotic madhouse. This scenario is ripe for some hilarious moments, but Neil LaBute's remake of a 2007 British original is one of the worst comedies I have ever seen. Everyone in the cast (which looks mouthwatering on paper) has switched to hammy comedy acting, with embarrassing results. While they all think they're performing in a clever and joyous farce, I am watching a painfully unfunny and mindnumbingly boring travesty. I adapted the rating to the film's funeral-themed title.

Date Night
2010
*½
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Taraji P. Henson, Jimmi Simpson, Common, Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Ray Liotta, William Fichtner, Kristen Wiig, Mark Ruffalo

Phil and Claire are a suburban couple with two small children, whose marriage is stuck in a rut. They go out for a romantic evening in Manhattan but, due to mistaken identity, it turns into an all-night adventure. The premise is promising (even if it's only a variation on the 1980s yuppie comedies such as After Hours), but it doesn't take long to realise that this film is going to be stupid and mindnumbingly formulaic. It is pitched as a comedy, which means that when Phil and Claire duck bullets in slapstick fashion, there is never any sense of danger. However, it doesn't make me laugh either. When they recruit the help of a shirtless super-spy, the story cuts all ties with reality. Steve Carell and Tina Fey have both had great success on television with The Office and 30 Rock, respectively, but their limitations as big screen actors are apparent. Although Fey is good at spewing pithy oneliners, she looks uncomfortable with actual acting. Thankfully there's an impressive number of amusing cameo appearances.

Copie conforme (Certified Copy)
2010
**½
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Cast: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, Jean-Claude Carrière, Agathe Natanson, Gianna Giachetti, Adrian Moore, Angelo Barbagallo

While promoting his new book Certified Copy, in which he argues that there is a fine line between a copy and the original, a British writer goes on a drive around the Tuscany region with a female antiques dealer. As the afternoon progresses, a sober conversation between two strangers begins to take an unexpectedly intimate tone. Abbas Kiarostami explores the central theme, copy vs. original, through the characters, their professional and personal lives, and the dialogue between the two. His drama looks really interesting and ambiguous, but mostly on paper. The opening minutes are some of the dullest in modern cinema. The film does recover from this early stupor, but it never becomes terribly captivating. The conversation stays mostly on abstract level, and Kiarostami is more interested in his grand scheme than the people within it.

The Company Men
2010
***
Director: John Wells
Cast: Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Chris Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Rosemarie DeWitt, Maria Bello, LeShay Tomlinson, Craig T. Nelson, Eamonn Walker

When the GTX corporation begins to downsize, three men are forced to reassess their lives. Bobby is a young sales manager who refuses to swallow his pride, Phil is a weathered veteran who feels powerless, and Gene is the number two who cannot recognize the company he helped to co-found. TV veteran John Wells' directorial debut is a well-acted and slow-paced drama which offers a topical look at modern day capitalism where the share price valuation drives all business decisions. This smart and believable film acknowledges, through Gene's words, that times have changed; paper pushing has replaced old-fashioned manufacturing. However, this is completely at odds with the story's cautiously optimistic ending.

Centurion
2010
**
Director: Neil Marshall
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko, Liam Cunnigham, David Morrissey, Jj Feild, Ulrich Thomsen

In 117 A.D., the Romans attempt to invade Scotland but face strong resistance from the Picts. When the Ninth Legion is ambushed and destroyed, a Roman centurion Quintus Dias and the remaining half a dozen soldiers attempt to flee to safety. As expected, Neil Marshall, best known for gritty no-nonsense horror movies like Dog Soldiers, doesn't give us a grand historical epic but a nuts and bolts 80-minute chase scene. This narrow approach becomes monotonous pretty quickly, especially when Marshall cranks up the gore to 11. If there's blood to be spilled or heads to be chopped, he is sure to show it all in full detail.

Catfish
2010
***½
Director: Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost
Cast:

A photographer in New York makes an online fan out of an 8-year-old Abby. Pretty soon he is Facebook friends with the entire family (who all seem to be incredibly talented artists) and begins to online date the girl's stepsister. However, he begins to grow suspicious and decides to go and meet the family in person. This documentary has been called fake, but is it all made-up, and does it matter if it is? The protagonist (and the directors) are certainly conveniently gullible and there are parts to the story that are hard to swallow, but this is still an interesting, enlightening and ultimately moving film about the lures and pitfalls of social networking. Followed by a reality TV show.

Buried
2010
***½
Director: Rodrigo Cortés
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, José Luis García Pérez, Robert Paterson, Stephen Tobolowsky, Samantha Mathis, Ivana Miño, Warner Loughlin, Donna Mitchell, Erik Palladino

Paul Conroy, an American civilian contractor, wakes up buried in a box somewhere in Iraq with a Zippo and a mobile phone left behind by the captors. This thriller never leaves its confined setting, yet it somehow manages to hold you in its claustrophobic grip for 90 minutes. The story is never dull, but it does stretch credibility to provide some occasional cheap thrills. Ryan Reynolds is alone on screen and his excellent performance carries the film.

The Book of Eli
2010
***
Director: The Hughes brothers
Cast: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, Jennifer Beals, Michael Gambon, Frances de la Tour

Following a nuclear holocaust, an enigmatic wanderer named Eli guards the last remaining copy of a mysterious book he plans to bring to the west coast. In the middle of nowhere, he runs into Carnegie, a self-appointed leader of the run-down town, who believes this book could give him power over the people. The fifth film by the Hughes brothers is a post-apocalyptic Western, a harrowing survival drama, a moving morality tale, a dodgy Christian parable, and a kick-ass action film. It's one strange concoction of ideas, at once harrowingly realistic, laughably implausible, thought-provoking and empty-headed, but consistently entertaining. The visual look is initially striking, but the fifty shades of grey numbed my senses after a while.

Blue Valentine
2010
****½
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Mike Vogel, Faith Wladyka, John Doman, Marshall Johnson, Ben Shenkman, Jessica Barth, Bill Smitrovich

Cindy and Drew are a married couple with a 4-year-old daughter. She is a nurse and he is a semi-alcoholic layabout. This hard-hitting drama cuts between the blissful beginning and the bitter end of their relationship. Like the reverse narrative in 5x2, the structure allows the audience to try and spot where it all went wrong. Derek Cianfrance doesn't provide fancy visual fireworks; his film is an intimate and poignant character piece built around two extremely talented young actors. The performances by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are warm but intense, and very naturalistic. Music by Grizzly Bear.

Black Swan
2010
*****
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Benjamin Millepied

Nina is a young ballerina who clinches the starring role in the New York Ballet's production of Swan Lake. She has the technical ability to play the White Swan but does she have the passion and the intensity for the Black Swan? This bombastic and visceral melodrama grabbed me from the very first dream scene and left me devastated at the end. As Nina gains professional confidence, her personality starts to crack; there's barely a scene in the film without a mirror or other reflective surface to indicate this. Her mental breakdown, as visualised by Aronofsky, is scary and deeply unsettling. The Oscar-winning Natalie Portman is remarkable as the fragile and sexually naive Nina, but there are also some memorable supporting performances: Mila Kunis as the laid-back alternate who may be after her role, Barbara Hershey as the over-protective mother, and Winona Ryder as the bitter, retiring dancer.

Biutiful
2010
***½
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Cast: Javier Bardem, Maricel Álvarez, Hanaa Bouchaib, Guillermo Estrella, Diaryatou Daff, Cheng Tai Shen, Nasser Saleh

Uxbal is a Barcelona street hustler who scrapes a living by arranging work for illegal immigrants. He tries to provide for his two children, whose mother is a bipolar alcoholic, and digest the news that he will die of cancer. Alejandro González Iñárritu's partnership with writer Guillermo Arriaga broke up after their trilogy (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel), but he hasn't lightened up one bit. This is another hard-hitting drama about a man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. The film is very long and heavy (Uxbal's ability to communicate with the dead is one subplot I could have lived without), but Iñárritu certainly knows how to use his cinematic tool box. He tells this tragic story with great bravado, and draws a wonderful performance from Javier Bardem in the process.

Beginners
2010
***
Director: Mike Mills
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent, Goran Višnjić, Kai Lennox, Mary Page Keller, China Shavers, Reynaldo Pacheco, Jennifer Hasty

While Oliver attempts to overcome grief and embark on a new relationship, he looks back at his father's final years after he came out as gay at the age of 75. Mike Mills' autobiographical drama comedy is likeable and well-acted but too quaint and quirky to fully embrace. Whether it's Oliver and Anna's meet cute at a party, his illustrations about the history of sadness, or the dog whose thoughts are subtitled, I was never able to forget that I was watching a film. Christopher Plummer, who plays the late father, won an Academy Award for his warm and subtle performance.

Barney's Version
2010
***½
Director: Richard J. Lewis
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver, Rachelle Lefevre, Scott Speedman, Dustin Hoffman, Bruce Greenwood, Anna Hopkins, Mark Addy

Just when his memory is starting to go, Barney Panofsky, a Canadian TV producer, reminisces about his three marriages and his best friend's mysterious disappearance years ago. Richard J. Lewis' adaptation of Mordecai Richler's final novel is a wonderful example of old-fashioned storytelling. This is a long and sprawling drama, but Barney's life and love story swept me along. The film left me with some unanswered questions, though. Firstly, why are all these beautiful women attracted to this selfish and modest-looking man? Secondly, why should I care about him? And lastly, is there a point to all of this? in any case, Paul Giamatti gives another excellent performance in the title role.

Armadillo
2010
***
Director: Janus Metz
Cast:

A visually striking documentary about a group of Danish soldiers who go on a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. The men patrol the area near the Armadillo military base, where they have occasional clashes with the Taliban fighters. The camera is in the thick of things, which gives the battle scenes a heightened sense of authenticity. All in all, however, the film doesn't tell us anything we haven't seen in other fictional or nonfictional war stories. The men are bored (Jarhead) and they yearn for action (The Hurt Locker), but the reality of war eventually hits home when their comrades get killed or injured (all war films).

Another Year
2010
****
Director: Mike Leigh
Cast: Lesley Manville, Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Peter Wight, Oliver Maltman, David Bradley, Karina Fernandez, Martin Savage

Tom and Gerri are a happy middle aged couple. They like their jobs, they love to tend their allotment and, most importantly, they enjoy each other's company after 30 years of marriage. Their friends and family, however, are less fortunate. In particular Mary, a lonely, semi-alcoholic daydreamer who likes to come over and pour her heart out. She's a self-centered and obnoxious but ultimately pitiable figure, brilliantly portrayed by Lesley Manville. Mike Leigh's film takes place over the course of one year and the story is split into four seasons. This is another patiently constructed and beautifully acted grown-up drama. The events seem unremarkable, but it's amazing how fully fleshed out and alive these characters are by the end of the two hours. The final shot of Mary is heartbreaking.

Animal Kingdom
2010
***
Director: David Michôd
Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford, Jacki Weaver, Sullivan Stapleton, James Frecheville

After his mother ODs, 17-year-old J moves in with his grandmother and uncles, who live off crime. J's newfound loyalty is immediately put to the test when a Melbourne detective tries to turn him against his family. David Michôd's debut feature is a slow-paced and quietly powerful crime drama. The uncles are known bank robbers but now mostly play cat and mouse with the local police, who are as ruthless as they are. The inevitable bursts of violence are sporadic and very quick. The problem with Michôd's stylish film is that J is one of the most uninteresting protagonists I can remember, and it's nigh on impossible to feel empathy towards him. How this impassive and monosyllabic teenager ever got himself a girlfriend is the most implausible part of the plot. The story was inspired by the real-life Pettingill family.

The American
2010
**
Director: Anton Corbijn
Cast: George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli, Irina Björklund, Johan Leysen

Anton Corbijn's follow-up to Control is a visually stylish but lifeless Euro-thriller which bears a strong Western influence. George Clooney plays an American hitman/gunsmith who flees for his life to a remote Italian village. There he agrees to build one more rifle, but can he still trust someone? The uneventful story, which was adapted from Martin Booth's 1990 novel A Very Private Gentleman, drudges along at snail pace to its predictably flat conclusion. However, the main problem is the stony-faced and monosyllabic hero who never gives me any reason to care about his existential crisis.

Alice in Wonderland
2010
**
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonhan Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall

This dark fantasy is loosely based on Lewis Carroll's novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and it tells an anachronistically feminist story of a 19-year-old Alice who returns to Wonderland (here Underland) to become an independent woman. It's unmistakably a Tim Burton film: Johnny Depp plays a wacky but tragic freak, it's scored by Danny Elfman, it's rich in visual details and the script is a muddled mess. Burton manages to cram most of Carroll's imaginative creatures into Alice's episodic journey, but he has no time to develop them into proper characters who serve a purpose in the story. This film is all about design, and it's almost entirely created in post-production. The fantasy world is admittedly vibrant and inventive, but so unreal that you never feel like anything's at stake. Apart from Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, the human performances are nothing to write home about.

127 Hours
2010
***½
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Clémence Poésy, Lizzy Caplan, Kate Burton, Treat Williams

The harrowing true story of Aron Ralston who went canyoneering in the Blue John Canyon in 2003, fell down a crevasse and got his right arm trapped between a boulder and the canyon wall. This intimate human drama is built around James Franco's strong performance, which brilliantly conveys the humbling of a cocky daredevil. Luckily Ralston doesn't lose his courage during his five-day ordeal. This is a static story but Danny Boyle fills the screen with his trademark flashy visuals, either to echo the hero's deteriorating mental state or simply to take us away from the confined setting. His film doesn't shy away from the harrowing details either. Based on Ralston's book Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Zombieland
2009
**½
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Amber Heard, Bill Murray

A young man on the way to Columbus, Ohio has survived the zombie apocalypse by following a strict set of rules. Things get more complicated when he is joined by three other survivors, a middle-aged man and two young sisters. Any zombie comedy has a massive hurdle to overcome, namely Shaun of the Dead, which is just about perfect in every way. Ruben Fleischer's directorial debut, which was scripted by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, is delightfully short but forgettable. It offers a slight twist on the old formula, but it features uninteresting characters, and not once did I feel like they were in actual danger. Followed by a 2019 sequel Zombieland: Double Tap.

Year One
2009
**
Director: Harold Ramis
Cast: Jack Black, Michael Cera, Olivia Wilde, Juno Temple, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, David Cross, Oliver Platt, Vinnie Jones

A dumb but sweet prehistoric spoof about an inept hunter who is exiled from his tribe for eating a forbidden fruit. A shy gatherer joins him on an epic journey through the early days of humanity. They meet Adam, Cain, Abel, Abraham and Isaac on their way to the showdown in the city of Sodom. The premise sounds fresh but this is ultimately a very formulaic story of a pair of losers who have a chance to prove everyone wrong and become heroes. The good-natured characterisation helps, but, apart from the occasional funny line or inspired anachronism, this is a rather tiresome comedy.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
2009
**½
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, Ryan Reynolds, Will.i.am, Lynn Collins, Kevin Durant, Taylor Kitsch, Daniel Henney

Three movies into the X-Men franchise, I don't really need an origin story for Wolverine, but here we are. It all starts in 1845, when James "Logan" Howlett discovers his mutant powers. Some 130 years and four major wars later, Logan and his blood-hungry half-brother Victor Creed (Sabretooth) join Major Stryker's Team X. Logan eventually leaves the team, but a few years later the past comes back to haunt him. X-Men 2 hinted at it, but now we see how the adamantium was actually fused into the hero's bones. However, this one scene does not justify a poorly scripted and frankly unnecessary movie. The silly action scenes mostly follow the same formula: Wolverine and mutant #2 face each other, they scream, they run towards one another, they fight, and then walk away unscathed. The hero returns in The Wolverine (2013).

White Material
2009
**
Director: Claire Denis
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Lambert, Isaach De Bankolé, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Adèle Ado, Michel Subor, William Nadylam, David Gozlan

Maria Vial is a white French woman whose family grows coffee somewhere in Africa. As the country in question becomes embroiled in civil war, the stubborn Marie refuses to believe that the unrest could reach the plantation. Claire Denis' tells this fairly simple story in a non-linear structure. Her aim is to arouse intrigue, but she only succeeds in creating confusion. She provides no background information on the setting, and the narrative trickery also alienates me from the characters. The film never allows me to get to know them, understand them or sympathise with them. Although Isabel Huppert gives a very strong performance in the lead, Marie is an infuriatingly naive protagonist. She knowingly harbours the rebel leader and goes about her daily business as if nothing is happening. When the inevitable tragedy strikes, I was unmoved and frustrated.

Where the Wild Things Are
2009
**½
Director: Spike Jonze
Cast: Max Records, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Forest Whitaker, Catherine Keener, Mark Ruffalo

Max is a lonely 8-year-old boy whose life with his single mother and his big sister is full of strife. One day he runs away from home and ends up in a faraway land, where he meets another dysfunctional family, a group of wild things. Spike Jonze's extremely thinly plotted film is expanded or, should I say, stretched from Maurice Sendak's short children's picture book. The visual look is wonderful, but the slow pacing and the suicidally depressed furry creatures offer very little fun or wonderment, even if the message - life in any family is a daily battle with challenges and compromises - is a worthy one.

When You're Strange
2009
***
Director: Tom DiCillo
Cast:

The story of The Doors. Or, as usual, mostly the story of its iconic lead singer / poet Jim Morrison, who died at the age of 27. This L.A. band was formed in 1965, and they released six studio albums between 1967 and 1971. Morrison's substance abuse is well-known, and this documentary provides an entertaining if very familiar look into his troubled soul. Tom DiCillo's attempt to place the band's short career in its historical context, the rise and fall of the counter culture, seems a bit forced, though. DiCillo uses some fascinating archive footage of the band and previously unseen clips from Morrison's film HWY: An American Pastoral. Oliver Stone controversially dramatised the same story in his 1991 film.

Whatever Works
2009
**
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Henry Cavill, Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley, Jr., Michael McKean, Conleth Hill, Olek Krupa

Boris Yelnikoff is a retired academic genius who fails to see anything good about the world and the people around him (he has a limp from a failed suicide attempt to prove it). His resolve is put to a test by Melodie, a young, attractive and ignorant woman who escaped the Bible Belt to come to New York City. Woody Allen wrote this disposable comedy back in the 1970s, and it feels like I've seen this several times in the intervening years. To be fair, the first half is quite sweet and funny, but when Melodie's parents show up, the whole thing becomes extremely tedious. Christian fundamentalists are a rare sight in a Woody Allen film, but he only allows them a scene or two until they become the same cultured liberals like all his other characters. Ultimately, none of the people in this story resemble real-life human beings. Larry David plays Boris with the same grating style he made his own on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and he gets all the best lines. There is an incredible number of oneliners, but weeding through the mass to find the gems is an enhausting task.


Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon)
2009
*****
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Christian Friedel, Burghart Klaussner, Ulrich Tukur, Rainer Bock, Leonie Benesch

At the brink of World War One, the idyllic village of Eichwald in Northern Germany is stirred by a series of sinister acts of violence. Are the children, who grow up to be the generation of Nazis, acting out against their repressive parents? Are the workers rebelling against the class system? Are these malicious acts cunningly planned or the work of a sick mind? Haneke's tense, intricate and hypnotic mystery stays with you for days, not least because of all the unanswered questions. The film is stunningly shot in black and white by Christian Berger, and strongly acted by adults and children alike.

Watchmen
2009
*½
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Malin Åkerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson

In the alternate 1985, Nixon starts his third term as President while the world is on the brink of nuclear war. Superheroes have been outlawed, but now someone has murdered one of the original Watchmen. This adaptation looks as though it left nothing out of the much revered comic book by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Zach Snyder has created a 160-minute jumble of ideas in which nauseating violence, unintentional humour and complete bafflement alternate with one another. And what is the relevance of the whole story in 2009 anyway? Extra half a star for the title sequence.

Up in the Air
2009
****
Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman, Amy Morton, Melanie Lynskey, Danny R. McBride, J. K. Simmons

An enjoyable romantic comedy drama about Ryan Bingham, a transition consultant who zooms across the country to tell people that they no longer have a job. He loves the travelling and enjoys being free of any baggage, be it a wife, child or home. Now his job is in danger of becoming obsolete, and he's falling in love. Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner adapted Walter Kirn's novel. The story takes us on a fairly familiar journey (the selfish protagonist and the cynical corporate satire both soften up during the course of the film), but it ends up in an unexpected place.

Up
2009
****
Director: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
Cast: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson, Delroy Lindo

A weird and wonderful Pixar animation about an elderly widower who attaches balloons to his house and flies to South America, with a young stowaway. As the action builds up, the film occasionally forgets that the main character is supposed to be an old man. In any case, it offers a perfect mix of deeply moving drama and terrifically odd comedy.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon
2009
**
Director: Chris Weitz
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen

In the second part of the Twilight series, Bella's love life becomes increasingly complicated. Edward, the vampire boyfriend, dumps her to keep her safe. In his absence, she finds comfort in her old friend Jacob, but damn it if he doesn't turn out to be a werewolf. This incredibly tedious film has no plot. It offers more than two hours of moping, longing, glancing, sulking, hand-holding and brooding in order to set up the love triangle for Eclipse. We're presumably expected to root for Bella and Edward on the basis of the first film, because now they barely share a scene. The visuals, apart from the poor werewolf CGI, are impressive.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2009
†
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Ramon Rodriguez, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, Isabel Lucas

Two years after the original, the Autobots work alongside the U.S. military. The Decepticons, on the other hand, attempt to regroup and unearth the Matrix of Leadership in order to activate the Sun Harvester, which they hope will destroy the world. The plot, or whatever you want to call it, is ridiculously complicated, especially when it's all just padding. This franchise is about gigantic robots who bash each other to bits and about humans who try to steer clear of the destruction. Michael Bay, who ended Transformers in an unintelligible action spectacle, gives us 2½ hours of the same. The Autobots appear to have a better coat of paint, otherwise I am not able to tell or care who is hitting who. This deeply offensive and mind-numbingly boring film takes its worldview from first person shooters and its view on women from porn movies. Followed by Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

The Time Traveler's Wife
2009
**½
Director: Robert Schwentke
Cast: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston, Jane McLean, Stephen Tobolowsky, Arliss Howard, Brooklynn Proulx, Hailey McCann, Tatum McCann

Henry suffers from Chrono-Displacement disorder, which causes him to time-travel spontaneously and uncontrollably. Claire, the love of his life, has known him since she was six, but only meets the real time Henry when she's 20. Will these two lovers be forever out of sync? Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 bestseller offered an exhilarating mix of romance and science fiction. This handsome looking adaptation tells the same story, but it cannot match the novel's endless inventiveness or its emotional impact. The film rushes through the main beats of the book, but it's not able to convey the passage of time. The script was co-written by the death-obsessed Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost and Jacob's Ladder), who spends too much time preparing us for the impending tragedy and not enough time making us care about the unfolding events. What's left is a gimmicky and uninvolving romance in the vein of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Terminator Salvation
2009
**½
Director: McG
Cast: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood, Bryce Dallas Howard, Common, Jadagrace Berry, Michael Ironside, Helena Bonham Carter

The fourth part in the series is set in 2018, when the war between the machines and humanity is at full swing. John Connor, who leads the troops on the battlefield, attempts to save the young man who is to travel back in time and father him (in the original Terminator). At the same time, the resistance fighters encounter a mysterious man who doesn't know who or what he is himself. This is another totally unnecessary sequel, which goes through the same motions and ends up in square one. As an action film, however, it's more exciting and inventive than Rise of the Machines.

Taking Woodstock
2009
***
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Demetri Martin, Imelda Staunton, Henry Goodman, Liev Schreiber, Jonathan Groff, Eugene Levy, Emile Hirsch, Paul Dano

Elliot, an aspiring artist, is stuck helping his Jewish parents run their shabby motel in Bethel, New York. In the summer of 1969 he decides to boost the business by offering his permit for a music festival to the organisers of Woodstock, and the rest is history. This nostalgic comedy tells an enjoyable but rather trivial story of his self-discovery, which happens to coincide with the biggest event of his generation. Sadly Elliot is a rather dull character, and once peace and love sweep over the region, we get all of the hippie clichés but none of the music played at the festival. Based on the actual events and adapted from the book Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert and a Life by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte.

The Taking of Pelham 123
2009
**½
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Denzel Washington, John Travolta, James Gandolfini, Victor Gojcaj, John Turturro, Luis Guzman, Ramón Rodríguéz, Robert vataj, Michael Rispoli

When a group of hijackers hold a subway train to a \$10M ransom, a demoted train dispatcher finds himself in a psychological sparring match with the gang's ruthless leader. The cat and mouse game between the two begins as an enjoyable verbal duel, but the wimpy civil servant must inevitably become a man of action. In 1974, Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three turned John Godey's novel into a subtle thriller. Tony Scott has never been subtle, so his version is a typically hyperkinetic action blockbuster. The story is set in New York City that still nurses the wounds of 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis. Brian Helgeland's script hints at these recent traumas, but mostly opts to deliver a dumb and formulaic thrill ride (with a terribly flat ending). Denzel Washington's understated hero and John Travolta's monotonously manic villain represent two very different schools of acting.

State of Play
2009
***
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman, Michael Berresse, Robin Wright Penn, Jeff Daniels

Two men are shot in a back alley, and the next morning a woman falls under a Metro train. A weathered journalist for the fictional Washington Globe puts two and two together and links the deaths to a private defense contractor who is under investigation by the Congress. Like Woodward and Bernstein in All the President's Men, he and his colleagues know they're onto a big story, even if this one is not based on fact. This political thriller is suspenseful and entertaining, but the conclusion of the elaborate conspiracy is very predictable, not to mention anticlimactic. The cast is impressive, although Crowe and Affleck are hardly believable as college buddies. Based on a British miniseries written by Paul Abbott.

Star Trek
2009
****½
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Eric Bana, Leonard Nimoy, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, Chris Hemsworth

This reboot of the Star Trek franchise goes back in time before the original TV series started. While a Romulan ship reappears 20 years after killing Kirk's father, Spock and Captain Kirk join Starfleet and gradually become friends. J.J. Abrams could teach George Lucas a thing or two about making a proper science fiction adventure. Just because the story is complicated and heavy on special effects, you can still have well drawn characters, relaxed performances, and lively dialogue, all wrapped in a rip-roaring two-hour package. Followed by Star Trek Into Darkness.

Splice
2009
*½
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Cast: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac, Brandon McGibbon, Simona Maicanescu, Abigail Chu

Clive and Elsa, genetic engineers and lovers, are on the verge of scientific breakthrough. They decide to go a step further and secretly splice human and animal DNA to create an intelligent but volatile female hybrid named Dren. When emotions come into play, the couple are no longer sure whether they should act like scientists or like parents. This chilly Canadian drama nods at classics like Frankenstein and The Fly. It has a smart premise which deals with a topically controversial subject matter, and the script spices things up with unresolved childhood traumas and odd sexual tension. Vincenzo Natali ignores all this potential and makes an utterly dumb, dull and formulaic monster movie, which is creepy in all the wrong ways. He abandons all credibility in the final twenty minutes to set up a sequel, which thankfully didn't happen.

Soul Kitchen
2009
**½
Director: Fatih Akin
Cast: Adam Bousdoukos, Birol Ünel, Moritz Bleibtreu, Anna Bederke, Pheline Roggan, Dorka Gryllus, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Lucas Gregorowicz

After two weighty and brilliant culture clash dramas (Head-On and The Edge of Heaven), Fatih Akin takes a break with a light comedy, although his characters are once again ethnically diverse. Zinos, a German-Greek with a bad back, runs a shabby fast food joint in Hamburg, but what he really wants is to reunite with his girlfriend in China. The escape looks possible when the new eccentric head chef turns his fortunes around, but his own shiftless brother is an accident waiting to happen. The story is not terribly original, but it charmed me with its low-key comedy and enjoyable characters. Then two thirds into the film, everything falls apart in ten cringeworthy minutes. There's a sequence of unfunny farcical events, which made me lose all my sympathy towards the protagonist.

Solitary Man
2009
****
Director: Brian Koppelman, David Levien
Cast: Michael Douglas, Jenna Fischer, Jesse Eisenberg, Mary-Louise Parker, Imogen Poots, Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, Richard Schiff

A lovely low-key comedy about a 65-year-old former car dealer who lives like every day could be his last. The self-destructive behaviour has ruined a successful business and alienated his family, and now he hits the bottom. The film is short and sharp, and it's filled with wonderfully dry humour. Michael Douglas is terrific as the charming and quick-witted but self-absorbed protagonist.

A Single Man
2009
***½
Director: Tom Ford
Cast: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult, Matthew Goode, Jon Kortajarena, Paulette Lamori, Ryan Simpkins, Ginnifer Goodwin, Teddy Sears

Colin Firth gives a subtle, mesmerising performance as a gay English college professor who is heartbroken and suicidal over the death of his lover. His only friend, played by Julianne Moore, is a self-deluding alcoholic. Fashion designer Tom Ford's directorial debut is very stylised, but the film's beautiful visuals do tie in with its protagonist, whose impeccable exterior hides a broken man. The ending feels like a lazy punch line, although it makes poetic sense and provides nice symmetry to the whole story. Adapted from Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel.

Sherlock Holmes
2009
**
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Mark Strong, Rachel McAdams, Kelly Reilly, Eddie Marsan, Hans Matheson, James Fox

Arthur Conan Doyle's highly perceptive detective gets a 21st century reboot as an action hero. The Sherlock Holmes here is incredibly smug and a little bit insane, and not only can he outwit the villains, he can also kick their ass. Just when his partnership with Dr. Watson is about to come to an end, their old nemesis Lord Blackwood comes back from the dead. Guy Ritchie has the stage set for an entertaining romp with a fresh twist, but he delivers a conventional and instantly forgettable modern day blockbuster. The duo bicker their way through the set pieces, but their dialogue has no bite, and the convoluted central mystery is solved only in Holmes' head and then explained to the audience. The film uses CGI to great effect (the grimy 19th century London), and not-so-great effect (explosions which don't cause any bodily harm). Downey cannot nail the accent, which makes his machine gun mumbling barely intelligible. Followed by Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in 2011.


A Serious Man
2009
**½
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff

It's the late 1960s in the Midwest, where Larry Gopnik, an amiable science teacher, finds himself in an existential crisis when his marriage, career, and finances are suddenly in disarray. This is a deeply personal and very Jewish comedy, or, knowing the Coen brothers, a vacuous injoke so meticulously staged, beautifully shot, and strongly acted that everyone's fooled. In any case, it fails to impress as entertainment or as an intellectual exercise. "Life sucks, then you die", that's as deep as the brothers go.

Rööperi (Hellsinki)
2009
***
Director: Aleksi Mäkelä
Cast: Samuli Edelmann, Peter Franzén, Pihla Viitala, Kari Hietalahti, Juha Veijonen, Jasper Pääkkönen, Kristo Salminen, Pekka Valkeejärvi

Punavuori (aka Rööperi) used to be a shady area of Helsinki, which was rife with bootlegging and prostitution. This Finnish gangster drama takes real-life people from a book of interviews by Harri Nykänen and Tom Sjöberg and weaves a fictionalised story of the rise and fall of three career criminals from 1966 to 1979. Tomppa is a pragmatic businessman who struggles to go legitimate, Kari is a simpleton who cannot take care of himself, and Krisu lives from hand to mouth, which becomes his downfall when he succumbs to drugs. The characters are not terribly original but they are carefully developed and wonderfully played by Edelmann, Hietalahti and Franzén, respectively. The film is at its best in the first hour, when the boys climb up in the underworld, but the narrative begins to lose its rhythm when they go their separate ways. And the story goes on too long.

The Road
2009
****
Director: John Hillcoat
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker, Michael K. Williams, Garret Dillahunt

An unspecified cataclysmic event has killed all flora and fauna on Earth and turned some of the remaining survivors into cannibal savages. In this barren landscape, a father and son make their way towards illusive hope and try to hold onto their last ounce of humanity. This adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel is one of the grimmest and most chilling dystopias portrayed on screen. The story is extremely bleak, but the outcome is thought-provoking rather than depressing. Hillcoat has visualized the film to perfection with minimal use of computer effects. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee gives excellent performances.

Race to Witch Mountain
2009
**½
Director: Andy Fickman
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Carla Gugino, Ciarán Hinds, Alexander Ludwig, Tom Everett Scott, Chris Marquette, Garry Marshall, Cheech Marin

Jack Bruno, a Las Vegas cab driver with a criminal past, picks up two teenagers. He is initially unaware that the two are actually aliens from another planet and the sinister people after them are government agents. This family movie offers instantly forgettable entertainment. The story is silly and the special effects are not always that special. The script is based on Alexander H. Key's 1968 novel Escape to Witch Mountain , which Disney has filmed twice before.

Public Enemies
2009
**
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Stephen Lang, Stephen Graham, David Wenham, Giovanni Ribisi, Branka Katic

Michael Mann's dry gangster drama is based on Bryan Burrough's book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34. The film is set during the Great Depression and the Prohibition, not that you'll see any evidence of either one, and it tells the real-life story of two men: John Dillinger, the famed bank robber who became somewhat of a celebrity in the 1930s, and Melvin Purvis, the FBI chief who was out to catch him. Johnny Depp is known for his quirky characters, but his Dillinger is neither a charming rogue nor a scary sociopath. He's a bland thug with a big head, and his romance with Billie Frechette never catches fire. Bale's G-man, on the other hand, has two different expressions on his face: ruthless determination and disgust at his coworkers' incompetence. Sadly these two faces are difficult to tell apart. There are several extended shootouts, but they are very ordinary compared to the ones Mann staged in Heat.

Un prophète (A Prophet)
2009
****
Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif, Reda Kateb, HichemYacoubi, Jean-Philippe Ricci, Gilles Cohen, Antoine Basler, Leïla Bekhti, Pierre Leccia

Like The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Jacques Audiard's follow-up is a story about a troubled young man caught in the middle. Malik is a 19-year-old Algerian French man who starts his six-year sentence for attacking a police officer. The new, insecure, and illiterate inmate immediately catches the eye of César, whose Corsican gang runs the prison. César promises to take Malik under his wing if he kills a Muslim snitch. Malik is caught between his adopted Corsican family and his Muslim brothers, but he slowly grows in confidence, or is he just looking out for himself? This sounds like a rather ordinary prison film, but Audiard uses the clichéd set-up to tell gripping crime and coming-of-age stories, to depict the perplexities of a multicultural society and to condemn the correctional system which builds criminals. It's a long drama but the character arcs are well developed and wonderfully played (Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup in particular).

Postia pappi Jaakobille (Letters to Father Jacob)
2009
***
Director: Klaus Härö
Cast: Heikki Nousiainen, Kaarina Hazard, Jukka Keinonen, Esko Roine

A short, minimalist story about a pardoned female convict who acts as a personal assistant to a blind pastor, and reads letters to the old man. A slow-burning drama about two very different individuals. Fine performances from the two leads.

Post Grad
2009
*½
Director: Vicky Jenson
Cast: Alexis Bledel, Zach Gilford, Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch, Carol Burnett, Bobby Coleman, Rodrigo Santoro

College graduate Ryden Malby fails to land a dream job in publishing and is forced to move in with her family. While she plots her next move, her best friend Adam hopes that she will one day feel the same way about him as he feels about her. Animation director Vicky Jenson's live-action debut is a lame and laugh-free romantic comedy. Kelly Fremon's script has a promising set-up, though. Its feisty heroine graduates just when the economy is in meltdown and she soon discovers that jobs are scarce even for a supremely qualified and irrepressibly enthusiastic candidate. However, this is as much as the film deals with reality. In the end, it tells an old-fashioned, empty-headed romantic story which points out that the place of a strong and smart woman is right next to her man. The wacky and exhausting shenanigans of the Malby family (father sells stolen belt buckles, grandmother buys her own coffin, and so on) bare no relevance to Ryden's big decisions, except to remind her why she needs to move out fast.

Planet 51
2009
*
Director: Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad, Marcos Martínez
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Biel, Justin Long, Gary Oldman, Seann William Scott, John Cleese, Freddie Benedict

In the 1950s, classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, and War of the Worlds (1953) created an entire subgenre of alien invasion movies. Some 50 odd years later, this incredibly boring 3D animation flips the scenario around. When a goofy modern-day astronaut lands on Planet 51, the green lizardy population fears that their beloved humaniac invasion movies have become reality. The premise shows a tiny bit of promise, but when the planet turns out to be like America in the 1950s and its inhabitants nothing more than green-tinted Americans, the story runs out of ideas in about ten minutes. The end result is like a reverse Iron Giant with a bit of Wall-E minus charm, wit, humour or originality.

A Perfect Getaway
2009
***½
Director: David Twohy
Cast: Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant, Kiele Sanchez, Marley Shelton, Chris Hemsworth

Cliff and Cydney are on honeymoon in Hawaii when they hear that another pair of newlyweds were brutally murdered on the neighbouring island by an unidentified couple. They've bumped into two erratic couples on the hiking trail; could one of them be behind the murders? Cliff is a screenwriter, a detail which becomes relevant as soon as David Twohy's clever script begins to subvert genre clichés, storytelling conventions and traditional dramatic expectations. The climax of the story is predictably conventional, but on the whole this is an entertaining thriller which offers plenty or genuine surprises.

Oil City Confidential
2009
***
Director: Julien Temple
Cast:

This documentary tells the story of Dr. Feelgood and their birthplace, Canvey Island, a peculiar corner of England in the Thames estuary. In the mid-1970s, they were one of the leading pub rock bands who lived the dream for a brief moment, only to throw it all away through substance abuse and artistic differences. This is a terribly familiar story and the band's music doesn't exactly stand out, but Julien Temple managed to keep me engrossed with his unique visual style, which combines interviews with old gangster film footage.

Nowhere Boy
2009
**½
Director: Sam Taylor-Wood
Cast: Aaron Johnson, Anne-Marie Duff, Kristin Scott Thomas, David Threlfall, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, David Morrissey, Ophelia Lovibond, Andrew Buchan

This well-acted but somewhat pointless biographical drama covers John Lennon's early years from 1955 to 1960. The protagonist is a famous real-life musician, but even a devout Beatles fan will struggle to defend this generic story about a rebellious teenager who has mommy issues with two different women, his biological mother (who gave him up) and his aunt (who brought him up). We see Lennon become a musician, but there are no songs by the Beatles on the soundtrack. Neither is there a major character who speaks with a Liverpudlian accent.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian / Night at the Museum 2
2009
*
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson, Hank Azaria, Christopher Guest, Alain Chabat, Robin Williams, Steve Coogan, Jon Bernthal

In the years since those incredible events in the Museum of Natural History, the night watch has become a successful but unfulfilled businessman. Now his old skills are in demand again when the exhibits, including the golden tablet which brings everything to life, are moved to the massive Federal Archives at the Smithsonian Institution. The original Night at the Museum was forgettable but enjoyable family entertainment. The sequel offers more of the same on a much larger scale, and with zero inspiration. Amy Adams' perky performance is just about the only spark in this utterly joyless second outing. There is no invention to be found here, no sense of wonder and, most depressingly, no laughs. The movie is in fact so dull that the premise, which seemed acceptably fantastical the first time, now feels nonsensical and irritating. Followed by Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
2009
**
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Chloë Sevigny, Udo Kier, Grace Zabriskie, Loretta Devine, Irma P. Hall, Michael Peña, Brad Dourif

A grown man kills his mother and barricades himself in her San Diego home with two hostages. The detectives on the scene interview the man's fiancée and the director of his amateur theatre group to understand who they are dealing with. With Werner Herzog directing and David Lynch producing, the end result is not going to be The Negotiator. Real-life events inspired this story, but the world Herzog depicts is predictably out of kilter. His psychological drama starts in a darkly comic fashion, but gets boring very quickly thanks to extremely mechanical flashbacks which only serve to illustrate that the protagonist never played with a full deck.

Moon
2009
****
Director: Duncan Jones
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Kaya Scodelario, Rosie Shaw, Benedict Wong, Matt Berry, Malcolm Stewart

On the Moon, the lonely employee of Lunar Industries oversees the mining of helium-3, which is now the main source of energy on Earth. Just when he's coming to the end of his three-year stint, he's beginning to feel that everything is not as it seems. Duncan Jones' directorial debut is an extremely minimalistic - one actor on a set mostly talking - but consistently gripping and beautifully designed thinking man's science fiction drama. Sam Rockwell carries the film with his excellent and uncharacteristically subdued performance. Kevin Spacey in turn voices the HAL-like computer Gerty.

MicMacs à tire-larigot (Micmacs)
2009
****
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Cast: Dany Boon, Yolande Moreau, André Dussollier, Nicolas Marié, Julie Ferrier, Omar Sy, Dominique Pinon, Marie-Julie Baup, Michel Crémadès, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Urbain Cancelier

Bazil, whose father was killed by a landmine, has a bullet permanently lodged in his head. He joins a group of quirky misfits, who plot an elaborate revenge on two rivalling arms manufacturers. This breezy and delightfully whimsical French comedy delivers an endless string of visual and physical gags. The script may not be Jean-Pierre Jeunet's strong point, but he is an incredibly inventive visual storyteller, like Amélie already proved.

The Men Who Stare at Goats
2009
**
Director: Grant Heslov
Cast: George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Robert Patrick, Stephen Lang, Stephen Root, Rebecca Mader

John Ronson's 2004 non-fiction book chronicled the history of paranormal techniques in the military. Peter Straughan's loose adaptation turns it into a fictional buddy comedy about a small town reporter who meets a former member of a secret U.S. Army unit, which specialises in psychological warfare. George Clooney's writing and producing partner Grant Heslov makes a ham-fisted directorial debut with this aimless and uninvolving story. The premise is initially intriguing, but the dull and unfunny film explains everything to death, either through the narrator or Clooney's psych wiz character. The title card claims that "more of this is true than you would believe", which is easy to forget when everything is played for goofy laughs. The cast looks promising on paper, but the performances are nothing to write home about.

Mary and Max
2009
****½
Director: Adam Elliot
Cast: Barry Humphries, Bethany Whitmore, Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Eric Bana, Renée Geyer as Vera Dinkle

An incredible stop motion animation about two hapless outcasts who become lifelong pen pals. Mary is an 8-year-old Australian girl who is teased in school because of her looks. Max is an obese 44-year-old New York Jew with frail mental health. Adam Elliot’s oddball film is almost entirely narrated, yet his characters are wonderfully idiosyncratic and well defined. The sad, touching and slightly overlong story about the power of friendship is counterbalanced with some excellent dry, black humour.

Män som hatar kvinnor (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo)
2009
***
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Cast: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube, Peter Haber, Tehilla Blad

Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy has become a global bestseller. The adaptation of the first novel introduces its charismatic anti-heroes Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, a tarnished lefty journalist and a deeply troubled Goth hacker, respectively. They join forces to investigate the disappearance of a teenage girl 40 years ago. The mystery is intriguing but the payoff is very conventional. Larsson paints a grim picture of modern day Sweden which is rife with corruption and sexual violence, but he also feels compelled to provide instant justice to all the wronged characters. The film, which was edited from a longer TV version, is long and clunky, and it has at least four endings. Followed by The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.

Madeo (Mother)
2009
****
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Kim Hye-ja, Won Bin, Jin Goo, Yoon Je-moon, Jeon Mi-seon, Song Sae-byeok, Lee Young-suk, Moon Hee-ra, Chun Woo-hee

South Korean mother lives with her son, who has a learning disability. When he is arrested for murdering a school girl, she is determined to prove his innocence. Bong Joon-ho's subtle crime drama is wonderfully written and beautifully directed. Kim Hye-ja is excellent as the mother who will stop at nothing to help her son.

Luftslottet som sprängdes (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest)
2009
**½
Director: Daniel Alfredson
Cast: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre, Annika Hallin, Micke Spreitz

The final part of the Millennium trilogy doesn't work as a standalone piece. In fact there isn't much of a story at all, this is just a very long and conveniently neat wrap-up to the series. The action picks up right where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off. Lisbeth Salander is recovering in hospital and waiting to be tried for attempted murder, while reporter Mikael Blomkvist is hoping to expose a high level conspiracy which would clear her name. Noomi Rapace is excellent through the three films, but the trilogy on the whole is hopefully more gripping on page.

The Lovely Bones
2009
**
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli, Saoirse Ronan

This adaptation of Alice Sebold's acclaimed novel aims to take the audience on a heartbreaking spiritual journey, but nothing about this cheesy and long-winded drama feels genuine or believable. Susie, our narrator, is a 14-year-old girl who is raped, murdered and stranded somewhere between heaven and Earth, where she observes her family deal with her death. In an oversaturated CGI limbo, she pines for the love of her life (that is, a boy who spoke to her once). Her father becomes so obsessed with solving the crime that he estranges Susie's mother, the voice of reason, who decides to abandon the family in order to pick fruit. In the meanwhile, the killer, who secretly constructed an elaborate murder room under a corn field, just seems to brood in his car. No description can do justice to how ridiculous and misjudged the story and the characters are. The spiritual link between this world and the next is the unique selling point of this metaphysical murder mystery, but it amounts to nothing.

Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces)
2009
***
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Blanca Portillo, Lluís Homar, Lola Dueñas, Ángela Molina, Rossy de Palma

A blinded writer looks back at the day when he was a successful director and fell in love with his leading lady, the mistress of a ruthless millionaire who produced the film. Pedro Almodóvar's latest melodrama draws influence from the works of Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock, but most importantly from the director's own recent output. So much so that despite the lovely performances, unpredictable and intriguing story and stunningly vibrant visuals, there is a feeling that Almodóvar is just going through the motions, and for too long at 128 minutes.

Life During Wartime
2009
**½
Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Chris Marquette, Rich Pecci, Charlotte Rampling, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy, Dylan Riley Snyder, Renée Taylor, Michael K. Williams

Todd Solondz brings back the characters but not the cast of Happiness (1998) and, to a lesser extent, Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) for this disappointing sequel, so to speak. The three Jordan sisters have moved on and, then again, they really haven't. The film convincingly deals with forgiveness, but it never becomes more than a pointless retread.

Law Abiding Citizen
2009
***
Director: F. Gary Gray
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Bruce McGill, Colm Meaney, Leslie Bibb, Michael Irby, Regina Hall, Michael Kelly, Michael Irby, Roger Bart, Christian Stolte, Gregory Itzin

After his family's murder went inadequately punished, a ruthless and highly skilled engineer seeks revenge on the perpetrators and the justice system that failed. While he orchestrates a series of elaborate and deadly schemes, the prosecutor of the original case attempts to stop him. F. Gary Gray's action thriller is entertaining, but it doesn't include many believable moments. Kurt Wimmer's convoluted script is ridiculous, and its rushed opening fails to evoke adequate sympathy for the protagonist for the upcoming atrocities.

Kynodontas (Dogtooth)
2009
*½
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Christos Stergioglou, Michelle Valley, Angeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Christos Passalis, Anna Kalaitzidou

Yorgos Lanthimos' breakthrough film tells a story of a couple who have brought up their three grown-up children with lies within the walls of the family's compound, completely cut off from the outside world. In theory, this is a highly original and extremely dark comedy about disturbingly over-protective parents. In practice, however, this is an implausible and incredibly boring soft porn film with robotic acting.

Knowing
2009
*½
Director: Alex Proyas
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne, Chandler Canterbury, Lara Robinson, Nadia Townsend, Ben Mendelsohn, Alan Hopgood, Adrienne Pickering

Following his wife's tragic death, an astrophysics professor/single dad has succumbed to fate. It all changes when his son brings home a cryptic letter, which was placed in a time capsule 50 years ago. With the help of bourbon, he deciphers the seemingly random numbers on the paper to be the dates and casualties of past and future disasters. The message here is that every individual catastrophe is predetermined and all that mankind can do is post the death toll on the Internet. There is something intriguing about the overall concept, but this deterministic approach is ludicrous and depressing. From early on, you can hear the plot machinery creak as it lays out the breadcrumbs, which come together in the end. By then, the film's increasingly silly twists and its moronic protagonist had driven me insane. The backbone of the story about a widower who has lost his faith in the face of extraordinary circumstances is lifted straight from Signs, and the rest is assembled from other works by M. Night Shyamalan. Nicolas Cage, in his typical shouty mode, gives one of his worst performances.

Julie & Julia
2009
****
Director: Nora Ephron
Cast: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Linda Emond, Jane Lynch

This light and bubbly comedy intertwines the lives of two real-life women. Julia Child is an American who trains herself as a chef in Paris after WW2 and co-writes the groundbreaking Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In 2002, Julie Powell starts an online blog which chronicles her attempts to cook through Child’s entire book. Both of the ladies turn their passion into a profession, but Julia's life is the more interesting one. She is a loveable and eccentric trailblazer with a warm and loyal husband. Julie is a self-absorbed modern day woman whose husband is not always supportive of her derivative obsession. Their combined stories result in a long but very enjoyable and mouthwatering film. It ends on a slightly odd note, though, when the two storylines come together for a brief moment. The cast is great, but Meryl Streep's performance would seem rather campy if it wasn't based on a real person. Based on two books, My Life in France by Julia Child and Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell.

Jennifer's Body
2009
***
Director: Karyn Kusama
Cast: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, J. K. Simmons, Amy Sedaris, Adam Brody, Kyle Gallner, Cynthia Stevenson, Chris Pratt, Carrie Genzel, Juan Riedinger

Needy and Jennifer have been inseparable since childhood, although they are like chalk and cheese. When Jennifer becomes possessed and starts feeding on the flesh of her male classmates, Needy must try and stop her best friend. Diablo Cody broke to the scene with her verbally rich screenplay for Juno, but her follow-up is a bit of a mess. This horror comedy features plenty of quotable lines, but it is smug and not nearly as clever and subversive as it thinks it is. The horror elements are formulaic and the friendship between Needy and Jennifer never feels genuine. Upon its release, the film was a critical and commercial flop, but it has gained a cult following in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

It's Complicated
2009
**½
Director: Nancy Meyers
Cast: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Lake Bell, Hunter Parrish, Zoe Kazan, Caitlin Fitzgerald, John Krasinski, Mary Kay Place, Rita Wilson

Jane and Jake divorced ten years ago when he was caught cheating with a younger woman. In an ironic twist, Jane turns from a cheated wife to a mistress when she embarks on an affair with Jake. But is there future for this unusual relationship? Like Something's Got to Give, Nancy Meyers' latest film champions the enduring appeal of a smart middle-aged woman over the fleeting excitement of a young and sexy hottie. With this delectable but instantly forgettable romantic comedy, Meyers takes the audience on another trip through movie reality in which everyone's wealthy without having to do anything for it. Jane runs a successful cafe, at least nominally, but she spends her days having nooners or planning an extension to her large house now that she lives in it alone. Jake is apparently a partner in a law firm, the proof of which are his sharp suit and black Porsche. Their three grown-up children are clingy and indistinguishable from each other.

Invictus
2009
**½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Julian Lewis Jones, Adjoa Andoh, Patrick Mofokeng, Matt Stern, Marguerite Wheatley, Leleti Khumalo, McNiel Hendriks

Nelson Mandela, the freshly elected President of South Africa, is determined to unite the divided host nation behind the Springboks in time for the 1995 World Cup. The problem is that the black majority does not embrace the all-white rugby team which symbolises Apartheid. Anthony Peckham's screenplay, which is based on John Carlin's book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, blends real-life sports and politics into a well-meaning but bland drama which offers minimal dramatic tension. The saintly Mandela is the nicest person and noblest politician on the planet, and racial tensions vanish into thin air when the Boks go on a winning streak. The climactic rugby final has at least some tension, but it's way too long.

The Invention of Lying
2009
**
Director: Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson
Cast: Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill, Louis C.K., Rob Lowe, Tina Fey, Christopher Guest, Jeffrey Tambor, Fionnula Flanagan, Jason Bateman

Ricky Gervais' (co-)directorial debut is set in a world where nobody is able to tell a lie or make up stories which have not happened. He plays Mark Bellison, a plump loser who discovers that by lying he can get anything he wants, except his dream girl, it seems. This reverse Liar, Liar premise is clever, but it doesn't hold water. The inability to lie and the compulsion to think out loud are surely not the same thing. The comedy includes some subversive moments, especially when Bellison dreams up religion in a moment of despair, but the results are never more than mildly funny. In the second half, the film turns into a conventional romcom, but it's difficult to root for the mismatched couple, neither one of whom looks beyond the surface. She repeatedly calls him fat, and he doesn't mind as long as she takes him.

The International
2009
**
Director: Tom Tykwer
Cast: Clive Owen, Haluk Bilginer, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Brian F. O'Byrne, Ulrich Thomsen

For years, a British Interpol agent has tried to nail IBBC, a colossal merchant bank who are prepared to silence anyone about to blow the whistle on its illegal dealings in arms and money laundering. Now he joins forces with the Assistant D.A. of New York City. The first-time screenplay by Eric Warren Singer was inspired by the real-life BCCI scandal, but the end result is a frustratingly generic and predictably cynical and paranoid conspiracy thriller. It's set in a global village where everyone addresses each other in perfect English. The story has an obsessive hero who has no life outside the case, and a female partner who exists only to appeal to Americans and women in particular. The villain is an omnipotent evil corporation, whose covert activities involve assassinating people around famous landmarks on a daily basis. Regardless of all the silliness, the main failing of the film is that it's dull and predictable. Towards the end, Tykwer livens things up with an exciting shootout in the Guggenheim museum. Not that it makes any logical sense.


Inglourious Basterds
2009
***
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph waltz, Michael Fassbender, Daniel Brühl, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, Til Schweiger, Mélanie Laurent, August Diehl, Julie Dreyfus, Sylvester Groth, Jacky Ido, Denis Ménochet, Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, Martin Wuttke

Christoph Waltz stars as a brilliant, charming, and fiendish SS colonel who's in charge of tracking down the remaining Jews in France. Brad Pitt, on the other hand, plays the leader of an American Jewish Nazi-scalping squad. The paths of these two men eventually cross in a Paris cinema towards the end of the war. Waltz was showered with acting accolades, including an Oscar, for his mesmerising multilingual performance, whereas Pitt with his stiff jaw and Tennessee twang would be home in a second rate comedy. Sadly this same inconsistency runs through Tarantino's WW2 revenge fantasy, which contains some terrific and some endless and pointless scenes in its excessive 2½-hour runtime.

Informant!
2009
***½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynskey, Thomas F. Wilson, Tom Papa, Rick Overton

In the early 1990s Mark Whitacre, an executive in a bio-chem firm ADM, became a whistleblower for the FBI. He claimed that the company and its competitors across the world were involved in price-fixing. However, by employing his services over a period of three years, the Bureau got way more than they bargained for. This comedy from Kurt Eichenwald's book is wacky, amusing and unusual, and a bit exhausting towards the end. Matt Damon gives a wonderful performance as the nerdish informant who slowly paints himself into a corner. It's all pleasantly deadpan, although Whitacre's rambling narration and Marvin Hamlisch's over-exuberant score hammer home the story's quirkiness.

In the Loop
2009
***½
Director: Armando Iannucci
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, James Gandolfini, Chris Addison, Mimi Kennedy, Anna Chlumsky, David Rasche

Just as the administrations in the US and the UK weigh the pros and cons of a war in the Middle East, a clueless British cabinet minister finds himself in hot water over his comments to the media. Armando Iannucci's feature film debut is a spin off from his TV series The Thick of It (2005-2012), and similar in style to Veep (2012-2019), a series he later developed for HBO. The truth is that the plain visuals and the machine gun dialogue work better in a shorter sitcom format. Nevertheless, this is a sharp, extremely profane, and often funny political satire, which left me alternately exhilarated and exhausted.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
2009
*½
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Verne Troyer, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield, Tom Waits, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law

The titular Imaginarium is an anachronistic traveling show with a real magic mirror, which allows a person to pass through it and explore their imagination. The troupe tour modern day London where they end up saving a secretive man, just as the Devil himself has come to collect his end of a deal with Doctor Parnassus. You can't accuse Terry Gilliam for lacking ambition, but it's all in vain if he doesn't have a coherent story that reigns in his excessive tendencies. This is another outlandish fable that mixes reality and fantasy, only here the two are barely distinguishable. The tedious concoction aims to combine whimsical comedy with heartbreaking drama, but it made me laugh and cry in all the wrong places. Heath Legder passed away during the shoot, and his character is played by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell in the fantasy sequences. Normally that kind of a gimmick would stick out like a sore thumb, but here it doesn't make any less sense that the rest of the film. The only thing you bring home from the experience is Gilliam's endless visual inventiveness, although he manages to dilute even that by introducing cheap CGI.


Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
2009
**½
Director: Carlos Saldanha, Mike Thurmeier
Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Simon Pegg

This franchise is clearly running out of steam, and now it's Ice Age only in the name. As Manny's about to become a father, Sid's emerging paternal drive leads our group to a lost world filled with creatures thought to have been extinct. The familiar characters and rich visual gags help you sit through it. Followed by Ice Age: Continental Drift.

I Love You, Man
2009
***
Director: John Hamburg
Cast: Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, J. K. Simmons, Jane Curtin, Jon Favreau, Jaime Pressly

After Peter realises that he has no one who could act as best man at his upcoming wedding, he embarks on a quest to find a male friend. He eventually forges an unlikely friendship with the free-spirited and spontaneous Sydney. This likeable but formulaic bromantic comedy features nice performances and a very fine track list, but I found its sex- and secretion-centred humour lazy and unfunny.

I Love You Phillip Morris
2009
**½
Director: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Cast: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro, Antoni Corone, Brennan Brown, Michael Mandel

An incredible true story of Steve Russell, a mild-mannered family man and one-time police officer who outs himself. When he realises that the stereotypical gay lifestyle is very expensive, he becomes a con artist. This lands him in prison where he meets Phillip Morris, the love of his life. This dark comedy is certainly unpredictable, but it cannot find a satisfying tone between broad comedy, heartbreaking drama and sweet romance. First-time directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa wrote Bad Santa, and this doesn't offer a marked improvement in good taste. Jim Carrey gives another one of his typically taxing performances. His character is tirelessly resourceful but difficult to love when you can't trust a word he says. Adapted from Steve McVicker's book I Love You Phillip Morris: A True Story of Life, Love, and Prison Breaks.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
2009
***½
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, Tom Felton, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, David Thewlis

With their hormones racing, Harry, Ron and Hermione return to Hogwarts where Harry discovers a mysterious potions book and learns crucial details of Lord Voldemort's past. The sixth book in J.K. Rowling's series is a lightly plotted, transitional episode which sets the stage for the big finale. Steve Kloves' screenplay compresses the thick novel into a lopsided movie. The first half is slow and rarely action-packed, but the second half picks up the pace and the final 30 minutes are terrific. Episode by episode, this franchise has become darker and more CGI-heavy. Now it reaches a point where there is barely a scene that was shot on location, or in daylight. Followed by The Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

The Hangover
2009
**½
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, Jeffrey Tambor, Sasha Barrese, Ken Jeong

Doug, his two best friends Phil and Stu, and his brother-in-law to be Alan travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. The morning after, the groom has vanished and the others wake up with no memory of the night before. The screenplay by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore was apparently inspired by someone's personal experiences, but the plot elements seem awfully familiar from past movies, such as Dude, Where's My Car? and Very Bad Things, or the Simpsons episode Viva Ned Flanders (1999). This unoriginal and unpromising set-up is brought up to date with some typically offensive 21st century humour. The resulting comedy is sweet, funny, predictable and infuriating in equal measures. The film was a massive hit, and it spawned two sequels, Part II (2011) and Part III (2013).

The Good Heart
2009
**½
Director: Dagur Kári
Cast: Brian Cox, Paul Dano, Stephanie Szostak, Isild Le Besco, Nicolas Bro

Jacques, a grumpy old misanthrope who runs a back alley bar, is recovering from another heart attack in hospital. There he meets Lucas, a young homeless man with suicidal tendencies, and decides to groom him into his successor before it's too late. The setting is New York City, but this comedy drama has a very European feel. There is a multinational cast and it was written and directed by the Icelandic Dagur Kári, who has clearly picked up a thing or two from Aki Kaurismäki's portrayals of the downtrodden. That is, he won't let a thing like realism get in the way of the story he wants to tell. Jacques only lets a selected dozen regulars in his bar, yet he seems to be loaded, and in possession of an incredible health insurance. In the early stages, this is actually a nicely gritty and dry comedy which pits the acerbic Cox (enjoyable) and the puppy-like Dano (typecast) against each other, but the film slowly morphs into a frustratingly implausible and tiresome fable. It's steep downhill once Isild Le Besco shows up in one of the most baffling and underwritten female roles in cinematic story.

Funny People
2009
***½
Director: Judd Apatow
Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Bana, Rza, Maude Apatow, Iris Apatow

It's lonely at the top. When George Simmons, a popular comedian, is diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, he realises that he has nothing to show for his life, apart from the riches. His new assistant, on the other hand, is a young and idealistic funnyman, just like himself 20 years ago. Fame is a double-edged sword and the two men represent two sides of the same coin. These themes are not particularly new, but Judd Apatow's (over)long autobiographical story develops into a warm, funny and moving study of loneliness and friendship. Like his previous film Knocked Up, this is a raunchy comedy with a very conservative undertone; the jokes revolve around frivolous sex and masturbation, but everyone's ultimate goal is to live in a meaningful monogamous relationship. Eric Bana, who plays the husband of George's old flame, gives a forgettably hammy performance.

Flickan som lekte med elden (The Girl Who Played With Fire)
2009
**½
Director: Daniel Alfredson
Cast: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre, Peter Andersson, Micke Spreitz

Lisbeth Salander's court-appointed guardian and a couple who are about to expose a sex trafficking ring are found killed, and she becomes the main suspect. Coming after The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the second part of the Millennium trilogy is a more streamlined film but its murder mystery is rather uninteresting. The gritty realism of the first film is gone, now we get a super villain and a number of incredibly implausible twists. We do learn Lisbeth's backstory but the star journalist Mikael Blomkvist is nothing but a bystander this time. Followed by The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.

Five Minutes of Heaven
2009
**½
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Cast: Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt, Anamaria Marinca, Niamh Cusack, Mark Davison, Kevin O'Neill, Diarmuid Noyes

In 1975, a 17-year-old UVF recruit shot a young catholic man in Belfast in front of the victim's younger brother. Now 33 years later the two are to meet again in front of TV cameras. Guy Hibbert's screenplay mixes fact and fiction to create a drama about breaking the cycle of revenge and violence. The message of forgiveness and reconciliation is worthy, but the film is somewhat clunky and stagy, and way too neatly wrapped up. The two leading performances are strong, although James Nesbitt's jittery turn seems a bit out of place.

Extract
2009
*½
Director: Mike Judge
Cast: Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck, J. K. Simmons, Clifton Collins, Jr., Dustin Milligan, David Koechner, Beth Grant, T.J. Miller, Gene Simmons

Joel Reynolds is eager to sell his unglamorous flavour extract company, but an expensive lawsuit puts a spanner in the works. Joel's marriage is also in the doldrums, so he hires a brainless gigolo to seduce his wife in order to have guilt-free sex with a flirty employee. Mike Judge's Office Space was a poignant and humorous movie about men in cubicles. This one is set in a factory, but, for the life of me, I cannot see any reason why this story needs to be told. It doesn't work as a workplace comedy or as a sex comedy. The film is pointless, charmless and utterly devoid of laughs, not to mention a waste of a great cast.

An Education
2009
***½
Director: Lone Scherfig
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Cara Seymour, Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper, Olivia Williams, Emma Thompson, Sally Hawkins

It's 1961 in London. The bright 16-year-old Jenny is getting ready for the Oxford exams when she meets David, an older man who offers a shortcut to the adult world. However, is this charming but shady businessman worth giving up a dream of first class education? Nick Hornby's screenplay, which is based on journalist Lynn Barber's memoir, transports us back to different, more innocent times. The relationship and its widespread acceptance (not to mention the slight anti-semitic undercurrent) are creepy, but this delightfully low-key drama comedy is not about a sexual predator but about the coming of age of a teenage girl. Were it set in the present day, the entire community would scream in outrage at the affair. The cast is terrific. Carey Mulligan gives a lovely breakthrough performance as Jenny, and Peter Sarsgaard is enjoyably suave as David. Alfred Molina as Jenny's pragmatic father, Rosamund Pike as the sweet but uncultured Helen, and Emma Thompson as the stern headmistress are the other standouts.

Død snø (Dead Snow)
2009
**
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Cast: Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner, Lasse Valdal, Evy Kasseth Røsten, Jeppe Laursen, Jenny Skavlan, Ane Dahl Torp, Bjørn Sundquist, Ørjan Gamst

A group of Norwegian medical students travel to a remote cabin, where they encounter a squad of zombie Nazis. Tommy Wirkola's short and snappy horror comedy offers a totally bonkers premise and some familiar play with genre tropes. Unfortunately, all of this doesn't translate to a particularly memorable movie. Apart from a few amusingly gory scenes, there is very little to laugh about.

Duplicity
2009
**
Director: Tony Gilroy
Cast: Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti, Denis O'Hare, Kathleen Chalfant, Thomas McCarthy, Wayne Duvall, Carrie Preston

When a major cosmetics manufacturer announces a groundbreaking new product, its fiercest rival is prepared to do anything to get in on the secret. Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play former government agents who now work as corporate counterintelligence specialists for the two competing companies. The jumbled narrative reveals the complicated nature of their personal and professional relationship. As it turns out, these two people are selfish and unpleasant, and their liaison is rather uninteresting. And what's more, the two stars have no chemistry whatsoever; Roberts is simply miscast. The film itself is a listless and mechanical sleight of hand with an oh-so ironic ending.

Drag Me to Hell
2009
**
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, David Paymer, Adriana Barraza

After three Spider-Man films Sam Raimi returns to his roots with an Evil Deadesque horror comedy. Alison Lohman plays Christine, a bank loan officer who is eager to win a promotion. She refuses to extend the loan of a poor gypsy woman, who curses her in return. The film kicks off with some enjoyable comedy gore and gross-out gags, but it turns out that's all Raimi has to offer; the script is complete and utter rubbish. We learn that Christine used to be a fat country girl, but this detail plays no role in the events. There's a long dinner scene at the boyfriend's parents which leads nowhere. The long séance towards the end looks like the climax but doesn't change one thing. And lastly, the fortune teller who helps Christine fight the curse conveniently remembers new helpful details about the spell as the story goes on. One pointless scene follows another with the sole purpose of dragging the story to feature length, when the introduction in fact tells the whole story. The rest is boring and predictable padding.

Il Divo
2009
**½
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Anna Bonaiuto, Toni Servillo, Piera Degli Esposti, Giulio Bosetti

This exhausting biopic of Giulio Andreotti begins in the early 1990s when the long-serving Italian Prime Minister starts his seventh term in office, and ends as he's put on trial for alleged Mafia ties. Inbetween we're introduced to umpteen Italian politicians, gangsters and journalists. This world doesn't open up to the uninitiated, but the biggest problem here is the protagonist who resembles a walking dead. Sorrentino's initially striking visual style wears out its welcome pretty fast.

District 9
2009
****
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James, Eugene Khumbanyiwa, Louis Minnaa, Mandla Gaduka, Vanessa Haywood

Some 20 years after a massive spaceship arrived over Johannesburg, the aliens on board are segregated in the slums of District 9. Things come to a head when the government operative in charge of relocating the population is exposed to foreign substance. This inventive and unpredictable but occasionally overwhelming South African science fiction comedy is clearly an allegory on apartheid, but it's too busy creating anarchic fun to rub our faces in it. The story is framed as a mockumentary and it inevitably ends in a big gunfight, but even that is freshly done. The special effects are wonderfully gritty and realistic, and they never call attention to themselves. Expanded from Blomkamp's 2005 short film Alive in Joburg.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed
2009
***½
Director: J Blakeson
Cast: Gemma Arterton, Martin Compston, Eddie Marsan

J Blakeson's feature debut kicks off with a terrific dialogue-free scene in which two men reconstruct an apartment as a hostage room. These two ex-cons then continue with their actual plan to kidnap a millionaire's daughter for a £2M ransom. This taut thriller takes place mostly inside the apartment, but the performances are strong and Blakeson's script offers enough twists and turns to keep us on the edge of our seat. When the stakes rise, the sharp and well-drilled kidnappers inevitably and somewhat predictably begin to make increasingly stupid decisions.

Crazy Heart
2009
***
Director: Scott Cooper
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Paul Herman, Jack Nation

Bad Blake is a washed-out country singer/songwriter and serial divorcee whose glory days are long gone. Now he's 57 and forced to play bars and bowling alleys just to make ends meet. In Santa Fe, he meets a young mother who gives him another shot at happiness, if only he can lay off the booze. Jeff Bridges deserved his long overdue best actor Oscar. He sings, plays and inhabits the character so completely that it's easy to forget you're watching a performance. Sadly the story from Thomas Cobb's novel is as cheesy as your run-of-the-mill country song. The characters are clichéd, the romance never feels plausible, and the ending, though not predictable, is flat. "The Weary Kind" by Ryan Bingham and T-Bone Burnett won the Academy Award for best original song.

The Cove
2009
***½
Director: Louie Psihoyos
Cast:

This Oscar winning documentary claims that up to 23,000 dolphins (and porpoises) are annually killed in a sealed off cove in the village of Taiji in Japan. It would be hypocritical to single out the killing of dolphins just because they're cute, but their meat is unfit for consumption due to high levels of mercury, the film argues. A crew of activists and film technicians devise and execute a plan to capture footage of the actual carnage. This plays out like a thriller and the climactic scenes are harrowing indeed. But is the topic as black and white as we're made to believe?

Coraline
2009
***
Director: Henry Selick
Cast: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, John Hodgman, Ian McShane

11-year-old Coraline moves to an old and spooky country mansion with her parents, who never have time for her. In the house she discovers a small door to a parallel reality, with alternative parents who seem too good to be true. And they are. Like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick's latest stop motion animation tells a dark gothic story with delightfully quirky visuals. And once again the end result is easier to admire than to like. Adapted from Neil Gaiman's novella.

Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel)
2009
**½
Director: Anne Fontaine
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Benoît Poelvoorde, Alessandro Nivola, Marie Gillain, Emmanuelle Devos

This French drama about Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel concentrates on the years before she became the fashion icon. In her early 20s, she becomes a kept woman to a wealthy Frenchman. At his chateau, Coco, already equipped with a strong sense of style, plants the first seeds of her clothing career by designing hats. Anne Fontaine's odd biopic provides an unsentimental portrayal of bourgeois decadence in the turn of the century, but the film is never terribly interesting. It stretches a minor biographical footnote to feature length, and it's difficult to decide whether to love or loathe its heroine. Coco is portrayed as a progressive maverick who refuses to marry to wealth, yet she's a willing courtesan to not one but two different wealthy men, and her tragic romance fails to tug at the heartstrings. She is also determined to work and make her own fortune, yet all we see is a grumpy, indecisive and opportunistic moocher.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
2009
***½
Director: Phil Lord, Chris Miller
Cast: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Neil Patrick Harris, Bruce Campbell, Andy Samberg, Mr. T, Bobb'e J. Thompson, Benjamin Bratt

Flint Lockwood is an aspiring inventor who lives in Swallow Falls, a small run-down island in the Atlantic Ocean which used to live of sardine fishing. He is about to have a breakthrough with a machine that turns water into food, but things don't quite go to plan. Phil Lord and Chris Miller's feature debut is a funny and enjoyably bonkers animation. It offers plenty of inventive visuals, and a worthy but somewhat predictable message that we must accept all people as they are. Loosely based on the children's book by Judi and Ron Barrett. Followed by a 2013 sequel.

Chloe
2009
**
Director: Atom Egoyan
Cast: Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, Max Thieriot, R. H. Thomson, Nina Dobrev, Meghan Heffern

When Catherine becomes convinced that David is unfaithful, she hires a prostitute to test the husband's marital devotion. When Chloe reports back to her, she is disturbed but also oddly turned on. Atom Egoyan's remake of a 2003 French film Natalie is a cold and stylish, erotically flavoured drama which teeters between intriguing and ridiculous. Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson are painfully believable as a middle-aged couple whose relationship has lost the spark. Chloe, on the other hand, remains a pretty plot device who never becomes a fully-fleshed human being. The last minute turn into Fatal Attraction territory ultimately destroys the film.

Capitalism: A Love Story
2009
****
Director: Michael Moore
Cast:

"The business of America is business", said President Calvin Coolidge. In his latest documentary, Michael Moore takes on capitalism itself. The economic system was adopted to bring prosperity to all Americans, but he argues that these days it serves only the country's richest 1 percent and brings nothing but misery to the rest of the population. In his opinion the traditional entrepreneurial values have made way for both legal (large corporations insure their employees and cash in on their death) and illegal (a judge gets paid for every juvenile he sentences to a correctional facility) forms of greed since the days of Reaganomics. This downward spiral reached its nadir in 2008, when the federal government bailed out the offenders (investment banks) but left the victims (homeless homeowners) to their own devices. Moore once again preaches to the converted, but his enjoyable film made me laugh and cry in disbelief, sometimes within the same scene. However, he ends on a note of misjudged optimism as Obama takes power. As the excellent and more recent Inside Job pointed out, nothing changed.

Brüno
2009
***½
Director: Larry Charles
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Gustaf Hammarsten, Clifford Bañagale

Sacha Baron Cohen brings another character from his Da Ali G Show to the big screen. Brüno is a 19-year-old, flamboyantly gay host of Funkyzeit mit Brüno, the most important TV fashion show in any German-speaking country, apart from Germany. When he becomes unpopular in his native Austria, he decides to travel to Los Angeles to become famous. Like Borat, the film mixes scripted comedy and encounters with real life people, who don't know that Cohen is in character. This allows him to ridicule homophobia and make fun of the current crop of celebrities who are famous for being famous. Some parts cracked me up, while others made me squirm in discomfort. It's crass, uneven, and too long even at 80 minutes, but if the main goal of a comedy is to make you laugh, this is a resounding success.

Brothers
2009
**½
Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Sam Shepard, Clifton Collins, Jr., Mare Winningham

This remake of a Danish film Brødre is a story about two brothers who have very little in common. Sam is a well respected Marine captain who is married to Grace and has two kids, Tommy is a carefree single man who has just served a term in prison. When Sam's helicopter is shot down in Afghanistan, Tommy must get his act together and support his brother's family. Jim Sheridan's earnest drama attempts to portray the effects of war on the men on the battlefield and on their families back at home. The film has some poignant moments, but there's a half-baked quality to its central relationships between Sam and Tommy, between Tommy and his father, and between Tommy and Grace. The plotting seems too cautious and the big emotional scenes end up feeling stagy and phony. Jake Gyllenhaal's performance is understated, Tobey Maguire's is intense, and the girls who play the daughters are convincing. However, despite her best efforts, Natalie Portman is not believable as a Midwestern housewife, no matter how many times the people around her remind us that she is unusually beautiful.


Bronson
2009
**
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Cast: Tom Hardy, Matt King, James Lance, Amanda Burton, Kelly Adams, Juliet Oldfield, Jonathan Phillips, Mark Powley

Michael Gordon Peterson, aka Charles Bronson, is known as the most violent prisoner in Britain. He has never killed a man, but his erratic behaviour has kept him in prison nearly his entire adult life. Nicolas Winding Refn's black comedy, which follows firmly in the footsteps of Chopper, is another cool and ironically detached portrayal of a thoroughly uninteresting and unrepentant brute. Bronson narrates his own (fictionalised) life story, which Refn turns into a grand performance. Tom Hardy gives a very fine lead performance. Shame about the film.

Bolt
2009
**
Director: Byron Howard, Chris Williams
Cast: John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton, Greg Germann

Bolt is a fearless super hero canine, but only on TV. When the star of the show escapes the confines of the studio, it's up for a surprise. Now, in order to buy this premise, you can't know how movies are made. Pixar's John Lasseter produced this animation, but it's a disappointingly charmless and formulaic affair. The action scenes are exciting and plentiful, but there is no plot to speak of or characters to root for. Bolt is a clueless hero, the cat is an unfunny comedy sidekick, and the hamster is just plain creepy.

The Boat That Rocked / Pirate Radio
2009
**
Director: Richard Curtis
Cast: Tom Sturridge, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Talulah Riley, Chris O'Dowd, Rhys Darby, Ralph Brown, Jack Davenport, Kenneth Branagh

In the mid to late 60s, during the glory days of British rock and pop music, the official radio refused to give the popular artists adequate airplay. In 1966, Radio Rock, a fictional pirate radio, broadcasts from the sea to bring joy to the youth across the UK. While the government tries to shut down this illegal operation, 17-year-old Carl arrives on the ship in search of his father. The era is fascinating and the premise is promising, but Richard Curtis' follow-up to Love Actually is another flabby comedy. His ensemble cast is impressive, but there are simply too many characters, which in turn leads to overlength. 90 minutes of frivolous nostalgia is understandable, 135 minutes is unforgivable (the film was released 19 minutes shorter in the U.S.). It doesn't help that the sprawling script is all over the place and the characters are one-dimensional. There's the small-minded nazi-like minister and his troops, and the cool hipster DJs adored by the people. The women don't come off well on the all-male ship. They are either groupies, deceitful girlfriends, wives and mothers, or lesbians.

The Blind Side
2009
**½
Director: John Lee Hancock
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Jae Head, Lily Collins, Ray McKinnon, Kim Dickens, Adriane Lenox, Kathy Bates, Eaddy Mays, Robert Singleton

Michael "Big Mike" Oher has spent most of his childhood in foster care due to his mother's drug addiction. The wealthy Tuohy family spots this impoverished black loner and gives him a home. They also detect Michael's potential on the gridiron and help him to improve his grades so he can qualify for a football scholarship. John Lee Hancock takes an inspirational real-life story from Michael Lewis' book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, smooths all the rough edges, and delivers an old-fashioned Hollywood feelgood film. The resulting drama is amiable and entertaining but it provides minimal conflict for its characters. Michael is a loveable and protective hulk of a man and the family are squeaky clean white liberals. Occasionally they have to deal with racism and prejudice, but these incidents are quickly brushed off with a line like "Dontcha be racist now, darling". Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for playing the feisty and strong-willed Leigh Anne Tuohy.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
2009
**
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Jennifer Coolidge, Val Kilmer, Brad Dourif, Xzibit, Fairuza Balk, Michael Shannon, Vondie Curtis Hall

Six months after Hurricane Katrina, decorated NOPD detective Terrence McDonagh is a human train wreck who will stop at nothing to feed his growing drug and gambling addictions. An emotional murder investigation finally pushes him over the edge. This remake/reimagining of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant moves the action from New York to New Orleans, and transforms a grim story of redemption into a pointless crime film about a bad cop. Apart from a few unusual but unsuccessful touches (shots through the eyes of an iguana and an alligator), it is a mystery what attracted Werner Herzog to this wacky police procedural. The plotting is so formulaic and implausible that maybe Herzog is just having a laugh. Unfortunately I'm not amused, only bored. The main problem is that McDonagh is never a particularly tragic or sympathetic character, especially when Nicolas Cage gives one of his annoying, shouty performances.

Away We Go
2009
**
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Jeff Daniels, Carmen Ejogo, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton, Allison Janney, Melanie Lynskey, Chris Messina, Catherine O'Hara, Paul Schneider

Burt and Verona, an unmarried couple in their 30s, are about to have a baby. They travel across the country to meet their old friends and colleagues, and to determine where they should settle down. On this trip, they meet bad parents and good parents, they meet shrieking caricatures and tragic characters who resemble real-life people. This frustratingly uneven and unoriginal road movie was written by a real-life couple Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. Their hero and heroine are bland, but it is somewhat refreshing that the script never questions their relationship, like most films would. Instead Burt and Verona discover how well-balanced they are and how lucky their child will be. What a pointless journey! The indie soundtrack by Alexi Murdoch sounds like second rate Nick Drake.

Avatar
2009
***½
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Wes Studi

In 2154, mankind has exhausted the resources on planet Earth and moved to the moon of Pandora to mine the precious unobtanium, but the local Na'vi population happens to be sitting on the largest deposit. With the help of an avatar, a paraplegic ex-marine becomes a Na'vi in order to study their customs and ask them to abandon their homes peacefully. James Cameron's phenomenally successful science fiction epic looks every bit as expensive as it was. The visuals are groundbreaking and mesmerising, but the script often isn't. The introduction to this new world is exciting stuff, but the plot is formulaic and the climactic battle is long and numbing. An Academy Award winner for best cinematography, art direction, and visual effects. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) is the first of four planned sequels.

Antichrist
2009
***
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Storm Acheche Sahlstrøm

Lars von Trier abandons the Dogme guidelines of Breaking the Waves and the uncinematic style of Dogville to give us his most visually rich work. If you thought those films dealt out cruelty to their leading ladies, the Danish auteur reaches a new level of brutality in this graphic horror film. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a couple whose infant son dies in a tragic accident. She's riddled with guilt and grief, and he's a shrink who's determined to get her over it. They decide to withdraw to their remote cottage, not knowing that nature is Satan's church. The film mixes psychological drama and supernatural horror. It's powerful and strongly acted, but doesn't seem to add up to anything meaningful.

Angels & Demons
2009
**
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Armin Mueller-Stahl

Although Dan Brown's novel was published three years earlier, this adaptation plays out as a sequel to The Da Vinci Code. Which explains why the Vatican reluctantly turns to symbologist Robert Langdon when it appears that the Illuminati, a real-life secret society, have kidnapped four cardinals most likely to follow the recently deceased Pope. They have also stolen a vial of antimatter from CERN and threaten to blow up the Vatican City. This gives our hero another chance to crack riddles and offer condescending lectures on ancient symbols and artefacts. The screenplay by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman takes out the silliest bits in the book and puts new ones in their place. Ron Howard stages a great-looking, fast-paced and incredibly stupid mystery, which doesn't make any sense (what do the kidnappers want?). Hollywood doesn't want to alienate a massive, potential audience, so the sequel (like the first film) sits on the fence in the science vs. religion debate; it goes as far as to put a Roman Catholic Priest in charge of the antimatter experiment in the opening scene.

(500) Days of Summer
2009
***
Director: Mark Webb
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Chloë Moretz, Geoffrey Arend, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg

This romantic drama comedy jumps back and forth to give us the key moments of Tom and Summer's complicated 500-day relationship. He's a moody wannabe architect who writes greeting cards for a living, she's his boss' kooky and free-spirited new assistant. This genre has become so utterly predictable that even a modest film with romcom clichés, non-humanlike supporting characters and a progressively more gimmicky structure can feel like a breath of fresh air. Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel are charming in the starring roles.

2012
2009
***
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt

In his earlier films Roland Emmerich allowed aliens and climate change to ravage the Earth, now he ups the ante and brings us the literal end of days. Scientists discover that Earth's crust begins to shift, which ties in with the Mayan prediction about the end of the world in 2012. All the while, a divorced everyman tries to save his nuclear family. This is an extremely formulaic disaster film, which is at least 30 minutes too long, but you're in for some spectacular destruction.

Yes Man
2008
***
Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, Bradley Cooper, John Michael Higgins, Terence Stamp, Rhys Darby, Danny Masterson, Fionnula Flanagan, Molly Sims, Sasha Alexander

Ever since his divorce, Carl has become a recluse who tends to say no to every invitation or suggestion. After attending a motivational seminar, he decides to say yes to everything from there onwards. This likeable but disposable Jim Carrey comedy offers a combination of Liar, Liar and Groundhog Day. Saying yes leads Carl to funny and awkward moments, but it also brings personal growth and a new relationship. Based on the memoir of Danny Wallace.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe
2008
**½
Director: Chris Carter
Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner, Mitch Pileggi, Callum Keith Rennie, Adam Godley

The second X-files film comes ten years after Fight the Future and six years after the television series wrapped up. Coming this late, the big screen spin-off should offer something spectacular, but this is sadly nothing more than a very ordinary episode stretched over 100 minutes. Mulder has a become recluse and Scully has delved into medicine, but they now agree to help their former employer to find a kidnapped federal agent. Their best clue is a psychic ex-priest/convicted pedophile, but are his visions to be trusted? The script reduces the supernatural elements to a minimum and ends up looking like an episode of Medium, or one of the formulaic serial killer movies from the recent years. During the course of events, Mulder and Scully get to rekindle their romance, but the sparks don't exactly fly. They share a scene in bed fully dressed, that's all.

The Wrestler
2008
***
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Mark Margolis, Todd Barry, Wass Stevens

In the 1980s, Mickey Rourke broke through as an explosive acting talent. After brilliant turns in films like Rumble Fish and Barfly, he was hailed as the new Brando. In the early 1990s, he was in the headlines more for his colourful private life than his films, which were all turkeys. He then decided to quit acting for boxing, which transformed his physical appearance. He reintroduced himself to the current generation in Sin City. In this tailor-made role, Rourke plays a veteran wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson, whose glory days were in the 1980s. The 1990s he would rather just forget entirely. In the present day, his body is falling apart and he's barely making ends meet, but he's still holding out for that big match which could bring a change in fortunes. It's obvious that this tough and gritty drama is as much about Randy as it is about Mickey Rourke, who is indeed brilliant here. He captures the physicality of the character, but more importantly he conveys Randy's vulnerability, which helps us to feel his regrets, disappointments, and fear of loneliness. Sadly the film is not as strong as Rourke's performance. It's at its best in the quieter moments when Randy tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, find companionship in an aging stripper, or work at the supermarket meat counter. The wrestling matches are even duller and more unpleasant than in real life, and the story on the whole plays out pretty much as expected.

Wanted
2008
*
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Cast: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Kretschmann, Terence Stamp

Wesley Gibson is a sad sack loser with a dead end job and relationship. One day he is approached by the Fraternity, an ancient secret society, to become one of their super assassins. If this sounds silly, wait until you see the loom of destiny, which reveals the assassins their hit targets through miswoven threads. This is an utterly unpleasant and sadistic action film, which is based on a comic book by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones, although it was seemingly scripted by a 15-year-old. There are no recognisable human beings in this story, and the only remotely likeable female character is a sexy assassin who kicks ass and keeps her mouth shut. The action scenes are flashy and well paced, but all the visuals are recycled from The Matrix.

WALL-E
2008
*****
Director: Andrew Stanton
Cast: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Sigourney Weaver,

In the 29th century, WALL-E, a lonely waste disposal robot, is tasked with cleaning up the deserted planet Earth. One day, WALL-E runs into a probe robot named EVE and ends up aboard a starliner with the remaining humans, who have turned into lazy and morbidly obese drones. Pixar Studios have often broken new ground in terms of storytelling and computer graphics, but this environmental animation is one their grimmest and boldest releases. The stunning and practically dialogue-free first half is unlike anything else out there. The second half in space is entertaining and thought-provoking in a different way, but perhaps not as original.










W.
2008
**
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn, Richard Dreyfuss, Toby Jones, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Scott Glenn, Bruce McGill, Jennifer Sipes, Noah Wyle, Ioan Gruffudd

This biopic of George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States of America, was released at the end of his second term. Oliver Stone is not a stranger to controversy but, unlike Nixon or JFK, this is a toothless drama which doesn't seem to have anything critical to say about one of the most contentious leaders in the country's history. Stone portrays Bush as a wide-eyed man of the people who just wants to earn his father's approval. The script skips most of the key events in his presidency (the controversial election win, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina) to concentrate on the weeks and months in 2002 and 2003 when his administration attempts to justify the upcoming War in Iraq. The other half depicts Dubya's aimless early years until one day he stops drinking and finds God. Josh Brolin avoids mimicry and gives a very strong lead performance, but the rest of the promising cast merely stand in for real-life people. Thandie Newton, who plays National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, has the most thankless role. She sits in the White House meetings in her odd-looking hair and puckered lips and says nothing meaningful during the two hours.

Vicky Christina Barcelona
2008
***½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson, Kevin Dunn, Chris Messina, Pablo Schreiber, Carrie Preston

After his three UK-set films, Woody Allen moves to Spain. He retains the services of Scarlett Johansson, who plays a carefree young woman who spends a summer in Barcelona with her more uptight best friend. Both of the ladies are in danger of falling in love with an enigmatic Spanish artist. Javier Bardem and the Oscar winning Penelope Cruz upstage the English speaking cast members in this enjoyable but disposable romantic comedy, which serves as a gorgeous tourist advert for Spain.

Vals im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir)
2008
****½
Director: Ari Folman
Cast:

Ari Folman's inventive and extremely powerful animated documentary deals with personal and collective guilt and suppressed memories. As a 19-year-old, he served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Lebanon War, but he has blocked out all the memories from this period in his life. A discussion with an old friend brings back a haunting vision of the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982. He goes out to talk to old friends, fellow soldiers and various other people to piece the puzzle together. Folman mixes old and new animation techniques to create the visuals, but the end result resembles Richard Linklater's rotoscoped Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. Similarly, the visual look is initially alienating - the talking heads in particular look oddly lifeless - but once the gripping narrative swept me along, everything else seemed secondary. The final shots resort to actual news footage for dramatic purposes.

Valkyrie
2008
***½
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Carice van Houten, Eddie Izzard, Terence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson, Christian Berkel, Thomas Kretschmann

Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is a wounded veteran of the North African Campaign, who has become disillusioned with Germany's future under the Nazi regime. In the following months, he becomes one of the key figures in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and stage a coup. Bryan Singer has turned these real-life events into a tight and entertaining but respectful thriller, which manages to be gripping even though we know how it ends. Tom Cruise is the only American in a cast of Englishmen and Germans, and he gives an intense but subdued performance.

Twilight
2008
***½
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Cam Gigandel

Bella, a reclusive teenage girl, moves to the Pacific Northwest and is immediately drawn to the enigmatic Edward, who happens to be a vampire. Stephenie Meyer's vampire romance novels have become a teenage phenomenon, and the first film in the series turns out to be a very entertaining and visually stunning romantic drama about teenage angst and abstinence. Followed by New Moon.

Tummien perhosten koti (The Home of Dark Butterflies)
2008
***
Director: Dome Karukoski
Cast: Tommi Korpela, Niilo Syväoja, Kristiina Halttu, Pertti Sveholm, Eero Milonoff

13-year-old Juhani, who is haunted by his tragic childhood, is sent to an isolated reformatory. The place is run by an idealistic educator who is struggling to convince the authorities to finance his outdated methods. This drama takes its time to get going and it's not always entirely believable, but it all leads to a satisfyingly moving climax. Based on Leena Lander's novel.

Tropic Thunder
2008
***½
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Jay Baruchel, Tom Cruise, Danny McBride, Brandon T. Jackson, Bill Hader, Nick Nolte

The director of an ambitious Vietnam War film drops his cast in the jungle and hopes to capture some gritty, award-worthy footage through hidden cameras. However, the oblivious stars end up in a real combat with the local drug dealers. Ben Stiller's outrageous Hollywood parody is bold and subversive but not always as funny or clever as it thinks it is. The performances are a mixed bag. While Robert Downey Jr. is fabulous as a method actor who always stays in character, Jack Black is rather exhausting as a gross-out comedy star with a drug addiction. Tom Cruise is almost unrecognisable in his amusing cameo.

Transsiberian
2008
**½
Director: Brad Anderson
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Kate Mara, Eduardo Noriega, Thomas Kretschmann, Ben Kingsley

Roy and Jessie are a do-gooder American couple who meet a mysterious Spaniard named Carlos and his quiet American girlfriend Abby on the Trans-Siberian train from Beijing to Moscow. Brad Anderson's thriller starts off like Bitter Moon; the two contrasting couples develop an odd relationship and the sexual tension increases between Jessie and Carlos. The script cleverly manipulates our expectations, and the twist about halfway in really comes as a surprise. This development should free the plot to go into unexpected territories, but instead it steers its towards clichés. In the second half, the film turns into an implausible morality tale, which becomes increasingly irritating. If only one third of Americans hold a passport, this xenophobic story is not going to convince the other two thirds to acquire one. The rude, corrupt, and deceitful foreigners are out there to exploit the American goodwill.

Taken
2008
***
Director: Pierre Morel
Cast: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Xander Berkeley, Katie Cassidy, Leland Orser, Olivier Rabourdin, Holly Valance, Jon Gries

"Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you", is the philosophy of a former CIA agent who reluctantly lets his 17-year-old daughter travel to perilous Europe. Before she has even unpacked her suitcase, the daughter is abducted by Albanian human traffickers and the father must track her down before it's too late. Pierre Morel's Euro-action film is morally bankrupt and astoundingly xenophobic, but way more gripping and enjoyable than it deserves to be. The hero is a combination of Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, and he doesn't bat an eyelash as he kills about a three dozen bad guys. The violence is brutal and quick, but Liam Neeson's charismatic presence helps you understand the father's fury and desperation. Followed by two sequels.

Synecdoche, New York
2008
***
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis, Tom Noonan, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Wiest, Michelle Williams

Charlie Kaufman became famous for his inventive and outlandish screenplays for films like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and his directorial debut is another mindbender. The wonderful Philip Seymour Hoffmann plays a hypochondriac theater director who wins the MacArthur Genius Award and decides to use the grant to stage something true and personal. The endless and ever-expanding production is about his own disappointing life and the inevitability of death. Kaufman's concept is insanely ambitious and full of brilliant notions about art imitating life and life imitating art. It includes sad, poignant, and hilarious moments. However, the film sags a bit in the second half, so perhaps Kaufman bites more than he can chew.

Standard Operating Procedure
2008
**½
Director: Errol Morris
Cast:

In the beginning of 2004, a number of photos leaked out, which depicted abuse, humiliation, and possible torture of Iraqi detainees by the U.S. military personnel in the Abu Ghraib prison. In this documentary, several of these male and female soldiers come forward to argue that they were only softening up the detainees for interrogation or merely posing for the pictures. We also hear the prosecution, who calmly went through the photographic evidence to determine whether a picture depicted crime or standard operating procedure. In the end, no one above the rank of Staff Sargent was ever prosecuted. The events in Abu Ghraib are horrific, but Errol Morris' approach seems misjudged. With The Thin Blue Line, he famously helped to absolve an innocent man. With a slight exaggeration, this time he appears to be on a mission to vindicate a handful of guilty ones by arguing that they were only following orders. Well, isn't that exactly what the Nazis said? To visualise his film, Morris uses a mix of the horrific photos, the usual talking heads and oddly over-dramatised footage shot by the Oscar winning cinematographer Ralph Richardson.

Speed Racer
2008
†
Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Cast: Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox, Benno Fürmann, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rain, Richard Roundtree, Scott Porter, Roger Allam

Speed Racer was born to be a racing car driver. Apart from nominative determinism, his parents run an independent racing team and his late older brother Rex was an ace behind the wheel. Now the young man is at a crossroads: should he stay loyal to his family or join a big corporate team. I thought the Wachowskis hit the bottom with The Matrix Revolutions, but there was still a long way to go. Their adaptation of Tatsuo Yoshida's manga series is an insanely long, stupid, and boring children's movie with a plot which is simultaneously childish and elaborate beyond comprehension. It was shot entirely against green screen. The candy-coloured world looks striking at first, but it wears out its welcome very quickly. The computer-generated racing scenes, in particular, lack any sense of gravity and look like a computer game. If the film was entertaining, I wouldn't mind that it is an odd tourist ad for Germany. Half of the cast is German, the main villain speaks the language out of character, and the winning racer picks up a trophy shaped like the Brandenburg Gate.


Slumdog Millionaire
2008
***
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Tanay Chheda, Irrfan Khan, Rubina Ali

18-year-old Jamal Malik is one question away from winning the top prize in India's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? How can a simple boy from the slums of Mumbai know all the answers? Question by question, we learn how he's acquired the knowledge through personal hardship, in chronological order, no less. Danny Boyle's surprise hit is a feelgood film in which everyone feels bad. The film is energetic and entertaining, but it offers an awkward mix of social realism and romantic fantasy. It's brutally frank and earnest in depicting the horrors of life in the gutter, but the story of Jamal, his love interest Latika, and his brother Salim has too many contrivances and coincidences to be plausible. Adapted from Vikas Swarup's novel Q & A. A winner of eight Oscars, which include best film, director, and adapted screenplay.

Sauna (Filth / Evil Rising)
2008
**½
Director: Antti-Jussi Annila
Cast: Ville Virtanen, Tommi Eronen, Viktor Klimenko, Rain Tolk, Kari Ketonen, Vilhelmiina Virkkunen, Taisto Reimaluoto, Ismo Kallio, Dick Idman, Kati Outinen

At the end of the Russo-Swedish War, the countries assign a commission to draw the new border. This group includes two Finnish brothers who are haunted by their war crimes. As they arrive in an eery village in the middle of the marshland, they are about to face (their) demons. A.J. Annila's second feature is a wonderfully atmospheric horror film. The beautiful and creepy imagery and David Lynchian soundscape create a powerful sense of dread. It's a shame Iiro Küttner's screenplay is a complete mess. At the outset, this seems like a classic tale of redemption - the titular sauna is a place for washing the sins away - but come the final third, the film doesn't even try to make sense. It's also unclear why this story needs to be set in 1595.

Role Models
2008
**
Director: David Wain
Cast: Seann William Scott, Paul Rudd, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bobb'e J. Thompson, Elizabeth Banks, Jane Lynch, Ken Jeong

After a series of unfortunate events, friends/colleagues Danny and Wheeler are sentenced to 150 hours of community service. They must serve it in a Big Brother-like programme where Danny is paired up with a LARPing-obsessed teenager and Wheeler with a foul-mouthed 10-year-old. Despite the promising premise, David Wain's comedy is frustratingly formulaic. The grown men predictably turn out to be the biggest kids in the scenario. When Rudd, Scott and Lynch play the same characters they always do, it does not exactly increase the freshness factor. In keeping with the current trend, the film's humour is predictably crude, and the jokes are extremely hit and miss. Mostly miss.

Revolutionary Road
2008
****
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Richard Easton, Jay O. Sanders, Kathryn Hahn, Kathy Bates

It's 1955 and April and Frank Wheeler are a well-to-do couple who feel they have resigned from life since they had children and settled into middle class mediocrity in the Connecticut suburbs. April devices a plan which allows them to move to Paris and reclaim their happiness, but reality inevitably intervenes. Sam Mendes' drama is powerful but it cannot quite do justice to the subtleties in Richard Yates' superb 1961 novel, especially in its depiction of the provocative truth-teller played by Michael Shannon or the breakdown of the marriage, which was built on romantic illusions. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, who are both excellent, reunite on screen eleven years after Titanic. Is this what would've eventually happened to Jack and Rose's fanciful romance had they both survived the iceberg?

Revanche
2008
***
Director: Götz Spielmann
Cast: Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Ursula Strauss, Hanno Pöschl

An ex-con wants to have a clean break with his prostitute girlfriend and decides to rob a bank. The plan goes horribly wrong and he's forced to hide at his grandfather's farm. This Austrian drama treads a familiar path, but it has a fresh spring in its step. The pace is slow and the protagonist is neither smart nor particularly likeable, but it is nicely unclear where the story is going to end up. However, you must suspend your disbelief in order to accept the massive coincidence at the centre of the story, which brings the two interlinked characters together.

Religulous
2008
**½
Director: Larry Charles
Cast:

Bill Maher, American comedian and TV personality, is vehemently against all religion. In this documentary, he travels to famous holy sites and religious theme parks to talk to various people in order to understand why billions of people across the world accept the imaginative scriptures without a hint of doubt. He mainly focuses on Christianity and its stories about talking snakes and God's son who was sent on Earth on a suicide mission. The film is often very funny, but Maher's interviewees are pretty easy targets. His goal is not to hear them out but to ridicule them. He doesn't even allow them to finish their sentences unless he agrees with them. This documentary entertains for 100 minutes, but it is not going to convert anyone.

The Reader
2008
**½
Director: Stephen Daldry
Cast: Kate Winslet, David Kross, Ralph Fiennes, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin, Hannah Herzsprung, Karoline Herfurth, Burghart Klaussner

In the late 1950s, a 15-year-old German boy begins a passionate affair with a secretive woman more than 20 years his senior. He reads her books and they make love, but one day she disappears without a trace. Their paths cross again a few years later when he's forced to face the painful truth about her. Bernhard Schlink's wonderful novel about national and personal guilt is faithfully adapted, but on screen the story seems somewhat trashy and trivial, and it doesn't have the expected emotional impact. There are also structural problems. After the dramatic second act, the entire last third of the film feels like an ending that never ends. However, Kate Winslet is once again very good in her Oscar winning performance.

Rachel Getting Married
2008
**½
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Anna Deavere Smith, Tunde Adebimpe, Debra Winger, Mather Zickel, Anisa George

A young addict leaves the rehab to attend her sister's wedding. In the few days that follow, Jonathan Demme's uneven film takes us through her troubled past and present. There are some dark secrets and ugly confrontations ahead, but it all ends on a predictably comforting note. The grainy and shaky camerawork gives us a voyeur's view to the family's dysfunction, although it's hardly an innovative way to instill realism. Demme's improvisational style feels fresh and vibrant, that is until he forces us to sit through an endless series of overemotional or merely embarrassing toasts at the rehearsal dinner, and a number of superfluous musical numbers at the actual nuptials. The characters on screen are very well played, but they deserve a collective slapping.

Quantum of Solace
2008
***
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini

Daniel Craig's second appearance as 007 continues straight from the end of Casino Royale with the same down to earth style: there are no gadgets, no campy jokes, and no "My name is Bond, James Bond". However, now that the surprise factor is gone, the film doesn't quite have the same impact. The end result is entertaining but a bit mechanical. Bond investigates an emerging omnipotent global crime syndicate Quantum, which is sponsoring a coup in Bolivia. The plot is a bit confusing at times, but the hyperrealistic action scenes follow one another at a relentless pace. The shortest release in the series doesn't outstay its welcome.

Precious
2008
****
Director: Lee Daniels
Cast: Gabourey Sidibe, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz, Sherri Shepherd, Nealla Gordon, Staphanie Andujaras

It's 1987 in Harlem, where Precious, an obese and reclusive 16-year-old, lives with her spiteful, abusive mother. She was raped by her absent father and is now pregnant with her second child. She's forced to transfer to an alternative school, but it turns out to be a blessing in disguise. This sounds like a perfect set-up for a formulaic overcoming-the-odds story, but this tough drama doesn't offer its protagonist an easy way out. All the hardship leads to a climax, which is emotionally charged but compellingly truthful. Geoffrey S. Fletcher earned an Oscar for adapting Sapphire's 1996 novel Push. The performances are excellent: Gabourey Sidibe is an aptly fragile Precious and Mo'Nique's Academy Award winning performance as the mother is frankly intimidating.

Pineapple Express
2008
*½
Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Seth Rogen, James Franco, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez, Craig Robinson, Amber Heard, Kevin Corrigan, Danny R. McBride

Another unfunny bromance from Judd Apatow's comedy conveyor belt. Seth Rogen plays a process server who is forced to go underground with his drug dealer/best friend when he witnesses a murder. If you've seen one Rogen performance, you've seen them all. Once again he plays the same chubby, pot-loving loudmouth loser, this time partnered with James Franco. The pot-heavy plot takes us back to Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke, but where that film was sweet, short and funny, this one is loud, long and crass.

The Other Boleyn Girl
2008
**
Director: Justin Chadwick
Cast: Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Jim Sturgess, Kristin Scott Thomas, Mark Rylance, Ana Torrent, David Morrissey, Eddie Redmayne, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Garfield

Knowing that Henry VIII is desperate for a male heir, Thomas Boleyn attempts to direct the King's attention towards his attractive daughter Anne. When it's the younger sister Mary who ends up in King's bed instead, Anne is not deterred. This adaptation of Philippa Gregory's novel distorts historical facts to create a Tudor-era soap opera. That's all good and well, if the story was entertaining and even modestly believable. The main problem is the characterisation. Anne Boleyn starts off as a strong-willed feminist heroine, but ultimately deserves everything that comes her way. King Henry VIII, who is famous for his six marriages, is portrayed as a balanced if slightly horny ruler.

Of Time and the City
2008
**½
Director: Terence Davies
Cast:

This muddled documentary about the transformation of Liverpool since WW2 is told through old pictures and archive film. The footage provides captivating snapshots of the times, and the soundtrack is selected with care. However, the director's ill-tempered and over-dramatic voice-over offers random ramblings but no thread to follow.

Nordwand (North Face)
2008
***½
Director: Philipp Stölzl
Cast: Benno Fürmann, Johanna Wokalek, Florian Lukas, Simon Schwarz, Georg Friedrich, Ulrich Tukur, Erwin Steinhauer, Branko Samarovski, Petra Morzé

By July 1936, no one has successfully climbed the north face of Eiger in the Swiss Alps. Two Bavarian climbers, Toni Kurz and Andi Hinterstoisser, are determined to be the first, but they have two Nazi-backed Austrians on their heels. However, the competition is quickly put aside when both teams face the wrath of the infamously hostile mountain. This tense German drama is based on a true story, but it is flourished with some fictional romantic elements. The scenes on the mountain are gripping, well acted, and wonderfully staged. The scenes on the ground are not as compelling.

Milk
2008
***
Director: Gus van Sant
Cast: Sean Penn, James Franco, Emile Hirsch, Diego Luna, Josh Brolin, Alison Pill

In 1977, Harvey Milk won a seat in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US. Less than a year later, he was brutally assassinated. This conventional biopic views him with dewy-eyed adulation and tells us everything we need to know about Harvey the activist, but almost nothing about Harvey the man. The result is an informative but not particularly involving drama. Sean Penn's commanding lead performance and Dustin Lance Black's screenplay won Oscars.

Me and Orson Welles
2008
**½
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Zac Efron, Christian McKay, Claire Danes, Ben Chaplin, James Tupper, Eddie Marsan, Leo Bill, Kelly Reilly, Zoe Kazan

Richard is a teenager who dreams of becoming an actor. In the fall of 1937, he somehow convinces Orson Welles to give him a bit part in the Mercury Theatre adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Richard is immediately attracted to the company's production assistant, and the next few days with Welles give him an eye-opening experience. Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock used an almost identical setting to paint a portrait of the times. Richard Linklater is happy to use this scenario for a conventional coming-of-age story. His sympathetic but pointless drama comedy takes a behind-the-scenes peek at this chaotic but groundbreaking production, but the resulting film is stagy and soaked in nostalgia. Christian McKay hardly passes for a 22-year-old, but otherwise he makes for a magnetic Welles, who is incidentally portrayed as a grandstanding egomaniac. Adapted from Robert Kaplow's novel, which is loosely based on the experiences of Arthur Anderson, a 15-year-old who played Lucius in the 1937 production.

Man on Wire
2008
***
Director: James Marsh
Cast:

In the early 1970s, a French high wire artist Philippe Petit had the world on the edge of their seat as he appeared unannounced at famous architectural landmarks to perform illegal walks. This entertaining but overelaborate documentary charts his most famous and daring stunt, the crossing of the Twin Towers in New York. The interviews and dramatised scenes show us how much planning and preparation went into the short walk, but the film doesn't have quite enough drama to keep you in its grips for all of its 90 minutes.

Mamma Mia!
2008
*
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Amanda Seyfried, Dominic Cooper, Cristine Baranski, Julie Walters

This screen adaptation of the immensely popular stage musical builds a bubbly and playful story around Abba's catchiest songs, and delivers one of the dullest films in recent memory. Meryl Streep plays Donna, a former hippie who runs a taverna on a Greek island, where she is about to host her daughter's wedding. The 20-year-old girl has secretly invited three of her mother's former lovers and hopes to discover which one of them is her father. If Donna had her promiscuous youth in the 1970s, this can't be set in 2008. Whichever year it is set in, the casting suggests that Donna and her three lovers had their wild youth in their mid-30s. The plotline doesn't make any sense mathematically, but that's a small complaint in this context. Phyllida Lloyd, who directed the original stage musical, makes an embarrasingly uncinematic film debut. She cannot put together one compelling static shot, let alone stage complicated, choreographed musical numbers. The cast is mouthwatering but their performances are cheesy, and if you thought these Abba songs were indestructible, wait until you hear the karaoke versions on offer here.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa / Madagascar 2
2008
****
Director: Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath
Cast: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Bernie Mac, Sherri Shepherd, Alec Baldwin, Elisa Gabrielli

The animals of the Central Park Zoo finally flee Madagascar for New York, but their makeshift plane crash-lands in Africa. There Alex the Lion is reunited with his parents, while Marty, Melman and Gloria meet members of their own respective species living in the wild. Madagascar was a likeable but rather formulaic animation. The sequel has a skeletal plot and it recycles the favourite bits from the original (for example, the song I Like to Move It), and yet it is more fun that the first one. The film adds more depth to the characters, and the results are often hilarious. Followed by Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted.

Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One in)
2008
***
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Cast: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, Karin Bergquist, Peter Carlberg, Ika Nord, Mikael Rahm

A dreamy and visually striking Swedish drama that mixes vampire mythology, coming-of-age elements, and teenage angst. In the early 80s, Oskar is a 12-year-old loner who is bullied in school. He lives with his mother in a wintery Stockholm suburb, where he befriends the mysterious Eli who has been 12 for a very long time. In their world, the adults are absolutely useless as parents, protectors, or blood providers, so they must look after each other. Alfredson creates some memorable set pieces and his film is consistently fresh, weird, and unpredictable, but the story doesn't really add up to much. Scripted by John Ajvide Lindqvist from his own novel. Remade in 2010 as Let Me in.

L'instinct de mort (Mesrin: Killer Instinct)
2008
****
Director: Jean-François Richet
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Ludivine Sagnier, Cécile De France, Gérard Depardieu, Gilles Lellouche, Roy Dupuis, Elena Anaya, Florence Thomassin, Abdelhafid Metalsi, Gilbert Sicotte, Michel Duchaussoy, Myriam Boyer

Jean-François Richet's ambitious two-part drama tells the story of Jacques Mesrin (1936-1979), a French criminal who became infamous on two continents in the 1960s and 1970s. He returns from the Algerian War a hardened man and immediately embarks on a life of crime, which includes murders, robberies and kidnappings. In the years that follow, he develops into a cocky and confident thug who is convinced that the cops will never catch him; and if they should, no prison is strong enough to hold him. This gritty and gripping biopic does not attempts to glamourise its hero. Mesrin is an unpleasant but charismatic brute, and wonderfully played by Vincent Cassel. Richet pulls the strings with great confidence and skips seemingly crucial parts of the gangster's life to achieve dynamism, occasionally at the expense of clarity and logic. The story continues in Mesrin: Public Enemy Number One.

L'Ennemi public no 1 (Mesrin: Public Enemy Number One)
2008
****
Director: Jean-François Richet
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Ludivine Sagnier, Michel Duchaussoy, Myriam Boyer, Mathieu Amalric, Gérard Lanvin, Samuel Le Bihan, Olivier Gourmet, Anne Consigny, Georges Wilson, Fanny Sidney

The follow-up to Mesrin: Killer Instinct covers the last six years of Jacques Mesrin's life. The story continues in 1973, when Mesrin is back in France, and even more full of swagger. Not only does he see himself as an honourable crook, but as a revolutionary, and as a man of the people. The French police see him as a sociopath who must be stopped at all cost. The second film is as gripping as the first one, but perhaps slightly too long. But Mesrin's outlandish criminal schemes and daring breakouts are irrestistibly entertaining, and Vincent Cassel is absolutely wonderful in the lead.

Jumper
2008
*
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane, Michael Rooker, Annasophia Robb, Max Thieriot

A teenage boy discovers that he can teleport himself anywhere in the world. Fast forward a few years and he's a smug playboy who exploits his skill to live the high life in New York City. By then the Paladins (the arch enemy of Jumpers) are onto him, which exposes his former high school sweetheart to danger. Doug Liman takes a gimmicky science fiction concept, a stupid and selfish hero, and a truckload of plot holes, and creates an infuriatingly dumb 80 minute chase scene. The incredibly wooden Hayden Christensen proves that his good work in Shattered Glass was an anomaly. Elsewhere in the film, Jamie Bell plays an annoyingly chatty British Jumper, Samuel L. Jackson phones in another bad guy performance, this time in a freakish white hair, and Diane Lane is completely wasted as the hero's mother. Very loosely based on Steven Gould's novel.

Journey to the Center of the Earth
2008
***
Director: Eric Brevig
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem, Seth Myers, Jean-Michel Paré, Jane Wheeler

Volcanologist Trevor Anderson discovers his brother Max's annotated copy of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. Max, who disappeared 10 years earlier, was convinced the book was not all fiction. Trevor and his estranged nephew follow the clues to Iceland, where they're in for the ride of their lives. The ensuing adventure is incredibly silly and fantastical but rather enjoyable. The movie is targeted at a younger audience, so the plot rarely gets in the way of the spectacle. However, the special effects are surprisingly poor for such a blockbuster. Followed by Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.

Jerichow
2008
**
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Benno Fürmann, Nina Hoss, Hilmi Sözer, André Hennicke, Claudia Geisler, Marie Gruber, Knut Berger

Since its publication in 1934, James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice has been adapted to the screen in France, Italy, Hungary and the U.S. Christian Petzold relocates the book to present-day northeastern Germany, where a young man returns from duty in Afghanistan. He lands a job as a driver for a German-Turkish fast food entrepreneur and becomes instantly attracted to the boss' young wife. Bob Rafelson's 1981 adaptation became synonymous with the primal sex scene on the kitchen table. Petzold's version drains this classic tale of lust and violence of any erotic charge or sense of danger. What's left is an uneventful drama about three uninteresting and underdeveloped characters, whose story leads to a bland shaggy dog ending.

JCVD
2008
**½
Director: Mabrouk El Mechri
Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, François Damiens, Zinedine Soualem, Karim Belkhadra, Jean-François Wolff, Anne Paulicevich, Saskia Flanders

Washed-up action star Jean-Claude Van Damme leaves the frying pan of Hollywood, where he is fighting for the custody of his daughter, and ends up in the fire back home in Brussels by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mabrouk El Mechri's metafictional crime comedy opens with a long and amusing tracking shot on a film set, and the 20-30 minutes that follow are rather enjoyable. JCVD makes fun of his public image. There is no sign of the tough and determined action hero, only a squeamish everyman who seems permanently out of his depth. However, the premise turns out to be far more interesting than the actual film. When Van Damme walks into a post office and turns from an innocent hostage to a suspected robber, this fresh and surprising twist sadly turns out be the whole rest of the story. The second half is slow-paced and tedious, and the monotony is broken only once when Van Damme addresses the camera in a long and unusual scene which is simultaneously moving and somewhat embarrassing.

Iron Man
2008
***½
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, Shaun Toub, Leslie Bibb, Faran Tahir

Marvel Cinematic Universe kicks off with the origin story of Iron Man. Tony Stark is a smug billionaire playboy/technical genius/arms manufacturer who is abducted by Afghan insurgents and forced to assemble one of his new super missiles. Instead he builds a suit of armour, which inspires him to work for good from there onwards. The first hour, when Stark develops, refines, and tries to get to grips with his Iron Man outfit, is thoroughly enjoyable. Then the villain copies the suit in five minutes, and the film becomes a more implausible superhero story, which rushes to a mechanical showdown. Robert Downey Jr. is a wonderful piece of casting, though. Followed by Iron Man 2.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
2008
***
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt

It's 1957 and Indy tries to return a crystal skull to the mystical city of Akator, with heavy opposition from the Soviets. The fourth Indy spent years in gestation as Spielberg, Ford, and George Lucas waited for a screenplay they were all happy with. And this was it? This is a moderately entertaining adventure, but it feels like one of the cheap rip-offs (such as The Mummy) that appeared during the franchise hiatus. 18 years should have been enough to freshen up the formula.

The Incredible Hulk
2008
**
Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, Tim Blake Nelson, Ty Burrell, William Hurt

Many people found Ang Lee's Hulk (2003) to be too clever or too silly. This superhero movie reboots the character for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and introduces a new leading man, although by the time Hulk reappears in The Avengers (2012) Edward Norton was replaced with Mark Ruffalo. This origin story is covered during the opening titles, and we find Bruce Banner hiding in Brazil, where he tries to avoid another rage attack and find a cure for his condition. Back home, General Ross wants to capture Hulk and harness his superhuman abilities to military use. Action hack Louis Leterrier delivers a nuts and bolts superhero action movie, which is as dumb as a bag of hammers. When the soldiers, scene after scene, shoot at Hulk with no discernible effect, military intelligence definitely seems like a contradiction in terms. In the meanwhile, Banner's love interest Betty Ross does her utmost to get in harm's way. Like Iron Man, another Marvel picture, the film ends with an overlong finale in which the hero fights an evil version of himself for 20-30 minutes.

In Bruges
2008
*½
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clemence Poesy, Jordan Prentice, Thekla Reuten, Jérémie Renier, Anna Madeley

After a botched job, two Irish hitmen are sent to Bruges in Belgium to lay low and wait for further instructions. Martin McDonagh's feature debut is a dark comedy, which is loved by many, but not me. I don't find the story or characters funny or believable for one moment. The older hitman is so warm and cuddly that I don't believe he could hurt a fly, and the younger one is an unpleasant and obnoxious hothead, which obviously makes him irresistible to a local girl. Once their boss, Ralph Fiennes giving his worst impression of cockney gangster clichés, arrives at the scene, the movie becomes laugh-out-loud stupid.

The Hurt Locker
2008
***½
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes

A story about three men who serve in a bomb disposal unit during the Iraq War. One of the men turns out to be a fearless adrenaline junkey who repeatedly puts his fellow soldiers in jeopardy. The film doesn't have much to say about war, other than that it's dangeorus business. Instead Bigelow has made a gripping thriller that is set in a war. Six Oscars include best film, best director and best screenplay.

Hunger
2008
**
Director: Steve McQueen
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Liam McMahon, Stuart Graham, Brian Milligan, Laine Megaw, Karen Hassan, Helen Madden, Des McAleer

In 1981, the incarcerated IRA members in the Maze prison demand to be treated as political prisoners, and their final attempt to gain attention is to go on a hunger strike. Bobby Sands, the first of the men, accepts that he will most likely die, and do so in vain. Award-winning video artist Steve McQueen makes his feature debut with this grotesque and masochistic real-life drama. The film does not condone terrorism, but it turns the perpetrators into martyrs, so what exactly is the difference? This is not a film you can easily shrug off and ignore, but it is definitely one of the least pleasurable watches I can remember. The nearly silent first 30 minutes depict the blanket/no wash protests. The naked prisoners paint the cell walls with their faeces and empty their bedpans on the floor. Inbetween, the guards brutalise them. The powerful 25-minute dialogue in the midsection between Sands and a Catholic priest is as close as McQueen comes to triggering an emotional response from me. The scene, which is shot in two long and static takes, lays down the motives for the horrific third act. The long and agonising last third falls back to silence as we watch the starving Sands wither away on the hospital bed. There is no question about Fassbender's physical dedication to his part, but I am not sure how much actual acting is involved.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
2008
**
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, John Hurt, Luke Goss, Anna Walton, Seth MacFarlane

Hellboy, Liz, and Abe Sapien are exposed to the world just as Prince Nuada returns from a long exile and aims to collect three pieces of a crown to reawaken and control the indestructible Golden Army. Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy was a poor comic book movie, and things don't improve in the sequel. Hellboy is still a likeable hero, although I don't undestand his powers even after two full features, but the villain is forgettable and the story is a whole lot of formulaic nonsense. The performances, apart from Perlman, are terrible. The franchise rebooted in 2019.

Happy-Go-Lucky
2008
***½
Director: Mike Leigh
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Samuel Roukin, Andrea Riseborough, Sinead Matthews, Caroline Martin

Poppy is an unceasingly positive 30-year-old schoolteacher who is forced to reassess her outlook on life when she starts taking driving lessons from a bigoted instructor full of bottled anger. Mike Leigh presents another subtle slice of British life full of wonderfully drawn characters, with the minimalist action firmly grounded in reality. Leigh cleverly plays with our preconceptions of the characters and the direction of the narrative. Poppy is an irritatingly bubbly person, but as we wait for her comeuppance, the story goes somewhere else. In the end, it is easy to agree with Poppy's view of the world. Sally Hawkins and Eddie Marsan give solid performances in the lead.


The Happening
2008
*½
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Betty Buckley, Ashlyn Sanchez, Spencer Breslin, Robert Bailey, Jr., Frank Collison

M. Night Shyamalan's disaster film has unsettling first five minutes, as a mysterious airborne neurotoxin makes people commit suicide in masses in the eastern seaboard. Following the shock start, a science teacher and his neurotic wife flee Philadelphia, but will they be safe anywhere? Who or what is behind these attacks? Shyamalan's reveal comes uncharacteristically early, but, oh boy, is it a silly one. Although the running time is nicely short, the screenplay is cluttered with side plots which serve no purpose. The wife frets about an innocent date she had with another man. The husband doesn't care one bit, so why should we? An old lady lives cut off from the world. She's creepy, unbalanced, and totally irrelevant to the story. The parts that matter, like the inexplicable wind that spreads the toxin are filed under things that cannot be explained. The plot machinery creaks when Shyamalan uses his exposition-heavy dialogue purely to set up the upcoming scenes. It is not a surprise that the performances are at par with the script. Mark Wahlberg acts with his frown lines, Deschanel with her wide eyes. The film is never exactly dull, I must admit, but it is unforgivably stupid and poorly conceived.

Hancock
2008
**½
Director: Peter Berg
Cast: Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, Eddie Marsan, Jae Head, David Mattey

John Hancock is an alcoholic hobo with superpowers. When his erratic and destructive heroics turn him into a pariah, a struggling PR guy decides to help him rebuild his image. This jumbled action film seems to make up its story as it goes along. It starts as a superhero parody and is at its best in the midsection. Then a plot twist turns it into something darker, but the big dramatic finale fails to make sense or impact.

Gran Torino
2008
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Christopher Carley, John Carroll Lynch, Doua Moua, Sonny Vue, Elvis Thao, Brian Haley, Brian Howe, Geraldine Hughes

Walt Kowalski is a recently widowed, grumpy old bigot who is at odds with everybody, be it his grown-up children, his next door neighbours, or the local Catholic priest. Walt worked at the Ford factory and fought in the Korean War, and in the recent times he has watched his white Detroit suburb turn into an ethnically mixed slum. The cherished 1972 Gran Torino in his garage symbolises the traditional American values. With his delightfully raw performance, Clint Eastwood manages to add some humanity to this racist and often unpleasant man. Walt's slurs made me wince and laugh, and the emotional climax left a lump in my throat, although the character ultimately comes across as a great white saviour.

Gomorra (Gomorrah)
2008
**
Director: Matteo Garrone
Cast: Toni Servillo, Gianfelice Imparato, Maria Nazionale, Salvatore Cantalupo, Gigio Morra, Salvatore Abruzzese, Marco Macor, Ciro Petrone, Carmine Paternoster

Roberto Saviani’s 2006 book charts the mechanics of the Camorra. Matteo Garrone’s gritty, award winning adaptation illustrates the crime organisation’s comprehensive stranglehold on the region around Naples, Italy. His intentions are commendable, but the film is a long and dull exposé which engages the mind but nothing else. Half a dozen main characters find themselves between a rock and a hard place, but they are either unsympathetic or uninteresting, and it’s impossible to feel sorry for any of them.

Ghost Town
2008
**½
Director: David Koepp
Cast: Ricky Gervais, Téa Leoni, Greg Kinnear, Billy Campbell, Kristen Wiig, Dana Ivey, Aasif Mandvi, Alan Ruck

A misanthropic English dentist wakes up from a botched medical procedure with the ability to see the ghosts of dead people. The new circumstances introduce him to a widowed Egyptologist, who begins to melt the man's cold exterior. Ricky Gervais makes for an unconventional romcom lead in his first Hollywood starring role. The part isn't much of a stretch for him, though, but he knows how to deliver a funny line. Greg Kinnear, on the other hand, is incredibly exhausting as the love interest's dead husband. This comedy has a sweet and amusing premise and likeable characters, but the script is mindnumbingly predictable. Will he get the girl? Will he help the ghosts to find peace? Will he become a better person? These questions are answered without a single surprise.

Get Smart
2008
**½
Director: Peter Segal
Cast: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Terry Crews, Bill Murray, Ryan Seacrest, Patrick Warburton, Blake Clark, Cedric Yarbrough, Vinicius Machado

When the identities of its field operatives are compromised, CONTROL must promote the bumbling Maxwell Smart from a data analyst to an agent and partner him with Agent 99 in an attempt to halt the plans of KAOS. Get Smart was an enjoyably silly TV series which ran from 1965 to 1970. This modern day adaptation is quite faithful, but the emphasis is on action rather than comedy. There are certainly some laughs, but the jokes come so infrequently that they almost seem out of place when they arrive. The resulting movie is likeable throughout, but not great at any point. The performances are good, though.

Gake no Ue no Ponyo (Ponyo)
2008
****½
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast: Tomoko Yamaguchi, Kazushige Nagashima, Yūki Amami, George Tokoro, Yuria Nara, Hiroki Doi, Rumi Hiiragi, Akiko Yano, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Tomoko Naraoka

Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli bring us another enchanting and unique 2D animation. This one tells a story of a 5-year-old boy Sōsuke, who lives by the coast where he befriends a small fish he names Ponyo. Ponyo wants to become a human, but her wizard father is against the idea. Once again Miyazaki intertwines reality and fantasy into an imaginative and unpredictable film, which leaves a warm and fuzzy feeling. Obviously it also looks fabulous. The script was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid.

Frost/Nixon
2008
***½
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Patty McCormack

Following the Watergate scandal, the American people wait for the resigned President Nixon to own up to his wrongdoings. To boost his public image, Nixon agrees to a lucrative and potentially soft televised interview with David Frost, a British playboy talk show host with poor journalistic credentials. Ron Howard's static drama takes some liberties with the truth to tell a captivating story of the months leading to the 1977 interview. Peter Morgan adapted his own 2006 play to the screen, and Frank Langella and Michael Sheen reprise their stage roles. Langella, in particular, is excellent. At first, his Nixon comes across as a one-dimensional, money-grubbing bigot, but the second half adds some layers to the character.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall
2008
**½
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Cast: Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Liz Cackowski, Da'Vone McDonald, Paul Rudd, Jack McBrayer, Maria Thayer

Peter takes a trip to Hawaii to get over a traumatic break-up, but ends up in the same resort with his ex and her new boyfriend. This is a very typical 21st century romantic comedy: the jokes revolve mostly around sex and the protagonist is a plain-looking loser who is somehow irresistible to two beautiful women, played by Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis. Jason Segel gives a likeable performance in the lead, but his script is too predictable.

Food, Inc.
2008
***
Director: Robert Kenner
Cast:

Robert Kenner lays out the cruel facts of modern day industrial food production. His film doesn't reveal anything particularly new, but it does leave you dumbstruck with the details of the large scale agribusiness in the U.S., which at its worst is harmful to humans, animals, and environment alike. Like Inside Job, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Capitalsim: A Love Story, this is another documentary which shows the U.S. regulators/legislators playing second fiddle to the big business.

Fireflies in the Garden
2008
**½
Director: Dennis Lee
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Julia Roberts, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hayden Panettiere, Ioan Gruffudd, Cayden Boyd

Dennis Lee's writing and directing debut is an amiable but frustratingly unoriginal story of a dysfunctional family. A troubled writer tries to get over a breakup and is about to publish a highly autobiographical novel, when his mother suddenly dies in a car crash. Through flashbacks we learn that she was just about perfect in every way, whereas his father is a bullying tyrant towards his son. This is a Hollywood drama with indie sensibilities. There are complicated issues, but they are wrapped in a neat happy ending. The film is awash with clichés, which reach their low point when the characters start watching old family videos that capture them at their happiest. The parts are well played but, apart from the protagonist, not properly fleshed out.

Eden Lake
2008
**½
Director: James Watkins
Cast: Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender, Jack O'Connell, Finn Atkins, James Gandhi, Thomas Turgoose, Bronson Webb, Shaun Dooley, Thomas Gill

James Watkins' directorial debut is a simple horror film which draws its influence from the likes of Lord of the Flies, Deliverance and Funny Games. A young couple drives to a remote lake for a romantic weekend. On their car radio, people discuss whether schools should take a more active role in raising the troubled individuals or if the kids should be left to their own devices. When the young lovers arrive in the location, a gang of preteen hoodlums turn their dreamy getaway into a survivalist nightmare. Watkins cannot resist the occasional moment of in-your-face gore, but for the most part this is a gripping and slow-burning thriller, which manages to illustrate the intimidating power of the mob. The cynical conclusion, however, makes the whole endeavour feel like a shaggy dog story.

The Duchess
2008
**½
Director: Saul Dibb
Cast: Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Hayley Atwell, Charlotte Rampling, Dominic Cooper, Max Bennett, Aidan McArdle, Simon McBurney

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, was a famous 18th century beauty, an active political campaigner, and an influential fashion icon. This lackluster biopic concentrates almost purely on her complicated love life. At the age of seventeen, she marries the Duke of Devonshire, but the dream marriage turns sour when she fails to produce a male heir. Georgiana becomes desperately unhappy, but (laying the path for her distant saintly descendant Lady Diana) she puts her children's happiness ahead of her own. This is a handsomely mounted soap, sadly not much more. The lavish costumes predictably won an Academy Award. Keira Knightley just about pulls off the demanding role, although she looks like she is sucking a lemon for 90 minutes. Ralph Fiennes is disappointingly one-note as the lethargic Duke, who takes no joy in anything.

Doubt
2008
**½
Director: John Patrick Shanley
Cast: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis, Joseph Foster

In 1964, Sister Aloysius, the rigid and old-fashioned principal of St. Nicholas Catholic school, becomes obsessively convinced that the compassionate and progressive Father Flynn has made advances on a black student. Sister James, the young nun who raises the initial suspicion, finds herself in the middle of the conflict. John Patrick Shanley adapted and directed his own Pulitzer Prize winning stage play Doubt: A Parable, which deals with guilt, doubt, and intolerance, among other things. The performances are good but the characters, for the most part, are disappointingly black and white, not to mention anachronistic. Especially Meryl Streep's head nun veers on caricature, although she's probably the only realistic character. The story introduces some ambiguity towards the end, but it's too little, too late. The film is relatively gripping, but it consists of long and stagy scenes, only one of which is truly memorable, namely the confrontation between Sister Aloysius and the boy's mother.

Defiance
2008
**½
Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, George MacKay, Alexa Davalos, Allan Corduner, Mark Feuerstein, Tomas Arana, Mia Wasikowska, Iben Hjejle

When the German troops march into eastern Poland (present-day Belarus) in August 1941, a group of Jews, led by the Bielski brothers, hide in the nearby forest. They set up a camp and form a Jewish partisan group, but the two eldest brothers eventually clash on whether they should kill as many Nazis or save as many lives as they can. By the end of the war, more than 1,200 refugees survived. Edward Zwick, the king of issuetainment, takes this incredible fact-based survival story, smooths out the rough edges of history, and creates a gripping and easy-to-digest depiction of heroism. Amidst the horrors of war and starvation, he finds time for some exciting action set pieces and sweet forest-bound romance. There's even a candle-lit bedroom scene in the dugout. In this world, the Germans speak German, the Russians speaks Russian, and the Jews speak English with a generic Eastern European accent. These numerous authenticity issues niggled at my enjoyment and raised some totally irrelevant questions, such as how come Daniel Craig looks so well-groomed after months in the woods? Based on Nechama Tec's book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
2008
****
Director: Kurt Kuenne
Cast:

In November 2001, medical resident Andrew Bagby was murdered in Latrobe, Pennsylvania by his ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner, who fled to St. John's, Newfoundland. The victim's parents were expecting a quick extradition, but they were in for a shock. Turner posted bail and was pregnant with their grandchild Zachary, who was born in July, 2002. Kurt Kuenne's film starts as a loving tribute to his close friend Andrew Bagby, but ends as a heartbreaking story of injustice. Apart from some questionable stylistic devices, this is a wonderful documentary.

The Dark Knight
2008
***½
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Legder, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman

The Caped Crusader attempts to phase himself out and allow Harvey Dent, the magnetic D.A., to take over the fight against crime, but a psychotic criminal known as Joker thwarts this plan in order to create chaos in Gotham City. Like the excellent Batman Begins, the dark and gritty second part of Christopher Nolan's trilogy includes strong performances, top-notch visual design, and gripping action scenes. However, this time I find the plot has too many contrivances and I fail to feel emotionally connected to the characters. The love triangle left me cold, and Joker, although deliciously played by the Oscar winning Heath Ledger, is a motiveless one-note villain. Academy Award winner for Best Sound Editing. The trilogy concludes in The Dark Knight Rises.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2008
**
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas, Tilda Swinton

Benjamin Button is born as an old man and he grows progressively younger. On his day of birth in 1918, he is abandoned on the steps of a New Orleans nursing home, where he later meets a bubbly girl named Daisy. Will these reversely aging souls ever be able to have a life together? In theory, Eric Roth adapted F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 short story, but in practice he has rehashed his own Forrest Gump screenplay. Benjamin is another simple Southerner who sleepwalks through the events of the 20th century. The hero ages backwards, and that's all there is to him. He does nothing with his life but still gets rich, which enables him to wallow in existential angst full-time. Brad Pitt's wooden (and in the latter scenes plastic) performance doesn't make the character any more interesting. The story could try and say something about life, love, and the passage of time, but it's happy being a conventional and massively overlong romantic melodrama with an unusual protagonist. The film is visually stunning, however, and it deservedly won Academy Awards for best art direction, makeup, and visual effects.

Cloverfield
2008
**½
Director: Matt Reeves
Cast: Michael Stahl-David, Odette Yustman, Jessica Lucas, Mike Vogel, T.J. Miller

This horror movie could be summed up as Blair Witch Godzilla. The US government has secured video footage of a young man's farewell party, which happened to coincide with a horrific monster attack on New York City. Just like The Blair Witch Project, the premise here sounds great, but the film doesn't live up to the hype. Both films have the same flaws: the characters are extremely uninteresting and, no matter what is going on, the guy behind the camera keeps shooting exciting footage. Followed by 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox.

Che Part Two
2008
**½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Franka Potente, Joaquim de Almeida, Lou Diamond Phillips, Rodrigo Santoro

By the mid-1960s, Che Guevara has left Cuba and vanished from the face of the earth. In 1966, he resurfaces in Bolivia to lead a disastrous coup which ends up costing his life. Revolution should be passionate business but, like in Che Part One, Soderbergh keeps the hero and his fellow revolutionaries at arm's length at all times. They sit and discuss, train, starve, fight, and become increasingly disillusioned or get killed, but I never get to know any of them well enough to care. By the end I can't even tell the hirsute guerrillas apart. However, it must be said that Benicio Del Toro's performance across the two films is very strong.

Che Part One
2008
**½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Demian Bichir, Kahlil Mendez, Rodrigo Santoro, Santiago Cabrera, Catalina Sandino Moreno

Since his death, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentinian doctor-turned-Marxist-revolutionary, has become a hero, a martyr and a symbol for his cause. This ambitious film is not your average Hollywood biopic which tries to compress 40 years of political and personal life into a neat two-hour package. The first part is framed with Che's speech at the UN in 1964 and it concentrates on his involvement in the Cuban Revolution from 1955 to 1958. And yet it feels like we learn nothing about him. Soderbergh's camera makes an accurate historical record but he doesn't attempt to analyse or understand the man behind the myth, which left me feeling detached. Followed by Che Part Two.

Changeling
2008
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Donovan, John Malkovich, Jason Butler Harner, Colm Feore, Michael Kelly, Gattlin Griffith

An incredible true slice of history about a single mother whose world falls apart when her son is abducted. The LAPD, who is in desperate need of good publicity, return a boy matching the description and consider the case closed, but when the lady insists that it's not her son, the authorities are prepared to silence her. Jolie is very good as this fragile but strong-willed woman, and so is Jason Butler Harner as an obnoxious killer who is linked to the case. The story has a few too many climaxes, but Eastwood skillfully juggles between the genres and shows once more what a wonderful storyteller he is when he's armed with a strong script. Los Angeles of the late 1920s is beautifully recreated with set decoration and digital effects.

Burn After Reading
2008
**½
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: John Malkovich, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins, Tilda Swinton, Elizabeth Marvel, David Rasche, J. K. Simmons

Two dimwits who work at a gym accidentally find a disk which contains potentially sensitive information written by an ex-CIA agent, but their clever-sounding moneymaking scheme doesn't go to plan. While the Coen brothers gained universal praise for the grim No Country for Old Men, their follow-up is an utterly disposable dark comedy. The cast looks great on paper, but many of the characters are mere caricatures, and some of the performances (Pitt and McDormand, first and foremost) are the worst of their career. The film lacks the sharp dialogue I've come to expect from the brothers, and their dark humour no longer has the element of surprise.

The Brothers Bloom
2008
*
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi, Maximilian Schell, Robbie Coltrane

The Bloom brothers have been con artists from an early age, but now the disenchanted younger brother wants out of the game. As their last job, he agrees to swindle a young and rich heiress, but his romantic feelings complicate the matters. The problem with most con movies is that while it's possible to enjoy a well-orchestrated sleight of hand, it's difficult to care about the duplicitous characters. The good ones (The Sting and House of Games) are gripping, entertaining, and surprising. The bad ones (Ocean's Twelve and The Spanish Prisoner) are lazy and self-indulgent. Rian Johnson's follow-up to Brick is another empty stylistic exercise. It begins as an irritatingly whimsical farce, which made me squirm rather than laugh. The somber second half, which concentrates on the elaborate scam and its repercussions, is boring and interminable. If there is one thing I've learned from all the con movies, it's that I shouldn't believe anything I see. However, Johnson takes this a bit too literally. His caper comedy is set in the real-world in the present day, and then again it's not. It includes people who have names like Bloom Bloom and Bang Bang, and it's set in a modern world where men wear fedoras, cross the Atlantic on a ship and travel across Europe by steam engine. And the actors playing the brothers, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo, are about as likely to come from the same parents as Danny De Vito and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Brideshead Revisited
2008
***
Director: Julian Jarrold
Cast: Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Hayley Atwell, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Greta Scacchi, Patrick Malahyde, Felicity Jones

Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel was most famously adapted to an 11-hour TV series in 1981. This film version strips down the complexities of the book to a simple romantic drama. The story starts in the 1920s, when Charles Ryder, an Oxford history student who wants to become a painter, becomes captivated with the company of Lord Sebastian Flyte, and falls in love with his sister Julia. As the years roll by, their relationship faces obstacles from Julia's devoutly Catholic family. As an adaptation, this is rushed, superficial and totally unnecessary. As a love story, it is too long but perfectly enjoyable.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
2008
**½
Director: Mark Herman
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, David Hayman, Rupert Friend

During WW2, Bruno and his family move from Berlin to the countryside, where his father takes a post as a concentration camp commandant. The 8-year-old Bruno, however, thinks they're living next to a farm whose eccentric inhabitants wear striped pyjamas. Eventually he forms a secret friendship through the fence with a boy his age. This well-intentioned and well-acted film attempts to make Holocaust digestible for children without shying away from the horrific facts. If only I could believe the events that lead to the tragic ending. It's impossible to accept the total innocence and naivety of the two boys, they should be well aware of the existence of evil at their age. Incidentally, the death camp portrayed in the film doesn't seem to have any guards, or prisoners for that matter. Adapted from a novel by John Boyne.

Body of Lies
2008
**½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani, Vince Colosimo, Oscar Isaac, Ali Suliman, Alon Aboutboul

Roger Ferris is a CIA field agent in Middle East who attempts to track down a wanted terrorist. As if operating in a fragile web of lies is not risky enough, his own boss in Langley keeps undermining him at every turn. The manhunt begins to take its toll on Ferris, especially when he witnesses the human price of his actions. Ridley Scott's spy thriller offers such a familiar mix of thought-provoking politics, entertaining action and implausible romance that it could have been credited to Edward Zwick. William Monahan's script is based on the novel by David Ignatius. In theory, it provides an interesting view to real-life intelligence work in the War on Terror. In practice, however, this is a long, workmanlike film which doesn't exactly set my pulse racing.

Blindness
2008
**½
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Cast: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover, Yoshino Kimura, Alice Braga, Don McKellar, Sandra Oh

A mysterious infection turns people blind in a blink of an eye. One woman is not affected, but she joins her husband in government quarantine. The infection, which initially seems like a contagious hysteria, first corrupts this microcosm of the society and eventually brings down the entire civilisation. This set-up is intriguing and rife with possibilities, but as soon as the self-appointed leader of Ward 3 pulls out a gun, things go downhill. As the events in the isolation unit turn increasingly lurid, the big themes of the film become decreasingly interesting. The story takes place in an unspecified city and country, and the characters remain nameless, which in reality would make communication extremely difficult in a group of blind people. The whole thing is obviously an allegory and the blindness is a metaphor for one thing or another, but this excessive metatextuality stifles the human drama. However, the performances are intense and Meirelles orchestrates this ambitious but flawed endeavour with a strong visual sense. Based on the novel by José Saramago, a Nobel Prize winning author from Portugal.

Be Kind Rewind
2008
**
Director: Michel Gondry
Cast: Jack Black, Mos Def, Melonie Diaz, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Arjay Smith, Quinton Aaron

Mr. Fletcher leaves Mike and Jerry in charge of his VHS rental store in a run-down building which faces demolition. When these two nimwits accidentally erase all the tapes, they are in a race against time to remake the lost movies. Ironically, their versions become cult items which could actually save the old man's store. The premise is cute but incredibly contrived, and although the film is sweet, it's frustratingly unfunny. The people of Passaic, New Jersey have either succumbed to nostalgia invented by Michel Gondry or they are some of the simplest folks on the planet. In any case, this sentimental fable wouldn't be plausible even if it was set in the heyday of video rental. Gondry is known for his visual imagination and love of old school in-camera effects, of which The Science of Sleep is a fine example. Mike and Jerry's reenactments of classics like Ghostbusters, Robocop and 2001: A Space Odyssey are inventively visualised but rarely amusing. The performances don't help either; Jack Black is irritatingly manic and Mos Def is simply wooden.


Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex)
2008
***
Director: Uli Edel
Cast: Moritz Bleibtreu, Martina Gedeck, Johanna Wokalek, Nadja Uhl, Simon Licht, Alexandra Maria Lara, Susanne Bormann, Bruno Ganz, Hans Werner Meyer, Stipe Erceg

Uli Edel's drama charts the history of the Baader-Meinhof Group from 1967 to 1977. In the late 1960s, Andreas Baader is a reckless criminal, his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin is a political anarchist, and Ulrike Meinhof is a left-leaning journalist. The events in Vietnam and in Germany lead them to form the Red Army Faction, a left-wing militant group which terrorises Germany in the years to come. Bernd Eichinger's no-nonsense screenplay is based on Stefan Aust's book. It builds a convincing backstory for the group's collective radicalisation but is not always as successful with the individual members. Although the performances are good, Baader doesn't develop beyond an aimless thug and Meinhof's transformation from a mother to a terrorist is not entirely convincing. The film also runs into some structural problems when the gripping action set pieces of the first half make way for an extended prison/trial finale.

Australia
2008
***
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, David Gulpilil, Brandon Walters

Nicole Kidman plays an uptight English lady who travels to a remote part of north Australia, only to find her absent husband murdered. Hugh Jackman plays a maverick drover who agrees to help the widow protect her farm from the local tycoon. They come from worlds apart but inevitably fall in love just as WW2 is about to expand to the Pacific. The narrator is a half-caste boy who grew up at the property. Like Rabbit-Proof Fence taught us, in those days the children of mixed race could be forcibly taken away by the authorities. Baz Luhrmann's romantic melodrama is frustratingly uneven. One moment it's funny and sweet like The African Queen, and the next it's as silly and cheesy as Pearl Harbor. The story is formulaic and the main villain, portrayed by David Wenham, is a one-note nasty who should have been written out of the script entirely. Luhrmann's visual flair is not in question, although the digital effects look surprisingly cheap. All things considered, however, this is still an oddly compelling and enjoyable epic. At 165 minutes, it never feels too long.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil
2008
****½
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Cast:

Anvil, a Canadian metal band, had their brief moment of fame in the early 80s. While some of their contemporaries became household names, Anvil sank into oblivion. We catch up with the band in 2006 when they play to empty rooms across Europe. The two original members, now in their 50s, work dead-end jobs but continue to dream about rock stardom. This excellent documentary combines hilarious comedy about a real life Spinal Tap with deeply moving depiction of aging, friendship and determination.

Anonyma – Eine Frau in Berlin (A Woman in Berlin)
2008
***
Director: Max Färberböck
Cast: Nina Hoss, Jewgeni Sidichin, Irm Hermann, Rüdiger Vogler, Ulrike Krumbiegel, Rolf Kanies, Jördis Triebel, Roman Gribkov

Berlin falls in the spring of 1945. After months of gruelling war, the Red Army take their wrath on the German women with wave after wave of brutal rapes. Nina Hoss plays a young woman who attempts to turn this horrific situation into her advantage. Her story is based on an autobiographical book, which caused a controversy upon its publication in 1959. The book dared to portray German women as morally bankrupt and willing to do anything to survive. Max Färberböck's adaptation is balanced, too balanced perhaps. The film is determined to portray these horrific war crimes, but it never lets you forget who started the war and who won it. The resulting drama is fascinating, but not as gripping and touching as I'd hope.

Adventureland
2008
***
Director: Greg Mottola
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Martin S, Margarita Levievatarr, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig

James, who made it through college a virgin, is forced to take a job in a shabby Pittsburgh amusement park. This turns out to be a blessing in disguise as he makes new friends and falls in love with his co-worker Emily. This likeable coming of age drama comedy has nice characterisation and perky performances, but most of its story elements feel recycled from earlier films. Greg Mottola's self-penned screenplay probably includes autobiographical elements since it's set in 1987 when he was the same age as James. Apart from putting all his old favourite tunes on the soundtrack, there is no point in setting the story in the past, especially when the period detail is virtually non-existent. The only person who looks authentically from the 1980s is Emily's stepmother, who wears a wig.

10,000 BC
2008
*½
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis, Joel Virgel, Affif Ben Badra, Mo Zinal, Nathanael Baring, Mona Hammond

In 10,000 BC, evil men on horses come over the Ural mountains to take Yagahli men, women and children as slaves. This group includes Evolet, the love interest of mammoth hunter D'Leh, who goes after the captors with a few other men. The pursuit takes them over the snowy mountains, through the jungle and across the burning desert to ancient Egypt in what seems like two days. Roland Emmerich's humourless but incredibly silly special effect spectacle takes great liberties not only with geography, but also with history and credibility. The plot, on the other hand, is lifted straight from Apocalypto. Emmerich employs varying qualities of CGI to create woolly mammoths, a sabre-toothed tiger, and nasty feathered beasts that look like gigantic dodos, but his human characters remain uninteresting throughout the dull adventure.

Zodiac
2007
****½
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, Donal Logue, John Carroll Lynch, Dermot Mulroney, Chloë Sevigny

A fascinating true crime film about the pursuit of Zodiac, a real life serial killer who wreaked terror from the late 60s to the early 80s. James Vanderbilt's script tells the story from two points of view, the detectives working on the case and the journalists reporting on the events. The film is enthralling and visually stunning, but it loses its grip a bit in the last third, not least because of its massive length. Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr are particular stand-outs in a strong cast. Based on Robert Graysmith's books.

You Kill Me
2007
*½
Director: John Dahl
Cast: Ben Kingsley, Téa Leoni, Luke Wilson, Dennis Farina, Philip Baker Hall, Bill Pullman, Marcus Thomas, Jayne Eastwood

Frank Falenczyk, an alcoholic contract killer for a Buffalo crime family, is sent away to sober up. In San Francisco, he attends AA meetings and works in a funeral home where he meets his soulmate. He has a chance for a fresh start, but what he really wants is to return to the work he knows and loves. John Dahl's dark comedy draws influence from various different sources (films like Fargo, The Matador and Grosse Pointe Blank, and the HBO show Six Feet Under), but its characters are bland and the resulting concoction is not edgy, funny or surprising enough.

La Vie En Rose
2007
***
Director: Olivier Dahan
Cast: Marion Cotillard, Gérard Depardieu, Sylvie Testud, Jean-Pierre Martins, Emmanuelle Seigner, Pascal Greggory, Catherine Allégret, Jean-Paul Ro as

The legendary French singer Edith Piaf rose from the Parisian slums to fame, but her taxing lifestyle took its toll at the age of 47. You could take the girl out of the gutter, but you couldn't take the gutter out of the girl. This unconventional biopic depicts her life more or less from birth to death, but it cuts back and forth to some of the defining moments in the diva's life. This storytelling technique is ultimately alienating and exhausting, not to mention confusing. What age is she at any given stage? Who are the people around her? Who is the dead child mentioned in passing? Was there such thing as World War 2? Olivier Dahan expects us to take certain aspects of her life for granted and be willing to ignore some blatant omissions. Marion Cotillard doesn't sing herself but she captures the character's physical frailty and volatile personality. It's a larger-than-life performance which predictably earned her an Oscar.

Transformers
2007
**
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Rachael Taylor, Anthony Anderson, John Turturro, Jon Voight, Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving

Transformers are shape-shifting robots from outer space. Since the destruction of their home planet Cybertron, the Autobots (the good ones) and the Decepticons (the bad ones) have pursued the AllSpark, and now they end up fighting for it on planet Earth. We're almost halfway to this long long film until the central plotline is actually laid out. The first hour is a goofy but unfunny comedy about a hapless teenager who comes to play a role in the latter part of the story. From the opening narration onwards, however, this world is just too silly. These gigantic scary robots threaten to destroy humanity, but don't seem to kill anyone with a speaking part. The more serious Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, sounds with his growled-out platitudes, the more I found myself laughing. Michael Bay stages a noisy, flashy and fetishistic action film with an incomprehensible climactic battle. As if Bay wasn't full of himself already, one of the cameo characters references his earlier "masterpiece", Armageddon. The characters are based on a toyline and they made their first appearance on screen in the 1980s in an animated film and television series. Followed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Towelhead / Nothing Is Private
2007
****
Director: Alan Ball
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Toni Collette, Maria Bello, Peter MacDissi, Summer Bishil, Matt Letscher, Chase Ellison, Eugene Jones, Lynn Collins

In his directorial debut Alan Ball, who wrote American Beauty, returns to the suburbs to tell a story of a 13-year-old Lebanese-American girl. Jasira is in the midst of puberty, self-discovery and sexual awakening, which she must try and balance with the expectations of her traditionalist single dad, black boyfriend, predatory neighbour and a do-gooder couple next door. Jasira is a provocative fusion of child and woman who makes some of the scenes very uncomfortable viewing. The story deals with controversial themes like racism, pedophilia and war, which Ball lightens up with some wickedly dark humour, much like Todd Solondz. But what exactly does his film say about human nature? The whole cast is great, but Peter MacDissi and Summer Bishil, as the father and daughter, are particular standouts. Based on Alicia Erian's novel.

There Will Be Blood
2007
*****
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier, Kevin J. O'Connor, Ciarán Hinds, Russell Harvard, Dillon Freasier, Colleen Foy, Sydney McCallister

Daniel Plainview is a persuasive oil man who vows to bring prosperity to the community that develops around his oil derricks in the turn of the century. Only gradually do we come to understand his twisted view on money, power, God, his adopted son, and humanity as a whole. Paul Thomas Anderson has created a majestic movie about a monster of a man. His uncompromising epic pits religion and capitalism, two forces that have shaped America, against each other with powerful results. The story was inspired by Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!. Daniel Day-Lewis does not merely act, he creates a complete character to the tiniest detail, be it the hunched walk or the John Huston-like tone of his voice. If he redefines acting, Jonny Greenwood does the same to the soundtrack, which is unusual but hypnotic. Day-Lewis and cinematographer Robert Elswit won deserved Academy Awards.

Then She Found Me
2007
*½
Director: Helen Hunt
Cast: Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick, Ben Shenkman, Salman Rushdie, John Benjamin Hickey

Helen Hunt makes her directing debut with a sluggish and instantly forgettable romantic drama, which was adapted from Elinor Lipman's novel. She plays April, a 39-year-old teacher and an adopted Jew, who is desperate to conceive a baby before her biological clock runs out. Just then her husband decides to walk away from the marriage. To complicate things even further, her birth mother contacts her out of the blue. Hunt's attention seems to have been entirely behind the camera, because she gives one of the worst performances of her career. Throughout the film, April looks like she is suffering from a mix of dementia and indigestion. Bette Midler as the pushy and chatty mother, Colin Firth as the too-good-to-be-true single dad cum love interest and Matthew Broderick as the good-for-nothing ex-husband fare slightly better, but only because they are all typecast. Hunt attempts to lighten up the dreary story with some badly needed humour, but her comic timing is badly off.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
2007
***
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Ed Sanders, Jamie Campbell Bower

Tim Burton brings Stephen Sondheim's gothic stage musical to the screen. It's a story of a barber who returns to Victorian London to seek revenge on a sinister judge who locked him away for 15 years. The stylised visuals, the sung dialogue and the cartoonish violence strip any sense of realism from the proceedings and the characters. What remains is an entertaining and beautifully designed but instantly forgettable freak show. Sondheim's lyrics are amusing but his tunes aren't very memorable.

Superbad
2007
**
Director: Greg Mottola
Cast: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader, Emma Stone, Martha MacIsaac, Aviva Baumann, Joe Lo Truglio, Kevin Corrigan

Seth, Evan, and Fogell, three highly uncool high school seniors, hope to score with the girls by bringing alcohol to a party, but nothing goes to plan. The screenwriting debut of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg lays down the formula they have used in their subsequent scripts, such as Pineapple Express and Sausage Party. This, like most of their movies, features immature, foul-mouthed, misogynistic, and sex and drugs-obsessed characters, who come to regret their actions latest by the sentimental ending. This overrated comedy features a few funny moments, but do these type of people actually exist in real life?

Sunshine
2007
*½
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Chipo Chung, Mark Strong

Danny Boyle claims he was influenced by thinking man's science fiction like Alien, Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey, but his dreadful film is closer to the dumb action and hokey science of Armageddon, The Core and Event Horizon. In 2057 the Earth is engulfed in a permanent solar winter, but Icarus II is on its way to detonate a payload of explosives which will hopefully reignite the dying star. The crew begins to grow fractious as they approach the sun and receive a distress signal from Icarus I which disappeared seven years earlier. Alex Garland's screenplay doesn't take any time to explain the mechanics of the ship or the dynamics of its crew. One moment the physicist played by Cillian Murphy is sent out on a potentially lethal mission to fix the shield, a moment later he's indispensable (what is the contingency plan?). It's difficult to care about these eight bickering bores, let alone the rest of humanity back on Earth. Boyle does his best to make everything as incomprehensible as possible. The first two thirds are merely dull and confusing, but come the final 30 minutes you're lucky if you can figure out what's what, who's who, who's where, what's happening or why you're still watching? As a final note, the one chord sound effects are extremely irritating, or perhaps that's part of the soundtrack by Underworld.

Suden vuosi (The Year of the Wolf)
2007
**
Director: Olli Saarela
Cast: Kari Heiskanen, Krista Kosonen, Kai Vaine, Aksa Korttila, Ville Virtanen

This film based on Virpi Hämeen-Anttila's popular novel seems like a modern day adaptation of an 18th century novel that was not brought up-to-date. It tells a story of a brilliant (but epileptic) female student who finds a soulmate in an older lecturer whose personal life has fallen apart. They start as roommates but slowly fall in love. This "shameful" relationship is frowned upon by the academic circles and the family members alike, and the heroine's epilepsy is treated like it's a curse from God. Olli Saarela puts beautiful images on the screen, but slowmo jogging and beautifully lit shower scenes are ultimately irrelevant.

Stardust
2007
**½
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Ricky Gervais, Jason Flemyng, Rupert Everett, Peter O'Toole, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro

Like his father 18 years earlier, Tristan crosses the forbidden wall to the magic kingdom of Stormhold to retrieve a fallen star, which has taken the shape of a girl. At the same time the sons of the dead king want the star to determine who inherits the throne, and a trio of witches need it to restore their youth. This romantic fantasy from Neil Gaiman's novel is lighthearted, charming and silly (Robert De Niro plays a cross-dressing sky pirate?). Its characters are well-drawn and the central performances are likeable. However, as I've recently been to Middle-earth, Narnia and Hogwarts, Gaiman's adventure in Stormhold cannot offer a shred of originality.

Spider-Man 3
2007
**½
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, J.K. Simmons, James Cromwell

The third film has a little too much of everything. Apart from three new villains (New Goblin, Sandman and Venom) Spider-Man and Peter Parker become their own worst enemies when a symbiote from outer space gives a boost to their dark sides. The characters are well drawn and played, as always, but the action scenes sadly return to what they were in the first part, that is, fast-paced computer animation without any sense of gravity. However, there are some enjoyable moments in this long and sprawling comic book movie which once again ends with the same damsel in distress.

Son of Rambow
2007
***
Director: Garth Jennings
Cast: Bill Milner, Will Poulter, Jules Sitruk, Jessica Hynes, Neil Dudgeon, Anna Wing, Ed Westwick, Eric Sykes

While the quiet Will has grown up in a religious sect with his imagination intact, the fearless Lee has practically raised himself. Inspired by Sylvester Stallone's First Blood, these two fatherless misfits set out to make their own film, Son of Rambow. Garth Jennings' enjoyable comedy drama mixes the wonderment of childhood with the magic of moviemaking. It's a social realist feelgood film, much like Billy Elliott: funny and moving, implausible and neatly wrapped up. The story is sprinkled with quirks and amusing 1980s period details.

The Simpsons Movie
2007
***
Director: David Silverman
Cast: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Yeardley Smith

After more than 15 years of brilliant TV comedy The Simpsons make their debut on the big screen. Now Homer screws up on a Grand scale - he causes an environmental catastrophe and the town of Springfield is sealed under a dome. The film is funny, witty and subversive as expected, but the whole is sadly not more than a very average episode stretched over 80 minutes.

Sicko
2007
****
Director: Michael Moore
Cast:

Michael Moore's documentary highlights the sorry state of the U.S. healthcare system. He argues that some 50 million Americans can't afford a health insurance, and the ones that can are at the mercy of HMOs (health maintenance organizations) who aim to maximise profits at all cost. A number of people come forward to tell their horror stories which have led to financial bankruptcy or, in the worst case, death. Moore compares the American system to the free universal healthcare available in the UK, Canada, France, and Cuba, but only as far as it suits his argument. He has never been a very evenhanded documentarian, but his cause is just and his film is informative and very entertaining.

Sè, jiè (Lust, Caution)
2007
****
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Tang Wei, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Joan Chen, Leehorn Wang, Tou Chung-Hua, Chin Kar-lok, Chu Chih-Ying

It's 1938 in Hong Kong, and a group of patriotic students devise a plan to assassinate a police chief who collaborates with the occupying Japanese. Young Chia Chi is to seduce and lead Mr. Yee into a trap, but when she gets close to him, her allegiances start to blur. This sounds like a rather obvious set-up for a romantic spy drama, but Ang Lee is the master of unspoken emotions (even if the film is most famous for the graphic sex scenes). The courtship is subtle and restrained, and when the lust finally kicks in, the true emotions remain in the dark. The period is beautifully captured, but we never fully understand what the occupying forces and the collaborators are up to. This personal and historical ambiguity keeps you intrigued but leaves you slightly frustrated. Nevertheless, Tang Wei and Tony Leung are excellent as the two ambivalent lovers. Based on Eileen Chang's novella.

The Savages
2007
**½
Director: Tamara Jenkins
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney, Philip Bosco, Peter Friedman, Guy Boyd, Debra Monk, Rosemary Murphy, David Zayas, Gbenga Akinnagbe

Jon Savage is a self-important academic and his sister Wendy is a flaky wannabe playwright who is in an affair with a married man. Now these estranged siblings must arrange care for their dementia-stricken father. Tamara Jenkins' family drama follows in the footsteps of Sarah Polley's Azlheimer's story Away from Her. This one is less about the patient and his deteriorating health and more about the self-absorbed family members. However, the story would have a far greater impact if Jon and Wendy had actual lives that were disrupted by the new circumstances. All in all, they come off too lightly, both emotionally and financially. The resulting film is sympathetic and well acted, but never terribly moving (or funny). It concludes with a baffling and totally irrelevant coda set six months later.

Rendition
2007
***
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin, Meryl Streep, Omar Metwally, J.K. Simmons, Zineb Oukach, Moa Khouas, Yigal Naor

Extraordinary rendition refers to the abduction and transport of terrorist suspects to countries which condone torture. After a suicide bombing kills a CIA agent in North Africa, the U.S. authorities render an Egyptian-born chemical engineer on flimsy evidence, while his pregnant American wife tries to locate him. A young CIA analyst suffers a crisis of conscience as he observes the brutal interrogation by the local police chief, whose own daughter has gone missing. This entertaining political drama provides Hollywood moviemaking at its most frustrating. The film takes a contentious, complex topic and over-simplifies and trivialises the issue to make it digestible. It also tells a shockingly believable personal story but gives it a sugarcoated ending. The cast is great, though.

Redacted
2007
***½
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Ty Jones, Kel O'Neill, Daniel Stewart Sherman, Izzy Diaz, Rob Devaney, Patrick Carroll, Mike Figueroa, Happy Anderson

Brian De Palma's daring and provocative war drama revolves around a handful of U.S. soldiers who man a checkpoint in Iraq. When one of them dies in an IED blast, it drives few of the disheartened men off the edge to carry out a horrible act of retribution. The film is heavily anti-war, and it doesn't portray the U.S. Army or the servicemen in a very favourable light. Some of the men in the unit are semi-illiterate thugs who seem to be in Iraq just to avoid prison time. The story is told through a variety of modern media: one soldier's video diary, another one's wife's online blog, CCTV and TV news footage, clips from a fictional French documentary, and Internet videos posted by the insurgents. This innovative approach sounds gimmicky but it isn't, mainly because the captivating narrative didn't allow me time to pay attention to it. The script is loosely based on a real event. De Palma's Casualties of War (1989) took place in Vietnam but dealt with exactly the same topic.

Ratatouille
2007
*****
Director: Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava
Cast: Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Janeane Garofalo, Brian Dennehy, Brad Garrett, Peter O'Toole, Brian Dennehy, Peter Sohn, Will Arnett

While his family is perfectly happy to eat rubbish, Remy the rat has a highly developed taste and he wants to become a chef in Paris. A happy coincidence allows him to attempt just that. Brad Bird and Pixar have turned this wacky premise into a highly entertaining and visually stunning animation. Like Bird's previous film, The Incredibles, this is quite long, but so much smarter and sweeter than most of Pixar's more formulaic output. Patton Oswalt gives a terrific voice performance as Remy. An Academy Award winner for best animated feature.

Planet Terror
2007
**
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Bruce Willis, Naveen Andrews, Stacy Ferguson, Nicky Katt, Electra Avellan, Elise Avellan

Robert Rodriguez's campy zombie movie was originally the first half of the Grindhouse double bill, and it's certainly more fun than Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino's mindnumbing half. The story is set in Texas where a biochemical agent turns the local people into deformed monsters. The group of survivors who fight for their lives includes a cheating anesthesiologist who gets a taste of her own medicine, a chef who is secretive about his BBQ sauce, a lethal one-legged stripper and her ex-boyfriend El Wray, a mysterious badass. The plot is over-convoluted and totally irrelevant in the same breath. The main focus is on blood, puss and snappy oneliners, of which there are plenty. In tribute to the original exploitation flicks, the "negative" has scratches, jumps, burns and a missing reel. All of this is cute and self-consciously clever, but at 105 minutes a deliberately cheesy and awful homage slowly wears you down and becomes just a cheesy and awful movie. Rodriguez turned the opening fake trailer for Machete into a full feature in 2010.


Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
2007
*
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, Chow Yun-Fat

This massively successful franchise started as a sympathetic pirate movie with some fresh supernatural elements. By the third film it has become a shapeless three-hour special effect behemoth that features some pirates. All fun and any sense of realism have been drained out of this beast now that Jack, Will, Elizabeth, Barbossa, Davy Jones and the East India Trading Company have their final confrontation. The once loveable characters have turned into slimy turncoats who change sides faster than you can say "Arr!". If you can keep track whose side or whose boat they're on at any given time, and you understand why they're there, you have my highest respect. The whole thing is incredibly plot-heavy for a film without any narrative. Followed by On Stranger Tides in 2011.

Persepolis
2007
****½
Director: Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi
Cast: Chiare Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian

A black and white animation based on Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel. As a young girl growing up in Tehran, she witnesses the Shah's brutal suppression of any opposition. The optimism fuelled by the Islamic revolution in 1979 is short-lived, as it merely introduces another form of totalitarianism. With her warmly drawn characters Satrapi creates a funny and moving personal story, and a shocking history lesson.

Paranormal Activity
2007
****
Director: Oren Peli
Cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat

Katie has been haunted by a paranormal spirit since she was a small girl, and now her boyfriend Micah is determined to catch it on camera. This short but unsettling low budget horror movie is based on allegedly found footage. This gimmick was pioneered by The Blair Witch Project, which featured three unpleasant individuals who deserved everything they got, and it was never believable that the trio would shoot material through their ordeal. Oren Peli's film has equally grating characters but he solves the credibility problem by setting the story entirely inside the couple's home, and actually produces the creepiest scares by placing the camera on a tripod in the bedroom. All in all, Peli manages to create some incredibly tense moments with minimal action.

No Country for Old Men
2007
***½
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Tess Harper, Stephen Root, Barry Corbin

In 1980, a Texas man discovers a satchel full of cash at the site of a drug deal shootout, and decides to keep it. When a coldblooded hitman in search of the money leaves a trail of bodies in his wake, a disillusioned sheriff tries to make sense of it all. After Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, two disappointing comedies they didn't script themselves, the Coen brothers continue by adapting Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel for their most earnest and celebrated work. Is this a commentary on senseless violence or just self-important entertainment? The sheriff is convinced that the country is going to hell in a handbasket, but the bloodshed on screen is mostly the work of one unhinged individual. Nevertheless, this is a great-looking and well-acted film, which builds its tension slowly, but the three underwhelming anti-climaxes in the final 30 minutes left me disappointed. Javier Bardem plays the hitman as a completely emotionless and expressionless psychopath, and I'm slightly baffled by the praise and Oscar he received for his performance. The Coens won Academy Awards for writing, directing, and producing.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets
2007
**½
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Ed Harris, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Bruce Greenwood, Helen Mirren

The sequel to National Treasure sees its goofy hero Benjamin Gates go on another treasure hunt when his family's good name is called into question. The search for a city of gold takes Gates and his partners to three capitals, and it naturally includes dodgy historical details and some utterly pointless chase scenes. Everything seems more or less familiar from the first movie, but it's not entirely without charm.

Musta jää (Black Ice)
2007
****
Director: Petri Kotwica
Cast: Outi Mäenpää, Ria Kataja, Martti Suosalo, Sara Paavolainen, Ville Virtanen

This slick, entertaining and well written Finnish jealousy drama could take place anywhere in the western world. It tells a story of a woman who discovers her husband's infidelity and decides to befriend the mistress. The female stars shine in a uniformly strong cast.

Mr. Brooks
2007
**
Director: Bruce A. Evans
Cast: Kevin Costner, Dane Cook, Demi Moore, Marg Helgenberger, William Hurt, Danielle Panabaker, Jason Lewis

Earl Brooks is a wealthy industrialist, a faithful husband, a loving father, and a meticulous serial killer who is driven by his insatiable addiction. Now Earl is hit by a triple whammy. His daughter may have inherited the addictive gene, and he's being blackmailed by a Peeping Tom and pursued by a persistent female detective/millionaire heiress who tries to divorce her gold-digging husband and catch another murdering psychopath. This silly and stupid thriller has two serial killers (with catchy nicknames Thumbprint Killer and Hangman), two young apprentices, and a number of irrelevant and implausible subplots which make the whole thing move like a steam roller. The film could be interesting if it concentrated solely on Mr. Brooks and didn't take itself so bloody seriously. Then again, the TV show Dexter did exactly that. As for the performances, Kevin Costner underplays Earl and William Hurt overplays Marshall, his split personality.

The Mist
2007
***
Director: Frank Darabont
Cast: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Jeffrey DeMunn, Andre Braugher, Toby Jones, William Sadler, Frances Sternhagen, Nathan Gamble

Following a storm, an ominous mist settles over a small Maine town. An artist, his 8-year-old son and other local residents are holed up in a grocery store where the group hopes to stay safe from the dangers lurking outside. Frank Darabont's third Stephen King adaptation feels like a cross between The Fog and Starship Troopers. The set-up is not original but it provides a nice platform for a study on group dynamics, religious hysteria and paranoia. This scary movie loses some of its initial impact when the unknown dread materialises as gigantic creepy-crawlies, but it alternates nicely between psychological thrills and full-blooded gore, and offers one of the grimmest endings in living memory.

A Mighty Heart
2007
***
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Will Patton, Archie Panjabi, Irfan Khan, Gary Wilmes, Denis O'Hare

In 2002 a Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi by Islamist militants. In the following ten days the Pakistani authorities, American diplomats and journalists, and the victim's heavily pregnant wife Mariane were in a race against time to find him. Michael Winterbottom turns her memoir into a gripping geopolitical crime drama, but his film is not equally effective as a portrayal of personal tragedy. The title refers to Mariane's bravery in the face of hardship, but, as portrayed by Angelina Jolie, she remains oddly calm and composed through her ordeal. And so did I.

Miehen työ (A Man's Work)
2007
****
Director: Aleksi Salmenperä
Cast: Tommi Korpela, Jani Volanen, Marja Heiskanen, Sara Paavolainen

An unemployed factory worker becomes a male prostitute in order to support his family, which includes a wife who suffers from depression. Sounds like perfect material for another miserablist Finnish film, but this terrific drama steers away from clichés and offers wonderful black humour to soften the dramatic blows. The last line is one of the best since Some Like It Hot.

Michael Clayton
2007
****
Director: Tony Gilroy
Cast: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Sydney Pollack, Sean Cullen

Screenwriter Tony Gilroy's directorial debut is a tense, atmospheric and finely nuanced drama about a middle-aged man whose life has been a series of disappointments. He's a lawyer who's stuck doing the dirty work for the firm. Now he must try and reign in one of the senior partners who's about to jeopardise a multi-million dollar class action suit. Tilda Swinton won an Oscar for her supporting performance, but the cast is uniformly strong.

Meet the Robinsons
2007
**
Director: Steve Anderson
Cast: Jordan Fry, Wesley Singerman, Harland Williams, Tom Kenny, Steve Anderson, Angela Bassett, Laurie Metcalf, Adam West, Tom Selleck, Nicole Sullivan

The 13-year-old Lewis is an orphan boy who waits to be adopted to a real family. Lewis is also an avid inventor who is swooped from the school's science fair to a time travel adventure. This disappointing Disney animation is loosely based on William Joyce's children's book A Day with Wilbur Robinson. The first half is an awful mess. The plot is confusing even for grown-ups and the characters are poorly defined. One moment the hero builds silly contraptions, the next he's a scientific genius whose latest invention is of great interest to the baffling bowler hat villain. However, it takes about an hour before we understand why. In the future, Lewis meets the family Robinson whose eccentric members are borderline creepy. And then there are the bloody singing frogs. When the twists in the space time continuum begin to add up and make sense, things improve massively, but it's too little, too late.

Margot at the Wedding
2007
***½
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, John Turturro, Ciarán Hinds, Halley Feiffer, Zane Pais, Seth Barrish, Michael Cullen

Margot travels to her sister Pauline's wedding with her 11-year-old son. The sisters have a brittle relationship, and things are not about to take a turn for the better once the outspoken Margot lays her eyes on Pauline's shiftless fiancé. Noah Baumbach's follow-up to The Squid and the Whale is another relaxed and enjoyable comedy drama about fragile family relations. Margot and her son Claude could be the writer mother and teenage son from the 2005 film. That was a brilliant depiction of the effects of divorce; this one is less clearly about something. These characters are not easy to like but they feel real. The plotting is minimal if not non-existent (the family gets together and things come to a head), but Baumbach writes excellent dialogue.

The Lookout
2007
***½
Director: Scott Frank
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher, Bruce McGill, Alberta Watson, Alex Borstein, Sergio Di Zio

An engrossing Memento-meets-Fargo drama about a young hotshot who becomes a nobody overnight when a horrid car crash leaves his memory in tatters. His vulnerable condition and his nighttime job in a local bank make him an attractive target for a group of shady characters. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives a wonderfully subtle performance as the absent-minded hero and Jeff Daniels is once again terrific as his sharp-tongued blind roommate, and only friend. Towards the end the story introduces some conventional crime caper elements and a somewhat romantic subplot, but, on the whole, screenwriter Scott Frank's directorial debut is a rather enjoyable film.

Lions for Lambs
2007
***
Director: Robert Redford
Cast: Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Andrew Garfield, Michael Peña, Derek Luke, Peter Berg

Two simultaneous conversations take place in this very talky film. A college professor tries to engage his talented but increasingly apathetic student, while a Senator briefs a veteran journalist about the new military strategy in Afghanistan which has just put the teacher's two former students in jeopardy. There's solid acting and two hours worth of sharp dialogue in 90 minutes, but it's unclear what this middle-of-the-road political drama wants to tell us. It gives us an academic who tries to activate his students to make a difference, but then shows us the ensuing tragedy. It criticises the country's militant foreign policy, but then tries to make our eyes swell with patriotism. Redford wants to have the cake and eat it too.

Lieksa (The Matriarch)
2007
***
Director: Markku Pölönen
Cast: Sanna-Kaisa Palo, Samuli vauramo, Jenni Banerjee, Peter Franzen

A family who used to be dressmakers for Czar Nikolay now live like gypsies and travel across the country in search of their eldorado, Lieksa. Markku Pölönen's films are traditionally set in the post-war years and rooted in reality. The setting of this baffling fable seems timeless and the story is, frankly, rubbish. However, it looks absolutely stunning and its overall atmosphere has peculiar charm.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
2007
****½
Director: Julian Schnabel
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Max von Sydow, Niels Arestrup, Isaach De Bankolé

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of Elle magazine, suffered a massive stroke which left him in a locked-in state, in full command of his mental faculties but unable to move any part of his body apart from his left eye. Using blinking and alphabets, the patient and his speech therapist developed a functioning communication system. This incredible real-life drama, scripted by Ronald Harwood, is based on the man's memoir, which he dictated one letter at a time. The premise sounds terribly depressing, but Julian Schnabel's film is sweet, uplifting, morbidly funny, and inevitably heartbreaking. Bauby's body is the diving bell dragging him down, but his imagination is the butterfly lifting him up. His memories and fantasies lighten up an otherwise grim story. Mathieu Amalric is excellent in the lead.

Lars and the Real Girl
2007
*
Director: Graig Gillespie
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson, Nancy Beatty, Doug Lennox

Lars is a shy 27-year-old introvert who lives in the garage next to his childhood home, now inhabited by his brother and his pregnant wife. The family and co-workers, who attempt to break him out of his shell, are happy to hear that he finally has a girlfriend, but Bianca turns out to be a life-sized sex doll. Nancy Oliver, a staff writer on Six Feet Under, makes her screenwriting debut with this flimsy and gimmicky premise, which could have potential as an outrageous sex comedy, but she gives us a terribly earnest and politically correct drama in which Lars and Bianca barely hold hands. The sympathetic townsfolk, without a cynic among them, collectively agree to play along with the pretense for the benefit of the delusional Lars. Even if you manage to get past this sugary wish fulfillment scenario, you still face a long and extremely tedious film which doesn't offer a single dramatic conflict.

Knocked Up
2007
***
Director: Judd Apatow
Cast: Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Leslie Mann, Paul Rudd, Harold Ramis

A career woman celebrates a promotion and in a late night drunken haze she sleeps with a jobless stoner who gets her pregnant. In the following two hours this mismatching couple try and get to know each other and prepare themselves for parenthood. This foul-mouthed hit comedy is quite funny and moving, if you can accept the laughably implausible and suprisingly conservative set-up.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
2007
****
Director: Seth Gordon
Cast:

In 1982 Billy Mitchell set a high score in Donkey Kong that was deemed out of this world. More than 20 years later an unemployed Boeing engineer Steve Wiebe set out to break the record. This fascinating documentary looks back at the birth of the arcade gaming culture and the history of Twin Galaxies, an organisation which keeps track of the official high scores. Mostly, however, this is a story about two obsessive gamers, Mitchell and Wiebe. The first one is portrayed as a cocky and petty champion, the latter one as a sympathetic and mistreated challenger. This may not be fair, but it makes for very entertaining viewing. Their rivalry doesn't actually end here, the men have both reclaimed and lost the high score since the film came out.

King of California
2007
**
Director: Mike Cahill
Cast: Michael Douglas, Evan Rachel Wood, Allisyn Ashley Arm, Willis Burks II, Laura Kachergus, Paul Lieber, Kathleen Wilhoite, Greg Davis Jr.

16-year-old Miranda is used to taking care of herself. Now suddenly she has to look after Charlie, her flaky father, who returns home from a mental institution. During his absence, Charlie has become obsessed with an old Spanish treasure he believes is buried under a retail store. Is Charlie truly mad and is he still a danger to himself? No, he's just little bit scruffy and cutely eccentric. Is the Spanish gold a metaphor for his lost marbles? No, it's an actual literal treasure without any hidden subtext. The set-up gives Miranda and Charlie a chance to rediscover each other, but Mike Cahill is not really interested in exploring that. He just wants to make a quirky and pointless indie comedy. It's worth your while only for Michael Douglas' likeable performance.

Katyn
2007
****
Director: Anrzej Wajda
Cast: Maja Ostaszewska, Andrzej Chyra, Artur Zmijewski, Danuuta Stenka, Jan Englert

After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Stalin executed over 20,000 Polish officers and other members of the country's intelligentsia. This massacre continued to haunt the minds of the Poles as they were forced to keep their mouths shut through the Cold War era. This extremely powerful and matter-of-fact drama depicts the events from the viewpoint of a few families.

Juno
2007
****
Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, J.K. Simmons

When Juno, a smart and eloquent 16-year-old, discovers that she is pregnant, she decides to have the baby and give it to a young couple who are looking to adopt. Jason Reitman's delightful (romantic) comedy features wonderful characters and surprising turns of events. Ellen Page is a revelation in the title role. Diablo Cody's clever and verbose screenplay won an Academy Award.

It's a Free World...
2007
***½
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Kierston Wareing, Juliet Ellis, Frank Gilhooley, Leslaw Zurek, Joe Siffleet, Colin Coughlin, Maggie Russell, Raymond Mearns, Davoud Rastgou

When Angie loses yet another job, she teams up with her friend to set up a temporary staffing agency for migrant workers in London. Although the agency is illegal, this is not a film about her run-ins with the law, but a thought-provoking morality tale about desperate people. Ken Loach and his regular screenwriting partner Paul Laverty are well-known defenders of the downtrodden, but who exactly is it in this balanced story? Angie starts off as a well-meaning idealist who is eager to succeed in order to spend more time with her neglected son, but when the grand plans begin to fall apart, she abandons her scruples to keep the business afloat. However, the exploited workers hardly act like helpless victims when they don't get paid on time. This is a believable drama with a strong lead performance by the first-timer Kierston Wareing.

Into the Wild
2007
*****
Director: Sean Penn
Cast: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Catherine Keener

A mesmerising true story of a college graduate Christopher McCandless who wants no part in the trappings of modern day life. He gives up his earthly belongings, disappears without a word to his family, and dreams of living in the Alaskan wilderness. Akin to The Straight Story, we follow his travels across the country where he meets an array of people, some of who support and some of who question his plan. Emile Hirsch gives a dedicated, star-turning performance in this sad and haunting drama. Based on Jon Krakauer's book.

In the Valley of Elah
2007
****
Director: Paul Haggis
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, Jason Patric, Frances Fisher, James Franco, Brent Briscoe

Paul Haggis follows up Crash with another somber but strongly scripted and acted drama. Tommy Lee Jones gives a subtle but heartbreaking performance as a retired career officer whose son is brutally killed after returning from duty in Iraq. While he assists a local female detective to crack the case, he's forced to reassess his assumptions about his son, his country and the soldier's code of honour. This whodunnit leads to an ending that feels somewhat anticlimactic, even if it makes perfect thematic sense.

I'm Not There
2007
**
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, Charlotte Gainsbourgh

A fictional drama about the many lives of Bob Dylan. During the course of the film, Dylan's name is never mentioned, but he appears in the shape of a 11-year-old black drifter named Woody Guthrie, a young poet named Arthur Rimbaud, a folk/gospel singer named Jack Rollins, an actor and family man named Robbie Clark, a confrontational rock star named Jude Quinn and as an elderly Billy the Kid. This is an ambitious project, but what exactly is Haynes’ ambition? The whole thing is very well put together, but the film drifts aimlessly from one Dylan incarnation to the next. The narrative, so to speak, is not emotionally engaging or even terribly interesting, and the 135 dreamy minutes are an endurance test. Perhaps it makes perfect sense to a fan. Dylan's originals and cover versions feature heavily on the soundtrack.

I Am Legend
2007
*½
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Dash Mihok, Emma Thompson, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith

A mutated version of the measles virus kills 90% of the world population and turns the remaining 10% into hairless, bloodthirsty monsters who hide in the dark. By happy coincidence, the last uninfected human in New York City is an all-around genius and a genuine hero. Robert Neville is a military virologist, which makes him both a man of action and a man of science. Not only can he wield his assault rifle and work on a cure to the disease, he's a skilled hunter who can trap zombies using wire and rejected automobiles. He's also a master of civil and military engineering who has fortified his home, installed power and running water, and booby-trapped it with explosives. The third adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel turns a harrowing post-apocalyptic scenario into a silly and implausible spectacle, with a happy ending, no less. Since the hero's lonely existence is pretty dull viewing, the script by Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevich adds idiotic and formulaic complications to keep things moving. Just because there's only one character, doesn't mean you can't have a car chase or a shootout. The special effects are a mixed bag. The abandoned, run-down Manhattan with its over-grown streets and blown-up bridges is an eerie sight. The computer-generated Darkseekers with their superhuman strength and agility, on the other hand, look terrible.

Hot Fuzz
2007
****½
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Paddy Considine, Rafe Spall, Bill Bailey, Timothy Dalton, Edward Woodward, Billie Whitelaw, Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman

Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's follow-up to Shaun of the Dead is another parody. This consistently hilarious comedy is equally gory but it pokes fun at buddy cop movies (Point Break and Bad Boys 2 are the main reference points). Pegg plays an uptight and overachieving London police officer who gets transferred to the village of Sandford where he's partnered with a shlub obsessed with cop movies. When he begins to suspect that there is a serial killer loose in their crime-free Village of the Year, nobody believes him. The story is inventive and full of surprises, and the film ends in an entertaining and spectacularly over-the-top final shootout.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
2007
***
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Imelda Staunton, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane,. Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes

The most bloated book in the Harry Potter series gets one of the snappiest film adaptations. In the fifth episode the Hogwarts School is gradually taken over by the Ministry of Magic and the new sadistic headmistress Dolores Umbridge (deliciously portrayed by Imelda Staunton), while Harry continues to fight off Lord Voldemort. The story is trimmed down to its bare bones and some regular set pieces and characters have been thrown to the sidelines, all to the benefit of the film. The tragic climax is visually arresting but it doesn't quite have the emotional impact you'd hope. Followed by The Half-Blood Prince.

Hairspray
2007
****
Director: Adam Shankman
Cast: Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Brittany Snow, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, Allison Janney

In 2002 John Waters' 1988 film was transformed into a Broadway musical, and now it returns to the big screen. It's set in 1962's Baltimore where the civil right movement is slowly gathering pace. Tracy Turnblad is a short and stocky teenager who dreams of dancing in her favourite TV show, but is Baltimore ready for Tracy's nonconforming looks, or for racial integration? This delightful musical has a simple story and a worthy message: don't judge a book by its cover. Adam Shankman attempts to destroy the musical numbers with his flat visuals and frequent cutting, but he is helpless against a laugh-out-loud funny script and catchy songs (by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman). John Travolta plays Tracy's grossly obese and insecure mother. This piece of casting seems completely bonkers at first, but Travolta gets all the best lines and his charming performance quickly won me over. Christopher Walken is also adorable as the eternally clueless father.

Gone Baby Gone
2007
****
Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, Amy Ryan, John Ashton, Amy Madigan, Edi Gathegi, Titus Welliver

Ben Affleck's strong directorial debut is adapted from Dennis Lehane's crime novel. It's a story of two missing persons detectives who are hired to track down a four-year-old girl who was abducted from her working glass home in Boston. The dialogue sizzles and the story is refreshingly gritty and captivating, even if the casting choices spoil some of the upcoming plot twists. The performances themselves are very strong, though; Affleck and Ryan are particular standouts.

The Golden Compass
2007
**
Director: Chris Weitz
Cast: Dakota Blue Richards, Freddie Highmore, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Sam Elliott, Eva Green, Jim Carter, Tom Courtenay, Ian McKellen, Ian McShane

Someone is abducting the local children, including the best friend of an orphan girl Lyra Belacqua. Accompanied by a magical golden compass, she goes on a formative journey which leads her to the root of this mystery. In the first novel of the His Dark Materials trilogy Philip Pullman takes his time to reveal the details of the parallel universe and the twists of the plot as Lyra slowly makes her way up north. Chris Weitz, on the other hand, kicks off the film with a LOTR-like intro which explains all the main concepts (dæmon, dust, alethiometer etc.), and he continues the same dumb it down approach for the remaining 100 minutes. In the end the story feels terribly rushed, the toned down danger feels unthreatening, and Lyra's long journey lacks any sense of discovery. The action scenes are nicely made and the visuals are predictably impressive. Especially Iorek Byrnison, the armoured polar bear, is an inspired creation. This adaptation wasn't a big hit, so the remaining novels, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, may never be filmed.


Ganes
2007
****
Director: JP Siili
Cast: Eero Milonoff, Jussi Nikkilä, Olavi Uusivirta, Minttu Mustakallio, Tommi Korpela, Kari Hietalahti, Reino Nordin

This dynamic and entertaining film tells the story of the popular Finnish rock band Hurriganes, or, more accurately, its singer/drummer Remu Aaltonen. He grew up into a life of petty crime, and music was his only way out of the rut. The excellent Eero Milonoff plays him as an endlessly energetic and driven leader of the band. The actors play the instruments for real, which gives the film some added grit and authenticity.

Fracture
2007
**½
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, David Strathairn, Rosamund Pike, Embeth Davidtz, Billy Burke, Cliff Curtis, Fiona Shaw, Bob Gunton

The L.A. Deputy District Attorney is assigned to prosecute an elderly man who shot his promiscuous wife. The case seems like a formality, but the suspect is about to teach the cocky young lawyer a lesson in humility. The ensuing psychological duel between these two intelligent men is slick and entertaining, but apart from the A-list cast, this crime drama offers nothing you don't see in a TV procedural on a weekly basis. Which is why the film is way too long at nearly two hours. In the B story, the DDA beds his boss before he has even started in his new lucrative job in corporate law. This entire subplot is needless and implausible.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
2007
*½
Director: Tim Story
Cast: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Doug Jones, Julian McMahon, Kerry Washington, Andre Braugher

In the follow-up to Fantastic Four, the superhero team have become celebrities. Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman attempt to get hitched but their wedding is interrupted by Silver Surfer and the impending end of the world. The first film took its time to build the world and the mythology, and even if it wasn't exactly heavy on plot, it was mostly good fun. The sequel is all spectacle and no story, and so dull that you have time to realise how silly these characters really are. That wouldn't be a disaster if the jokes and the action set pieces weren't so mechanical.

Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters)
2007
**½
Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Cast: Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Veit Stübner, Sebastian Urzendowsky, August Zirner, Martin Brambach, Andreas Schmidt, Tilo Prückner, Lenn Kudrjawizki

When Hitler tightens his stranglehold on Europe, a talented Jewish forger Salomon Sorowitsch ends up in a concentration camp. In Sachsenhausen, he becomes a key figure in Operation Bernhard, a scheme to destabilise the Allied economies with forged banknotes. This German film initially offers an alternative look at the Holocaust, it even has a selfish, cunning, and rather unlikeable protagonist. The man is adamant that he won't allow the Nazis to make him feel guilty about surviving, but the narrative eventually forces him to soften up and see his actions in a larger context. When the story turns conventional, the fate of these privileged men in their "golden cage" seems trivial in the big picture. In the end, this fictionalised true story is a fascinating historical footnote but not a terribly captivating drama. It's based on the autobiographical book by Adolf Burger, whose character is, by coincidence, the only one of the men with any guts. Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
2007
***½
Director: Shekhar Kapur
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen, Rhys Ifans, Jordi Mollà, Abbie Cornish, Samantha Morton, Tom Hollander

In 1585, Philip II, the King of Roman Catholic Spain, plans to invade England and overthrow the ungodly Queen Elizabeth I. In the meanwhile, the Virgin Queen is pressured to marry one of her suitors, but she is enamoured by the rugged charm of explorer Walter Raleigh. To sex up the royal affairs of the era, the sequel to Elizabeth takes great liberties with historical accuracy and it cranks up the melodrama to bring us an anachronistic but very enjoyable costume piece. The sets and the Academy Award winning costumes are incredible, and every single shot looks like a picture postcard. The performances are not terrible either.

El Orfanato (The Orphanage)
2007
*****
Director: J.A. Bayona
Cast: Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Príncep, Geraldine Chaplin, Mabel Rivera, Edgar Vivar, Montserrat Carulla

A mesmerising ghost story about a family who move into a former orphanage where the mother grew up herself. When her son claims to have made new imaginary friends and then disappears without a trace, she's determined to find out what happened. The screenplay by Sergio G. Sánchez is a meticulously crafted mystery (which may remind you of films like The Sixth Sense or The Others) which J.A. Bayona has directed with style and attention to detail. The resulting film is extremely powerful.

Eastern Promises
2007
**½
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Armin Müller-Stahl, Vincent Cassel

A teenager dies in childbirth and her diary leads a nurse to Russian gangsters operating in London. Cronenberg can suck the life out of any promising story, but this one doesn't offer anything too original or interesting to begin with. The performances of the multinational cast range from terrific (Müller-Stahl) to terrible (Cassel), but the English with various degrees of Ryussian accjent irritates consistently.

Die Hard 4.0 / Live Free Or Die Hard
2007
**½
Director: Len Wiseman
Cast: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Jonathan Sadowski, Maggie Q, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kevin Smith, Cliff Curtis

This action film series follows the “more is less” principle with diminishing result. It’s 19 years since the first Die Hard, and by now its hero played by Bruce Willis has become virtually unbreakable. Each consecutive sequel has moved the franchise further away from anything resembling realism. Ironically, this befits the plot of the intermittently enjoyable fourth instalment, because it doesn’t have one believable moment in it. Cyberterrorists bring the country to a grinding halt, but they forgot to factor one thing, the old school cop John McClane, who has to save the country "because there's nobody else to do it". If the original was built around physical stunts, this one relies on digital effects, which make the action scenes look like computer animation. The series concludes in A Good Day to Die Hard (2013).

Death Proof
2007
*½
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Zoë Bell, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Rose McGowan, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

This homage to 1970s exploitation movies was originally screened as a double bill with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. When the 190 minute Grindhouse bombed, the two films were released separately. Tarantino readded 27 minutes of footage to his half to create this, his most self-indulgent work and one of the dullest movies in the living memory. The story is set in Texas, where three young women drive to a bar and yabber on about nothing for 45 mind-numbing minutes. When they finally head home with the mysterious Stuntman Mike on their heels in his death proof car, I was so glad to come out of the stupor that the car stunts that follow felt like the most exciting five minutes ever put on film. Sadly, we're only at the halfway point. 14 months later Mike stalks another group of women in Tennessee, and we must go through the same tedium for the second time.

The Darjeeling Limited
2007
*½
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, Waris Ahluwalia, Amara Karan, Bill Murray, Camilla Rutherford, Irrfan Khan

Francis, Peter, and Jack Whitman recently lost their father. Now the brothers and their dad's monogrammed luggage take a spiritual journey through India, where they hope to be reunited with their long-absent mother. Wes Anderson has specialised in whimsical tales about dysfunctional families. This, however, is a dull and annoying comedy about three personality vacuums on a plotless and pointless rail trip. He and his co-writers Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola couldn't even be bothered to make it up as they went along. It's supposedly a story of three men on a route to self-discovery, but the film has a permanent twinkle in its eye and it's never believable when it tries to deal with actual human emotions. India is nothing but a pretty backdrop here; even the two actors playing members of the staff aboard the train are clearly not local. Anderson's visuals are interesting, which is just about the only nice thing I can say about this tandoori turkey.

Control
2007
***
Director: Anton Corbijn
Cast: Sam Riley, Samantha Morton, Toby Kebbell, Alexandra Maria Lara, Joe Anderson, Craig Parkinson, James Anthony Pearson, Harry Treadaway

Anton Corbijn's directorial debut is a black and white biopic of Ian Curtis. The story starts in 1975, when he meets his wife and becomes the vocalist of Joy Division, and it ends in his suicide in 1980, just when the band is on the brink of mass popularity. This adaptation of his widow Deborah Curtis' book Touching from a Distance is a moving portrayal of a frail young man who is crippled with depression and epilepsy, and torn between his wife and lover. The film is less successful as a musical biography. The four guys pick up their instruments and magically produce a new and unique sound. However, the actors play the songs for real, which gives them a great sense of rawness and authenticity. Sam Riley gives a strong breakthrough performance as Curtis.

Cleaner
2007
**½
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, Eva Mendes, Luis Guzmán, Keke Palmer, Robert Forster

A crime scene cleaner (and ex-cop) gets drawn into a police department corruption scandal, but he can't come forward due to his personal history. This short and serviceable thriller offers plenty of blood and brain matter, but very little actual violence. The story is not half bad, but you can guess the villain by reading the cast list. The ending is terrible.

Charlie Wilson's War
2007
***
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Amy Adams

In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union has just invaded Afghanistan. Back in the U.S., a Texas congressman uses his charm and wits to arm the Afghan rebels, but during the Cold War it needs to be a covert operation. This entertaining political comedy is based on a true story and adapted from George Crile's book. Hanks (as a suave politician who loves whiskey and women) and Hoffman (as a cynical CIA agent) give enjoyable performances.

Cassandra's Dream
2007
**
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Sally Hawkins, Tom Wilkinson, Phil Davis, Clare Higgins

Woody Allen's third and final film set in the UK continues in the same somber mode as Match Point and Scoop. This one is a clumsy and unoriginal morality play about two brothers. Terry urgently needs £90.000 to pay off his gambling debts, and his brother Ian needs funds to keep up appearances as a successful businessman. Their wealthy uncle comes up with a proposition that solves their financial worries but leaves them morally bankrupt. The characters are uninteresting and their rarely believable story leads to one of the lamest endings in living memory. The performances, especially that of Colin Farrell, are best left forgotten. Soundtrack by Philip Glass.

The Bucket List
2007
**½
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes, Beverly Todd, Rob Morrow, Alfonso Freeman, Rowena King, Jennifer Defrancisco

Edward is a millionaire misanthrope who has spent his entire life making money, Carter is a family-centred blue collar worker who never took time for himself. Now both of these elderly men have terminal cancer, and they agree to live a little before they die. Rob Reiner's melancholic buddy comedy drama is a rarity, a feelgood film about dying. Edward and Carter's blooming friendship and their trip around the world is sweet, funny and sad, but incredibly formulaic. They enjoy the wonders of the world, but predictably come to understand that what really matters are your friends and family. Nicholson and Freeman give likeable performances.

Breach
2007
***
Director: Billy Ray
Cast: Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney, Dennis Haysbert, Caroline Dhavernas, Gary Cole, Kathleen Quinlan

Young FBI staffer Eric O'Neill dreams of becoming an agent. His chance arrives when he's assigned to work undercover as a clerk to Robert Hanssen, who is suspected of selling sensitive information to Russians. The veteran agent is an intelligent and deeply religious family man, but O'Neill gradually begins to feel that something's not quite right. Billy Ray follows his captivating debut Shattered Glass with another fact-based story about a conflicted, two-faced American. The story is fascinating and well acted, but not terribly exciting. Chris Cooper is wonderful as Hanssen, although the film refuses to speculate on his motives.

The Brave One
2007
*½
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Jodie Foster, Naveen Andrews, Terrence Howard, Nicky Katt, Zoe Kravitz, Mary Steenburgen, Jane Adams, Julia Garro

A radio show host and her fiancé are brutally assaulted in Central Park, which leaves him dead and her traumatised. She buys an illegal firearm to protect herself, but ends up becoming a vigilante. If you want to kid yourself, you can read the story as an allegory on America's reaction to 9/11, but really this is nothing more than Death Wish with high pretensions and a misjudged title. The whole thing is a morality play without any dilemma. The heroine is a righteous killer without scruples and her victims are irredeemable scumbags whose mothers won't miss them. To counterbalance the heroine's vindictive tendencies, there is a detective who investigates her killing spree, but he would rather just shoot the bad guys himself because he is frustrated with the restrictions imposed by the law. This film is a typical, morally bankrupt Hollywood product which abhors and celebrates violence. The grim honesty of Michael Haneke's Funny Games seems all the more relevant after this nauseating wish fulfilment. The ending is simply off-putting.

The Bourne Ultimatum
2007
**½
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Matt Damon, David Strathairn, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, Scott Glenn

In the end of The Bourne Supremacy, it seemed like Jason Bourne was heading back to his roots to learn who he really is, but his story hasn't moved forward. If anything, it feels like I'm watching the same movie for the third time. Once more Bourne wants to be left alone, but the CIA consider him a risk and want to capture/eliminate him, only for our hero to outrun and outwit everyone time and time again. Sure, the action scenes are fast and frequent, but they offer nothing I haven't seen in the previous two outings. The Bourne Legacy reboots the series and the hero himself returns in Jason Bourne.

Blades of Glory
2007
*½
Director: Will Speck, Josh Gordon
Cast: Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, William Fichtner, Jenna Fischer, Romany Malco, Craig T. Nelson

Chazz Michael Michaels, an arrogant sex addict, and Jimmy MacElroy, a baby-faced virgin, are two of the finest skaters in the world, but they can't stand each other. When they're banned for life from the singles competition, they make an unexpected comeback as the first-ever male-male pair. This skullcrushingly predictable film combines the worst elements of modern day low-brow comedies with the age-old sports movie clichés, and it's only enjoyable when the two guys are on the ice. Figure skating is a somewhat girlish sport, but the jokes are exclusively targeted at teenage boys. For the umpteenth time Will Ferrell, who is about 20 years too old for the role, plays a cocky macho who needs to hit the bottom before he learns some humility. Jon Heder mostly just looks baffled.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
2007
****½
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney, Rosemary Harris

A gripping morality drama about two brothers who are both in dire financial straits. As a quick fix, they decide to rob their parents' jewellery store, but their victimless crime goes horribly wrong. The excellent script by first-time writer Kelly Masterson unfolds in a non-linear order, and veteran director Lumet shows that he still has what it takes to direct a riveting thriller. Only the ending feels a bit overdramatic.

Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven)
2007
****½
Director: Fatih Akin
Cast: Baki Davrak, Nurgül Yeşilçay, Hanna Schygulla, Patrycia Ziolkowska, Tuncel Kurtiz

In his follow-up to the excellent Gegen die Wand, Fatih Akin weaves a stunning story of two generations of three families (one German and two Turkish) whose lives are connected by coincidence. It's about the divide between parents and children, anger and forgiveness, and Germany and Turkey. Although the section titles reveal upcoming character deaths, the gripping story keeps you guessing until the end.

Atonement
2007
***
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Romola Garai, Saoirse Ronan, Vanessa Redgrave

A meticulous adaptation of Ian McEwan's award winning novel. A young fanciful girl misinterprets an innocent moment between her sister and the housekeeper's son, which has dramatic consequences to all of their lives. This is a beautifully staged drama (in the middle part Wright captures the madness of the Dunkirk evacuation in one long stunning shot), but it's not able to make its characters or their pain believable.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
2007
****
Director: Andrew Dominik
Cast: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Mary-Louise Parker, Sam Rockwell, Paul Schneider

The pompous sounding title of this epic western spells out the accepted view of how Jesse James died. However, the events depicted on screen tell a different story. Robert Ford is portrayed as an obsessive fan/stalker and the assassination itself plays out as an elaborate assisted suicide. Dominik's film is very long and slowly paced but it's stunningly shot and acted, and incredibly atmospheric. Based on Ron Hansen's novel.

American Gangster
2007
**½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Josh Brolin, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Yul Vazquez, Armand Assante, Ruby Dee, Lymari Nadal, Ted Levine, Cuba Gooding Jr.

In the late 1960s, Frank Lucas, the new kingpin of Harlem, puts his competition out of business by importing top quality heroin straight from the manufacturer. At the same time, Richie Roberts, a squeaky-clean detective, forms a new task force to capture the top dogs in the drug trade and rid the police department of corruption. This long crime epic is solidly made and perfectly watchable, but everything about it feels secondhand. Lucas' story arc echoes Scarface, GoodFellas, The Godfather, and every other gangster film. Roberts, who finds himself ostracised by his colleagues, follows in the footsteps of Serpico. The face-off between these two men, who actually have a lot in common, brings back memories of Heat and The French Connection. You could look past the lack of originality if the story was entertaining and the characters were charismatic, but the usually reliable Washington and Crowe are not able to breathe life into these two bland archetypes. To earn a place in the pantheon of gangster classics, a drama like this needs one or two truly memorable scenes, like all the films listed above, but Ridley Scott doesn't provide any. Loosely based on real events described in a New York Magazine article The Return of Superfly by Mark Jacobson.

Am Ende kommen Touristen (And Along Came Tourists)
2007
**½
Director: Robert Thalheim
Cast: Alexander Fehling, Ryszard Ronczewski, Barbara Wysocka, Piotr Rogucki

A well-meaning but meandering story of a young German man who is doing his civil service in Auschwitz. His job is to assist a concentration camp survivor, which puts his own troubles into perspective. This short film is needlessly stretched with a predictable romance.

4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)
2007
****
Director: Christian Mungiu
Cast: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov, Adi Carauleanu, Luminiţa Gheorghiu, Mădălina Ghiţescu, Alexandru Potocean

It's 1987 and abortion is outlawed in Romania. Găbiţa, a hapless young student, seeks illegal termination, but it's her loyal friend and roommate Otilia (the excellent Anamaria Marinca) who makes it all happen. This grim but hopeful drama shows the procedure and its outcome in great detail, but its stance is both pro-choice and pro-life. What the film does best is to illustrate the Ceauşescu regime's oppressive and patriarchal stranglehold on all layers of the society. This is done with subtlety, and the (after)effect is powerful. Mungiu builds his film of long slow takes, most powerful of which is a dinner party that Otilia is forced to attend in the middle of her horrific day.

3:10 to Yuma
2007
**½
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Logan Lerman, Peter Fonda, Ben Foster

A thoroughly ordinary Western about a down-and-out rancher who agrees to escort a charismatic outlaw to a train to Yuma Prison. After revisionist masterpieces like Unforgiven, it is difficult to get excited about an old-fashioned cowboy movie that offers nothing but genre tropes, which include a stagecoach chase, an attack by Indians, and a climactic shoot-out through a Western town.

300
2007
**½
Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Dominic West, Vincent Regan, Rodrigo Santoro, Tom Wisdom, Johnny Lewis, Riley Keough

A fictionalised account of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, when 300 Spartan warriors (clad in sandals, capes and leather briefs) defended Greece against the Persian army, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Like Sin City, this frame-for-frame adaptation of Frank Miller's comic book was shot entirely against green screen. The sets, locations, special effects, and abs were all created on the computer. Zack Snyder's heavily stylised epic turns everything to 11; it seems like every action scene is in slow motion and each line of dialogue is shouted. The film doesn't have a dull moment, but it is remarkably silly and infantile.

28 Weeks Later
2007
***
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Idris Elba, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Catherine McCormack, Mackintosh Muggleton, Imogen Poots

28 weeks after the outbreak of the Rage Virus, a cowardly man who left his wife to die is reunited with his kids in London, which is now free of infection and occupied by the U.S. troops. When the virus predictably breaks out again, all of the above seems irrelevant as the film becomes a formulaic survival story. A small group of people, which includes those kids, try to evade the infected attackers and the soldiers, who are now authorised to shoot at everyone. In spite of some scary, powerful, and thought-provoking moments, Fresnadillo's incredibly gory and frantically edited horror film is a typical sequel, which pretty much retells the story of 28 Days Later and then leaves the ending open for more.

2 Days in Paris
2007
****
Director: Julie Delpy
Cast: Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg, Daniel Brühl, Marie Pillet, Albert Delpy, Alexia Landeau, Adan Jodorowsky, Alexandre Nahon

Before heading back home to New York City, Marion (a French photographer) and her boyfriend Jack (an American interior designer) have a two-day stopover in Paris. However, the time spent with Marion's eccentric parents and the countless encounters with her former sex partners put their strained relationship to a test. Julie Delpy's directorial debut is a romantic culture clash farce, which she also wrote, produced, edited and scored. This very talky film follows in the footsteps of her best know screen role in the Before Sunrise / Sunset / Midnight trilogy, and it is heavily influenced by Woody Allen's early works like Annie Hall and Manhattan. The story may not amount to much, but she has made a lovely and effortlessly funny comedy. Marion and her family return in 2 Days in New York.

Zwartboek (Black Book)
2006
****½
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman, Halina Reijn, Waldemar Kobus, Derek de Lint, Christian Berkel, Dolf de Vries, Peter Blok

In 1944, a Jewish woman named Rachel Stein is about to flee the Netherlands, when the Nazis slay her entire family. She stays in the country instead and joins the Resistance, who ask her to go undercover in the SD headquarters in the Hague. Paul Verhoeven's terrific drama puts a fresh twist on the traditional black and white view of World War 2. His characters are multilayered human beings with warts and all. They are all capable of good or evil, whether they are Nazis or Resistance fighters, soldiers or civilians, German or Dutch. The film is long and occasionally trashy, but consistently gripping. Carice van Houten is quite exceptional in the lead. The script by Verhoeven and Gerard Soeteman is partially based on true events.

X-Men: The Last Stand / X-Men 3
2006
**½
Director: Brett Ratner
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Shawn Ashmore, Aaron Stanford, Vinnie Jones, Patrick Stewart

The mutant community is conflicted whether a vaccine that suppresses the special abilities is a threat or a possibility. Magneto's stance on the matter is clear, as he continues to wage war on humans. At the same time, Jean Grey, presumed dead in X-Men 2, returns as Phoenix, the most powerful and fearsome mutant of them all. For the third part, Brett Ratner takes over the directing duties from Brian Singer. Ratner is a workmanlike director without any personal stamp, so it comes as no surprise that this is the weakest part in the trilogy. Although the story comes to a somewhat satisfactory conclusion, with a few of the main players kicking the bucket, this mediocre superhero action movie offers very few memorable moments, unless you count one magnificently stupid CGI set piece towards the end. The series continues in prequels X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: First Class.

World Trade Center
2006
**½
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stephen Dorff

The first act of this 9/11 drama is gripping stuff. Port Authority police officers arrive at the chaotic scene with very little knowledge of what has happened and what they should do. A few devastating moments later they are buried under rubble when the South Tower collapses. However, for the remaining 90 minutes we watch the talking heads of the two surviving officers and wait for them to be rescued while their respective families at home prepare for the worst. This true story of a "heroic rescue" is almost entirely stripped of any political context, and seems therefore rather pointless. Not quite what you'd expect from an Oliver Stone movie.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley
2006
***½
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Padraic Delaney, Orla Fitzgerald, Liam Cunningham, Myles Horgan, John Crean, Damien Kearney

Damien and Teddy are brothers and IRA guerrillas who strive for an independent Ireland. They fight shoulder to shoulder against the brutal British Black and Tan forces, but find themselves at odds when Ireland signs a compromise treaty in 1921. Ken Loach's strongly acted political drama alternates between explosive debates and fierce gun fights. This is a powerful film, although the personal story is somewhat dwarfed by the fate of the entire nation.

Volver
2006
****
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Duenas, Yohana Cobo, Blanca Portillo

Raimunda and her teenage daughter are trying to cope with a recent tragedy, while Raimunda's divorced sister is visited by their dead mother. There are some twists in the tale as everyone has something to hide. This is a glorified soap opera really, but a darn entertaining one, and easy on the eye as well.

Vier Minuten (Four Minutes)
2006
**½
Director: Chris Kraus
Cast: Monica Bleibtreu, Hannah Herzsprung, Sven Pippig, Richy Müller

This story of a troubled genius and her traumatised mentor offers a German variation on Good Will Hunting. Now an elderly piano teacher attempts to harness the talent of a young female convict. The protégée is brilliant but deeply distressed, which forces the teacher to revisit her own painful past in war-stricken Berlin. Chris Kraus spends too little time eploring the young lady's background, and too much on the old lady's overdramatic and predictable dark secret. This interesting but heavy-going drama leads to an uplifting finale, which seems at odds with the film that came before it. The two leading performances are good.

United 93
2006
*****
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Christian Clemenson, Trish Gates, David Alan Basche, Cheyenne Jackson

What happened on United Airlines flight 93 before it crashed into the Pennsylvanian field on September 11th, 2001. This mesmerizing dramatisation takes us on board like we're passengers on the flight and don't know anything about our fellow hostages. We also witness how air traffic controllers and the military (many of the actual people play themselves) try to come to terms with the situation on that tragic day. This is an incredibly tense and unforgettable thriller which doesn't sentimentalise the events.

La Tourneuse de pages (The Page Turner)
2006
***
Director: Denis Dercourt
Cast: Catherine Frot, Déborah François, Pascal Greggory, Xavier De Guillebon, Christine Citti, Clotilde Mollet, Jacques Bonnaffé

A frosty young woman who is doing her internship in a law firm agrees to look after her boss' son for a month. All of this is part of an elaborate scheme to get close to the lawyer's wife, a famous concert pianist, who once crushed her dreams. Denis Dercourt's short and slick revenge thriller is easy to admire but more difficult to enjoy. It's a fine example of subtle, economical storytelling, but you find yourself wishing that the protagonist would pull the stick out of her ass and get a life. The female stars give very strong performances.

This Is England
2006
***
Director: Shane Meadows
Cast: Thomas Turgoose, Joe Gilgun, Andrew Shim, Vicky McClure, Stephen Graham, Rosamund Hanson, Andrew Ellis, Jo Hartley

Shaun is a fatherless, bullied 12-year-old who joins the skinheads. Just when he finally feels accepted, an ex-convict rejoins the group and splits it with his nationalistic agenda. Shane Meadows doesn't vilify the skinhead culture or his characters in this partly autobiographical story of growing up in Britain in 1983. His kitchen sink drama is refreshingly ambivalent, but it predictably heads towards a violent climax. Thomas Turgoose is a very natural child actor and Stephen Graham is menacing as the racist leader, but the scariest character by far is Shaun's thoroughly oblivious mother.

Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny
2006
**
Director: Liam Lynch
Cast: Jack Black, Kyle Gass, Jason Reed, Ben Stiller, Paul F. Tompkins, Tim Robbins, Ronnie James Dio, Dave Grohl, Meat Loaf

This fictionalised story of the comedy band Tenacious D begins and ends with a fart joke, and everything inbetween pretty much stinks. The band's two members, Jack Black and Kyle Gass, are two stocky potheads who dream of stardom. They learn of the Pick of Destiny, which was forged from Satan's tooth and used by many of their idols, and believe it could be the missing link to success. The band's TV shorts and crude cock rock are enjoyable in small doses, but this tiresome 90-minute rock opera is extremely thinly scripted. All the good bits are in the first fifteen minutes when Ronnie James Dio appears in a brief cameo and the band play Bach on the Venice Beach.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
2006
**
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Sacha Baron Cohen, Gary Cole, Michael Clarke Duncan, Leslie Bibb, Jane Lynch, Amy Adams, Andy Richter

The star and director of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy have pretty much remade their previous collaboration; even the title looks the same. This time the hero is not a news anchor but a fiercely competitive Nascar driver Ricky Bobby who lives by his absent father's motto: "If you ain't first, you're last". Ricky's cocky sense of entitlement leads to a personal and professional crisis when an immensely talented and extremely gay French F1 driver joins the circuit. Co-writers Ferrell and McKay take a low-brow sport, a bunch of dumb redneck characters and, unsurprisingly, create a lowest common denominator comedy which is rarely funny. Will Ferrell springs no surprises and Sasha Baron Cohen is underused as the French rival, but Gary Cole provides the film's few laughs as the hero's drunk and incredibly selfish dad.

Superman Returns
2006
**½
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, James Marsden, Parker Posey, Frank Langella, Sam Huntington, Eva Marie Saint, Kal Penn

After a five-year absence Superman returns to Earth only to discover that Lois Lane is now a mother and engaged to be married. At the same time Lex Luthor plans to use Kryptonian crystals to reshape the Atlantic Seaboard. (Sadly we don't see how he plans to profit from the craggy new landmass.) Brian Singer's reboot doesn't attempt to make the Superman franchise darker, like Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins did. Lois Lane has a child out of wedlock, that's as edgy as it gets. In fact Singer wants to destroy the memory of the terrible sequels (III and Iv) and take us back to the innocent charm of the original. But what exactly is the point of giving us something we've seen done better almost 30 years ago, especially when Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth clearly lack the charisma of Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder?

Stranger Than Fiction
2006
**½
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman

A moderately successful drama comedy about a robotic tax official who realises that he's the protagonist in somebody's novel and destined to die in the last chapter. This Charlie Kaufman-like story has some clever and funny bits but it's a somewhat lackluster whole; there's an awkward polite smile on your face throughout the story. The ending is that of a mediocre Hollywood film, not of the great novel described on screen.

Southland Tales
2006
†
Director: Richard Kelly
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Bai Ling, John Larroquette, Jon Lovitz

Richard Kelly's highly anticipated follow-up to Donnie Darko presents an astoundingly stupid and pretentious post-9/11 nightmare vision of the future when personal freedoms have been suppressed to a minimum and people have adopted silly names. The sprawling story has a prologue and three parts, obviously numbered from IV to VI, and it revolves around an amnesiac actor, his manipulative ex-porn star girfriend, a police officer, his mysterious twin brother, a group of Neo-Marxist terrorists, and a few dozen other irrelevant characters. There are some musical numbers and it's continuously narrated by a veteran of the Iraq war. If this sound complicated, nevermind, because the film is a hopelessly boring and incoherent mess. Kelly cut the film down to 144 minutes following the disastrous Cannes premiere, but there is no polishing this turd. The mostly B-list cast give their career-worst performances, with no little thanks to the clunky dialogue. The Angelo Badalamentiesque soundtrack was written by Moby.

Snakes On a Plane
2006
**
Director: David R. Ellis
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Nathan Phillips, Rachel Blanchard, Byron Lawson, Julianna Margulies

FBI escorts a key witness on a passenger plane from Honolulu to Los Angeles, unknowing that the gangster to be charged with murder has smuggled hundreds of pissed off snakes on board. The outlandish premise and the matter-of-fact title created a massive hype before the script was even written. The audience was already there, so the movie could have taken some risks and give us something totally unexpected. Unfortunately all we get is a B-film filled with tired clichés and cheap CGI.

Smokin' Aces
2006
*
Director: Joe Carnahan
Cast: Ben Affleck, Andy García, Alicia Keys, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, Chris Pine, Common, Tommy Flanagan, Joseph Ruskin, Alicia Keys, Taraji P. Henson, Joel Edgerton

While two FBI agents attempt to protect a sleazy magician-turned-informant Buddy "Aces" Israel, a colourful group of assassins arrive in Las Vegas to claim the million-dollar bounty on his head. Joe Carnahan's geezer gangster movie is a boring, implausible, and incoherent mess. In the first 30 minutes, he introduces about 20 characters, but there isn't one among them who is properly fleshed out and worth my while. The cast looks amazing on paper, though. Followed by a prequel Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball.

Seraphim Falls
2006
***½
Director: David Van Ancken
Cast: Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Michael Wincott, Ed Lauter, Xander Berkeley, Tom Noonan, Kevin J. O'Connor, John Robinson, Anjelica Huston, Angie Harmon

Three years after the Civil War, a group of men, led by a former Confederate officer Colonel Carver, chase a man named Gideon. With a gunshot wound in his arm, this resourceful man manages to outrun and outwit his pursuers in an endless chase which begins on the snowy mountains and ends in the burning desert. David Van Ancken's feature debut tells a classic revenge story in the form of a gripping and visually striking Western. It's like a road movie set in the Wild West, with some memorable and occasionally dreamlike stopovers on the way. Neeson and Brosnan give strong and charismatic lead performances.

Scoop
2006
**
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Woody Allen, Ian McShane, Charles Dance, Romola Garai, Kevin R. McNally, Julian Glover

Like Match Point, the second one of Woody Allen's UK-set films offers a mix of murder and romance, only this time with a lighter touch and instantly forgettable results. During a magic show a spirit tips a journalism student that the infamous Tarot Card Killer is in fact the son of a wealthy Lord. In order to prove this she gets close to the suspect, but inevitably falls for the guy. Unfortunately their romance never creates a spark, mostly thanks to Hugh Jackman who seems permanently uninterested. It also doesn't help that the murder mystery offers plot holes but no suspense whatsoever.

The Science of Sleep
2006
***½
Director: Michel Gondry
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou, Emma de Caunes, Aurélia Petit, Sacha Bourdo, Pierre Vaneck

Michel Gondry's follow-up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is another mindbender, but now he's scripted it himself. This is a story of a highly creative young man who has trouble keeping his dreams and reality apart. His typesetting job in Paris may be a source of boredom but his next-door neighbour brings joy to his life. Gondry keeps us guessing what's happening for real and he employs all kinds of imaginative mechanical effects to visualise the film. The end product is a delightful romantic comedy whose whimsy can be intermittently exhilarating and exhausting.

A Scanner Darkly
2006
**
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey, Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane

Drugs and paranoia are some of the favourite themes of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner and Total Recall), and this adaptation of his 1977 novel offers plenty of both. In the drug-crazed Orwellian future an undercover detective falls deeper and deeper into paranoia. Nobody knows his true identity, least of all himself, it seems. Is he really investigating himself or is he suffering from the effects of Substance D? Dick's dark and ultimately clever metaphysical story should make for a captivating drama, but the dreary world and the distant characters turn this into a lifeless affair. Richard Linklater has animated over each frame, like he did in Waking Life. In theory, the unreal quality of the image ties in with the story's distorted reality. In practice, however, I found myself constantly distracted by some trivial detail in the animation work at the expense of the narrative. And, oh boy, is it easy to get distracted when the film is so thuddingly dull.

Saippuaprinssi
2006
**
Director: Janne Kuusi
Cast: Pamela Tola, Mikko Leppilampi, Outi Mäenpää, Kristiina Halttu, Sari Havas

A dopey Finnish farce about a struggling actress who accidentally lands a job as a writer on a popular daily soap, falls in love with its star and ends up writing her own life into the show. Most soaps are intrinsically silly (and the type of kitschy show portrayed here doesn't even exist in this part of the world), so it's a somewhat fruitless source for parody. The story has far too many characters who, apart from the hero and the heroine, are nothing but sketchy caricatures. The film at least manages to remind us how difficult it is to act badly.

Rescue Dawn
2006
****
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies, Marshall Bell, François Chau, Zach Grenier, Toby Huss

Werner Herzog returns to the topic of his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly to retell the incredible story of Dieter Dengler, a German-born US Navy pilot who was shot down and taken captive in Laos in 1966. Christian Bale plays him as an endlessly energetic, optimistic and resourceful man who flashes his jovial and somewhat creepy smile even when staring down the barrel of a gun. Herzog, the director of Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, is no stranger to the jungle, and this survival drama gives him another chance to explore the theme of man against nature. The film is gripping and well-acted, and possibly the most conventional work of his career.

Red Road
2006
***
Director: Andrea Arnold
Cast: Kate Dickie, Tony Curran, Nathalie Press, Martin Compston, Andrew Armour, Jessica Angus, Paul Higgins

A CCTV operator monitors the seedy suburbs of Glasgow when she accidentally spots a man from her past, and becomes obsessed with him. This captivating thriller is a bit heavy-going in the midsection, although the slow pace does help to create a sense of uncertainty about her motives and his true nature. Andrea Arnold's feature debut is the first in a trilogy in which three first-time directors must use the same set of characters in the same location to tell a different story. The second film, Donkeys, by Morag McKinnon was released in 2010.

The Queen
2006
***
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Helen McCrory, Sylvia Sims

Helen Mirren collected a well earned Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth. The story focuses on a few weeks in 1997 when the Royal Family failed to respond to the tragic death of Princess Diana. It's a respectful, moving, funny and slightly trivial film.

The Pursuit of Happyness
2006
***
Director: Gabriele Muccino
Cast: Will Smith, Jaden Smith, Thandie Newton, Brian Howe, Dan Castellaneta

Will Smith gives a fine performance as a struggling salesman and single father who accepts an unpaid internship in a brokerage firm, knowing that he's unlikely to turn it into a lucrative job. This is a typically inspirational tale of overcoming adversity with resilience and striving for the American Dream, but it also offers some frank portrayal of poverty. The story is set in the early 1980s and it's based on Chris Gardner's memoir (co-written with Quincy Troup).

The Prestige
2006
***
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, David Bowie, Piper Perabo, Andy Serkis, Rebecca Hall

The long-running professional and private rivalry between two Victorian stage magicians ends in tragedy. Robert Angier is killed during his own show and Alfred Borden is arrested for the murder. The flashbacks reveal how it all ended like this, but as it's a Christopher Nolan film, things are never as straightforward as they seem. The late 19th century setting is beautifully recreated, the performances are strong, and the script is a beautifully constructed puzzle, but it all falls flat when I don't really care about either of the two main characters. The title refers to the climax of a magic trick, and the prestige of this elaborate deception disappointingly involves some actual magic. Adapted from Christopher Priest's novel.

Poseidon
2006
**½
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Jacinda Barrett, Mia Maestro

This remake tells the story of the capsized luxury cruise liner in half the time with much improved special effects, and it manages to create some moments of believable terror. Otherwise the film offers nothing we didn't see in The Poseidon Adventure or in numerous other disaster films. A group of cardboard characters are introduced in a hurry and then thrown into peril. It isn't too hard to guess the casualties.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
2006
**
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, Jack Davenport

The original cast reunites in this terrible sequel which ditches humour and coherent storytelling in favour of overblown action scenes and in-your-face CGI. Captain Jack, a breath of fresh air in the original, has become a bore with his predictable mischief and constant eye-rolling. The baffling story, on the other hand, is merely an excuse to split up and reunite the cast, and set up the third part (At World's End). It's about an hour too long and it recaptures the good-spirited fun of the first film only when Captain Jack and co. flee the cannibals.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
2006
***
Director: Tom Tykwer
Cast: Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Karoline Herfurth, Corinna Harfouch, Paul Berrondo

It has taken 21 years to bring Patrick Süskind's acclaimed but "unfilmable" novel to the screen. Its protagonist Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is an orphan who grows up with an extraordinary sense of smell. He trains as a perfumer and becomes obsessed with creating the perfect scent, which involves killing young virgins and preserving their odour. The story is incredible - dark, inventive and out of this world - and Tom Tykwer has visualised the sights, sounds and smells of 18th century France to the smallest detail. However, the film is long and there's a whiff of self-importance and silliness to the whole endeavour. Grenouille should be an enigmatic character, but he comes across as a loveless and sexless freak.

Over the Hedge
2006
***
Director: Tim Johnson, Karey Kirkpatrick
Cast: Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, William Shatner, Wanda Sykes, Nick Nolte, Avril Lavigne

A group of wild animals wake up from hibernation and discover that their patch of forest is now in the middle of a suburban housing development. A newly arrived raccoon agrees to help them steal food from the humans, but only to satisfy his own selfish needs. This modestly entertaining animation is based on a comic strip by Michael Fry and T. Lewis. After seeing dozens of animation films, the screenplay could hardly be any more predictable than it is. However, the nicely drawn characters and inventive action sequences make this surprisingly digestible.

Night at the Museum
2006
***
Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Carla Gugino, Owen Wilson, Ricky Gervais

A family film about a divorced Dad whose last chance of restoring his son's respect is a job as a night watchman at the Museum of Natural History. However, it's not easy when all the exhibits come to life after sundown. The story is predictable and schmaltzy, the plot is full of holes and the jokes don't always fly, but this is good educational fun for the whole family. Followed by Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb.

Nacho Libre
2006
*
Director: Jared Hess
Cast: Jack Black, Troy Gentile, Ana de la Reguera, Héctor Jiménez, Silver King, Carla Jimenez, Richard Montoya, Enrique Muñoz, Peter Stormare

Ignacio is a mild-mannered cook in a Mexican monastery, who dreams of becoming a luchador (freestyle wrestler) in order to feed the orphans and impress the beautiful Sister Encarnación. Despite being unwatchable, Jared Hess' feature debut Napoleon Dynamite (2004) became a sleeper hit. His follow-up didn't make me laugh once, but at least I was able to finish it. This comedy offers the same kind of whimsical humour, which only triggered cringe and second-hand embarrassment. Jack Black is not the only one to give a terrible performance.

Mission: Impossible III
2006
***
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Michelle Monaghan, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell, Maggie Q, Laurence Fishburne, Simon Pegg

Ethan Hunt hopes to settle down with the woman he loves, but he is drawn back into field work to track down a plot device known as Rabbit's Foot and to capture a ruthless arms dealer. Anything looks good after M:i-2, the weakest release in the series, but J.J. Abrams' feature debut is an entertaining if forgettable action movie. The script includes the usual twists and double-crosses between the unspectacular action set pieces. This franchise needs to reinvent itself, and Brad Bird's follow-up Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol does just that.

Matti
2006
*
Director: Aleksi Mäkelä
Cast: Jasper Pääkkönen, Peter Franzen, Juha Veijonen, Elina Hietala

A biopic of sorts about Matti Nykänen, arguably the finest ski jumper in the history of the sport. The film skips the parts that make him matter, namely his sport achievements, and takes extreme poetic license to guide us through the downs and downs of his tumultuous private life. The names and events have been changed to make his story flow, but, ironically, there is no narrative whatsoever. This a long and boring series of standalone humiliations, all of which seem to start with the hero hungover or beaten up, or both at the same time.

Marie Antoinette
2006
**
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Rose Byrne, Steve Coogan, Asia Argento, Molly Shannon, Jamie Dornan

Sofia Coppola's offbeat biopic is based on Antonia Fraser's autobiography Marie Antoinette: The Journey, which takes a more lenient view on this controversial figure in French history. She's portrayed as a poor little rich girl from Austria who always feels like a misunderstood outsider in France. As a historical portrait, this is unauthentic and unconvincing. As a piece of entertainment, it's incredibly dull. The sets and the Academy Award winning costumes are lavishly designed, but Coppola's overall mise-en-scène is somewhat underwhelming. Her anachronistic New Wave soundtrack works amazingly well, though.

Little Miss Sunshine
2006
**½
Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano, Steve Carell

A dysfunctional family travels on an old unreliable VW bus (note the subtle symbolism) to take the seven-year-old daughter to a beauty pageant. The car gradually breaks down while the family members vent out their respective issues. This indie hit attempts to be quirky and subversive, but ultimately it's a conservative and not-particularly-funny comedy that pays tribute to the power of the family. It's yet another movie which cannot decide whether it's for or against children's beauty pageants. Alan Arkin and Michael Arndt's screenplay won Academy Awards.

Little Children
2006
***½
Director: Todd Field
Cast: Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earle Haley, Noah Emmerich, Gregg Edelman, Phyllis Somerville

This suburban drama from Tom Perrotta's novel follows in the footsteps of American Beauty. The plot centres on two frustrated stay-at-home parents who begin an affair just as their neighbourhood is rocked by a sex offender returning from prison. These three people are subtly drawn and warmly portrayed. Sadly all the other characters are shrieking caricatures. The story also struggles for credibility when kids behave like props and Kate Winslet plays a plain looking woman. Overall, however, the film is sharply observed and darkly funny.

Letters from Iwo Jima
2006
***
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryō Kase, Shidō Nakamura; Hiroshi Watanabe, Takumi Bando

Clint Eastwood's companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers shows the battle of Iwo Jima from the enemy's point of view. This one is a more traditional war movie, and a noble attempt to portray the Japanese soldiers as something more than robotic killing machines. In 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army, lead by General Kuribayashi, prepares for the impending American invasion with little support from mainland Japan. The commander's decision to dig defenses into the mountain only postpones the inevitable, and once the defeat is imminent, the ancient honour code compels the men to die by their own hand rather than surrender shamefully. Iris Yamashita's screenplay convincingly and movingly tells the personal stories of a handful of ordinary men who have ordinary hopes and dreams. However, when the film focuses on these few men, it loses touch with the battle and cannot convey that almost 22,000 Japanese and 7,000 American troops died on the island. Towards the end, it's difficult to figure out where the survivors are, where they try to go, and what exactly is happening outside the caves? Based on the book Picture Letters from Commander in Chief by Tadamichi Kuribayashi.

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)
2006
****½
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Tukur, Thomas Thieme

It's 1984 in East Berlin where Stasi places two suspected enemies of the state, a playwright and an actress, under surveillance. A dedicated but lonely Stasi agent immerses himself in their lives and slowly begins to question his orders. This wonderful and utterly believable (apart from some updated hairdos and costumes) German drama captures the paranoia and hypocrisy of the GDR regime, and manages to tell a very moving personal story about the era. Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

The Last King of Scotland
2006
****
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Cast: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Gillian Anderson, Kerry Washington, Simon McBurney, Apollo Okwenje Omamo, David Oyelowo

Idi Amin ruled Uganda with an iron fist from 1971 to 1979, and left an estimated 300,000 people dead in his wake. In this captivating drama, which mixes fact and fiction, an idealistic Scottish doctor becomes Amin's personal physician and right-hand man, but slowly wakes up to the reality of the reign. Amin, as portrayed by Forest Whitaker, is charming and playful one moment, ruthless and unpredictable the next. His performance is big and showy but electrifying, and it earned him an Oscar. Based on Giles Foden's novel.

Laitakaupungin valot (Lights in the Dusk)
2006
**
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Janne Hyytiäinen, Maria Järvenhelmi, Maria Heiskanen, Ilkka Koivula, Matti Onnismaa, Sulevi Peltola, Antti Reini, Santtu Karvonen, Sesa Lehto, Svante Korkiakoski, Pertti Sveholm, Juhani Niemelä

Some directors have an idiosyncratic style and can successfully make more or less the same film over and over again. Then there are hacks who repeatedly make the same film, because that's all they can do. Aki Kaurismäki's scope is definitely very limited, but it's hard to say which group he belongs to. Following the impressive Drifting Clouds and Man Without a Past, the Loser Trilogy ends on a drab note. It's once again set in a Kaurismäki version of modern day Helsinki, where a lonely, gullible, and stupid security guard allows himself to be conned by a shady businessman and his girlfriend. Like the first two parts of the trilogy, the film depicts the plight of a working class man. However, I found it impossible to feel any sympathy for the protagonist, who sleepwalks through his own life. The director's stilted style and the film's total lack of humour turn this into a joyless affair.

Lady in the Water
2006
*
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bob Balaban, Jeffrey Wright

M. Night Shyamalan hits the bottom with this dull, baffling and humourless fairy tale which Disney, his usual collaborator, refused to produce - for a good reason. Paul Giamatti plays a traumatised janitor who discovers a water nymph in the pool and attempts to help her to return home. The apartment complex also houses a nasty film critic and a visionary writer played by the director. Is there a message here? This is an archetypal Shyamalan mystery, this time without the twist ending. However, his plot is an endless series of red herrings, and I stopped caring how it ends well before the climax.

El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)
2006
****
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Ivana Baquero, Ariadna Gil, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu, Doug Jones

11-year-old Ofelia travels to a remote military outpost with her pregnant mother who has remarried a commander in Franco's army. While the new husband battles the remaining reds of the Spanish civil war, Ofelia meets a faun who gives her a test of courage. Guillermo del Toro's wonderfully original study of fascism mixes historical drama and fairy tale elements to great effect. It begins like a children's story but turns dark and violent very quickly, and includes some terrifying scenes on both levels of the story. The film's only flaw is the single-mindedly sadistic stepfather who is little more than a cartoon villain. Academy Award winner for best cinematography, art direction and makeup.

Inside Man
2006
**
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Christopher Plummer

A detective in charge of a Dog Day Afternoon-style hostage drama begins to smell a rat when the bank robbers only seem to be buying time. In order to appreciate this slick movie, you should forget it immediately. The initial response is that it's a heist drama with a great set-up but a disappointing pay-off. However, the more you think about it the more you realise that the plot or the characters don't make any sense.

Inland Empire
2006
****
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Laura Dern, Jeremy Iorns, Justin Theroux, Grace Zabriskie, Karolina Gruszka

An incomprehensible but oddly hypnotic David Lynch mystery. On the surface it's a story about a Hollywood actress who is signed to star in a remake of a cursed Polish film which was never finished. However, pretty soon we cannot tell the difference between the actress and her character. Add to this some clips from the original Polish film (or are we watching the lives of the Polish actors?) and a sitcom starring a family of rabbits, and your head should be spinning. The film is and feels long, but it's a captivating experiment.

Infamous
2006
**½
Director: Douglas McGrath
Cast: Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, Peter Bogdanovich, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, Gwyneth Paltrow, Isabella Rossellini, Juliet Stevenson, Sigourney Weaver, Lee Pace

In 1959, Truman Capote becomes fascinated with the brutal murder of a farming family in Kansas. He travels to the nearby town and befriends the locals and the two killers in order to write his nonfictional novel In Cold Blood. A mere year after Capote, Douglas McGrath's drama brings more or less the same story to the screen, which makes this a pretty pointless exercise. Where Bennett Miller's fine film emphasised the author's moral dilemma, McGrath's version concentrates on Capote's personal, perhaps even sexual relationship with one the killers. Toby Jones gives a lively and extremely gay lead performance.

An Inconvenient Truth
2006
***
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Cast:

After the bitter defeat in the 2000 presidential election Al Gore toured the world with a slide show about the dangers of global warming. This Oscar winning documentary of those lectures doesn't shock us with new data, but it offers a thought-provoking and entertaining recap of the issue. This slightly sanctimonious film portrays Gore as a man drawn to environmental issues since the 1970. Then why didn't he do anything in his eight years as Vice President?

The Illusionist
2006
**
Director: Neil Burger
Cast: Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, Paul Giamatti, Rufus Sewell, Aaron Johnson

In the turn-of-the-century Vienna a master magician locks horns with the Crown Prince when he discovers that his childhood sweetheart is about to become a princess. It all ends tragically, or does it? Is there really someone out there who doesn't find the story utterly predictable, and dull? Look at the title of the film if you need a hint. Edward Norton gives another bland performance, and the promise he showed a few years ago is but a faint memory. The magic tricks we see on stage would be hard to produce even with the 21st century technology. The film looks stunning, that much I admit.

Idiocracy
2006
**½
Director: Mike Judge
Cast: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Alan Crews, Anthony Campos, David Herman, Kevin McAfee, Robert Musgrave

Luke Wilson plays an average Joe who wakes up 500 years into the future and discovers that the mankind has become so stupid that he is now the smartest man on the planet. The set-up of this science fiction comedy obviously owes a great deal to Woody Allen's Sleeper, but it is unclear whether this is a smart comedy for dumb people or a dumb comedy for smart people? The first 30 minutes offer some wonderfully witty, keenly observed humour about the American way of life, but then Mike Judge and Etan Cohen run out of ideas. Clever gags make way for big, boring action set pieces and jokes that play to the lowest common denominator.

Ice Age: The Meltdown
2006
***
Director: Carlos Saldanha
Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Jay Leno

Manny, Sid, Diego and Scrat return for new adventures. The ice caps are melting and the animals must flee to safety. That's all there is to the plot. However, there are plenty of exciting sequences and a number of good jokes during the 90 minutes. Followed by Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Hollywoodland
2006
***
Director: Allen Coulter
Cast: Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins, Robin Tunney

George Reeves was a B actor in the 1950s who had a brief moment in the limelight as Superman, and was later found dead with a bullet hole in his head. This watchable drama speculates whether it was murder or suicide, but doesn't dare to draw any conclusions. Affleck is great as Reeves, and so is Lane as his lover/provider. Adrien Brody plays a screwed up private eye hired to look into the actor's death, but his uninteresting personal story is a distraction.

The Holiday
2006
**
Director: Nancy Meyers
Cast: Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Jack Black, Eli Wallach, Edward Burns, Rufus Sewell, Shannyn Sossamon

Iris and Amanda, two lovelorn ladies, want to escape their philandering boyfriends and agree to swap homes for two weeks. And wouldn't you know, Iris finds Mr. Right in L.A. and Amanda finds hers in Surrey, UK. Nancy Meyers has created a romantic comedy so bland and inoffensive that it's not even worth getting worked up about. If the story was set in the real world and the characters resembled actual human beings, one might be tempted to throw stuff at the screen. These four incredibly successful career people live in the land of milk and honey where they never have to worry about annoyances such as work. This amiable crowdpleaser comes straight off the conveyor belt, yet Meyers has the audacity to comment on the shallowness of modern day Hollywood movies. The film is about 45 minutes too long and its actors range from sweet (Winslet) to oversweet (Law) to miscast (Black) to plain awful (Diaz).

The Hoax
2006
***
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, Julie Delpy

It's 1970 and two struggling writers, Clifford Irving and Richard Suskind, come up with an outrageous idea. They'll forge Howard Hughes' autobiography because the hermit-like millionaire is unlikely to contradict anything that they put out. This fact-based story takes liberties with the truth, but it offers a fascinating and entertaining slice of recent history. Based on Irving's book.

Happy Feet
2006
*½
Director: George Miller
Cast: Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Robin Williams, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman

This computer animation about emperor penguins goes into its first bland song and dance number before the titles are over. Then it introduces the story and the characters without raising a smile; young Mumble is a skillful dancer but a terrible singer, which makes him an outcast in his community. The first impression is definitely not very good, but much worse is yet to come. A few gratuitous and suprisingly scary action scenes later we reach the ecological finale, which is too naive, preachy and stupid to put into words. The animation work looks stunning, but isn't that the benchmark nowadays?

Half Nelson
2006
**½
Director: Ryan Fleck
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie, Monique Gabriela Curnen, Denis O'Hare, Starla Benford, Deborah Rush, Jay O. Sanders

Dan Dunne is an idealistic and idiosyncratic middle-school history teacher who nurses a serious drug habit. Drey, one of his pupils, is a 13-year-old girl from a broken home. These two dysfunctional people form an unusual friendship, which this indie drama portrays in a subtle, fresh and cliché-free manner. "If you can save one life, you can save the world" is the theme of the film, but the surprise is who saves who. Ryan Fleck's feature debut is interesting but slow-paced and drawn out. No wonder, because he expanded it from his 20-minute short Gowanus, Brooklyn (2004). Another problem is Dan, who is a thoroughly loathsome and unsympathetic character. Ryan Gosling plays him well, though, even if he is about 10 years too young for the part.

A Good Year
2006
*
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Russell Crowe, Marion Cotillard, Albert Finney, Didier Bourdon, Isabelle Candelier

A workaholic London stock broker inherits his uncle's house in Provence. He flies there to sell it fast, but...you can guess the rest. It's based on a novel by Peter Mayle whose autobiographical books lovingly depicted Provencial food, wine and people. Now he rolls out every imaginable xenophobic stereotype and fish out of water cliché. Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott are both useless at comedy, and this stinker doesn't get anything right. The protagonist's transformation from a self-absorbed and boorish womaniser to a relaxed and life-loving romantic doesn't have one credible second in it.

The Good Shepherd
2006
**½
Director: Robert De Niro
Cast: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, William Hurt, Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, Timothy Hutton, Joe Pesci, John Turturro

Eric Roth's ambitious screenplay, which spent ten years in development, explores the birth of CIA through the fictional Edward Wilson, who is partly based on James Jesus Angleton. He is recruited from Yale and groomed into a counterintelligence specialist during and after WW2. This quiet and serious man learns very quickly that he shouldn't trust anyone. In his second film behind the camera Robert De Niro creates a palpable sense of Cold War paranoia and conveys the brutality of the spy game with a few powerful scenes. However, his drama is ridiculously long and the personal half of the story fails as spectacularly as the Bay of Pigs invasion in the beginning of the film because a stoic bureaucrat who doesn't take joy in anything cannot function as the emotional centre of the story. His wife (Angelina Jolie in a thankless role) is supposed to represent softer family values, but this unpleasant character coerces Wilson to marry her and then spends the rest of the time whining. The cast is impressive, but apart from Matt Damon they have very little to do. And Damon himself does even less; he plays a man who keeps everything inside, and the performance is either perfectly controlled or incredibly wooden.

The Good German
2006
**
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, Tobey Maguire, Beau Bridges, Tony Curran, Leland Orser, Jack Thompson, Robin Weigert

This experimental black and white drama recreates the look and feel of the Golden Age of Hollywood by employing the filmmaking techniques and style of the time (cinematography, sound, back projection, score, titles, etc.). The events take place at the end of World War 2. An American correspondent arrives in Berlin to cover a peace conference when he runs into Lena, his secretive old flame who is at the centre of a complicated espionage mystery. Soderbergh produces an authentic pastiche, but what exactly is the point of this exercise? Who needs to see a technically outdated film that joylessly retreads the steps of the genuine classics, Casablanca and The Third Man. The story (from Joseph Kanon's novel) is an overelaborate bore. Clooney and Blanchett have no chemistry. He's wooden and charmless, she's just plain awful.

Goemul (The Host)
2006
***½
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona, Go Ah-sung, Oh Dal-su, Lee Jae-eung, Lee Dong-ho

A few years after hazardous chemicals were dumped into the Han River, a huge monster appears and begins to terrorise the people of Seoul, and one family in particular. Bong Joon-ho offers a fresh and original twist on the monster movie genre. There are thrills like in Godzilla, but also some wonderful social satire and moving family drama. The script takes a scathing look at the American military who wield undue influence over the Korean government, who in turn have the safety of their own population on the lowest priority level.

The Fountain
2006
**
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn, Mark Margolis, Stephen McHattie, Cliff Curtis, Sean Patrick Thomas

Three men, all of them played by Hugh Jackman, dream of spending eternity with the woman portrayed by Rachel Weisz. A 21st century neuroscientist tries to cure his wife, who has written a book about a 16th century conquistador who is commissioned by the Queen of Spain to locate the Tree of Life, which in the distant future is dying inside an orb and travelling in deep space with a Buddhist spaceman. Darren Aronofsky's long-cherished project, which he also scripted, could be summed up as 2001: A Love Story. The film is ambitious and visually arresting, and after a confounding start the three strands do come together, but the whole story is just a bunch of New Age hoeey. Although Jackman and Weisz are both good, their under-developed but over-played romance fails to touch the heart.

For Your Consideration
2006
***
Director: Christopher Guest
Cast: Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean

The production of a pompous period drama goes into a frenzy when rumours of potential Oscar nominations begin to crop up. Christopher Guest has abandoned the trademark mockumentary style of his previous comedies, such as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, but in essence this Hollywood parody is not much of a departure for him. Some wonderfully subtle humour and a few laugh-out-loud moments are counterbalanced by some sadly exaggerated characters and turns of event.

Flags of Our Fathers
2006
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Ryan Philippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery, Paul Walker, Jamie Bell, Barry Pepper, Robert Patrick, Neal McDonough, Melanie Lynskey, Tom McCarthy

Clint Eastwood has come a long way since his previous war films, Firefox and Heartbreak Ridge, which were mostly jingoistic macho posturing. This gripping, moving, and thought-provoking war drama tells the story behind the iconic photograph in which American soldiers raise the flag during the battle of Iwo Jima. The three surviving soldiers are paraded at home in order to raise funds for the war effort, but the men hate being called heroes. The story cuts seamlessly between Iwo Jima and the home front, but the clunky ending takes about 30 minutes to wrap things up. Eastwood shot Letters from Iwo Jima at the same time, and it covers the events on the island from the Japanese perspective.

Elementarteilchen (Atomised)
2006
*
Director: Oskar Röhler
Cast: Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Ulmen, Franka Potente, Martina Gedeck, Nina Hoss

A godawful mess based on Michel Houllebecq's highly rated novel about two very different half-brothers who were (left un-) raised by a hippie mother. One is a celebrated geneticist but a virgin in his thirties. The other one is a racist sex addict who finally has a breakdown. You can try hard to find something tangible in the story, but it's impossible; one scene follows another and the sole emotion you feel is numbness.

Dreamgirls
2006
***
Director: Bill Condon
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Danny Glover

Based on the popular stage musical, this film adaptation attempts to tell several personal stories against the backdrop of the black music movement during the civil right era. The Dreamettes (inspired by the Supremes) are a girl group who build a long and successful career thanks to their visionary but ruthless manager. The story and the performances are captivating, but a musical about music industry should have at least one memorable tune on the soundtrack.

The Devil Wears Prada
2006
***½
Director: David Frankel
Cast: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, Adrian Grenier, Stanley Tucci

Andrea, a bright college graduate and an aspiring journalist, wins a coveted job as an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the famously demanding editor of the fashion bible Runway. The job slowly transforms Andrea from an ugly duckling to a self-assured young woman, but she seems to lose a part of herself in the process. This satirical comedy is delightful, even if wants to have it both ways. It makes fun of the fickleness and vacuousness of the fashion industry, and worships the glamour and beauty associated with it. The story throws in some obvious romantic complications for the heroine, but the outcome of the love triangle is not what you'd expect. The anorexic Anne Hathaway may not be the most obvious choice to play a "fat assistant", but she does well. And so does Meryl Streep whose performance is wonderfully understated, although her character could as easily have been a cartoon villain. Adapted from the novel by Lauren Weisberger who based the book on her experiences of working for the Vogue magazine.

The Descent
2006
**½
Director: Neil Marshall
Cast: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Alex Reid, Nora-Jane Noone

Six female friends (and extreme sport addicts) get trapped inside uncharted caves in the Appalachian mountains. As if that's not enough, they find something unexpected deeper underground. In the first half this low budget horror film builds suspense slowly and effectively, and it really makes you feel the claustrophobia of the underground passages. Then the floodgates of gore open in the murky caves and it becomes hard to see or care what is happening.

The Departed
2006
****½
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Ray Winston, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson, James Badge Dale

Ruthless but charismatic Boston mob boss Frank Costello has an inside man in the Massachusetts State Police, but he is unaware that there is also a mole in his own organisation. This cynical, violent, and over-elaborate but irresistibly entertaining and wonderfully acted crime drama attempts to show how similar these two men ultimately are; both of them are forced to live a lie and try to hold on to what's left of their own identity. William Monahan's script is based on the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs (2002). Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson's characters are based on real-life people, who were also portrayed in Black Mass. An Academy Award winner for best film, director, screenplay, and film editing.

Déjà Vu
2006
***½
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer, Bruce Greenwood, Matt Craven, James Caviezel, Paula Patton, Adam Goldberg

Denzel Washington gives a reliably commanding performance as a federal agent who investigates the bombing of a ferry in New Orleans, which killed more than 500 people. In order to find the culprit, he's introduced to a secret government programme, which enables him to see into the recent past. The science behind this technology is more than dubious and the plot has its share of holes, but Tony Scott's irresistible thriller doesn't stop long enough to let us dwell on the details. He stages some outrageously entertaining set pieces, and the highlight is a car chase in which the suspect and the pursuer are separated by four days.

The Da Vinci Code
2006
**
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Alfred Molina, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno

A symbology expert is on a lecture trip in Paris when he's invited to solve a murder mystery. This leads him to a secret guarded since the dawn of Christianity. Ron Howard has turned Dan Brown's multi-million-selling page turner into a watch-checker of a movie. Any thrills that existed in the novel have disappeared into the hours of exposition, and the controversial secret has no wow effect whatsoever. In his final speech the protagonist makes sure that no churchgoer should feel offended by the story.

Cocaine Cowboys
2006
**½
Director: Billy Corben
Cast:

In the late 1970s and early 1980s cocaine landed in Miami and quickly transformed the city into the murder capital of the world. The first half of this documentary explains how the narcotics were imported from Colombia to the U.S. The second half focuses on the ensuing drug war, and particularly on its ruthless leader Griselda Blanco who needed no excuse to kill anyone on her way. Billy Corben's overlong film provides an informative but pointless look into the minutiae of the drug trade. The drug traffickers brag about how much money they made and the enforcer details how many people he killed. The only thing missing is a user who explains what it feels like to be under the influence of cocaine. Corben's restless visuals and breakless narration give you an idea, though. His use of images of bullet-ridden men, women and children is in poor taste. The score was written by Miami Vice composer Jan Hammer.

Clerks II
2006
**
Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Jennifer Schwalbach, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith

Everything and nothing has changed since Clerks. Dante and Randal are in their thirties, and they’ve advanced from manning a convenience store to flipping burgers. Dante, who is once again torn between two (implausibly gorgeous) women, at least wants to break out of his depressing existence, but Randal is cool with status quo. This irksome comedy doesn’t reach even the modest heights of the original. It’s superficially about growing old, but the dialogue continues to revolve around sex and popular culture and the characters act like geeky and horny 16-year-olds. Smith's film offers his trademark blend of raunch and schmaltz. Admittedly it does take special talent to move from bestiality to conservative family values in a matter of minutes, even if it doesn't produce anything funny.

Children of Men
2006
****½
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Clare-Hope Ashitey

A disturbing but utterly believable dystopia set in 2027 when women have become infertile and the UK has turned into a totalitarian society ruled by chaos and anarchy. Clive Owen plays a disillusioned ex-activist who is asked to escort a pregnant woman to safety. A refreshingly unpredictable scifi drama with some stunning but unflashy camera work. Based on a novel by P.D. James.

Casino Royale
2006
****
Director: Martin Campbell
Cast: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright

Daniel Craig's debut as 007 is arguably one of the best films in the series, even if it could be a bit shorter. This reboot strips down the worn-out formula - beautiful women, glamorous locations, and terrific action set pieces remain - and gives the franchise a much needed injection of gritty realism. Now James Bond goes through real emotions, be it pain, love or loss. The main storyline, based on Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, revolves around a tense card game against a moneylaunderer for terrorists.

Cars
2006
**½
Director: John Lasseter, Joe Ranft
Cast: Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy

Pixar has managed to make us care about bugs and rats, but they're not able to repeat the feat with automobiles. In fact the whole concept doesn't hold water. There are no humans, the cars have built the world as we know it. And if they have eyes, mouth, tongue and teeth, does it mean that they were born and not built? Nevermind. The protagonist is an arrogant racing car who is stuck against his will in a small town of Radiator Springs on Route 66. This animation is beautiful to look at but it rarely raises a laugh.

Bug
2006
***
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Lynn Collins, Brian F. O'Byrne, Harry Connick, Jr.

Agnes is an unstable, hard-drinking waitress who is trying to get over the loss of her son. Peter is a paranoid soldier gone AWOL. These two desperate souls find solace in each other and go gradually insane together in her motel room in Oklahoma. This unsettling one room drama is based on Tracy Letts' stage play. Its graphic depiction of paranoia is disturbing in both positive and negative senses of the word. Judd and Shannon give incredibly raw performances.

Breaking and Entering
2006
**½
Director: Anthony Minghella
Cast: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, Rafi Gavron, Martin Freeman

Anthony Minghella's final film is set in London's King's Cross where an architecture firm's fancy new office is repeatedly burgled. One day one of the architects, who feels like an outsider in his own home, knowingly begins an unconventional affair with the teenage burglar's mother. This is a modest and oddly ineffectual drama about a man stuck between two women who are both dedicated to their children.

The Break-Up
2006
**
Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn, Joey Lauren Adams, Cole Hauser, Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman, Judy Davis, Justin Long

Gary and Brooke meet in the pre-credit teaser. The title scene montage shows us the highlights of the subsequent two years, and ten minutes in they're breaking up and commencing a fight over their apartment. Even if you're not hoping for a darkly comic story about the end of a relationship à la The War of the Roses, this gutless comedy disappoints. The film presumes that we want the couple to reconcile, but we don't even understand how these two mismatching individuals got together in the first place. It looks like the story ends with dignity, if not for the final scene. As for the performances, Vince Vaughn is his usual tiresome self and Jennifer Aniston seems out of her depth.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
2006
***½
Director: Larry Charles
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, Luenell, Pamela Anderson, Bob Barr

In this original mockumentary comedy, Sacha Baron Cohen plays Borat Sagdiyev, a blatantly racist, sexist, and anti-semitic Kazakhstani journalist, who travels across the US and A. This fictional character cleverly pushes the right buttons and reveals the shocking prejudice and indifference in the American people, who incidentally think Borat is a real person. The film delivers an uneven collection of vignettes, some of which are hilarious while others feel scripted or just plain awkward. The character made its first appearance on Cohen's TV show. Followed by a 2020 sequel.

Blood Diamond
2006
**½
Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly, Kagiso Kyupers

Edward Zwick wants to make ambitious and worthy dramas, but he doesn't like to leave the audience too depressed at the end of the film. The finished product always feels like a compromise. His latest example is set in civil war-ridden Sierra Leone where conflict diamonds are mined with slave labour in order to buy arms for child soldiers. A thought-provoking setting, but, in all honesty, this is just a rip roaring action adventure about a white mercenary who wants to get his hands on a gigantic diamond which was hidden by a local man whose family is torn apart. The film paints a believable picture of the conflict, but offers a laughably implausible solution to one man's private hell. DiCaprio and Hounsou are great, though.

The Black Dahlia
2006
*½
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner

The brutal and unsolved Black Dahlia murder in 1947 has haunted and captivated people for decades. This fictional film noir needs just two hours to solve the case and make a dog's dinner of it. The murder is used as a backdrop to tell a highly uninteresting story of two pugilistic cops and two femme fatales. The film captures the period beautifully but gets nothing else right. The casting is dead wrong, the performances are dreadful and the script is incoherent. Based on James Ellroy's novel.

Babel
2006
**½
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barrazza, Rinko Kikuchi, Koji Yakusho

Following Amores Perros and 21 Grams, Inarritu goes global in his third film about tragically interrelated lives, as an American rifle brings misery on three continents. The production values are high and the performances are strong, but the mosaic structure struggles to find a rhythm and the film never delivers the emotional payoff you're waiting for, not least because some of the characters are left hanging out to dry. The haunting score by Gustavo Santaolalla won an Oscar.

Away from Her
2006
***½
Director: Sarah Polley
Cast: Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, Kristen Thomson, Michael Murphy, Wendy Crewson, Nina Dobrev

Grant and Fiona are a childless couple who have been married for 44 years. Fiona suffers from Alzheimer's disease and she checks voluntarily into a nursing home. The move is harder on Grant who must live with his guilt and memories while Fiona slowly drifts away from him. Actress Sarah Polley's directorial debut is a moving but geriatrically paced drama which is built around two veteran actors. Julie Christie garnered all the accolades, but Gordon Pinsent is the true star of the film with his subdued performance. Polley adapted Alice Munro's short story The Bear Came over the Mountain.

Apocalypto
2006
****½
Director: Mel Gibson
Cast: Rudy Youngblood, Morris Birdyellowhead, Carlos Emilio Baez, Raoul Trujillo

Mel Gibson follows the offputting The Passion of the Christ with another ambitious epic in an obscure language. This time, however, he's made a brilliantly captivating action drama which argues that the downfall of the Mayan civilization had begun before the white man arrived in the 16th century. Jaguar Paw is a young tribesman with a pregnant wife and son. The early scenes depict a close-knit community, which is followed by a brutal attack on the village by warriors who plan to sell the women as slaves and the men as human sacrifice. The mid-section in the Maya city contains some beautiful, arresting and wonderfully over-the-top images, and the film climaxes in one of the most exciting chase scenes ever put on film.

All the King's Men
2006
**
Director: Steven Zaillian
Cast: Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, Anthony Hopkins, Thomas Falterman

Willie Stark, a self-proclaimed hick, is elected the governor of Louisiana on a populist vote. Jack Burden, a reporter who was initially captivated by this idealistic truth-teller, becomes his aide and witnesses the instantaneous corruptive effect of power. Robert Penn Warren' Pulitzer Prize winning novel was modelled on the real-life governor Huey Long, and the previous adaptation in 1949 won multiple Academy Awards. Back in those days the story may have seemed a groundbreakingly cynical look at politics, now it feels like yesterday's news. Steven Zaillian's dry update moves the setting from the 1930s to the 1950s, for no apparent reason, and his entire film has an air of phonyness to it. The people on the screen act like characters in a pre-scripted melodrama rather than living, breathing human beings with free wills. The cast is very impressive, but there isn't a single memorable performance.

16 Blocks
2006
**½
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Bruce Willis, Mos Def, David Morse, Cylk Cozart, David Zayas

This crime drama is heavily influenced by Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet. Bruce Willis plays an alcoholic detective who is assigned to escort a witness to the court house. As it turns out, the witness is about to testify against corrupt police officers, who in turn want him dead. The film is snappy and entertaining, but its plausibility is close to zero.

Zathura / Zathura: A Space Adventure
2005
**½
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Tim Robbins

Danny and Walter are two bickering brothers who must learn to pull together when their house ends up in outer space after they start a game of Zathura. If this story sounds awfully familiar, that's because it is based on Chris Van Allsburg's book, just like Jumanji. Although Jon Favreau's family movie is somewhat likeable and entertaining, I could not get past its lack of fresh ideas and the infuriating main characters.

The World's Fastest Indian
2005
***
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Cauffiel, Joe Howard, Chris Williams, Paul Rodriguez, Christopher Lawford, Annie Whittle

In the late 1950s avid land speed racer Burt Munro is about to travel from his native New Zealand to Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to test the limits of his trusted Indian Scout motorcycle. The candid and genial Munro meets many obstacles and a colourful selection of people during his long journey. The story is based on real-life events and it offers a lighter version of David Lynch's The Straight Story. This feelgood film wins you over with its old school charm and optimism, even if the narrative is a bit sluggish at times. But what to make of Antony Hopkins and his performance? His accent is all over the place and his Burt Munro borders on Forrest Gump, but somehow he manages to capture the character's affability.

The White Countess
2005
*½
Director: James Ivory
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Hiroyuki Sanada

The final Merchant Ivory production attempts to emulate Casablanca but fails miserably. The story is set in Shanghai in 1937 where an American ex-diplomat wants to employ a Russian Countess in exile as the centerpiece of his new restaurant. The diplomat is both physically and symbolically blind, and the countess supports her family from hell as a prostitute, although we never see her do anything beyond dancing. If their dreary and overlong story is supposed to be romantic, I must be dead inside because I didn't feel a thing. Ralph Fiennes is usually reliable, but this time his character is unbearable. The man is full of self-loathing and can't even seem to stand up straight.

Where the Truth Lies
2005
**
Director: Atom Egoyan
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, Alison Lohman, Rachel Blanchard, Sonja Bennett, Maury Chaykin, David Hayman, Kristin Adams

Lanny Morris and Vince Collins were a popular pair of comedy entertainers whose lucrative partnership came to an end in 1957 when a college student was found dead in their hotel room. 15 years later, a young female journalist, who is hired to write Collins' biography, is determined to uncover the events of that fateful night. Atom Egoyan's erotic thriller was adapted from Rupert Holmes' 2003 book. The twisty story jumps back and forth in time and unravels like a good mystery novel. That is, until the resolution which is disappointingly underwhelming. However, the main problem with Egoyan's stylishly mounted noir is that I never become invested in his characters. Whether it is the comedy duo who tragically succumb to a life of excess without a moment of privacy, the writer who finds herself cruelly manipulated, or the poor student who dies, I am equally unmoved. Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth come through unscathed, but Alison Lohman, who was the best thing in Matchstick Men and White Oleander, is woefully miscast as the smart and sexy journalist.


Wedding Crashers
2005
**
Director: David Dobkin
Cast: Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Christopher Walken, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Bradley Cooper, Jane Seymour, Keir O'Donnell, Ellen Albertini Tow

John and Jeremy are divorce mediators and BFFs who crash weddings to bed gorgeous single women. In the latest nuptials things get complicated when John begins to develop real feelings for Claire, the bride's sister. David Dobkin's film begins as a raunchy and mildly funny comedy, but as the crashers inevitably mature up, the story turns into romantic mush. The script by first-timers Steve Faber and Bob Fisher combines two of the genre's most clichéd and overused premises: 1) A boy falls in love with a girl through a deception and 2) the boy faces a romantic rival who is an obnoxious asshole. The resulting film is tired, overlong, and sexist. All the female characters are horny and gullible bimbos except Claire. Then again, this presumably smart young woman is about to marry a superficial and chauvinistic boor.

The Weather Man
2005
**
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, Hope Davis, Michael Rispoli, Gemmenne de la Peña, Nicholas Hoult, Gil Bellows

A Chicago TV weatherman finds himself in the doldrums. His work is well-paid but meaningless, his marriage is in ruins, and his teenage children have become strangers. Compare this to his own father who is a celebrated author and a dedicated family man. Gore Verbinski's dark comedy about a middle-aged man in an existential crisis gives us a few enjoyable comic moments but it's let down by a protagonist who is an irritating, over-privileged sadsack. We're meant to root for him but how can we when he aims to change the course of his life with the following three-step plan: 1) pursue the same menial job but quadruple the salary, 2) save the marriage by behaving like an idiot, 3) become a better parent through bribery and violence. Nicolas Cage plays the character with his familiar hangdog expression. Michael Caine is nicely understated as the father, even if his accent is totally untraceable.

War of the Worlds
2005
****½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins, Miranda Otto

Visitors from another world begin to execute a plan millions of years in the making: the annihilation of the human race. A neglectful dad and his two kids try to stay alive long enough to reunite with the ex-wife/mother. This blockbuster is wonderfully suspenseful and entertaining, and it includes first-rate special effects and some outstanding set pieces. Steven Spielberg's film is untypically but delightfully bleak, and closer in tone to Schindler's List than to E.T. Based on a novel by H.G. Wells which was previously filmed in 1953.

Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were Rabbit
2005
****
Director: Nick Park, Steve Box
Cast: Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Nicholas Smith

The second full length animation from the Aardman studios offers a delightful mix of visual gags and hilarious oneliners, although the whole is not quite as disarming as Chicken Run. Wallace and Gromit are after a mysterious rodent who is wreaking havoc on the eve of the giant vegetable competition. The story kicks off brilliantly, then loses some momentum midway through only to make amends with a breathtaking finale.

Walk the Line
2005
****
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick

The story of Johnny Cash (and June Carter). The singer's climb from childhood traumas to pop stardom, his subsequent drug addiction, and his inevitable comeback are the type of stuff that biopic clichés, not to mention Ray, are made of. However, this drama sparkles thanks to a strong love story, excellent performances (Reese Witherspoon won an Oscar), wonderful music numbers (both leads sing their own songs), and overall grit and credibility.

Valiant
2005
***
Director: Gary Chapman
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ricky Gervais, Tim Curry, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Williams

RHPS, Royal Homing Pigeon Service had their role to play in WW2 and, as odd as it sounds, some of the birds were decorated for their bravery. This entertaining but formulaic computer animation follows an uncommonly small pigeon who wants to prove his doubters wrong and make his country proud.

V for Vendetta
2005
****
Director: James McTeigue
Cast: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, John Hurt, Stephen Fry, Tim Pigott-Smith, Rupert Graves, Roger Allam, Ben Miles, Sinéad Cusack

In the near future, Britain has turned into a fascist dictatorship, where dissidents are jailed or killed. A mysterious masked insurgent called V wants to overthrow the regime, or is he just out for revenge? This captivating and entertaining dystopia is based on Alan Moore's comic book and scripted by the Wachowskis. The action scenes are a bit clunky and too similar to The Matrix in style, but at least they serve a gripping and thought-provoking story. However, the Nazi references did not need to be quite so obvious (the name of the shouty dictator is Sutler).

The Upside of Anger
2005
****
Director: Mike Binder
Cast: Joan Allen, Kevin Costner, Mike Binder, Erika Christensen, Keri Russell

Joan Allen gives another fine performance in this poignant and entertaining adult drama about a woman who is overcome by anger after her husband suddenly abandons her and their four teenage daughters. She finds some comfort in her semi-alcoholic neighbour, nicely played by Kevin Costner. The needless twist ending doesn't change anything, it merely serves as an ironic footnote to the story.

An Unfinished Life
2005
*
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, Morgan Freeman, Josh Lucas, Becca Gardner

A young mom and her daughter escape an abusive boyfriend to her ex-father-in-law's farm. This bitter old man lives there with his friend who was mauled by a bear, and blames the woman for his son's death. However, the cute grandchild and some asskicking heal all wounds. This feelgood family drama is so utterly predictable that not only can I predict exactly what's going to happen, I can quote every clunky line of dialogue before it's spoken. Redford and Freeman manage to add some gravitas to their characters but, all credit to her, JLo's character is so underwritten that she seems to have no personality whatsoever. The bear subplot, on the other hand, is so burdened with symbolism that the actual events become uninteresting.

Tyttö sinä olet tähti (Beauty and the Bastard)
2005
***
Director: Dome Karukoski
Cast: Pamela Tola, Samuli Vauramo, Eero Milonoff, Eero Saarinen

A smart young girl wants to become a singer but, much to the pleasure of her stiff upper class parents, her career doesn't seem to take off. An idealistic hip hop producer helps her to cut a demo and soon it's l-o-v-e. This Finnish variation on 8 Mile pays attention to the look and sound, and it pays off, but a hint of originality wouldn't hurt. Now it's a watchable but very forgettable flick.

Tsotsi
2005
***½
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Presley Chweneyagae, Mothusi Magano, Kenneth Nkosi, Zenzo Ngqobe, Jerry Mofokeng, Terry Pheto, Nambitha Mpumlwana, Rapulana Seiphemo

Tsotsi is the leader of a ruthless youth gang who go around mugging people. One day on his own he wounds a woman and steals her car, only to discover that her baby is on the backseat. The new circumstances force Tsotsi to look back on his own unhappy childhood and reexamine his current life in the shantytown. This South African drama, which is based on Athol Fugard's novel, celebrates humanity. The story is believable and touching, if slightly didactic and sanctimonious. Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

Transamerica
2005
***
Director: Duncan Tucker
Cast: Felicity Huffman, Kevin Zegers, Graham Greene, Fionnula Flanagan, Burt Young, Carrie Preston, Elizabeth Peña

A transsexual woman is about to have the final reconstructive surgery when she discovers that she fathered a child 18 years earlier. She bails the boy out without revealing her true identity and takes him on a road trip from New York to Los Angeles. Most journeys in films are about the characters discovering who they really are, but this one is about her family discovering who she is. Felicity Huffman gives a bold and moving performance, and her vulnerable character is the heart and soul of the movie. The teenage son, by contrast, is uninteresting and frankly irritating, and not that credibly played by Kevin Zegers. The central characters are certainly edgy but otherwise this is a predictable road movie.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
2005
****
Director: Tommy Lee Jones
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio César Cedillo, Dwight Yoakam, January Jones, Melissa Leo

Tommy Lee Jones' impressive big screen directorial debut is based on a screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga who wrote Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel. Once again Arriaga manipulates chronology to tell us a tragic story of interrelated lives ruled by chance. Jones himself plays a ranch foreman who vowed to bury his friend's body in his home village in Mexico. He kidnaps the border patrolman (Pepper) who shot the friend and drags him along on this trip across the border. There are a few too many coincidences in the plotting, but this is still a moody and intelligent grown-up drama which plays out like a modern day Western. The border patrolman seems dreadfully one-note at first, but thanks to good writing and Pepper's sound performance he develops into a three-dimensional character, and his redemption seems believable and touching.

Thank You for Smoking
2005
**½
Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Cameron Bright, J.K. Simmons, Katie Holmes, Maria Bello

Nick Naylor is an unscrupulous tobacco industry lobbyist who is good at his job but not very good at connecting with his son. This flawed satire on spin control has occasional bite, but it loses its nerve towards the end. It would also help if I could believe the following plot details: a) tobacco lobbyists are avid smokers, alcohol lobbyists are alcoholics, and arms lobbyists are gun nuts, b) people who smoke themselves to death blame the tobacco industry spokesperson, c) Naylor's son admires his dad no matter what he does. And why on earth doesn't anyone light up a cigarette in a film about smoking? Jason Reitman's debut is based on Christopher Buckley's novel.

Syriana
2005
***
Director: Stephen Gaghan
Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Christopher Plummer

A politically charged multi-character drama which shows how oil has the world on its knees. Corruption is par for the course when Washington politicians, CIA, Middle-Eastern emirates, major oil companies and terrorists all pursue their own agenda. Stephen Gaghan, who wrote the similarly structured Traffic, moves behind the camera and delivers a film which is ambitious but flawed, smart but cynical, interesting but not terribly captivating. Maybe he should have concentrated on only one or two of the story strands. George Clooney is part of a strong ensemble cast, and he won an Oscar for his performance as a disillusioned CIA agent.




Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
2005
**½
Director: George Lucas
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Frank Oz

Desperate to protect his pregnant wife, the vulnerable Anakin is drawn to Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and his evil plans. The concluding part of the prequel trilogy possesses the same strengths and weaknesses as the other two movies. The visual design, special effects and action scenes are impressive albeit overpowering, but the acting and the dialogue are once again secondary elements. Although you get a feeling that the saga comes full circle, thanks to bad writing and Hayden Christensen's wooden performance, it's hard to accept the reasons behind Anakin Skywalker's transformation into Darth Vader.

The Squid and the Whale
2005
****½
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, Anna Paquin, William Baldwin

Noah Baumbach's excellent autobiographical drama comedy about a family break-up is set in Bronx in 1986. The father is a pretentious and self-absorbed writer-cum-teacher who hasn't written anything meaningful in years, while the promiscuous mother just had her first story published in the New Yorker. The two boys, who have their own respective crises, are caught in the middle. Writing is wonderfully subtle and poignant, and while the performances are all first rate, Jeff Daniels is a particular standout.

Sorstalanság (Fateless)
2005
****
Director: Lajos Koltai
Cast: Marcell Nagy, Béla Dóra, Bálint Péntek, Áron Dimény, Zsolt Dér

A 14-year-old Jewish boy from Budapest takes a bus on the wrong day and is transported to Auschwitz, and from there to Buchenwald. This unique Holocaust film has a protagonist who takes his suffering as it comes and doesn't try to analyse his fate or place it in a larger context. The story takes a while to get going, but it leads to deeply moving human drama. Cinematographer Lajos Koltai's directorial debut is based on Imre Kertész's autobiographical novel. Ennio Morricone provides another excellent score.

Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days)
2005
***½
Director: Marc Rothemund
Cast: Julia Jentsch, Alexander Held, Fabian Hinrichs, Johanna Gastdorf, Andre Hennicke

In 1943 Sophie Scholl and his brother Hans were arrested and trialed for distributing anti-war leaflets at the university of Munich. They were both members of the White Rose, a non-violent resistance movement against the Nazi regime. The screenplay of this fine German drama is based on interviews and interrogation transcripts. As a result the movie is very dialogue heavy, but the strong performances and the captivating true story make it engrossing.

Sky High
2005
***½
Director: Mike Mitchell
Cast: Kelly Preston, Michael Angarano, Danielle Panabaker, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kurt Russell, Steven Strait, Dee Jay Daniels, Kelly Vitz, Nicholas Braun

Will Stronghold joins Sky High, a special floating school for kids with superpowers. His parents, The Commander and Jetstream, are famous superheroes, but unaware that Will is yet to develop any superpowers of his own. This highly entertaining family movie takes a predictable but funny spin on the superhero movie genre. The characters are wacky and the gags come thick and fast.

Sin City
2005
***
Director: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
Cast: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, Benicio del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Elijah Wood, Alexis Bledel, Jaime King, Nick Stahl, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett

This frame-by-frame adaptation of Frank Miller's series of graphic novels was shot entirely against green screen, and its monochromatic visual look is stunning and totally unique. The three stories, however, are all equally adolescent, macho, and ultra-violent, which eventually becomes dull and monotonous. It's difficult to root for anyone on screen when the good guys are ruthless killers, the bad guys are psychopathic killers and rapists, and the female characters can't keep their clothes on. Mickey Rourke makes an impressive comeback in the best story. Quentin Tarantino has guest directed one scene. Followed by Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014).

Serenity
2005
**
Director: Josh Whedon
Cast: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Summer Glau, Alan Tudyk

Josh Whedon's science fiction show Firefly was cancelled in its first season. This utterly unremarkable big screen spin-off probably gives closure to the fans but it doesn't work as a standalone film. Some of the action scenes are confounding and the lifeless characters clearly miss their backstories. Whedon knows how to write wisecracking dialogue but his universe is recycled from other movies, mostly from Star Wars. In the story the Millenium Falcon, I mean, Serenity and its crew save a young girl who turns out to be a programmed killing machine, and the powers that be want her back at any cost.

Sahara
2005
**
Director: Breck Eisner
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, Penelope Cruz, Lennie James

Dirk Pitt, poor man's Indiana Jones, believes that a Civil War era ironclad ended up on the river Niger in Africa. But how does his treasure hunt tie in with the strange plague claiming casualties on the same continent? Pretty poorly, I must say. This stupid, noisy and long action adventure doesn't leave much of an impression at all. The film is adapted from Clive Cussler's novel and it's only a slight improvement on the previous attempt, Raise the Titanic.

Robots
2005
***
Director: Chris Wedge, Carlos Sandalha
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Robin Williams, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks

A robot boy moves to the big city to become an inventor in this computer animation from the makers of Ice Age. The film has a wonderful look and more visual gags than you can absorb without a pause button, but it's undermined by a formulaic story (you can do anything if you believe in yourself) and bland characters. Many aspects of the robot world reflect the human world, which doesn't make much sense since the machines have built themselves.

The Ring Two
2005
***
Director: Hideo Nakata
Cast: Naomi Watts, Simon Baker, David Dorfman, Sissy Spacek, Gary Cole

Rachel and her son Aidan have relocated since The Ring. The infamous tape is out of the picture after the opening scene, and the rest of the story concentrates on the sinister Samara's attempt to possess Aidan. The story doesn't make much sense at times, but there are some very effective and scary sequences, such as the deer attack. Nice cameos by Sissy Spacek and Gary Cole, as Samara's mother and a real estate agent, respectively.

Red Eye
2005
***
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox, Jayma Mays, Laura Johnson, Jack Scalia, Suzie Plakson

This snappy, no-nonsense thriller doesn't beat around the bush. We're introduced to a hotel manager who is accustomed to being on top of things. On a flight to Miami she is seated next to a suave young man whose blackmail scheme suddenly turns her into a helpless victim. The story is fresh and gripping, McAdams and Murphy are good in the lead and Wes Craven keeps things moving at a relentless pace. Then the film hits the usual stumbling block, the ending. It wants to offer us gratification but feels terribly clichéd and contrived.

The Proposition
2005
**
Director: John Hillcoat
Cast: Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Emily Watson, Danny Huston, David Wenham, Richard Wilson, John Hurt, Tom E. Lewis, Leah Purcell

A settler family in the Australian Outback is raped and murdered by a group of outlaws headed by Arthur Burns and his brothers Charlie and Mikey. An English lawman captures the last two and makes an offer to Charlie. If he goes out and kills Arthur, Mikey will not be hanged. The premise sets up an intriguing moral dilemma, but Nick Cave's muddled script only explores it from the lawman's perspective. His violent Western does recreate a world which feels authentically gritty and uncivilised. In this lawless frontier nobody's righteous, or remotely appealing, or properly fleshed out. As a case in point, the three brothers include a wailing retard, a monosyllabic stoneface, and a shamanic psychopath. Cave co-wrote the moody soundtrack with Warren Ellis.

Pride & Prejudice
2005
**½
Director: Joe Wright
Cast: Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Donald Sutherland, Brenda Blethyn

The Bennet family would like to see all of their five girls married to wealthy men, but the second oldest daughter, Elizabeth, cannot get over her first impressions of Mr. Darcy. Joe Wright's feature debut is a boorish version of Jane Austen's wonderfully witty and understated novel. Everything here is painted with broad strokes and many of the characters end up feeling like caricatures rather than real people. This is definitely no match to the lovely 1995 TV adaptation.

Paha maa (Frozen Land)
2005
**
Director: Aku Louhimies
Cast: Jasper Pääkkönen, Mikko Leppilampi, Pamela Tola, Petteri Summanen, Mikko Kouki

This miserablist Finnish drama is a filmed version of Murphy's Law "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong". The events are set in motion by a counterfeit bill which brings nothing but bad luck to everyone. The story offers losers, depressives, alcoholics and corpses, and relatively normal people who turn into one of the above before it's over. The characters move out of the frying pan and into the fire, and the earnest story offers no respite, so much so that the whole thing becomes almost comical. Inspired by Leo Tolstoy's novella The Forged Coupon.

Oldboy
2005
****½
Director: Chan-wook Park
Cast: Min-sik Choi, Ji-tae Yu, Hye-jeong Kang, Dae-han Ji, Seung-Shin Lee

A gut-wrenching Korean revenge drama about an obnoxious man who is locked into a hotel room for fifteen years. Once he's out, he's determined to find out who did it and why. A violent, visceral and unrelenting film with some very memorable scenes.

North Country
2005
***
Director: Niki Caro
Cast: Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, Sissy Spacek, Woody Harrelson, Sean Bean, Michelle Monaghan, Jeremy Renner

In the late 1980s a group of women take jobs in Minnesota iron mines. They enter a male-dominated world where they're subjected to brutal sexual harassment. Josey, a hard-luck single mom reaches her breaking point and decides to take action against the company. Niki Caro's first Hollywood film was inspired by Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law. This non-fiction book is transformed into a compelling fictional story which walks a fine line between gritty social drama and overdramatic soap opera. Charlize Theron gives a very strong performance, although she's a bit too stunning to be believable as a miner.

The New World
2005
***½
Director: Terrence Malick
Cast: Colin Farrell, Q'Orianka Kilcher, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer

Terrence Malick's fourth film has the director's fingerprint all over it. He once again explores man's relationship to his environment in this meticulously staged, meditative drama about a group of English settlers who arrive in Virginia in the 17th century. One of them falls in love with a young indian girl (Pocahontas), which makes their volatile co-existence with the natives all the much harder. But who represents civilisation and who are the savages in this set up?

Murderball
2005
***
Director: Henry Alex Rubin, Dana Adam Shapiro
Cast:

A dynamic documentary about a group of paraplegic men whose lives revolve around wheelchair rugby. These men are not portrayed as victims but as strong-willed individuals who are living their lives to the full. The back stories of the players are captivating, but the film focuses too much on the Rocky IV-style clash between Team USA and Team Canada.

Munich
2005
**½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz

After Arab terrorists kill 11 Israeli atheletes during the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the Israeli government appoints a group of assassins to eliminate the masterminds behind this bloodbath. With his earnest drama Steven Spielberg attempts to illustrate that the cycle of revenge has no end. The intention is noble (and rather obvious), but this overlong and overreaching film fails to convince. The group begin to question their mission, not due to guilt but because they nearly botch every job and begin to fear for their own safety. Spielberg has shot the assassination set-pieces with his usual brilliance, but he ends the film on a bafflingly misjudged note by cross-cutting between the protagonist who is having sex and the athletes who are having their heads blown off. Inspired by true events and adapted from George Jonas' book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team.


Mr. And Mrs. Smith
2005
**½
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn, Adam Brody, William Fichtner

A married suburban couple discover that they are both professional assassins, now pitted against each other. This action comedy is loud, preposterous and overlong, but occasionally amusing. The two attractive leads have good chemistry. Enjoy while it lasts, but don't think about it too much.

Monster-in-Law
2005
*½
Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Jane Fonda, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Vartean, Wanda Sykes, Adam Scott

After a 15 year hiatus, Jane Fonda returns to the screen as a mother who thinks no girl is good enough for her son, not even JLo. Her comeback is a teeth-grindingly stupid and occasionally embarrassing farce. Meet the Parents covered the same ground with some wit, this one only makes you feel sorry for poor old Jane.

Memoirs of a Geisha
2005
***½
Director: Rob Marshall
Cast: Ziyi Zhang, Michelle Yeoh, Ken Watanabe, Koji Yakusho, Li Gong

A sumptuous adaptation of Arthur Golden's bestseller about one woman's journey from an enslaved young girl to the most celebrated geisha in Japan. The story is moving and enlightening, and there are some strong performances (Li Gong is a standout as an experienced geisha who feels her place is threatened). However, some parts feel rushed (WW2) and I cannot escape the feeling of compromised authenticity while watching the Asian cast struggle with their English. This winner of three visual Oscars (art direction, costumes and cinematography) is obviously easy on the eye.

Meet the Fockers
2005
***
Director: Jay Roach
Cast: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Teri Polo, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand

The novelty has worn off and the feeling of déjà vu is inevitable, but the sequel to Meet the Parents is surprisingly funny, if a bit overlong. Now the two families finally come together during a visit to the groom's parents, whose liberal views and unabashed sexuality bring things to a head once more. Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand are a lovely addition to an already strong cast. Followed by Little Fockers.

Match Point
2005
***½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode

A Mr. Ripleyesque drama about a young go-getter who is desperate to become a somebody. He rises above his state but jeopardises it all by falling in love with another woman. The story, which is set in London, is long, somber and familiar from A Place in the Sun, but it keeps you in its grip. However, it's hard to recognize Woody Allen's fingerprint in this chilly film.

The Matador
2005
***
Director: Richard Shepard
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Philip Baker Hall

A hitman in an existential crisis and a business man in a career limbo run into each other in a hotel bar in Mexico, and form an unusual friendship. Pierce Brosnan sheds off his James Bond reputation to play the professional killer who is rude, selfish and insufferable. If only the script and the dialogue could match the bite of Brosnan's character, this could be more than a perfectly enjoyable but rather forgettable dark comedy.

Manderlay
2005
***½
Director: Lars Von Trier
Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankole, Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe

In the second part of Von Trier's trilogy on America, Grace (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard) stumbles on a farm which enforces slavery 70 years after the system was abolished. Like George W. Bush in Iraq, Grace is determined to liberate the slaves, whether they want it or not. Von Trier uses the same type of minimalist theatre sets as in Dogville, but he can't reproduce its shock effect, although in many ways this is a superior, more streamlined film.

Madagascar
2005
***
Director: Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath
Cast: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Tom McGrath

This animation tells an amusing but rather formulaic fish-out-of-water story about four Central Park Zoo animals (a lion, a zebra, a giraffe and a hippo) who accidentally end up in the wild in Madagascar. The four main characters are nice alright, but the nasty and hilarious penguins steal the show. Subsequently, they got their own television series The Penguins of Madagascar. Followed by Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted.

Lupaus
2005
**
Director: Ilkka Vanne
Cast: Laura Birn, Hanna Lekander, Karoliina Vanne, Kari Hietalahti

A disappointingly clinical drama of three young women who volunteer to serve as Lottas in WW2. The key moments of the war years are faithfully reenacted, this time from a female perspective. The characters, some of who naturally die in the process, seem like plot devices rather than human beings.

Lord of War
2005
**½
Director: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Bridget Moynahan, Jared Leto, Eamonn Walker, Ian Holm

This black comedy tells a partly true story of Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian born gunrunner who hits the jackpot with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The script is thought-provoking and well researched, even if Niccol is heavy-handed in including all the grim data in his dialogue and narration. Orlov's personal story, on the other hand, fails to resonate because we're never given any reason to feel sorry for him.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
2005
***½
Director: Shane Black
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen, Dash Mihok, Larry Miller, Rockmond Dunbar, Shannyn Sossamon, Angela Lindvall

Like his best-known screenplays (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight), Shane Black's directorial debut offers bullets and jokes galore, but the tongue remains firmly in the cheek as he plays with movie tropes and storytelling mechanics. The protagonist is a not-terribly-smart loser whose life turns upside down when he arrives in Los Angeles and stumbles on the body of a young woman. Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer (as a gay private investigator) have great chemistry and the film is funny, messy, and disposable.

Kingdom of Heaven
2005
**½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons, Eva Green, Edward Norton, Liam Neeson

This dull and muddled crusade epic is set in the 12th century when Christians and Muslims continue to fight over Holy Land. The film is visually striking but you need some background knowledge on crusades in order to make sense of all the characters and their respective allegiances. The final attack on Jerusalem is very reminiscent of the battle of Helm's Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The Director's Cut, which is about 45 minutes longer, is apparently a much better film, although it still stars the bland Orlando Bloom.

King Kong
2005
****
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann

A wonderfully entertaining remake of the classic monster movie about a film crew who discover a gigantic gorilla on the mysterious Skull Island in the 1930s. Peter Jackson fleshes out the characters, especially the relationship between Kong and the girl, and creates some amazing set pieces with the help of computer effects. The three hour running time is a bit excessive, although the film remains thrilling and touching until the end.

Junebug
2005
****
Director: Phil Morrison
Cast: Embeth Davidtz, Alessandro Nivola, Amy Adams, Ben McKenzie, Celia Weston

A newlywed woman of the world visits her husband's boorish family in North Carolina for the first time. The premise hardly sounds original, but this charming indie flick steers clear of clichés and offers subtle writing and direction, lovingly detailed characters and finely tuned performances.

Jarhead
2005
**½
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Lucas Black, Evan Jones

A fact-based drama about US marines who endure cruel and dehumanising, not to mention very expensive training, only to be sent to a war (Desert Storm I) that is over before they get to shoot anyone. Poor lads. The performances are strong and there are some arresting images in the second half, but what exactly is the point of the story? War is hell...of a boring endeavour? Based on Anthony Swofford's autobiographical book.

The Island
2005
**½
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi

A man who thinks he is one of the survivors of the Contamination discovers that he and his fellowmen and women are all clones waiting to be harvested for body parts. The beginning of this science fiction story is gripping, although everything in it reminds me of something I've seen before. Just when it seems like Michael Bay is in danger of making his first smart movie, he packs the second half full of loud and empty-headed chase scenes. Los Angeles of 2019 seems curiously advanced with its sky trains, considering that the city hasn't managed to build a decent public transport system in the preceding 500 years.

The Interpreter
2005
***
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Sydney Pollack, Satish Joshi

A UN interpreter accidentally overhears a plan to assassinate an African leader in the General Assembly, but nobody seems to believe her. Sydney Pollack's final film is a smart, entertaining and disposable conspiracy thriller which actually makes very little sense in the end. Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman work well together, although it's questionable why the palest actress in the world is cast to play an African.

In Her Shoes
2005
**½
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz, Shirley MacLaine, Mark Feuerstein

Two sisters share a shoe size and not much else, and their strained relationship is put to a test. This watchable comedy drama is soppy and full of clichés (it climaxes in a wedding), but the characters are believable and the performances are first rate. Shirley MacLaine shines as the girls' long lost grandmother.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
2005
**
Director: Garth Jennings
Cast: Martin Freeman, Zooey Deschanel, Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Bill Nighy

The film version of Douglas Adams' scifi comedy has been in the making ever since the radio plays and novels became cult items. The first question on the lips of the uninitiated is "what is all the fuss about?" The acting and writing tell us that it's all supposed to be very clever and funny. Unfortunately it barely makes you smile. A million flies can't be wrong, and so on and so forth. Is it possible that film is not the right medium for conveying Adams' witty and wordy creations.

A History of Violence
2005
***
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Ashton Holmes, Peter MacNeill, Stephen McHattie, Greg Bryk

The owner of a small town diner makes the news when he shoots a pair of bandits, but why did killing come so easy to this mild-mannered family man? Perhaps because he may not be who he claims to be. David Cronenberg's gory drama is based on a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. What attracted Cronenberg to this material? Is this an allegory of America, which tends to solve its conflicts with brute force, or of Hollywood, which simultaneously glamorises and demonises killing people? Or does it deal with the cross-generational effects of violence? Not really. To be honest, I cannot find any depth in this gripping but oversimplified and overrated film, which offers violence as a solution to problems and then dwells on the gory details.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
2005
****
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Brendan Gleeson, Gary Oldman, Robbie Coltrane,. Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes

The fourth year in Hogwarts brings along teenage hormones, an exciting inter-school Triwizard Tournament and Lord Voldemort himself. Mike Newell takes the helm in the darkest episode so far. This is a perfectly entertaining film, but at times it struggles to transfer J.K. Rowling's 600+ page book to the screen. Followed by The Order of the Phoenix.

Hard Candy
2005
**½
Director: David Slade
Cast: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh, Odessa Rae, Erin Kraft

After chatting online, 32-year-old Jeff meets 14-year-old Hayley and lures her back into his apartment. But who is the predator and who is the victim in this setup? Jeff finds himself drugged and bound to a chair, and at the mercy of a crazed, vengeful teenager. David Slade's feature debut is a tense two-people-in-one-room thriller which follows in the footsteps of Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden and Takashi Miike's Audition. Brian Nelson's script starts with a lovely twist, but then becomes a disappointingly monotonous display of mental and physical torture. Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson are both excellent, even if the film is ultimately nothing more than a seedy and populistic revenge fantasy.

Grizzly Man
2005
****
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast:

Timothy Treadwell lived in Alaska among grizzly bears for thirteen summers. He shot hours of funny, moving and frankly disturbing footage of himself with the animals, until one of them finally killed him and his girlfriend. Werner Herzog has assembled a very compelling documentary of his material. Treadwell considered the bears to be his cuddly friends, but Herzog's film argues that they are unpredictable wild beasts.

Good Night, And Good Luck
2005
****
Director: George Clooney
Cast: David Strathairn, George Clooney, Frank Langella, Robert Downey Jr.

A fascinating fact-based drama about CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow who stood up to defy Senator McCarthy during the Communist witch hunt. Superb black and white cinematography and uniformly strong performances help to recreate the smoky and hectic atmosphere of the 1950s newsroom. It's all extremely matter-of-fact and the story won't allow you to get emotionally involved in the events.

Fun with Dick and Jane
2005
**
Director: Dean Parisot
Cast: Jim Carrey, Tea Leoni, Alec Baldwin, Richard Jenkins, Angie Harmon

Dick is climbing up the corporate ladder at Globodyne until the company's success is revealed to be a bubble. With his pension and savings gone, the life of crime seems to be the most obvious alternative. This thankfully short remake of the 1977 comedy has a promising premise but its jokes keep going for the lowest common denominator. The implausible happy ending removes any parallels to the real-life Enron scandal.

Flightplan
2005
**½
Director: Robert Schwentke
Cast: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean, Karen Beahan, Michael Irby

Suspension of disbelief is important for any dramatic film, but in the case of this thriller it is vital. We are expected to accept that a widow loses her six-year-old daughter during a flight from Berlin to New York, and none of her co-passengers notice a thing. There are some tense and powerful moments, but on the whole, this is a very silly film indeed.

Fantastic Four
2005
***
Director: Tim Story
Cast: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, Julian McMahon

A space crew is exposed to cosmic radiation, which alters their DNA and gives each of them individual special abilities. Fantastic Four comes in the wake of the other Marvel Comic adaptations, X-men, Hulk and Spider-Man, and the question whether superpowers are a curse or a blessing is a bit over-explored by now. However, the film spends little time wallowing in angst and instead concentrates on providing a fun ride. The end result is an entertaining but instantly forgettable action film. Followed by Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose
2005
**
Director: Scott Derrickson
Cast: Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Carpenter, Colm Feore, Mary Beth Hurt, Henry Czerny, Shohreh Aghdashloo

Emily Rose was a young troubled woman who believed she was possessed by demons. Father Moore carried out a failed exorcism on her and is now on trial for homicidal negligence. This horror court drama is a cross between Inherit the Wind and The Exorcist. The prosecution's case is based on pseudoscience, the defense fights the charges with supernatural arguments, and the jury is asked to weigh the facts. Scott Derrickson tells the story with a straight face, but it's way too silly and implausible to work. Jennifer Carpenter gives an impressive performance as Emily, though. Loosely based on the life of Anneliese Michel, a young German Catholic who also inspired the 2006 German film Requiem.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
2005
***½
Director: Alex Gibney
Cast:

The collapse of Enron was due to one of the most elaborate financial frauds in history, but the aftermath with lost jobs and wiped out pension savings was also a great human tragedy. This long, arduous but consistently gripping documentary attempts to illustrate what actually happened.

L'Enfant
2005
**½
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Cast: Jérémie Renier, Déborah François, Jérémie Segard, Fabrizio Rongione, Olivier Gourmet

Bruno is a 20-year-old petty thief who thinks working is for suckers, but when he fathers a baby with his girlfriend Sonia, his hand-to-mouth lifestyle becomes harder to sustain. The child in the title is actually Bruno, and the infant himself is a faceless and voiceless plot device who sets his father's redemptive downfall in motion. This critically lauded slice of Belgian social realism feels truthful but unengaging because the protagonist is an annoying and contemptible human being who would sell his own mother, or, as is the case here, his own son. I feel only intellectual sympathy for Bruno and his ordeal.

Elizabethtown
2005
*
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Srandon, Paul Schneider, Bruce McGill

Drew is a failed shoe designer who is just about to off himself when he hears about his father's death. There's new hope when he meets a cute air stewardess on the flight to the funeral in Kentucky. Cameron Crowe has thrown everything in this concoction, except a cohesive script. Whimsical characters, pointless dialogue and unfunny little vignettes ultimately add up to nothing. He expects us to find Kirsten Dunst's character kooky and adorable, but she ends up feeling more like a psychotic stalker. Crowe also disappoints with his usually reliable soundtrack, as he opts for the umpteenth Elton John song to underline a point.

Down in the Valley
2005
***
Director: David Jacobson
Cast: Edward Norton, Evan Rachel Wood, David Morse, Rory Culkin, Aviva, Bruce Dern, John Diehl, Geoffrey Lewis

A teenage girl from San Fernando Valley falls for a suave cowboy wannabe whose calm demeanour and good manners work as an antidote to her gruff dad who is vehemently against the relationship. Edward Norton is wonderful and back to his best as the smooth-talking Southern gentleman whose volatile nature slowly reveals itself. This slow-burning drama is at its best in the first half when the ambiguous stranger charms the girl and her jittery baby brother but we're not sure where it's all going. However, when the dad's worst fears are confirmed, the story becomes somewhat predictable.

Dark Water
2005
***
Director: Walter Salles
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Dougray Scott, John C. Reilly, Pete Postlethwaite, Tim Roth, Ariel Gade, Perla Haney-Jardine

A recently separated single mother and her daughter move to a derelict and gloomy apartment building off Manhattan. This effective but slow-paced psychological thriller is a remake of a Japanese film, and its characters and twists did remind me of The Ring. Jennifer Connelly gives a fine performance in the lead.

Corpse Bride
2005
***½
Director: Tim Burton, Mike Johnson
Cast: Johnny Depp, Emily Watson, Helena Bonham-Carter, Albert Finney

Two families in Victorian England have arranged a marriage that serves all parties, but the shy groom accidentally awakens a corpse bride and is swooped to the land of the dead. This wonderful looking digital stop motion animation is a companion piece to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Another enjoyable dark comedy with familiar looking stick characters, but, once again, not a total success.

Constantine
2005
*
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Djimon Hounsou, Gavin Rossdale, Peter Stormare

The delicate pact between God and Satan is hanging in the balance as evil spirits begin to manifest themselves in the physical world. John Constantine, a cynical exorcist who can see angels and demons, attempts to find out what's going on while he helps a female detective whose twin sister allegedly killed herself. Francis Lawrence's feature debut is loosely based on the Hellblazer comic. The source material hopefully has more merit than its film adaptation, which is nothing but a trashy religiously flavoured CGI blockbuster. The script by Kevin Brodbin and Frank A. Cappello features some incredibly silly scenes (taking a footbath with your shoes on transports you to hell) and its self-contained events never concern or involve the rest of humanity. The sketchy characters, none of whom resemble real people, feel like they were torn straight from the pages of the comic book. Why else would Constantine inconveniently wear a suit and tie. The equation is quite simple: a dreadful script + non-existent characterisation + overload of second-rate CGI = a load of unquantifiable rubbish. Keanu Reeves adds another embarrassing entry on his CV, and Peter Stormare (as Lucifer) challenges his own turn in The Brothers Grimm for the worst performance of 2005. Followed by a TV show in 2014.


The Constant Gardener
2005
****½
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy, Hubert Kounde, Pete Postlethwaite, Hubert Koundé, Archie Panjabi, Gerard McSorley

A terrific tragic romance cum conspiracy thriller about an oblivious British diplomat whose wife is brutally murdered under mysterious circumstances in Kenya. She was an activist whose curiosity and convictions got her killed. Jeffrey Caine's screenplay (from John le Carré's novel) tells a moving love story, but also provides a thought-provoking depiction of corporate greed and Third World exploitation. Ralph Fiennes and the Oscar winning Rachel Weisz give commanding performances.

Colour Me Kubrick: A True...Ish Story
2005
*½
Director: Brian Cook
Cast: John Malkovich, Jim Davidson, Richard E. Grant, Terence Rigby, Marisa Berenson

While Stanley Kubrick was preparing Eyes Wide Shut, an alcoholic gay conman Alan Conway went around claiming to be the famed director, although he looked nothing like him. This dull comedy is loosely based on fact and it implies that people believe anything if it allows them to hang out with a celebrity. John Malkovich totally hams it in the lead, and it's hard to fathom how a man with such an unreliable and untraceable accent and outrageous wardrobe would fool anyone. This footnote of history would make an amusing YouTube video, but 85 minutes seems an incredibly long time when it just repeats the same comedy routine over and over again. Director Cook and screenwriter Anthony Frewin both worked with Kubrick, and they make some references to his films on the screen and on the soundtrack.

Cinderella Man
2005
**½
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Paddy Considine

Russell Crowe gives a fine performance as a boxer whose determination helped him to become the champion of the underdog during the Depression era and offer a glimmer of hope to millions of people. Although this "Seabisquit in a ring" story is based on fact, it manages to go through every imaginable cliché and provide the emotional highs and lows on the dot.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
2005
**½
Director: Andrew Adamson
Cast: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Tilda Swinton

This handsome looking adaptation of C.S. Lewis' popular children's book is not able to transport me to its fantasy world. In fact it seems like the four kids who find a doorway to Narnia through the wardrobe are in a theme park and never in real jeopardy. There is very little plot and everything seems to happen too fast. One moment the oldest child is playing hide and seek, and the next he's leading troops in a battle like Aragorn. Speaking of which, the sets, costumes and the locations in New Zealand seem recycled from The Lord of the Rings series. Academy Award winner for best makeup. Followed by Prince Caspian (2008) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
2005
***½
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore, David Kelly, Deep Roy, Helena Bonham Carter

An entertaining children's film about an eccentric sweet manufacturer Willy Wonka who invites five lucky kids to tour his chocolate factory. Tim Burton is just the man to visualise all the dark, cruel and inventive elements of Roald Dahl's popular book. Willy Wonka, as played by Johnny Depp, leaves a slightly uneasy aftertaste.

Casanova
2005
**½
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller, Lena Olin, Jeremy Irons, Oliver Platt

Casanova is forced to find himself a wife or face jail for debauchery. He sets his sights on a pretty, self-assured feminist while the Catholic Church tries to nail him for heresy. This anachronistic romp is stunning to look at, but for a story about the world's greatest lover it's not a least bit sexy.

Capote
2005
****
Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., Chris Cooper

Philip Seymour Hoffman earned his Oscar for this vivid portrayal of Truman Capote. The film chronicles the writing of his famous non-fiction novel In Cold Bllod about a brutal murder of four in Kansas. He befriends the killers and helps them to appeal their case, but also needs them executed in order to finish his book. This captivating drama manages to illustrate the complex nature of Capote as he battles with his conscience. Infamous tells more or less the same story.

Caché
2005
****
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Benichou, Lester Makedonsky, Walid Afkir

Michael Haneke's haunting drama starts off like David Lynch's Lost Highway: a Parisian couple receive mysterious surveillance tapes of their home, which causes their seemingly happy middle class lives to unravel. Caché translates as hidden, which describes almost all the characters in this story.

The Brothers Grimm
2005
**
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Jonathan Pryce, Peter Stormare, Lena Headey

The Brothers Grimm went out to the people to collect folklore and wrote them into their famous fairytales. The brothers in this film are charlatans who go out to the people and pretend to exorcise witches and bad spirits, and in the forests of Marbaden they actually face the real deal. Terry Gilliam is famous for his stunning visuals and, once again, he creates some scary and beautiful imagery, but the story is messy and uninvolving, and for the first 30 minutes almost unwatchable. Stylistically he doesn't know what kind of a film he's making, and the result is a historical slapstick horror fantasy. Acting is by and large awful, but Peter Stormare's hamming is in a league of his own.

Broken Flowers
2005
****
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Tilda Swinton, Jessica Lange, Julie Delpy, Alexis Dziena, Frances Conroy, Christopher McDonald, Chloë Sevigny

After a mysterious pink letter implies that he fathered a son about 20 years ago, a middle-aged bachelor Don Johnston embarks on a quest to meet four women from his past. Jim Jarmusch's comedy drama is funny, charming, and poignant, but also somewhat episodic and slow-paced. The cast is great, and Bill Murray delivers a lovely deadpan performance.

Brokeback Mountain
2005
*****
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway

In the early 1960s two cowboys fall in love while working on the mountains. The men return to their respective lives, get married and have children but can never get over (or even fully comprehend) that brief moment of pure bliss. This heartbreaking love story is based on E. Annie Proulx's short story and the Oscar winning Ang Lee directs it masterfully. The lead performances are superb; Gyllenhaal and Ledger convey emotions that cannot be put into words with their body language and demeanour. Further Academy Awards for best adapted screenplay (Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana) and Gustavo Santaolalla's score.

Brick
2005
**½
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, Emilie de Ravin, Noah Fleiss, Matt O'Leary, Richard Roundtree, Lukas Haas

In his directorial debut Rian Johnson boldly takes an archetypal film noir premise and adapts it to a modern-day high school setting. The hero is a quiet, bespectacled teenager who cannot get over his ex. When he finds her killed, he's determined to seek out the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. The dark story is peppered with typically hardboiled dialogue, and apart from the laconic hero, there is a beautiful femme fatale, a ruthless crime boss and his trigger-happy muscleman. The concept is original and it results in some darkly comic scenes, like the one in which the kingpin's mother casually serves cereal to the beat-up hero. However, the mystery that drives the plot is confusing, overdramatic, anachronistic and long, and the film as a whole doesn't amount to much more than a clever-clever stylistic exercise.

De battre mon cœur s'est arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped)
2005
***½
Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Romain Duris, Niels Arestrup, Jonathan Zaccai, Linh Dan Pham, Aure Atika

A powerful drama about a young man who is torn between his thuggish and his sensitive side. Thomas is a semi-criminal real estate speculator, but also a talented musician who aspires to become a classical pianist. Romain Duris gives a very fine performance in the lead. A remake of an American film Fingers.

Batman Begins
2005
****
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman

Like the title says, Christopher Nolan's franchise reboot goes back to the beginning to try and explain how and why Bruce Wayne became Batman. The dark and gripping story, strong characterisation and terrific but unpretentious action scenes make this one of the finest films in the series. Christian Bale is solid in the lead and he is supported by a great ensemble cast. Followed by The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.

The Ballad of Jack and Rose
2005
***
Director: Rebecca Miller
Cast: Camilla Belle, Daniel Day-Lewis, Catherine Keener, Ryan McDonald, Paul Dano, Jason Lee, Jena Malone, Beau Bridges

An earnest drama about a father and daughter who live on a small island where they've developed an intimately close relationship. He's an idealistic Scottish environmentalist with a weak heart. She's a naive 16-year-old who knows nothing about the world out there. Things come to a head when Jack's girlfriend and her two teenage boys move in. The premise is intriguing and the characters are fresh, but the events play out pretty much as expected. It's an uneven story where powerful, poignant moments are followed by flat, heavy-handed scenes, and in the end we're left with several totally irrelevant questions. Why is the story set in the 1980s? Why is it important that the protagonist is Scottish? Why doesn't Rose share his father's accent if she hasn't been exposed to outside influences? Nevertheless, Rebecca Miller's husband Daniel Day-Lewis adds another intense performance to his CV.

Äideistä parhain (Mother of Mine)
2005
****
Director: Klaus Härö
Cast: Topi Majaniemi, Maria Lundqvist, Marjaana Maijala, Michael Nyqvist

Over 70,000 Finnish children were sent to Sweden to safety from the dangers of WW2. This very moving drama, based on a novel by Heikki Hietamies, tells a fictional story of a 9-year-old Eero who feels unwanted by both his biological and his surrogate mother. Maria Lundqvist gives a superb performance as the Swedish mother who initially doesn't warm up to the boy.

Adam's æbler (Adam's Apples)
2005
**½
Director: Anders Thomas Jensen
Cast: Ulrich Thomsen, Mads Mikkelsen, Nicola Bro, Paprika Steen. Ali Kazim

An odd black comedy about a young priest who is in denial about the existence of evil due to various tragedies in his life. Now he attempts to teach his views to a neo-nazi who's doing community service at the church. This Danish film offers some interesting ideas and lovely visual flourishes, but it cannot find a balance between its spiritual pondering and absurdist humour.

Ystäväni Henry (My Friend Henry)
2004
***½
Director: Auli Mantila
Cast: Aleksi Rantanen, Ninni Ahlroth, Hellen Willberg, Pertti Sveholm, Ylva Ekblad

A young fatherless girl befriends mysterious Henry, an odd and reclusive boy who hangs around at the mall. But is the boy real or only figment of her imagination? A compelling and believable drama which portrays familiar childhood traumas with a fresh angle.

Yes
2004
***
Director: Sally Potter
Cast: Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, Sam Neill, Shirley Henderson, Samantha Bond

A thought-provoking culture clash drama about a love affair between an American Woman and a Lebanese man, with the dialogue entirely in verse. Sounds like a gimmicky idea, but it works perfectly with the visual aesthetics of the film. The first hour is captivating, then the story begins to lose momentum before it heads towards an absurd happy ending in the Communist Cuban paradise.

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton
2004
*½
Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Kate Bosworth, Topher Grace, Josh Duhamel, Ginnifer Goodwin, Nathan Lane

A wholesome small town girl wins a dream date with a Hollywood hunk, much to the dismay of a close friend who has a secret crush on her. The outcome of the love triangle is so utterly predictable that I hoped for a twist or two on the way there, but no such luxury. The film completely screws up its characterisation and makes Mr. Wrong more sympathetic than Mr. Right, yet there's never even a hint of doubt how things will turn out.

Wimbledon
2004
**
Director: Richard Loncraine
Cast: Paul Bettany, Kirsten Dunst, Sam Elliott, Bernard Hill, James MacAvoy

The screenplay to this British romcom clearly uses the Four Weddings and a Funeral template. It's a familiar story of a stuttering Englishman (a fading tennis ace) and a self-confident young American (a rising star of the female circuit), who fall in love during the Wimbledon tournament. One tiny surprise would be refreshing, but no, it even comes with the by-now-familiar "this is what happened next" epilogue. And what do we learn about tennis? Winning a Grand Slam is only a matter of believing in yourself.

The White Diamond
2004
***½
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast:

This interesting documentary tracks the attempts of a British scientist to fly over the rain forest on a hot air balloon in order to study the canopies. The man has suffered a tragedy in his past which also has bearing on the current project. Herzog beefs up the film with his usual themes of man vs. nature.

We Don't Live Here Anymore
2004
**
Director: John Curran
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Peter Krause, Naomi watts, Laura Dern, Sam Charles

A flat drama about two unhappily married couples. He's sleeping with his best friend's wife, while his own wife is sleeping with the best mate. With friends like these...you couldn't really care if they all died in a drive-by shooting.

The Village
2004
**
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard

M. Night Shyamalan has clearly become a victim of his own success now that everyone expects him to deliver another spooky story with a shock ending. This one is set in late 19th century Pennsylvania, where a small community's peaceful co-existence with the forest creatures comes to an end. Shyamalan creates some effective individual set pieces, but his shaggy dog story is simply laughable.

Vera Drake
2004
****
Director: Mike Leigh
Cast: Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Daniel Mays, Lesley Manville, Peter Wight

Vera Drake works as a housekeeper and takes great care of her family and friends, but also performs illegal abortions in 1950s England. Mike Leigh creates a wonderful sense of time, place and community in this heart-wrenching drama, which doesn't really take sides on the issue but merely shows what the reality was. Imelda Staunton stands out in the demanding leading role but, to be honest, the entire cast is excellent.

Vanity Fair
2004
**
Director: Mina Nair
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, James Purefoy, Gabriel Byrne, Rhys Ifans, Eileen Atkins

Becky Sharp is a determined young woman who wants to climb the social ladder in the 19th century England. The story shows initial promise but it goes on forever, and you're left baffled once it's over. It all starts to make sense when you read about William Makepeace Thackeray's source novel and realise that Becky is supposed to be a wholly unpleasant character. The adaptation has kept many of the events but changed the context. Director Mira Nair adds some glued-on India references, an anachronistic Bollywood dance scene in particular sticks out like a sore thumb.

Der Untergang (Downfall)
2004
****
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Cast: Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Juliane Köhler, Ulrich Matthes

The last days of the Third Reich are vividly brought to life in this captivating German drama. Bruno Ganz gives a terrific performance as Adolf Hitler. The dictator is not portrayed as a typical faceless monster but as a broken man who has trouble facing defeat. The screenplay is based on several non-fiction books.

Troy
2004
**
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Diane Kruger, Orlando Bloom, Brian Cox

Homer's Iliad is adapted into an overlong and pompous action film which concentrates on the siege of Troy. The story is stripped of all mythical elements and feels like one long battle scene with convincing but obvious special effects. Eric Bana is a charismatic Hector but Brad Pitt is badly miscast as Achilles.

The Terminal
2004
**
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Hanks, Stanley Tucci, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chi McBride, Diego Luna

A mushy feelgood movie about an Eastern European traveler who gets stranded in the transit lounge of the JFK airport when his home country ceases to exist. The man wins over the hearts of the little people but not that of the airport immigration officer in charge. The story is comprised of several contrived subplots which go on forever and lead to, what seems, five consecutive endings. And none of it seems plausible at any point.

Team America: World Police
2004
**
Director: Trey Parker
Cast: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Masasa Moyo, Daran Norris

Kim Jong II plans to destroy the world, and only Team America, an anti-terrorist unit famous for using excessive force, can stop him. If only a group of Hollywood liberals (Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, etc.) weren't making their job difficult. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, give us a marionette satire on America's foreign policy. Like their TV show, the film is consistently exhausting but only sporadically funny. The puppetry is heavily influenced by Thunderbirds, and it does look good. This overrated animation has become a cult item, obviously.

Taking Lives
2004
**
Director: D.J. Caruso
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland, Olivier Martinez

A self-loathing serial killer assumes the identities of his victims. So far, so good. Sadly the rest of this thriller is recycled clichés (FBI agents search unlit apartments and basements with Maglites, chase suspects and lose them into a carnival crowd, or pursue suspects by car and end up driving against the traffic). The twists offer no shocks and the ending is especially far-fetched. Based on Michael Pye's novel.

Super Size Me
2004
***½
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Cast:

Morgan Spurlock's enjoyable documentary delves into America's obsession with fast food. He decides to eat nothing but McDonalds food for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 30 days, with devastating effects to his health. Whether anyone actually does that in real life is beside the point. Spurlock comes from the Michael Moore school of filmmaking, and entertainment always comes first. Followed by a TV series which looked at other topics with the same 30 days format.

Starsky & Hutch
2004
**½
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Juliette Lewis, Carmen Electra

Following Charlie's Angels, another popular semi-serious TV series from the 1970s is turned into a tongue in cheek comedy with some 21st century touches. The result is nothing but a series of (amusing) sketches stitched together by the thinnest of plotlines.

Stage Beauty
2004
**½
Director: Richard Eyre
Cast: Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Tom Wilkinson, Rupert Everett

Until Charles II changed the law in the 17th century, all theatre roles, including the female ones, were performed by men. That is the setting for this mildly entertaining curiosity piece. The film attempts to repeat the magic of Shakespeare in Love by mixing fact and fiction, but it lacks both bite and humour. Jeffrey Hatcher adapted his own play Compleat Female Stage Beauty.


Spider-Man 2
2004
***½
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina, James Franco, Rosemary Harris

This sequel continues to develop the characters we got to know in the original film and it shows what personal price Peter Parker must pay for being a superhero. Doc Ock is a fascinating, complex villain, and this time around the action scenes are exciting and believable. However, you can't escape the occasional sense of déjà vu with the whole thing. Followed by Spider-Man 3.

Spartan
2004
**
Director: David Mamet
Cast: Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, Wiliam H. Macy, Ed O'Neill, Kristen Bell

A pedantic military operative is tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a Washington bigwig. The clues point to human traffickers in the Middle East, but then the evening news report their version of the events. In fact you should doubt each version of the truth since it's a David Mamet movie. He attempts to make an offbeat conspiracy thriller but the story is confusing and extremely cynical, and it's hard to get interested when the rescuers act like thugs, the villains are faceless and the victim doesn't care to be rescued.

Spanglish
2004
**½
Director: James L. Brooks
Cast: Paz Vega, Adam Sandler, Tea Leoni, Cloris Leachman, Shelbie Bruce

A Mexican single mom who barely speaks English takes a job as a housekeeper to a highly dysfunctional family in Los Angeles. However, she becomes increasingly disconnected from her own daughter who is drawn to the family's high standard of life. This overlong culture clash comedy shows some early promise, but ultimately it has nothing to say apart from the usual "poor people have values, rich people don't". Paz Vega (who is far too gorgeous to be believable) plays one of those only-in-the movies characters, a poor immigrant so proud that she won't accept any charity.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
2004
**
Director: Kerry Conran
Cast: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Ling Bai

It's 1939, gigantic robots attack humanity and Sky Captain and his ex (a nosy reporter) follow the clues which lead to one Dr. Totenkopf. Kerry Conran used six odd years to extend his short into a full length feature, and judging by the end result he spent most of this time on the computer creating the visual look. Bad news is that the smudgy look wears out its initial welcome pretty quickly and then you're left with nothing. The story doesn't even try to make sense and the performances are by and large wooden (Gwyneth Paltrow is a particular standout in that department).

Sideways
2004
*****
Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh, Marylouise Burke, Jessica Hecht, Lee Brooks, Missy Doty

Miles is a depressed wannabe writer and a wine aficionado. His best friend Jack is a washed-up actor who wants to get laid before his wedding. The two embark on a week-long road trip through California’s wine country. This brilliantly funny and moving comedy about two loveable losers is full of poignant and well observed vignettes. The four leading actors give excellent performances. The Academy Award winning screnplay by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor is based on Rex Pickett's 2004 novel.

Shrek 2
2004
****
Director: Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Ver
Cast: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Antonio Banderas

In this very satisfying sequel to Shrek the ogre and his wife Fiona visit her parents in the kingdom of Far Far Away. Their colourful and amusing adventure is sprinkled with enjoyable music numbers. Antonio Banderas is hilarious as Puss in Boots who got his spin-off film in 2011. Followed by Shrek the Third and Shrek Forever After.

Shaun of the Dead
2004
*****
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Jessica Stevenson

Shaun is an aimless 29-year-old slacker, and his girlfriend Liz has had enough. When London is overrun by zombies, it is Shaun's time to shine and win back Liz. The first part of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy is a hilarious and lovingly crafted horror comedy with a wonderful cast of characters. The script is witty and direction is sharp. Followed by Hot Fuzz and The World's End.

Shark Tale
2004
**
Director: Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson, Rob Letterm
Cast: Will Smith, Renee Zellweger, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Jack Black

Even without unfair comparison to the excellent Finding Nemo, this is a lame computer animation about fish. The colourful underwater world is very U.S.-centric and it's difficult to relate to a protagonist who is an urban hiphop fish whose only dream is to be rich and famous. There's some moderately successful parody on Jaws and The Godfather, which are presumably aimed at the parents.

Shall We Dance?
2004
**½
Director: Peter Chelsom
Cast: Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Jennifer Lopez, Lisa Ann Walter, Stanley Tucci

Predictable and sentimental but fairly entertaining wish-fullfillment about a middle-aged man who has an interesting job and a loving family, but is still unhappy. He secretly enrolls on a ballroom dancing class and rediscovers his zest for life (while he helps all of his new friends to solve all of their problems). A remake of a Japanese film.

The Secret Window
2004
*½
Director: David Koepp
Cast: Johnny Depp, John Turturro, Maria Bello, Timothy Hutton, Charles S. Dutton

Another Stephen King story about a deeply troubled writer. This time the tormentor is a fellow scribe who accuses our hermit-like novelist of plagiarism. Johnny Depp is an amusing sight in his tousled hair and torn up bathrobe, but the story is predictable, implausible and paralysingly boring.

School of Rock
2004
****½
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Jack Black, Joan Cusack, Mike White, Joey Gaydos Jr., Sarah Silverman

Dewey is a die-hard rock fan who is fired from his own band. When he cons himself a job as a substitute teacher, he realises that these prep school kids could form his new band, but first they must be taught how to rock. Jack Black as Dewey provides an ideal mix of verbal and physical comedy, musical skills and, most importantly, attitude. He is the clear star of the show, but the film around him is charming and hilarious.

Saw
2004
**
Director: James Wan
Cast: Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Danny Glover, Ken Leung, Dina Meyer

This thriller cuts right to the chase. Two men are locked and chained in a basement and their abductor blackmails one of them to kill the other, otherwise his family will be slayed. These haunting first moments eventually lead to nothing of interest. Who is the bad guy and why is he doing this to these particular men? Don't expect answers, or credibility for that matter. The only thing we learn in the end is that there's definitely going to be a sequel. So far there have been six.

Ray
2004
***
Director: Taylor Hackford
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Regina King, Clifton Powell, C.J. Sanders

Ray Charles was one of the pioneers of soul music, and as a successful blind black man he was an inspiration to many. This biopic is entertaining but formulaic, and unable to get under Ray's skin. The music numbers and Jamie Foxx's Academy Award winning performance are worth the watch, but Ray, a long time heroin addict and a serial philanderer, gets off too lightly as a person.

Polar Express
2004
***
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Tom Hanks, Daryl Sabara, Nona Gaye, Jimmy Bennett, Eddie Deezen, Michael Jeter

Just when he is about to stop believing in Santa Claus, a young boy is swept away on a magical train ride to the North Pole. Robert Zemeckis used motion capture technology to create this unusual and uneven animation. The resulting visual style is an acquired taste. While the trip on the Polar Express is exciting and full of imagination, the short stay in the North Pole is sugary and sentimental. Tom Hanks plays about as many roles as he did in Cloud Atlas. Adapted from Chris Van Allsburg's children's book.

The Passion of the Christ
2004
**
Director: Mel Gibson
Cast: Jim Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Maia Morgenstern, Francesco De Vito

Mel Gibson's deeply personal and privately financed film about the last hours of Christ became a massive hit although all of the dialogue is in ancient languages. However, it's difficult to see how anyone, even a religious zealot, could draw spiritual comfort from this ugly, boring and pointless film. Christ suffered for our sins, that is hammered home with graphic violence and extended scenes of torture, but what happened to His message?

Palindromes
2004
***½
Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Ellen Barkin, Richard Masur, Matthew Faber, Stephen Adly Guirgis

This powerful and demanding abortion drama doesn't take sides. It argues that no matter which way you look at the issue, you end up in the same place (like palindromes). A pregnant 12-year-old Aviva wants to keep the baby, but her parents convince her to have an abortion. She runs away from home and this trip introduces her to some contradictory characters. Aviva is played by 10 different actors of different age, race, size and gender. Solondz's idea was to let us view Aviva's predicament without prejudice, but this gimmicky technique actually alienates us from the character.

Ocean's Twelve
2004
*
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Matt Damon

Watching self-indulgent Hollywood stars share injokes doesn't sound like a lot of fun, and it most certainly isn't. In hindsight, the original remake now looks like it was tightly scripted. This dud clearly isn't scripted at all. Now the gang are forced to go to Europe where they are pestered by a French master thief and don't manage to pull off one decent job. Oh, wait a minute, while I was resisting sleep for two hours, the gang had us all conned after all. Followed by Ocean's 13.

The Notebook
2004
**½
Director: Nick Cassavettes
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Joan Allen

An old man reads a love story to an old lady who is about to lose her memory. The story he reads is about a poor boy and a rich girl who were denied their happiness in the 1940s. This romantic drama is likeable and well acted, but it leaves no cliché unused and no tear unjerked. Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks.

National Treasure
2004
***
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Christopher Plummer, Harvey Keitel

For centuries, the Gates family has believed that the Founding Fathers hid a massive treasure from the Brits, and the clues turn out to be hidden in famous landmarks. Following the enormous success of The Da Vinci Code, this family movie aspires to be another smart and educational historical mystery. However, as this is a Jerry Bruckheimer production, he has very little confidence in his story, so what we get is an entertaining but silly and formulaic adventure with clichéd characters (wisecracking sidekick, British villain) and gratuitous chase scenes. Followed by National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

Mysterious Skin
2004
***½
Director: Gregg Araki
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet, Elisabeth Shue, Michelle Trachtenberg

Two boys suffer a similar dramatic experience when they're eight, but as they grow older the effects of the event are strikingly different. This combination of mystery and human drama unravels piece by piece and it definitely doesn't shun uncomfortable material. The young leading actors give impressive performances. Adapted from Scott Heim's novel.

My Summer of Love
2004
***
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Cast: Natalie Press, Emily Blunt, Paddy Considine, Dean Andrews, Kathryn Sumner

Young Mona meets Tamsin and falls in love with her. The girls come from very different backgrounds but share a feeling of estrangement. However, the dream-like summer they spend together is not as perfect as Mona thinks. This is a modest coming-of-age drama with very strong performances from the leading ladies. Based on a novel by Helen Cross.

The Missing
2004
**½
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Tommy Lee Jones, Evan Rachel Wood, Jenna Boyd

When Indians snatch a teen girl, her single mother, little sister and estranged grandfather team up to go after the kidnappers. Ron Howard's Western is heavily influenced by The Searchers. The film is nicely acted and shot but overlong, and it lacks the moral ambiguity that made John Ford's film the classic it is. Based on Thomas Eidson's novel The Last Ride.

Miracle
2004
***½
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Cast: Kurt Russell, Patricia Clarkson, Noah Emmerich, Sean McCann, Kenneth Welsh, Eddie Cahill, Patrick O'Brien Demsey, Michael Mantenuto

A powerful feelgood film about the U.S. ice hockey team who performed a miracle in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. They were coached by Herb Brooks, who took seven months to mold a group of young amateurs into a tight unit. En route to the Olympic gold they beat Soviet Union, who had dominated the game for the preceding 20 years. The story follows a very predictable sport movie path (first you lose, then you win, inbetween the wife complains that Herb is always working), but the rush of emotions inevitably swept me along, and the tightly edited scenes in the rink actually feel like real ice hockey. Kurt Russell gives a charismatic lead performance.

Mindhunters
2004
**½
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Jonny Lee Miller, Ll Cool J, Kathryn Morris, Christian Slater, Val Kilmer

A group of FBI profiler trainees are sent to an isolated island for their final test, and one of them looks to be a real serial killer. What are the odds? This thriller has a totally preposterous plot and extremely sketchy characters, but it offers some suspenseful scenes and nicely imaginative ways to kill off the cast members.

Millions
2004
**
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Alex Etel, Lewis McGibbon, James Nesbitt, Daisy Donovan, Christopher Fulford, Pearce Quigley, Jane Hogarth

A frustrating fantasy comedy about two brothers who stumble on a duffle bag full of cash which will become worthless in a matter of days when Britain adopts euro. The holier-than-thou younger brother Damian wants to give it all to the poor, while the older brother Anthony wants to buy things for himself and his family. Damian is an insufferable brat, both of the boys are implausibly naive, and their father is one of the most clueless parents ever portrayed on film. Danny Boyle directs with verve, but this story falls apart as soon as it's set up. The notion that the euro would replace the pound overnight is laughable, but the film's biggest problem is that it sits on the fence and gives us a lecture on ethics. Scripted by Frank Cottrell Boyce from his own novel.

Million Dollar Baby
2004
*****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Jay Baruchel, Mike Colter, Lucia Rijker, Brían F. O'Byrne, Anthony Mackie, Margo Martindale, Riki Lindhome, Michael Peña, Bruce MacVittie, Ned Eisenberg

A grumpy old boxing coach is initially reluctant to train a determined young white trash woman into a fighter, but the two slowly develop a deep surrogate father/daughter relationship. The screenplay by Paul Haggis (from the stories by F.X. Toole) starts as a funny and seemingly trivial boxing drama, but in the last third it takes an unexpected turn into something deeper and darker, which leads to a heart-rending finale. An Academy Award winner for best film and director, and for the terrific performances of Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
2004
****
Director: Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky
Cast:

A promotional making-of film about the new Metallica album ended up as a long but very enjoyable documentary about a rock band in turmoil. Egos clash, old wounds are reopened and the recording session turns into group therapy. The band may not delve that deep into their emotions but they show honesty and guts in allowing the cameras to record it all, although it makes them look like Spinal Tap at times.

Melinda and Melinda
2004
***
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Radha Mitchell, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Ferrell, Amanda Peet, Chloë Sevigny

Four people discuss over dinner whether life is essentially tragic or comic, and imagine two alternate versions of Melinda's story. In the tragedy she's a suicidal divorcee who lost her children, in the comedy she's a quirky single woman. Allen's dialogue is sharp and Radha Mitchell shines in the dual role. Other than that, it's a rather forgettable movie occupied by flimsy and vacuous characters.

Mar adentro (A Sea Inside)
2004
****
Director: Alejandro Amenabar
Cast: Javier Bardem, Belen Rueda, Lola Duenas, Manuel Rivera, Celso Bugallo

A moving and wonderfully acted Spanish drama about a quadriplegic man who has lost his will to live but not his sense of humour. This true story chronicles his fight to die with dignity.

The Manchurian Candidate
2004
***½
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Jon Voight

This rather successful 21st century remake of the Cold War era classic updates the action from Korea to Iraq, and turns the villain into a faceless global corporation. The core of the story remains the same: one man comes back from the Desert Storm as a decorated war hero, but no one in his platoon actually has a clear memory of what happened during that near-disastrous operation. Although the update may be more plausible as far as the actual brainwashing technique is concerned, it feels like an average conspiracy thriller and cannot reproduce the timing or the poignancy of the original.

Man on Fire
2004
**½
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Radha Mitchell, Christopher Walken

An ex-soldier who tries to deal with his repressed guilt and his drinking problem takes a job in Mexico City as a bodyguard to a young girl, who slowly brings him out of his shell. Once the girl is kidnapped, all internal conflicts are swept aside as the hero inflicts his revenge on the Mexican underworld; nothing heals the wound of an old killing faster than a new one. This is a gripping but overlong and extremely questionable drama that condones torture and lawless killing, and portrays all Mexicans as corrupt lowlifes.

La mala educación (Bad Education)
2004
****
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Fele Martinez, Lluis Homar, Francisco Boira

A multilayered drama about two childhood friends, now a film director and an actor, the last of who has transformed their traumatic experiences in a Catholic school into a potent screenplay. This captivating Hitchcockian mystery smoothly combines the present tense, the flashbacks and the film within a film sctructure to form one version of the truth. The only things Almodovar doesn't offer in this concoction are women and heterosexuals.

The Machinist
2004
***
Director: Brad Anderson
Cast: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, John Sharian

A traumatised machine operator is suffering from insomnia and hallucinations in this athmospheric thriller, which is wrapped up a bit too neatly in the end. What would David Lynch have done with the same material? Christian Bale shed 30 kilos for the role, and he is definitely a haunting site.

A Love Song for Bobby Long
2004
**
Director: Shainee Gabel
Cast: John Travolta, Gabriel Macht, Scarlett Johansson, Deborah Kara Unger

A young woman misses the funeral of her mother, who abandoned her, but finds two literary losers occupying the dead woman's house in New Orleans. One of them is a literature professor turned alcoholic, and the other one his old student who is struggling to finish his book (about the events of the film, would you know). The promising premise and John Travolta's wonderful performance are not enough to help the film overcome the massive overlength and the soapy clichés. Adapted from Ronald Everett Capps' novel Off Magazine Street.


Looking for Kitty
2004
***
Director: Edward Burns
Cast: Edward Burns, David Krumholtz, Max Baker, Connie Britton, Ari Meyers

A short and sympathetic but rather forgettable film about a small town basketball coach who comes to NYC and hires a private eye to track down his wife who ran away. Both men are living in the past, and the message seems to be that one should look forward not backward. The writing and acting are low-key and the pace is relaxed.

Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement)
2004
***½
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Dominique Pinon, Chantal Neuwirth

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's follow-up to Amélie is strikingly similar in style (the main story thread is sprinkled with charming little vignettes and inventive visual flourishes), but this time the story is quite a bit darker. Audrey Tautou plays a young woman who is desperate to find out what happened to her fiance who, she is told, died in the Great War. Although the film doesn't have a dull moment, it's a bit long and overfilled with details, and requires multiple viewings. Adapted from Sebastien Japrisot's novel.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
2004
**½
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Bill Murray, Angelica Huston, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe

After his best friend is killed by a jaguar shark, the latest expedition of oceanographer and documentarist Steve Zissou (lovingly based on Jacques Cousteau) is motivated by revenge. He is joined on this trip by a young man who may be his son. The premise is wacky, the visuals (boat, costumes, creatures, etc.) are terrific, and the film gets off to a flying start. However, it becomes clear pretty soon that there isn't enough story here for a two-hour film, or a one-hour film for that matter. The characters are lovable but underdeveloped, the story goes through some uncomfortable shifts in tone, and the whole thing seems to go on forever.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers
2004
**½
Director: Stephen Hopkins
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Charlize Theron, John Lithgow, Miriam Margolyes

The story of Peter Sellers as if told by himself. The film vividly recreates the key moments in his personal and private life, and the star occasionally imagines himself playing the people close to him. This is because Sellers is portrayed as a brilliant actor who had no personality of his own. This approach is attention grabbing and alienating in equal measures, and in the end I feel like I don't know him any better. It's a one-man-show and Geoffrey Rush is awesome in the lead, but the supporting characters are barely sketched. Based on Roger Lewis's book.

Layer Cake
2004
***
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, Kenneth Cranham, George Harris, Sienna Miller

Matthew Vaughn produced Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. His directorial debut doesn't veer too far from the world of Guy Ritchie's vacuous cockney gangster movies, but his style and his characters are less grating. The story, from J.J. Connolly's novel, is twisty, entertaining and instantly forgettable. Daniel Craig plays a cautious midlevel drug dealer who conducts his business according to a strict set of rules. However, once he's falsely linked to a stolen shipment of drugs, his fate is no longer in his own hands.

The Ladykillers
2004
**
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cast: Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma

A useless low-brow remake of the 1950s comedy classic. Tom Hanks plays a criminal mastermind who rents a room from an old black lady. Irma P. Hall's performance as the vivacious landlady is the saving grace, but her character is in the wrong film. Some of the best films by the Coen brothers are based on loveable characters rather than strong stories, but now they've dropped the ball. You can accept the lazy scripting and even the toilet humour, but the incredibly annoying  black guy from the hood (played by Marlon Wayans) is where I draw the line.

Kung Fu Hustle
2004
***
Director: Stephen Chow
Cast: Stephen Chow, Xiaogang Feng, Wah Yuen, Zhi Hua Dong, Kwok-Kwan Chan

An acrobatic kung fu comedy about a wannabe gangster who is caught in a turf war between a violent gang and the local slum. There are amazing fight scenes and hilarious sight gags galore, but it all becomes a bit overwhelming towards the end, especially when the sketchy characters don't offer any kind of emotional counterbalance to the stunts.

Koirankynnen leikkaaja (Dog Nail Clipper)
2004
***½
Director: Markku Pölönen
Cast: Peter Franzen, Taisto Reimaluoto, Ahti Kuoppala, Ville Virtanen, Leo Lastumäki

Markku Pöyhönen continues to delve into the Finnish psyche in this adaptation of Veikko Huovinen's novel. It's a story of a war veteran with a debilitating head wound who tries to make a life for himself in post-war Finland. The personal story loses its grip at times but the film serves as an interesting depiction of a different era when people looked out for each other and felt like they were all working for a common goal.

Kinsey
2004
****
Director: Bill Condon
Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, John Lithgow, Oliver Platt

A fascinating and entertaining biopic of Alfred Kinsey whose sex studies opened a can of worms by revealing what takes place in the bedrooms of America. The film portrays Kinsey as an endlessly curious and slightly naive scientist whose modern ideas clashed with the puritan climate of the 1950s. It also touches on some problematic aspects of his work (what is normal sexual behaviour?, sex vs. emotions, etc.). Liam Neeson and Laura Linney stand out in a uniformly excellent cast.

Kill Bill, Vol. 2
2004
***
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen

The second half of the Kill Bill story is less action-packed and more character-driven, as the heroine attempts to eliminate the remaining three people on her hit list. There are some terrific scenes but also some pedestrian moments which drag on for an eternity. However, the use of music is as brilliant as we've come to expect from Mr. Tarantino. As for the entire Kill Bill movie, it's a 90 minute B-film stretched into a self-important four hour epic.

Juoksuhaudantie (Trench Road)
2004
***
Director: Veikko Aaltonen
Cast: Eero Aho, Tiina Lymi, Kari Väänänen, Aake Kalliala, Esko Pesonen, Ella Aho

This compelling but unsatisfactory study of the plight of the modern man is based on Kari Hotakainen's award winning novel. The protagonist Matti Virtanen is a provider, a husband, a cook, a father and whatnot. After losing his family in a break-up he becomes obsessed with buying a house that could reverse his fortunes. His slow decline into madness is touching but never entirely believable. The ending is especially flat and abrupt.

The Incredibles
2004
****
Director: Brad Bird
Cast: Graig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Jason Lee, Samuel L. Jackson

Pixar Studios abandon their trademark buddy comedy formula in favour of something a bit darker, and the resulting film is another highly entertaining computer animation. The story is about a family of superheroes who have been forced to live undercover as normal people. The film is long but there are wonderful characters, hilarious gags and exciting action scenes galore.

In Good Company
2004
****
Director: Paul Weitz
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Scarlett Johansson, David Paymer

Topher Grace is wonderful in his first leading role as a 26-year-old go-getter who replaces a 50-something dinosaur as the head of sales in a sports magazine, and also happens to fall in love with the man's daughter. This is a sharp and thoroughly enjoyable mix of character study, romantic comedy and satire on corporate culture. Sadly the film cops out in the end as it tries to convince us that it's the honest workers and not the overachievers who ultimately rule in the corporate world.

I, Robot
2004
***½
Director: Alex Proyas
Cast: Will Smith, Brigdet Moyhanan, Bruce Greenwood, James Cromwell

In 2035 robots are trusted commonplace companions, but one detective cannot shake off his mistrust towards the machines. This highly enjoyable science fiction story is based on Isaac Asimov's robotic laws. It has terrific action scenes and state-of-the-art special effects, the star of which is the incredible robot character Sonny. The film cannot quite decide whether it wants to be serious scifi or wisecracking action.

I ♥ Huckabees
2004
**½
Director: David O. Russell
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Jude Law, Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Watts, Lily Tomlin

A young environmentalist tries to make some sense of his "coincidences" and hires two existential detectives to follow him around while he's involved in a project at the Huckabees superstores. This comedy is deliberately zany, occasionally amusing and overall rather watchable, but too incoherent and self-absorbed to fully win you over. O'Russell throws millions of scattershot ideas in the air and hopes that some of them will stick. Not exactly the answer to life, universe, and everything.

House of the Flying Daggers
2004
**½
Director: Yimou Zhang
Cast: Jiyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau, Dandan Song

In the ninth century two police officers use a blind dancer as a decoy to track down the leaders of the titular terrorist organisation. However, once both of the men reveal romantic interests towards the girl, the original conspiracy plot is thrown out of the window. Yimou Zhang follows Hero with another formulaic martial arts movie. The usual gravity-defying swordfights come at regular intervals, so regular in fact that you can set your clock to them. It all looks great, but this genre on the whole is starting to get a bit old hat.

Hotel Rwanda
2004
****
Director: Terry George
Cast: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Fana Mokoena

This emotional human drama about Rwandan civil war is based on real events. The excellent Don Cheadle plays a hotel manager who takes in and tries to protect a large group of refugees (including his family) while waiting for international intervention. A strong and shocking story well told.

Hidalgo
2004
**
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Zuleikha Robinson, Louise Lonbard, Omar Sharif

In the end of the 19th century a famous long distance rider and his mustang Hidalgo are challenged to a 3,000 mile endurance race through the Arabian desert. When the competitors rush off, it looks like the stage is set for an exciting adventure, but after the first mile the riders slow down to snail pace and it's clear that this is going to be the most uneventful race of all time. No wonder there is a long and irrelevant subplot about an Arabian princess who needs to be rescued from kidnappers. Based on fact, but extremely loosely, I presume.

Hellboy
2004
**½
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Ron Perlman, John Hurt, Selma Blair, Rupert Evans, Karel Roden, Jeffrey Tambor, Doug Jones

Nazis momentarily have a portal open, which allows a little red creature to slip through. He grows up to be Hellboy, US government’s secret weapon against paranormal creatures. Hellboy is based on a cult comic book by Mike Mignola and he’s a wonderfully off-the-wall character. Sadly the movie around him is formulaic and silly, and some of the other characters are sketchy. Grigori Rasputin is the main villain and his sidekick Kroenen is a creepy Nazi assassin. Both appear to be undead in one scene and totally killable in the next. The action scenes consist of well executed but repetitive fights against tentacled monsters who multiply in death. Followed by Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl's Moving Castle)
2004
***½
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast:

A curse turns young Sophie into an old woman. She flees home and ends up travelling on a magical moving castle whose owner Howl, a young handsome wizard, is fighting in a brutal war...or something or the other. Full credit to those who have complete understanding of the story and its characters. Nevertheless, if you allow your imagination to run wild and the amazing visuals to wash over you, Hayao Miyazaki's animation is a delightful watch.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
2004
****½
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, David Thewlis, Gary Oldman, Robbie Coltrane,. Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall

In his third year, Harry Potter learns that Sirius Black, a man who once betrayed Harry's parents, has escaped from the Azkaban prison and is out to get the young wizard. The third movie is one of the best in the series. It adds new important characters and tells a wonderfully twisty story. With the new director Alfonso Cuaron, the franchise also takes a giant leap forward in cinematic storytelling. For the first time, the script does not follow the source material page by page, which in turn means that it has to rush through some of the complexities of the plot with breakneck speed. Followed by The Goblet of Fire.

The Grudge
2004
**
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jason Behr, William Mapother, Clea DuVall, Ryo Ishibashi, KaDee Strickland, Grace Zabriskie, Bill Pullman

Like his original 2003 horror film Ju-on: The Grudge, Takashi Shimizu's Hollywood remake is set in Tokyo, only now the main characters are mostly American. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays an exchange student/care worker who enters the home of an elderly expat lady. The title card hints that the house was cursed when someone died there in extreme rage. Shimizu creates some effectively eerie images, but the characters are all passive, clueless victims. Nearly every scene has someone walking alone down a creaky corridor, which becomes tiresome and predictable very fast. The story turns out to be a series of scares without a beginning or an end. In other words, a perfect formula for an infinite number of sequels. So far there have been two.

Gegen die Wand (Head-On)
2004
****
Director: Fatih Akin
Cast: Biro Ünel, Sibel Kekilli, Catrin Striebeck, Meltem Cumbul, Cem Akin

Two German Turks form a marriage of convenience, but once the emotions come to the surface, the arrangement has dramatic consequences for both of their lives. This hard-hitting drama provides a moving personal story which gives a face to the large Turkish community in Germany.

Garden State
2004
**½
Director: Zach Braff
Cast: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Ian Holm, Jean Smart

A likeable but poorly scripted comedy about a troubled young man who returns to his hometown in Jersey for his mother's funeral. He's been drugged for the best part of his life, but four days with a cute and kooky girl makes all the difference. Zach Braff's writing and directing debut offers some funny and heartfelt moments, but the script is cluttered with too many (quirky but) irrelevant supporting characters, and the whole thing is wrapped up much too neatly.

The Forgotten
2004
**
Director: Joseph Ruben
Cast: Julianne Moore, Dominic West, Linus Roache, Alfre Woodard

Julianne Moore plays a mother who grieves the death of her son, that is, until everyone around her tells that she never had a child. This thriller has a promising start and one massively effective scare in the middle, but after a dozen chase scenes we arrive at the climax, which is when the whole thing implodes. If you know anything about the sanctity of children in Hollywood films, the final twist won't come as a surprise.

Finding Neverland
2004
****
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Radha Mitchell, Dustin Hoffman

A lovely fictionalised drama about J.M. Barrie's close friendship with a widow and her four boys, which inspires him to write Peter Pan. This thoroughly moving tale makes you want to believe in magic. Johnny Depp is excellent as a man who refuses to grow up. Based on Allan Knee's play The Man Who Was Peter Pan. Jan A. P. Kaczmarek's score won an Academy Award.

Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (The Edukators)
2004
***
Director: Hans Weingärtner
Cast: Daniel Bruhl, Julia Jentsch, Stipe Erceg, Burghart Klaussner

An entertaining German drama about young activists who break into rich people's homes, not to steal but to remind the owners that all that money can't buy them security. After a failed break-In the innocent fun suddenly turns serious. The second half of this thought-provoking movie drags on a bit too long.

Fahrenheit 9/11
2004
***
Director: Michael Moore
Cast:

Michael Moore's most successful and most controversial work is an all-out attack on the personality and politics of President George W. Bush. The film is funny and entertaining, but definitely not a documentary. Moore timed the release for the 2004 election but couldn't stop Bush from being reelected. As a consequence, the whole thing now seems as archaic as a John Kerry campaign poster.


Exorcist: The Beginning
2004
**
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Stellan Skarsgard, Izabella Scorupco, James D'Arcy, Remy Sweeney

In the beginning of The Exorcist we learned that an archeological dig in Africa was the source of the possession. Now we go back there to witness Father Merrin encounter the demonic presence for the first time. The introduction is promising and the picture, which was shot by Vittorio Storaro, looks stunning, but as the cheap scares and clichés begin to pile up it becomes obvious that this prequel has nothing new to add to the franchise. In fact the making of this movie is a far more exciting story: Paul Schrader, the original director was sacked and Renny Harlin reshot the whole thing. Schrader's version was released in 2005 as Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2004
*****
Director: Michel Gondry
Cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood

Another mindbender from the pen of Charlie Kaufman. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play former lovers who have used a new revolutionary treatment to erase each other from their respective memories. This wonderfully weird and witty film may be confusing at times as it unravels backwards, but it's full of priceless observations on memories and their significance to human life. Michel Gondry has visualised it all to perfection.

The Door in the Floor
2004
**½
Director: Tod Williams
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Jon Foster, Elle Fanning, Mimi Rogers

No one has completely successfully filmed John Irving's writing, and this adaptation of the first third of A Widow for One Year is no exception. The story is about a writer and his wife who've been through family tragedy and are about to break up when he hires a horny teenage boy as his assistant for one summer. The novel was about the couple's four-year-old daughter, the film is about the parents; the boy in the middle seems like a narrator turned character who just goes with the flow. Irving's characters are carefully drawn and his sprawling stories easily mix humour with heartbreaking drama. The film, once again, ends up feeling too story-driven, awkwardly unfocused and trivial.

Dodgeball
2004
**
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor, Rip Torn, Gary Cole

An overrated comedy about a nice guy (but a lousy businessman) who takes his team to a dodgeball tournament in order to save his struggling gym from the clutches of a slimy competitor. There are some amusing cameos and one or two funny oneliners, but the story is maddeningly obvious and not nearly funny enough to compensate. Ironically, the film points out in the end titles how cliched and predictable it was.

Dig!
2004
****
Director: Ondi Timoner
Cast:

The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, two close-knit American indie bands, dream about revolution. Fast forward a few years and Dw have compromised and become stadium rockers, while Bjm have succumbed to their leader's ego and tour small clubs in a hail of vegetables. Ondi Timoner spent seven years with the bands to create this fascinating, funny and psychologically insightful documentary.

Diarios de motorcicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries)
2004
****
Director: Walter Salles
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Rodrigo De la Serna, Mia Maestro, Mercedes Moran

A few years before the Cuban Revolution "Che" Guevara was a medical student who took a trip across South America with his cousin. This is the story of that journey which ended up changing the course of his life. Walter Salles' touching, subtle drama offers also many enjoyable comic moments. Gael Garcia Bernal is perfect in the lead. Adapted from Guevara's memoir.

Dead Man's Shoes
2004
***
Director: Shane Meadows
Cast: Paddy Considine, Toby Kebbell, Gary Stretch, Emily Aston, Neil Bell, Jo Hartley, Seamus O'Neil, Stuart Wolfenden, Paul Sadot, Paul Hurstfield

Shane Meadows' stripped down revenge drama plays out like a modern day Western. An ex-soldier named Richard walks to a town to settle a score with a group of low-lifes who bullied his mentally challenged younger brother. The avenger and the avengees appear to be the only people in this ghost town. The film gets off to a hilarious start as Richard humiliates and intimidates the wrongdoers, but things take a sudden turn when he unleashes his full wrath. Does the hero's gruesome punishment really fit the crime? Meadows seems to ponder this same question. The story is gritty and gripping, but it builds to a climax which feels overdramatic and ponderous.

The Day After Tomorrow
2004
****
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum, Sela Ward, Ian Holm

Global warming has advanced too far, the climate takes a sudden turn for the worse and the future of humanity is at stake. Special effects are put in great use as tornadoes ravage Los Angeles and massive tidal waves hit New York. A clichéd personal story of a climatologist looking to make amends for neglecting his family is set against this dramatic backdrop. This is an occasionally silly and cheesy, but irresistibly entertaining disaster film.

Crash
2004
****
Director: Paul Haggis
Cast: Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Thandie Newton, Ryan Philippe, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Thandiwe Newton, Ryan Phillippe, Larenz Tate

Paul Haggis, who scripted the terrific Million Dollar Baby, co-wrote his second directorial work with Robert Moresco. This wonderful collection of intertwining lives looks at the challenges of living in multicultural Los Angeles. The characters portrayed here are all flawed and prejudicial, and they can turn from victims to perpetrators in a blink of an eye. This drama flows smoothly from comic moments to moving dramatic set pieces, and the ensemble cast is great. The film has suffered a severe critical backlash since it won Academy Awards for best picture, screenplay, and editing. Admittedly, the film is didactic and heavy-handed in the way it deals with racism.

Collateral
2004
****
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Mark Ruffalo

An LA cab driver picks up a customer who plans to drive around the city and kill five people during the night. Michael Mann's terrific film starts as a moody and stylish character drama, and then builds towards a tense action thriller finale. Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise are both successfully cast against type. The digitally shot nighttime Los Angeles look glorious.

Closer
2004
**½
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Clive Owen, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts

The so-called love lives of two English men and two American women living in London intertwine in this adaptation of Patrick Marber's play. This time we don't see people fall in love or have relationships, instead we witness lies, betrayal, humiliation and ugly break-ups. With this limited access to the lives of these smug characters it's impossible to care how things turn out. Nevertheless, the performances are solid and the dialogue is poignant, albeit overwrought for a film.

The Clearing
2004
***
Director: Pieter Jan Brugge
Cast: Robert Redford, Willem Dafoe, Helen Mirren, Alessandro Nivola

A kidnapper and a wealthy businessman make their way through the woods to a hideaway, while the victim's wife tries to cope with the situation at home. This interesting drama cleverly manipulates the viewer's concept of time but doesn't quite pull it off. However, there's much to enjoy, such as the performances by Redford, Dafoe and Mirren. Furthermore, the perpetrator is not your average villain but a layered character; we may not approve of his actions but we perhaps understand what drove him to it.

Cellular
2004
***
Director: David R. Ellis
Cast: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, William H. Macy, Jason Statham, Noah Emmerich

Writer Larry Cohen's companion piece to his recent thriller, Phone Booth. A woman is kidnapped and locked away and her only thread of hope is an open phone line to a stranger on a mobile phone. There are clichés aplenty and Kim Basinger is not that convincing as the woman in despair, but, all in all, the film is snappy and entertaining. At times it all feels like an extended Nokia ad, although, admittedly, the writers have thought of many ways to incorporate mobile phones into the proceedings.

The Butterfly Effect
2004
**½
Director: Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Melora Walters, William Lee Scott, Elden Henson, Logan Lerman, Ethan Suplee, Melora Walters

Young Evan suffers mysterious blackouts during traumatic events in his life, but as a young man he discovers that he can go back in time and change those moments. This thriller, which draws inspiration from chaos theory and numerous time travel movies, attempts to tell us that the tiniest change in the past can alter the course of the future. This results in a grim and intriguing but occasionally stupid story. The film's simplistic view of human psychology is difficult to swallow. All the characters are latent psychopaths, who seem to have no active control over their own lives. Followed by two poorly received sequels.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
2004
**
Director: Beeban Kidron
Cast: Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones

Bridget Jones manages to humiliate herself in numerous new ways in this unnecessary sequel which takes place six weeks after the events in the original. In terms of the story or the characters this offers nothing fresh, as it dutifully repeats all the favourite moments from the first film. Renee Zellweger is still enjoyable in the lead, but Bridget Jones has outstayed her welcome. Once again based on Helen Fielding's novel.

The Bourne Supremacy
2004
***
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Matt Damon, Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Franka Potente, Karl Urban

Jason Bourne must come out of hiding in this gripping but repetitive sequel to The Bourne Identity. Paul Greengrass takes over the directing duties, and his smart film adds layers to a complex and fascinating character. Sadly his idea of an action scene is to shake the camera and cut at least twice every second until I suffer from a combination of headache, nausea and epilepsy. Followed by The Bourne Ultimatum.

Blueberry
2004
*
Director: Jan Kounen
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Juliette Lewis, Michael Madsen, Temuera Morrison, Ernest Borgnine, Djimon Hounsou, Hugh O'Conor

Native-bred Marshal Blueberry runs into a sinister character from his past who is after Indian treasure. This encounter eventually leads to the climactic drug-fuelled CGI frenzy in the Sacred Mountain. To call this shamanic Western confusing is a massive understatement. However, bafflement would be fine if the story wasn't so utterly uninteresting and mindnumbingly dull. The cast is promising but half of them play characters who are either irrelevant or incomprehensible. Based on the comic strip by Moebius.

Birth
2004
**½
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall, Anne Heche

Nicole Kidman in her Rosemary's Baby hairdo is in fine form as a widow who has just got over her loss when a 10-year-old boy claims that he's her dead husband reincarnate. This chilly drama attempts to be a clever meditation on grief as the protagonist clings to any glimmer of hope in order to avoid facing reality. However, the truth is that despite the consistently eerie mood, the story and its characters exist in an alternate reality where they follow their dream logic all the way to the vapid conclusion.

Beyond the Sea
2004
**½
Director: Kevin Spacey
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, John Goodman, Bob Hoskins, Brenda Blethyn

Kevin Spacey wrote, directed and produced this biopic of crooner Bobby Darin who had a fleeting moment in the limelight before fading out and dying at the age of 37. Spacey also acts, sings and dances to his heart's content. He does a respectable job on all fronts, but it's difficult to get interested in the protagonist. Darin expects to die any moment, which makes him a highly driven and unpleasant person. One can understand 44-year-old Spacey's wish to play the lead in his dream project, but why did he cast Kate Bosworth, who is 24 years his junior, to play his onscreen love interest.

Before Sunset
2004
****½
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Vernon Dobtcheff, Louise Lemoine Torres

Jesse and Celine meet again in Paris nine years after that memorable night in Before Sunrise. They talk about life, love and missed opportunities, among other things. This short but very impressive sequel stays true to the characters, and although it's very talky, the dialogue sounds fresh, spontaneous and believable. Followed by Before Midnight.

The Aviator
2004
****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Kate Beckinsale, Jude Law, Ian Holm, Matt Ross, Danny Huston, Gwen Stefani

Howard Hughes (1905-1976) was a millionaire, an aviation pioneer and an ambitious filmmaker, who was gradually consumed by his physical injuries and OCD. Martin Scorsese's compelling and beautifully staged biopic skips his reclusive final years, but still clocks at almost three hours. It does feel a bit long towards the end. Leonardo DiCaprio is superb in the title role, but as this is a story about Hughes, the supporting characters remain rather sketchy. The film won Academy Awards for cinematography, editing, costume design, art direction, and supporting actress (Cate Blanchett for her slightly mannered performance as Katharine Hepburn).


The Assassination of Richard Nixon
2004
****
Director: Niels Mueller
Cast: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Don Cheadle, Jack Thompson, Brad William Henke

A powerful drama about a man on a downward spiral. Sam Bicke is a sad sack salesman who begins to feel that the whole world is pitted against him. His boss, brother, ex-wife and President Richard Nixon all share a lack of respect towards him. Sean Penn gives another mesmerising performance as this fragile man. The story echoes Taxi Driver, but this one is partly based on real events.

Around the World in 80 Days
2004
**½
Director: Frank Coraci
Cast: Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan, Cécile de France, Jim Broadbent, Ian McNeice, Karen Joy Morris, Ewen Bremner, Kathy Bates

In Victorian London, avid inventor Phileas Fogg accepts a mad wager that he can circumnavigate the world in 80 days. He embarks on this journey, accompanied by his new valet Passepartout, who is not all that he claims to be. Disney's goofy family feature is only nominally based on Jules Verne's novel. The movie is long and poorly scripted, but it offers a nice mix of action, romance, and silliness, and a number of amusing cameos.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
2004
**
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Fred Willard

In San Diego back in the 1970s Ron Burgundy is an egotistical and chauvinistic anchor of the local network news. His world begins to crumble when a beautiful and smart female journalist joins the news team. This patchy sketch comedy has some laughs, but far too few. The story is utterly formulaic and the gags are too obvious, too often.

Alexander
2004
**
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto, Anthony Hopkins

Oliver Stone's ambitious but meandering epic fails to shed light on Alexander the Great as a historical figure or as a private person. The film is overlong, but not long enough to explore the character properly. Alexander conquers half the known world in two well-mounted but baffling battle scenes. The man also marries a barren Persian woman but his true love is his lifelong male companion Hephaestion, although we never see it go beyond wet glances and brotherly hugs. Val Kilmer is the only member of the cast to pack a wallop.

After the Sunset
2004
***
Director: Brett Ratner
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek, Woody Harrelson, Naomie Harris

Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek play master thieves and lovers whose retirement days seem short-lived when a massive diamond is put on display on the very same tropical island they occupy. This piece of entertaining but implausible and instantly forgettable fluff offers eye candy to men, women and scenery lovers alike.

5x2
2004
***
Director: Francois Ozon
Cast: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Stephane Freiss, Francoise Fabian, Michael Lonsdale

This chronicle of one marriage starts with a loveless break-up and ends with the bliss of new romance. The story plays backwards, as we catch five brief moments from the couple's lives. With the benefit of the hindsight, we can look for signs which lead to the eventual divorce - most of which are very subtle. Ozon doesn't offer universal truths about relationships, merely an (almost uncomfortably) intimate peek into one failed union.

Young Adam
2003
**½
Director: David Mackenzie
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Emily Mortimer, Peter Mullan

A drifter takes a job on a barge owned by a married couple, and he wastes no time in having it off with the missus (or any other woman with a pulse). But how does a dead body found in the river tie in with the story? This may be a commentary on loveless people, but these characters are very difficult to love. The film also gives a new meaning to the term "gratuitous sex". Adapted from Alexander Trocchi's novel.

X-Men 2
2003
****
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen

Just as humans and mutants find it increasingly difficult to live alongside each other, military scientist Colonel Stryker is about to carry out his final solution. This terrific sequel to X-Men expands the universe and develops the characters and their relationships further. The subtext about tolerance remains strong. Followed by X-Men: The Last Stand.

Das Wunder von Bern (The Miracle of Bern)
2003
**½
Director: Sönke Wortmann
Cast: Louis Klamroth, Peter Lohmeyer, Johanna Gastdorf, Sascha Göpel

This sentimental German film sets a personal story of a young boy whose family is in turmoil against the backdrop of the 1954 World Cup. The first half is captivating as the boy's father tries to rebuild his life after ten years in a Soviet Pow camp. The second half, however, is wish fulfilment as the football fever in Germany heals both personal and collective wounds.

Wonderland
2003
**½
Director: James Cox
Cast: Val Kilmer, Kate Bosworth, Josh Lucas, Dylan McDermott, Lisa Kudrow

This fact-based drama looks at porn star John Holmes and his involvement in a brutal gangland killing in 1981. We hear the story from different perspectives, but the film is not able to answer the key question, why should we care? When drug dealers and criminals/drug addicts, all of them highly unpleasant, want to kill each other, you're not really bothered who dies.

Under the Tuscan Sun
2003
**½
Director: Audrey Wells
Cast: Diane Lane, Sandra Oh, Lindsay Duncan, Raoul Bova, Pawel Szaida

After a heartbreaking divorce an American writer makes a fresh start by purchasing a derelict country house in Tuscany in this extremely loose adaptation of Frances Mayes' memoirs. We have laughs and cries, as well as a stock collection of colourful local and not-so-local characters, and by the end everybody's problems are ironed out. The film has an attractive cast and beautiful locations, and it's quite watchable, but it all flows over you like water off a duck's back.

Les Triplettes des Belvilles (The Triplettes of Belleville)
2003
****½
Director: Sylvain Chomet
Cast: Beatrice Bonifassi, Lina Boudreau, Michele Caucheteux, Jean-Claude Donda

A delightfully idiosyncratic French animation about an old lady and her fat dog whose quest to find her grandson (who was kidnapped during Tour de France) takes them to the new world. The story is funny, bizarre and dialogue-free, the characters wonderfully wacky and French, and the overall look and feel of the animation like nothing else out there.

Touching the Void
2003
****½
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Cast: Brendan Mackey, Nicholas Aaron, Ollie Ryall, Joe Simpson, Simon Yates

An absolute nailbiter of a docudrama about a pair of English mountain climbers who went through an extraordinary ordeal in their climb to Siula Grande in the Andes. This absorbing film intercuts dramatised footage with survivor interviews into an amazing survival story full of deep-felt human emotions from optimism, guilt, anger and hope to desperation.

Thirteen
2003
***
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, Nikki Reed, Holly Hunter, Jeremy Sisto, Brady Corbet

A gritty drama about a single mom and her 13-year-old daughter who turns from a sweet little girl to a hellraising teenager. Stuffed animals are out, sex and drugs are in. The story is believable and the performances are strong, although most of the characters, especially the teenage girls, would need a good slap around the ears.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
2003
**
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken

A new female Terminator model is sent from the future to eliminate John Connor, the hope of humankind, but an obsolete model (Arnie) is back to protect him. This tired third episode offers more of the same, but contradicts with the second film and doesn't always make sense. The action scenes are decent but they offer nothing new, only destruction on a larger scale. The grim ending sets the scene for another sequel. Followed by Terminator Salvation.

Le temps du loup (Time of the Wolf)
2003
**
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Béatrice Dalle, Patrice Chéreau, Rona Hartner, Lucas Biscombe, Anais Demoustier, Hakim Taleb

The end of the world according to Michael Haneke. An unexplained disaster has contaminated the drinking water and the livestock in France (and perhaps across the world), and a Parisian family are forced to roam the countryside in search of food and shelter when their car, country cottage and last provisions are taken by force. The film starts with two very powerful scenes: first the father is shot dead with shocking abruptness, then the son gets lost in the night. When the remaining family members find fellow survivors who reside in an empty warehouse and wait for a train that may or may not come, the drama comes to a standstill. Haneke attempts to tackle the big moral, ethical and philosophical questions and loses all interest in the characters. After the dull final hour, the last mysterious shot left me indifferent rather than intrigued.

Tears of the Sun
2003
**
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker, Tom Skerritt

A special Navy Seals unit is on a mission in Nigeria to rescue an American doctor, but end up getting involved in the bloody civil War. This dull and dubious action drama endorses George W. Bush's enforced democracy doctrine; the heroic US soldiers sacrifice their lives to liberate a country from tyranny because the indigenous people just aren't going to do it themselves. Bruce Willis hasn't been this wooden since Armageddon.

Sylvia
2003
**
Director: Christine Jeffs
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Michael Gambon, Jared Harris

Watching a writer at work can be like watching paint dry. First a blank page, then a spell of inspiration and we're to believe that a masterpiece has been produced. To be fair, this drama concentrates more on the tumultuous relationship between poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. However, this story would've been deemed too boring, not to mention depressing, was it not based on fact. Sylvia doesn't come across as a particularly interesting person or writer.

Swimming Pool
2003
***
Director: Francois Ozon
Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance, Marc Fayolle

A slick and entertaining drama about a burned out crime novelist who finds a retreat in her agent's house in Provence, that is until the owner's over-sexed daughter shows up. The ladies go from detesting to manipulating each other, and ultimately end up sharing a secret. Or do they? That depends on what you make of the ending.

Stuck On You
2003
**½
Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Matt Damon, Eva Mendes, Wen YAnn Shih, Cher

In this Farrelly brothers comedy a pair of conjoined twins move to Hollywood when one of them wants to launch an acting career. The fact that the attached brother is an extremely shy individual is not the only obstacle they must overcome. This premise creates a steady mix of amusing and cringe-worthy gags. Kinnear and Damon are wonderful as the twins, and the Farrellys never lose their optimism while they preach against prejudice.

Station Agent
2003
***½
Director: Thomas McCarthy
Cast: Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Benjamin

Three disparate lonely souls - a worldweary dwarf, an outgoing young man and a grieving woman - become friends in the backwoods of New Jersey. This offbeat slice of life and its quirky characters have charm to spare, but the total is not quite the sum of its parts. The lead performances are all strong, however.

Stander
2003
***
Director: Bronwen Hughes
Cast: Thomas Jane, Dexter Fletcher, Deborah Kara Unger, David O'Hara

A South African policeman is disillusioned by Apartheid and turns into the country's most legendary bank robber. This bizarre drama is told with a lot of verve and energy, but the point of it all is lost on me. Every true story does not make a poignant film.

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
2003
**
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara; Ricardo Moltalban Sylvester Stallone, Salma Hayek

In the third instalment, our young hero must go inside a computer game to rescue his big sister. Most of the story takes place inside the virtual reality of this game (which to me looks like the cheapest and dullest one ever programmed). Due to this artificial setting the story never manages to create any sense of jeopardy. But Stallone is quite amusing in multiple roles. Followed by Spy Kids: All the Time in the World eight years later.

Something's Gotta Give
2003
**½
Director: Nancy Meyers
Cast: Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Keanu Reeves, Amanda Peet

Jack Nicholson gives a lazy portrayal of himself in this story about an elderly Lothario who, for the first time in a long while, falls in love with a woman of his own age (played with panache by Diane Keaton). It's nice to see a mature romantic comedy, if only it wasn't this predictable. It even ends in Paris of all places.

The Singing Detective
2003
**
Director: Keith Gordon
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Robin Wright Penn, Mel Gibson, Jeremy Northam

A pulp novelist with a terrible skin condition lies in a hospital bed where a hazy mix of old songs, his last novel and his childhood memories become his reality. Dennis Potter's excellent TV series has been Americanized and compressed into 100 minutes. Now the protagonist is loud and offensive instead of witty and cynical, and the complex and captivating story feels confusing and unpleasant.

Sibelius
2003
**
Director: Timo Koivusalo
Cast: Martti Suosalo, Miina Turunen, Vesa Vierikko, Heikki Nousiainen

This ambitious but lumbering biopic of Jean Sibelius covers most of his life, but doesn't delve into anything long enough for us to care. The story is bookended with scenes of the composer as a fragile old man (for no apparent reason) and we see the key events in his professional and private life, but there isn't a single scene that delivers an emotional wallop. To add insult to injury, all roles, be it a Swede or a German, are played by Finnish actors.

Shattered Glass
2003
***½
Director: Billy Ray
Cast: Hayden Christensen, Peter Sargaard, Chloe Sevigny, Hank Azaria

Hayden Christensen makes us forget his Star Wars woodenness in this true story of Stephen Glass, a young, talented and ambitious journalist who is so desperate to be liked that he invents most of his stories. As good as Christensen is, he is upstaged by Peter Sarsgaard who is perfect as the editor who gradually uncovers the deceit. This drama doesn't portray Glass as a bad guy or try to explain his motives. It offers no fancy gimmicks, merely a well-acted and solidly written character study.

Shanghai Knights
2003
***
Director: David Dobkin
Cast: Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Fann Wong, Aaron Johnson, Aidan Gillen

The sequel sees "John Wayne" reteam with Roy to pursue his father's murderer to London where we are in for a silly and anachronistic adventure with cameos from Arthur Conan Doyle and Jack the Ripper. The story is inept but Wilson's banter and Chan's beautifully choreographed fights carry this sweet-natured and entertaining film a long way.

Seabiscuit
2003
***½
Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper, Elisabeth Banks

A fact-based drama about an underdog racing horse whose unanticipated success helped to raise the spirits across the depression-stricken America in the 1930s. A heartwarming if manipulative crowd pleaser with strong performances.

Schultze Gets the Blues
2003
**
Director: Michael Schorr
Cast: Horst Krause, Harald Warmbrunn, Karl Fred Müller, Rosemarie Deibel

A laid-off elderly German miner seems literally redundant until he hears some zydeco music and finds new purpose for his life and, er, accordion playing. This moody film offers offbeat moments and dark humour in the opening hour, but the second half in the US is nothing but a series of confounding and directionless vignettes. And if the pace was any slower this would be a two hour still photo.

Runaway Jury
2003
**½
Director: James Foley
Cast: John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz

An arms manufacturer hires an expert to eliminate potentially risky jury members in a court case that could ruin the company. An entertaining but forgettable thriller based on a John Grisham novel. Any thought-provoking questions regarding the credibility of the American legal system are wiped away in the finale that has one too many twists in store.

Rosenstrasse
2003
**½
Director: Margarethe Von Trotta
Cast: Katja Riemann, Maria Schrader, Doris Schade, Jutta Lampe

In 2003 a young New Yorker interviews an old lady who saved her mother's life in 1943 when a group of Aryan women in Berlin mounted a protest against the Nazi regime to save their Jewish husbands from deportation to Auschwitz. Despite the actual historical backdrop this drama never grabs you. The modern day half of the story is unnecessary and the WW2 flashbacks are not able to create a sense of jeopardy and despair, which is a must for any Holocaust film.

The Recruit
2003
**½
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynahan, Gabriel Macht, Karl Pruner

A group of promising youngsters are recruited by the CIA and warned that when you're a spy, nothing is as it seems. This is the key to the events that unfold in this initially intriguing and entertaining but ultimately substandard drama.

Raid
2003
***½
Director: Tapio Piirainen
Cast: Kai Lehtinen, Oiva Lohtander, Mari Rantasila, Juha Muje, Pekka Huotari

Two years after the events in the wonderful TV series Raid returns to Finland, only to discover that his ex-girl may have died in a fire. The humour, the snappy dialogue and the flaky morale are still there, and so are many of the loveable characters. However, the plot is needlessly complicated and the climax is baffling.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
2003
****
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley

An overlong but thoroughly enjoyable pirate action comedy which relies very heavily on Johnny Depp's hilarious performance as Jack Sparrow. He's the former captain of Black Pearl, a ship whose crew is cursed (to be GCI-enhanced). Based on an amusement park ride. Followed by several inferior sequels: Dead Man's Chest, At World's End, On Stranger Tides, and Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Phone Booth
2003
***½
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, Radha Mitchell

A sniper on a morality mission threatens to shoot an arrogant and two-faced publicist in a New York City phone booth if the man hangs up. Joel Schumacher has a field day visualising Larry Cohen's tight script for this snappy and suspenseful 80 minute thriller. The film is enjoyable if you are willing to ignore how ridiculous the whole premise is. Colin Farrell carries the film with force in one of his first leading roles.

Peter Pan
2003
*
Director: P.J. Hogan
Cast: Jeremy Sumpter, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Jason Isaacs, Lynn Redgrave, Richard Briers, Olivia Williams, Harry Newell, Freddie Popplewell, Ludivine Sagnier

A dismal but apparently faithful adaptation of J.M Barrie's play and novel about a boy who doesn't want to grow up. Peter Pan transports young Wendy and her two brothers from London to Neverland where they face the ruthless Captain Hook. This is obviously a fantasy but the characters and the events should be grounded in some form of reality to convey actual human emotions, be it the parents' despair at losing their kids or the children's fear for their lives. Hook is a psychopath who kills his own men at a whim, but this lavishly staged mess makes the adventure in Neverland feel like a video game. Wendy is the only relatable character, whereas Peter Pan is a smug preteen, and the wooden Jeremy Sumpter gives him the same grin when he's having happy thoughts or when he's facing death. The sexual chemistry between these two is frankly unsettling, but not nearly as unsettling as the weird undertone of the relationship between Wendy and Hook, portrayed by Jason Isaacs who also plays her father. You could forgive P.J. Hogan some of these gross misjudgements if his film was fun at any point.

Pahat pojat (Bad Boys)
2003
**½
Director: Aleksi Mäkelä
Cast: Peter Franzen, Jasper Pääkkönen, Niko Saarela, Vesa-Matti Loiri

An action drama about four brothers who become wanted outlaws after a series of small time robberies. The film is overlong and despite its Finnish setting the film resembles a second rate Hollywood film or a cheesy music video. Vesa-Matti Loiri gives a strong performance as the boys' oppressive and hypocritical father, even if the character is awfully one-note. Very loosely based on fact.

Out of Time
2003
***
Director: Carl Franklin
Cast: Denzel Washington, Eva Mendes, Sanaa Lathan, John Billingsley

A small town sheriff in Florida is secretly having it off with a married woman. When the husband and wife are found killed, he realises who the prime suspect is. A very entertaining race against time ensues as the sheriff uses his position to stay one step ahead of the investigators. If only the ending wasn't so dreadfully clichéd.

Open Water
2003
***½
Director: Chris Kentis
Cast: Blanchard Ryan, Daniel Travis, Saul Stein, Michael E. Williamson

This taut thriller claims to be based on actual events. In any case it's a harrowing story about a couple who are accidentally left behind on their scuba diving holiday. They float in the sea and go through every imaginable emotion. Doesn't sound like much, but this compact low budget film keep you in its grip all the way through.

Open Range
2003
****
Director: Kevin Costner
Cast: Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall, Annette Bening, Michael Gambon

A group of cowboys want to go about their business in a peaceful way but end up in a confrontation with the local landowner. Kevin Costner's second western behind the camera is reminiscent of Unforgiven, the films share a protagonist who unsuccessfully tries to put his violent past behind him. A solid and moody genre piece.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico
2003
**
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Johnny Depp, Salma Hayek, Willem Dafoe, Mickey Rourke

This Tortilla western follows El Mariachi and Desperado, and now our mariachi/assassin is looking to revenge the killing of his family. Robert Rodriguez is a technically and visually skilled filmmaker and here he's done basically everything himself. The action scenes are well staged and shot, as always, but the script is an incomprehensible mess. Characters get introduced and shot before you get to know their names, let alone care about them. A fine cast is wasted in sketchy roles, Johnny Depp as an offbeat CIA agent is the sole standout.

Nousukausi
2003
***½
Director: Johanna Vuoksenmaa
Cast: Petteri Summanen, Tiina Lymi, Kari-Pekka Toivonen, Antti Virmavirta

A well-to-do couple learn what's important in life when they agree to live like unemployed people, just for kicks. The plot stutters towards the end but, all in all, this is an enjoyable Finnish comedy with social conscience.

Mystic River
2003
***
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney, Tom Guiry, Spencer Treat Clark, Emmy Rossum

Jimmy, Sean, and Dave were childhood friends in a tough Boston neighbourhood until one of them suffered a traumatic experience. Now 25 years later, they come together again when Jimmy's daughter is brutally murdered. Clint Eastwood stays behind the camera for this smart and slow-burning crime drama, which is based on Dennis Lehane's crime novel. This is more of a character study than a conventional murder mystery, and it features raw and believable characters. However, the ending is so overpoweringly underwhelming that it leaves a very bad aftertaste. Nevertheless, the performances are brilliant. Sean Penn and Tim Robbins won Academy Awards, but for me Marcia Gay Harden is the pick of the bunch.

The Mother
2003
**
Director: Roger Michell
Cast: Anne Reid, Daniel Craig, Cathryn Bradshaw, Steven Macintosh

After her husband's death an elderly woman embarks on a tempestuos love affair with her grown-up daughter's boyfriend. With this premise you'd expect writer Hanif Kureishi to explore a rarely seen topic, sex in older age, but this film goes nowhere. Unpleasant characters, especially the leading lady's two children, and a contrived and underwhelming ending are just some of the pitfalls.

Monster
2003
****
Director: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Lee Tergesen, Annie Corley, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Marco St. John, Marc Macaulay, Scott Wilson

Aileen Wuornos (1956-2002) was a prostitute who ended up killing six men between 1989 and 1990. Patty Jenkins' feature debut is a smart and gritty true crime drama and a moving love story, which attempts to show what drove her to take the lives of those men. The Academy Award winning Charlize Theron is awesome as Wuornos, not merely because she looks ugly and unglamorous, but because she nails all aspects of the character (facial ticks, body language, hunched walk, speech patterns, etc.).

Mona Lisa Smile
2003
**½
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Julia Roberts, Marcia Gay Harden, Julia Stiles, Kirsten Dunst

This Dead Poetess Society tells a story of an art history teacher who attempts to open the minds of her young female students in the 1950s America. Sadly everything is painted in broad, black and white strokes, and the film gives the audience exactly what they expect. Julia Roberts feels too contemporary and doesn't convince in the lead.

A Mighty Wind
2003
**
Director: Christopher Guest
Cast: Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer

Three influential folk groups from the 1960s get together for a tribute concert in Christopher Guest's latest mockumentary. His comedies rarely offer surprises, but they have wonderful characters and subtle humour. This time is no different, except that the jokes don't seem to hit home and the last half hour is all performance and no comedy.

Memories of Murder
2003
***
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung, Kim Roi-ha, Song Jae-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Go Seo-hee, Ryu Tae-Ho, Park No-shik, Park Hae-il

In the 1980s, detectives with contrasting methods team up to investigate a series of brutal rapes and murders in a rural town, but every clue they discover seems to lead to a dead end. Bong Joon-ho's crime thriller was adapted from Kim Kwang-rim's 1996 play Come to See Me, which is loosely based on real events. As a genre piece, the film is quirky and unpredictable, but tonally it is all over the place. The gruesome murders fail to make the required impact, when they are followed by ridiculously incompetent police work and general buffoonery. Like in The Host, the South Korean government remains uninterested in the events.

The Matrix Revolutions
2003
*½
Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving

This instantly forgettable third part, which follows The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded, proves that there was no story to tell beyond the original film. The two sequels are special effect bonanzas in search of a narrative. The characters we know struggle with their respective obstacles and the trilogy finishes with an overlong and underwhelming battle over the falling city of Zion. Neo's anti-climacting "destiny" leaves the door open for additional parts.

The Matrix Reloaded
2003
**½
Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving

The middle part of The Matrix trilogy has a mind-blowing 14 minute car chase, but the narrative stutters and the characters have nowhere to go; When Neo is invincible, where's the jeopardy? The first film came out of obscurity, so the element of surprise is long gone. Followed by The Matrix Revolutions.

Matchstick Men
2003
***
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Alison Lohman, Bruce Altman, Bruce McGill

An extremely neurotic con artist is trying to score big while getting to know his teenage daughter. Ridley Scott's comedy is stylish and enjoyable, but disappointingly predictable if you've seen con films before. Nicolas Cage is a bit over-the-top with his nervous ticks. The epilogue is worth one star alone.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
2003
****½
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, James D'Arcy, Edward Woodall, Chris Larkin, Max Pirkis, Lee Ingleby, Billy Boyd, Joseph Morgan, Patrick Gallagher


Following Gladiator, Russell Crowe gives another commanding performance as Captain Jack Aubrey, who commands the HMS Surprise during the Napoleonic Wars. While pursuing a fast and powerful French warship, he must weigh the risks against the gains. Peter Weir's slow but highly entertaining sea adventure is based on the novels in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series. Weir's film is not only a historically accurate record of a battle between the English and the French, but a moving depiction of friendship and camaraderie, and a gritty portrayal of life at sea. Everything is beautifully staged, mostly with practical effects. Russell Boyd's cinematography and Richard King's sound editing won Academy Awards.

Love Actually
2003
**
Director: Richard Curtis
Cast: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson, Lúcia Moniz, Thomas Brodie-Sangster

Richard Curtis, who wrote the delightful Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, makes his directorial debut with this overlong and overegged romantic comedy, which has become an enduring Christmas classic. Curtis clearly wasn't his own worst critic when he wrote and directed this messy collection of ten different storylines about love. Many of the stories have nothing to do with love, some of them don't offer a believable moment, and the rest feel like first drafts of unfinished stories. There are a few funny moments but it is cheesy and set entirely in movie reality.


Lost in Translation
2003
****½
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi, Akiko Takeshita

Sofia Coppola's second films is a funny, touching, romantic and understated gem about a washed out older actor and a young married woman who share a brief moment in Tokyo. Excellent performances from the two leading actors.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2003
*****
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Bernard Hill, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, Miranda Otto, David Wenham, Karl Urban, John Noble, Andy Serkis, Ian Holm, Sean Bean

Following The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, Sam and Frodo approach Mount Doom while the others prepare for a massive battle against Sauron's armies. The third part of the trilogy is a triumph in epic filmmaking. Peter Jackson wraps up the story of the ring and stages some spectacular set pieces. There are maybe one too many battle scenes, not to mention endings, but so much imagination and verve on the screen, and so much at stake emotionally that I'm willing to ignore little flaws. A winner of 11 Oscars.

The Life of David Gale
2003
**½
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet, Laura Linney, Gabriel Mann, Matt Craven

Akin to his Oscar-winning turn in The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey plays a brilliant man who takes the audience on a captivating journey, only to pull the rug from under us at the crucial moment. He is a college professor and famous anti-death penalty activist who has agreed to give an exclusive interview three days before his own execution. Oh, the irony. The story grabs you as it unravels in flashbacks, but once the twist(s) come nothing makes any sense whatsoever. Instead it begs the question, why did I bother?

The Last Samurai
2003
**½
Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Timothy Spall, Tony Goldwyn

This beautifully staged but painfully obvious drama recycles Dances with Wolves and Shogun into a story about a scarred Civil War veteran who travels to Japan to train its army in modern warfare. After the initial arrogance our hero embraces the local culture and masters the art of samurai in a jiffy. Tom Cruise is miscast in the leading role. Nice New Zealand scenery.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1
2003
***
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Sonny Chiba, Julie Dreyfus

After Jackie Brown Quentin Tarantino returns to original material, so to speak, with this pastiche of kung fu and samurai films. Uma Thurman plays a female assassin who wants to get even with the colleagues who tried to kill her. There are impressive action scenes and some enjoyably over-the-top bloodshed, but this is only half a movie, as the entire back story is left to Vol. 2.

Johnny English
2003
**
Director: Peter Howitt
Cast: Rowan Atkinson, John Malkovich, Ben Miller, Natalie Imbruglia, Nina Young

A disappointingly uninspired James Bond parody about a lumbering MI7 office clerk who gets to live his dream and work as a secret agent. Rowan Atkinson is good with physical comedy but the script is weak and you can see almost every punchline before it arrives. Natalie Imbruglia is wooden in her film debut. Followed by Johnny English Reborn and Johnny English Strikes Again.

Japanese Story
2003
****
Director: Sue Brooks
Cast: Toni Collette, Gotaro Tsunashima, Matthew Dyktynski, Lynette Curran

A geologist is forced to act as a tour guide to a Japanese businessman and take him to the depths of the Australian outback. During the trip they gradually begin to understand each other and eventually have a brief romance, until something totally unxpected happens. Collette and Tsunashima give excellent performances in this thoughful, funny and sad drama.

The Italian Job
2003
**
Director: F. Gary Gray
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Edward Norton, Jason Staham, Seth Green

An uninspired remake of the 1969 heist movie. However, this time the job in Italy is only the launch pad for the main events; the gang settle the score with a member who double-crossed them. The characters are either unoriginal (explosives expert, computer hacker, getaway driver) or laughable (Charlize Theron plays a safe cracker?) and the events follow their course without a single shock. Even the updated Mini Cooper chase is a wasted opportunity.

It's All About Love
2003
*½
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, Dounglas Henshall, Sean Penn, Mark Strong

The good news is that Thomas Vinterberg's first film in English is not a formulaic Hollywood product. The bad news is that it's incomprehensible and self-important rubbish. The story is set in 2021 where our hero is about to divorce his celebrity wife but can't escape the feeling that she is hiding something. All the while the entire world seems to be off kilter. The story is over-ambitious and all over the place, acting is wooden and the dialogue is clunky and exposition-heavy. Better luck next time, Thomas.

Intolerable Cruelty
2003
**
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: George Clooney, Catherine Zeta Jones, Billy Bob Thornton, Geoffrey Rush, Cedric the Entertainer, Edward Herrmann, Richard Jenkins, Paul Adelstein, Julia Duffy

Miles Massey is a cocky and suave divorce attorney who meets his match in Marylin Rexroth, a beautiful gold digger who wants to divorce her rich husband. The tenth feature by the Coen brothers is a studio movie, which is not based on their original material, and consequently one of their weakest efforts. This is a cringey and predictable romantic farce, which doesn't work because I don't like Miles or Marylin. Catherine Zeta-Jones is very good as a seductive femme fatale but George Clooney mugs his way through a forgettable performance.

Intermission
2003
**
Director: John Crowley
Cast: Colin Farrell, Shirley Henderson, Cillian Murphy, Kelly Macdonald

A colourful group of Dubliners (including an arrogant detective, a short-tempered thug, a promiscuous banker and some insecure young adults) keep running into each other in this dull and derivative film. Offbeat characters, laid-back dialogue and surprising bursts of violence. As if nobody's seen Pulp Fiction.

The In-Laws
2003
*½
Director: Andrew Fleming
Cast: Michael Douglas, Albert Brooks, Robin Tunney, David Suchet, Lindsay Sloane

The father of the bride is a neurotic doctor who goes on a wild ride with the groom's dad who turns out to be a reckless undercover CIA operative. The casting of Brooks and Douglas looks good on paper but this comedy remake fails to deliver. Characterisation is tired and cliched, and most of the jokes fall flat.

In the Cut
2003
*½
Director: Jane Campion
Cast: Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Damici, Sharrieff Pugh

Meg Ryan takes her kit off as a sexually repressed English teacher/writer who is drawn to a cocky detective in pursuit of a serial killer. The premise and Jane Campion's name above the title lead you to expect a smart, erotically charged grown-up drama. Instead you have to sit through this horrible, sleazy thriller with plot holes the size of Manhattan and characters you hope will become future murder victims. The supporting characters serve no other purpose than to divert you from the killer's identity. Based on Susanna Moore's novel.

Identity
2003
**
Director: James Mangold
Cast: John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, Alfred Molina, John Hawkes

A group of disparate people get stranded in a motel during a storm and end up getting killed one by one. Tension builds up nicely but then the story pulls the rug from under us by revealing what it's all about. Nothing makes sense, least of all the explanation. As if this wasn't bad enough, we also get the standard last second "shock" ending.

The Human Stain
2003
**
Director: Robert Benton
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Wentworth Miller, Gary Sinise

An aging college professor, who has been living a lie for most of his life, loses his job over semantics. He then finds solace in another troubled soul, a considerably younger custodial worker. Philip Roth's complex novel has been given a rushed, confusing and lightweight adaptation. Hopkins and Kidman are badly miscast and the novel's narrator has been turned into a character who is nothing but an observer.

Hulk
2003
**½
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte, Sam Elliott, Josh Lucas

Ang Lee's first big budget action movie is an adaptation of Marvel's popular comic book series. Eric Bana plays Bruce Banner, a scientist with anger (and father) issues, and a gigantic green alter ego. This origin story takes forever to get going. However, once it does, it offers an enjoyable but uneven mix of visual gimmicks, adult drama and CGI action. The final showdown is frankly baffling. The character is rebooted for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in The Incredible Hulk, and recast in The Avengers.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
2003
*
Director: Donald Petrie
Cast: Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, Kathryn Hahn, Bebe Neuwirth

A female journalist places a bet that she can dump a man in 10 days, while a hot shot advertising agent bets that he can make any woman fall in love with him in the same timeframe. When these two insincere hypocrites actually begin to fall in love, we are supposed to find it believable and charming. This is a thoroughly unpleasant romantic comedy that may stimulate aggressive behaviour.

House of Sand and Fog
2003
**½
Director: Vadim Perelman
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Ron Eldard, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Jonathan Ahdout

A pompous, self-important drama about the darker side of the American Dream. A recovering alcoholic hits rock bottom when she loses her house due to unpaid taxes. The same house in turn represents fresh hope to its new owners, an immigrant family from Iran. This initially subtle drama goes through increasingly preposterous twists which lead to a finale which leaves you completely indifferent, although it should be heartbreaking. The actors work hard, but in Kingsley's case in particular you feel like you're watching a performance.

Gothika
2003
**
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Cast: Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., Penelope Cruz, John Carroll Lynch

The roles are reversed when a brilliant psychiatrist wakes up in a mental hospital and is charged with murdering her own husband. Halle Berry cries convincingly and the scares are fast and frequent, but the story is just rubbish. The supernatural elements are far more plausible than the twists and turns of the script.

Good Bye Lenin
2003
****
Director: Wolfgang Becker
Cast: Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, Chulpan Khamatova, Florian Lukas, Maria Simon

A devout socialist mother falls into coma as the Berlin Wall is about to crumble. When she wakes up, her children try to protect her from the new Germany waiting outside. A delightful German comedy that pokes fun at the East and the West, but never forgets the human drama behind the reunification. Funny, thought-provoking and melancholic.

Girl with a Pearl Earring
2003
**
Director: Peter Webber
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Essie Davis, Judy Parfitt

This adaptation of Tracy Chevalier's novel weaves a fictional story around the creation of Johannes Vermeer's titular painting. The girl with the pearl earring, it claims, is Vermeer's maid who had a soft spot for art(ist). 17th century Delft is beautifully recreated, but the characters feel too modern and, frankly, cliched. And there really isn't much of a story to tell, as it turns out.

The Fog of War
2003
****
Director: Errol Morris
Cast:

Robert S. McNamara served as a data analyst in the U.S. Aír Forces during World War II, and most famously as the Secretary of Defence during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. He still has a sharp mind at the age of 85, and in this captivating, Oscar winning documentary he uses his first hand experience to offer humanity 11 lessons about war.

Finding Nemo
2003
****½
Director: Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich
Cast: Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Willem Dafoe, Geoffrey Rush

When his only son is captured and put into an aquarium, the neurotic clownfish widower must go on a long journey to save him. Pixar animation studio has created the sights and sounds of the underwater world with incredible attention to detail. The anthropomorphic animal characters occasionally make you uneasy, but the wonderfully voiced characters, clever film references, endless visual gags and the overall creative energy make this a joy to watch. Followed by Finding Dory.

Elephant
2003
***
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Timothy Bottoms, Matt Malloy, Elias McConnell, Nathan Tyson, Carrie Finklea, Kristen Hicks

Gus Van Sant's minimalistic drama depicts a Columbine-style massacre in a Portland high school. The slow, long tracking shots introduce the archetypal characters: the shy long-haired outsider, the insecure nerdish girl, the aspiring artist, the popular athlete and his hot girlfriend, the bulimic beauty queens, the sensitive killer and his susceptible cohort. These kids are played mostly by non-professional actors. Van Sant doesn't offer a clear motive for the killings but he provides the usual list of explanations when such an act of brutality takes place: bullying, violent video games, sexual frustration, fascination with extremism and availability of guns. Although the film is short and compact, it also feels somewhat incomplete. The final 20 minutes are truly unsettling but the abrupt ending is frustrating. However, the camera work by Harris Savides is impressive, apart from a few visible glares and shadows.

Dreamcatcher
2003
†
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: Thomas Jane, Morgan Freeman, Damian Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, Jason Lee

This adaptation of Stephen King's novel brings together not some but all of the author's familiar themes (male bonding, childhood nostalgia, isolation, paranormal phenomenon, alien invasion, monster attack, deadly virus, split personality, etc.) into what must be one of the worst films ever made. Four boyhood friends take their annual trip to the woods where their special abilities finally seem to find purpose when they're attacked by, what one character refers to as, shit weasels who are about to kill the entire population. If it all could just be as ridiculous as it sounds, but this film has no sense of humour and it takes forever to tell nothing of interest. The wintry locations do look menacing, but how cold does it have to be for movie characters to zip up their jackets?

Dogville
2003
****
Director: Lars Von Trier
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, Stellan Skarsgard, Lauren Bacall

A beautiful woman finds refuge from gangsters in a small town of Dogville in the Rockies. First the townfolk seem welcoming but they gradually reveal their darker side. Lars von Trier's drama is long and not particularly cinematic, but the film is so powerfully written and brilliantly acted that you simply forget that it takes place entirely on one artificial studio set. The first part of a planned trilogy (followed by Manderlay in 2005).

Daredevil
2003
**
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Cast: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Colin Farrell, Michael Clarke Duncan

A formulaic Marvel comic book adaptation. Matt Murdock is a lawyer at day and Daredevil - a blind superhero whose other senses are highly developed - at night. Daredevil has no superpowers, yet he jumps and flies from roof to roof like Spider Man. You could overlook little flaws like that if the movie and its hero weren't so utterly lacking in balls and charisma. The villains are equally devoid of personality, and we have no clue what motivates them.

The Core
2003
**½
Director: Jon Amiel
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, Tcheky Karyo

The Earth's core has stopped spinning and the future of the planet is at risk. Within days a group of scientists are ready to embark on a pioneering journey to the centre of the world. This scientific disaster movie is hopelessly formulaic, predictable and, frankly, complete nonsense but it is surprisingly watchable.

The Cooler
2003
***
Director: Wayne Kramer
Cast: William H. Macy, Maria Bello, Alec Baldwin, Shawn Hatosy, Ron Livingston

William H. Macy is perfectly cast as a sadsack whose mere presence brings bad luck to the gamblers in a Las Vegas casino. His fortunes begin to improve when he falls in love, which is not good news to his boss, an old-time thug who doesn't welcome change (fiercely played by Alec Baldwin). The film is an entertaining if a bit uncomfortable mix of sweet romance and graphic violence. The final scene is incredibly stupid, though.

Confidence
2003
**
Director: James Foley
Cast: Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Dustin Hoffman, Andy Garcia, Paul Giamatti

A team of con men accidentally hustle a trigger-happy gangster, and to make up to him they agree to pull an even bigger con. If you've seen The Sting, Ocean's Eleven, Matchstick Men, House of Games or any other con movie, you know that every surprising twist or hick-up in the plan is just another piece of the elaborate scam. Maybe this wouldn't feel like a con drama on autop(i)lot if there were characters you could care about. A superb cast goes to waste, and Rachel Weisz is simply miscast as femme fatale.

Cold Mountain
2003
***
Director: Anthony Minghella
Cast: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Philip Seymour Hoffman

A wounded Civil War deserter makes an odyssey home to his sweetheart. This ambitious romantic drama has high production values but it never seems to take off, especially as far as the romance is concerned. Jude Law is solidly monosyllabic, but Nicole Kidman seems miscast in the female lead. Renee Zellweger picked up an Oscar for her showy supporting role. Adapted from Chales Frazier's novel.

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
2003
*
Director: McG
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Demi Moore

The Angels return in this totally contrived and uninspired sequel. McG puts together an endless series of identical action scenes which are glued together with a story about two stolen rings that contain the names of the people in the witness protection programme.

Capturing the Friedmans
2003
*****
Director: Andrew Jarecki
Cast:

A mesmerising documentary (comprised of numerous intrusive home video recordings and contemporary interviews) about a seemingly normal and happy Long Island family that completely fell apart. Amidst the child abuse hysteria in the 1980s the father and his youngest son were accused of raping numerous neighbourhood boys. The witness testimonies were contradictory and even absurd, but the father admitted to abusing children in the past. By the end of this deeply sad and unsettling film the absolute truth is still unclear.

Calendar Girls
2003
**½
Director: Nigel Cole
Cast: Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, John Alderton, Linda Bassett, Celia Imrie

A moderately amusing comedy about a group of middle-aged Yorkshire women who want to create a nude calendar for charity. This wacky premise is actually based on an amazing true story. However, the whole film is built on the notion that being in the nude is somehow incredibly comical. The climactic trip to L.A. is utterly pointless.

Bruce Almighty
2003
**½
Director: Tom Shadyac
Cast: Jim Carrey, Jennifer Aniston, Morgan Freeman, Philip Baker Hall, Steve Carell, Catherine Bell, Lisa Ann Walter

When things don't go his way, a self-centered TV reporter named Bruce is convinced that it's God's fault. To illustrate the complexity of His work, God decides to give Bruce divine powers. The premise is promising, but it sadly doesn't lead to anything too deep or inventive. This safe comedy doesn't dare to take risks or ask questions about the nature of man or God. Instead it offers some cute gags and predictable life lessons. However, there are some laughs along the way. Followed by Evan Almighty without Jim Carrey.

Brother Bear
2003
***
Director: Aaron Blaise, Robert Walker
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Suarez, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, Jason Raize, D.B. Sweeney, Joan Copeland

Sometime after the Ice Age young hunter loses his older brother. In rage he kills the bear he blames for the death, which tranforms him into a bear. Disney's spiritually charged 2D animation is an entertaining if rather forgettable children's film. It offers a moving story and some comic relief in the form of a talkative cub Koda.

Big Fish
2003
***
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, Billy Crudup, Alison Lohman, Steve Buscemi

The son confronts his dying father to finally get to know the real person behind the old man's colourful stories. The story is entertaining, the cast is great and Tim Burton is the right director to visualise all the tall tales, but somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Based on Daniel Wallace's novel.

Basic
2003
*½
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: John Travolta, Connie Nielsen, Samuel L. Jackson, Giovanni Ribisi

Several people die in a routine military exercise, but the survivors can't seem to agree what actually took place. The story tries to outwit the audience with endless twists and surprises, and succeeds in it. You can pat yourself on the back if you can figure out what actually happened, not that any of it makes sense. Some funny banter between Travolta and Nielsen on the plus side.

Bad Santa
2003
***
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Brett Kelly, Lauren Graham, Lauren Tom

Billy Bob Thornton is great fun as a nihilistic, misanthropic and heavy-drinking department store Santa who traditionally robs his employer when the season's job is finished. This Christmas comedy is refreshingly anarchistic and unsentimental, but it's ultimately just an implausible, over-streched joke with a protagonist who doesn't have any redeeming features.

Bad Boys 2
2003
*
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Jordi Molla, Gabrielle Union, Peter Stormare

In the sequel to Bad Boys the Miami PD detectives attempt to nail a Cuban drug lord, but their investigation seems to interfere with that of the DEA, or something. Not to worry, the plot won't stand in the way of an offensive, irresponsible and gargantuan 140 minute demolition fest where our heroes create more casualties than the villains ever could. The film is aimed at a wide target audience: ultra-conservatives, homophobes, xenophobes, misogynists, racists and especially attention deficients are all catered for.

Anything Else
2003
**
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Jason Biggs, Christina Ricci, Woody Allen, Stockard Channing, Danny DeVito

Jason Biggs steps into Woody Allen's shoes and plays a struggling comedy writer who has an impossible relationship with a young neurotic actress. Sounds very much like Annie Hall, which makes it doubly sad to watch a comedy this tired and anachronistic (modern day characters in their early twenties enthuse about Humphrey Bogart and Billie Holiday).

Anger Management
2003
**
Director: Peter Segal
Cast: Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson, Marisa Tomei, John Turturro, Luis Guzman

Adam Sandler plays a doormat who has been bottling anger for most of his life. A misunderstanding leads him to take court-ordered anger management classes with an eccentric therapist (played by Jack Nicholson as only he can) whose hands-on approach starts to affect his entire life. The two male leads have decent chemistry but the jokes don't fly. Eventually it gets so tiresome that you're not even bothered by the shaggy dog ending.

American Splendor
2003
****
Director: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, Judah Friedlander, Earl Billings, James Urbaniak, Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, Toby Radloff

Paul Giamatti is perfectly cast as Harvey Pekar, a grouchy and lonely file clerk from Cleveland, who turns his mundane life into a popular underground comic book and becomes somewhat of a celebrity in the process. This unusual but thoroughly enjoyable film mixes dramatisation of Pekar's life with animation based on his comics, and wry commentary from the actual people portrayed on screen. Adapted from American Splendor (series of comic books) and Our Cancer Year (graphic novel).

28 Days Later
2003
***½
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Brendan Gleeson

A young man wakes up in an empty hospital and soon discovers that the whole of Britain is infected by a virus that turns people into raging maniacs. Danny Boyle's horror film is visually striking and its first half is gripping as the protagonist walks through empty London In search of fellow survivors. In the disappointing second half the action moves to a country mansion run by a group of twisted soldiers who turn a sanctuary into a prison. The film asks some difficult questions about morality but its answers are not terribly original. Followed by 28 Weeks Later.

21 Grams
2003
****
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Cast: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Danny Huston, Carly Nahon

A heartbreaking drama about three people whose lives intersect due to a horrific traffic accident. There's definitely a lot of misery on screen, but thanks to the amazing performances by the three leading actors, the story of these characters becomes palpably real and authentic. Iñárritu has edited a fairly straight-forward story into a non-linear puzzle, which is both effective and gimmicky.

XXX
2002
**½
Director: Rob Cohen
Cast: Vin Diesel, Samuel L. Jackson, Asia Argento, Marton Csokas, Danny Trejo

An extreme sports fan and all-around rebel Xander Cage is recruited as a spy by the NSA. This action film attempts to introduce a bit hipper, cooler and more American 007, but why does it have to follow the Bond formula so dutifully. There are a few nice action set pieces, such as the escape from the avalanche. Followed by a sequel without VIn Diesel.

XX/XY
2002
**
Director: Austin Chick
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Maya Stange, Kathleen Robertson, Petra Wright

One guy and two college girls form an unusual (sexual) partnership which inevitably ends on a sour note. Years later they run into each other and are forced to rexamine their current lives. It all sounds relatively promising, and the actors are all doing a decent job. If only the characters were worth our while.

White Oleander
2002
**½
Director: Peter Kosminsky
Cast: Alison Lohman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Patrick Fugit, Robin Wright Penn

Alison Lohman gives a strong performance as a teenage girl whose overbearing mother seems to be in charge of her life even while serving a sentence for murder. The troubled girl goes from one foster home to another but she never has my fullest sympathy. Is she a victim or not? Does she have her own will or not? Adapted from Janet Fitch's novel.

Whale Rider
2002
***
Director: Niki Caro
Cast: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton, Cliff Curtis, Grant Roa

12-year-old Maori girl Paikea comes from a long line of chieftains, but her grandfather is a bullheaded traditionalist who refuses to accept that the new tribe leader could be a girl. Paikea's uplifting coming-of-age story is beautifully filmed and strongly acted (Keisha Castle-Hughes is very impressive in her debut), but it leaves a bad aftertaste. Most family films teach children to be their own lovable selves; the protagonist of this manipulative drama needs to be one notch below God just to be accepted by her own family member. Director Niki Caro adapted Witi Ihimaera's novel.

Welcome to Collinwood
2002
*½
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Luis Guzman, William H. Macy, Isaiah Washington

A handful of small-time crooks, each one stupider than the next, gang up in order to break through a wall and crack a safe full of money, but nothing seems to go their way. The dynamite cast try their darndest, but this caper film remake is just utterly charmless and embarrassingly unfunny.

We Were Soldiers
2002
**½
Director: Randall Wallace
Cast: Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear, Sam Elliott, Chris Klein

In this self-important war film a highly respected Lieutenant Colonel leads his troops into one of the first major battles in Vietnam in 1965. The battle scenes are gory and well directed, but the film takes no stance on war, so it's hard to see the point of it all. When you go to war, soldiers die on both sides?

Unfaithful
2002
***½
Director: Adrian Lyne
Cast: Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Olivier Martinez, Erik Per Sullivan, Kate Burton

A happily married wife and mother risks everything by beginning a passionate love affair with another man, but her husband is immediately onto her. An intelligent and well acted adult drama which takes a dramatic turn in the second half. The wonderful open ending forces the couple to continue living with the knowledge of their actions.

Two Weeks Notice
2002
*½
Director: Mark Lawrence
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Hugh Grant, Alicia Witt, Dana Ivey, Robert Klein

A charmless and joyless romantic comedy about an idealistic lawyer who reluctantly takes a job with a ruthless property developer and, surprise, falls in love with him. Bullock and Grant are both typecast and it looks like they phoned in their respective performances. The story, on the other hand, is maddeningly formulaic stuff in which each individual scene plays out exactly as expected.

Trapped
2002
*
Director: Luis Mandoki
Cast: Charlize Theron, Kevin Bacon, Dakota Fanning, Pruitt Taylor Vince

An extremely off-putting thriller about a trio of kidnappers who hold a rich couple's kid for ransom. Kevin Bacon plays a slimy one-dimensional villain, Charlize Theron wails monotonously as mommy, and Stuart Townsend is a highly implausible medical genius/daddy. However, the performances are not the worst aspect of the film, it's the screenplay which will throw in any plot device to keep things moving, be it the girl's asthma, doctor father's medical innovation or his flying skills.

The Transporter
2002
**½
Director: Corey Yuen, Louis Leterrier
Cast: Jason Statham, Qi Shu, Matt Schulze, Francois Berleand, Doug Rand

A professional getaway car driver breaks one of his own rules and checks what he's transporting in the boot of his car; it turns out to be a kidnapped Asian girl. A series of explosive and well-executed action set-pieces and chase scenes follow one another until you're completely numb. This is one of those films in which everyone is an expert in martial arts (just so the fight scenes can be drawn out). Followed by a sequel.

Time Machine
2002
**
Director: Simon Wells
Cast: Guy Pearce, Mark Addy, Orlando Jones, Samantha Mumba, Jeremy Irons

A 19th century scientist builds a time machine in order to go back in time and save the woman he loves. After a failed attempt he ends up 800,000 years into the future and discovers the fate of humanity. This adaptation is supposedly quite faithful to H.G. Wells' scifi novel but, frankly, the story is a mind-boggling mess. Presumably the message is that while you can't change the past you can change the future.

The Sum of All Fears
2002
**½
Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Cast: Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber, Alan Bates

Tom Clancy's CIA agent Jack Ryan is back, and thanks to recasting he is about 30 years younger than the last time we saw him in A Clear and Present Danger. Meanwhile, a group of Neo-Nazis manipulate USA and Russia into war against each other by blowing up a nuclear bomb on the US soil. The film is sufficiently entertaining and suspenseful, but after 9/11 its view of the world seems hopelessly outdated and its plot as a whole cannot bear closer examination (what happened to the fallout?).

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
2002
**½
Director: George Lucas
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, Temuera Morrison, Kenny Baker, Frank Oz

Anakin Skywalker, now a young man and Jedi apprentice, is assigned to protect Senator Padmé Amidala, but things get complicated when he begins to fall in love with her. In the meanwhile, Obi-Wan Kenobi discovers that someone has ordered a clone army for the Republic. The second instalment in the prequel trilogy offers slight improvement on the family entertainment of href=/search2.php?query=1990>The Phantom Menace, but it doesn't come even close to the innocent charm of the original trilogy. The action scenes are well executed and the plot is almost comprehensible, but the dialogue still hurts your ears and Hayden Christensen is weak as Anakin. The story concludes in Revenge of the Sith.

Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams
2002
***
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Mike Judge, Ricardo Montalbán, Holland Taylor, Christopher McDonald, Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin, Steve Buscemi, Taylor Momsen, Matt O'Leary, Emily Osment

In the follow-up to the entertaining Spy Kids, Juni and Carmen are fully established agents until they become embroiled in the power games at the top of the OSS. When the villain steals the all-powerful Transmooker, the clues lead the siblings to a mysterious island which does not appear on the map. The sequel doesn't add anything new to the formula, but it maintains the lighthearted charm and inventiveness of the original. The special effects are anything but special, but the clever gags and delightful performances compensate. Followed by Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.

Spider-Man
2002
***
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe, James Franco

This enjoyable Marvel comic book adaptation launched a hugely successful franchise. Tobey Maguire plays Peter Parker, a high school student who is bitten by a genetically engineered spider. The film is at its best when Peter tries to woo Mary Jane or come to terms with his emerging superpowers. The action scenes, however, look like animation and occasionally consist of two mouthless characters (Spider-Man and Green Goblin) shouting at each other. Followed by Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3.

Spider
2002
**½
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave

A mentally unstable man known as Spider looks back at his childhood, especially the relationship with his mother. Fiennes and Richardson give fine performances but the film is slow and dreary. The story is told from Spider's perspective and it's ultimately impossible to determine which came first, his childhood trauma or his mental illness.

Solaris
2002
***½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis

A captivating if a bit aloof psychological drama-cum-science fiction film about a man who travels to a space station near planet Solaris to investigate strange occurrences. Filmed before in the 1970s by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Signs
2002
***
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Cherry Jones, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin, M. Night Shyamalan, Patricia Kalember, Ted Sutton, Merritt Wever, Lanny Flaherty, Marion McCorry, Michael Showalter, Clifford David

A bereaved former Reverend, his two children, and his younger brother live in growing fear as mysterious crop circles appear around their Pennsylvania farm and elsewhere across the world. M. Night Shyamalan made his name with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, captivating thrillers which relied on surprising twists to varying degrees of success. With this science fiction-flavoured horror film, Shyamalan miscasts himself in a crucial supporting role, but he builds suspense slowly and very effectively behind the camera. Unfortunately, his screenplay turns out to be an intricate and frankly silly puzzle whose every little detail (wife's death, brother's baseball career, daughter's peculiar habits, etc.) serves a bigger purpose. The ultimate message of the film is that if you lose your faith in God, the aliens will overtake the Earth.

Showtime
2002
**½
Director: Tom Dey
Cast: Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy, Rene Russo, Pedro Damian, Mos Def, William Shatner

A heavy-handed media satire about a decorated detective and a second rate police officer/actor wannabe who are teamed up for a "reality" TV show. There are some funny bits in the first half (William Shatner teaches Robert De Niro how to act) but then it begins to take itself too seriously. However, the film is not as smart as it thinks it is at any point.

Secretary
2002
***
Director: Steven Shainberg
Cast: James Spader, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jeremy Davies, Patrick Bauchau, Stephen McHattie, Lesley Ann Warren, Oz Perkins, Jessica Tuck, Amy Locane

A young woman with a history of self-harm takes a job as a secretary for a demanding lawyer, and the two quickly develop a complex and unconventional personal and professional relationship. This BDSM-flavoured dark romantic comedy about a dominant man and a submissive woman certainly offers something different. Unfortunately these two people are only defined by their kinks, which is not enough to make them interesting as characters. Incidentally, the lawyer's name is Mr. Grey, like in the abysmal Fifty Shades of Grey (2015). Based on Mary Gaitskill's 1988 short story.

S1MØNE
2002
*
Director: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Al Pacino, Catherine Keener, Evan Rachel Wood, Pruitt Taylor Vince

Frustrated with stars and their tantrums, a film director creates a perfect actress on the computer and she becomes a huge star. This Hollywood satire wannabe has a clever premise but absolutely nothing about it is plausible, be it Simone's talent, her massive success, her reclusive private "life", the way films are made, the way the media operates and, above all, the way the creator manages to trick everyone and do it all by himself. And after all of the above the ending leaves you dumbstruck.

Road to Perdition
2002
***½
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Tom Hanks, Jude Law, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Sam Mendes follows the Oscar glory of American Beauty with another tale of a man who's not too crazy about his job. This time the protagonist is a mob hitman who gets in over his head. A well-acted and visually stunning (Conrad L. Hall's cinematography won an Academy Award) gangster drama which seems to follow a predestined path. Based on a graphic novel.

Ripley's Game
2002
**½
Director: Liliana Cavani
Cast: John Malkovich, Ray Winstone, Dougray Scott, Lena Headey, Sam Blitz

Tom Ripley (the character from The Talented Mr. Ripley), now played by John Malkovich, plots a fiendish scheme on his terminally ill neighbour who insulted him. This darkly comic drama has its moments (the long scene in the train toilet), but its premise is highly implausible and Ripley's total lack of empathy is difficult to stomach. Based on Patricia Highsmith's novel and previously filmed by Wim Wenders as The Amercian Friend.

The Ring
2002
****
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, David Dorfman, Jane Alexander, Daveigh Chase, Brian Cox, Shannon Cochran, Lindsay Frost, Amber Tamblyn, Rachael Bella, Richard Lineback

A journalist investigates a mysterious videotape that is said to bring death to anyone who watches it within seven days. As she delves deeper into the story, she puts herself and her loved ones in peril. I haven't seen the 1998 Japanese original, but this Hollywood remake tells a creepy and powerful horror story. Gore Verbinski's visually resourceful film manages to maintain an eerie atmosphere all the way to the end. Followed by The Ring Two.

Red Dragon
2002
**½
Director: Brett Ratner
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson

This prequel to The Silence of the Lambs (and remake of Michael Mann's Manhunter) is a predictable and cliché-ridden story of an FBI agent who consults Hannibal Lecter in order to track down a serial killer. How did Thomas Harris get away with writing the same story twice? An unbelievable cast, but to no avail.

Rabbit-proof Fence
2002
****
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, Kenneth Branagh

Up to the 1970s the Australian government enforced a law which entitled them to take half-caste children away from their biological parents. This touching but unsentimental drama follows three girls who escape internment and begin a long journey home.

The Quiet American
2002
***
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Do Thi Hai Yen, Rade Serbedzija, Tzi Ma

This intelligent and well-acted but not terribly exciting drama is based on Graham Greene's novel, and it was filmed once before in the 1950s. The story is set in Saigon in 1952 where a British correspondent witnesses the first signs of the upcoming civil war. He befriends a mysterious American who has something bigger to hide than the fact that he's about to steal the journo's Vietnamese girlfriend.

Punch-Drunk Love
2002
****½
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Robert Smigel

Barry Egan is a socially awkward and emotionally volatile man, who owns a toilet accessory business. Just when Barry finds an unexpected romance, he falls for a phone sex hotline scam. Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to the brilliant but relentlessly grim Magnolia is something completely different, an enjoyable and energy-filled oddity. The wonderful Adam Sandler and Emily Watson star in one of the sweetest, weirdest, and most unpredictable romantic comedies of all time.


The Pianist
2002
****
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman

It's hard to find new and fresh angles to portray the horrors of the Holocaust, but this touching true drama shows us how difficult it was to survive even if you managed to avoid the concentration camp. Adrien Brody, who won an Oscar for his strong performance, plays a pianist who hides in Warsaw. Director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Ronald Harwood also won Academy Awards. Based on Władysław Szpilman's autobiography.

Panic Room
2002
**½
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yokam, Kristen Stewart

David Fincher undoubtedly has an impressive command of the technical side of filmmaking. The camera swoops through walls, floors and kitchen utensils, but that won't keep you on the edge of your seat for two hours. The story about a single mother and her daughter who are trapped inside their new house has nowhere to go from its clichéd settings, except to a foregone conclusion.

One Hour Photo
2002
***½
Director: Mark Romanek
Cast: Robin Williams, Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Gary Cole, Eriq La Salle, Clark Gregg, Paul H. Kim, Erin Daniels

Robin Williams gives a chilling and unusually restrained performance as Sy, a desperately lonely photo lab clerk who has developed an obsession with a seemingly perfect American family. This short, smart, and unsettling film luckily doesn't lead to an over-the-top finale, which is often the case withe these kinds of stories.

Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
2002
***½
Director: Shane Meadows
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Rhys Ifans, Shirley Henderson, Kathy Burke, Finn Atkins

The Brits excel at making funny, moving and believable films about working class people, and here we have another fine contender. Rhys Ifans plays a nerdy man whose seemingly perfect life falls apart when the father of her partner's teenage daughter comes back to the picture. There are some contrived and melodramatic turns towards the end, but on the whole this slice of Nottingham life leaves a pleasant aftertaste.

Narc
2002
**½
Director: Joe Carnahan
Cast: Jason Patric, Ray Liotta, Krista Bridges, Alan Van Sprang, Dan Leis

Two detectives investigate a cop killing. One of them is a former undercover agent who is alienating his wife by delving too deep into the case. His partner is the dead man's friend and a loose cannon. Police corruption is uncovered and the entire investigation seems to be motivated by department politics. After countless cop films and TV series like NYPD Blue it's hard to find anything original in the above scenario. However, the film partly redeems itself with its gritty look and feel. Ray Liotta is also in good form, although he always seems to play the same character.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding
2002
***
Director: Joel Zwick
Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan

This massively successful romantic comedy with an ethnic twist is occasionally hilarious but very predictable. It would actually be a pretty decent comedy if all the conflicts were not solved in a matter of minutes and if the groom-to-be wasn't so spineless. Followed by a 2016 sequel.

Murder By Numbers
2002
**½
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Ben Chaplin, Michael Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Chris Penn

Two troubled teenagers plot a perfect murder just to see if they can get away with it. They would if it wasn't for a tough female detective who must relive her traumatic past while investigating the case. This thriller is not your usual whodunnit since we know who the culprits are, but it still doesn't manage to offer anything we haven't seen before.

The Mothman Prophecies
2002
***
Director: Mark Pellington
Cast: Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton, Debra Messing, Alan Bates, Lucinda Jenney, David Eigenberg, Bob Tracey

A Washington Post reporter is drawn into a small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia by a series of supernatural events, similar to those that preceded his wife's death. This slow-burning mystery features a no-nonsense protagonist, who is less intrigued by what is happening and more intrigued by why it's happening. This thriller starts in a gripping manner, but once the sightings become frequent and the Mothman begins to make regular phone calls, the story starts to lose its mystique and get a bit silly. To make matters worse, the film claims to be based on real events in the late 1960s. Richard Hatem scripted from John Keel's 1975 book.

Morvern Callar
2002
*½
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Cast: Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott, Linda McGuire, Ruby Milton, Dolly Wells

Morvern Callar is a young Scottish supermarket clerk whose writer boyfriend has just killed himself. She takes his money and his unpublished book and continues to live like nothing's happened. Is she in shock, in denial or compeletely emotionless? After 90 boring, pretentious and implausible minutes we're not any wiser. "What planet are you on?", Morvern's best friend poignantly asks her. Based on Alan Warner's book.

Moonlight Mile
2002
***
Director: Brad Silberling
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, Ellen Pompeo

After the brutal killing of his bride-to-be, a young man ends up living with the dead girl's parents while they all try to process the tragedy in their own way. This partly autobiographical drama is well acted but somewhat unfocused. Silberling can't decide whether he wants to present a study of grief, a coming of age tale or a love story. He struggles to squeeze all three in one film.

Minority Report
2002
***
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Cruise, Samantha Morton, Colin Farrell, Max von Sydow, Neal McDonough, Steve Harris, Patrick Kilpatrick, essica Capshaw, Lois Smith, Kathryn Morris

In 2054, the experimental PreCrime unit in Washington DC stops murders before they happen. Just when this controversial method is about to be launched across the country, the unit's chief John Anderton goes in hiding when he learns that in 36 hour he is to murder a man he doesn't even know. Steven Spielberg’s somber science fiction spectacle is loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s 1956 short story. Like A Clockwork Orange, it deals with the clash between free will and predestination. However, ultimately this is just a glorified whodunnit, with a plot so full of holes that Scott Frank and Jeff Cohen should've been arrested before they handed in their script. The film is overlong and visually smudgy, but Spielberg does stage some gripping set pieces along the way,

Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past)
2002
****
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Sakari Kuosmanen, Juhani Niemelä

Aki Kaurismäki's best known film is a story about an amnesiac who finds shelter with homeless people while he tries to rebuild his life. Lovely dry humour and touching human drama in one enjoyable package.

Men in Black II
2002
**
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Rip Torn, Lara Flynn Boyle

When a Kylothian alien comes to Earth to find the Light of Zartha, Agent J must bring Agent K out of retirement and find a way to restore his memory. The original Men in Black was a fresh and funny science fiction comedy, which became a global hit. This thinly scripted sequel provides a few good gags and plenty of surprisingly awful special effects. Followed by Men in Black 3 in 2012.

Maid in Manhattan
2002
**
Director: Wayne Wang
Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Stanley Tucci

A politician falls in love with a chambermaid who he mistakes for a hotel guest (in the most contrived fashion, I might add). He is an exceptionally open-minded Republican, she is an uncharacteristically smart working class single mom, and the film is an implausible, predictable and tired version of the Cinderella story. The stars have no chemistry.

The Magdalene Sisters
2002
****
Director: Peter Mullan
Cast: Geraldine McEwan, Nora-Jane Noone, Anne-Marie Duff, Dorothy Duffy

A powerful fact-based drama set in Ireland in the 1960s when young girls suspected of improper conduct were sent to Magdalene laundrettes, sweatshop-like institutions run by oppressive nuns. Mullan exposes the sanctimonious nature of the Catholic church in this moving and strongly acted slice of history.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
2002
****½
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Bernard Hill, Christopher Lee, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, Miranda Otto, David Wenham, Brad Dourif, Karl Urban, Andy Serkis

While Frodo and Sam continue their journey with the ring, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli track Merry and Pippin, and end up escorting the people of Rohan to Helm's Deep, where they face a fierce battle against the Orcs. The middle part of the trilogy is a lovely fantasy epic, but since it offers so much misery without relief, it doesn't work quite as well as a standalone piece. At times, it also struggles to find a satisfactory rhythm with the three parallel storylines. However, the visual look is dazzling and Gollum in particular is an incredible creation, The film won two technical Oscars. The story concludes in The Return of the King.


Lilya 4-Ever
2002
***
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Cast: Oksana Akinshina, Artyom Bogucharsky, Lyobov Agapova, Pavel Ponomaryov

Lukas Moodysson tackles human trafficking and forced prostitution in his third feature. 16-year-old Lilya's miserable life in ex-Soviet Union takes a turn for the worse when she moves to Sweden. This unflinching film definitely doesn't leave you cold, but from the first moments the events have certain disappointing inevitability.

Lilo & Stitch
2002
***
Director: Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois
Cast: Chris Sanders, Daveigh Chase, Tia Carrere, David Ogden Stiers, Kevin McDonald, Ving Rhames, Kevin Michael Richardson, Jason Scott Lee, Zoe Caldwell

A destructive, genetically engineered extraterrestrial creature escapes captivity and lands on Hawaii where he is adopted by a rebellious young girl who lives with his older sister under the watchful eye of social workers. Disney's sympathetic 2D animation has a wacky premise, charming characters, and half a dozen classic Elvis songs. The central story about intergalactic friendship is funny and moving.

Kuutamolla (Lovers & Leavers)
2002
**½
Director: Aku Louhimies
Cast: Minna Haapkylä, Peter Franzén, Anna-Leena Härkönen, Laura Malmivaara

A young woman lives her life through movies and can't seem to find a soul mate in the real world. This bland romantic drama also seems to be set in the movie world, what with its clichéd or implausible characters, including the protagonist who doesn't seem to work at all but lives in big apartments in the most desirable parts of Helsinki.

Killing Me Softly
2002
**
Director: Chen Kaige
Cast: Heather Graham, Joseph Fiennes, Natascha McElhone, Ulrich Thomsen

A rather dismal erotic thriller about a good girl who dumps her nice guy boyfriend in favour of a mysterious mountaineer who seems to harbour a terrible secret. Rough (and frankly laughable) sex games are aided by inept writing and hopeless acting. Especially Joseph Fiennes takes his brooding seriously and he looks more like a plot device than a real person. This is one of those films whose title comes close to capturing the viewing experience.

The Kid Stays in the Picture
2002
***
Director: Nanette Burstein, Brett Morgen
Cast:

Robert Evans was/is a big shot film producer whose own life had the story arc of a trashy Hollywood flick. A pretty boy who failed as an actor but excelled as the head of Paramount Studios. He went from marrying a film star to becoming a serial divorcee, and from producing The Godfather to making turkeys like The Phantom. Cocaine was his final downfall. In this arresting documentary, which is based on Evans' autobiography, he tells his story against old photos and news footage.

K-19: The Widowmaker
2002
**
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson, Peter Sarsgaard, Joss Ackland, John Schrapnel

A fact-based drama about a Russian nuclear submarine and its crew whose maiden voyage in 1961 goes from bad to worse. There's a good cast, but the uninteresting story and the nonsensical characters make this a very forgettable experience.

Interview with the Assassin
2002
***
Director: Neil Burger
Cast: Raymond J. Barry, Dylan Haggerty, Renee Faia, Jared McVay, Kate Williamson

A short documentary-like film about a cameraman who interviews his reclusive neighbour who claims to have been involved in the JFK assassination. Pretty soon he's not sure whether he's being followed by the co-conspirators or if the old man is just talking nonsense. This rather interesting story has a very disappointing ending.

Insomnia
2002
****
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank, Martin Donovan, Maura Tierney

Christopher Nolan follows the brilliantly original Memento with a solid remake of a Norwegian film from 1997. Al Pacino gives one of his best performances in years as an insomniac cop who flies from Los Angeles to Alaska to investigate a murder, with a skeleton of his own in the closet. An atypical psychological thriller with a disappointingly typical ending.

Igby Goes Down
2002
***
Director: Burr Steers
Cast: Kieran Culkin, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon, Ryan Philippe, Jeff Goldblum

With a family consisting of a pill-popping mother, a mentally ill father and an overachieving brother, no wonder 17-year-old slacker Igby struggles to come to terms with his life. This is a quirky, smart, funny and well acted rites of passage story, but unfortunately everything in it seems second-hand, like warmed up left-overs from better movies.

Ice Age
2002
****
Director: Chris Wedge
Cast: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Jack Black, Goran Visnjic

An amusing and enjoyable computer animation about a sloth, a mammoth and a sabre-toothed tiger who reluctantly team up to return a human child to its parents. The little gutsy squirrel Scrat steals the show with his regular cameos. Followed by four increasingly inferior sequels, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Ice Age: Continental Drift, and Ice Age: Collision Course.


The Hours
2002
***
Director: Stephen Daldry
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, Toni Collette

The lives of author Virginia Woolf, a 1950s housewife and a modern day literary agent come together in this uniformly well acted drama. The story is adapted from Michael Cunnnigham's novel, and it's refreshing that there is no voiceover that explains every little detail. On the other hand, it's difficult to relate to the characters when you don't know the background for their troubles. Nicole Kidman (and the fake nose) won an Oscar for the smallish lead role.

Hollywood Ending
2002
**
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Tea Leoni, Mark Rydell, Treat Williams, Debra Messing

A washed-out movie director gets one more chance to helm a big budget Hollywood gangster film. Unfortunately all the stress, both private and professional, make him go temporarily blind. The idea of Woody Allen poking fun at Hollywood is a mouth-watering prospect, but the whole premise is preposterous and over-egged. Clumsy physical comedy and awkwardly unfunny set pieces don't help either.

High Crimes
2002
**½
Director: Carl Franklin
Cast: Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, Jim Caviezel, Amanda Peet, Adam Scott

The life of a hot shot lawyer falls apart when she discovers that her husband has lied about his past and is now accused of massacring a group of civilians during his military career. The always likeable Ashley Judd cannot rescue this mediocre court drama/thriller which offers twists and turns but no surprises.

Hero
2002
***
Director: Yimou Zhang
Cast: Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang, Daoming Chen

In ancient China a nameless warrior recounts his defeat of three assassins who were a threat to the King's life. But what actually happened? Nevermind, the sketchy, baffling and politically suspect story is just an excuse to stage four different versions of the events, with amazing action and battle scenes, each with its own colour palette. A visual feast if there ever was one, but a stronger script would have made it perfect.

Heaven
2002
**
Director: Tom Tykwer
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Mattia Spragia, Alberto Di Stasio

The mesmerising title sequence sadly turns out to be the highlight of Tom Tykwer's first film in English. Krzysztof Kieślowski co-wrote this pseudo-intellectual drama about a woman who wants to off an Italian drug dealer but ends up killing four innocent people. The characters seem to float in a world free of logic or reality.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
2002
**½
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Harris, John Cleese, Jason Isaacs

In his second year, Harry returns to Hogwarts only to discover that someone has reopened the chamber of secrets and unleashed a series of sinister events. Like Philosopher's Stone, the second feature is entertaining but it sticks too close to J.K. Rowling's book. By now, we know the main players and the main aspects of the wizarding world, but the movie keeps adding supporting characters, magical creatures, and wizarding mythology until the whole thing turns into an insanely long and shapeless blob. Followed by The Prisoner of Azkaban.

Hable con ella (Talk to Her)
2002
****
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Javier Camara, Dario Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores

Two women - a bull fighter and a dancer - lie in coma and two men - a travel writer and a nurse - are in love with these ladies. Almodovar's non-linear story moves fluently from the lighter comic moments to its disturbing dramatic turns to produce a visually stunning and very moving drama.

The Good Girl
2002
***½
Director: Miguel Arteta
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, John C. Reilly, Tim Blake Nelson

A slight change of pace for Jennifer Aniston who plays a small town woman with a dead-end job and marriage whose affair with a young man ends up turning her life upside down. The film is likeable, but not quirky, original, surprising or believable enough to leave a long-lasting impression. John C. Reilly plays the role of the faithful but boring husband for the umpteenth time.

Gangs of New York
2002
*****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent

Martin Scorsese's slice of not-so-proud American history charts the origins of gang violence. In 1862 a young man who calls himself Amsterdam returns to New York City to seek revenge on a gang leader who killed his father 16 years earlier. The screenplay, which was inspired by Herbert Asbury's non-fiction book The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld, has its problems and the ending seems a bit rushed, but this flawed masterpiece has so much balls and energy that you can't help but fall under its spell. Daniel Day-Lewis is simply stunning as Bill the Butcher.

Frida
2002
***
Director: Julie Taymor
Cast: Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Rush, Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd

A beautifully made but slightly conventional and sketchy biopic of Frida Kahlo. Salma Hayek is excellent as the Mexican painter and revolutionary and Alfred Molina gives terrific support as her likeminded husband.

Frailty
2002
***
Director: Bill Paxton
Cast: Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, Powers Boothe, Matt O'Leary, Luke Askew, Jeremy Sumpter, Levi Kreis, Derk Cheetwood

Bill Paxton's directorial debut is a creepy thriller about a single dad who tells his two young sons that God has instructed him to kill demons, who are disguised as regular people. The set-up is captivating, but the story becomes increasingly implausible, and The Sixth Sense-style end twist is either brilliantly clever or incredibly stupid. On the second viewing, it was the latter.

Femme Fatale
2002
***½
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Eric Ebouaney

Brian De Palma is firing on all cylinders again. There are some wonderfully exciting suspense set pieces in this story of a fiendish female thief who must return to Paris seven years after she betrayed her associates and fled the country. The complex story sinks its claws in you and keeps you second-guessing what to believe and what not to believe, but the pay-off is ultimately a cop-out.

Far from Heaven
2002
****½
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson

A stunning drama about a seemingly perfect 1950s middle class family whose idyllic front begins to crumble due to secrets, lies and small-mindedness. A visually striking homage to Douglas Sirk's melodramas, shot in wonderfully vibrant colours. This touching film is also brilliantly acted.

Equilibrium
2002
**½
Director: Kurt Wimmer
Cast: Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Taye Diggs, Angus Macfadyen, Sean Bean, Matthew Harbour, William Fichtner, Sean Pertwee

In a totalitarian future, emotions are outlawed and suppressed with mandatory drugs. When a hardened law enforcement officer accidentally skips his dosage, he begins to question his loyalty to the oppressive regime. This dystopian set-up has ingredients for a decent science fiction movie, but it's all just a bit too clunky and heavy-handed. There is very little subtlety when the state's flag is just a variation on the swastika flag. On top of that, the action scenes are rather silly: the stormtroopers in their black helmets stand still and wait to be shot or kicked in slow motion.

Eight Legged Freaks
2002
**½
Director: Ellory Elkayem
Cast: David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scarlett Johansson, Scott Terra, Leon Rippy

A moderately entertaining horror comedy set in a small town where radioactive waste turns spiders into super-sized monsters. The film is aware of the genre clichés and of its own inanity, but in spite of a few inspirational moments the story is too derivative to win you over.

Dragonfly
2002
***
Director: Tom Shadyac
Cast: Kevin Costner, Kathy Bates, Joe Morton, Ron Rifkin, Susanna Thompson

An agnostic widower cannot get over his wife's tragic death, especially because he believes he's getting messages from her. This supernatural drama keeps you in its grip quite nicely until its sentimental ending. We're in Hollywood, so by the end our protagonist no longer doubts the existence of God.

Dog Soldiers
2002
***½
Director: Neil Marshall
Cast: Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee, Liam Cunningham, Emma Cleasby

A group of soldiers in Scotland run into, what seems, a pack of werewolves. This taut and entertaining horror film doesn't beat around the bush. The cast is thrown into the jaws of death and the tension doesn't ease until it's over. It reminds you of many other films in its genre, but it manages to put a fresh twist on things.

Dirty Pretty Things
2002
****
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo, Benedict Wong

A refreshing British drama about the immigrant experience. A nighttime receptionist (and illegal alien) from Nigeria and a Turkish chambermaid discover a sinister black market operation in the hotel they work in. A touching, thought-provoking, warm and entertaining human drama which manages to convey the struggle these people face in their day-to-day lives after escaping the opression in their home countries.

Die Another Day
2002
***
Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike

Any film that follows the dreadful The World in Not Enough probably looks good, but Pierce Brosnan's fourth and final appearance as James Bond is campy but perfectly enjoyable fluff. The story is not particularly memorable, but there's Halle Berry and some enjoyable set pieces which keep you happy, and some terrible special effects which don't.

Dark Blue
2002
**
Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Kurt Russell, Scott Speedman, Brendan Gleeson, Ving Rhames, Lolita Davidovich

At the dawn of the L.A. riots in 1992 a thoroughly corrupt detective finds that his young partner is reluctant to follow in his footsteps. If it all sounds a bit like Training Day, that's because David Ayer wrote both films (although this one is based on a James Ellroy story). Kurt Russell gives a commanding performance, but sadly in a not-very-good movie. The beginning is a muddled mess with no likeable character in sight. In the middle section the film gets its act together, only to throw it all away in an over-dramatic climax.

The Dancer Upstairs
2002
***½
Director: John Malkovich
Cast: Javier Bardem, Juan Diego Botto, Laura Morante, Luis Miquel Cintra

John Malkovich's directorial debut is a smart, thoughful and (perhaps slightly too) slow burning story of a detective in pursuit of a clever guerrilla/terrorist in an unspecified Latin American country. The performances are solid, although it is questionable why you need a predominantly Hispanic cast (with a varying degree of intelligibility) to perform in English. Scripted by Nicholas Shakespeare from his own novel.

The Count of Monte Cristo
2002
***
Director: Kevin Reynolds
Cast: Jim Caviezel, Guy Pearce, Richard Harris, Dagmara Dominczyk

The umpteenth adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' epic novel about Edmond Dantes who is wrongly imprisoned and determined to get even with his wrongdoers. An entertaining if very conventional adventure drama with good lead performances.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
2002
**½
Director: George Clooney
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Rutger Hauer, Jerry Weintraub, Robert John Burke, Michael Ensign, Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Urbaniak

Chuck Barris was a host, creator, and producer, who had several popular game shows in the 1960s and 1970s. In his 1984 autobiography, Barris claimed that through all those years he moonlighted as a CIA assassin. This biographical comedy never takes off. It is unclear if that's because George Clooney is a first-time director, because Charlie Kaufman's script is his most conventional one to date, or because Barris' life story is a whole lot of implausible nonsense. Clooney and his cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel use different camera techniques for different time periods, which results in a mishmash of visual styles. Nevertheless, Sam Rockwell gives a lively and energetic performance in one his first leading roles. Drew Barrymore plays his on/off love interest, but her character doesn't make any impression whatsoever.

City by the Sea
2002
***
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Cast: Robert De Niro, Frances McDormand, James Franco, William Forsythe

The murky slums of Long Beach provide the backdrop for this story about the sins of the fathers. De Niro plays a detective whose father was executed for murder and now his son is under suspicion for the same crime. He abandoned the son years ago, so he is not without guilt himself. This crime drama follows its somewhat inevitable path to a powerful finale.

Cidade de Deus (City of God)
2002
*****
Director: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund
Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen, Alice Braga

This mesmerising Brazilian crime drama is set in Cidade de Deus, a favela of Rio De Janeiro, where we follow the lives of a handful of kids from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Their home is a brutal and disturbing place where human life is a cheap commodity and crime seems like the only feasible career path. Here it is not uncommon that school-aged children carry guns and act like grown men. The story and the characters alone are worth your while, but Fernando Meirelles (and Kátia Lund) depict it with so much visual energy and narrative fluidity that I was nailed to my seat. Adapted from Paulo Lins' 1997 novel which is partly based on real events.

Chicago
2002
**½
Director: Rob Marshall
Cast: Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah

This musical may be sassy and vibrant but it's nothing but a filmed version of a stage show. The characters are nicely cynical and there's plenty to look at, but everything is weighed down by the boring tunes which leave no space for dialogue. Nevertheless, the film won six Oscars, which include Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress (Catherine Zeta-Jones).

Changing Lanes
2002
***½
Director: Roger Michell
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Affleck, Toni Collette, Sydney Pollack, William Hurt, Amanda Peet, Richard Jenkins, Kim Staunton, Tina Sloan

Doyle, a recovering alcoholic on his way to a custody hearing, and Gavin, a hotshot lawyer delivering vital documents, crash in the morning traffic. When both fail in their respective objectives, the harmless fender bender escalates to a full-blown war. This enjoyable and well-acted morality tale shows what happens when two short-tempered individuals lose their heads. The events are not always entirely believable, and the final scenes needlessly solve the outstanding issues when both of the men have already learned to live with their own actions.

Catch Me If You Can
2002
***½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken, Nathalie Baye

Steven Spielberg's entertaining film tells the story of Frank Abagnale, a teenage con artist who in the 1960s impersonated a lawyer, a doctor and an airline pilot, to mention a few. It's based on a true story, and maybe that's why Spielberg was afraid to make the necessary cuts. The film is needlessly long as it stands now. An untypical jazzy John Williams score.

Cabin Fever
2002
*½
Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent, Joey Kern

Five horny college friends rent a cottage in the woods, and pretty soon after the first sexual intercourse all hell breaks loose. A flesh-eating virus breaks loose, to be more precise. This low budget horror film draws influence from Night of the Living Dead, The Evil Dead, Deliverance and numerous other superior films, but doesn't manage to add anything original into the concoction.

Bowling for Columbine
2002
****
Director: Michael Moore
Cast:

Many Americans believe in the sanctity of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Michael Moore looks at the country's obsession with personal firearms and attempts to understand why there are so many gun-related deaths in the U.S. (compared to the rest of the Western world). Moore refines his trademark style of shocks, laughs and stunts in this entertaining and enlightening documentary. The title refers to the Columbine High School massacre. Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature.

The Bourne Identity
2002
****
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Matt Damon, Chris Cooper, Franka Potente, Clive Owen, Brian Cox

The second adaptation of Robert Ludlum's novel about Jason Bourne, a deadly amnesiac who cannot remember his shady past, is a thoroughly enjoyable spy thriller. The story is so fast-paced that it doesn't allow you time to dwell on the occasional holes in the plot. The film makes great use of the various European locations, and there's a nice pulsating electronic soundtrack by John Powell. Followed by The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.

Bloody Sunday
2002
****
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: James Nesbitt, Simon Mann, Tim Pigott-Smith, Nicholas Farrell, Allan Gildea, Gerard Crossan, Mary Moulds, Carmel McCallion

Paul Greengrass made his name with this docudrama about the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland. On 30 January 1972 a large group of civil rights protesters, lead by an idealistic MP Ivan Cooper, stage a peaceful march, while the British Army has the Parachute Regiment on standby in case troubles break out. When a handful of teenagers break off from the march, things get out of hand, and 13 unarmed civilians end up dead. Greengrass puts his handheld camera in the thick of things. He builds an increasing sense of foreboding which eventually explodes into riveting drama when the shooting starts. These scenes capture the chaos and madness of the tragedy with gut wrenching verisimilitude.

Blood Work
2002
**
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Jeff Daniels, Wanda De Jesus, Anjelica Huston

A lazy and hackneyed thriller about a retired FBI profiler who is trying to solve the murder of the woman who donated his newly transplanted heart. Clint nicely uses (and even makes fun of) his age and fragility in the lead, although he also manages to bed a woman half his age. The central murder plot, however, is extremely formulaic and predictable. Based on Michael Connelly's novel.

Big Trouble
2002
*
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Stanley Tucci, Dennis Farina, Tom Sizemore

Two parents, two teenagers, two hitmen, two thugs, two policemen, a corrupt businessman, a Jesus-lookalike, Russian mob and a nuclear bomb are thrown into the concoction and the result is a boring and incomprehensible mess, and the least funny comedy in years. Thankfully it's very short.

Bend It Like Beckham
2002
***
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Cast: Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Anupam Kher

This enjoyable British comedy drama is reminiscent of East is East in its culture clash scenario, as we follow an Indian girl living in London who wants to play football against the wish of her parents. If only the film didn't feel such an urge to pander to the audience and leave no problem unsolved (the last few images are almost worth dropping a star from the rating).

Banger Sisters
2002
**½
Director: Bob Dolman
Cast: Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Rush, Erika Christensen

Two legendary groupies reunite after a long break. One is still embracing the lifestyle, while the other one has turned into an uptight mother and housewife. The film offers some enjoyable moments and the leads are clearly enjoying themselves. However, everything turns out pretty much as expected and all conflicts are resolved fast and with ease.

Bad Company
2002
**
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Chris Rock, Gabriel Macht, Peter Stormare

A veteran CIA agent needs the help of a streetwise young black man for an undercover operation in the Czech Republic. This overlong film is just as contrived as it sounds, but hey, everybody involved seems to be doing a half-assed job anyway. One or two funny moments along the way.

Auto Focus
2002
**½
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe, Rita Wilson, Maria Bello, Ron Leibman

As numerous educational books and films have taught us, a life of excess leads either to redemption (Walk the Line) or to death (The Doors). This fact-based story doesn't break the formula. A clean-cut family man and overnight celebrity suddenly discovers that he's irresistible to women. Pretty soon he immerses himself in sleaze, turns into a sex addict and begins to tape himself in action. Greg Kinnear is very strong in the lead, but the film offers precious little new insight into the subject. In fact, there wouldn't be a movie at all was it not based on a real life TV star.

Antwone Fisher
2002
***
Director: Denzel Washington
Cast: Denzel Washington, Derek Luke, Joy Bryant, Malcolm David Kelley

A young black sailor is constantly in trouble due to his violent outbursts and he eventually agrees to recount his tragic story to a navy shrink. In the tradition of Abridged Hollywood Psychiatry, the protagonist becomes a model citizen once he is able to pour out his heart to someone. Good Will Hunting minus the math is a pretty accurate summary of this likeable but predictable true story.

Analyze That
2002
**½
Director: Harold Ramis
Cast: Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Joe Viterelli, Cathy Moriarty-Gentile, Anthony LaPaglia, Frank Gio, Reg Rogers

When mob boss Paul Vitti faces attempts on his life in prison, he plots a release to the custody of his therapist Dr. Sobel, who is just processing his father's death. The sequel to Analyze This finds a terribly contrived way to bring the mismatching duo back together again. About 15 minutes in, the two are on each other's case and it seems like the first film never took place. Thankfully these characters are nicely drawn and played, and their bickering still manages to be funny.

All or Nothing
2002
***½
Director: Mike Leigh
Cast: Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, Alison Garland, James Corden, Ruth Sheen

A depressed cab driver and his unhappy working class family lead a wretched existence in a miserable neighbourhood. At first it looks like there's not more to the story than that, but after an unfocused start this gripping and realistic drama pulls itself together for a very moving climax.

Adaptation
2002
***
Director: Spike Jonze
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox

Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze follow up Being John Malkovich with an original metafictional comedy about Hollywood. Nicolas Cage plays Charlie Kaufman, a socially awkward screenwriter who struggles to adapt Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief. Cage also plays his outgoing twin brother Donald who is in the process of writing a clichéd serial killer movie. On the surface this is a smug and, to be honest, not particularly enjoyable film, the wit and humour are almost entirely subtextual. The question is whether that's worth sitting through a clunky film with a dreadful ending, even if that's Kaufman's whole point. Cooper won a well deserved Oscar for his funny performance as the titular orchid thief.

About Schmidt
2002
***½
Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Hope Davis, Kathy Bates, Dermot Mulroney

Warren Schmidt, a recently retired widower goes on a road trip to make sure that his life has not been in vain. Jack Nicholson is excellent in the unglamorous leading role, but the film is definitely about Schmidt, as most of the supporting characters are just caricatures.

About a Boy
2002
***½
Director: Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz
Cast: Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult

Hugh Grant shows surprising versatility in this funny comedy drama about a selfish 38-year-old womanizer who learns responsibility from an unexpected source. It's based on Nick Hornby's novel and the dual narration may not be everyone's cup of tea.

8 Mile
2002
****
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Eminem, Kim Basinger, Mekhi Phifer, Brittany Murphy, Evan Jones, Omar Benson Miller, Anthony Mackie, Taryn Manning, Michael Shannon, De'Angelo Wilson, Eugene Byrd

Jimmy "B-Rabbit" Smith Jr. is a young aspiring rapper from Detroit, who wants to break out from his dead-end life and make a name for himself in the competitive rap scene. It's hard to tell if Eminem can actually act since he basically plays himself with all of one expression on his face, but he is a commanding presence in his debut performance. This is a gritty film, which doesn't make anything easy for its protagonist. The rap battles, on the other hand, are very entertaining. Lose Yourself won an Academy Award for best original song.

8 femmes (8 Women)
2002
***
Director: Francois Ozon
Cast: Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart

A bizarre but delightful Agatha Christiesque mystery-cum-musical about eight ladies who get trapped by snow in a country house with a dead man in the bedroom. Each one of the women has close ties to the victim, and something to hide, obviously. A visual feast with a lovely cast.

25th Hour
2002
****
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Edward Norton, Rosario Dawson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper

A small-time drug dealer tries to make amends to his friends and family one day before he starts a seven-year prison sentence. A terrific cast in a solid drama that plays against the backdrop of post-9/11 NYC.

24 Hour Party People
2002
***
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Steve Coogan, Paddy Considine, Andy Serkis, Shirley Henderson

An enjoyable comedy about the Madchester music scene from the late 70s to the early 90s, when bands such as Joy Division, Stone Roses and Happy Mondays broke through. The film is "hosted" by Tony Wilson, an idealistic club and record label owner. It's a fascinating peek into pop music history but ultimately a very familiar story of ambition and talent squandered by drugs and overindulgence.

Zoolander
2001
**½
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Milla Jovovich, Jerry Stiller, David Duchovny, Jon Voight, Woodrow Asai, Vince Vaughn, Judah Friedlander

In order to protect their profits, an international cartel of clothes manufacturers has brainwashed dim-witted male models into assassins, and Derek Zoolander is the latest victim. Ben Stiller's outrageous comedy pokes fun at the fashion industry and vacuous popular culture in general, and several celebrities of the time appear as themselves. There are a few jokes that land, but the film is needlessly wacky and over-the-top. The male models are total idiots and Will Ferrell is completely out of control as the evil designer. Followed by Zoolander 2 15 years later.

Y Tu Mamá También
2001
***½
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Cast: Maribel Verdu, Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal, Diana Barcho

Two horny teenagers go on a road trip with a slightly older woman who ends up teaching them a few life lessons. This raunchy and well acted film avoids taking the easy way out, but it doesn't quite live up to its reputation.

Vanilla Sky
2001
**½
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Kurt Russell, Jason Lee

Cameron Crowe takes time off from his sympathetic comedies with this remake of a Spanish film Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), which tells a story of a vain man whose seemingly perfect life falls into pieces. This overlong drama has some striking moments, such as the opening scene, but the ending makes it all seem a waste of time.

Training Day
2001
**½
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Tom Berenger

Denzel Washington is solid in his Oscar winning role as a shady narcotics detective who shows a rookie cop the ropes. The film starts as an interesting juxtaposition of theory and practice of police work, but unfortunately turns into a dull and increasingly violent battle between a good cop and a bad cop.

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
2001
****
Director: Jill Sprecher
Cast: John Turturro, Matthew McConaughey, Amy Irving, Clea DuVall

An impressive collection of intertwining stories about happiness, or actually lack of it. Great performances all around.

The Tailor of Panama
2001
***
Director: John Boorman
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Gleeson

This original but not entirely successful spy drama is set in Panama and it's based on John le Carré's novel. Its main characters are not particularly likeable, which is both the strength and the weakness of the film. Pierce Brosnan plays a slimy and greedy British agent and the excellent Geoffrey Rush portrays a naive tailor with a shady past.

Swordfish
2001
**½
Director: Dominic Sena
Cast: John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, Vinnie Jones

A hi-tech thriller about a hacker who is hired for a lucrative job by a brilliant and enigmatic criminal. The film starts with a big and impressively shot bang when a hostage situation goes awry. From then on it's slick and entertaining but not exactly groundbreaking. Credibility is also an issue when two of the world's best hackers are also two of hunkiest guys on the planet.

Storytelling
2001
****
Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Selma Blair, Robert Wisdom, Paul Giamatti, Mark Webber, John Goodman

The line between real life and storytelling blurs in this episodic film. In the first story a student is inspired by an affair with her creative writing teacher. In the second episode a filmmaker's documentary about an average high school student has a twist ending. With pros and cons a typical Todd Solondz film. Once again he manages to make us care for his difficult and even unpleasant characters and offer us some wonderfully dark humour. However, at times his cynicism and negativity can be hard to stomach.

Spy Kids
2001
****
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara

Two kids, Juni and Carmen, discover that their parents are spies who have just been kidnapped, so they must go on a rescue mission. A very entertaining children's film that has enough clever gags and gadgets to keep the entire family happy. Followed by three sequels.

Spy Game
2001
***
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane

A weathered CIA agent is on his last day when he is forced to help his former protégée escape from a Chinese prison, while the agency wants to sweep the whole incident under the rug. This entertaining spy thriller is told in flashbacks, all of which don't seem entirely relevant to the story. However, what keeps you hooked is the fact that the protagonist doesn't physically help his friend, but merely orchestrates everything from the other side of the planet.

Someone Like You
2001
***½
Director: Tony Goldwyn
Cast: Ashley Judd, Greg Kinnear, Hugh Jackman, Marisa Tomei

After another promising relationship turns sour, a young lady publishes a controversial feminist theory about male behaviour which becomes an instant hit. Since this is a romantic comedy, love has to conquer all and that's why the ending feels like a real cop-out. However, this likeable film is given a huge boost by Ashley Judd's lovely performance in the lead.

Siu Lam juk kau (Shaolin Soccer)
2001
***½
Director: Stephen Chow
Cast: Stephen Chow, Zhao Wei, Ng Man-tat, Patrick Tse, Danny Chan Kwok-kwan, Wong Yat-fei, Mok Mei-lam, Tin Kai-man, Lam Chi-chung

Sing needs a channel to promote the benefits of Shaolin kung fu. Fung needs to prove that he can still coach a successful football team. The two join forces with the rest of the Shaolin brothers to form a football team that applies special kung fu powers on the pitch, with the aim to win the national football tournament. The following spectacle has very little to do with kung fu, and even less with football, but Stephen Chow's outrageous movie offers an entertaining mix of wacky humour, inventive stunts, and sweet romance.

Sidewalks of New York
2001
***
Director: Edward Burns
Cast: Edward Burns, Rosario Dawson, Heather Graham, David Krumholtz

Edwards Burns seems to have found his niche in the movie world. He continues to explore the troubled love lives of young adults in New York, and his fourth film is the most mature one to date. However, the usual pitfalls are still present. Nobody seems to do anything for a living, all problems in life are relationship-related and break-ups are almost always caused by infidelity or suspicion thereof.

Shrek
2001
****
Director: Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson
Cast: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow

This lovely animation proves that all fancy computer graphics are irrelevant if you don't have a good script. The story (from William Steig's book) about an ogre who must rescue a princess in order to get his land back is very enjoyable indeed. This is the first animation to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Followed by Shrek 2 and two further sequels.

The Shipping News
2001
**½
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett

Lasse Hallström's rushed adaptation hammers home the subtleties of E. Annie Proulx's excellent novel about a widower who moves to Newfoundland. Kevin Spacey is miscast as a gentle simpleton but at least the film is shot on authentic locations.

Shallow Hal
2001
***
Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Cast: Jack Black, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jason Alexander, Joe Viterelli

A kind-hearted and educational fantasy comedy about learning to see the inner beauty. Jason Alexander as Hal's best friend steals the show.

Serendipity
2001
**
Director: Peter Chelsom
Cast: John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, Jeremy Piven, Molly Shannon

Two people spend a brief but unforgettable evening together, but leave it to destiny to decide whether they should ever see each other again. This lazy and implausible romantic comedy could do with at least one tiny surprise as far as the story and the characters are concerned. John Cusack can play this type of role with his eyes closed, while Kate Beckinsale is so bland that I wouldn't remember her the next day.

Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away)
2001
****½
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast: Rumi Hiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, takashi Naitô, Yasugo Sawaguchi

On the way to their new home 10-year-old Chihiro and her parents get lost and end up at a mysterious gate. It leads them to a magical world where the parents fall under a spell and Chihiro faces a test of wits and courage. Hayao Miyazaki's best known animation is a visual feast and a treasure trove of imagination. The elaborate world and its shapeshifting characters are designed and drawn to the tiniest detail, and the film is exhilarating and a bit overwhelming. Academy Award winner for best animation.

The Score
2001
**½
Director: Frank Oz
Cast: Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, Angela Bassett, Gary Farmer

An expert safe cracker wants to pull off one more heist and then retire, but his partner for the last job is a young punk he doesn't really know. An excellent cast has been put together for a story that doesn't really offer anything we haven't seen done better before. Angela Bassett's tagged on role as De Niro's girlfriend exists only to provide some female presence in the film.

The Royal Tenenbaums
2001
****
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny Glover

Royal Tenenbaum left his wife and three brilliant children 22 years ago, but now he wants to be part of their lives again, primarily because he's penniless. Wes Anderson's follow-up to Rushmore is a whimsical comedy about an eccentric but dysfunctional family. It gets off to a shaky start, as we're introduced to a number of intentionally wacky characters, who rarely resemble actual human beings. However, the film gradually builds into a funny, original, and genuinely moving depiction of family ties.

Rock Star
2001
**½
Director: Stephen Herek
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Jennifer Aniston, Dominic West, Timothy Spall, Timothy Olyphant, Dagmara Dominczyk, Michael Wiles, Beth Grant

An obsessive rock fan who refuses to grow up gets to live the dream as the new singer of his favourite band, Steel Dragon. However, sex, drug and rock n' roll don't turn out to be as much fun as he thought. The film begins as a silly but likeable comedy and ends as a conservative morality tale, inbetween it gives us rock clichés with a straight face as if This Is Spinal Tap never happened. Mark Wahlberg looks the part but he only lip-synchs the songs. Loosely based on the true story of Tim "Ripper" Owens, a tribute band singer who joined Judas Priest.

Riding in Cars with Boys
2001
**
Director: Penny Marshall
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn, Brittany Murphy, James Woods, Adam Garcia

Drew Barrymore is a talented comedienne, but her limitations as a dramatic actress become apparent (she seems unable to keep a straight face) in this story about a girl whose dream of a writing career is shattered by an unexpected pregnancy at fifteen. The film is based on the memoir of Beverly D'Onofrio, but her life oddly follows the highs and lows of a standard issue Hollywood script. And it's pretty obvious from the word go that she will eventually become a writer.

The Pledge
2001
*****
Director: Sean Penn
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Robin Wright-Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Vanessa Redgrave

A retiring detective makes a pledge to the parents of a murdered girl; he will find the killer. Sean Penn's film is a slow-paced but absolutely haunting portrayal of a man who will do anything to keep his word. Jack Nicholson gives one of his best and most controlled performances in the lead. Based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt's novel.

Planet of the Apes
2001
**
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Michael Clarke Duncan

Tim Burton's heartless remake of the 1968 science fiction classic surpasses the original only in its stunning ape make-up. The non-existent story (originally from Pierre Boulle's novel La planète des singes) about a space crew who land on a planet ruled by apes is stripped of any potentially thought-provoking aspects, and the ending makes no sense whatsoever. Mark Wahlberg is not at ease as an action hero.

Pinero
2001
**½
Director: Leon Ichaso
Cast: Benjamin Bratt, Giancarlo Esposito, Talisa Soto, Nelson Vasquez

This true story of Miguel Pinero - a Puerto Rican New Yorker, a petty criminal and later a successful street poet and playwright - seems to be aimed at his fans. The film doesn't manage to make its case for his significance as an artist or his appeal as a person to the uninitiated. Bratt is energetic in the lead, but this is just another formulaic story of a talented but self-destructive artist.

Pearl Harbor
2001
**
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Katie Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin

The attack on Pearl Harbor is used as a backdrop for a cheesy romantic triangle as two pilots (and best mates) both fall in love with the same nurse. Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay are not known for historical dramas, and they don't defy expectations. The performances are wooden and the script is clichéd, and historically and romantically unconvincing. The attack itself is impressive but overlong, and ultimately pointless.

The Others
2001
***½
Director: Alejandro Amenabar
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Christopher Ecclestone, Fionnula Flanagan, Elaine Cassidy, Eric Sykes, Alakina Mann, James Bentley

In 1945, mother and her two light-sensitive children recide in an isolated mansion on Jersey Island, where they wait for the father to return from war. She gradually becomes convinced that the house is haunted. Alejandro Amenabar's powerful and atmospheric psychological horror film offers no gore or special effects, just wonderfully ustained tension. Whether you like the twist ending or not is a matter of taste. Nicole Kidman is superb in the lead.

One Night at McCool's
2001
***½
Director: Harald Zwart
Cast: Liv Tyler, Matt Dillon, John Goodman, Paul Reiser, Michael Douglas

An entertaining comedy about a young woman who uses her sexuality to drive three men crazy. The violent ending sticks out like a sore thumb. Michael Douglas' hair deserves a special mention.

On the Nose
2001
*½
Director: David Caffrey
Cast: Robbie Coltrane, Dan Aykroyd, Brenda Blethyn, Tony Briggs, Jim Norton

A wonderful cast in a poorly scripted and rarely funny Irish comedy which reminds me of Waking Ned, and that's not a good thing. Robbie Coltrane plays a university janitor with a gambling problem who gets surefire betting tips from a head in a jar. The premise is confoundingly stupid and the plot twists that follow don't exactly improve things. The ultimate message of it all is that money can solve all your problems.

Ocean's Eleven
2001
**½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Andy Garcia, Matt Damon

This stylish heist film remake is supposedly the epitome of pure entertainment. Admittedly, the picture has a beautiful golden glow, the dialogue is snappy, the soundtrack is cool and all the stars look gorgeous. However, we learn absolutely nothing about the characters (for example, why on earth is Roberts with Garcia?) and the story doesn't offer one surprise. Ocean's 11 plan the heist, pull it off and run away with the money without a single hitch on the way.

O
2001
**½
Director: Tim Blake Nelson
Cast: Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, Julia Stiles, Martin Sheen, Andrew Keegan

In this updated version of Shakespeare's Othello a flashy black prep school basketball star becomes the target of his friend's envy and hate. The film is edgy and well acted, but it fails to make its characters or their respective motives believable. Apparently a problem that has always haunted the play.

No Man's Land
2001
****
Director: Danis Tanovic
Cast: Brancko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic, Georges Siatidis

A Serb and two Bosnians are stranded in a trench between the lines and the situation escalates into an international incident. This funny and cynical black comedy doesn't spare anyone: Serbs, Bosnians, UN and the international press all get their due.

Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa)
2001
***
Director: Caroline Link
Cast: Juliane Köhler, Merab Ninidze, Sidede Onyulo, Matthias Habich, Lea Kurka

An autobiographical story about a young Jewish girl and her family who flee the Nazi regime to Africa, where their lives are no bed of roses either. The film avoids Africa clichés and it's interesting and entertaining throughout, but ultimately it's not more than a historical anecdote. Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

The Mummy Returns
2001
*½
Director: Stephen Sommers
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo

Both heroes and villains return in this seemingly endless sequel to The Mummy. One mind-numbing action scene follows another until you lose all interest in the characters and the story. The special effects are impressive but the entire film is built around them, rather than the other way around.

Mulholland Drive
2001
*****
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller

After his most accessible film, The Straight Story, David Lynch is back to his usual Lynchian self. A young actress tries to help an amnesiac to retrace her identity. And that is only the beginning of the story, or is it the end? A moody and stylish mystery that never gets solved on screen. It's a puzzle that will either infuriate you or haunt your mind for days, waiting to be solved. Naomi Watts gives a stunning, star-turning performance in the lead.

Moulin Rouge
2001
*****
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, Jim Broadbent, Richard Roxburgh

This flamboyant musical is something else. The love story between a writer and a showgirl is skeletal but Baz Luhrmann's musical and visual genius compensates more than adequately. Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman are solid in the lead, and both sing their own songs.

Monsters, Inc.
2001
***
Director: Peter Docter, Lee Unkrich, David Silverman
Cast: John Goodman, Billy Crystal, James Coburn, Steve Buscemi, Mary Gibbs

Monstropolis is a city powered by the screams of scared children. Sulley is one of the colourful monsters who visits their bedrooms, but one night he accidentally brings back a human child with him. This Pixar animation has a wonderfully wacky premise and it looks great, as expected, but its gags are not quite up to the studio's usual high standard. While Scully, Mike and the other creatures are beautifully designed, they are not terribly likeable characters. Followed by Monsters University in 2013.

Monster's Ball
2001
****
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thornton, Peter Boyle, Heath Ledger

Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton are first-rate in this nicely understated but not entirely believable drama about an unlikely cross-racial relationship. At times it seems like the lovers live under a dome, as we see no reaction from the community around them. Berry won an Oscar for her brave performance.

The Mexican
2001
**
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, James Galdolfini, J.K. Simmons, Bob Balaban

Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt share about ten minutes of screen time in their first film "together". For most of the running time they are kept apart in supposedly clever and weakly linked stories, in which he looks for a pricy pistol and she looks for him. As if we didn't know it already, Brad Pitt is definitely not a comedian.

The Man Who Wasn't There
2001
****
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Scarlett Johansson, James Galdolfini, Frances McDormand

Billy Bob Thornton gives a wonderfully controlled one-note performance as a quiet barber whose idyllic life slowly falls apsrt. This black and white film noir by the Coen brothers is not one of their best but it's visually striking and wonderfully atmospheric.

The Majestic
2001
**½
Director: Frank Darabont
Cast: Jim Carrey, Laurie Holden, Martin Landau, David Ogden Stiers

During the McCarthy era a tainted screenwriter has a car accident outside L.A., loses his memory and is mistaken for a returning war hero. Following in Frank Capra's footsteps this amiable but fatally overlong feelgood film paints an idealised picture of small town America and its values. A few memorable scenes, but the congressional hearing, which is meant as an emotional climax, falls flat. Jim Carrey, who was so terrific in his more serious roles in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, is bland here.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2001
*****
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Sean Bean, Ian Holm

J.R.R. Tolkien's immensely popular fantasy novel tells the story of a brave little Hobbit boy Frodo Baggins who agrees to travel through Middle-earth to destroy a powerful ring. Peter Jackson's adaptation of the first part is better than anyone had right to hope. The film has more humour and action than the book, and visual imagination galore. The wonderful story arc from the innocence of Shire to the darkness of the task ahead makes this my favourite part in the trilogy. A winner of four Academy Awards, which include the best original score and cinematography. The trilogy continues in The Two Towers


Legally Blonde
2001
**
Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair, Matthew Davis, Ali Larter

Reese Witherspoon, perky and disarming as always, plays a blonde who is determined to study a law degree in Harvard in order to win back the smug ex-boyfriend who just dumped her. This wish fulfilment comedy has some cute moments but the story is so unbelievably formulaic and the characters so one-dimensional that the whole thing is practically on auto-pilot - there's nothing at risk, either emotionally or intellectually. "This is what happened next"-captions in the end cost the film an additional half a star.

The Last Castle
2001
**½
Director: Rod Lurie
Cast: Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Steven Burton

A military prison is run by a sadistic but cowardly colonel, but the latest arrival, a heroic but scarred general, refuses to turn a blind eye to the way the place is run. Acting is solid but the story is pompous and clichéd, the villain is a one-dimensional goon and the jingoistic finale is frankly offputting.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider
2001
*½
Director: Simon West
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Noah Taylor, Jon Voight, Iain Glen, Daniel Craig

Having never played the popular computer games this action film is based on, Lara Croft appears to be an archeologist/adventurer who enjoys demolishing ancient temples and relics. Director Simon West didn't have great credentials to begin with (Con Air, The General's Daughter), but this inept mess is a new low for him. Admittedly, incomprehensible script, baffling characterisation, dreadful performances and laughable dialogue do not help matters.

Lantana
2001
****½
Director: Ray Lawrence
Cast: Anthony La Paglia, Barbara Hershey, Geoffrey Rush, Kerry Armstrong, Rachael Blake, Vince Colosimo, Russell Dykstra, Daniela Farinacci, Peter Phelps, Leah Purcell, Glenn Robbins

A woman's dead body is lying in lantana bushes. Who is she and what happened? The truth is revealed through a story of four married couples, whose lives intertwine. This slow burning but excellent Australian drama is wonderfully acted. The brilliant script is based on Andrew Bovell's play Speaking In Tongues.

La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher)
2001
**
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel, Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel, Anna Sigalevitch, Cornelia Köndgen

Erika is a sexually repressed piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory who lives with her overbearing mother. She is slowly and somewhat reluctantly drawn to an increasingly abusive relationship with a young piano student named Walter. With past works like Benny's Video, The Seventh Continent, and Funny Games, Michael Haneke is no stranger to controversial topics or unhinged characters. This adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek's 1983 novel is right up his alley, and it definitely offers some uncomfortable scenes. Unfortunately I could not get in the heads of these particular damaged individuals. The moral of the story is, careful what you wish for. The story takes place in an odd French-speaking Austria, and some of the Austrian actors were clearly post-synched.

A Knight's Tale
2001
***
Director: Brian Helgeland
Cast: Heath Ledger, Rufus Sewell, Shannyn Sossamon, Mark Addy, Paul Bettany, Alan Tudyk, Laura Fraser, Bérénice Bejo, James Purefoy

A boisterous, anachronistic romp about a thatcher's son who pretends to be a knight in order to become a jousting champion. Brian Helgeland puts an original twist on the story by mixing writer Geoffrey Chaucer into the proceedings and by filling the soundtrack with contemporary rock music. The movie is light-hearted and entertaining, but repetitive and roughly 30 minutes too long. The main characters are well-drawn and well-played, but the antagonist is a stereotypically arrogant one-dimensional Frenchman and the love interest lacks personality. She is played by Shannyn Sossamon, whose performance is all smiles.

Kate & Leopold
2001
**½
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Meg Ryan, Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Breckin Meyer, Natasha Lyonne

A duke from the 19th century travels in time to modern day New York and falls in love with a neurotic career woman. This watchable comedy quickly drops all the fish out of water elements as the nobleman adjusts to the present day setting overnight and finds the toaster to be the most perplexing 20th century invention. The film concentrates on the romance, which has no surprises in store.

Kandahar
2001
**½
Director: Mohsen Makhbalhaf
Cast: Nelofer Pazira, Sadou Teymouri, Hassan Tantai, Hayatalah Hakimi

An Afghan journalist who lives in Canada must return to her home country to find her sister in this moving but clumsy film, which shows the grim reality in Afghanistan.

K-Pax
2001
***½
Director: Iain Softley
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Mary McCormack, Alfre Woodard

A smart and entertaining drama about a man who claims to be from a distant planet. Kevin Spacey as the man and Jeff Bridges as his shrink are excellent. In the end the film leaves us guessing whether the man is telling the truth or not, which works really well.

Jurassic Park III
2001
**½
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Laura Dern

With its cartoonish action scenes and short running time, the third Jurassic Park film is a slight improvement on the horrid second one. However, the only surprise is that T-Rex is no longer the biggest baddie. Otherwise you can set your clock on each scare and have an easy guessing game on which cast members are expendable.

Joy Ride
2001
**½
Director: John Dahl
Cast: Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, leelee Sobieski, Jessica Bowman, Matthew Kimbrough

While on a cross-country road trip, two brothers play a prank on the wrong truck driver, and this mysterious madman reacts with a bout of extreme road rage. After the forgettable Unforgettable and boring Rounders, John Dahl returns to his comfort zone. Like his best movies, The Last Seduction and Red Rock West, this is a snappy, nuts and bolts thriller, but sadly only for the first hour or so. The final third is ludicrously implausible. The trucker's intricate revenge plot would be a logistical nightmare to carry out alone, but, as if by magic, he is always one step ahead of the victims who are too stupid to run away and hide from a cumbersome 18 wheeler. Steven Spielberg's Duel is a clear influence, but only for the good parts.

Joki
2001
**½
Director: Jarmo Lampela
Cast: Juha Kukkonen, Liisa Vuori, Jyri Ojansivu, Ahti Jokinen, Pihla Penttinen

Death, suicide, alcoholism, infidelity, sexual banter and bungee jumping. Just another day in central Finland. Jarmo Lampela attempts to build a Short Cuts/Magnolia type of tapestry, but most of his vignettes are too short to get you involved or too long to keep you interested. The stories don't really come together at all, they're just isolated incidents happening simultaneously.

Jeepers Creepers
2001
**½
Director: Victor Salva
Cast: Gina Philips, Justin Long, Jonathan Breck, Patricia Belcher

While on a road trip, brother and sister stumble on something truly horrific. The scary beginning is sadly the highlight of this mediocre horror film. From there onwards it's one monotonous and pointless chase as the bad guy turns out to be invincible.

Iris
2001
**½
Director: Richard Eyre
Cast: Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Kate Winslet, Hugh Bonneville

A finely acted but aimless drama about author Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bailey. The film jumps between the time they met and the time Iris was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Her work plays no part in the film and hence you get a feeling that there is no story here worth telling.

In the Bedroom
2001
***½
Director: Todd Field
Cast: Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Marisa Tomei, William Mapother, Nick Stahl

Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek play parents whose young son dates a divorced mom whose unpredictable ex isn't making their lives easy. The film starts off as a subtle family drama, then after a shock twist it becomes a story about grief, but it ultimately ends in a disappointing way. The performances are all excellent. Based on an Andre Dubus short story Killings.

I Am Sam
2001
**½
Director: Jessie Nelson
Cast: Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Richard Schiff, Laura Dern

A moving but shamelessly manipulative weepy about a mentally retarded man who is fighting for the right to raise his 7-year-old daughter. The story is clearly appeling to our hearts and not our minds, and it cannot bear any scrutiny. Sam is mad about the Beatles and we're reminded of the song "All You Need Is Love", but perhaps "Nowhere Man" would've been a more appropriate song choice.

Human Nature
2001
***
Director: Michel Gondry
Cast: Tim Robbins, Patricia Arquette, Rhys Ifans, Miranda Otto, Rosie Perez

A scientist preoccupied with table manners, an abnormally hairy woman and a man brought up in the wild have one thing in common, they are all obsessed with sex. Charlie Kaufman's story offers some funny, clever and outright wacky ideas, but the whole is not quite the sum of its parts.

Heist
2001
**
Director: David Mamet
Cast: Gene Hackman, Danny De Vito, Rebecca Pidgeon, Sam Rockwell

A career criminal reluctantly agrees to do one more job before retirement, as if things were ever that straightforward, especially in a David Mamet movie. The heist is planned and carried out, and the characters double-cross and shoot each other, but apart from a few lines of snappy dialogue, this is an utterly listless drama that never pulls you in.

Hearts in Atlantis
2001
**
Director: Scott Hicks
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Hope Davis, David Morse, Anton Yelchin, Mika Boorem

An 11-year-old boy, living with his detached mother, befriends his mysterious upstairs neighbour who seems to be on the run. Another Stephen King story set in the sweet 60s, told in flashback and narrated by the protagonist who tells about the summer that changed his life. Sadly this particular summer doesn't offer anything to tell. The mystery neighbour is the sole shred of interest in the film, but we get to know very little about him.

Heartbreakers
2001
***½
Director: David Mirkin
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Gene Hackman, Jason Lee

A smutty but very funny comedy about mother and daughter team who con rich men. Predictably true love comes and spoils everything, but Gene Hackman and Sigourney Weaver are hilarious. The film is also a bit long at two hours.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
2001
***
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Harris, John Cleese, Ian Hart

On his 11th birthday, Harry Potter learns that he's a wizard, but he is unaware that he is already a legend in the wizarding world. J.K. Rowling's books have sold by the millions, which is probably why the adaptation of the first book doesn't dare to stray from the source material. As a result, the introduction to Harry Potter and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry offers 2½ hours of worldbuilding and not much else. The film nicely captures the sense of wonderment, but it could use a proper story. Followed by The Chamber of Secrets

Hannibal
2001
*½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Ray Liotta

Hannibal Lecter has become an invincible super villain and the creepy psychological thrills of The Silence of the Lambs have turned into repulsive graphic violence in this shockingly disappointing sequel. Julianne Moore has replaced Jodie Foster as agent Starling, but that makes no difference in a dud like this.

Gosford Park
2001
****
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Emily Watson, Clive Owen, Helen Mirren

A group of people gather for a hunting party in an English country house in the 1930s in this Agatha Christiesque murder mystery. Robert Altman's obviously more interested in the web of relationships than in finding the culprit. An incredible cast in an enjoyable drama which won an Oscar for its screenplay. Maggie Smith steals her scenes as a cynical and snobbish Lady.

The Glass House
2001
**
Director: Daniel Sacheim
Cast: Leelee Sobieski, Stellan Skarsgard, Diane Lane, Bruce Dern, Kathy Baker

After their parents are killed, a teenage girl and her younger brother are adopted by family friends whose seemingly perfect facade seems to conceal something sinister. This thriller has a promising start as we get hints that the new parents are up to no good, but then the cliché monster is released and the film becomes increasingly implausible and ridiculous. The final scene alone is worth dropping a star from the rating.

Ghost World
2001
****
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Cast: Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Brad Renfro

A funny and quirky but a bit cold coming-of-age tale about a nihilistic and alienated teen who is unable to move on with her life after high school graduation. Steve Buscemi is wonderful as a nerdy record collector she befriends. Based on an underground comic book.

From Hell
2001
***
Director: The Hughes brothers
Cast: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Robbie Coltrane, Ian Holm, Paul Rhys

Jack the Ripper is slaughtering prostitutes in 19th century London, but an inspector with eery visions about the killings is on his trail. This visually impressive thriller tries to revamp the old formula with a romance (with a prostitute who we never actually see working) and some conspiracy elements, but it cannot avoid predictability and genre clichés. Based on a graphic novel.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
2001
**
Director: Hironobu Sakaguchi, Moto Sakakibara
Cast: Ming-Na, Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, James Woods, Ving Rhames

Sensitive scientists and a warmongering general are at loggerheads over the way to tackle a phantom alien threat. The popular computer game has been expanded into a groundbreaking animation which has realistic computer created human characters. After the initial sense of wonder subsides, you're left with the cold and clichéd characters and the dull story filled with New Age gobbledygook.

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (Amélie)
2001
*****
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Yolande Moreau

An enchanting French film about a young woman who finds her true calling in improving the happiness of her fellow people. A visually striking and rich film that needs multiple viewings to absorb all the details.

Das Experiment (The Experiment)
2001
****
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Cast: Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Berkel, Justusvon Dohnanyi, Oliver Stokowski

A group of men take part in a behavioural experiment in which some play guards and others play prisoners. It wouldn't be a story if things didn't go horribly wrong. This taut German film takes its time to get going and the protagonist's girlfriend is an unnecessary distraction from the story, but the final hour is so gripping and suspenseful that you are willing to forget minor flaws.

Evolution
2001
**
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, Julianne Moore, Seann William Scott

Two local scientists survey a meteor crash site and discover an alien life form, but their hopes and dreams of scientific glory are short-lived when the military and the federal government intervene. This dreadfully formulaic and unfunny science fiction comedy is aimed at adolescents. However, alien fart jokes carry a film only so far.

Enigma
2001
**
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam, Saffron Burrows

A codebreaker returns to Bletchley Park in 1943 to crack the Enigma code and to find out what happened to his ex-lover, who has mysteriously disappeared. A promising premise, adapted from a Thomas Harris novel, but the end result is a thoroughly dull and, at times, incomprehensible WW2 drama. Dougray Scott in the lead is under the assumption that he was cast in a zombie movie.

Enemy at the Gates
2001
***
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Bob Hoskins

A visually impressive but somewhat sterile WW2 film set in the eastern front where Russians play the heroes and Germans play the villains. Some finely executed set pieces on the way to the obvious conclusion.

Driven
2001
*
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Kip Pardue, Til Schweiger, Burt Reynolds

This is presumably a car racing action film for people who have never seen a car race or an action film. A dreadful noisy mess which doesn't have one plausible second in it.

Donnie Darko
2001
***½
Director: Richard Kelly
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Drew Barrymore

An intriguing, dream-like film about a mentally unstable teen who has disturbing visions of the future, or maybe he's just plain crazy? A captivating buildup to a disappointing payoff. Jake Gyllenhaal is excellent in the title role.

Don't Say a Word
2001
**
Director: Gary Fleder
Cast: Michael Douglas, Sean Bean, Famke Janssen, Jennifer Esposito

After his young daughter is kidnapped a top psychiatrist is blackmailed to acquire vital information from a mental patient, within 24 hours. This potentially interesting thriller turns out to be a real dog's dinner. There are several story strands that don't either add up or make sense: the patient is insane only when it's convenient to the plot, a detective on the case is made redundant the moment she joins the main characters, the villains have been waiting for 10 years but now have to do everything in one day.

Domestic Disturbance
2001
*½
Director: Harold Becker
Cast: John Travolta, Teri Polo, Vince Vaughn, Matt O'Leary, Steve Buscemi

Since the police is clueless, a divorced dad takes the law into his own hands in order to protect his son and his ex-wife from her new husband who seems to have something to hide. A more intelligent film would have told a story of a man who must come to terms with the fact that another man is now raising his family. This, however, is not that film, but a thoroughly repulsive neoconservative thriller which won't let anything or anyone foul the sanctity of the nuclear family. Some ambiguity could have made it at least tolerable but, no, dad is the nicest guy in the world and stepdad is a sadistic one-note villain.

Dinner with Friends
2001
***
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Andie MacDowell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Jake Fritz

A married couple with two children learn that their closest friends are about to break up. This forces them to reassess the marriage of their friends, their own relationship to these people as well as their own marital life. This enjoyable but disposable drama comedy from Donald Margulies' play doesn't offer new insight into marital matters, but it's short, funny and nicely acted.

The Deep End
2001
***½
Director: Scott McGehee, David Siegel
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathan Tucker, Josh Lucas, Peter Donat

Mother discovers the body of her teenage son's gay lover, speculates what has happened and decides to cover it up. This captivating thriller doesn't turn into a cat and mouse game between her and the police but into something more original and interesting, although it somehow keeps the viewer at arm's length through the events. Tilda Swinton is very convincing in the lead.

Curse of the Jade Scorpion
2001
**
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Helen Hunt, Dan Aykroyd, David Ogden Stiers, Wallace Shawn

An insurance investigator in New York in the 1940s cannot stand his new female boss, that is until they are both put under a spell by a hypnotist who has some devious plans in store. This mediocre Woody Allen comedy has some nice oneliners but, all in all, it's a pretty hackneyed affair. Woody has cast himself as another irresistible ladies man, which doesn't help.

Crush
2001
**½
Director: John McKay
Cast: Andie MacDowell, Imelda Staunton, Anna Chancellor, Kenny Doughty

A chick flick, if there ever was one. Three single women in their fourties regularly get together to compare their embarrassing male conquests, but now one of them falls for a young man. The film is raunchy and entertaining in the first half when our heroine rediscovers her sexuality, but then the relationship turns serious and the story goes through increasingly ridiculous twists. The female bonds can endure anything and there's nothing that a good hug won't cure.

Conspiracy
2001
**½
Director: Frank Pierson
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, Kevin McNally, Owen Teale

A matter-of-fact account of the 1942 meeting where the Final Solution was approved. A group of Nazi officials sit around the table and discuss the details, and that's about it for action. The end result is neither cinematic nor entertaining, but it does work as an interesting historical footnote, even if it's occasionally difficult to follow. Made for TV, and Branagh and Tucci won awards for their performances.

Chelsea Walls
2001
**
Director: Ethan Hawke
Cast: Kris Kristofersson, Rosario Dawson, Robert Sean Leonard, Uma Thurman

Ethan Hawke's directorial debut is a frustratingly pretentious mood piece about Chelsea Hotel, famed for being the home to many important American artists. The episodic tapestry, based on Nicole Burdette's play, includes painters, writers and musicians, all of whom are equally uninteresting and uninvolving.

The Center of the World
2001
***
Director: Wayne Wang
Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, Molly Parker, Carla Gugino, Balthazar Getty, Alisha Klass

A dotcom millionaire hires a stripper for an erotically charged weekend trip to Las Vegas. Gradually emotions come into play and someone is bound to get hurt. A sexy, intriguing and well acted, but also a bit cold and inaccessible adult drama.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin
2001
**
Director: John Madden
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, John Hurt, Christian Bale, Irene Papas

The beautiful Mediterranean scenery is the only reason to see this uninspired WW2 love drama set on a Greek island. The film offers a mishmash of accents and characters who never get you involved in the events. The last half an hour doesn't make sense at all. Adapted from the novel by Louis de Bernieres.

Buffalo Soldiers
2001
**½
Director: Gregor Jordan
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Scott Glenn, Anna Paquin, Ed Harris, Michael Pena

An American soldier stationed in Germany in 1989 runs a black market (guns, drugs, you name it) in order to keep boredom away. This anarchistic and darkly comic story kicks off with an effective blend of laughs and shocks, but then the clichés roll in (the hero falls in love with the daughter of his nemesis) and the film becomes needlessly cruel at the expense of comedy.

Bridget Jones's Diary
2001
**½
Director: Sharon Maguire
Cast: Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones

This amiable romantic comedy about a neurotic single woman makes some poignant observations about modern relationships but, alas, it's not particularly funny. Renee Zellweger gives an excellent performance in the title role, but it gets tiresome to watch Bridget make a fool of herself time and time again. The soundtrack is intentionally awful. Based on Helen Fielding's novel. Followed by Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

Blow
2001
**
Director: Ted Demme
Cast: Johnny Depp, Franka Potente, Penelope Cruz, Paul Reubens

A true-life story of a man who went from rags to riches to rags again when he introduced cocaine to the American masses in the 1970s and 1980s. Why we should give a damn about anything that happens to this man is a question the film fails to answer. Johnny Depp seems to concentrate on his numerous wacky hairdos and gives a rather forgettable performance. Penelope Cruz, on the other hand, is a travesty as his wife.

Black Hawk Down
2001
***
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana

A technically flawless and visually striking war film about a real life routine mission in Somalia that turned into one of the longest single battles in the recent American military history. The film doesn't give any context to the battle, and even then it would be difficult to feel much sympathy for the US military who have a long history of sticking their noses into regions and conflicts they don't understand.

Birthday Girl
2001
**
Director: Jez Butterworth
Cast: Ben Chaplin, Nicole Kidman, Vincent Cassel, Mathieu Kassovitz, Kate Evans

An English bank clerk gets more than he bargained for when his mail order bride from Russia arrives. The film has a promising start but as soon as the girl's "relatives" show up, we get all the usual Russian stereotypes and the film takes a wrong turn. Towards the end all credibility is thrown out of the window and you're left with a strong feeling of disappointment.

Bella Martha (Mostly Martha)
2001
***
Director: Sandra Nettelbeck
Cast: Martina Gedec, Maxime Foerste, Sergio Castellitto, August Zirner

A likeable little German film about a successful chef whose delicately balanced (mostly professional) life gets a shake up when she suddenly finds herself raising her dead sister's little girl. Reevaluation of everything follows. Not terribly original, but a good waste of time.

The Believer
2001
**½
Director: Henry Bean
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Jacob Green, Billy Zane, Theresa Russell, Summer Phoenix, Ronald Guttman, Glenn Fitzgerald, Garret Dillahunt, Heather Goldenhersh, A. D. Miles

Daniel Balint is a smart and articulate Neo-Nazi who hates the Jews from the bottom of his heart. The twist is that he is Jewish himself. Ryan Gosling, in his breakthrough role, plays this young conflicted man with impressive intensity. Henry Bean's controversial drama is thought-provoking but flat. The film's combination of long-drawn debates and clumsily visualised bursts of violence is never particularly compelling.

Behind Enemy Lines
2001
**½
Director: John Moore
Cast: Owen Wilson, Gene Hackman, Gabriel Macht, Joaquim de Almeida

US pilot on a reconnaissance mission in Bosnia is shot down, but the unstable political situation in the country makes his rescue nearly impossible. This military action film offers some exciting set pieces but no insight into the Balkan conflict or wars overall. However, it does offer us a few bits of wisdom: 1) if you want to get things done, you need to call in the US Army, 2) nothing uplifts the morale of a frustrated soldier better than killing some baddies.

A Beautiful Mind
2001
***½
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Christopher Plummer

This cleaned up true story about one man's triumph over adversity (in this case, schizophrenia) is a manipulative but gripping drama. Russell Crowe and Oscar winning Jennifer Connelly give very strong performances. One of Ron Howard's best films, but the directorial Oscar may have been exaggeration.

Bandits
2001
**½
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett, Troy Garity

A sympathetic but aimless comedy about two bank robbers whose lives become complicated when they fall in love with the same woman. Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett are enjoyable in their roles, but it's hard to see how this unusual story could ever work.

Antitrust
2001
***
Director: Peter Howitt
Cast: Ryan Philippe, Rachael Leigh Cook, Tim Robbins, Claire Forlani

A young hotshot programmer is hired by a massive software firm but he soon suspects that the company eliminates competition even more literally than Microsoft. A watchable conspiracy thriller with Tim Robbins as a sinister Bill Gates-like businessman.

America's Sweethearts
2001
*½
Director: Joe Roth
Cast: Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, John Cusack, Catherine Zeta-Jones

The film studio wants to reunite a popular on-screen (but no longer off-screen) couple to promote their last film, which no one apart from the director has seen. This parody on the Hollywood publicity machine is ruined by a shockingly unfunny script and ham-fisted direction. Throw in an unconvincing romance, a couple of caricatured performances and an overall lack of plausibility, and you have a complete dud in your hands.

Along Came a Spider
2001
**½
Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Morgan Freeman, Monica Potter, Michael Wincott, Mika Boorem

First it looks like this kidnap thriller might have a surprise or two in store, but sadly it turns out to be a pretty formulaic whodunnit. However, Morgan Freeman manages to be commanding in the lead as a forensic psychologist. Sequel to Kiss the Girls.

Ali
2001
**½
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jon Voight, Mario Van Peebles

A long and exhausting biopic of Muhammad Ali. Michael Mann's film avoids the usual biography sketchiness by not trying to cover the fighter's entire life, but still it only seems to scratch the surface in spite of its long running time. However, Will Smith surprises in the title role.

The Affair of the Necklace
2001
**
Director: Charles Shyer
Cast: Hilary Swank, Jonathan Pryce, Simon Baker, Adrien Brody, Brian Cox

On the eve of the French Revolution a young woman attempts to save her family name by concocting a plot which involves Marie Antoinette and a powerful Cardinal. The main failing of this stillborn costume piece is that it expects us to feel sorry for the protagonist. Hilary Swank is dreadfully artificial in the lead, and not only because of her dubious accent.

A.I. – Artificial Intelligence
2001
***½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Haley-Joel Osment, Jude Law, William Hurt, Frances O'Connor

This odd collaboration between Steven Spielberg and the late Stanley Kubrick is a thought-provoking and visually dazzling science fiction film, but it doesn't quite gel. It is also about 30 minutes too long. However, Haley Joel Osment is simply phenomenal as the robot boy who has been programmed to have emotions.

The 51st State / Formula 51
2001
*
Director: Ronny Yu
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Carlyle, Emily Mortimer, Meat Loaf, Rhys Ifans

A recreational chemist with a groundbreaking new product double-crosses a drug kingpin and flees to Liverpool where he buddies up with a local thug. The Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting influences are obvious, but this mindnumbing mess gets everything wrong (the dialogue is offensive but unwitty, the soundtrack is omnipresent but lacks a single memorable tune, the screen is inhabited by unpleasant caricatures instead of characters). The shaggy dog ending makes you want to beat yourself blue for not giving up on the film earlier.

15 Minutes
2001
*
Director: John Herzfeld
Cast: Robert De Niro, Edward Burns, Kelsey Grammer, Avery Brooks

Two chronically sweaty Eastern European thugs go on a killing spree in NYC, and hope to become celebrities and make money from their atrocities. A loud, violent and utterly off-putting drama that aspires to be a media satire, but it has neither subtlety nor credibility.

You Can Count on Me
2000
****
Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Laura Linney, Matthew Broderick, Rory Culkin

Kenneth Lonergan's directorial debut is a terrifically well-observed drama about a brother and sister; she stayed in their hometown while he went out to see the world. The characters feel authentic and the story is touching and poignant. Mark Ruffalo is excellent in his breakthrough performance.

X-Men
2000
****
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen

A small proportion of the human population are mutants, who have different special abilities. While some of them come together to form a team of superheroes, others are at odds with humanity. This adaptation of a Marvel comic book is a highly enjoyable origin story. There are some nice action set pieces and a strong lead performance by Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Followed by X-Men 2.

Wonder Boys
2000
****½
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., Frances McDormand

A splendidly funny and witty story about one weekend in the life of an author/college professor. Michael Douglas is cast against type in a wonderful low key performance. The film is almost spoiled by one overly farcical scene towards the end.

Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
2000
*****
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen, Lung Sihung

It seems Ang Lee can master any genre. This one is an exciting and visually beautiful martial arts movie made for Western sensibilities. The film offers a perfect mix of drama, fights, romance and mysticism, and it became an international hit although the dialogue is entirely in Mandarin. Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh are excellent as the tragic lovers. Oscar winner for Best Cinematography, Best Score, Best Art Direction and Best Foreign Language Film.

The Whole Nine Yards
2000
**
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Cast: Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Rosanna Arquette, Amanda Peet

A terrible black comedy about an unhappily married dentist whose new neighbour turns out to be a mob hitman. The dark parts are too dark and the funny parts aren't funny. The film is set in Montreal, but only to illustrate how awful the protagonist's life is.

Where the Money Is
2000
*½
Director: Marek Kanievska
Cast: Paul Newman, Linda Fiorentino, Dermot Mulroney, Susan Barnes

A sassy nurse in an old folk's home refuses to believe that the famous elderly bank robber is really comatose, and tries to get his help to pull off a bank job. It's a mystery how this idiotic caper comedy ever got made. Plausibility and character motivation are only few of the things that never troubled the minds behind this film.

What Women Want
2000
***
Director: Nancy Meyers
Cast: Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Lauren Holly, Marisa Tomei, Alan Alda

A clever and enjoyable but predictably educational romantic comedy about a womaniser who learns to appreciate women when he, due to an accident, can hear what they think.

What Lies Beneath
2000
**½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Harrison Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Diana Scarwid, Miranda Otto

An atmospheric and slightly supernatural thriller about a married woman who begins to feel a strange presence in her house. The ending is so anti-climactic that you're almost willing to forget the good two thirds.

The Way of the Gun
2000
*½
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Benicio Del Toro, Juliette Lewis, James Caan, Taye Diggs

Two thugs kidnap a pregnant woman who expects a baby to a millionaire. What they don't know is that the man they want to blackmail earned his riches as a gangster. Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote the overrated The Usual Suspects, aimed to tell a crime story which doesn't dictate who we should root for. He's definitely successful in that respect, but his directorial debut is almost unwatchable. The characters and events flow past your eyes without producing as much as a shrug.

Vertical Limit
2000
***
Director: Martin Campbell
Cast: Chris O'Donnell, Robin Tunney, Bill Paxton, Scott Glenn, Izabella Scorupco

A young man and five other people - with backpacks full of nitroglycerine - go on a rescue mission on K2 to save three climbers, among them his sister. Cardboard characters in cliched settings with a preposterous and explosive plot device. Yet this silly film is oddly enjoyable, thanks to its vivid, suspenseful and terrifically directed action scenes.

Unbreakable
2000
****
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright Penn, Charlayne Woodard

This bleak drama was inspired by comic books. It tells a story of two men, one who seems to be invulnerable and the other one who is frail as glass. Structurally it's very similar to The Sixth Sense, apart from the slightly disappointing ending. However, Shyamalan creates some ingenious set pieces and the overall mood of the film is very intense. The character returns in Glass.

U-571
2000
**
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, Jon Bon Jovi

Das Boot had a shaggy U-boat crew who grew disillusioned about the war. The crew on U-571 is a collection of noble and cleanly shaved Americans who are determined to keep an evil German sub captain alive no matter how many times he tries to kill them. This film is a disgrace, not because it claims that the Americans (and not the British) snatched the Enigma code machine from the Nazis, but because it's a stupid, preposterous and boring action drama.

Traffic
2000
***
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Benicio Del Toro, Don Cheadle

Steven Soderbergh deserved his best director Oscar for orchestrating this episodic and elaborate drama that looks at the world of drugs from different angles. A nifty film which is simultaneously predictable (anti-drug enforcer's daughter becomes an addict) and implausible (drug kingpin's wife goes from being oblivious to ordering a hit). Benicio Del Toro also picked up an Oscar for his supporting performance.

Tigerland
2000
***½
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Colin Farrell, Matthew Davis, Clifton Collins Jr., Shea Whigham

Colin Farrell plays a maverick among a group of young men who are in combat training, waiting to be shipped to Vietnam. Joel Schumacher has ditched his trademark glitzy visuals in favour of gritty hand-held camera work for this strong but somewhat trivial character study. Farrell and Collins stand out in a great young emsemble cast.

Thirteen Days
2000
***
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood, Stephen Culp, Dylan Baker

A long and dry but captivating drama about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Kevin Costner is JFK's advisor who plays a key role in solving the conflict. As expected, Kennedy is portrayed as a solid leader and the US military comes out of it as the bad guy.

Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her
2000
**
Director: Rodrigo Garcia
Cast: Glenn Close, Cameron Diaz, Amy Brenneman, Holly Hunter

An episodic film with a female perspective. Fine cast and some nice bits but the stories do not gel.

State & Main
2000
****
Director: David Mamet
Cast: Wiliam H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Philp Seymour Hoffman

David Mamet's witty comedy pokes fun at Hollywood and, more importantly, it's funny. It's a story of a small city in Maine which is completely transformed by a film shoot.

Space Cowboys
2000
***
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Marcia Gay Harden, James Cromwell

Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, Tommy Lee Jones and James Garner play a group of friends and space exploration pioneers who are needed for a mission to repair an out-of-control satellite. The funny first hour in the training and the dramatic second hour in space form a slightly uncomfortable whole. This overlong film is also a bit low on credibility.

Snatch
2000
**
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Jason Flemyng, Brad Pitt, Dennis Farina, Benicio Del Toro

A group of small time crooks, boxing promoters and Irish gypsies clash in the London underworld. Some of them kill and some of them get killed, not that you'd care which of these characters stay alive. Guy Ritchie has basically reshot Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Small Time Crooks
2000
***
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Tracey Ullman, Elaine May, Hugh Grant, Jon Lovitz

A light, entertaining and disposable comedy which makes a lovely U-turn right after it sets up the story. Woody Allen and Tracey Ullman play a couple who become rich because their heist goes wrong. Elaine May is a memorable dimwit.

Shanghai Noon
2000
***½
Director: Tom Dey
Cast: Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Lucy Liu, Brandon Merrill, Roger Yuan

A very silly but thoroughly enjoyable action comedy about a Chinese servant who follows a kidnapped princess to the Wild West, where he teams up with a second rate outlaw. Owen Wilson supplies the snappy oneliners and Jackie Chan provides the acrobatic stunts.

Shaft
2000
*½
Director: John Singleton
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Christian Bale, Jeffrey Wright, Vanessa Williams

The original Shaft wasn't a cinematic masterpiece, but it's hard to think how this remake could've been any worse than it is. By replacing Samuel L. Jackson with Wesley Snipes? Jackson is solid as the strong-willed detective with ridiculous facial hair, but Christian Bale, who repeats his American Psycho role, and Jeffrey Wright play cardboard villains. The story is mindnumbingly formulaic. Half a star for a single line of dialogue: "It's my duty to please that booty".

Shadow of the Vampire
2000
**½
Director: E. Elias Merhige
Cast: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Cary Elwes, Udo Kier, Eddie Izzard

F.W Murnau shoots his famous Nosferatu and he's the only one who knows that his leading actor is a real vampire. The moviemaking world of the 1920s is wonderfully recreated but, all in all, this is an overlong one-joke film.

Sexy Beast
2000
**
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Amanda Redman, Ian McShane, James Fox

A Cockney criminal is enjoying his retirement days in sunny Spain until his psychotic cohort Don (Ben Kingsley) shows up to persuade him to do one more job. Kingsley is cast against type, and his character is scary and unpredictable, but also extremely annoying and one-dimensional. This unpleasant and overrated crime film goes from a monotonous build-up (Do the job. No. Do the job. No. Do it. No.) to a flat finale.

Scream 3
2000
**
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox Arquette, David Arquette, Patrick Dempsey

The Scream series has become part of the genre the original succesfully parodied. There are some suggestions that anything can happen in the third episode, but once again some new and allegedly related character puts the mask on and starts killing the new cast members, while the old familiar faces reunite and come through it unscathed. Slightly funnier than the second part.

Scary Movie
2000
*½
Director: Keenen Ivory Wayans
Cast: Jon Abrahams, Shannon Elisabeth, Anna Paris, Regina Hall

What is the point of making a spoof of href=/search2.php?query=1829>Scream, a film that was a spoof itself? This seriously unfunny gross-out comedy also makes references to other hit films of the time, such as The Matrix and The Sixth Sense. Followed by three sequels.

Romeo Must Die
2000
**
Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Cast: Jet Lee, Aaliyah, Delroy Lindo, Isaiah Washington, Henry O.

Jet Lee and Aaliyah - both dreadful - are "Romeo and Juliet" who are caught in the middle of a feud between a black and an Asian family. An overlong and instantly forgettable action film.

Road Trip
2000
**½
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Breckin Meyer, Seann William Scott, Amy Smart, Paulo Costanzo

Four college students go on a road trip to retrieve a compromising videotape before it is delivered. Some tasteless jokes and life lessons in this mediocre teen film.

Return to Me
2000
***
Director: Bonnie Hunt
Cast: David Duchovny, Minnie Driver, Carol O'Connor, Robert Loggia, Bonnie Hunt

A grieving widower finds new love, unaware that the dead wife is still present in the form of a transplanted heart. The story unfolds in predictable fashion but the cast is charming (yes, even Minnie Driver) and the film on the whole offers a generous serving of sugary, disarming and non-threatening romantic fluff.

Requiem for a Dream
2000
***½
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Jared Leto, Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans

Darren Aronofsky's grim portrayal of addiction in its different forms is visually dazzling, at times self-consciously so. Ellen Burstyn gives a phenomenally gutsy performance as a woman who becomes addicted to diet pills. Based on the novel by Hubert Selby, Jr.

Remember the Titans
2000
**½
Director: Boaz Yakin
Cast: Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Donald Faison, Wood Harris

This feelgood drama is based on a true story. In the 1970s a black high school football coach, charismatically played by Denzel Washington, tries to mould a group of racially mixed kids into a team. The film is thoroughly watchable but incredibly simplistic and manipulative (deep-rooted racial prejudices disappear in seconds and the emotional highs and lows arrive like a clockwork). It adheres to the standard sport movie formula and the whole thing is sprinkled with an endless flow of predictable period hits.

Rakkaudella, Maire (Kiss Me in the Rain)
2000
***½
Director: Veikko Aaltonen
Cast: Eeva Litmanen, Minna Haapkylä, Matti Onnismaa, Esko Salminen

Eeva Litmanen is wonderful as an unhappily married middle aged woman who becomes exceedingly obsessed with other people's tragedies. An atmospheric and untypical Finnish drama which heads to its somewhat inevitable conclusion.

Quills
2000
***½
Director: Philip Kaufman
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Caine, Amelia Warner

A charming fictionalised story of the Marquis de Sade, set in the asylum of Charenton where he still tries to write and get published. This is first and foremost a showcase for Geoffrey Rush, who is indeed excellent as the lewd and sharp-tongued scribe. The sets, costumes and photography are first class, but the confined settings and the vivid dialogue regularly remind you that it's based on a stage play (by Doug Wright).

Proof of Life
2000
**
Director: Taylor Hackford
Cast: Russell Crowe, Meg Ryan, David Morse, David Caruso, Pamela Reed

Russell Crowe plays a hostage negotiator/commando who helps a woman whose husband was kidnapped in an imaginary South American country. This is a dreadfully stiff and boring, romantically flavoured hostage drama. The film wastes ages on repetitious ransom negotiations when it's obvious from the outset that the film climaxes in a rescue operation where our hero can exhibit his military skills.

Pollock
2000
****
Director: Ed Harris
Cast: Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Jennifer Connelly, Amy Madigan, Bud Cort, John Heard, Val Kilmer, Jeffrey Tambor

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), was an abstract expressionist painter most famous for his drip technique. The heavy-drinking Pollock had a stormy relationship with his wife and champion Lee Krasner. Ed Harris' directorial debut is one of the most convincing portrayals of an artist at work. Harris and the Academy Award winning Marcia Gay Harden give excellent performances.

Pitch Black
2000
**½
Director: David Twohy
Cast: Radha Mitchell, Vin Diesel, Cole Hauser, Keith David, Claudia Black

In the terrific opening scene a space ship crashes to a mysterious planet that has a few surprises in store for the crew. What follows is a formulaic Alien-style cat and mouse game in which the survivors are offed one by one in an increasingly gruesome manner and, by the end, in complete darkness. VIn Diesel's breakthrough.

The Perfect Storm
2000
**½
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Diane Lane, John C. Reilly

Don't look for subtlety in this sentimental fact-based drama about a fishing boat that was caught in the middle of a massive hurricane in 1991. The soapy and clichéd screenplay makes sure you know something bad is about to happen. The storm looks realistic, though. Based on Sebastian Junger's book.

Pelon Maantiede
2000
**½
Director: Auli Mantila
Cast: Leea Klemola, Tanjalotta Räikkä, Pertt Sveholm, Kari Sorvali, Eija Vilpas

An ambitious but flawed Finnish morality drama about a group of rape victims who become vigilantes. Based on Anja Snellman's novel.

Pay It Forward
2000
**
Director: Mimi Leder
Cast: Haley-Joel Osment, Helen Hunt, Kevin Spacey, Jim Caviezel

A young boy comes up with an idea to help his fellow people. This drama potentially has it all; a great premise and an excellent cast. However, the finished product is a soppy drama with a manipulative ending. Helen Hunt is badly miscast in the female lead.

The Patriot
2000
**½
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Mel Gibson, Joely Richardson, Jason Isaacs, Tom Wilkinson

A war hero and a single father of seven refuses to fight in the War of Independence, until his family comes in jeopardy that is. This potentially gripping epic is spoiled by one-dimensional characters and constant slow motion gore, which is not appropriate in this context. Mel Gibson is dynamic in the lead, but Braveheart this is not.

O' Brother Where Art Thou?
2000
*****
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Holly Hunter

George Clooney shows surprising aptitude for comedy in this absolutely charming story of three prison escapees. The film relies more on lovely characters and hilarious dialogue than on a strong storyline, which is incidentally based on Homer's Odyssey. The wonderful soundtrack became a bigger hit than the film.

Nurse Betty
2000
**½
Director: Neil LaBute
Cast: Renee Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear, Aaron Eckhart, Crispin Glover, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Tia Texada, Allison Janney, Kathleen Wilhoite

A small town waitress, who is traumatised by her husband's murder, becomes determined to track down her ex-fiancé, who in reality is a character from her favorite soap opera. The hitmen who killed her husband are on her trail. Neil LaBute's dark comedy clearly came out in the wake of Pulp Fiction, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski, but unlike those films, it hasn't stood the test of time. The script by John C. Richards and James Flamberg doesn't feature many believable moments and Chris Rock's character really tested my patience.

Mission: Impossible 2
2000
**
Director: John Woo
Cast: Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton, Dougray Scott, Richard Roxburgh

The original Mission: Impossible TV series was about a team of specialists. John Woo's boring sequel is a one man show, a two-hour jerk-off video for Tom Cruise fetishists to be more precise. The story revolves around bioterrorism, but the film is all about Woo's trademark action scenes. Which is why you almost fall asleep during the plot-heavy mid-section.

Miss Congeniality
2000
**
Director: Donald Petrie
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, Benjamin Bratt, William Shatner

An ugly FBI agent (ahem, Sandra Bullock) goes undercover in the Miss America competition where she discovers her latent femininity. This is a gutless comedy that first pokes fun at America's obsession with beauty pageants but then panders to the whole concept. Followed by a sequel.

The Million Dollar Hotel
2000
*
Director: Wim Wenders
Cast: Jeremy Davies, Milla Jovovich, Mel Gibson, Jimmy Smits, Tim Roth

A group of colourful characters come together in the titular hotel in Los Angeles. Bono of U2 hatched the concept for this film for almost a decade. What his big idea was, I'm not really sure. The cast is impressive but this is a dreary, slow-paced and frankly off-putting drama.

Men of Honor
2000
***
Director: George Tillman, Jr.
Cast: Cuba Gooding, Jr., Robert De Niro, Aunjanue Ellis, Charlize Theron

A formulaic and manipulative but oddly moving and captivating drama about a young man whose determination helped him to become the first coloured naval diver in the 1950s. Cuba Gooding, Jr. is great in the lead, but Robert De Niro is somewhat of an embarrassment as his bigoted trainer, and Charlize Theron is bafflingly miscast as his wife.

Memento
2000
*****
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Guy Pearce, Joe Pantoliano, Carrie-Anne Moss, Mark Boone Jr.

A highly original thriller about a man who tries to make sense of his reality after he has lost his short term memory. To reflect the fractured memory, the riveting story is told backwards. This could easily result in gimmicky and self-satisfied nonsense, but in this case it couldn't be further from the truth.

Meet the Parents
2000
****
Director: Jay Roach
Cast: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Owen Wilson

Greg and his fiancé Pam travel to meet her parents, where he plans to ask the father's permission to marry his daughter. However, the potential father-in-law is an extremely mistrustful and protective ex-CIA agent who is very hard to impress. Jay Roach's film takes a familiarly awkward scenario and turns it into a very enjoyable comedy. The story builds up nicely but goes a bit over the top towards the end when everything conceivable goes wrong for Greg. Followed by two progressively inferior sequels, Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers.

Me, Myself & Irene
2000
***
Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Cast: Jim Carrey, Renee Zellweger, Chris Cooper, Robert Forster, Anthony Anderson, Richard Jenkins, Daniel Greene, Jerod Mixon. Mongo Brownlee

The amicable and gullible Rhode Island state trooper Charlie Baileygates has bottled his frustrations for so long that he develops a sinister alter ego Hank. This wacky comedy includes plenty of funny moments, but it eventually runs out of steam and goes on about 30 minutes too long, like all works by the Farrelly brothers. As the entire movie is built around Jim Carrey's energetic and schizophrenic performance, the events get a bit predictable and repetitive.

Lucky Numbers
2000
**
Director: Nora Ephron
Cast: John Travolta, Lisa Kudrow, Ed O'Neill, Tim Roth, Michael Rapaport

A weatherman and his girlfriend pull a successful lottery scam but soon a number of swindlers and small time crooks demand their piece of the pot. This is a lifeless comedy with a collection of unpleasant characters, none of whom deserve the money.

Lost Souls
2000
†
Director: Janusz Kaminski
Cast: Winona Ryder, Ben Chaplin, Philip Baker Hall, Sarah Wynter, John Hurt

A young female assistant exorcist, or something, is convinced that an agnostic crime writer will become the devil incarnate, or whatever. In Hollywood tradition, a person who doesn't practice religion must be the root of all evil. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski's directorial debut is an awful, not to mention nonsensical and astoundingly boring horror film which rips off The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. The self-conscious visual look becomes irritating pretty fast.

Liam
2000
**
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Ian Hart, Claire Hackett, Anthony Borrows, Anne Reid, Megan Burns

A young working class boy grows up in the economic hardship of the 1930s Liverpool where he lives by strict Catholic doctrine and witnesses the rise of fascism. Following Priest, Jimmy McGovern continues his obsession with the sins of the Catholic church. This is a bit like Angela's Ashes, bar the humour, but it's very hard to relate to any of it.

The Legend of Bagger Vance
2000
**
Director: Robert Redford
Cast: Matt Damon, Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Bruce McGill, Lane Smith

Robert Redford stays behind the camera in his sluggish drama which draws parallels between golf and life. Sadly there's too much golf and not enough life in the film.

Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (The Princess and the Warrior)
2000
***½
Director: Tom Tykwer
Cast: Franka Potente, Benno Furmann, Joachim Krol, Marita Breuer

Tom Tykwer's follow-up to Lola Rennt is a less kinetic and more thoughtful story about two odd souls who are brought together. It has some incredible set pieces but what is it all about? That is the question.

Keeping the Faith
2000
**
Director: Edward Norton
Cast: Edward Norton, Ben Stiller, Jenna Elfman, Anne Bancroft, Eli Wallach

Close childhood friends, who become a rabbi and a priest when they grow up, fall in love with the same girl. Edward Norton's directorial debut is a disappointingly dull and superficial romantic comedy which uses religion as an artificial catalyst to the story.

In the Mood for Love
2000
***½
Director: Wong Kar-wai
Cast: Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Lai Chin, Rebecca Pan, Siu Ping-lam, Kelly Lai Chen, Joe Cheung, Chan Man-Lei, Chin Tsi-ang

Two neighbors in 1960s Hong Kong form a close bond after they learn that their respective partners are having an affair. Wong Kar-wai's drama is beautifully shot and scored, but its story about longing and unspoken love left me a bit cold. Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung look gorgeous, and give terrific performances, as well.

Hollow Man
2000
**
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue, Josh Brolin, William Devane

A scientist expirements on himself and turns invisible, which teaches us once more that you shouldn't meddle with nature. Sadly Paul Verhoeven's invisible man is a one-note psychopath who just wants to use his powers to rape and kill. The brilliant special effects go to waste.

High Fidelity
2000
***
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Jack Black, Todd Louiso, Lisa Bonet, Joelle Carter, Joan Cusack, Sara Gilbert, Lili Taylor, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Rob loves to listen to good music and compile top 5 lists, but he doesn't understand women. When his girlfriend dumps him, he wants to figure out the mistakes he keeps making in his relationships. This enjoyable but flawed romantic comedy from Nick Hornby's novel is a treat for music lovers. What I find problematic is that Rob is ultimately an asshole and he doesn't deserve the happy ending that comes out of nowhere. He breaks the fourth wall from the first second to the last, which gets tiresome after a while. In his breakthrough role, Jack Black plays another music geek. Zoë Kravitz played Rob in a short-lived TV series in 2020.

Gone in Sixty Seconds
2000
*½
Director: Dominic Sena
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Christopher Eccleston

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer's infernally noisy action film about a guy who has to steal 50 cars in 48 hours in order to save his brother. As someone cleverly pointed out, the title probably refers to the length of time this film remains in your memory.

The Golden Bowl
2000
**
Director: James Ivory
Cast: Uma Thurman, Jeremy Northam, Nick Nolte, Kate Beckinsale, Anjelica Huston

This uninspired Merchant-Ivory period film never manages to draw you in to its story and characters, you always feel like you're only watching a film. Uma Thurman and Jeremy Northam play lovers who are forced to wed elsewhere but end up marrying to the same family. Adapted from a Henry James novel.

Gladiator
2000
****
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, Richard Harris, Tommy Flanagan

Victorious Roman General Maximus refuses to pledge loyalty to the patricidal and power-hungry emperor Commodus. After he finds his family murdered, Maximus is captured and sold into slavery, but he returns to Rome as a gladiator. This long, powerful and occasionally pompous historical revenge drama revived the sword and sandals epics for a brief moment. The film is consistently gripping, but it should have featured a slightly less one-dimensional villain. It's visually stunning, of course, like all of Ridley Scott's works. The film won five Academy Awards, which includes Russell Crowe's mesmerising lead performance. Oliver Reed died during the shoot and his performance was completed with CGI.

The Gift
2000
***
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Greg Kinnear, Keanu Reeves, Hilary Swank

This creepy thriller looks promising as it builds suspense slowly and effectively, but it turns into a conventional whodunnit towards the end. Cate Blanchett, however, is convincing in almost any role, this time as a psychic from Georgia who tries to solve a disappearance.

Frequency
2000
***
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Cast: Jim Caviezel, Dennis Quaid, Andre Braugher, Elisabeth Mitchell

A nice science fiction family drama about a grown-up son who makes contact with his long dead father through the radio. The film goes on too long and is let down by an illogical feelgood ending.

Finding Forrester
2000
**½
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Sean Connery, Rob Brown, F. Murray Abraham, Anna Paquin

Gus Van Sant fails to repeat the success of Good Will Hunting with another story of a troubled young genius and his tragic mentor. Sean Connery is very good as a novelist turned recluse, but the story is illogical and it comes with a terrible feelgood ending.

Final Destination
2000
***½
Director: James Wong
Cast: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Kristen Cloke, Daniel Roebuck

Tne killer in this snappy horror film is not an actual person but a pissed-off destiny. The story is dark and funny, but also a bit gimmicky and episodic. However, there are some clever visual gags. Followed by numerous sequels.

The Family Man
2000
***½
Director: Brett Ratner
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Tea Leoni, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Piven, Saul Rubinek

In the vein of It's a Wonderful Life, a selfish businessman gets a glimpse of what could've been if he had chosen to raise a family rather than pursue his career. It’s all predictable and manipulative stuff, but oddly moving and nicely done.

Erin Brockovich
2000
***½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart, Marg Helgenberger

An entertaining but overlong true story about a resourceful and outspoken woman who finds her true calling when she helps to put together a class action suit against a polluting chemical company. Julia Roberts manages to come across as a character rather than as herself, which is rare. Hence the Oscar.

Dude, Where's My Car?
2000
**
Director: Danny Leiner
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Seann William Scott, Kristy Swanson, Jennifer Garner

A silly and infantile but somewhat likeable comedy about two potheads who try to figure out what happened to them and their car the night before. Don't expect any clever jokes.

Dr. T & The Women
2000
**
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Richard Gere, Helen Hunt, Shelley Long, Farrah Fawcett, Laura Dern

Richard Gere plays a gynecologist whose life is practically run by women (his wife, lover, daughters, colleagues and patients). Robert Altman's drama has a great cast but it's aimless. It's also very thinly scripted; the wife suffers a breakdown in the beginning and is then completely forgotten.

The Dish
2000
***½
Director: Rob Sitch
Cast: Sam Neill, Kevin Harrington, Tom Long, Patrick Warburton, Genevieve Mooy

This amusing and affable if somewhat trivial Australian comedy is based on a true story. In 1969 a massive satellite dish Down Under helped to capture the TV image of the moon landing.

Dancer in the Dark
2000
****
Director: Lars Von Trier
Cast: Björk, David Morse, Catherine Deneuve, Peter Stormare, Joel Grey

An emotionally wrenching but highly implausible musical drama about a nearly blind single mother who wants to save her son from sharing her fate. Björk gives an impressive debut performance, and she also wrote and performed the wonderful soundtrack.

Coyote Ugly
2000
**
Director: David McNally
Cast: Piper Perabo, Adam Garcia, Maria Bello, Melanie Lynskey, John Goodman

A naive small town girl moves into New York City to become a singer/songwriter but ends up working in a noisy bar where she serves drinks and dances on the counter. But not to worry, all her dreams will come true. Jerry Bruckheimer has basically remade his hit film Flashdance.

The Contender
2000
***
Director: Rod Lurie
Cast: Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges, Gary Oldman, Sam Elliott, Christian Slater

This cynical political drama depicts Washington as a rooting ground for ruthless power games. Joan Allen plays the new vice-presidential candidate who is smeared in a sex scandal but reluctant to comment on the allegations. Sadly the ending feels compelled to re-establish our trust in democracy and the political system. Nice performances from Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman.

Chopper
2000
**
Director: Andrew Dominik
Cast: Eric Bana, Vince Colosimo, Simon Lyndon, Kate Beahan, David Field, Dan Wyllie, Fletcher Humphrys, Serge Liistro

Andrew Dominik's feature debut is a biopic of Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, a notorious Australian criminal. He's in prison in the beginning and end of the story, which spans from the late 1970 to the early 1990s. Read is portrayed as a master of self-promotion who is willing to twist the truth or even mutilate himself for his own ends. He became a celebrity and his life ended up on the screen, which is either a brilliant ironic twist or the low point in moral degradation. In any case, both the man and the legend are highly uninteresting. Eric Bana gives a very fine performance, but Read is an unpleasant and predictably unpredictable thug. However, the cool anti-hero, the pitch black humour and the pornographic violence have ensured the film's cult status.

Chocolat
2000
****
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp, Alfred Molina, Lena Olin, Judi Dench

A delightful romantic morality tale about a free spirited woman whose new chocolaterie in an uptight French village stirs up emotions in the late 1950s. It's all very light-weight but it's almost impossible not to be taken over by this well-acted fluff. Based on a novel by Joanne Harris.

Chicken Run
2000
*****
Director: Peter Lord, Nick Park
Cast: Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, Miranda Richardson, Jane Horrocks

The first full length animation from the makers of Wallace and Gromit is a bottomless well of visual and verbal gags, and prison film references. You may marvel the technical mastery of the stop motion work for the first 15 minutes, but then you are unavoidably sucked into the story about a group of chickens who try to escape from a farm that resembles a Pow camp. Mel Gibson voices a rooster who is not all that he claims to be.

Charlie's Angels
2000
***
Director: McG
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Bill Murray, Tim Curry

A vacuous but delightfully wacky action comedy which is based on the popular 1970s TV series about three female agents. There's no plot to speak of but the tongue is firmly in the cheek and the girls seem to be enjoying themselves. Followed by the dreadful Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

The Cell
2000
***
Director: Tarsem Singh
Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jake Weber

JLo plays a psychologist who penetrates the mind of a comatose serial killer in order to find his last victim, who may still be alive. The science behind the story is fascinating and the images are absolutely beautiful, but the film just doesn't work as a whole.

Cast Away
2000
****
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Lari White, Chris Noth

Robert Zemeckis' drama starts with a horrific plane crash, which leaves the protagonist alone on a desert island. What follows is a gripping depiction of perseverance and loneliness. Tom Hanks is solo acting for most of the film, and he is magnificent. Unfortunately Zemeckis doesn't quite know where and when to end his film.

Boiler Room
2000
**½
Director: Ben Younger
Cast: Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, Nia Lonng, Nicky Katt, Ron Rifkin

An idle young man joins a trainee programme in a dodgy brokerage firm, and believes he has found a shortcut to success. Ben Younger's debut is slick and entertaining, but the story of a man who lets his greed blind him at the expense of his father's respect is just a rehash of Wall Street, even if the influence is acknowledged in one scene.

Bless the Child
2000
*
Director: Chuck Russell
Cast: Kim Basinger, Rufus Sewell, Holliston Coleman, Jimmy Smits, Ian Holm

The clues on a series of child killings point to a group of satan worshippers whose diabolical scheme requires the skills of Basinger's adopted special child. She can spin plates with her mind. Whoa! This horror film takes overused clichés from several different genres and cooks them into a baffling and mind-numbingly awful mess. This tosh is actually not even written for the screen but adapted from a novel by Cathy Cash Spellman.

Billy Elliot
2000
****
Director: Stephen Daldry
Cast: Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Jamie Draven, Gary Lewis, Jean Haywood, Stuart Wells, Nicola Blackwell, Colin Maclachlan, Mike Elliott, Billy Fane, Janine Birkett

Billy Elliot, an 11-year-old boy in a working-class English mining town, discovers a passion for ballet despite his father's disapproval. Billy's story is set against the backdrop of the 1984–1985 miners' strike. This charming feelgood film is simple and heartwarming, but perhaps a bit predictable. Jamie Bell is terrific in his breakthrogh performance. The story was later turned into a stage musical.

Best in Show
2000
***
Director: Christopher Guest
Cast: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey

The cast and crew behind Waiting for Guffman continue in the same mockumentary style. This time they explore the world of dog shows. Not a world-shattering experience, but an enjoyable array of original characters and funny vignettes.

Before Night Falls
2000
****
Director: Julian Schnabel
Cast: Javier Bardem, Olivier Martinez, Andrea Di Stefano,Johnny Depp

The life of a freethinking gay writer in communist Cuba was not a bed of roses. This touching true story covers the life of Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990) from his early years as a revolutionary and celebrated writer to his later years as a political prisoner, all the way to his death from AIDS. An absorbing drama with a star-turning performance from Javier Bardem. Johnny Depp appears in a distracting double role.

Bedazzled
2000
**½
Director: Harold Ramis
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Frances O'Connor, Liz Hurley, Miriam Shor

A nerd sells his soul to the Devil for seven wishes, but things don't work out quite as smoothly as he had hoped. Brendan Fraser is funny in his multiple roles but the story is obvious and repetitive, and the ending is a cop-out. A remake of a 1967 comedy with Dudley Moore, which was equally weak.

The Beach
2000
**½
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoyen, Guillaume Canet

A good-looking but shapeless, pointless and ultimately gutless film about a group of backpackers who discover a tropical paradise and its exclusive commune. The premise has potential for several thought-provoking stories, but this obvious drama aims at the lowest common denominator and puts together a group of uninteresting characters in a beautiful location. Based on Alex Garland's novel.

Batoru Rowaiaru (Battle Royale)
2000
***
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Cast: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Taro Yamamoto, Takeshi Kitano

A biting black comedy and social satire with an entertaining but preposterous premise. Japanese teenagers have gone out of control and a new law is enforced to tackle the problem. A group of kids are transported to a desert island where they must kill each other, only the last one alive goes home. The film has a brilliant shock start, but it eventually turns into a rather tiresome series of imaginative killings.

Barking Dogs Never Bite
2000
**½
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Lee Sung-jae, Bae Doona, Kim Ho-jung, Byun Hee-bong, Go Soo-hee, Kim Roi-ha, Kim Jin-goo

While a jobless college lecturer loses patience with his neighbour's barking dog, he is drawn to a young woman who works as a janitor in his apartment complex. Bong Joon-ho's films often mix tense drama, offbeat humour, and social commentary. Sometimes he gets the balance right (Parasite) and sometimes he doesn't (Memories of Murder). His directorial debut is a tonal mess and it features almost exclusively unpleasant characters.


Bad Luck Love
2000
**
Director: Olli Saarela
Cast: Jorma Tommila, Tommi Eronen, Maria Järvenhelmi, Ilkka Koivula

This crime drama puts a Finnish twist on the clichéd tale of an ex-con who tries to stay on the straight and narrow. That is, blame it all on the society. The film also echoes American History X and Little Odessa, as the protagonist tries to protect his baby brother. However, the over-egged story has barely a plausible moment in it, let alone a character who comes across as a believable human being. The film does have a vibrant look but Saarela could've used other cinematic effects besides slow motion.

Autumn in New York
2000
**
Director: Joan Chen
Cast: Richard Gere, Winona Ryder, Anthony LaPaglia, Elaine Stritch

Richard Gere and Winona Ryder play a pair of unlikely lovers in a weak romantic tearjerker, which is unable to make a case that a man with commitment issues would fall in love with a young woman who is terminally ill, and vice versa.

Anatomie
2000
***
Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Cast: Franka Potente, Benno Fürmann, Anna Loos, Sebastian Blomberg

An entertaining German horror comedy about a medical student who makes a shocking discovery: someone is killing people in order to provide test cases for the anatomy department. This offbeat film feels like a combination of Scream, Coma and The Da Vinci Code.

Amores Perros
2000
****
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Cast: Emilio Echevarria, Gael Garcia Bernal, Goya Toledo, Alvaro Guerrero

Human and canine lives intersect in Mexico City in Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu's feature debut. There's a young man who's in love with his sister-in-law, a successful model who loses her leg and a hermit-like assassin with a tragic past. The film is wonderfully written, acted and directed but feels a bit long at 2½ hours, especially as the three stories don't overlap all that much. Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga examine the same themes in their follow-up films 21 Grams and Babel.

American Psycho
2000
**
Director: Mary Harron
Cast: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon

This adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis' cult novel is a heavy-handed satire on the vacuous lifestyle of the 1980s. Christian Bale seems dreadfully phony as a cleancut New York yuppie who moonlights as a vicious serial killer, or maybe that's the point of his performance.

Almost Famous
2000
*****
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, Jason Lee, Patrick Fugit, Anna Paquin, Frances McDormand, Fairuza Balk, Noah Taylor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Terry Chen, Jimmy Fallon

Cameron Crowe's follow-up to the box office success of Jerry Maguire is a more personal and semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about William, an aspiring 15-year-old music journalist who goes on tour with a fictional rock band called Stillwater in 1973. Although Crowe presents a family friendly version of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, his film is irresistibly funny, charming, and poignant. He won an Academy Award for his screenplay. The soundtrack obviously rocks and the performances are excellent. Kate Hudson is incredibly sweet as a groupie called Penny Lane, Frances McDormand is hilarious as William's overprotective mother, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is terrific as his mentor.

All the Pretty Horses
2000
**
Director: Billy Bob Thornton
Cast: Matt Damon, Penelope Cruz, Henry Thomas, Lucas Black

Apparently Billy Bob Thornton had to cut his film from about four hours down to less than two. That figures when you see this rushed drama about two boys who cross the Mexican border to start a new life. It's literally love at first sight for Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz, and a long, painful bout in prison which lasts about five minutes. A shame really, as this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel clearly has potential.

28 Days
2000
**½
Director: Betty Thomas
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Viggo Mortensen, Dominic West, Elizabeth Perkins

A lame drama about a heavy drinking young woman who is court-ordered to detox. As she joins the programme, the story turns into One Flew Over the Dipso's Nest. The rehab clinic houses a motley group of colourful and amusing addicts. Moments of desperation are followed by moments of laughter and bonding, and the obligatory suicide puts everything into perspective.

The World Is Not Enough
1999
**
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Denise Richards, Judi Dench, Robert Carlyle, Sophie Marceau, Robbie Coltrane, Colin Salmon

007 is assigned to protect a banker's daughter who is constructing an oil pipeline in Azerbaijan, but everything is obviously not as it seems. Pierce Brosnan's third Bond film is a dud. The badly miscast Denise Richards plays a nuclear physicist in hot pants, Judi Dench is overused as M and Robert Carlyle is barely used at all as the villain who cannot feel pain.

Wonderland
1999
**
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Shirley Henderson, Gina McKee, Molly Parker, Ian Hart, John Simm, Stuart Townsend

A gritty drama about three London sisters and their family. The performances are good but you never feel emotionally connected to these characters. Michael Winterbottom takes a stab at pseudo-Dogme filmmaking by using handheld camera and grainy footage.

The Winslow Boy
1999
***
Director: David Mamet
Cast: Nigel Hawthorne, Rebecca Pidgeon, Jeremy Northam, Gemma Jones, Guy Edwards

In 1911 a retired banker is prepared to go to lengths to restore the family's good name after his 13-year-old son is accused of theft. This stagy period drama is well made and acted but not terribly exciting. This must be the first David Mamet film not to feature any foul language, and that's because it's based on Terence Rattigan's 1946 play.

Wild Wild West
1999
**
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Salma Hayek, Ted Levine

Barry Sonnenfeld and Will Smith, Men in Black collaborators, reunite in this misfiring western comedy which offers guns and gadgets but no coherence. The special effects are impressive and aplenty but the jokes are weak and the whole thing doesn't make much sense. Based on the television series The Wild Wild West which ran from 1965 to 1969.

The War Zone
1999
*½
Director: Tim Roth
Cast: Ray Winstone, Tilda Swinton, Lara Belmont, Freddie Cunliffe

Tim Roth's directorial debut, which deals with incest and child abuse in a working class English family, is so utterly depressing, mindnumbingly dull and ridiculously self-important that the film becomes almost unwatchable. There's an endless number of endless shots where the characters walk in the landscape or sit inside the house and stare at the ceiling. These people deserve everything that's coming to them. Adapted from Alexander Stuart's novel.

The Virgin Suicides
1999
***
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Hannah Hall

Sofia Coppola's first film is an offbeat story about a suicidally dysfunctional family. It's clear that she's not out to make a feelgood film, but once it's over you feel oddly indifferent. James Woods is wonderfully cast against type. Adapted from a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. A nice soundtrack by Air.

Tumbleweeds
1999
***½
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Cast: Janet McTeer, Kimberly J. Brown, Jay O. Sanders, Gavin O'Connor

A white trash mother and her teenage daughter move from place to place and settle down only long enough to notice that mom's new boyfriend is no better than the one before. The story is familiar from other films, but this is a surprisingly funny and heartfelt drama, and the lead performances are all excellent.

True Crime
1999
**½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Isaiah Washington, Denis Leary, Lisa Gay Hamilton

A rather predictable crime drama about an elderly journalist and a recovering alcoholic who is convinced that the man about to be executed is innocent. Clint cannot carry a film like he used to, and it's a bit uncomfortable to watch his character hit on 20-year-old girls all through the story. Based on Andrew Klavan's novel.

Toy Story 2
1999
****½
Director: John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Ash Brannon
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Wayne Knight

In the sequel to Toy Story Woody is stolen by a ruthless toy collector who recognizes him as a valuable item. Buzz Lightyear and the other toys gang up for a rescue mission. This wonderful sequel tops the original with its excellent characterisation, hilarious visual gags, and perfect blend of humour and melancholy. The story explores more emotional territories as the toys discover how flimsy their existence can be. Followed by Toy Story 3.

Topsy-Turvy
1999
**½
Director: Mike Leigh
Cast: Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Lesley Manville, Eleanor David

Mike Leigh's greatly overrated fictionalised drama depicts the troubled relationship between W.S. Gilbert and Arthut Sullivan, famed comic opera writers, as they prepare to stage The Mikado in 1885. The film is wonderfully acted and rich in period detail, but at 160 minutes it's monotonous, unfocused and just way too long. The actual show numbers are pure pain. Academy Award winner for best costume design and makeup.

Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother)
1999
***
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penelope Cruz, Antonia San Juan

When a mother loses her son in an accident, she decides go back to her roots in Barcelona and track down the boy's father. Several other women and woman wannabes come into the picture in Almodovar's strongly acted but deliberately obnoxious and overly convoluted drama comedy.

Titus
1999
**
Director: Julia Taymor
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Harry J. Lennix, Alan Cumming

Roman general Titus Andronicus returns from war and pisses off the wrong people. They destroy him and his family, whereupon he swears revenge on them. You could read the story as a warning against retorting to violence with violence, but that would be giving Shakespeare too much credit. It's apparently one of the bard's least admired efforts and one has to wonder what this concoction including rape, mutilation, filicide and "incestuous cannibalism" could possibly have to offer to today's audience. It's as profound as Hannibal.

The Three Kings
1999
***½
Director: David O. Russell
Cast: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze, Nora Dunn

At the end of the Gulf War four American soldiers go in search of Saddam's gold. This "thinking man's Kelly's Heroes" examines the US participation in the conflict and the horrors of war in general. The story is innovative and refreshingly "unjingoistic", and its visual look is strikingly original.

The Thomas Crown Affair
1999
***½
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary, Ben Gazzaram, Frankie Faison

A thoroughly entertaining erotically charged heist movie about a gentleman thief who has an attractive insurance investigator on his trail once he steals a priceless Monet painting. This is a classy grown-up caper, but how exactly does Thomas Crown pull of his final stunt? Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo are bnth very sexy. This is a remake of a 1968 film starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.

Thick As Thieves
1999
**
Director: Scott Sanders
Cast: Alec Baldwin, Andre Braugher, Michael Jai White, Rebecca De Mornay

The influence of Quentin Tarantino and Elmore Leonard (cool criminals talking about nothing) is too obvious in this lazy and pointless crime film about two feuding career criminals. Adapted from Patrick Quinn's novel.

Tarzan
1999
***
Director: Chris Buck, Kevin Lima
Cast: Tony Goldwyn, Minnie Driver, Glenn Close, Lance Henriksen, Brian Blessed

This Disney version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan story is a visually superlative 2D animation, but its script is utterly and completely formulaic. The story is familiar to everyone, so it would be nice to have at least one surprising turn in the course of events. "You'll Be in My Heart" by Phil Collins won an Academy Award for best song.

The Talented Mr. Ripley
1999
****
Director: Anthony Minghella
Cast: Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Jack Davenport

Tom Ripley is a compulsive liar who is desperate to become a somebody. He gets his chance when a wealthy tycoon hires him to retrieve his son from Italy, but Tom becomes dangerously enamoured by the man and his lifestyle. Anthony Minghella's Hitchcockian thriller is classy and captivating, but way too long. Tom Ripley is a wonderfully intriguing and complex character, and Matt Damon gives one of his finest performances playing the man. He reappears in the unrelated Ripley's Game. Adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel, which was previously filmed as Purple Noon in 1960.

Sweet and Lowdown
1999
***½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Sean Penn, Samantha Morton, Uma Thurman, Brian Markinson

Woody Allen's sweet mockumentary tells the story of Emmet Ray, an egotistical but talented jazz guitarist, wonderfully played by Sean Penn. This great looking comedy keeps you smiling all the way through. Samantha Morton gives a terrific breakthrough performance as a mute girl.

Summer of Sam
1999
***½
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: John Leguizamo, Mira Sorvino, Adrien Brody, Jennifer Espositom Michael Rispoli, Saverio Guerra, Brian Tarantina, Al Palagonia, Ken Garito, Bebe Neuwirth, Patti LuPone, Mike Starr, Anthony LaPaglia

While a serial killer known as Son of Sam terrorises New York City during the scorching summer of 1977, emotions run high in an Italian-American neighborhood of the Bronx. Spike Lee's rich and colourful slice of fictionalised history concentrates on two childhood friends who are drifting apart. The film is well crafted and wonderfully acted, but also excessively long and foulmouthed, and therefore exhausting.

Stuart Little
1999
***
Director: Rob Minkoff
Cast: Geena Davis, Hugh Laurie, Jeffrey Jones, Jonathan Lipnicki

An enjoyable and heart-warming children's film about a family who adopt a tiny orphan mouse. The best thing about the story is that everyone (except the cat) accepts Stuart as a member of a human family and no explanations are provided. Stuart, who is computer-generated, is very life-like and nicely voiced by Michael J. Fox. Based on E. B. White's novel. Followed by sequels in 2002 and 2006.

The Straight Story
1999
*****
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Harry Dean Stanton, Everett McGill

Richard Farnsworth is superb as an old man who makes a cross-country trip on his lawnmower in order to to see his ailing brother. On this journey he is able to exchange thoughts with an array of characters. David Lynch's most conventional film to date is touching, intelligent and atmospheric, the latter of which is greatly helped by Angelo Badalamenti's beautiful score. This is probably the slowest moving road movie ever made. Based on a true story.

The Story of Us
1999
**½
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Bruce Willis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rob Reiner, Tim Matheson, Rita Wilson

A predictable and manipulative but surprisingly watchable drama about breakup. There are some poignant and moving moments (for example, when the husband has to ring his own doorbell during the separation), but also many syrupy turns and an embarrassing ending.

Stir of Echoes
1999
***½
Director: David Koepp
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Erbe, Kevin Dunn, Illeana Douglas, Liza Weil, Jennifer Morrison, Lusia Strus

A snappy thriller about a man who begins to experience strange, unsettling visions after he undergoes hypnosis. This is a smart, funny and surprising film, even if its story is ultimately quite similar to The Sixth Sense, which came out in the same year. Loosely based on Richard Matheson's novel A Stir of Echoes.

Stigmata
1999
**
Director: Rupert Wainwright
Cast: Patricia Arquette, Gabriel Byrne, Jonathan Pryce, Nia Long

A weak and monotonous horror film about a young unreligious female who becomes the unlikely victim of stigmata. The story throws in a Gospel by Jesus and some Catholic conspiracies, but it never really convinces at any point.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
1999
**
Director: George Lucas
Cast: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, Ian McDiarmid, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Pernilla August, Frank Oz

George Lucas is back behind the camera in the fourth Star Wars film, which is the first episode in the entire saga. Obi-Wan Kenobi meets the young Anakin Skywalker, the future Darth Vader and the father of Luke and Leia. The film looks terrific but its story lacks drive, its performances are wooden and its dialogue is mostly gibberish. Since the first trilogy, Lucas has fallen in love with the possibilities of CGI, and the resulting action scenes feel like a computer game. Followed by Attack of the Clones.

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
1999
***
Director: Trey Parker
Cast: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Mary Kay Bergman, Isaac Hayes

Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman see an offensive Canadian film called Asses of Fire. This cinema visit eventually escalates to a full-blown war between the U.S. and Canada. Just like South Park, the television show, this feature length animation is hilarious in small doses but exhausting as a whole. The soundtrack offers plenty of amusing tracks, though.

Snow Falling On Cedars
1999
***
Director: Scott Hicks
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Max von Sydow, James Cromwell, Richard Jenkins

When a local fisherman in the Pacific Northwest is found killed, all fingers point at Kazuo Miyamoto, and the case rekindles the memories of the internment of Japanese American citizens during WW2.
The story is based on David Guterson's excellent novel, but on film this murder mystery/tragic romance is a somewhat lackluster affair. However, cinematographer Robert Richardson creates
some staggeringly beautiful images.

Sleepy Hollow
1999
***½
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Michael Gambon, Miranda Richardson

In 1799 eccentric detective Ichabod Crane travels to the village of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of decapitations. The locals believe that Headless Horseman is behind the murders. The story, which was inspired by Washington Irving's short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is not terribly interesting but Tim Burton's horror fantasy is enjoyable, and visually one of the most beautiful films ever made.

The Sixth Sense
1999
*****
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Bruce Willis, Haley-Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams

This haunting, atmospheric and brilliantly crafted thriller turned M. Night Shyamalan into a household name overnight. The story is gripping throughout but most famous for its shock ending which forces you to reassess everything you've just seen. Bruce Willis plays a psychiatrist who tries to help a young troubled boy. Haley Joel Osment is spectacular as the boy, who believes he can see dead people. Shyamalan's career has been continuous downfall since this stunning film.

Runaway Bride
1999
**½
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Hector Elizondo, Joan Cusack, Rita Wilson

Julia Roberts and Richard Gere reunite nine years after Pretty Woman in an overlong but relatively enjoyable romantic comedy. Julia Roberts is the same as ever as a bride who has the habit of running away at the last moment, but Richard Gere as a persistent reporter has rarely been this likeable.

Rukajärven tie (Ambush)
1999
**
Director: Olli Saarela
Cast: Peter Franzén, Irina Björklund, Kari Heiskanen, Taisto Reimaluoto

A love drama about a couple who are torn apart by war. Or, if you will, a war film that is interrupted by romantic interludes. Either way, this is a long, dull and dreary watch. The story is implausible more than once and the supporting characters are never properly fleshed out. Freely adapted from Antti Tuuri's book.

Ride with the Devil
1999
***
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jewel, Jeffrey Wright, Jim Caviezel

Ang Lee's interesting but slightly trivial drama follows a group of southern guerrillas during the Civil War. Jeffrey Wright gives a strong performance as a quiet freed slave who also fights against the Yankees.

Ravenous
1999
***
Director: Antonia Bird
Cast: Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, Jeffrey Jones, David Arquette

In the mid 19th century a mysterious man arrives in a military fort to recite his terrible story; he was part of a wagon train which got lost and the people had to resort to cannibalism in order to survive. However, this is only the beginning. This gruesome, mythical black comedy is definitely original, although there's maybe a twist too many on the way to its unpleasant finale.

Random Hearts
1999
**½
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Charles S. Dutton, Bonnie Hunt

A mediocre romantic drama about two people who are brought together by a plane crash which killed their respective partners, who were incidentally having an affair with each other. Sydney Pollack's drama makes some poignant notions but he cannot reign in the overlong narrative, and the resulting film is all over the place. Based on Warren Adler's novel.

Pushing Tin
1999
**
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Angelina Jolie, Cate Blanchett

John Cusack plays a cocky air traffic controller who gets into a macho battle with his new colleague. This meandering and pointless mix of character drama and romantic comedy seems to go on forever.

Payback
1999
**½
Director: Brian Helgeland
Cast: Mel Gibson, Gregg Henry, Maria Bello, James Coburn, William Devane

A cold and cynical remake of John Boorman's Point Blank, which in turn was based on Donald E. Westlake's crime novel The Hunter. Mel Gibson plays a thug who was double-crossed, but now he's back to reclaim his money. The protagonist basically kills everyone in his way, which becomes monotonous after a while.

The Out-of-Towners
1999
*½
Director: Sam Weisman
Cast: Steve Martin, Goldie Hawn, John Cleese, Mark McKinney, Oliver Hudson

A middle-aged Ohio couple travel to New York City for his job interview, but not one thing seems to go their way. This remake of a 1970 film starring Jack Lemmon has some promising verbal exchanges in the first few minutes, but it's steep downhill from there onwards. A series of unfunny stand-alone mishaps and misunderstandings ensue and they are all supposedly held together by the slogan "only in New York".

Office Space
1999
***½
Director: Mike Judge
Cast: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, Diedrich Bader, Gary Cole, Stephen Roo, John C. McGinley

Mike Judge made his name with the animations Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill. His live action debut is based on the Milton cartoons he made for Saturday Night Live. The story is set in the offices of a bureaucratic and hierachical software company. Peter, a programmer who hates his boring job, takes part in an unfinished session of hypnotherapy which gives him a whole new outlook on life. Those who have worked in a cubicle will enjoy the comedy Judge draws out of banality, those who haven't will find it pretty dull. This satire is enjoyable but it starts to lose its bite towards the end when Peter and his colleagues plot a revenge on their employer.

Ōdishon (Audition)
1999
****
Director: Takashi Miike
Cast: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki, Juri Kunimura

A widower and his movie producer friend stage a fake audition in order to find him the perfect wife candidate. The man is completely spellbound by a young beautiful woman with some questionable holes in her CV. The film starts as a somewhat banal romantic comedy as these two awkward, deceitful people are slowly drawn to one another. Then the story takes a turn that defies all expectations, which leads to incredibly intense final 30 minutes. Is this really happening or is it just a bad dream? Miike throws this old storytelling gimmick on its head, as well. His film may be literally one of the most painful lessons in what happens if you treat women without respect. Based on a novel by Ryu Murakami.

Notting Hill
1999
***½
Director: Roger Michell
Cast: Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, Rhys Ifans, Hugh Bonneville, Emma Chambers

The team behind Four Weddings and a Funeral, producer Duncan Kenworthy, writer Richard Curtis and star Hugh Grant, reunite in a charming but by now formulaic romantic comedy about an English bookseller who falls in love with the world's biggest movie star, played by the world's biggest movie star Julia Roberts.

The Ninth Gate
1999
***
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Frank Langella, Lena Olin, Emmanuelle Seigner,

A rare book expert is hired to track down a book co-written by Satan. This creepy thriller has an ominous atmosphere and it looks terrific, but the story doesn't make much sense in the end. Polanski could also have paid some attention to (trivial) details: the alleged expert played by Johnny Depp drinks coffee and/or smokes cigarettes over priceless editions all through the film. Based on the novel El Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

Never Been Kissed
1999
**
Director: Raja Gosnell
Cast: Drew Barrymore, David Arquette, Michael Vartan, John C. Reilly

A nerdish 25-year-old journo wannabe goes undercover to write a story about the life of a high school student, and finds herself reliving the nightmare of being an unpopular 17-year-old. This preposterous and awkwardly unfunny crowd-pleaser doesn't offer anything original, just the usual array of clichéd characters: the popular girls who are bimbos, the cool guy who is not that smart, the bright but socially awkward nerds, and the inspirational English teacher.

Mystery Men
1999
**
Director: Kinka Usher
Cast: Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Hank Azaria, Janeane Garofalo, Wes Studi

Captain Amazing is in trouble and a group of second rate superhero wannabes decide to save the day. This comic book parody cannot live up to its initial promise. The jokes miss more often than they hit and, all in all, it's an infernally noisy mess. Based on Flaming Carrot Comics by Bob Burden.

My Life So Far
1999
**½
Director: Hugh Hudson
Cast: Colin Firth, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Malcolm McDowell, Irene Jacob

A cliched coming-of-age tale set in Scotland in the 1920s, narrated by a young boy in the usual I-was-never-the-same-after-that-summer tradition. This story of a quirky family is likeable but not interesting or original enough to be worth your while. The actors and accents are from all over the world, so it's difficult to take the group as a Scottish family.

The Mummy
1999
**
Director: Stephen Sommers
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo

In the 1920s an English Egyptologist and an American adventurer join forces to battle a cursed mummy who comes back to life. This archaeological adventure film (read: Indiana Jones rip-off) starts well and it looks terrific, but it turns dreadfully stupid and repetitive very fast. Followed by The Mummy Returns two years later.

Mifunes sidste sang (Mifune / Mifune's Last Song)
1999
***
Director: Soren Kragh-Jacobsen
Cast: Anders W. Berthelsen, Iben Hjejle, Jesper Asholt, Emil Tarding

A young man returns to the countryside and recruits a prostitute to take care of his retarded brother. This offbeat Danish drama is enjoyable, even though it tries to tackle one too many issues in its 90ish minutes. The film was made under the rules of Dogme 95.

Mickey Blue Eyes
1999
**½
Director: Kelly Makin
Cast: Hugh Grant, Jeanne Tripplehorn, James Caan, Burt Young

A bumbling English art auctioneer is unknowingly about to marry to a mob family. Some mildly funny misunderstandings ensue but, all in all, this is a rather lame comedy in the vein of Analyze This. Hugh Grant is dreadfully unconvincing in the lead.

Message in a Bottle
1999
**
Director: Luis Mandoki
Cast: Kevin Costner, Robin Wright-Penn, Paul Newman, John Savage

A lame, sombre and overlong tearjerker about a woman who falls in love with a taciturn widower who sent bottled love letters to his dying wife. Paul Newman plays the man's father and he provides some badly needed humour to the proceedings. The contrived and frankly ultra-conservative ending finally spoils it all. Adapted from a novel by Nicholas Sparks.

Mein liebster Feind (My Best Fiend)
1999
****
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast:

Calling Klaus Kinski difficult is a gross understatement. Werner Herzog's delightfully entertaining documentary charts his tempestuous relationship with the diva. Kinski's famous tantrums are in the forefront, but the purpose is not to ridicule the man but to pay homage to his great talent.

The Matrix
1999
*****
Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss,Hugo Weaving

Reality as we know it is nothing but an illusion created by the machines, who have in fact enslaved the people. A hacker named Neo learns that he has a key role to play in liberating the mankind. The Wachowskis have written and directed a highly original and visually groundbreaking science fiction action film which mixes oriental philosophy with kung-fu action, among many other things. Followed by two inferior sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.

Man on the Moon
1999
****
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: Jim Carrey, Courtney Love, Danny DeVito, Paul Giamatti, Vincent Schiavelli, Peter Bonerz, Jerry Lawler, Gerry Becker, Leslie Lyles, George Shapiro, Richard Belzer, Patton Oswalt

Milos Forman's biopic chronicles the life of cult entertainer Andy Kaufman, who became famous for his elaborate and anarchistic hoaxes, which stretched the definition of comedy. This funny and unusual but somewhat exhausting film explores Kaufman's eccentricities and his performance art, but mostly skips past his personal life. Jim Carrey gives a superb performance as this one-of-a-kind character. Carrey's dedication to the role is depicted in Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017), documentary by Chris Smith.

Magnolia
1999
*****
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Jason Robards, Julianne Moore, Philip Baker Hall, Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Melora Walters, Jeremy Blackman

Paul Thomas Anderson's amazing tapestry of intertwining lives centres around two patriarchs who are both dying of cancer. The other people in the story are not dying, but they aren't doing much better. This long and extremely powerful (but admittedly depressing) drama is reminiscent of Robert Altman's Short Cuts, only better. Tom Cruise is a revelation as a misogynistic motivational speaker but the performances are excellent throughout. The soundtrack by Aimee Mann is ingeniously incorporated into the narrative.

A Love Divided
1999
**
Director: Sydney Macartney
Cast: Liam Cunnigham, Orla Brady, Sarah Bolger, Nicole Bohan, Ali White

This love drama about a marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant in 1950s Ireland is based on a true story. The film is sympathetic but hopelessly sluggish and uninvolving. Liam Cunningham comes from the Jack Nicholson school of acting, and he tries to do everything with his eyebrows.

Limey
1999
**
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Terence Stamp, Peter Fonda, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzman

Steven Soderbergh adopts a self-consciously artsy visual style in an attempt to breathe life into a lifeless story about an Englishman who goes to Los Angeles to find out how his daughter died. All in vain, I'm afraid.

Limbo
1999
****½
Director: John Sayles
Cast: Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, David Strathairn, Vanessa Martinez, Hermínio Ramos, Kris Kristofferson, Dawn McInturff

John Sayles' hypnotic and unpredictable film is set in Alaska. It starts as an intimate romantic drama about the relationship between a reserved man and an edgy nightclub singer, but turns into a survival story as the couple and her estranged daughter get stranded in the wilderness. The story comes with a terrific ending which, depending on your taste, will either stay in your mind for days or ruin the film.

Lake Placid
1999
**
Director: Steve Miner
Cast: Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson

David E. Kelley is well known for his funny and smart TV shows. His first film screenplay is a rehash of monster film clichés as it tells a story of a giant crocodile who terrorises the community around a small lake in Maine. Not funny enough to work as a comedy, and not bad enough to work as an unintentional comedy.

Kulkuri Ja Joutsen
1999
**½
Director: Timo Koivusalo
Cast: Martti Suosalo, Tapio Liinoja, Heikki Nousiainen, Anna Haaranen

A nicely made but very superficial biopic of Finnish folk singer and national idol Tapio Rautavaara. Martti Suosalo is excellent as his songwriting partner Reino Helismaa.

Juha
1999
****½
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Sakari Kuosmanen, Kati Outinen, Markku Peltola, André Wilms, Elina Salo, Ona Kamu, Outi Mäenpää, Tuire Tuomisto, Esko Nikkari

Juha and Marja are a happily married couple who work their farm. One day, a suave city slicker ends up at their house and seduces Marja with a promise of a better life. Aki Kaurismäki's adaptation of Juhani Aho's 1911 novel tells a tragic and surprisingly moving tale of love, betrayal, and redemption. Kaurismäki tells this story as a black and white silent film, a bold and creative choice not repeated until Michel Hazanavicius made The Artist (2011), Anssi Tikanmäki's omnipresent score is a bit of a mixed bag.

Joan of Arc / The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
1999
***
Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway

A pompous but visually dazzling biopic of Joan, a 15th century teenager who believed she was on a mission from God to liberate France. Luc Besson stages some stunning battle sequences but the overlong heresy trial towards the end leaves a bad aftertaste. Milla Jovovich is amazingly commanding in the difficult lead role.

Iron Giant
1999
****
Director: Brad Bird
Cast: Eli Marienthal, Jennifer Aniston, Vin Diesel, Christopher McDonald

A charming old school 2D animation about a young boy who befriends a gigantic robot from outer space. The story is reminiscent of E.T., but this one is wonderfully set against the backdrop of the 1950s communist paranoia. Based on the novel The Iron Man by Ted Hughes.

Instinct
1999
**½
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Donald Sutherland, Maura Tierney

Anthony Hopkins plays an anthropologist accused of killing park rangers and Cuba Gooding Jr. is a psychiatrist who tries to get inside his head. Both actors try their best, but this is a rather lifeless drama which builds up to a climax that doesn't pay off. The patients in the mental hospital represent your typical Hollywood selection of wacky and likeable nuts. Inspired by the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

Inspector Gadget
1999
*½
Director: David Kellogg
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Rupert Everett, Joely Fisher, Michelle Trachtenberg

A wounded police officer is built into a supercop with the help of the latest technology, in this case CGI. This truly unfunny but delightfully short "Robocop-for-kids" is another fine example of special effects acting as narrative. Rupert Everett is appalling as the villain. Based on an animated television series.

The Insider
1999
****
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora

Russell Crowe gives one of his finest performances as a scientist whose decision to become a tobacco industry whistleblower ends up destroying his life. Al Pacino is also in fine form for a change as a TV producer who wants to break the story. Michael Mann's real-life drama is sharp and captivating, but also somewhat dry and academic. Adapted from the book The Man Who Knew Too Much by Marie Brenner.

In Dreams
1999
**
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Annette Bening, Robert Downey Jr., Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea

Annette Bening plays a wife and mother whose violent dreams about a serial killer turn out to be real. Psychological thrillers are not Neil Jordan's oeuvre, perhaps that's why he fails miserably with this story that doesn’t even try to make sense. Based on Bari Wood's novel Doll's Eyes.

An Ideal Husband
1999
**
Director: Oliver Parker
Cast: Rubert Everett, Jeremy Northam, Cate Blanchett, Minnie Driver

Corruption, blackmail, and old and new lovers are all par for the course in an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play. The cast is wonderful, apart from the badly miscast Minnie Driver, but they are all wasted in this dreadfully artificial romantic comedy.

The Hurricane
1999
***½
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Denzel Washington, Vicellous Reon Shannon, Deborah Kara Unger

Denzel Washington is better than ever in this gripping true story about a man who was jailed for 20 years for a crime he had nothing to do with. Like A Beautiful Mind the screenplay turns this slightly conflicted character into a total innocent. Based on the books Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Freeing of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter by Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton and The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to #45472 by Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

Holy Smoke
1999
**
Director: Jane Campion
Cast: Kate Winslet, Harvey Keitel, Julie Hamilton, Tim Robertson

Jane Campion's poorly scripted drama about a young woman who experiences a spiritual awakening. The story is unfocused and it never pulls you in. However, Harvey Keitel and Kate Winslet give solid performances.

History Is Made at Night / Spy Games
1999
**
Director: Ilkka Järvi-Laturi
Cast: Bill Pullman, Irene Jacob, Bruno Kirby, Glenn Plummer, Udo Kier

A high quality international cast is wasted in this instantly forgettable spy drama about an American and Russian intelligence agents who join forces on their mission in Finland.

Heart
1999
*½
Director: Charles McDougall
Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Saskia Reeves, Kate Hardie, Rhys Ifans

A grieving mother becomes obsessed with a man who received her dead son's heart in a transplant operation. Such an intriguing premise, but what an absolute disaster for a film. Scripted by Jim McGovern, the man behind Priest.

The Haunting
1999
**
Director: Jan De Bont
Cast: Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Owen Wilson, Lily Taylor

A remake of a 1963 horror film about a group of people who gather in a haunted mansion for a psychological study. Jan De Bont turns the thrill screw slowly and effectively in the first hour, but then swamps everything in impressive but overpowering computer effects.

Happy, Texas
1999
**½
Director: Mark Illsley
Cast: Jeremy Northam, Steve Zahn, William H. Macy, Ally Walker, Illeana Douglas

Two fugitives hide in a small Texas town and pretend to be a pair of gay beauty pageant specialists. This comedy mixes humour based on mistaken identity with some fish out of water elements. While the results are amusing at times, the story is painfully predictable.

Häjyt (The Tough Ones)
1999
***
Director: Aleksi Mäkelä
Cast: Juha Veijonen, Samuli Edelmann, Sari Havas, Kalevi Haapoja, Eero Aho

Two troublemakers are released from prison and they're back to their old ways in no time, blaming anyone but themselves for their actions. This Finnish film is not always plausible but it's consistently entertaining. It's far more successful with its dramatic elements than with its somewhat uncomfortable comedy. The characters are based on legendary real-life thugs.

Grey Owl
1999
**
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Annie Galipeau, Nathaniel Arcand, Vlasta Vrana

A likeable but deeply flawed romantic drama about a real-life Native American environmentalist Grey Owl who turned out to be an impostor. The first hour in the film is all over the place, but it gets its act together a bit in the second half.

The Green Mile
1999
****½
Director: Frank Darabont
Cast: Tom Hanks, David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Clarke Duncan, James Cromwell, Michael Jeter, Graham Greene, Doug Hutchison, Sam Rockwell, Barry Pepper, Jeffrey DeMunn, Patricia Clarkson, Harry Dean Stanton

Frank Darabont attempts and partially succeeds in repeating the magic of The Shawshank Redemption with another prison-set period film adapted from Stephen King's book. Tom Hanks plays a death row corrections officer who begins to question the guilt of a gigantic but child-like black inmate, who was sentenced to death for the murder of two small girls. This gripping and moving drama provides a brutal condemnation of capital punishment, much like Dead Man Walking. At three hours, the film is long and occasionally over-sentimental. However, the performances are great and Michael Clarke Duncan, in particular, is a revelation.

Go
1999
***
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Katie Holmes, Sarah Polley, Desmond Askew, Taye Diggs

This entertaining crime film tells the story of one drug deal from four points of view in an unchronological order. The Pulp Fiction influences are blatantly obvious, although these intertwining storylines do not gel quite as neatly.

Girl, Interrupted
1999
***
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg, Jared Leto

In the late 1960s Susanna checks in to a mental institution where she befriends the deeply troubled Lisa. Winona Ryder and the Oscar winning Angelina Jolie give creditable performances as the two ladies. However, it's a bit unclear what the point of the whole story is. So the narrator could write a book about it? Well she did. The film is based on Susanna Kaysen's memoir.

The General's Daughter
1999
**
Director: Simon West
Cast: John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe, James Cromwell, Timothy Hutton, Leslie Stefanson, Clarence Williams III, James Woods

Two officers in the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command are assigned to investigate the brutal rape and murder of a general's daughter, who was in the service herself. This morally dubious thriller portrays the victim in such a negative light that it becomes almost irrelevant who the culprit is. Simon West's visual style (gun shells flying in slow motion) suits an action films but not a crime drama like this. Based on Nelson DeMille's novel.

Galaxy Quest
1999
***½
Director: Dean Parisot
Cast: Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam RockWell, Daryl Mitchell, Enrico Colantoni, Robin Sachs, Justin Long, Missi Pyle

The washed-up stars of a cult science fiction show are mistaken for real intergalactic heroes and transported to space to broker peace with an evil war lord. This comedy takes its time to get going, but it offers delightful parody of science fiction and its fan culture, but also delivers laughs to people who are not scifi nerds.


The Five Senses
1999
***
Director: Jeremy Podeswa
Cast: Mary-Louise Parker, Pascale Bussieres, Richard Clarkin, Brendan Fletcher, Gabrielle Rose, Molly Parker

A moderately successful tapestry of intertwining lives linked by an apartment building in a Canadian city. Some story strands are more interesting than others, but all of them are well-acted.

Fight Club
1999
**½
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Jared Leto, Holt McCallany, Zach Grenier, Eion Bailey, Peter Iacangelo, Thom Gossom Jr.

An insomniac disillusioned with his mundane life and an enigmatic soap salesman form an underground fight club, which evolves into an anarchic and subversive movement. David Fincher's most celebrated work is a smart, thought-provoking, and cynical dark comedy that deals with consumerism, toxic masculinity, mental health, and identity. However, I have always found the film easier to admire than to enjoy. Jim Uhls scripted from Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel, and there is no denying that Fincher has directed it all with a verve and creativity.

Felicia's Journey
1999
****
Director: Atom Egoyan
Cast: Bob Hoskins, Arsinee Khanjian, Elaine Cassidy, Sheila Reid

A haunting drama about a pregnant Irish girl who comes to England in search of her boyfriend, but ends up getting help from a seemingly goodhearted older man. This is an intelligent film with a credible multi-layered villain, wonderfully portrayed by Bob Hoskins. Based on William Trevor's novel.

Eyes Wide Shut
1999
****
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Marie Richardson

In a fit of jealousy a New York doctor goes out into the night on a surreal journey. Stanley Kubrick's final film may not rank among his best works, but it's an intriguing and disturbing study of jealousy, all the same. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who were married at the time, star as a couple. Based on
Arthur Schnitzler's novella Dream Story.

Existenz
1999
**
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Jennifer Jason Liegh, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm, Don McKellar, Callum Keith Rennie, Sarah Polley, Christopher Eccleston

eXistenZ is a virtual reality game people play through organic pods which are plugged into the bio-ports in their back. Following an assassination attempt, the game's designer Allegra Geller and a complete gaming novice escape inside her creation to discover what is happening. Like The Matrix, David Cronenberg's futuristic film teeters between reality and alternate reality, which makes its twists pretty predictable. The Wachowski brothers produced a groundbreaking visual feast, Cronenberg gives us a worst example of a shoestring-budget scifi movie which cannot afford to show, so it must tell. The game he depicts is so incredibly and implausibly dull that the whole premise falls apart right there. The rest of the film is so full of the director's recurring motifs (bodily fluids, organs and orifices) that it becomes almost comical.

End of the Affair
1999
***½
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore, Steven Rea, Ian Hart, Jason Isaacs

Neil Jordan's classy adaptation of Graham Greene's autobiographical novel about faith, infidelity and jealousy. This is a beautiful, touching drama about a writer whose affair with a married woman ends abruptly and leaves him heartbroken. The performances by Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes are terrific.



End of Days
1999
*½
Director: Peter Hyams
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Robin Tunney, Kevin Pollak

On the eve of the millennium Satan must impregnate a young woman in order to rule the world. Arnie plays a security specialist and Christ figure Jericho Cane (J.C. - get it?) who has lost his faith in God but is determined to foil the plan just for the hell of it. This is a long, silly and illogical action film in which the Devil alternates between clueless and allpowerful, depending on what the plot machination requires. God is absent from all of this, although the ultimate message is that one should have faith in Him.

Election
1999
****
Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Broderick, Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell, Phil Reeves, Molly Hagan, Colleen Camp, Nicholas D'Agosto, Jeanine Jackson, Holmes Osborne, Mark Harelik

As his personal life lies in ruins, a mild-mannered schoolteacher finds himself at odds with an entitled overachiever who runs for student body president. Alexander Payne's dark satire on ambition and ethics is dry, smart, and funny. The characters are wonderful, and Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon are the standouts in a great cast. Based on Tom Perrotta's 1998 novel.

EdTv
1999
**½
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson, Martin Landau

True TV launches a new reality show which follows the life of a regular guy 24/7. The show becomes a hit when its star Ed falls in love with his brother's girlfriend on live television. Ron Howard's modest satire is The Truman Show Lite, so to speak. It takes a more conventional approach to making a TV show out of someone's life, but, as plausible as the concept sounds, you cannot believe these characters for one minute.

East Is East
1999
***
Director: Damien O'Donnell
Cast: Om Puri, Linda Bassett, Jordan Routledge, Archie Panjabi

The Pakistani father wants his children to respect their cultural heritage, but it's difficult when they live in the UK. This amiable culture clash story cannot quite find the balance between humour and drama. Om Puri is great as the stubborn patriarch.

Drop Dead Gorgeous
1999
*½
Director: Michael Patrick Jann
Cast: Kirstie Alley, Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards, Ellen Barkin, Allison Janney, Sam McMurray, Mindy Sterling, Brittany Murphy, Amy Adams

What's worse than a comedy that thinks it's funny but isn't? A comedy that thinks it's funny and smart but isn't. The American obsession with beauty pageants is a fruitful topic, but this embarrassingly unsubtle comedy about mothers and daughters who will do anything to win goes over the top with every single joke.

Double Jeopardy
1999
**½
Director: Bruce Beresford
Cast: Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Greenwood, Annabeth Gish

Ashley Judd gives another strong performance as a betrayed woman who seeks revenge on her husband who framed her for his murder. However, the story and its conclusion offer very few surprises. Tommy Lee Jones plays the heroine's parole officer, and he simply repeats his role from The Fugitive. The title of the film refers to the clause which guarantees that a person cannot be tried twice for the same offence.

Dogma
1999
*
Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris Rock, Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman

It's difficult to comprehend the controversy over Kevin Smith's comedy on Catholicism. I doubt many of the religious zealots actually managed to watch this turkey to the end. The story about two fallen angels who try to get back to Heaven is as funny as cancer and as thought-provoking as all the other Kevin Smith movies. It's Shit Demon, like one of its characters.

Detroit Rock City
1999
*½
Director: Adam Rifkin
Cast: Giuseppe Andrews, James DeBello, Edward Furlong, Sam Huntington, Lin Shaye, Melanie Lynskey, Natasha Lyonne

In 1978 Kiss is playing in Detroit and four teenage airheads are desperate to see their favourite band's gig. If only they didn't face so many obstacles. This inane and utterly laughless comedy plays out like a teenage boy's wet dream; all four guys score with a hot chick while trying to secure a ticket to the concert. The soundtrack has a number of classic rock tunes, unfortunately most of them play only for about 5 seconds.

The Deep End of the Ocean
1999
**
Director: Ulu Grosbard
Cast: Michelle Pfeiffer, Treat Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Jonathan Jackson

An appalling tearjerker about a couple whose son is kidnapped, only to turn up on their doorstep nine years later. Stories this cheesy are usually reserved for TV movies of the week. Decent actors (Michelle Pfeiffer, Treat Williams) are completely wasted. Adapted from Jacquelyn Mitchard's novel.

Deep Blue Sea
1999
**½
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, Samuel L. Jackson, Stellan Skarsgard, Ll Cool J, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport

This fairly entertaining but instantly forgettable thriller recycles Jurassic Park, Jaws and a bunch of generic clichés into a story about genetically enhanced sharks who escape from an underwater research facility during a storm. These sharks can, for example, switch on an oven because they are super intelligent. Yeah, right! Albert Einstein wasn't able to do it until he saw his mom do it first. A mix of a and B list actors offer a varying standard of performances.

Cruel Intentions
1999
**
Director: Roger Kumble
Cast: Ryan Philippe, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Selma Blair

A rich bitch and her step-brother make a wager at the expense of two girls in this heavy-handed teen market update of Dangerous Liaisons, which itself was based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' book. The film is slick but who are you supposed to root for in this story when the perpetrators and the victims are all equally unpleasant? Followed by two direct-to-DVD sequels.

Crazy in Alabama
1999
**½
Director: Antonio Banderas
Cast: Melanie Griffith, David Morse, Lucas Black, Cathy Moriarty, Meat Loaf

Antonio Banderas' directorial debut is a messy but watchable comedy drama about a woman from Alabama who kills her husband and travels to Hollywood with his head in a box. Her nephew has problems of his own and he narrates a usual "that summer changed my life" story. There are some poignant bits but all the elements don't come together, the ending is especially unsatisfactory. Mark Childress adapted his own novel.

Cradle Will Rock
1999
**½
Director: Tim Robbins
Cast: Hank Azaria, Cherry Jones, John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Cary Elwes

In 1937 Orson Welles prepared to stage the musical The Cradle Will Rock on Broadway. Tim Robbins' ambitious and fascinating drama attempts to tell the story of this production, but he also takes some artistic liberties to throw communist witchhunts, workers' movement and other events of the time in the concoction. Sadly the finished film is overlong and muddled.

Cookie's Fortune
1999
**
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Charles S. Dutton, Chris O'Donnell

Glenn Close and Julianne Moore are frankly awful as two sisters who try to conceal their aunt's potentially shameful suicide in a small Mississippi town. Robert Altman's drama comedy is sympathetic but hopelessly dull and seemingly pointless.

The Cider House Rules
1999
***
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Michael Caine, Charlize Theron, Delroy Lindo

John Irving's Oscar winning screenplay contains only the bare bones of his sprawling novel about a boy who grows up in an orphanage where people get rid of their unwanted children, before or after giving birth. The resulting film is moving and well-acted but somewhat rushed and trivial. Michael Caine won an Academy Award for his warm performance as the head of the orphanage.

Buena Vista Social Club
1999
***½
Director: Wim Wenders
Cast:

Musician Ry Cooder cut a surprise hit record with legendary but nearly forgotten Cuban musicians. In this enlightening if a bit monotonous documentary we see the band in the studio, on stage and on the streets of Havana telling their respective stories.

Bringing Out the Dead
1999
****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames

Martin Scorsese paints the screen with vivid colours and arresting images as he revisits the seedy underworld of New York City in this companion piece to Taxi Driver. This is also scripted by Paul Schrader, this time from Joe Connelly's book. Nicolas Cage plays a depressed and insomniac paramedic who looks for redemption. A darkly comic but slightly episodic film.

Boys Don't Cry
1999
***
Director: Kimberly Peirce
Cast: Hilary Swank, Chloe Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Brendam Sexton III

Brandon Teena was born Teena Brandon, and she met her violent end at the hands of a Nebraskan redneck in 1993. The Oscar winning Hillary Swank is extraordinary as the transgender female. The film, however, is tragic but somewhat uninvolving. It's very difficult to comprehend what's going through the minds of most of the characters, true story though this may be.

Bowfinger
1999
**½
Director: Frank Oz
Cast: Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Heather Graham, Christine Baranski

Steve Martin's heavy-handed and rarely funny Hollywood parody about a low budget producer who is desperate to shoot a movie of his own. There are some clever and funny jabs at old girlfriends, Hollywood politics and filmmaking in general, but the results are mostly tedious to watch.

The Bone Collector
1999
***
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Queen Latifah, Michael Rooker

An enjoyable and occassionally scary thriller about the hunt for a serial killer who removes a piece of bone from his targets. Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie play a quadriplegic detective and a police officer, respectively. They unravel the mystery piece by piece, which keeps you adequately captivated, although it's difficult to comprehend why any killer would go through such an elaborate plan to kill his victims. Based on Jeffery Deaver's crime novel.

Blast from the Past
1999
**
Director: Hugh Wilson
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek

This mediocre comedy has a lovely premise. It tells a story of a family who emerge from their fallout shelter 35 years after they thought the world was destroyed. Ultimately, however, this is a modest and predictable romantically flavoured fish out of water story.

The Blair Witch Project
1999
**
Director: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez
Cast: Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, Joshua Leonard, Bob Griffin

Three documentary filmakers disappeared mysteriously in the Maryland forest and only their footage was found. This low budget horror story made tons of money, thanks to inventive online marketing. The film does leave you speechless, if only for realising that in spite of the brilliant premise there is nothing behind the hype. The whole thing is an overstreched sleight of hand with three incredibly irritating characters. This cult hit turned the found footage gimmick into its own subgenre, and it was followed by the likes of Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity.

Best Laid Plans
1999
***
Director: Mike Barker
Cast: Alessandro Nivola, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin, Rocky Carroll

A well-acted thriller about a young man who is conned upon his return to his hometown. The slick story has so many twists in store that by the end I began to lose all interest in these characters. Another film which is heavily influenced by Pulp Fiction.

Being John Malkovich
1999
*****
Director: Spike Jonze
Cast: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich, Orson Bean, Mary Kay Place

An aspiring puppeteer works a menial job on the 7½th floor of the Mertin-Flemmer building. One day he discovers a portal, which allows anyone to be actor John Malkovich for 15 minutes at a time. Charlie Kaufman made his name with this brilliant existential comedy. The concept is totally outrageous, but the layered and endlessly inventive script is just pure genius. It deals with love, sexuality, identity and our obsession with celebrity. John Malkovich gives a courageous and hilarious performance as "himself".

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
1999
*½
Director: Jay Roach
Cast: Mike Myers, Heather Graham, Rob Lowe, Michael York, Seth Green

The sequel to Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery is even less fun than the original parody wannabe. Now the hero teams up with a CIA agent Felicity Shagwell. The characters are OK but there are about two good gags in the entire film.

At First Sight
1999
**
Director: Irwin Winkler
Cast: Val Kilmer, Mira Sorvino, Kelly McGillis, Steven Weber, Nathan Lane

Val Kilmer plays a blind man who regains his sight and has to learn to live all over again. That is sadly the single worthy idea in this cheesy and clichéd romantic tearjerker.

Astronaut's Wife
1999
*½
Director: Rand Ravich
Cast: Johnny Depp, Charlize Theron, Joe Morton, Donna Murphy

Something unusual occurs during a space mission which loses all communication for two minutes, and the astronaut's wife welcomes back a changed man. This potentially great premise results in a dreadful Rosemary's Baby homage in which almost everything seems phony. Johnny Depp is rarely anything but excellent, but now he is either miscast or just simply bad as the spaceman.

Arlington Road
1999
***½
Director: Mark Pellington
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack, Hope Davis, Robert Gossett

Following the tragic death of his wife a history professor has become obsessed with terrorism, and now he strongly believes that his new neighbour has something to hide. This conspiracy thriller has some clever turns, but just when it looks like the story is going down the toilet the film is saved by a terrific final twist. Jeff Bridges seems a bit out of place in a noisy role like this but it's fun to watch Tim Robbins as a bad guy.

Anywhere But Here
1999
**½
Director: Wane Wang
Cast: Susan Sarandon, Natalie Portman, Hart Bochner, Shawn Hatosy

An episodic tearjerker about a mother and daughter who move to Los Angeles but increasingly struggle to see eye to eye.
Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman are both good, but the film is rather forgettable. Based on Mona Simpson's novel.



Any Given Sunday
1999
**
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, Jamie Foxx, James Woods

A clichéd and seemingly endless drama about a struggling American Football team the Miami Sharks. Oliver Stone's formulaic story has a talented but cocky young quarterback, a head coach who knows the game inside out and an owner who only looks at the bottom line. First you lose, then you win, inbetween the usual lessons about respect, dedication and team spirit. Based on Pat Toomay's book On Any Given Sunday.

Anna and the King
1999
***
Director: Andy Tennant
Cast: Jodie Foster, Chow Yun-Fat, Bai Ling, Tom Felton, Syed Alwi

An old-fashioned, that is, not terribly exciting romantic spectacle about a British schoolteacher who slowly falls in love with the King in 19th century Siam. The locations are beautiful and Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat are charismatic leads. Based on Margaret Landon's novel Anna and the King of Siam which was filmed with that title in 1946 and as the musical The King and I in 1956.

Angela's Ashes
1999
**
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Emily Watson, Robert Carlyle, Joe Breen, Ciaran Owens, Michael Legge

Frank McCourt's wonderful autobiography described the details of his miserable Catholic childhood in Ireland before he moved across the Atlantic. Alan Parker's phony and lifeless adaptation fails to convey the book's humour or misery.

Analyze This
1999
***½
Director: Harold Ramis
Cast: Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri

Robert De Niro pokes fun at his past roles by playing a ruthless crime boss who seeks professional help for his recurring panic attacks. He secretly hires/coerces an insecure therapist who is distracted by his upcoming wedding. This is an enjoyable and nicely acted comedy, even if there aren't quite enough laughs to carry the story to the end. Besides, The Sopranos on TV took this concept much further. Followed by Analyze That in 2002.

American Pie
1999
**
Director: Chris Weitz
Cast: Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Shannon Elisabeth, Eugene Levy

A bland and ultimately conservative teen comedy about four high school kids who make a pact to lose their virginity before the prom. This popular film gathered notoriety thanks to a few raunchy set pieces, the most famous of which involves a warm apple pie. Followed by three theatrically released sequels and another four released straight to DVD.

American Beauty
1999
****½
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Chris Cooper, Thora Birch

A wonderful drama about a man who hits midlife crisis and completely reinvents himself. Alan Ball's Oscar winning script is a funny, moving and sharp-eyed look at life in American suburbia, but it's a shame the story has to conclude with a gun shot. Kevin Spacey deserved an Academy Awards for his flashy performance but Annette Bening is terribly hammy as his wife. Sam Mendes made his name in the theatre and his film debut won altogether five Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography (Conrad Hall).

Aimée and Jaguar
1999
***
Director: Max Färberböck
Cast: Maria Schrader, Juliane Köhler, Johanna Wokalek, Heike Makatsch

A touching and well-acted WW2 drama about a tragic love affair between two young German women. One of the ladies is Jewish, so there's an air of inevitability to the unfolding events. Based on Erica Fischer's book Aimée & Jaguar. Eine Liebesgeschichte, Berlin 1943.

8MM
1999
**½
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini, Peter Stormare

Another seedy thriller from the pen of Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote the excellent Se7en. Sadly the follow-up is no good. The story starts well but it becomes formulaic very fast. On the other hand, the protagonist, a private invesitigator who attempts to discover the truth about an alleged snuff tape, behaves in an increasingly improbable manner. If you need any proof that Joel Schumacher is no David Fincher, here it is.

The 13th Warrior
1999
**
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Diane Venora, Dennis Storhoi, Omar Sharif

An Arab travels north with a group of Norsemen to fight a mysterious enemy and becomes the titular 13th warrior. The story, which is based on a Michael Crichton novel Eaters of the Dead, is just as absurd as it sounds, but there are a few nice action set pieces. The film had a long and difficult gestation, and it shows in the uneven end product.

10 Things I Hate About You
1999
**
Director: Gil Junger
Cast: Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik

A high school outcast meets his match in a feisty young woman who slowly warms to his advances. This teen film is based on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, which doesn't automatically mean that it has something clever or original to offer. The plot is formulaic, the characters are clichéd and everything is neatly wrapped up.

Zugvögel einmal nach Inari
1998
***
Director: Peter Lichtefeld
Cast: Joachim Krol, Outi Mäenpää, Peter Lochmeyer, Kari Väänänen

A simple and silly but very cute German (rail)road movie about a train timetable enthusiast who travels from Dortmund to Lapland. Kari Väänänen gives a hilarious supporting performance.

You've Got Mail
1998
****
Director: Nora Ephron
Cast: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Parker Posey, Greg Kinnear, Jean Stapleton

The owner of a small bookshop and the manager of a new literary superstore are at war, unaware that at the same time they are falling in love with each other via anonymous email correspondence. This delightful remake of Shop Around the Corner takes its entire running time to bring the pair together, which is refreshing. It's also surprisingly realistic and unsentimental in its portrayal of the modern corporate world; the super chains rule and there's nothing you can do about it.

The X-Files: Fight the Future
1998
***
Director: Rob Bowman
Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Martin Landau, Mitch Pileggi, William B. Davis

In the spin-off film of the popular TV show agents Mulder and Scully attempt to clear their names after a failed bomb evacuation, which leads them to a ploy to cover up an extra terrestrial virus threat. If you're able to ignore the conspiracy thriller clichés, the gaping holes in the plot and scenes that exist only for the sake of spectacle, you're in for surprisingly entertaining two hours.

Wild Things
1998
*½
Director: John McNaughton
Cast: Matt Dillon, Denise Richards, Neve Campbell, Kevin Bacon

An utterly dull and pointless erotic thriller. It starts as a story about a student counsellor who is accused of rape. This is followed by a new shocking twist every five minutes until the plot doesn't make any sense. And if you found it all too subtle, the title scene in the end hammers everything home.

The Wedding Singer
1998
**½
Director: Frank Coraci
Cast: Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Steve Buscemi, Angela Featherstone

A wedding singer falls in love with a girl who is already taken. Nevermind, these two people are clearly meant for each other but are only momentarily hooked up with complete creeps. This predictable romantic comedy is set in the 1980s and Adam Sandler creates a few funny gags about the period.

Waking Ned / Waking Ned Devine
1998
*½
Director: Kirk Jones
Cast: Ian Bannen, David Kelly, Fionnula Flanagan, Susan Lynch

When Ned Devine dies of a shock after winning the Lotto jackpot, the people in his tiny home village of Tullymore pretend that he's still alive so they can collect the prize money. This highly implausible and tiresomely unfunny farce was probably funded by the Irish Tourist Board in order to maintain the country's backwoods image in America.

Very Bad Things
1998
*½
Director: Peter Berg
Cast: Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz, John Favreau, Jeremy Piven

A bachelor party in Las Vegas ends tragically with the prostitute dead in the hotel bathroom. The group of men return home, some of them riddled with guilt and the bodycount rises. This infuriating attempt at black comedy gets nothing right. It has characters you couldn't care less about, a couple of performances to forget, no credibility whatsoever and, most importantly, it's not funny at any point. Actor Peter Berg's directorial debut.

U.S. Marshals
1998
**
Director: Stuart Baird
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, Robert Downey Jr., Kate Nelligan

The innocent convict has turned black, and the train crash has been raplaced with a plane crash. What we have here is not a sequel to but a rehash of The Fugitive. Tommy Lee Jones reprises his role as the cynical US marshal in this predictable and boring action film.

The Truman Show
1998
*****
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Natascha McElhone, Ed Harris, Noah Emmerich

A brilliant dark comedy about a man who discovers that his entire life has been a scripted 24h reality soap. Andrew Niccol's script is topical and smart as hell, and Peter Weir has visualised the film to perfection. Jim Carrey gives one of his most likeable performances as the tragic title character.

The Thin Red Line
1998
****
Director: Terrence Malick
Cast: Nick Nolte, Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Elias Koteas, Woody Harrelson

Terrence Malick's third film, after a 20-year hiatus, is a moody, philosophical and beautifully shot WW2 story set in the Pacific. As a war film this demanding (and overlong) drama is closer to Apocalypse Now than Saving Private Ryan. Adapted from James Jones' novel.

There's Something About Mary
1998
***½
Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon, Lee Evans, Chris Elliott, Lin Shaye, Jeffrey Tambor, Markie Post, W. Earl Brown, Keith David, Sarah Silverman

Mary is a bubbly, beautiful, and kindhearted young woman, who seems to turn all the men who meet her into obsessive stalkers. This hit comedy by the Farrelly brothers is famous for its few gross-out moments, but ultimately it's a funny, charming, and quite conservative romantic comedy, which unfortunately goes on too long. Cameron Diaz gives a delightful lead performance.

Sweety Barrett / The Tale of Sweety Barrett
1998
***
Director: Stephen Bradley
Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Liam Cunnigham, Brendan O'Carroll, Tony Rohr

A kindhearted simpleton finds himself caught between an ex-con, his wife and his son and a corrupt cop who will stop at nothing. Brendan Gleeson gives a nice performance as the titular hero, otherwise this sympathetic Irish drama is very predictable.

Stepmom
1998
**½
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, Ed Harris, Jena Malone, Liam Aiken

A schmaltzy but not entirely offputting drama about a divorced couple, their two kids and the new stepmom who stirs up things within the family. There are conflicts but everything's worked out just as predictably as you'd imagine. Julia Roberts plays a fashion photographer in one of the least convincing potrayals of a person at work.

Sphere
1998
**½
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Coyote, Liev Schreiber, Queen Latifah, Marga Gómez

A group of top scientists are brought together to investigate a spacecraft found in the bottom of the ocean, and it's not too long before unexplainable things begin to happen, very much like in The Abyss. The story builds up nicely, but it abandons logic somewhere along the way and cannot deliver a satisfactory conclusion. Based on Michael Crichton's novel.

Sour Grapes
1998
*½
Director: Larry David
Cast: Steven Weber, Graig Bierko, Matt Keeslar, Robyn Peterman

Two cousins fall out after one of them wins the jackpot in the slot machine with the other one's coins but refuses to share the winnings. Larry David was the co-creator of Seinfeld and led me to expect more than a crass, unfunny and overacted comedy.

Soldier
1998
*½
Director: Paul Anderson
Cast: Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen, Sean Pertwee

Sometime in the future a veteran soldier is replaced by a new genetically enhanced killing machine and dumped onto a planet where he ends up helping a group of survivors. This science fiction action film is one noisy and dim-witted mess. I could imagine taking some interest in the story if Kurt Russell with his single expression didn't seem less like a human being than the super soldiers.

Snake Eyes
1998
**½
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise, Carla Gugino, Stan Shaw, Kevin Dunn

The Defense Secretary is assassinated during a boxing match and the police order a lockdown. A corrupt detective who witnessed the killing now has a chance for redemption. Brian De Palma's assassination thriller takes place entirely inside the sports arena. The film is technically masterful but storywise utterly predictable (just look at the poster!). Nicolas Cage is annoyingly out of control in the lead.

Small Soldiers
1998
**
Director: Joe Dante
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Gregory Smith, Frank Langella, Tommy Lee Jones

A stupid, noisy and clumsy film about two kids whose action figures come alive. The premise is clever but the end product is very much like Joe Dante's criminally overrated Gremlins and its sequel. The sole surprise in the story is that the aliens turn out to be the good guys the soldiers are the actual villains.

Slums of Beverly Hills
1998
***
Director: Tamara Jenkins
Cast: Natasha Lyonne, Alan Arkin, Marisa Tomei, Kevin Corrigan

A rather enjoyable rites of passage story about a teenage girl whose dysfunctional and chronically poor Jewish family never stays in one place for very long. The film has some clichéd turns but, all in all, this is a heartfelt story.

Sliding Doors
1998
***½
Director: Peter Howitt
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hannah, Jeanne Tripplehorn, John Lynch

A clever and enjoyable romantic drama with two parallel storylines with the same characters. The story aims to show that the smallest of details can change the course of one's life. However, the final deterministic scene makes the whole exercise seem futile. Jeanne Tripplehorn's cartoonish bitch seems out of place in an otherwise down-to-earth story.

Six Days Seven Nights
1998
***
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Harrison Ford, Anne Heche, David Schwimmer, Jacqueline Obradors

A romantic comedy about an ageing pilot and a young career woman who crashland on a desert island. The film doesn't have a shred of originality, but it's quite funny and the locations are stunning, so there are worse crimes than to spend 1.40 h with this.

A Simple Plan
1998
****
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Bridget Fonda, Brent Briscoe, Gary Cole, Jack Walsh, Chelcie Ross, Becky Ann Baker

Three Minnesota men find a bag of drug money, and agree to sit on it to see if anyone comes looking for it. However, greed, impatience, and general lack of intelligence gradually brings out the worst in all of them. Sam Raimi's grim and gripping thriller gives strong Fargo vibes, not only due to its wintery setting but also because of its pessimistic view of humanity. Billy Bob Thornton stands out ins a strong cast. Scott Smith adapted his own novel.

Simon Birch
1998
***
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Cast: Ian Michael Smith, Joseph Mazzello, Ashley Judd, Oliver Platt

A touching but manipulative tearjerker about two young boys, the smaller one of who believes that God has a special plan for him. As with Cider House Rules, only about 10% of John Irving's marvellous novel A Prayer for Owen Meany has ended up on the screen.

The Siege
1998
***
Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, Annette Bening, Tony Shalhoub

An FBI agent investigates a series of terrorist attacks on the U.S. soil, which result in the President declaring martial law. Post-9/11 the first half of this captivating drama seems incredibly realistic. Sadly the film falls apart in the second half when it concentrates on a power struggle between the agent and a U.S. Army Colonel.

Shakespeare in Love
1998
****½
Director: John Madden
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Judi Dench

Shakespeare hits a writer's block just when he's trying to finish Romeo and Juliet. He begins to come out of his shell when he discovers that one of his actors is actually a beautiful young woman in disguise. This romantic comedy uses many real-life characters to tell a charming fictionalised story. It's full of clever injokes and references, half of which probably go unnoticed on a person unfamiliar with the works or the era of the Bard. Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench won two of the film's seven Academy Awards.

The Savior
1998
**½
Director: Peter Antonijevic
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Nastassja Kinski, Stellan Skarsgard, Natasa Ninkovic

A man whose family is killed in a terrorist attack winds up an emotionless killer fighting for the Serbs in the Bosnian War. Now he suddenly finds himself protecting a Serbian outcast and her baby. This is a brutal film which manages to illustrate the absurdity of war, but it's somewhat marred by a protagonist who has no redeeming qualities.

Saving Private Ryan
1998
****
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Vin Diesel, Jeremy Davies, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Dennis Farina, Ted Danson, Paul Giamatti

After a blood-soaked landing on Omaha Beach, Captain Miller and a small unit of men are sent out to find and rescue private Ryan, whose three brothers have just fallen in combat. The mesmerising opening scene on the beach is brutal and intense, and just brilliantly shot, edited, and directed. The downside is that nothing in the remaining two hours can quite live up to it. While Steven Spielberg beautifully stages some of the longest and fiercest battle scenes in cinematic history, he loses the big picture in the process. This is most definitely not an anti-war film. Academy Awards winner for best director, editing, cinematography, sound, and sound effects editing.

Rushmore
1998
****½
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Seymour Cassel, Brian Cox, Mason Gamble, Sara Tanaka, Connie Nielsen, Luke Wilson, Stephen McCole

Max Fischer is a clever and resourceful high school student who is involved in every imaginable extra-curricular activity at the expense of his academic performance. Now he falls in love with a first-grade school teacher and befriends a local business tycoon, and makes the mistake of introducing the two to each other. Wes Anderson's breakthrough is a quirky, original and disarming comedy, which reminds me of The Graduate, not only because of its themes but because of its dated feel and wonderful oldies soundtrack. Great performances all around.

Rounders
1998
**
Director: John Dahl
Cast: Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Malkovich, John Turturro, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, John Malkovich, Martin Landau

A gambling drama about a young but talented poker player. The premise is interesting but the script is terrible. The film cannot decide whether the protagonist should play or not, and the hero's childhood friend, played by Edward Norton, disappears abruptly about 90 minutes into the story. The cast is excellent but the performances are rather forgettable.

Ronin
1998
**½
Director: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgard

A group of former agents and military men plan to carry out a heist in France, but one of them is a rat. This action drama is about 75% car chase and 25% nonsensical plot. However, it's refreshing to see a Hollywood film (that is not a romantic comedy) set entirely in France.

Return to Paradise
1998
***
Director: Joseph Ruben
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Joaquin Phoenix, Anne Heche, Jada Pinkett-Smith, David Conrad, Vera Farmiga

Two American backpackers must return to Malaysia to share the blame for a drug offense in order to save their friend from hanging. This emotional drama feels like Midnight Express for the 1990s audience. Its story is compelling but extremely manipulative.

The Replacement Killers
1998
**
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Mira Sorvino, Michael Rooker, Jürgen Prochnow

A weak action film about a Hong Kong hitman with a heart. There's some flashy camera work but the action scenes are poorly edited and the sketchy story doesn't give Chow Yun-Fat anything to work with in his Hollywood debut.

The Prince of Egypt
1998
***½
Director: Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, Simon Wel
Cast: Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum

The story of Moses retold as an old-fashioned animation with several songs. However, it's not as bad as it sounds. Although the story gets a bit gloomy and detached at times, and the big name voices are bland, the film is visually stunning and it includes some very memorable sequences.

Primary Colors
1998
****
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: John Travolta, Emma Thompson, Kathy Bates, Adrian Lester

A wonderful political satire about a Bill Clinton-like senator candidate whose insatiable libido is in danger of jeopardising his campaign. The hero is a Democrat but the film is surprisingly critical towards all political denominations. There's plenty of excellent performances, for example, Rob Reiner as a naive radio show host. Based on Joe Klein's book.

Practical Magic
1998
*½
Director: Griffin Dunne
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Aidan Quinn, Stockard Channing

Magic has practically abandoned this silly drama about two sisters who are descended from witches. Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock are easy on the eye but the story is a concoction of clichés and implausibilities.

Pleasantville
1998
****
Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, J.T. Walsh, Jeff Daniels

Back to the Future meets The Truman Show in this highly original but delightfully old-fashioned fantasy about a feuding brother and sister who get sucked inside a 1950s sitcom. These modern teenagers are forced to live in the past and play the archaic characters on the show. The clever and touching story deals with racism, prejudice, emancipation and the overall paranoia in the 1950, as the symbolically and literally black white world turns into colour. This change is beautifully realised.

Pi
1998
***
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart

Darren Aronofsky's feature debut is an impressively hyperkinetic but self-satisfied low budget black and white film about a mentally unstable math genius who believes he is about to discover a numeric pattern that can answer any question.

A Perfect Murder
1998
***
Director: Andrew Davis
Cast: Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, Viggo Mortensen, David Suchet

A stylish thriller about a betrayed husband who blackmails his wife's lover to kill the missus. This well made remake of Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder builds up tension impressively towards a greatly disappointing ending.

Pecker
1998
***
Director: John Waters
Cast: Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci, Lili Taylor, Brenda Sexton III

An intentionally wacky but disarming slice of life about Pecker, a young man from Baltimore who takes pictures of life around him. The overnight success as a serious artist catches him and his odd family off guard. The comedy pokes fun at the pretentiousness of high art and the flimsy nature of celebrity. The film is short but still feels a bit stretched, especially towards the end.

Patch Adams
1998
**½
Director: Tom Shadyac
Cast: Robin Williams, Monica Potter, Daniel London, Philip Seymour Hoffman

An over-sentimental but occasionally funny true story about Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams, who wanted to treat his patients with dignity and humour. Robin Williams is on autopilot in the title role. Based on the book Gesundheit: Good Health Is a Laughing Matter by Patch Adams and Maureen Mylander.

Out of Sight
1998
***
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Steve Zahn, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks, Dennis Farina, Luis Guzmán, Isaiah Washington, Karen Allen, Viola Davis, Michael Keaton

Serial bank robber Jack Foley and U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco start a sexy game of cat and mouse after he escapes from prison and heads towards Detroit for a big score. Steven Soderbergh's crime caper is cool and stylish, but oddly underwhelming. The performances and dialogue are great, but the plot is confusing and implausible. I guess anything can happen when you're hot like George Clooney or Jennifer Lopez. Scott Frank's screenplay is based on Elmore Leonard's 1996 novel and it's very similar to the writer's other stories, like Get Shorty and Jackie Brown. There are good crooks and bad crooks, and the good ones win.

The Opposite of Sex
1998
***½
Director: Don Roos
Cast: Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan, Lisa Kudrow, Johnny Galecki

A refreshing dark comedy about an utterly selfish and manipulative bitch (Christina Ricci in a deliciously nasty performance) who wreaks havoc everywhere she goes. Lisa Kudrow from Friends is also surprisingly good as her half-brother's sister-in-law.

The Object of My Affection
1998
**½
Director: Nicholas Hytner
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, Alan Alda, Nigel Hawthorne, Tim Daly

Jennifer Aniston plays a young woman with a difficult lovelife, which is further complicated when she falls for her gay friend. This passable romantic comedy tries to tackle a number of hot topics (gay and cross-racial relationships, child out of wedlock, etc.) but it's all very superficial. Adapted from Stephen McCauley's novel.

The Newton Boys
1998
**½
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, Skeet Ulrich, Vincent D'Onofrio

This lazy drama about four brothers who robbed banks in the 1920s is based on a true story. Why the story needed to be told is a question the film fails to answer. Judging by the final product, the cast and crew had their doubts during the production.

The Negotiator
1998
***
Director: F. Gary Gray
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, David Morse, Ron Rifkin

A top-notch hostage negotiator becomes a hostage taker to clear his name. This formulaic action drama relies heavily on the combined charisma of Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey, but they can carry the film only so far.

The Mighty
1998
**
Director: Peter Chelsom
Cast: Sharon Stone, Kieran Culkin, Elden Henson, Gena Rowlands, Harry Dean Stanton

Two misunderstood teenagers, a brainy cripple and a bulky simpleton, form an unlikely alliance to deal with the world they live in. A potentially fine coming-of-age story ends up taking the most predictable and melodramatic turns on the way to its obvious finale. The teen actors are great in their well written roles, but the supporting characters are all boringly one-dimensional. Based on Rodman Philbrick's book Freak the Mighty .

Mercury Rising
1998
**
Director: Harold Becker
Cast: Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Miko Hughes, Chi McBride, Kim Dickens

A cliché-ridden thriller about an FBI agent who tries to protect an autistic child who has cracked a top secret government code. The premise is implausible and the resulting film is utterly predictable.

Meet Joe Black
1998
**
Director: Martin Brest
Cast: Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Claire Forlani, Marcia Gay Harden

A dreadfully boring, pointless and syrupy drama in which Death in the form of Brad Pitt comes for a billionaire businessman played by Anthony Hopkins. Each new Martin Brest film is longer than its predecessor. This one runs almost three hours and is at least an hour too long. Loosely based on the film Death Takes a Holiday.

The Mask of Zorro
1998
***½
Director: Martin Campbell
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Stuart Wilson

Zorro's big screen outing is a very enjoyable action comedy which doesn't take itself too seriously. Anthony Hopkins plays the ageing title character and Antonio Banderas shows great comedic timing as his younger apprentice. Together they fight a nasty land developer who snatched the old man's daughter 20 years earlier. Followed by The Legend of Zorro in 2005.

The Man in the Iron Mask
1998
***
Director: Randall Wallace
Cast: Leonardo Di Caprio, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Gerard Depardieu, Gabriel Byrne Gérard Depardieu, Anne Parillaud, Judith Godrèche, Peter Saarsgard

This entertaining but very conventional adventure film is loosely based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Leonardo Di Caprio plays a dual role, the nasty King Louis Xiv and the mysterious man in the iron mask. However, it's the ageing musketeers who steal the show. Writer Randall Wallace makes his directorial debut.

Lulu on the Bridge
1998
***
Director: Paul Auster
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino, Richard Edson, Dana Lyn Baron, Don Byron

In Smoke and Blue in the Face Paul Auster collaborated with Wayne Wang. His first solo effort is an odd mix of romantic drama and fantasy about a recently shot jazz musician, a young actress and a mysterious glowing stone.

Lost in Space
1998
**½
Director: Stephen Hopkins
Cast: William Hurt, Gary Oldman, Heather Graham, Matt LeBlanc

A formulaic science fiction film about the Robinson family who are stranded in space. The film has its fair share of mumbo jumbo but also some intriguing and visually stunning bits. Based on a TV series which ran from 1965 to 1968.

Lola rennt (Run Lola Run)
1998
****
Director: Tom Tykwer
Cast: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Armin Rohde

Lola tries to save her boyfriend's life by delivering Dm 100,000 on time. This inventive and endlessly energetic German film shows three possible outcomes to her efforts. Tom Tykwer's international breakthrough is a visual feast. He also wrote the pulsating electronic soundtrack.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
1998
**½
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher, Vinnie Jones, Nick Moran

Guy Ritchie's cult debut is a flashy but empty "guns and geezers movie" set in the London underworld. The Tarantino influences are blatantly obvious in his mix of humour, hip dialogue, visual tricks, plot twists and sudden bursts of violence. The follow-up Snatch is more or less the same film.

Little Voice
1998
****
Director: Mark Herman
Cast: Jane Horrocks, Ewan McGregor, Michael Caine, Brenda Blethyn

A charming and brilliantly acted music comedy with a remarkable performance from Jane Horrocks as a quiet girl with a hidden talent. Michael Caine is terrific as a talent agent who becomes more and more sinister as the story goes on. Based on Jim Cartwright's play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.

Lethal Weapon 4
1998
*
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo, Chris Rock

Just when I thought Lethal Weapon 3 was poorly plotted, here comes this shockingly bad and hopefully final sequel
In which Riggs and Murtaugh battle a sadistic bad guy in L.A. Chinatown. The film has to be entirely improvised, I cannot think of any other explanation for this collection of unrelated, unfunny and disgustingly violent scenes.



Les Miserables
1998
***
Director: Bille August
Cast: Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman, Claire Danes

A perfectly enjoyable adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic novel about a reformed convict who cannot escape his past. Liam Neeson is charismatic as Jean Valjean but Geoffrey Rush is a bit one-note as Javert, the relentless inspector on his trail. The ending is slightly confounding.

The Last Days of Disco
1998
**½
Director: Whit Stillman
Cast: Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Chris Eigeman, Mackenzie Astin

In the early 1980s a group of twentysomethings try to get their lives sorted, both personally and professionally, and spend most of their free time in the local disco. Strong performances and occasionally insightful dialogue sadly go to waste when there isn't a single interesting character on the screen.

The Land Girls
1998
**
Director: David Leland
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Catherine McCormack, Anna Friel, Steven Mackintosh

Three girls working on a farm each take their turn with the son of the house in a pointless drama set in England during WW2. The setting is real but everything else seems phony.

Kuningasjätkä (A Summer by the River)
1998
****
Director: Markku Pölönen
Cast: Pertti Koivula, Simo Kontio, Esko Nikkari, Peter Franzen, Sulevi Peltola

Markku Pölönen continues his nostalgic portrayals of rural Finland of days gone by. This time he tells a story about a widower and his son who work as loggers in the 1950s. A funny and moving drama, although the tagged-on romance seems a bit unnecessary.

Just the Ticket
1998
**½
Director: Richard Wenk
Cast: Andy Garcia, Andie MacDowell, Richard Bradford, Laura Harris

An illogical and futile romantic drama about a good-hearted but hopelessly unreliable ticket scalper. It's as hard to sympathize with Andy Garcia's character as it is to understand why his on and off girlfriend keeps taking him back.

The Impostors
1998
*½
Director: Stanley Tucci
Cast: Stanley Tucci, Oliver Platt, Alfred Molina, Lili Taylor, Steve Buscemi

In the 1930s two struggling actors are forced to go in hiding and they end up playing stewards on a cross-Atlantic cruise ship. Stanley Tucci's follow-up to Big Night is an utterly useless farce, but it has such a nice premise and such a wonderful cast that you almost feel sorry for not finding it funny.

The Horse Whisperer
1998
***½
Director: Robert Redford
Cast: Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Neill

An engrossing but long and occasionally heavy-going romantic drama about a busy career woman and her daughter who visit a horse specialist who they hope will be able to heal the girl's traumatized steed. The story kicks off with a wonderfully staged and horrific riding accident. Based on Nicholas Evans' novel.

Hope Floats
1998
**½
Director: Forest Whitaker
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Harry Connick Jr., Gena Rowlands, Mae Whitman

A housewife moves back to her home town after discovering that her husband is having an affair with her best friend. Sandra Bullock gives a likeable performance, otherwise this is a sentimental romantic drama that doesn't offer any major surprises.

Homegrown
1998
**
Director: Stephen Gyllenhaal
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Hank Azaria, Ryan Phillippe, John Lithgow, Jon Bon Jovi, Jon Tenney, Kelly Lynch, Judge Reinhold, Jamie Lee Curtis

Their boss has just been killed in front of their eyes, but three dim-witted aides decide to go ahead and sell the season's dope crop on their own. Needless to say, everything goes horribly wrong, but not in a way that is particularly funny, original or enjoyable. The leading trio deserve everything that is coming to them.

Hilary and Jackie
1998
***½
Director: Anand Tucker
Cast: Emily Watson, Rachel Griffiths, James Frain, David Morrissey

A solid true-life drama about two musical sisters, Hilary and Jacqueline Du Pre, the last of who became a world famous cellist whose career was cut short by a crippling illness. Personal and professional stories come together in a non-linear structure, where character behaviour at first seems irrational and even infuriating, but eventually makes sense. Strong performances by the two female leads.

High Art
1998
**
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Cast: Radha Mitchell, Ally Sheedy, Patricia Clarkson, Tammy Grimes, Bill Sage

A young woman working for an art magazine discovers that her upstairs neighbour is a once famous photographer who disappeared from the scene. Henceforth the artist introduces her to heroin, lesbian sex and heartbreak. These people have dream jobs, they take drugs and have fabulous sex, but this pointless drama just keeps wallowing in misery.

Hideous Kinky
1998
**
Director: Gillies MacKinnon
Cast: Kate Winslet, Said Taghmaoui, Bella Riza, Carrie Mullan, Sira Stampe

An English woman moves to Morocco with her two girls in this adaptation of Esther Freud's novel. Kate Winslet's first film following the mega success of Titanic is from the other extreme: a drama about people that no one can care about.

He Got Game
1998
***
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Ray Allen, Milla Jovovich, Rosario Dawson, Hill Harper

Everyone has an opinion where the hottest young basketball talent should play and study. This includes the boy's father, who attempts to shorten his prison sentence by persuading his son to sign with one of the candidate colleges. This captivating but not entirely successful or believable drama has vivid characterisation and strong sense of place, like most Spike Lee films. Yet another intense Denzel Washington performance is counterbalanced by Ray Allen, who is clearly not a professional actor.

Hard Rain
1998
**
Director: Mikael Salomon
Cast: Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Minnie Driver, Randy Quaid

A lifeless action/disaster film with Morgan Freeman as a likeable bad guy who tries to pull a heist during a torrential downpour. The rain pours non-stop but Minnie Driver's American accent comes and goes.

Happiness
1998
*****
Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lara Flynn Boyle, Jane Adams, Dylan Baker

Humour doesn't come much blacker than in this highly original collection of intertwining lives that revolves around the three Jordan sisters. The deeply troubled but wonderfully three-dimensional characters include a gullible young woman and a loving father who is secretly a pedophile. The cast is great. Life During Wartime (2009), a sequel of sorts, brings back the same characters with a different cast.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
1998
**
Director: Steve Miner
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Adam Arkin, Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams

Michael Myers is back to kill his sister. She is played by Jamie Lee Curtis who appeared as a different character in the original Halloween. No one has managed to kill Michael in the intervening years, so why should this formulaic "anniversary sequel" be any different? No scares, no thrills.

Great Expectations
1998
**½
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Bancroft, Chris Cooper

A poor boy falls in love with a rich girl who always seems out of his league. This updated adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel is stylish and sophisticated but somewhat soulless. A fine cast.

Godzilla
1998
**
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Hank Azaria, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Kevin Dunn

This remake about a gigantic lizard is loosely based on the 1954 Japanese film. Roland Emmerich builds up suspense nicely in the beginning as the title character wreaks havoc in the Pacific. Half a day later(?) Godzilla is in New York where she is disclosed much too soon. From then onwards this bombastic film is all about special effects.

Gods and Monsters
1998
*****
Director: Bill Condon
Cast: $2y$10$rrvUt8oloTRg1tzI.SObC.rtQ3w4/01Ac6AIrz9v7rMhpzbO1NcF2

A terrific drama about James Whale, who was most famous for directing Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein in the 1930s. This fictionalised story is set in the 1950s, when he's a retired recluse who grows close to his new gardener. Ian McKellen is superb as the frail and openly gay director whose mind is increasingly haunted by his war memories. Bill Condon's subtle and funny screenplay, which is based on Christopher Bram's novel Father of Frankenstein, won an Academy Award.

The Gingerbread Man
1998
**½
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Embeth Davidtz, Robert Duvall, Robert Downey Jr.

Robert Altman's laid back directorial style is visible in this crime drama about a gullible lawyer, but he cannot breathe life into John Grisham’s original screenplay, which is as unoriginal as thery come. Kenneth Branagh is a surprisingly convincing southerner, though.

The General
1998
**
Director: John Boorman
Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Jon Voight, Adrian Dunbar, Sean McGinley

A dull drama about a real-life Irish crime boss Martin Cahill. The film is ruined by its irritating protagonist who can only be loved by his own mother. Shot in black & white for no good reason.

Fucking Åmål (Show Me Love)
1998
***
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Cast: Alexandra Dahlström, Rebecka Liljeberg, Erica Carlson, Mathias Rust

Two troubled teenage girls find solace in each other in this likeable Swedish teen drama. The film is more daring than all its American counterparts put together, yet everything is wrapped up a bit too neatly in 90 minutes.

Festen (Celebration)
1998
****
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Cast: Ulrich Thomsen, Henning Moritzen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Paprika Steen

A darkly comic and very original Danish film about a family who get together to celebrate the father's 60th birthday, but end up airing their dirty laundry in public. Writing is sharp and some of the performances are wonderfully over the top. Shot according to the Dogme 95 rules.

Fallen
1998
***
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Cast: Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, Embeth Davidtz

A detective investigates a series of murders and the leads seem to suggest that something paranormal is involved. This creepy and clever thriller has an overall ominous mood and a few terrific scenes when the protagonist discovers the horrible truth, but all in all the film is not quite as effective as you would hope.

The Faculty
1998
**½
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Salma Hayek, Jordana Brewster

Teenagers begin to suspect that the school staff has been taken over by aliens. This horror comedy is lively and relatively funny but ultimately very clichéd. Scripted by Kevin Williamson, the man behind Scream.

Ever After
1998
***
Director: Andy Tennant
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Dougray Scott, Anjelica Huston, Patrick Godfrey

This fresh and enjoyable retelling of the classic Cinderella story is set in the 16th century France and stars Drew Barrymore as a kick-ass heroine. Long, anachronistic and obviously predictable, but there's enough fairy tale magic to make it worth your while.

Enemy of the State
1998
***½
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet, Regina King

A young lawyer is in the wrong place at the wrong time and his entire life is erased. Tony Scott's conspiracy thriller is influenced by the likes of The Parallax View and All the President's Men. However, his film moves with such a pace that you have no time to think whether it all makes sense. Good fun, although Scott directs with his typical headache-inducing visual style.

Elizabeth
1998
***½
Director: Shekhar Kapur
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston

Queen Elizabeth - a protestant heretic - is a controversial figure when she takes the throne in 1558. This captivating historical conspiracy drama concentrates on the beginning of her reign, which was filled with challenges. The sets and costumes are lavish, and the performances are impressive. Followed by a 2007 sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Academy Award winner for best makeup.

Dr. Dolittle
1998
**½
Director: Betty Thomas
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Ossie Davis, Oliver Platt, Peter Boyle, Richard Schiff

A likeable children's film about a doctor who can talk to animals, most of whom are oddly sarcastic. The film seems to set up the story, but then abruptly ends. The character is based on Hugh Lofting's children't stories. Followed by two sequels.

Desperate Measures
1998
**
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Cast: Andy Garcia, Michael Keaton, Marcia Gay Harden, Brian Cox, Erik King, Efrain Figueroa, Joseph Cross

A detective's son has leukemia, and he finds a perfect donor for bone marrow. The bad news is that the person is a nasty murderer serving time in prison. Both men exploit each other and the whole thing turns into a daft and irresponsible action drama in which the protagonist destroys lives and property in order to save his own son. David Klass adapted his own novel.

Deep Rising
1998
***
Director: Stephen Sommers
Cast: Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Anthony Heald, Wes Studi

A luxury cruise ship is taken over by a horrific sea monster in this umpteenth Alien rehash. The cast is killed off one by one in the usual manner, but luckily the tongue is firmly in the cheek all through the film.

Deep Impact
1998
***½
Director: Mimi Leder
Cast: Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Vanessa Redgrave

As a massive comet is heading towards the Earth, the US government draws up a plan to destroy it or, if that doesn't work, a plan to save a selected part of the population. This enjoyable disaster movie raises some intriguing moral questions, which are somewhat undermined by the over-sentimental storyline. Scripted by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin.

Dark City
1998
**
Director: Alex Proyas
Cast: Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly, Kiefer Sutherland, William Hurt, Richard O'Brien

At midnight in a city where the sun never shines the Strangers put people to sleep and perform experiments on them, but one man who has lost his memory is resistant to their powers. Following the abysmal visual fireworks of The Crow, Alex Proyas has polished another turd. Somewhere deep inside there is a hint of a good idea, but his scifi noir is all set decoration and special effects. The Strangers are pale creatures in big hats who speak in an English accent and hover across the city at slow speed. Cool? No. Silly? Yes. Sewell and Connelly are wooden, which doesn't help to bring their underwritten parts to life.

Dancing at Lughnasa
1998
**½
Director: Pat O'Connor
Cast: Meryl Streep, Michael Gambon, Catherine McCormack, Rhys Ifans, Sophie Thompson, Brid Brennan, Lorcan Cranitch, John Kavanagh, Marie Mullen

The lives of five Irish sisters in the 1930s are disrupted by the return of their missionary brother. The story is narrated by the son of one of the sisters. This adaptation of Brian Friel's play is a sympathetic but uninspired family drama.

Clay Pigeons
1998
**
Director: David Dobkin
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Vince Vaughn, Janeane Garofalo, Georgina Cates

A naive (and innocent) small town loser keeps stumbling on dead bodies and finds himself deeper and deeper in trouble. This dark comedy has a promising start but from there onwards the events alternate between implausible and infuriating. The film combines humour and unexpected bursts of violence, but sadly without the success of its direct influences Pulp Fiction and Fargo. Vince Vaughn hams it as a mysterious new acquaintance.

A Civil Action
1998
***½
Director: Steven Zaillian
Cast: John Travolta, Robert Duvall, William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub, Zeljko Ivanek, Bruce Norris

An Erin Brockovich-like true story of a class action suit which was filed against two corporations accused of polluting the local water supply in Woburn, Massachusetts. This refreshing court drama doesn't unfold as neatly as one might expect. A fine ensemble cast. Based on Jonathan Harr's non-fiction book.

City of Angels
1998
**½
Director: Brad Silberling
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Meg Ryan, Andre Braugher, Dennis Franz, Colm Feore

A less than impressive romantic fantasy about an angel who falls in love with a beautiful surgeon and wants to become a human. The film, which is a loose remake of Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, strips angels of any mystique and forces its view of them on you.

Central Station
1998
*****
Director: Walter Salles
Cast: Fernanda Montenegro, Vinicius de Oliveira, Marilia Pera, Soia Lira

Walter Salles' international breakthrough is a disarming road movie about an unlikely and unusual friendship between an elderly woman and a 9-year-old boy. The pace is slow, the characters are warm and the performances are superb.

Celebrity
1998
**½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Charlize Theron, Judy Davis, Leonardo DiCaprio

An existential comedy about a writer who tries to get over his own disappointing life by mingling with glamourous celebrities. Woody Allen's black and white film has some good bits, but on the whole it's long and not teribly captivating. Kenneth Branagh plays the part that Allen himself would have played in the past.

Bulworth
1998
****½
Director: Warren Beatty
Cast: Warren Beatty, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, Oliver Platt, Paul Sorvino

When a veteran politician is about to lose his latest campaign, he changes his approach and tells it like it is. The premise is outrageous and time and time again Warren Beatty's sharp and anarchistic political satire is about to go overboard (for example, the senator gives his speeches in rap), but somehow the film pulls through with its wonderfully wacky humour.

A Bug's Life
1998
***½
Director: John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton
Cast: Dave Foley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kevin Spacey, Phyllis Diller

This amusing Pixar film came out at the same time with Antz, another computer animation about an outsider ant who becomes a hero of his colony, this time by resisting lazy but vicious grasshoppers. There's the usual array of colourful characters and visual gags, but on the whole this is not one of Pixar's finest.

Blues Brothers 2000
1998
**
Director: John Landis
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman, Joe Morton, Nia Peeples, Frank Oz

This stillborn comedy cannot even be called a sequel since it's just a mindless rehash of the original from 18 years earlier. Elwood comes out of prison, drives around in an old police car, puts the band together, James Brown and Aretha Franklin sing, a load of police cars get smashed, neo-nazis get ridiculed and the band plays in the end. The 1980 comedy classic is repeated step by step without a moment of inspiration,

The Big Lebowski
1998
****
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston, John Turturro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tara Reid , Sam Elliott, David Thewlis, Ben Gazzara, Peter Stormare,

Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, is a jobless slacker whose life revolves around bowling and smoking weed. Due to mistaken identity, he gets involved in the kidnapping of a trophy wife, which threatens his easygoing lifestyle. This dark Coen brothers comedy has become a cult favourite, but although the film is funny, it would not be one of my personal picks from their body of work. Jeff Bridges is absolutely brilliant as the Dude, who is one of the most endearing protagonists in cinema history. Sadly I can't say the same for some of the other characters and performances (John Goodman, Julianne Moore, and Peter Stormare). The dialogue is colourful, but the blackmail plot is long and overconvoluted.

The Big Hit
1998
*½
Director: Che-Kirk Wong
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Louis Diamond Phillips, Christina Applegate

A Hong Kong-style action film with characters who talk about things like masturbation and video rentals. If John Woo and Quentin Tarantino were dead, they would be surely be turning in their graves. Mark Wahlberg plays a hitman who tries to balance between his demanding job and his two needy girlfriends. This expensive mess offers preposterous plot twists, clichéd characters, blatant overacting and continuity errors, among other things.

Beloved
1998
**
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Kimberly Elise

A disastrous adaptation of Tony Morrison's terrific novel about the ordeals of a black woman in the end of the 19th century. The subtle mystical elements of the novel look very awkward on screen and the whole thing ends up feeling phony. The performances are strong, apart from Thandie Newton who is over-the-top as Beloved. At 170 minutes, the film is about an hour too long.

Babe: Pig in the City
1998
**½
Director: George Miller
Cast: James Cromwell, Magda Szubanski, Mickey Rooney, E.G. Daily

George "Mad Max" Miller has moved from the producer's chair to the director's chair for this dark and disturbing sequel to Babe. He certainly doesn't play safe, but is this really targeted at the same people who enjoyed the cute original? The beloved sheep pig's adventure in the city is too weird and bleak for children and too silly for adults.

The Avengers
1998
*½
Director: Jeremiah Chechik
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery, Jim Broadbent

A completely plotless and embarrasingly unfunny adventure comedy about British agents who attempt to stop a madman who controls the weather. It's painful to watch all the potential and all the miscast talent go to waste. Based on the popular TV series which ran from 1961 to 1969.

Armageddon
1998
**
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thornton, Will Patton

An asteroid the size of Texas is heading towards the Earth, and Nasa decides to send a crew of deep-sea drillers to nuke it into pieces. Unlike Deep Impact, this disaster film definitely doesn't make you think "what if this really happened?" This one is just a sporadically funny but utterly stupid, preposterous and overlong space action film. Bruce Willis is w-o-o-d-e-n.

Apt Pupil
1998
**½
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Brad Renfro, Ian McKellen, Bruce Davison, David Schwimmer

A teenager discovers that his neighbour is a Nazi in hiding and he decides to feed his own curiosity by blackmailing the old man to describe the atrocities. This watchable drama is adapted from a Stephen King novella. It's well-acted and pleasantly low-key, but never terribly gripping.

Antz
1998
***
Director: Eric Darnell, Tim Johnson
Cast: Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Sylvester Stallone

Woody Allen voices a neurotic worker ant who accidentally becomes a hero when a nasty soldier plans to overthrow the Queen. This computer animation came out almost simultanously with A Bug's Life, and it's enjoyable but surprisingly cruel at times.

American History X
1998
****½
Director: Tony Kaye
Cast: Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Stacey Keach, Fairuza Balk, Elliott Gould, Avery Brooks, Beverly D'Angelo, Jennifer Lien, Ethan Suplee, William Russ

Edward Norton gives his career-best performance as a former neo-Nazi leader who tries to prevent his younger brother from following in his racist footsteps. This is an intense, moving, and very powerful, if not entirely believable drama. David McKenna's semi-autobiographical script deals with racism, redemption, and the cycle of violence and prejudice. Tony Kaye lost the final cut for his impressive feature debut, and destroyed his promising Hollywood career in the process.

54
1998
**
Director: Mark Christopher
Cast: Ryan Philippe, Mike Myers, Salma Hayek, Neve Campbell

In the 1970s a naïve young man is drawn into the lifestyle of sex and drugs, as embodied by the infamous New York City nightclub Studio 54, but he gradually comes to understand the decadence of it all. Although the setting is based on fact, I've seen this type of educational coming of age story one too many times.

Winterschläfer (Winter Sleepers)
1997
***½
Director: Tom Tykwer
Cast: Ulrich Matthes, Marie-Lou Sellem, Floriane Daniel, Heino Ferch

A group of people in the German Alps don't seem to be living but just killing time. Before the international success of Run Lola Run Tom Tykwer directed this visually spectacular drama. The story is thoughful but slightly inconsequential.

The Wings of the Dove
1997
***
Director: Iain Softley
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Linus Roache, Alison Elliott, Charlotte Rampling

This respectable but somewhat lifeless costume drama is based on a Henry James novel, and it tells the classic story of a woman who has to choose whether to marry for money or for love. The film is reserved and dry, like the characters themselves.

Wilde
1997
***
Director: Bryan Gilbert
Cast: Stephen Fry, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, Vanessa Redgrave

A well-made but very conventional biopic of Oscar Wilde whose eloquent writing and open homosexuality made him a controversial figure in the end of the 19th century. Stephen Fry is very good in the title role. Based on Richard Ellmann's biography.



White Lies
1997
*½
Director: Ken Selden
Cast: Julie Warner, Larry Gilliard Jr., Rosanna Arquette, Harvey Fierstein

A con comedy about a horny young man who tries to get laid by pretending to be an artist. The film starts well but it turns into romantic mush towards the end.

Wag the Dog
1997
**½
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Anne Heche, Denis Leary, Willie Nelson

A perfectly timed political satire about a Bill Clintonesque US president who starts a war to take attention away from his sex scandal. The film offers some poignant bits, but it's too much in love with its own cleverness. Hilary Henkin and David Mamet scripted from Larry Beinhart's novel American Hero.

Volcano
1997
**
Director: Mick Jackson
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffmann, Don Cheadle

An erupting volcano wreaks havoc in Los Angeles and unleashes all available genre clichés. This lame, formulaic and implausible disaster film offers even more cheese than Dante's Peak, which came out just a few months earlier.

La vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful)
1997
****½
Director: Roberto Benigni
Cast: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini, Horst Buchholz, Giustino Durano, Marisa Paredes, Sergio Bustric, Amerigo Fontani

Guido is a jovial Italian Jewish man who jokes his way through any situation. This doesn't stop even when the Nazis occupy Northern Italy in 1944, and Guido, his wife, and young son are sent to a concentration camp. Concentration camp comedy sounds like an oxymoron, but somehow Roberto Benigni pulls it off. This is a funny, warm, and heartbreaking drama comedy about a father who will do or say anything to protect his son from the awful truth. The film won Academy Awards for best foreign language film, Nicola Piovani's score, and Benigni's animated and occasionally exhausting lead performance.

Ulee's Gold
1997
****
Director: Victor Nunez
Cast: Peter Fonda, Patricia Richardson, Jessica Biel, J. Kenneth Campbell

A nicely unhurried drama about family ties. Peter Fonda plays a middle aged man who is forced to help his imprisoned son. This well-acted film nearly avoids the inevitable and predictable violent showdown.

Twenty Four Seven
1997
**½
Director: Shane Meadows
Cast: Bob Hoskins, Danny Nussbaum, James Hooton, Darren Campbell

Bob Hoskins is powerful as a tragic man who sets up a boxing club to keep the local teens out of trouble. This is a very familiar story and I don't understand what beating each other in the ring is supposed to teach you. Filmed in murky black and white.

Turbulence
1997
**
Director: Robert Butler
Cast: Lauren Holly, Ray Liotta, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Cross, Rachel Ticotin

A dangerous murderer is transported to L.A. on a commercial flight, but he breaks free and begins a cat and mouse game with the four air marshals and the crew. This action film is highly implausible but not entirely without merit.

Tomorrow Never Dies
1997
***
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Pryce, Teri Hatcher, Judi Dench, Joe Don Baker, Vincent Schiavelli, Smantha Bond

007 joins forces with his Chinese counterpart when a power-hungry media mogul attempts to incite war between China and the UK. Pierce Brosnan's second appearance as James Bond is very formulaic but rather entertaining.

Titanic
1997
***
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Frances Fisher

The poor little rich girl Rose falls in love with the poor little poor boy Jack as Titanic heads towards the iceberg. James Cameron's overegged shipwreck epic became the biggest box office hit of all time and it won 11 Academy Awards. The massive budget is all up on the screen in the form of amazing special effects, but the characters are one-dimensional, the dialogue is clunky and the outcome of the drama is a foregone conclusion.

A Thousand Acres
1997
**½
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Cast: Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jason Robards, Jennifer Jason Leigh

A well-acted but manipulative feminist drama about a farmer and his three daughters whose bitter dispute over the inheritance allows dark family secrets to resurface. The male characters in this implausible story are either monsters, wimps or cheats. Adapted from Jane Smiley's novel.

Sweet Hereafter
1997
****
Director: Atom Egoyan
Cast: Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus

Ian Holm stars as a lawyer who is desperate to find a scapegoat for a devastating bus accident which has killed a group of children. This haunting drama was shot in the beautiful wintery locations of the British Columbia. Based on the novel by Russell Banks.

Starship Troopers
1997
****½
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Casper Van Diem, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, Michael Ironside

After the disaster of Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven returns to form. This loose adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 book is a smart, cynical and darkly comic science fiction satire disguised as a dumb and badly acted action movie. In the 23rd century, humankind finds themselves at war with an extraterrestrial species. But who are the good guys here, the men or the bugs? The special effects still look very impressive.

Speed 2: Cruise Control
1997
**
Director: Jan De Bont
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jason Patric, Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison

Sandra Bullock's bubbly character from Speed goes on a Caribbean cruise with her new SWAT boyfriend, but the holiday is cut short when the ship is hijacked by a criminal mastermind. This is an utterly silly and implausible action film sequel which offers very slow speed.

The Spanish Prisoner
1997
**
Director: David Mamet
Cast: Campbell Scott, Steve Martin, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ben Gazzara

An engineer comes up with a potentially lucrative idea, which turns him into an attractive target for cunning con men. David Mamet's criminally over-praised drama has an intriguing premise, but the protagonist is so gullible and the conclusion so stupid, that the film leaves you angry.

Smilla's Sense of Snow
1997
**
Director: Bille August
Cast: Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris, Robert Loggia

Smilla, a snow and ice expert with a troubled past, gets drawn into a murder investigation in Copenhagen. This mystery has a terrific cast but the performances are icy. The murder plot is flat and the overall mood is consistently aloof. Adapted from Peter Hoeg's novel.

Seven Years in Tibet
1997
**
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Brad Pitt, David Thewlis, B.D. Wong, Mako, Danny Denzongpa

Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer who ended up in Tibet and befriended the young Dalai Lama. This long, bland and self-important but visually beautiful drama is based on his autobiographical book. Brad Pitt gives a wooden performance and only occasionally remembers to speak in his German accent.

Scream 2
1997
*½
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich

Scream was an original and enjoyable horror comedy. The sequel is a frustratingly tiresome rehash of old ideas with one or two funny observations about the rules of sequels. Followed by Scream 3.



The Saint
1997
*½
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Val Kilmer, Elisabeth Shue, Rade Serbedzija, Valery Nikolaev

Simon Templar a.k.a. The Saint is a man with thousand faces, all of them the same. He's a professional thief and a master of disguise who must now work for good in order to stop a nasty oligarch who threatens to stage a coup in Russia. This silly and stupid action film is based on the popular books by Leslie Charteris and the TV series starring Roger Moore.

Red Corner
1997
**
Director: Jon Avnet
Cast: Richard Gere, Bai Ling, Bradley Whitford, Byron Mann, Peter Donat

Richard Gere is a passionate advocate of Free Tibet, and this is his personal attack on China. He plays an American businessman who is on trial in China for the murder of a young woman. The film starts as a promising political drama but eventually turns into an overlong and predictable court proceeding.

The Rainmaker
1997
***
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Matt Damon, Danny DeVito, Claire Danes, Jon Voight, Mickey Rourke

Matt Damon plays an idealistic law school graduate who gets a wake-up call when he tries his first case. This John Grisham adaptation is one of the better ones. It's an eentertaining court drama but not more. Don't expect to find any Francis Ford Coppola touches on the screen.

The Peacemaker
1997
**½
Director: Mimi Leder
Cast: George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Marcel Iures, Armin Mueller-Stahl

A generic action drama in which George Clooney and Nicole Kidman chase a stolen Russian warhead across the world and end up in New York City. Director Mimi Leder comes from TV, and she seems unable to direct a satisfying feature film. Very much like her previous works Deep Impact and Pay It Forward, this one offers a few terrific set pieces, but that's it. The pace is fast but everything seems to happen too easily.

Paradise Road
1997
**
Director: Bruce Beresford
Cast: Glenn Close, Pauline Collins, Cate Blanchett, Frances McDormand

A true story about a group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women who are sent to a Japanese Pow camp where they take up choral singing to keep up the spirits. Some of them die and some of them survive, but why this story was deemed worthy of a film remains unanswered. Based on Betty Jeffrey's book White Coolies.

Neitoperho (The Collector)
1997
***
Director: Auli Mantila
Cast: Leea Klemola, Elina Hurme, Rea Mauranen, Henriikka Salo, Jari Hietanen

A young sociopathic woman takes her sister's car and heads for an eventful and tragic road trip. This Finnish film is an interesting portrayal of mental illness, although it would be nice to get an idea what goes on inside the protagonist's head. In any case, Leea Klemola gives a very commanding performance in the lead.

My Best Friend's Wedding
1997
**½
Director: P.J. Hogan
Cast: Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett

Two longtime friends agreed to get married if they are both still single at 28. Now that time has come, with some complications. This romantic comedy doesn't take the obvious route and its ending is quite untypical, but the whole genre has become so formulaic that the film still ends up feeling familiar.

Mrs. Brown
1997
***
Director: John Madden
Cast: Judi Dench, Billy Connelly, Geoffrey Palmer, Gerard Butler

An interesting Driving Miss Daisyesque drama about the relationship between Queen Victoria and her Scottish servant. This very British film is nicely made but occasionally heavy-going. Judi Dench and Billy Connelly are both superb.



Miss Evers' Boys
1997
**½
Director: Joseph Sargent
Cast: Alfre Woodard, Laurence Fishburne, Graig Sheffer, Joe Morton

This watchable TV drama about a group of poor black men who were used as medical guinea pigs is based on a shameful slice of true American history. Alfre Woodard shines in the lead.

Men in Black
1997
****
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Rip Torn, Vincent D'Onofrio

An NYPD detective joins a secret agency which tracks alien activity on Earth, and is partnered with a grumpy veteran. This clever science fiction comedy has a skeletal plot, but it more than makes up with hilarious gags, lovely performances, and impressive special effects. The movie is so fast-paced that it feels almost too short. Loosely based on a comic book series. Followed by two inferior sequels, II (2002) and III (2012).

Mad City
1997
**
Director: Costa Gavras
Cast: John Travolta, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Alda, William Atherton

Costa Gavras' satire raises some interesting questions about how media abuses its power but the points are all pretty obvious, yet they're hammered home without a hint of subtlety. John Travolta is not convincing as a sweet simpleton who accidentally takes a group of children hostage.

Love and Death On Long Island
1997
****
Director: Richard Kwietniowski
Cast: John Hurt, Jason Priestley, Fiona Loewi, Sheila Hancock, Maury Chaykin

John Hurt is terrific as a highbrow English writer who becomes obsessed with an American teen film heartthrob. Stories like this often have an inevitably violent climax, but this little film stays pleasantly funny and low-key all the way through.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park
1997
*
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Pete Postlethwaite

In this awful sequel to Jurassic Park, T-Rex ends up in San Diego - in an extremely contrived and stupid way, I should add. It is quite a shock that Steven Spielberg directed this stinker right after one of his best films, Schindler's List. It's once again based on Michael Crichton's novel. Followed by Jurassic Park III.

Lost Highway
1997
****
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Loggia

A saxophone player and his wife receive mysterious and invasive video tapes on their door step. This eventually leads to a murder, and that's when the musician turns into a different person. None of this makes sense, and it doesn't need to, because this is a David Lynch film. This fascinating drama has a strong foreboding and it lingers somewhere between dream and reality like his masterpiece Mulholland Drive, but not quite with the same effect.

Little Dieter Needs to Fly
1997
***
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast:

A young boy's dream about becoming a pilot takes him from post-war Germany to the US and to the Vietnam War, where he's shot down and held prisoner in Laos. This is a captivating but a bit thinly spread documentary. Herzog later retold the story in a fiction film Rescue Dawn.

A Life Less Ordinary
1997
*½
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz, Holly Hunter, Delroy Limdo, Ian Holm, Dan Hedaya, Stanley Tucci

The third film from the people who made Shallow Grave and Trainspotting is an extremely unsuccessful and disappointing mishmash of drama, comedy, romance and fantasy. It once again stars Ewan McGregor, now as a petty criminal who kidnaps a rich heiress and is followed around by guardian angels.

Liar, Liar
1997
**½
Director: Tom Shadyac
Cast: Jim Carrey, Maura Tierney, Jennifer Tilly, Amanda Donohoe

Jim Carrey is in his usual rubber face mode as he plays a self-absorbed lawyer and divorced dad who is unable to tell a lie for one day. This comedy has some funny oneliners, but it's dragged down by a sappy and educational subplot in which the protagonist becomes a better person.

L.A. Confidential
1997
****
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger, Kevin Spacey, Danny De Vito, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, Ron Rifkin, Graham Beckel

In the 1950s, three LAPD detectives with different personalities end up investigating a multiple homicide in a coffee shop, which seems to have links to police corruption, Hollywood sleaze, and organized crime. This hard-boiled crime drama is classy, well-acted, and visually impressive, but seeping with testosterone. The ultimate message is that only men who are prepared to use violence will get any results. The female characters are all prostitutes (Kim Basinger won an Oscar for her performance). Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland adapted James Ellroy's 1990 novel and also won an Academy Award.


Kundun
1997
***
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong, Guyrme Tethong, Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin

This story of the 14th Dalai Lama from his discovery to his exile from Tibet is not your average Martin Scorsese film. It's an interesting and visually impressive historical drama, but slightly overlong and not always as gripping as you would hope. Written by Melissa Mathison, who scripted E.T..


Knockin' On Heaven's Door
1997
**½
Director: Thomas Jahn
Cast: Til Schweiger, Jan Josef Liefers, Theirry Van Werveke, Moritz Bleibtreu

Two terminally ill men decide to live their last few days to the fullest and end up stealing a gangster's car with a suitcase full of money. It's an enjoyable ride, especially when the men have nothing to lose, but the influences (Tarantino and American road movies) are a bit too obvious and gun-toting bad guys seem a bit out of place in a German film.

Kiss the Girls
1997
**
Director: Gary Fleder
Cast: Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Cary Elwes, Tony Goldwyn, Bill Nunn

This serial killer film doesn't stand out from the mass, although in this case the madman doesn't kill the victims but holds them captive. It all gets increasingly clichéd and implausible towards the end. Adapted from James Patterson's crime novel. Morgan Freeman's forensic psychologist Alex Cross returns in Along Came a Spider.

Jackie Brown
1997
****
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Robert De Niro, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton, Michael Bowen, Chris Tucker , LisaGay Hamilton, Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr.

A middle-aged air stewardess finds herself in a pickle. While she smuggles money for a ruthless arms dealer, she is forced to assist the authorities to catch the man. Quentin Tarantino's third movie is his most mature work, which features very little violence and characters who actually resemble real people. I do like the relaxed pacing, but like most of the director's output, it's too long at 2½ hours. The screenplay is based on Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch, which is a very ordinary pulp novel. Pam Grier and Robert Forster give wonderfully warm performances. The soundtrack is dynamite.

The Jackal
1997
**
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Cast: Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, Sidney Poitier, Diane Venora, Tess Harper

Americans and Russians join forces and recruit an ex-IRA terrorist to catch a top-notch assassin in this run-of-the-mill thriller remake. Bruce Willis gives another wooden performance and Richard Gere struggles to maintain his Irish accent. The original The Day of the Jackal was no masterpiece either, but it at least provided a believable political context to the story.

Inventing the Abbotts
1997
**½
Director: Pat O'Connor
Cast: Liv Tyler, Joaquin Phoenix, Jennifer Connelly, Billy Crudup, Kathy Baker

A likeable but obvious story about two working class brothers who become obsessed with the local tycoon and his beautiful daughters. This soapy drama is set in the 1950s and it follows its predictable course. Based on Sue Miller's short story.

In & Out
1997
****
Director: Frank Oz
Cast: Kevin Kline, Tom Selleck, Joan Cusack, Matt Dillon, Debbie Reynolds

A very funny comedy about a small town drama teacher whose former student gives an Oscar speech and hints that his mentor is gay. All the gay clichés are obviously present but there are a lot of laughs to go with them.

The Ice Storm
1997
*****
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood

In 1970s Connecticut the lives of two highly dysfunctional families come to a head during an ice storm. This drama is wonderfully acted and stunningly visualised. The story and its characters are chilly and remote, but the effect is deeply moving. Adapted from Rick Moody's novel.

I Know What You Did Last Summer
1997
*½
Director: Jim Gillespie
Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Philippe, Freddie Prinze Jr.

A group of teenagers accidentally kill a man who comes back to haunt them. In Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson created an enjoyable horror film parody, but in this adaptation of Lois Duncan's novel he demonstrates how things become clichés in the first place. This deadly dull shocker was followed by two sequels, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. And I still don't care what you did last summer.

Grosse Pointe Blank
1997
**½
Director: George Armitage
Cast: John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Dan Aykroyd, Alan Arkin, Joan Cusack

A hitman goes to his high school reunion where meets his old flame, but how is he going to explain what he does for a living these days. This black comedy has a terrific premise, but it cannot find a balance between jokes and bloodshed. The all-is-forgiven ending is simply awful.

Gridlock'D
1997
***
Director: Vondie Curtis-Hall
Cast: Tupac Shakur, Tim Roth, Thandie Newton, Charles Fleischer

An enjoyable minimalist comedy about two drug addicts who spend a day battling red tape in order to get into rehab. Tupac Shakur got killed before the film was released.

Good Will Hunting
1997
****
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams, Stellan Skarsgard, Minnie Driver, Casey Affleck, Cole Hauser, John Mighton

Will is a deeply troubled 20-year-old who leads a dead-end existence with his childhood friends. He is also a natural genius, who has potential for great things. This captivating and touching but not entirely believable character drama was written by its stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who earned an Academy Award for their terrific screenplay. As did Robin Williams, who is wonderful as Will's wise but heartbroken therapist. On the other hand, Minnie Driver's chirpy performance as Will's girlfriend is an acquired taste.

Gi Jane
1997
*½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Demi Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Anne Bacroft, Scott Wilson

A pompous and militaristic film directed by the on-and-off, this time off, cinematic genius Ridley Scott. Demi Moore plays the first woman to take a crack at the Navy Seals training. Predictably she's first disliked by her male peers but she proves them all wrong by completing the training, saving someone's life in combat and becoming one of the guys. The gutsiest thing she does is shave her long, beautiful hair.

George of the Jungle
1997
***
Director: Sam Weisman
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Leslie Mann, Thomas Haden Church, Holland Taylor

A silly but cute children's film about a king of the jungle who doesn't quite have the agility of Tarzan. The story isn't difficult to outline but Brendan Fraser as George provides some laugh-out-loud moments. Based on a cartoon by Jay Ward.

Gattaca
1997
****
Director: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Gore Vidal, Loren Dean

This thought-provoking science fiction allegory is set in the near future when genetically enhanced people have become the ruling class. Andrew Niccol's directorial debut is a very impressive drama, apart from the redundant murder subplot.


The Game
1997
**
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, Deborah Kara Unger, Carroll Baker, James Rebhorn, Peter Donat, Armin Mueller-Stahl

On his birthday, a wealthy but unhappy banker receives a voucher for a mysterious game organised by a company called Consumer Recreation Services. A few days later, his perfect life begins to fall apart, or is CRS behind it all? David Fincher's follow-up to the superb Se7en is a pointless, gimmicky, and boring thriller in which the protagonist is the only person who doesn't know what's going on. May I point out that the film's title is The Game. In terms of plausibility, the whole thing is absolutely ridiculous.

Funny Games
1997
****
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering

Michael Haneke is not a big fan of the Hollywood double standard which manipulates us to revile the bad guys and cheer the good guys for the same act of violence. In his overpowering drama two young men take a family hostage in their holiday home and play sick games with their lives. The film plays with our expectations, but refuses to give us what we hope. Get ready to squirm in your seat in discomfort, but don't look forward to a happy ending. Haneke remade the film in English in 2008.

The Full Monty
1997
****
Director: Peter Cattaneo
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy, Lesley Sharp, Emily Woof, Steve Huison, Paul Barber, Hugo Speer, William Snape, Deirdre Costello, Paul Butterworth

A group of unemployed Sheffield steelworkers are so desperate that they form a male striptease act. But before they can perform in front of people, they must overcome societal prejudices and personal insecurities. This delightful English comedy about friendship and self-discovery became a massive hit and was even nominated for several Academy Awards. It is a socially conscious crowdpleaser that deals with the effects of unemployment, divorce, impotence, and working class life.

Flubber
1997
**
Director: Les Mayfield
Cast: Robin Williams, Marcia Gay Harden, Christopher McDonald, Clancy Brown

A formulaic and utterly predictable children's film about a professor who invents flubber (flying rubber) but neglects his love life. At times it's very reminiscent of Home Alone, thanks to screenwriter John Hughes, but it's actually a remake of The Absent-Minded Professor.

The Fifth Element
1997
****
Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Chris Tucker

In the 23rd century a cab driver saves a humanoid girl and becomes inadvertently involved in saving the rest of the world. Luc Besson's science fiction parody is wacky, hilarious and beautifully (over)designed. Milla Jovovich is wonderful in the female lead.

Fierce Creatures
1997
**
Director: Fred Schepisi, Robert Young
Cast: John Cleese, Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin

The cast and writer of A Fish Called Wanda reunite for a messy and very disappointing comedy about a run down zoo whose new owners have radical redevelopment plans. This unfunny reunion resorts to fart jokes.

Fever Pitch
1997
**½
Director: David Evans
Cast: Colin Firth, Ruth Gemmell, Neil Pearson, Lorraine Ashbourne

A sweet but formulaic English romantic comedy about a man whose obsession with Arsenal Football Club is a burden on his relationships to women, very much like music in High Fidelity. Both films are based on Nick Hornby's novels, although the source material for this film was actually an autobiographical collection of essays.

Face/Off
1997
****
Director: John Woo
Cast: Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Joan Allen, Alessandro Nivola, Gina Gershon, Dominique Swain, Nick Cassavetes

To discover the location of a bomb, FBI agent Sean Archer undergoes experimental face transplant surgery to play his arch nemesis Castor Troy. While Archer is undercover, Troy wakes up from his coma and takes the agent's face. This ridiculously far-fetched premise results in an irresistibly entertaining action movie, which takes the fake identity scenario to places most movies wouldn't dare to go. John Travolta and Nicolas Cage both get to give hilariously schizophrenic performances. The movie could easily be shorter and tighter by taking out one of the many shootouts with explosions and smashed glass.

Face
1997
*½
Director: Antonia Bird
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Ray Winstone, Steve Sweeney, Gerry Conlon

The heist goes wrong and someone has double-crossed the gang...yawn!...In this British Reservoir Dogs wannabe. Transferring American style gunfights directly to the streets of London just doesn't work. The film also has a very carefree attitude towards logic and credibility. All in all, a terrible film.

Event Horizon
1997
**
Director: Paul Anderson
Cast: Sam Neill, Lawrence Fishburne, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson

A spaceship re-emerges without its crew seven years after it vanished. Sounds like something interesting could happen? Thing again, this is another Alien retread where the cast gets killed one by one. There are some scary moments but absolutely no attempt is made to explain any of it.

The Edge
1997
***
Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Elle Macpherson, Harold Perrineau

A group of men crash their plane in remote Alaska, where they must battle bears and other hazards of the wilderness. The premise is intriguing but the story with its soap opera twists cannot keep you in its grip. Written by David Mamet and shot on beautiful locations in Alaska and the British Columbia.

Donnie Brasco
1997
****
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Johnny Depp, Al Pacino, Michael Madsen, Bruno Kirby, James Russo

This terrific drama offers a less glamorous view at the life of a gangster, much like The Sopranos on TV. Johnny Depp, once again very good, plays an FBI agent who infiltrates the mob but begins to lose his real self in the process. Al Pacino gives a brilliant low-key performance in a supporting role. Adapted from the book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia by Joseph D. Pistone and Richard Woodley.

Devil's Own
1997
**
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Margaret Colin, Natascha McElhone

This action drama uses a real life backdrop to tell a stupid and boring fictional story of a New York City policeman who unknowingly harbours an IRA terrorist. Brad Pitt is a highly unconvincing Irishman with his big hair and bad accent. Alan J. Pakula's final film.

Devil's Advocate
1997
***½
Director: Taylor Hackford
Cast: Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron, Judith Ivey, Connie Nielsen

This visually impressive and gripping morality play is reminiscent of The Firm. A young hotshot lawyer is lured into a dodgy law firm, only this time it's literally run by a bad guy. Al Pacino goes predictably over the top but Charlize Theron is excellent in her breakthrough performance. Based on Andrew Neiderman's novel.

Deconstructing Harry
1997
***½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Judy Davis, Richard Benjamin, Billy Crystal, Demi Moore

Woody Allen's likeable comedy about a neurotic writer whose family and friends find his fiction uncomfortably autobiographical. The film mixes his reality and his fiction into an interesting and original, if also occasionally confusing, concoction.

Dante's Peak
1997
**½
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, Jamie Renee Smith, Jeremy Foley

Dante's Peak, a picture-postcard town in Washington state, sits under a dormant volcano. A United States Geological Survey volcanologist discovers clear warning signs but struggles to convince the townsfolk or his own team that the town should be evacuated. This disaster movie is hokey and formulaic but surprisingly enjoyable. The script takes its sweet time to set up the characters, which pays off when the destructive spectacle begins.

Cube
1997
**
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Cast: Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Julian Richings, Wayne Robson, Maurice Dean Wint

A group of strangers find themselves imprisoned inside a maze of trap-filled cubic rooms which are connected to each other by doors on all six faces. Who is behind this diabolical scheme? Why did they do it? Why were these particular people selected? Do not expect to get answers to the questions above, or to the ones below. Where is this gigantic structure? How many years did it take to construct? How were the victims abducted and brought inside the cube? What is the point of the film? Kudos to Vincenzo Natali for creating a tense little horror scenario in an extremely limited environment. His film works perfectly fine on a conceptual level, but as a piece of human drama it's complete nonsense. It's a shame Natali couldn't inhabit his confined space with more interesting characters or develop a plot which is not so predictably cynical.

Cop Land
1997
****
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Peter Berg, Janeane Garofalo, Robert Patrick, Michael Rapaport, Annabella Sciorra

The fictional town of Garrison in New Jersey is inhabited predominantly by NYPD officers, some of whom are immersed in crime and corruption. The town's timid and gullible sheriff realises that he has been looking the other way for too long. James Mangold's testosterone-filled crime drama unfolds like a contemporary Western. The cast is superb, but Mangold's characters are painted with very broad strokes. Nevertheless, Sylvester Stallone gives an unusually understated performance as the sheriff.


Contact
1997
***½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, David Morse

Jodie Foster plays a female scientist who tries to interpret a cryptic message from outer space. Could there be life outside the Earth? This fascinating, thought-provoking and beautifully crafted science fiction story from Carl Sagan's novel relies on ideas rather than special effects. However, the film needs some radical re-editing; the last 30 minutes can go as far as I'm concerned.

Conspiracy Theory
1997
***
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, Patrick Stewart, Cylk Cozart, Stephen Kahan

Mel Gibson is enjoyable as a paranoid New York City cab driver who believes in every conceivable conspiracy theory, one of which turns out to be true. This is a moderately interesting thriller with an unnecessary tagged-on happy ending. Scripted by Brian Helgeland.

Con Air
1997
**
Director: Simon West
Cast: Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, John Cusack, Monica Potter, Ving Rhames, Mykelti Williamson, Nick Chinlund, Rachel Ticotin, Steve Buscemi

A group of ruthless convicts hijack a plane and only one falsely imprisoned good guy can stop their plan. There's plenty of action and explosions but not nearly enough humour to compensate for the stupidity of the whole endeavour. In the end this is a bog standard Jerry Bruckheimer production. The cast is impressive, but that's not enough.

Chasing Amy
1997
***
Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Lee, Dwight Ewell

Kevin Smith's third film is possibly his best. It's a smart and charming if not entirely believable romantic comedy about a comic book artist who falls in love with a girl who prefers girls. Less smut and geekiness equal more enjoyment.

The Butcher Boy
1997
**½
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Eamonn Owens, Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Andrew Fullerton

Neil Jordan's well made but incredibly exhausting drama about a 12-year-old Irish boy from a broken home whose eccentricity slowly turns into insanity. Eamonn Owens is lively in the lead, although his character is really annoying. Based on Patrick McCabe's novel.

Breakdown
1997
***
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Cast: Kurt Russell, Kathleen Quinlan, J.T. Walsh, Jack Noseworthy

A very short and snappy thriller about a couple whose cross-country trip becomes hell when the wife is kidnapped. Sadly the psychological thrills turn to outright violence towards the end. Reminiscent of The Vanishing.

The Boxer
1997
***½
Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Emily Watson, Brian Cox, Gerard McSorley

A former boxer returns to troubled Belfast where he tries to find his feet. Jim Sheridan's look at life in the shadow of the IRA fails to bring anything new to the subject, but the film is gripping, the characters are believable and the performances are strong.

Boogie Nights
1997
*****
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, Heather Graham, Nicole Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Paul Thomas Anderson's second film is a long but brilliant drama about Eddie Adams, a well-endowed young man who becomes a porn actor named Dirk Diggler. This is a wonderfully warm and funny portrayal of a close-knit "family" who have unconventional jobs, and a fascinating depiction of the porn industry from the golden age of the 1970 to the home video revolution in the early 1980s. The performances are terrific and Robert Elswit's camera work is stunning. The young Paul Thomas Anderson has directed it all with incredible confidence.

Bean
1997
**½
Director: Mel Smith
Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol, Pamela Reed, Harris Yulin

Mr. Bean is a likeable buffoon who is often hilarious in the TV shorts which feature very little dialogue. In this spin-off film he travels to Hollywood to cause further destruction. Now the character speaks but he is not able to carry a feature length film on his own, especially when all the other roles are badly written (and acted). Followed by Mr. Bean's Holiday in 2007.

Batman and Robin
1997
**
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell, Alicia Silverstone, Uma Thurman

George Clooney makes his one-off appearance as the caped crusader in another good looking turd polished by Joel Schumacher. The sets are impressive but there is no story to speak of. As Batman and Robin take on Mr. Freeze, Batgirl battles Poison Ivy. The film is unjustly derided as the low point in the franchise, but, in all honesty, it's no worse than the previous three films.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
1997
**
Director: Jay Roach
Cast: Mike Myers, Elisabeth Hurley, Michael York, Mimi Rogers

Austin Powers is a womanising British spy. The world of cinema could use a funny and clever parody of the James Bond franchise and 1960s lifestyle, but this is not it. Mike Myers gives a rather likeable performance but this is a silly and smutty lowest common denominator comedy. Followed by The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember.

As Good As It Gets
1997
****½
Director: James L. Brooks
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding Jr.

A brilliantly written and acted romantic comedy about a neurotic novelist who begins to fall for a troubled single mother. The lovers really connect only in the very end, which is refreshing, but perhaps they could have done it in less than 140 minutes. Nicholson and Hunt both won Oscars for their performances.

Anaconda
1997
*½
Director: Luis Llosa
Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde

A documentary crew in the Amazon is terrorised by a giant constrictor in this cheesy, formulaic and only unintentionally funny horror film which has third rate special effects. Jennifer Lopez plays the director before her big breakthrough. Followed by Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid and two further TV movies sequels.

Amistad
1997
**½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman, Nigel Hawthorne

A true story about the 1839 mutiny on the slave-ship La Amistad and the subsequant trial which tried to determine the legal rights of its captives. Steven Spielberg displays some of his visual brilliance aboard the ship, but for the most part this is a dull and long-winded court drama.

Alien Resurrection
1997
*
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott, Brad Dourif, Leland Orser, Dan Hedaya, J. E. Freeman, Kim Flowers, Raymond Cruz

The fourth instalment in the Alien franchise doesn't even bother to set up a proper story before it unleashes mayhem. 200 years after Alien³, a group of spaceborne scientists clone Ripley into a superhuman, take out the baby alien inside her and let it breed. Why? Nevermind, none of it matters 30 minutes in when it's business as usual; the aliens are loose and they kill everyone on their way, including a ragged group of mercenaries who arrive on the spaceship at the wrong moment. Jean-Pierre Jeunet made his name with eccentric fantasy films (Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children), but his Hollywood debut offers committee filmmaking at its worst. Joss Whedon's mechanical script assembles a cast of characters, none of whom deserve to survive. Jeunet, in turn, takes each cliché and each line of cheesy dialogue at face value, without the slightest sense of humour or irony. Predictably there's plenty of gore but, thanks to inept direction and John Frizzell's unsubtle score, no sense of terror or dread.

Air Force One
1997
**½
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Dean Stockwell

Air Force One is hijacked by a group of Russian militant extremists, and it's time for the President to kick some ass. Wolfgang Petersen's mediocre thriller repeats the twists and turns of Passenger 57, of all films. Harrison Ford in a bland leader and Gary Oldman plays a silmy villain for the umpteenth time.

Afterglow
1997
***
Director: Alan Rudolph
Cast: Nick Nolte, Julie Christie, Lara Flynn Boyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Jay Underwood

The lives of two unhappy couples become entangled with one another in this interesting but occasionally detached drama. Julie Christie and Nick Nolte give very strong performances, but the younger cast members suffer from bland characterisation.

Affliction
1997
****
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Nick Nolte, James Coburn, Sissy Spacek, Mary Beth Hurt

Old wounds between father and son are reopened as the latter, a small town cop, becomes obsessed with an allegedly accidental death. Paul Schrader adapted Russell Banks' novel and creates a haunting drama which doesn't show its hand, even at the end. Nick Nolte and the Oscar winning James Coburn both give very strong and gruffy performances.

Addicted to Love
1997
***
Director: Griffin Dunne
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Meg Ryan, Tcheky Karyo, Kelly Preston, Maureen Stapleton, Remak Ramsay

A likeable but frustratingly predictable dark romantic comedy about two abandoned lovers who fall in love while they spy on their exes. Some overly farcical scenes towards the end nearly destroy the film.

Absolute Power
1997
**½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Judy Davis

This uninspired conspiracy thriller is based on David Baldacci's crime novel. Clint Eastwood plays an ageing burglar who witnesses a high profile murder. The story never takes off and the entire cast seem to be doing a half-assed job.

187
1997
**½
Director: Kevin Reynolds
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, John Heard, Kelly Rowan, Karina Arroyave

Samuel L. Jackson plays a traumatised teacher who moves from New York to Los Angeles but cannot escape the grim reality of American high schools. The topic is worthy but this drama is rather mediocre. The title is a slang term for murder.

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
1996
**½
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Leonardo Di Caprio, Claire Danes, John Leguizamo, Paul Sorvino

Baz Luhrmann's anarchistic update of Shakespeare's best known play might have worked, had he bothered to bring its values and attitudes to the 20th century, as well. As it stands, the film seems gritty and phony. The old English dialogue is difficult enough to follow on page, but when it's shouted out by an American cast, it's pretty much incomprehensible.

White Squall
1996
***
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Caroline Goodall, John Savage, Jeremy Sisto, Scott Wolf

A gripping character drama about a group of students who go on a sailing trip but get caught in a storm. Their ship is skippered by Jeff Bridges in another charismatic performance. The unnecessary feelgood ending almost spoils the film. Based on Charles Gieg's book The Last Voyage of the Albatross.

Waiting for Guffman
1996
***½
Director: Christopher Guest
Cast: Christopher Guest, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard

Director, writer and actor Christopher Guest was one the brains behind the seminal mockumentary This is Spinal Tap. This comedy about a musical production in a small Missouri town continues in the similar style but doesn't quite reach the same heights. However, it's funny and enjoyably low-key.

The Van
1996
**
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Colm Meyney, Donal O'Kelly, Ger Ryan, Caroline Rothwell, Stuart Dunn

Two unemployed Irish mates create work for themselves by operating a fish and chips van, but the business ends up putting a great strain on their friendship. The third and weakest part of Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy has loveable characters, just like The Commitments and The Snapper, but the story goes nowhere.

Up, Close & Personal
1996
***
Director: Jon Avnet
Cast: Robert Redford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna

A likeable romantic drama about the professional and personal relationship between an aspiring news reporter and her boss. Ironically the unlikely romance between the two is more believable than her climb in the media world. The ending seems contrived, not to mention similar to that in Out of Africa, another Redford film. Marginally based on Alanna Nash's book Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch.

Unforgettable
1996
**
Director: John Dahl
Cast: Ray Liotta, Linda Fiorentino, Peter Coyote, Christopher McDonald

It's never a good idea to name your film Unforgettable, when the finished product can be anything but. In a rare good guy role Ray Liotta plays a medical examiner who tries to solve his wife's murder by injecting himself with her memories. Linda Fiorentino, on the other hand, is miscast as a helpless female scientist. In the end this is a predictable and frustrating whodunnit with some scifi elements.

Twister
1996
**½
Director: Jan De Bont
Cast: Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, Jamie Gertz, Philip Seymour Hoffman

A formulaic but relatively entertaining disaster film about two teams of competing tornado chasers. During the course of the movie the twisters kill the bad guys and heal a troubled marriage. The impressive special effects needed a better story that the one co-written by Michael Crichton.

The Truth About Cats & Dogs
1996
**
Director: Michael Lehmann
Cast: Janeane Garofalo, Ben Chaplin, Uma Thurman, James McCaffrey

The host of a pet radio show is insecure about her looks and asks her tall blond colleague to take her place on a date with a man who only knows her by voice. This incredibly contrived story follows one of the standard romantic comedy formulas, meet-cute through a lie. The film is not only predictable but also unbelievably stupid and implausible.

The Trigger Effect
1996
**
Director: David Koepp
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Elisabeth Shue, Dermot Mulroney, Richard T. Jones

This thriller about a blackout starts out brilliantly. It shows how many aspects of everyday life are affected and how people would act in such circumstances. Then the guns are pulled out, people start shooting each other and our protagonists go on the run. The ending is unbelievably lame.

Trainspotting
1996
*****
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle

A terrific dark comedy about a group of friends, most of whom are heroin addicts. Danny Boyle's second feature moves from hilarious comedy to harrowing drama with admirable ease. The film is vividly directed and wonderfully acted, and its soundtrack is an instant classic. The story is set in Edinburgh and it's adapted from Irvine Welsh's novel.

To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday
1996
***
Director: Michael Pressman
Cast: Peter Gallagher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Bruce Altman, Kathy Baker

Two years after Gillian's tragic death her husband still clings to his memories and has conversations with the dead wife. This tearjerker is touching and well-acted but rather forgettable. Based on a play by Michael Brady.

Tin Cup
1996
**
Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Don Johnson, Cheech Marin, Linda Hart

Ron Shelton continues to churn out his forgettable sport films. This one is about a washed out golfer who wants to take one more shot at the U.S. Open. The 18th hole is a definitive anticlimax.

That Thing You Do!
1996
***
Director: Tom Hanks
Cast: Tom Everett Scott, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, Liv Tyler

A sweet and enjoyable but rather predictable comedy drama about the rise and fall of The Wonders, a fictional pop band who have a hit song in 1964. Tom Hanks also wrote his directorial debut, and he plays the band's ruthless manager.

Swingers
1996
***
Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston, Patrick Van Horn, Alex Désert, Deena Martin, Katherine Kendall, Heather Graham

A sympathetic drama comedy about five young struggling actors who live in Los Angeles. While the rest of the group are just happy to go out and get laid, Mike cannot get over his long-term ex-girlfriend. The film is never laugh-out-loud funny, but at least Vaughn's comedy schtick still seemed fresh at this point. Favreau wrote the script.

Surviving Picasso
1996
**½
Director: James Ivory
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Julianne Moore, Joss Ackland

Pablo Picasso loved women but none of them had precedence over his art. Anthony Hopkins is strong in the title role, but the film is badly let down by its female characters, who are nothing but helpless victims. Also, we never see any of the artist's real work on screen. Loosely based on Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington's book Picasso: Creator and Destroyer.

The Substance of Fire
1996
**½
Director: Daniel Sullivan
Cast: Ron Rifkin, Timothy Hutton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tony Goldwyn

A Jewish publisher loses his grip on reality and is about to commit a commercial suicide by publishing a massive opus on Nazi medical experiments. The film starts well and Ron Rifkin gives a strong performance, but the story falls spart when it begins to focus on his three adult children. This is an adaptation of Jon Robin Baitz's stage play, but that is no excuse for such a visually substandard film.

Striptease
1996
*½
Director: Andrew Bergman
Cast: Demi Moore, Burt Reynolds, Armand Assante, Ving Rhames

A single mother needs to raise money for a custody battle, so she decides to become a stripper. A dodgy Congressman played by Burt Reynolds becomes her number one fan. Demi Moore earned a record salary to take her clothes off for this sleazy crime drama. She looks good but it seems no funds were left to write a script. Based on Carl Hiaasen's novel.

Stealing Beauty
1996
**½
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Cast: Liv Tyler, Jeremy Irons, Rachel Weisz, Joseph Fiennes, Donal McCann

Liv Tyler is impressive in her first major role as an American teenager who spends a formative summer in Tuscany. Bertolucci's drama is visually stirring but terribly shallow. It has a child-like protagonist and soulless supporting characters.

Star Trek: First Contact
1996
**½
Director: Jonathan Frakes
Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Alice Krige

In the eighth Star Trek film Captain Picard brings the Uss Enterprise to Earth. This half-decent science fiction drama offers very little action. It has two parallel storylines, which are both interesting, but they don't really gel.

Space Jam
1996
**
Director: Joe Pytka
Cast: Michael Jordan, Wayne Knight, Theresa Randle, Charles Barkley

Michael Jordan and Looney Tunes play in an intergalactic basketball match. This lame combination of cartoon and live action is no match to the likes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

Small Faces
1996
**
Director: Gillies MacKinnon
Cast: Iain Robertson, Joseph McFadden, J.S. Duffy, Garry Sweeney

This looks like a science fiction film set in Glasgow, although it's a gang drama set in the end of 1960s. There is potential in the story but the film fails to deliver.

Sling Blade
1996
****
Director: Billy Bob Thornton
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Dwight Yoakam, J.T. Walsh, John Ritter

Billy Bob Thornton gives a staggering performance as a retarded killer who struggles to adjust to normal life after 20 year in a mental hospital. He also wrote and directed this film which is based on a short Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade. Academy Award winner for Best Adapted Screenplay

Sleepers
1996
**
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Minnie Driver

In the late 1960s four young boys in Hell's Kitchen pull a prank that goes horribly wrong. The boys are sent to a reform school where they are physically and sexually abused. The only shocking aspect of this controversy-courting drama is its hypocrisy. Sexual abuse is the most horrific thing in the world, but murder is OK. Based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's book, which was sold as a work of non-fiction but is apparently mostly made up.

Shine
1996
****
Director: Scott Hicks
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, Alex Rafalowicz

A touching, partly true story of Australian pianist David Helfgott. The demands of the music and his overbearing father lead to an eventual nervous breakdown. This is a well-acted but not entirely convincing drama in which mental illness is portrayed as something cute like forgetting to put your clothes on. Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar for his impressive but showy performance.

She's the One
1996
**
Director: Edward Burns
Cast: Edward Burns, Maxine Bahns, John Mahoney, Jennifer Aniston

Edward Burns' second film is a pointless and charmless romantic comedy about two Irish-American brothers and their father whose relationship problems stem solely from infidelity. The director's girlfriend of the time, Maxine Bahns, is lovely to look at but absolutely useless as an actress. The soundtrack by Tom Petty is the film's saving grace.

Secrets & Lies
1996
****
Director: Mike Leigh
Cast: Brenda Blethyn, Timothy Spall, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Phyllis Logan

Mike Leigh's best known work is a delightful multi-character drama about a young black woman who tries to track down her biological mother. This is another finely constructed and strongly acted film. Brenda Blethyn is phenomenal as the working class mother.

Seasick
1996
**
Director: Veikko Aaltonen
Cast: Bob Peck, Katrin Cartlidge, John Castle, Peter Firth, Giles Thomas

A ship full of toxic cargo is stranded at sea when no port will allow it to dock. Veikko Aaltonen's first and last film in English floats aimlessly in a similar fashion. The premise is promising but the film is not gripping.

Scream
1996
***
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich

In New Nightmare Wes Craven played with movie reality as his cast members kept getting killed. In this inventive parody, which was scripted by Kevin Williamson, he takes the joke a step further. The story is set in the town of Woodsboro where a masked killer targets teenagers. However, that's pretty much irrelevant. The main point is to play with our knowledge and expectations of horror film clichés. It's ultimately one joke streched very thin, and it has very little to offer to those uninterested in the genre. The film was a massive hit and it has since spawned three sequels (2, 3 and 4), its own subgenre as well as a very profitable Scary Movie spoof series.



The Rock
1996
***½
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Sean Connery, Ed Harris, Michael Biehn, David Morse, John Spencer, William Forsythe, Vanessa Marcil, John C. McGinley

A disillusioned General and his rogue army unit hold more than 80 people hostage in Alcatraz and threaten to attack San Francisco with a nerve agent. An FBI chemical weapons expert teams up with a convict, who knows how to break into the prison. This bombastic action movie laid the formula for Michael Bay's subsequent output. It delivers quintessential 90s action with several slow motion shootouts and explosions, and tons of smashed glass. Sure it's dumb, but this one stands out in Bay's filmography, because the characters, even the villain, are layered and well-drawn. Sean Connery gives another commanding performance.

Ransom
1996
***
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Mel Gibson, Rene Russo, Gary Sinise, Delroy Lindo, Lili Taylor

A twisty and entertaining kidnap drama about a millionaire, played by Mel Gibson, whose son is held for ransom. The actual kidnapping scene is suspenceful, but even at his best Ron Howard directs mediocre films.

Primal Fear
1996
***
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Cast: Richard Gere, Edward Norton, Laura Linney, John Mahoney

Edward Norton is impressive in his breakthrough performance as a fragile young altar boy who is accused of a heinous murder. Otherwise this is a very conventional courtroom drama. Based on William Diehl's novel.

The Phantom
1996
**
Director: Simon Wincer
Cast: Billy Zane, Treat Williams, Kristy Swanson, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Some comic book characters don't turn into believable film characters; the Phantom in his allbody tights looks frankly laughable. The plot revolves around the quest for the mystical Skulls of Touganda, but it's rubbish and full of supernatural elements, which were never part of the original Lee Falk's comic.

The People Vs. Larry Flynt
1996
***
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward Norton, Brett Harrelson

A larger-than-life biopic of Larry Flynt, the man behind the Hustler magazine. Milos Forman's film is mostly a story about his fight for the freedom of speech, but the one-sided script doesn't allow the audience to think for themselves. Interesting and well-acted, nevertheless.

One Fine Day
1996
***
Director: Michael Hoffman
Cast: George Collney, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mae Whitman, Alex D. Linz

An inoffensive romantic comedy about two career-oriented single parents who keep running to each other during one busy day. This is a cute and likeable film with two attractive leads, but don't expect to remember anything about it the day after.

The Nutty Professor
1996
**
Director: Tom Shadyac
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Jada Pinkett, James Coburn, Dave Chappelle

Eddie Murphy is oddly likeable as a shy, flabby professor who invents a formula that turns him into a slim ladies man. This alter ego, on the other hand, is obnoxious and highly irritating, and so loud that you miss half of the dialogue. This remake of Jerry Lewis' 1962 comedy was followed by Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.

Multiplicity
1996
*½
Director: Harold Ramis
Cast: Michael Keaton, Andie Macdowell, Harris Yulin, Richard Masur

What could be worse than an unfunny comedy with Michael Keaton? An unfunny comedy with four Michael Keatons. He plays a contractor who doesn't seem to have time to share between his work, family and himself, so he agrees to have himself cloned. A series of predictable but far from hilarious misunderstandings and near misses ensue as he tries to keep his clone(s) a secret. Apart from the science, the rest of the story is also short on credibility. Eugene Levy as a less than punctual builder supplies the film's few funny moments.

Mulholland Falls
1996
**½
Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Nick Nolte, Chazz Palminteri, Chris Penn, John Malkovich

In his first Hollywood film Lee Tamahori has cast a familiar face in every little role in order to keep the audience awake. This is a mediocre crime drama which tells a fact-based story about a group of detectives who became famous in the 1950s for their brutal methods. Not to be confused with the vastly superior Mulholland Drive.

Mission: Impossible
1996
***
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emmanuel Beart, Henry Czerny, Jean Reno

The Impossible Missions Force (IMF) are double-crossed during their assignment in Prague, and several of the team members are killed. From there onwards it's a one man show as Ethan Hunt tries to find out who the rat is. Brian De Palma turns the gimmicky TV series into an entertaining but instantly forgettable action film which launched a popular franchise. M: I II, M: I III and M: I - Ghost Protocol followed.


The Mirror Has Two Faces
1996
**
Director: Barbra Streisand
Cast: Barbra Streisand, Jeff Bridges, Lauren Bacall, Mimi Rogers

A stale romantic comedy about a middle-aged math teacher who wants to have an intellectual relatisonship. Jeff Bridges and Lauren Bacall are good, Babs herself not so much. Based on the 1958 French film Le Miroir à deux faces.

Microcosmos: Le Peuple De L'Herbe (Microcosmos)
1996
**½
Director: Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou
Cast:

In their nature documentary, Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou take the camera literally to the grassroot level to reveal the hidden wildlife on the meadows and ponds in Aveyron, in southern France. They show amazing close-up footage of insects, amphibians, invertebrates and other species, but do not provide a narrative thread to tie the beautiful images together; neither do they give information about the numerous small creatures or their behaviour. I imagine this is what Honey I Shrunk the Kids would had looked like without the people and the plot.

Michael Collins
1996
***½
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Liam Neeson, Julia Roberts, Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea, Ian Hart

Michael Collins (1890-1922) was one of the key figures of Irish independence. Neil Jordan's film is an interesting but not terribly captivating biopic. Liam Neeson is a towering presence as the "Big Lad", but Julia Roberts is lost with her on and off accent in the obligatory female role. The script is clearly biased against the British.

Matilda
1996
****
Director: Danny DeVito
Cast: Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Embeth Davidtz, Pam Ferris

(So far) Danny De Vito's best film behind the camera is a hilarious and visually inventive comedy. It tells a story of an exceptional little girl who has terrible parents. Based on Roald Dahl's book.

Marvin's Room
1996
***½
Director: Jerry Zaks
Cast: Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro

Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep play a pair of sisters who haven't spoken in years. Now they're brought back together when the older sister is diagnosed with leukemia. This is a touching and well-acted drama, but it doesn't try to jerk your tears. In fact we don't see the terminally ill character die on screen, which is refreshing. Based on Scott McPherson's play.

Mars Attacks!
1996
***
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Pam Grier, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman, Jim Brown, Lisa Marie, Sylvia Sidney, Jack Black

In Tim Burton's wacky and anarchistic comedy, the Martians come to Earth, and definitely not in peace. The script by Jonathan Gems breaks the usual story tropes (the militant warmongers and the kids who play video games turn out to be the heroes). Although the film is funny, it hasn't aged well and it's certainly not to everyone's taste. Nevertheless, the cast is great. The story and the characters are based on a trading card series.

Looking for Richard
1996
***
Director: Al Pacino
Cast: Al Pacino, Frederic Kimball, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin

Al Pacino's directorial debut is a semi-documentary which attempts to find out what Shakespeare's significance is in the present date. The topic is quite interesting but his film is too long and, frankly, all over the place.

The Long Kiss Goodnight
1996
****
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Graig Bierko, Yvonne Zima, Brian Cox, David Morse, G. D. Spradlin, Tom Amandes

A mild-mannered mother and schoolteacher, who suffered amnesia, discovers that she was a highly skilled government assassin, and the men who tried to kill her eight years ago want to rectify their mistake. Shane Black's $4M screenplay tells a very funny female version of The Bourne Identity and Renny Harlin fills the lulls with some exciting action. The resulting film is arguably Harlin's best. Geena Davis gives a terrific lead performance and Samuel L. Jackson is reliably amusing as a hustling private detective.

Lone Star
1996
*****
Director: John Sayles
Cast: Ron Canada, Chris Cooper, Clifton James, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey, Frances McDormand, Joe Morton, Elizabeth Peña

The remains of the infamously cruel and corrupt sheriff, who disappeared decades ago, are found in the desert close to the Mexican border. While the current sheriff of Rio County investigates the case, he is forced to reassess the memory of his late father. John Sayles' wonderful slow-burning character drama is brilliantly written and acted. In the flashbacks, Kris Kristofersson gives a juicy performance as the dead lawman. The transitions between the past and the present are inventively done.

Larger Than Life
1996
**
Director: Howard Franklin
Cast: Bill Murray, Janeane Garofalo, Matthew McConaughey, Linda Fiorentino

A self-help expert who can talk the talk must now walk the walk. He inherits a circus elephant which he needs to transport across the country. Some mildly funny sequences ensue. The animal is cute but this is a waste of a quality cast, especially of Bill Murray.

Kauas pilvet karkaavat (Drifting Clouds)
1996
****
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Kari Väänänen, Kati Outinen, Sakari Kuosmanen, Elina Salo, Markku Peltola, Matti Onnismaa, Esko Nikkari, Outi Mäenpää, Markus Allan, Shelley Fisher

Ilona is a head waitress at an upscale restaurant in Helsinki and her husband Lauri is a tram driver. When they lose their jobs at the same time, they must try and hold onto hope and dignity in the face of adversity. Aki Kaurismäki's dark but warm comedy about unemployment is not set in the real world, but the story of Ilona and Lauri is funny, moving, and surprisingly hopeful. This is the first part in a so-called Loser Trilogy, which continues with Man Without a Past and Lights in the Dusk.

The Juror
1996
**
Director: Brian Gibson
Cast: Demi Moore, Alec Baldwin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anne Heche

Demi Moore is at the limits of her range as she plays a single mom/juror who is being blackmailed to vote "not guilty" in a mob murder trial. This is an unpleasant thriller with cardboard characters. Adapted from George Dawes Green's novel.

Jude
1996
****
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Kate Winslet, Rachel Griffiths, Liam Cunnigham

This gripping adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure tells a story of Jude and Sue, cousins who fall in love. Michael Winterbottom's drama is an incredibly bleak and pessimistic depiction of dreams and reality in 19th century Britain.

Jerry Maguire
1996
****
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Tom Cruise, Renee Zellweger, Cuba Gooding Jr., Kelly Preston, Jerry O'Connell, Jay Mohr, Regina King, Bonnie Hunt

Jerry Maguire is a high-flying sports agent who rediscovers his conscience. He loses his job, and as he tries to hold on to his last remaining client, a cocky and difficult football player (Cuba Gooding Jr. in an amusing Oscar winning performance), he begins to fall in love with a young single mother. Cameron Crowe's romantic drama comedy is long but very enjoyable, and Tom Cruise gives one of his warmest performances in the lead. In the beginning, Jerry realises that money isn't everything, but by the end of the story it actually is.

Independence Day
1996
***
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Bill Pullman, Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Randy Quaid, Mary McDonnell

Massive city-sized alien spaceships appear all over the world and the future of humanity is at stake, but those pesky and resourceful Americans are not going to give up without a fight. Roland Emmerich's science fiction blockbuster has a gripping premise, but it is undermined by a connect-the-dots screenplay and an overall sense of silliness. The special effects, which look impressive but a bit dated, won an Academy Award. Followed by Independence Day: Resurgence 20 years later.

In Love and War
1996
**
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Chris O'Donnell, Sandra Bullock, Mackenzie Astin, Emilio Bonucci

Sir Richard Attenborough continues to make films based on real-life people, this time about the young Ernest Hemingway who falls in love with an American nurse during the First World War. However, this lame romantic anecdote of history could be about anyone. The character shows no literary aspirations and Chris O'Donnell has none of the wit one would associate with Hemingway. Based on the book Hemingway in Love and War by Henry S. Villard and James Nagel.

Hollow Reed
1996
****
Director: Angela Pope
Cast: Martin Donovan, Joely Richardson, Jason Flemyng, Ian Hart

When his son comes over with mysterious injuries, a divorced dad begins to suspect that they were caused by his ex-wife's new boyfriend. This realistic and gripping British family drama tackles several hot topics, which include sexual prejudice and child abuse.

High School High
1996
**
Director: Hart Bochner
Cast: Jon Lovitz, Tia Carrera, Louise Fletcher, Mekhi Phifer, John Neville

An uneven comedy about an idealistic high school teacher who wants to stand by his troubled pupils who live in a rough neighbourhood. Some gags are funny, but most aren't. The film spoofs Dangerous Minds, Principal
and Stand and Deliver, among others.

Hard Eight
1996
***
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Samuel L. Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Robert Ridgely, Melora Walters

Paul Thomas Anderson's offbeat feature debut is heavy on atmosphere and light on plot. It tells a Las Vegas-set story about an elderly con artist and his new protégé. The cast is great but the film isn't terribly memorable.

Hamlet
1996
***
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet, Derek Jacobi

Prince Hamlet returns to Denmark where he finds his father King Hamlet murdered and his mother Gertrude remarried. This meticulous adaptation of Shakespeare's most famous play looks very much like a filmed stage show. It's never exactly boring but four hours is plenty of time to walk around the set and talk. Branagh has cast too many stars in small roles to distract you from the story.

Girl 6
1996
**
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Theresa Randle, Isaiah Washington, Spike Lee, Jenifer Lewis

Spike Lee's film deals with phone sex, but what exactly he wants to say about it is an enigma. It's as corruptive and addictive to the people who work in the field as it is to the people who use the services? One thing seems certain; the girls working in the industry look even hotter than they sound.

Ghosts of Mississippi
1996
***
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, James Woods, Graig T. Nelson

A black civil rights activist is gunned down in the 1960s, but the assassin goes free in the openly racist Mississippi. That is until the case is reopened 30 years later. This drama is touching and well-intentioned, but although it's based on a true story, the characters and the story twists seem extremely clichéd.

The Ghost and the Darkness
1996
**½
Director: Stephen Hopkins
Cast: Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas, Tom Wilkinson, John Kani, Bernard Hill

A fictionalised true story about two man-eating lions who terrorised a group of bridge builders in Kenya in the late 19th century. The tension builds nicely as we hear a growl in the dark or see glimpses of the mane in the grass, but when the cats are out, there is nothing left to hold our attention. In the second half Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas chase the lions in increasingly preposterous set pieces.

From Dusk Till Dawn
1996
***
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Cheech Marin, Ernest Liu, Salma Hayek, Michael Parks, Tom Savini

Two brothers on the run from the law hijack a family in an RV and force them to drive it across the border to a rendezvous point in Mexico. What follows is mayhem, but not the kind you'd expect. The first half of Quentin Tarantino's screenplay delivers a familiar smorgasbord of cool characters, hip dialogue, and brutal violence. At halfway point, the film does a 180 and becomes something completely different. The whole is messy but quite enjoyable. Cheech Marin appears in three amusing roles. The special effects look cheap. Followed by a number of low budget sequels.

The First Wives Club
1996
*½
Director: Hugh Wilson
Cast: Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, Maggie Smith, Dan Hedaya, Bronson Pinchot, Victor Garber

A feminist wish fulfilment comedy about three women who take revenge on their cheating husbands. The charismatic leading ladies cannot save this predictable feelgood film. Based on Olivia Goldsmith's novel.

Fear
1996
*½
Director: James Foley
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon, William Petersen, Amy Brenneman

A seemingly nice boyfriend turns out to be a psychopath. This story is familiar from superior films like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female and Unlawful Entry. Mark Wahlberg doesn't convince in one of his first starring roles.

Fargo
1996
*****
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: Frances McDormand, Steve Buscemi, William H. Macy, Peter Stormare, Harve Presnell, Kristin Rudrüd, Tony Denman, Steve Reevis, Larry Brandenburg, John Carroll Lynch, Steve Park

A Minneapolis car salesman in dire financial straits hires two goons to kidnap his wife in order to keep the ransom money paid by his wealthy father-in-law, but the plan goes horribly wrong. This quintessential Coen brothers film is a masterpiece of black humour. The story is gruesome but funny, and the dialogue and performances are all top class. The Oscar winning Frances McDormand is adorable as the pregnant police chief, and William H. Macy and Steve Buscemi are equally unforgettable. The Coens themselves won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film spawned a TV series in 2014.

The Fan
1996
**
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Robert De Niro, Wesley Snipes, Ellen Barkin, John Leguizamo

This is not a film about ventilation but an unpleasant thriller about a baseball fan whose obsession with the game goes a step too far. Robert De Niro gives another performance to forget and Tony Scott tries to keep you awake with his numbing audiovisual bombardment. Based on the novel by Peter Abrahams.

Extreme Measures
1996
**½
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman, Sarah Jessica Parker, David Morse

It's refreshing to see Hugh Grant in a more dramatic role for a change. He plays a doctor who becomes curious when the body of his mysteriously ill patient disappears without a trace. Unfortunately storywise this drama is basically just a remake of Coma. Based on Michael Palmer's novel.

Everyone Says I Love You
1996
***½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Alan Alda, Drew Barrymore, Lukas Haas, Goldie Hawn, Gaby Hoffmann, Natasha Lyonne, Edward Norton, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Tim Roth, David Ogden Stiers,

Woody Allen's comedy is set in New York, Paris and Venice, and it offers an enjoyable mishmash of intertwining romantic relationships and musical numbers. Nearly everyone in the cast, apart from Drew Barrymore, gives a sample of their singing talent, and at times it's difficult to decide whether to laugh or cry.

Eraser
1996
*½
Director: Charles Russell
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vanessa Williams, James Caan, James Coburn

A dull and dreadfully predictable action film about a witness protection specialist who is assigned to protect a beautiful arms manufacturing executive. Arnold Schwarzenegger spits out the usual oneliners, but his best films are behind him by now.

The English Patient
1996
****½
Director: Anthony Minghella
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth

In the end of WW2 a badly burned man tries to recollect his past to a French-Canadian nurse. He was a mapmaker who had to make terrible sacrifices for his love towards a married woman. This sweeping romantic drama is based on Michael Ondaatje's novel. The slowly unraveling story, the dazzling visuals and the excellent performances result in a very impressive film. I'm not completely won over by the love story, though. A winner of nine Academy Awards, which include Best Film, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress (Binoche).


Emma
1996
***
Director: Douglas McGrath
Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, Toni Collette, Greta Scacchi

A charming but slightly chatty adaptation of Jane Austen's novel about a 19th century woman who is too busy playing a matchmaker to notice that her own Mr. Right is right in front of her eyes. Gwyneth Paltrow's accent is impeccable in one of her first of many roles as an English woman.

Eddie
1996
**
Director: Steve Rash
Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Frank Langella, Dennis Farina, Richard Jenkins

Whoopi Goldberg plays a basketball coach in this run-of-the-mill sport comedy. First you lose miserably but then you win gloriously.

Echte Kerle (Regular Guys)
1996
***
Director: Rolf Silber
Cast: Christoph M. Ohrt, Carin C. Tietze, Tim Bergmann, Oliver Stokowski

The macho cop and almost everyone else in this German film is uncertain about their sexuality. This romantic comedy is enjoyable but disposable.

Dragonheart
1996
**½
Director: Rob Cohen
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Sean Connery, David Thewlis, Dina Meyer, Julie Christie

A dragon hunter and the last remaining dragon (voiced by Sean Connery) form an odd alliance in order to defeat the ruthless king. The film starts off as an enjoyable buddy comedy but then turns darker towards the end. However, this change in mood doesn't work as the whole concept is just too silly to be taken seriously.

Daylight
1996
**½
Director: Rob Cohen
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen, Dan Hedaya, Jay O. Sanders, Karen Young, Claire Bloom, Danielle Harris

A formulaic disaster film about a group of people who get trapped in a Manhattan tunnel which slowly fills up with water. Sylvester Stallone plays an ex-rescue worker who, predictably, once failed in similar circumstances but now has a chance to make amends.

The Crucible
1996
***
Director: Nicholas Hytner
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Joan Allen, Paul Schofield

In 1692 a group of girls play a foolish game which leads to a full-blown witchhunt in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. This gripping tale of paranoia is an adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1953 play, which was written as an allegory of McCarthyism. The film feels occasionally stagy but it is strongly acted, although Daniel Day-Lewis seems a bit miscast in the lead.

Crash
1996
**
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Rosanna Arquette, Elias Koteas

David Cronenberg's controversial drama mixes sex and violence. It tells a story of a group of people who are car crash fetishists. The film is stylishly made and wonderfully acted, but it's as enjoyable as an enema. Adapted from J. G. Ballard's novel.

The Craft
1996
**
Director: Andrew Fleming
Cast: Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, Christine Taylor

A boring and clichéd teen horror film about four witches whose innocent game turns into something more serious. The leading ladies are attractive but the story gets stupider and sillier towards the end.

Courage Under Fire
1996
**½
Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Meg Ryan, Denzel Washington, Lou Diamond Philips, Michael Moriarty

You need to suspend your disbelief to accept Meg Ryan as a Black Hawk pilot who was shot down during the Gulf War. Denzel Washington is more believable as a Lieutenant Colonel who tries to determine whether she should receive a posthumous Medal of Honor. This pompous military drama turns a young mother's premature death into a patriotic celebration of bravery. However, I lost my interest in the characters before the dramatic finale.



City Hall
1996
**½
Director: Harold Becker
Cast: Al Pacino, John Cusack, Danny Aiello, Bridget Fonda, Martin Landau

New York City is hit by a scandal when an innocent child dies in a shootout between a detective and a mobster who was released on parole. The deputy major digs into the case and discovers widespread corruption. This well-acted drama has an impressive list of screenwriters (Kenneth Lipper, Paul Schrader, Nicholas Pileggi and Bo Goldman), yet its script is the weakest link. The plot is predictable and the dialogue is mostly redundant jabber.



The Chamber
1996
**½
Director: James Foley
Cast: Gene Hackman, Chris O'Donnell, Faye Dunaway, Lela Rochon, Robert Prosky, Raymond J. Barry

The reliably wooden Chris O'Donnell plays a young lawyer who has to defend his grandfather, a Klansman on deathrow. This John Grisham adaptation deals with racial bigotry and capital punishment, but the end result is instantly forgettable.

Carla's Song
1996
***
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Oyanka Cabezas, Scott Glenn, Salvador Espinoza

A Glasgow bus driver falls in love with a Nicaraguan woman whose home country is in the middle of a bloody civil war. Ken Loach's romantic/political drama is likeable but uneven. The first half in Scotland is funny and the second half in Nicaragua is touching, but the two halves do not produce a very cohesive whole.

The Cable Guy
1996
*½
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Lesley Mann, George Segal

A dull and implausible dark comedy about an obsessive cable TV installer, played by Jim Carrey in his usual over-the-top fashion. The main problem of the film is that his character feels completely out of place in the bleak story.

The Broken Arrow
1996
**
Director: John Woo
Cast: John Travolta, Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Delroy Lindo

John Woo's second Hollywood film has an a list cast, unlike Hard Target, but its script is poor. John Travolta plays a monotonically cool villain who steals a nuclear-armed fighter jet.

Breaking the Waves
1996
****
Director: Lars Von Trier
Cast: Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, Adrian Rawlins, Katrin Cartlidge

A religious and unbalanced young Scottish woman marries a Norwegian man. When he gets injured on an oil rig, their marriage takes a dark turn. Lars von Trier's gripping drama is one of the first ones where he puts his female protagonist through hell. His film will not leave you cold, you will either hate it or love it. Emily Watson gives an excellent breakthrough performance. This is one of the first Dogme 95 films, shot with hand-held camera and without artificial lighting.

Brassed Off
1996
***
Director: Mark Herman
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald, Stephen Tompkinson

A credible and gripping English social drama about a brass band whose members are miners who are facing unemployment if/when the pit closes. The film is a scathing attack on Mrs. Thatcher's policies, but the story turns a bit melodramatic towards the end. The soundtrack is nice.

Box of Moonlight
1996
***½
Director: Tom DiCillo
Cast: John Turturro, Sam Rockwell, Catherine Kenner, Lisa Blount

A funny and sympathetic but rather predictable story about an uptight engineer whose little trip after his work assignment teaches him to be more laid- back. John Turturro is excellent in the lead.

Bound
1996
****
Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Cast: Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano, Christopher Meloni

A sexy and entertaining film noir about Corky and Violet, two women who become lovers. As they get more intimate, they plan to rob Violet's boyfriend who is a money launderer for the mob. The directorial debut of the Wachowskis is stylishly cool and beautifully visualised.

Blood and Wine
1996
***½
Director: Bob Rafelson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine, Stephen Dorff, Jennifer Lopez

A dark, funny and clever crime film about a group of shady characters who double-cross each other over a stolen diamond necklace. Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine are excellent as the two ageing amateur criminals.

Birdcage
1996
*
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest

A seriously unfunny and often infuriating comedy about a young man who tries to introduce his gay father to his uptight in-laws to be. Gay clichés galore, but no laughs. Based on the play La Cage aux Folles which was filmed before in 1978.

Big Night
1996
***
Director: Stanley Tucci, Campbell Scott
Cast: Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rosselini, Minnie Driver, Tony Shalhoub

Two Italian American brothers struggle to keep their restaurant afloat in the 1950s. However, they hope that a potential visit from the famous singer Louis Prima will restore their fortunes. This is a charming and mouthwatering but a bit underwhelming drama about brotherly love and the Italian kitchen. A pinch more humour and it could've been buono. Directorial debut for Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott.

Before and After
1996
***
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Cast: Liam Neeson, Meryl Streep, Edward Furlong, Alfred Molina

Liam Neeson and Meryl Streep are both very good as a middle-aged couple whose son is charged with murder. The tragedy makes them question how far they are willing to go to protect their child. This drama is moody and powerful, but its anti-climactic ending is terrible. Based on Rosellen Brown's novel.

Beautiful Thing
1996
*½
Director: Hettei Macdonald
Cast: Glen Berry, Linda Henry, Scott Neal, Tameka Empson, Ben Daniels

An utterkly useless British drama about two teenage boys who fall in love with each other. Everything happens too easily, but luckily very fast. Based on Jonathan Harvey's play.

2 Days in the Valley
1996
***
Director: John Herzfeld
Cast: Danny Aiello, Eric Stoltz, James Spader, Charlize Theron, Jeff Daniels

Pulp Fiction's cool criminals and intertwining storylines spawned dozens of weak or weaker imitations, but this is one of the more inspired ones. There's nothing original here, but the characters are moderately interesting and the story has some nice twists. However, the film loses some momentum when it attempts to tie all the loose ends.

The Young Poisoner's Handbook
1995
**
Director: Benjamin Ross
Cast: Hugh O'Conor, Antony Sher, Ruth Sheen, Roger Lloyd Pack

A weak black comedy about a macabre boy who inevitably grows up into a murderer. The film uses the story structure and even the main theme of A Clockwork Orange, sadly without any of the film's wit or humour.

Wild Bill
1995
**½
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Ellen Barkin, John Hurt, Diane Lane, David Arquette,

A poor Western biopic about the last days of Wild Bill Hickok. We all know how he died, so it's just a matter of watching and waiting to see where and when he is shot. Jeff Bridges is not able to make the hero interesting. Based on two books, Deadwood by Pete Dexter and Fathers and Sons by Thomas Babe.

While You Were Sleeping
1995
**½
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman, Peter Gallagher, Peter Boyle, Jack Warden

A young woman has a crush on a handsome commuter. When he's in an accident and falls into coma, she pretends to be his girlfriend. This moderately likeable film uses one of the standard romantic comedy scenarios, relationship through a lie. The story has a twist, but it's still frustratingly predictable.

Welcome to the Dollhouse
1995
****
Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Heather Matarazzo, Brendan Sexton Jr., Daria Kalinina, Matthew Faber

Dawn Wiener is a smart but unattractive and unpopular teenager whose life is hell both in school and at home. Todd Solondz's breakthrough is a terrifically funny, moving and cliché-free film about puberty.

Waterworld
1995
***
Director: Kevin Reynolds
Cast: Kevin Costner, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Dennis Hopper, Tina Majorino

In the future the polar caps have melted and the remaining humans are desperate to find dry land. Kevin Costner plays a Mad Maxesque anti-hero who wants to be left alone but inevitably ends up helping the good guys. This post-apocalyptic drama was briefly the most expensive film of all time. The premise is intriguing and the film is visually stunning, but its plot is full of massive holes.

The Usual Suspects
1995
**½
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey, Pete Postlethwaite, Stephen Bladwin, Benicio Del Toro, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollak, Suzy Amis, Giancarlo Esposito, Peter Greene

Under questioning, a physically disabled small-time crook recounts how he and four other criminals met and carried out a job for the mysterious crime lord Keyser Söze, and how it all ended in a massacre. Bryan Singer's clever but self-satisfied crime mystery was over-hyped upon its release, and the subsequent years have done it no favours. In my opinion, the famous twist ending makes the whole exercise seem pointless, but fans of the film will argue that it's the main reason they love it. Although it's all well-acted, the characters remain utterly uninteresting, and I often found myself confused (that is, unengaged) what exactly the gang were hired to do and why. Nevertheless, Christopher McQuarrie's script and Kevin Spacey as the unreliable narrator won Academy Awards.

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
1995
*½
Director: Geoff Murphy
Cast: Steven Seagal, Eric Bogosian, Katherine Heigl, Morris Chestnut

Under Siege was a surprise hit, and Steven Seagal returns as the ex-Navy Seal/current cook Casey Ryback. When terrorists take a train hostage, he needs to kick some ass again. This run-of-the-mill action film is another Die Hard rip-off.

Two Bits
1995
**
Director: James Foley
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Al Pacino, Jerry Barrone, Andy Romano

A 12-year-old boy needs to help his grandfather before he will get money to go to the movies. This dull coming of age tale is set in the 1930s, and it's memorable only for having Al Pacino in a small role.

Toy Story
1995
****
Director: John Lasseter
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn

Andy's toys come alive every time he leaves the room. Now his birthday is approaching and his favourite cowboy doll Woody feels threatened by the new space ranger action figure Buzz Lightyear. The first entirely computer-generated feature length animation put Pixar Studios on the map, but from the first moment onwards their films have not been about the technology but about the story. This is a lovely film with clever gags and wonderful toy characters. Followed by two sequels, Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, which are even better.

To Die For
1995
**
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix, Illeana Douglas, Alison Folland, Casey Affleck, Dan Hedaya

A disappointing black comedy about a young woman who wants to become a news anchor and will stop at nothing to get what she wants. The gimmicky monologues to the camera ultimately destroy the film. Buck Henry scripted from Joyce Maynard's novel.

Streetlife
1995
**½
Director: Karl Francis
Cast: Helen McCrory, Rhys Ifans, Christine Tuckett, Donna Edwards

A gritty but not entirely successful Welsh kitchen sink drama about a pregnant woman who cannot cope with the situation.

Strange Days
1995
***½
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore

On the eve of the third Millennium a slimy dealer sells recorded memories, one of which lands him in trouble. The screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks is original and it unravels slowly, too slowly in fact. This science fiction film is fascinating but too dreary and long.

Species
1995
**
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Natasha Henstridge, Forest Whitaker

A group of scientists try to catch a shape-shifting alien before it's too late. This is an abysmal scifi film, but the special effects are impressive and Natasha Henstridge is easy on the eye. The plot is clichéd and full of holes. Followed by several sequels.

Smoke
1995
*****
Director: Wayne Wang, Paul Auster
Cast: Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Harold Perrineau Jr.

An absolutely irresistible low-key film about a few New Yorkers whose paths cross in a Brooklyn tobacco shop. There's a troubled writer, a teenage boy who searches for his father, and Auggie himself who runs the shop and documents the neighhbourhood with his camera. The performances are excellent, and writer/co-director Paul Auster has scattered some wonderful little vignettes in the main storyline. Followed by a sequel/mockumentary Blue in the Face.

Sense and Sensibility
1995
*****
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Emma Thompson, Katie Winslet, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman

A funny and delightful romantic drama about two very different sisters, representing sense and sensibility, who try to find happiness after their dying father leaves them broke. Ang Lee's first English language film is brilliantly acted. Emma Thompson, who plays the older sister, won an Academy Award for adapting Jane Austen's novel.

Se7en
1995
*****
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey, R. Lee Ermey, John C. McGinley, Richard Roundtree

David Fincher's second feature is a brilliant thriller about two L.A. detectives who try to capture a serial killer who punishes his victims for seven deadly sins. The film is dark, scary, and atmospherically shot. The subversive and uncompromising script by Andrew Kevin Walker turns the genre on its head, and in the end it's not about the manhunt at all. Morgan Freeman is awesome as the older detective who is looking forward to his retirement.

Sabrina
1995
**½
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond, Greg Kinnear, Nancy Marchand, Lauren Holly, Angie Dickinson, Richard Crenna

Her father is the chaffeur for the wealthy Larrabees, and Sabrina herself is madly in love with the family's youngest son David. But is he the right man for her? This story about love over social classes and age differences is a remake of Billy Wilder's 1954 romantic comedy. It's impossible to screw up a perfectly good premise like this, but Pollack's film is oddly sombre all the way to the end. Even the happy ending feels like an ordeal for the characters.

Rob Roy
1995
***
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Cast: Liam Neeson, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, John Hurt, Eric Stoltz

An enjoyable but rather unremarkable drama about a real-life Scottish folk hero who fought the brutal landowners in the 18th century. The film would probably fare better if it hadn't come out at the same time with the superior Braveheart. Liam Neeson is a charismatic hero and Tim Roth is a wonderfully slimy villain.




Richard III
1995
**½
Director: Richard Loncraine
Cast: Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent, Robert Downey Jr.

This heavy-handed adaptation of Shakespeare's play compares its murderous king with the Nazis. However, like with Baz Luhrmann's href=/search2.php?query=2290>Romeo and Juliet, there is more to updating a classic than moving the action to the modern time (1930s). Scripted by Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine.

The Quick and the Dead
1995
**
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo Di Caprio

The town of Redemption hosts a brutal gunfighting competition which attracts both good and bad guys. Sam Raimi attempts to spice up his hackneyed western with some visual gags (the sun shines through bullet holes), but he cannot hide the fact how repetitive and predictable the story is. The endless identical quick draw fights consume two thirds of the running time.

Outbreak
1995
***
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr., Zakes Mokae

When a deadly Motaba virus breaks out in a Cedar Creek, California, the Army quarantines the town and the CDC together with a crew of military virologists attempt to find the source of the virus. Wolfgang Petersen’s virus drama scores high on thrills, but low on credibility. It begins as a gripping and believable virus investigation, much like Contagion, but the second half pushes Motaba to the sidelines and the whole thing becomes a conspiracy thriller which features a long and silly helicopter chase. Based on Richard Preston's non-fiction novel The Hot Zone.

Nixon
1995
***
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, Powers Boothe, Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins

Oliver Stone's ambitious biopic of the controversial US President Richard Nixon treats its subject with respect. This is a long but gripping history lesson, but a bit hard to follow if you don't pay attention. Anthony Hopkins seems out of place at first but utterly convincing by the end of the film.

Nine Months
1995
*½
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Hugh Grant, Julianne Moore, Robin Williams, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Arnold

An irritating comedy about a selfish child psychologist who cannot come to terms with his girlfirend's pregnancy, but obviously he will. Hugh Grant takes his stuttering Englishman routine to the extreme. A remake of the French movie Neuf mois.

Nick of Time
1995
**½
Director: John Badham
Cast: Johnny Depp, Christopher Walken, Charles S. Dutton, Courtney Chase

Two bad guys kidnap an accountant's daughter and threaten to kill her unless he kills the State Governor. Johnny Depp appears in a rare family man role, but the most memorable thing about this disappointing thriller is that it happens in real time, like 24 on TV.

The Net
1995
**½
Director: Irwin Winkler
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jeremy Northam, Dennis Miller, Diane Baker

An entertaining if not very believable Internet conspiracy thriller about a young systems analyst who loses everything overnight. In the end the story is quite similar to The Pelican Brief. Sandra Bullock is fresh in one of her first starring roles. Followed by a 2006 sequel and a spin-off TV show.

Murder in the First
1995
***
Director: Marc Rocco
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Gary Oldman, Christian Slater, Embeth Davidtz

Henri Young moves from the frying pan into the fire. He spends most of his miserable life in prison and then ends up being tried for murder. This moving prison drama is partly based on a true story, but it follows the usual genre clichés. Director Marc Rocco tries to spice things up with flashy visuals, but he could have kept his camera still for a second or two.

Mr. Holland's Opus
1995
**½
Director: Stephen Herek
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Glenne Headly, Jay Thomas, Olympia Dukakis

Mr. Holland is a composer who is absolutely obsessed with music. So he is understandably devastated to find out that his son is deaf. This drama is well-acted and touching but also terribly schmalzy and manipulative. The climactic American Symphony is rather underwhelming.

Mighty Aphrodite
1995
***½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Mira Sorvino, F. Murray Abraham, Claire Bloom

A cute and enjoyable Woody Allen comedy about a man who tracks down his adopted son's biological mother. She turns out to be a bimbo prostitute, deliciously played by Mira Sorvino in her Academy Award winning performance. The story is "narrated" by a Greek chorus.

Mad Love
1995
*½
Director: Antonia Bird
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Chris O’Donnell, Joan Allen, Jude Ciccolella

Mediocre stars (Drew Barrymore and Chris O'Donnell) cannot light up a predictable teen film about a boy whose new girlfriend is unstable.

Leaving Las Vegas
1995
***
Director: Mike Figgis
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue, Julian Sands, Richard Lewis

Nicolas Cage gives an uncharacteristically controlled performance as a man who has lost his family and decides to move to Las Vegas and drink himself to death, only to find himself falling in love with a prostitute. This moody drama is seedy, uncompromising, unpleasant and thought-provoking in equal measures. Cage won an Oscar.

Land and Freedom
1995
**½
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Ian Hart, Rosana Pastor, Iciar Bollain, Tom Gilroy, Marc Martines

A story about a young English communist who joins the Spanish civil war. Ken Loach's partisan film is ambitious but very talky. Visually it looks like a home video.

Kivenpyörittäjän kylä (The Last Wedding)
1995
***½
Director: Markku Pölönen
Cast: Martti Suosalo, Esko Nikkari, Henrika Andersson, Jarmo Mäkinen, Matti Varjo, Pertti Koivula, Pekka Huotari, Esko Hukkanen

Pekka, who lives in Sweden with his estranged wife and daughter, returns to his home village of Jerusalem in eastern Finland for a summer wedding. Following the hour-long Onnen maa, Markku Pölönen's first long feature is an enjoyable and beautifully shot rural drama comedy. At its best, it's a funny and moving depiction of a man who is afraid to word what he really wants. At its worst, it's a shouting match between a group of drunken characters. The wordy dialogue in thick dialect reveals that this is based on Heikki Turunen's 1976 novel.

Kiss of Death
1995
****
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Cast: David Caruso, Nicolas Cage, Helen Hunt, Samuel L. Jackson

A gripping crime story about an ex-con who finds himself between a rock and a hard place, namely between cops and gangsters. David Caruso gives a decent lead performance but Nicolas Cage hams it big way as the crime boss. A remake of a 1947 film by Henry Hathaway.

Kicking and Screaming
1995
*
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Josh Hamilton, Olivia d'Abo, Chris Eigeman, Parker Posey, Jason Wiles, Cara Buono, Carlos Jacott, Elliott Gould, Eric Stoltz

Noah Baumbach's directorial debut is a plotless and aimless story about a group of recent college graduates who struggle with the uncertainties of adulthood, whether it's choosing the right career path or the right romantic partner. This looks and feels very much like a typical semi-autobiographical first indie film. Unfortunately Baumbach doesn't come up with anything funny or poignant, and his characters are so forgettable that I couldn't remember most of their names after the end titles.


Jumanji
1995
***
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt, Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce

Two kids find and begin to play a mysterious board game. It frees a boy trapped inside the game world and unleashes a series of sinister events on their new home town. This family movie is quite enjoyable, although the story is highly episodic and clearly built around the special effects, which have not aged well. Based on Chris Van Allsburg's picture book. Followed by an animated TV series. The franchise reboots in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

Johnny Mnemonic
1995
*½
Director: Robert Longo
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren, Takeshi, Ice-T, Dina Meyer

An anaemic science fiction film about Johnny, who carries some very valuable and desirable information in his head. Keanu Reeves' role is slightly similar to the one he plays in The Matrix, but this dud doesn't offer the story or the visuals to match it. Based on William Gibson's short story.

Jade
1995
**
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: David Caruso, Linda Fiorentino, Chazz Palminteri, Michael Biehn

Assistant D.A. Investigates a murder involving prostitution and kinky sex, and the leads seem to point towards a married couple he's close to. Screenwriter Joe Esterhaz rehashes his own Basic Instinct formula with lackluster results. The film is better than its reputation, but it's terribly formulaic. A car chase on the hills of San Francisco is a good illustration of this lack of fresh ideas.

How to Make an American Quilt
1995
***
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Cast: Winona Ryder, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, Kate Nelligan, Alfre Woodard, Jared Leto

A likeable chick flick with an incredible ensemble cast. Several generations of women work on a quilt and share their stories. The film is moving but obviously very episodic. Adapted from Whitney Otto's novel.

Home for the Holidays
1995
**
Director: Jodie Foster
Cast: Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Charles Durning, Anne Bancroft

A fine cast is pretty much wasted in Jodie Foster's messy and confusing comedy about a dysfunctional family who gets together for the holidays. The film turns oddly serious just before the end. Based on a short story by Chris Radan.

Heat
1995
*****
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi, Ted Levine, Jon Voight, Val Kilmer

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino share the screen for the first time in this superb crime film. De Niro plays a smart career criminal and Pacino plays an LAPD detective on his heels. These two men are on the opposite sides of the law, but they both operate with ruthless determination. Michael Mann's long, compelling, and stylish drama features two wonderfully smart and well-drawn main characters. The battle between these two features some exciting action set pieces, but the film is perhaps best known for one unforgettable dialogue scene when the men meet for the first time. The city of Los Angeles, beautifully shot by Dante Spinotti, plays a key role in the events. The versatile soundtrack is excellent. Mann's script is based on his 1989 TV movie L.A. Takedown.

La Haine
1995
****
Director: Matthieu Kassovitz
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Said Taghmaoui,Abdel Ahmed Ghili

The morning after violent riots in a Parisian suburb, three young men - an arab, a jew and a black man - go out to vent their anger. This gripping drama follows the trio during this day as they constantly find themselves at odds with their surroundings. The film is shot in black and white and offers some subtly spectacular camera work.

GoldenEye
1995
***½
Director: Martin Campbell
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Joe Don Baker, Robbie Coltrane, Tchéky Karyo, Gottfried John, Alan Cumming, Judi Dench, Samantha Bond

After two boringly straight-faced Timothy Dalton movies, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, Pierce Brosnan brings the fun back to the James Bond franchise. Otherwise this is very much business as usual. 007 loses a fellow agent and the Russian government loses a powerful satellite weapon system, and these two incidents turn out to be connected. Martin Campbell's first Bond movie is fast-paced and relatively entertaining. Judi Dench makes a brief debut as M. Famke Janssen's performance as the sadistic Xenia Onatopp has not aged well.

Get Shorty
1995
****
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: John Travolta, Rene Russo, Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Dennis Farina, Delroy Lindo, James Gandolfini, David Paymer, Miguel Sandoval, Bette Midler

A funny, twisty and enjoyably laid-back crime comedy about a loan shark who gets to live his dream and work on a movie project in Hollywood. Right after Pulp Fiction, John Travolta gives another wonderfully cool and understated lead performance. John Lurie's soundtrack is terrifically groovy. Based on Elmore Leonard's novel. Followed by Be Cool in 2005.

French Kiss
1995
**
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: Kevin Kline, Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton, Jean Reno, Francois Cluzet

France is the country of love for the Americans. Meg Ryan plays a woman who travels to Paris to woo back her fiancé, but falls for a conniving Frenchman. This lame romantic comedy came out more or less at the same time with Forget Paris, but it doesn't have its charm. Kevin Kline doesn't cut it as a Frenchie.

Forget Paris
1995
***
Director: Billy Crystal
Cast: Billy Crystal, Debra Winger, Joe Mantegna, Cynthia Stevenson

A basketball referee and an airline employee fall in love but their relatioship is strife with difficulties. There aren't too many surprises in this romantic comedy but it's quite enjoyable, mostly due to its charismatic stars Billy Crystal and Debra Winger. Crystal also co-scripted.

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill, But Came Down a Mountain
1995
**½
Director: Christopher Monger
Cast: Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald, Colm Menaey, Ian McNeice, Ian Hart

During Wwi English mapmakers come to Wales to determine whether the local hill can be classified as a mountain. This is an amiable but forgettable romantic yarn with Hugh Grant in the lead.

Dolores Claiborne
1995
*****
Director: Taylor Hackford
Cast: Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Plummer, Judy Parfitt, Ellen Muth, David Strathairn, Eric Bogosian, John C. Reilly, Bob Gunton

Like Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, this is another brilliant film based on Stephen King's non-horror writing. Kathy Bates (who made her breakthrough in Misery, another King adaptation) is phenomenal as an elderly woman who is accused of murdering her employer (Judy Parfitt in an equally impressive performance). However, this is not really a murder mystery but a touching family drama. The film is visually stunning and undoubtedly Taylor Hackford's best.

Die Hard with a Vengeance
1995
****
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Bruce Willis, Jeremy Irons, Samuel L. Jackson, Graham Greene, Colleen Camp, Larry Bryggman, Sam Phillips, Anthony Peck, Nick Wyman, Kevin Chamberlin

John McTiernan returns to the director's chair in the third part of the series, which ditches the old formula (John McClane fighting the bad guys in a confined surrounding in order to rescue his wife) and takes the action to the streets of New York. A nasty terrorist, who is related to the villain in the original Die Hard, threatens to bomb an unnamed school unless detective John McClane and a man from Harlem zoom around the city and do exactly as he says. But what is the bad guy's ultimate plan? Is it really all about revenge? The second sequel is a highly enjoyable action movie with a wonderfully twisty script. Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson have great chemistry. Followed by Die Hard 4.0 12 years later.

Devil in a Blue Dress
1995
**½
Director: Carl Franklin
Cast: Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizemore, Don Cheadle

A jobless black man becomes an amateur detective when he agrees to track down a mysterious femme fatale in 1940's L.A. The prerequisite film noir intrique, atmosphere and dialogue are there, but apart from the coloured protagonist this film has precious little new to offer. Based on Walter Mosley's pulp novel.

Desperado
1995
**½
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Steve Buscemi, Joaquim de Almeida

A quiet Mariachi comes to town with revenge on his mind, and his only ally is a beautiful bookstore owner. After the runaway success of El Mariachi Robert Rodriquez got a big pile of money to make this visually impressive sequel/remake. Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek are probably the hottest screen couple of all time, but the story is predictable and the other characters are boringly one-dimensional. Followed by Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Dead Presidents
1995
****
Director: The Hughes brothers
Cast: Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, N'bushe Wright, Rose Jackson

A gripping and violent drama about a group of black men and their grim reality before, during and after the Vietnam War. The story offers very little hope, but the performances are strong and the Hughes brothers are a pair of very dynamic filmmakers. Partly based on the book Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans by Wallace Terry.

Dead Man Walking
1995
*****
Director: Tim Robbins
Cast: Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Robert Prosky, Raymond J. Barry

Tim Robbins' emotionally wrenching drama provides a well-balanced, thought-provoking and deeply moving condemnation of capital punishment. Susan Sarandon plays a nun who agrees to assist an inmate who is on death row for rape and murder. Carlito's Way reminded us how good of an actor Sean Penn can be, but here he's just phenomenal. The same goes for Sarandon, who won an Academy Award for her performance. Based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean.

Dead Man
1995
*****
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen,

In Jim Jarmusch's weird but wonderful Western the mood can change from lively banter to gruesome cannibalism in a matter of seconds. The film is beautifully shot in black and white, and it has a, let's say, unique electric guitar soundtrack by Neil Young.

Dangerous Minds
1995
**½
Director: John N. Smith
Cast: Michelle Pfeiffer, George Dzundza, Courtney B. Vance, Robin Bartlett

The pretty and slender Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't really cut is as a tough suburban school teacher who doesn't give up on the troubled kids. This drama is predictable and quite similar to Stand and Deliver. Based on LouAnne Johnson's My Posse Don't Do Homework.

Cutthroat Island
1995
**
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, Frank Langella, Maury Chaykin

Renny Harlin's record breaking flop is not completely unwatchable, it's just an utterly forgettable pirate film about a hidden treasure. Everything is big and spectacular but you couldn’t spend 25 words to describe the story. Geena Davis is a believable swashbuckler but Matthew Modine, who was the second choice, is badly miscast as the male hero.

The Crossing Guard
1995
**½
Director: Sean Penn
Cast: Jack Nicholson, David Morse, Anjelica Huston, Robin Wright

Sean Penn's second film behind the camera is similar to The Indian Runner, that is, an atmospheric but not terribly gripping drama. Jack Nicholson gives a strong performance as a tortured father whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver.

Crimson Tide
1995
****
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, George Dzundza, Matt Craven, Viggo Mortensen, James Gandolfini, Rocky Carroll, Jaime P. Gomez

While unpredictable nationalists have taken power in post-Soviet Russia, a U.S. Navy ballistic missile submarine USS Alabama, commanded by a paranoid and trigger-happy veteran Captain Ramsey, is ready to strike if necessary. This gripping and well-acted thriller works well regardless or because of its restrictive setting. After True Romance, this is Tony Scott's second decent film in a row.

Copycat
1995
**
Director: Jon Amiel
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Holly Hunter, Dermot Mulroney, Harry Connick Jr.

An agoraphobic criminal psychologist helps the police to catch a serial killer but becomes a target herself. This gruesome thriller comes in the wake of The Silence of the Lambs. It starts well but inevitably becomes clichéd and implausible.



Casino
1995
***½
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Alan King

Martin Scorsese and writer Nicolas Pileggi return to the world of real-life gangsters in this (partly fictionalised) story about a mobster who runs a casino in Las Vegas and his marriage to a self-destructive woman. The film is violent and often derivative of GoodFellas, but wonderfully constructed and beautifully filmed, technically one of Scorsese's best. It's almost three hours long despite the never-ending narration by several characters. In the end, the question is whether these people are worth all that time.

Carrington
1995
**½
Director: Christopher Hampton
Cast: Emma Thompson, Jonathan Pryce, Steven Waddington, Rufus Sewell

Dora Carrington is a sexually ambiguous painter, and Lytton Strachey is a gay author. This is the story of theit unusual friendship from 1915 to 1932. In theory this real-life British film is well written and well acted. In practice, unfortunately, it's a heavy-going and pointless drama. Based on Michael Holroyd's biographies.

The Brothers Mcmullen
1995
**½
Director: Edward Burns
Cast: Edward Burns, Jack Mulcahy, Mike McGlone, Shari Albert

Edward Burns' directorial debut film is an enjoyable but contrived romantic comedy about three brothers who all move back to their childhood home. They also share another thing, their relationships to women are very difficult.

The Bridges of Madison County
1995
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Annie Corley, Victor Slezak

A touching drama about a housewife and a National Geographic photographer who have a brief but intense love affair in the mid-1960s. Richard LaGravanese's screenplay is based on Robert James Waller's novel, and it uses an unnecessary modern-day framing device and cannot seem to wrap up the story in a satisfactory manner. Meryl Streep gives another phenomenal performance and Clint isn't too bad himself.

Braveheart
1995
****½
Director: Mel Gibson
Cast: Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Catherine McCormack, Patrick McGoohan

Mel Gibson's second film behind the camera is a gripping historical drama about William Wallace, a real-life 13th century rebel, who fought for Scottish independence against King Edward I of England. The story takes some liberties with the truth but it carries beautifully through its three hour length, and is only let down by its overlong and pompous finale. The five Academy Awards include Best Film and Best Director.

Boys on the Side
1995
**½
Director: Herbert Ross
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Whoopie Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker, Matthew McConaughey

A forgettable feminist road movie about three friends which include a lesbian, a pregnant girl and a woman with AIDS. This was made in the wake of Thelma and Louise and if suffers from a distinct lack of originality. Mary-Louise Parker is good in her tragic role, however. The soundtrack rocks, as well.

Blue in the Face
1995
***½
Director: Wayne Wang, Paul Auster
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Lou Read, Jim Jarmusch, Michael J. Fox, Roseanne

The leftovers of Smoke is an episodic mockumentary about New Yorkers. The film is patchy but occasionally very funny.

Before Sunrise
1995
****
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Andrea Eckert, Karl Bruckschwaiger

A refreshingly smart, down-to-earth, and well-acted romantic film about two young people, Jesse (American) Celine (French), who meet on the train and spend a night together in Vienna, mostly talking. Followed by Before Sunset and Before Midnight.

Batman Forever
1995
**
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Nicole Kidman

In the third film Batman, now played by Val Kilmer, faces two new villains, Riddler and Two-Face. Joel Schumacher takes over the directing duties, but he doesn't bring anything original to the franchise, merely enough noise and glitz to distract you from the overall emptiness of the whole thing.

Basketball Diaries
1995
**½
Director: Scott Kalvert
Cast: Leonardo Di Caprio, Lorraine Bracco, Bruno Kirby, Mark Wahlberg

A drama about a young man who has two addictions, basketball and drugs. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a fine performance, but the film is drab and not terribly captivating. Based on Jim Carroll's autobiographical book.

Bad Boys
1995
*
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Tea Leoni, Theresa Randle, Tcheky Karyo

A depressingly unfunny and infernally loud action comedy about two black detectives, one a womaniser and the other one a married man, who switch roles in order to add complications to the plot...sorry, to protect a murder witness. The story is stupid and illogical, and the whole thing is too boring to even pass as no-brain entertainment. This film laid the foundation for my lifelong dislike of Martin Lawrence and Michael Bay, and the sequel Bad Boys 2 cemented it.

Babe
1995
****
Director: Chris Noonan
Cast: James Cromwell, Magda Szubanski, Christine Cavanaugh, Miriam Margolyes

A live action fable about a friendly piglet called Babe who moves to the Hoggett's farm. There he shows surprising aptitude for becoming a sheep dog. The film is based on Dick King-Smith's book The Sheep-Pig and it's cute and loveable, if you can accept the anthropomorphic animals. The special effects, which enable all the animals to talk, are excellent. Co-produced and co-scripted by George "Mad Max" Miller, who directed the sequel Babe: Pig in the City.

Apollo 13
1995
***
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Kathleen Quinlan

In 1970 the Apollo 13 lunar mission ran into technical difficulties and turned its crew's exciting trip into a horrific nightmare. This well-made dramatisation is very gripping, if you're unfamiliar with the events. Based on the book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell.

The American President
1995
***
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox, Richard Dreyfuss

A likeable romantic comedy drama set in the White House where the President, who lost his wife to cancer, falls in love with a feisty lobbyist. However, the film presents a terribly idealistic view of the U.S. politics. A President who is determined to impose strict gun control and push through an environmental bill seems like a character from a science fiction film. The film was written by Aaron Sorkin, whose TV show The West Wing gave a more realistic view of politics.

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
1995
*
Director: Steve Oedekirk
Cast: Jim Carrey, Ian McNeice, Simon Callow, Maynard Eziashi, Bob Gunton, Bruce Spence, Tommy Davidson, Damon Standifer, Sophie Okonedo

Following a traumatic experience, Ace Ventura returns to work in the African country of Nibia, where he attempts to track down Shikaka, the sacred animal of the Wachati tribe. Ace Ventura was a brainless comedy vehicle for Jim Carrey, but at least it had a discernible plot. The sequel lets Carrey loose and hopes that he creates magic by clowning his way through every single scene. The laughs are few and very far apart.

12 Monkeys
1995
***½
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer, David Morse, Jon Seda, Christopher Meloni, Frank Gorshin, Vernon Campbell, Lisa Gay Hamilton

A convicted criminal from a dystopian future is sent back in time to investigate the source of a deadly virus that wiped out most of human population, and the clues point towards an anarchist group called the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. This intriguing and well constructed science fiction story was scripted by David and Janet Peoples, and it was inspired by a 1962 short film La Jetée. However, Terry Gilliam's film is not always as captivating and enjoyable as it could be. The pacing is slow and Gilliam takes a long time on a murky detour in a mental hospital. Bruce Willis gives one of his strongest performances in the lead, but for some reason Brad Pitt won all the plaudits by hamming it in a supporting role.

Wyatt Earp
1994
**½
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, Michael Madsen

Lawrence Kasdan's Western biopic about the famous lawman Wyatt Earp is matter-of-fact and impressively made, but the film is at least an hour too long and rarely gripping. Kevin Costner is wooden, but it works in this role.

Wolf
1994
****
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, Kate Nelligan

A publishing editor is bitten by wolf. He returns to work and faces a power struggle just as his body is starting to change. Jack Nicholson and James Spader give nice performances in this subtle and enjoyable werewolf film, which goes over the top only in the very end.


With Honors
1994
**
Director: Alek Keshishian
Cast: Joe Pesci, Brendan Fraser, Moira Kelly, Patrick Dempsey, Gore Vidal

A boringly educational film about a student who learns about life from a hobo played by Joe Pesci.

When a Man Loves a Woman
1994
**
Director: Luis Mandoki
Cast: Meg Ryan, Andy Garcia, Ellen Burstyn, Tina Majorino, Mae Whitman

Meg Ryan is an unconvincing drunk and Andy Garcia is equally implausible as her forgiving husband in this ridiculously simplified depiction of alcoholism.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare
1994
**½
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, Miko Hughes, Davis Newsom

The difference between film and reality blurs when Freddy Krueger starts to kill the cast and crew of the Nightmare on Elm Street series. The clever premise lures you in, but the second half is as formulaic as any of the films in the series. Craven later used the same idea with more success in the href=/search2.php?query=1829>Scream movies.

True Lies
1994
****
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Arnold, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Paxton, Eliza Dushku, Art Malik, Tia Carrere

Following The Terminator and Terminator 2, Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron reunite for a remake of a 1991 French film La Totale!. Their third collaboration is a laugh-out-loud funny action comedy with inventive, enthralling, and memorable action set pieces. Arnie plays Harry Tasker, a globetrotting counterterrorism agent whose wife and daughter think he's a boring salesman. When Harry suspects that his wife is unfaithful, he deploys the full resources of the agency to uncover the truth in the movie's questionable and misogynistic midsection, which goes on for an eternity, or 45 minutes, to be more exact.

Trois coleurs: Rouge (Red)
1994
****½
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Cast: Irene Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Frederique Feder, Jean-Pierre Lorit

Following Blue and White, the third part in Kieslowski's colour trilogy is a captivating and beautiful story about a student whose life takes a surprising turn when she runs over a dog. The film deals with chance and its climax brings together characters and themes from the entire trilogy.

Trois coleurs: Blanc (White)
1994
***½
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Cast: Zbigniew Zamachowksi, Julie Delpy, Janusz Gajos, Jerzy Stuhr, Jerzy Trela, Aleksander Bardini, Grzegorz Warchoł, Cezary Harasimowicz, Jerzy Nowak

The middle part of Kieslowski's colour trilogy is a dark comedy about a Polish barber, whose French wife dumps him for failure to consummate the marriage. The man goes back to his home country and devises a diabolical scheme to get back at her. The story may not be plausible, but it offers some amusing and touching moments. Preceded by Blue and followed by Red.

Stargate
1994
**½
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Viveca Lindfors

This science fiction film, written by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, starts well. A modern day Egyptologist deciphers the symbols on a mysterious stone ring, which turns out to be a Stargate, a portal to a different universe. Once they decide to pass through it, the military takes charge like in James Cameron's movies The Abyss and Aliens, and the story gets stupider and sillier as it goes along. Followed by a long running Stargate Sg-1 TV show.

Speed
1994
****½
Director: Jan De Bont
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Jeff Daniels, Joe Morton, Alan Ruck, Carlos Carrasco, Glenn Plummer, Beth Grant

When a nasty terrorist plants a bomb on a Los Angeles bus which explodes if the vehicle slows down below 50 miles per hour, a SWAT member boards the bus to attempt to avert disaster. This terrific, fast-paced adrenalin shot of a movie made Sandra Bullock a star and it proves that action flicks don't always need to be dumb and illogical shooting fests. The finale outside the bus is a bit of a letdown, though. Cinematographer Jan De Bont's directorial career has been steep downhill since this vigorous debut. Followed by Speed 2: Crusie Control three years later.

The Specialist
1994
*½
Director: Luis Llosa
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Rod Steiger

Sylvester Stallone plays a "good hitman" whose explosives never kill innocent bystanders, and Sharon Stone is his latest client. As the bombs go off, they get off. The end result is a dumb, stiff and dull action film. James Woods portrays a slimeball for the umpteenth time.

Sirens
1994
**
Director: John Duigan
Cast: Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald, Sam Neill, Elle Macpherson, Kate Fischer

An empty and boring comedy about a priest and his wife who get a sexual reawakening when they visit an artist famous for his explicit paintings. Even the semi-nude super models cannot save this dud.

A Simple Twist of Fate
1994
**
Director: Gillies MacKinnon
Cast: Steve Martin, Gabriel Byrne, Catherine O'Hara, Stephen Baldwin

Steve Martin is an odd choice to play a music teacher who must fight to keep the custody of his adopted daughter. He's tolerable but the story is terribly weepy and predictable. Loosely based on George Eliot's novel Silas Marner.

The Shawshank Redemption
1994
*****
Director: Frank Darabont
Cast: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, James Whitmore

Frank Darabont's directorial debut is a long but beautifully told story about friendship between two convicts who serve time in the Shawshank State Penitentiary. The excellent Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman play these two men. The film is warm and uplifting. Based on a Stephen King short story Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.

Shallow Grave
1994
***½
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, Kerry Fox, Ken Stott

Danny Boyle's directorial debut is an enjoyable and unpredictable black comedy about three friends whose new roommate dies and leaves behind a suitcase full of money. This leads to a modern day version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The film is sharply written and acted, but it loses its grip a bit towards the end.

Serial Mom
1994
*½
Director: John Waters
Cast: Kathleen Turner, Sam Waterston, Ricki Lake, Matthew Lillard

An appalling black comedy about a petty suburban housewife/mother who starts killing people who disagree with her. John Waters' film is neither witty nor funny, just utterly stupid and boring.

The Santa Clause
1994
*½
Director: John Pasquin
Cast: Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold, Wendy Crewson, David Krumholtz

A terrible, sugar-coated Xmas comedy about an ordinary man who must cover for Santa. This cynical modern man predictably discovers the Holiday spirit. Followed by two sequels.

Rudyard Kipling's the Jungle Book
1994
**½
Director: Stephen Sommers
Cast: Jason Scott Lee, Cary Elwes, Lena Headey, Sam Neill, John Cleese

A clichéd and rather lifeless adventure film about Mowgli, a boy who has grown up (and worked out a perfect six-pack) in the jungle. The climax in the city full of treasures looks a lot like the ending of The Mummy, Stephen Sommers' next film. Based on Rudyard Kipling's novels, like the title suggests.

The Road to Wellville
1994
**½
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Anthony Hopkins, Bridget Fonda, John Cusack

Alan Parker's sporadically funny satire is set in an early 20th century health spa run by Dr. Kellogg. The film is quite faithfully based on T.C. Boyle's novel, but it suffers from the usual adaptation issues by trying to squeeze too much material into two hours. However, there is some nice parody on America's obsession with health and hygiene, although some of the scenes are overly farcical.

The River Wild
1994
**½
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Meryl Streep, Kevin Bacon, David Strathairn, Joseph Mazzello

Meryl Streep is surprisingly convincing in a physical role as a heroic river boat guide who is forced to bring bad guys down the river. The story, however, is clichéd and basically just Deadly Pursuit on the water.

Reality Bites
1994
**
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Winona Ryder, Ben Stiller, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo

Ben Stiller's directorial debut is a dull Generation X love triangle about a young aspiring filmmaker who needs to choose between a stable executive and a hopeless dreamer.

Quiz Show
1994
****½
Director: Robert Redford
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, John Turturro, Rob Morrow, Paul Scofield, David Paymer, Hank Azaria, Christopher McDonald, Johann Carlo, Elizabeth Wilson, Allan Rich, Mira Sorvino, Martin Scorsese

In 1958, the producer of NBC's popular quiz show Twenty One convinces the reigning champion to bow out so the network can appease the sponsor and bring in a more clean-cut contender. Robert Redford's long but wonderfully effortless drama chronicles a real-life broadcasting scandal, which exposed how the public was deceived to believe they were watching an actual competition. In this age of scripted reality TV, these events wouldn't break the news threshold, but this film is set in a different era. Paul Attanasio's pitch-perfect script covers the historical details and tells the moving personal stories of two different men. John Turturro, Ralph Fiennes, and John Schofield give great performances. Based on Richard Goodwin's memoir Remembering America.

Pulp Fiction
1994
*****
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Ving Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Christopher Walken, Bruce Willis

Quentin Tarantino's follow-up to Reservoir Dogs is a long but superb collection of intertwining stories set in the seedy corners of Los Angeles. His characters include two chatty mob hitmen, their ruthless boss, his druggy missus, a principled boxer, and his French wife. The film's cool characters, quotable dialogue, narrative trickery, and terrific soundtrack have influenced dozens and dozens of weak imitations. The entire cast shines in these violent but funny stories. The screenplay by Tarantino and Roger Avary won an Academy Award.

Priest
1994
****
Director: Antonia Bird
Cast: Linus Roache, Tom Wilkinson, Cathy Tyson, Robert Carlyle

A touching and thought-provoking drama about a conflicted Catholic priest who not only breaks his vow of selibacy, but he does it with a man. Roache and Wilkinson are the standouts of the strong cast. Scripted by Jimmy McGovern.

Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana (Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana)
1994
***½
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Mato Valtonen, Matti Pellonpää, Kati Outinen, Kirsi Tykkyläinen, Elina Salo, Irma Junnilainen, Veikko Lavi, Pertti Husu, Viktor Vassel, Carl-Erik Calamnius

Two quiet and socially awkward men embark on a road trip, where they pick up two women hitchhikers from Russia and Estonia, respectively. Aki Kaurismäki's short 60-minute road movie features some cool vibes and nice comedy moments, but it has no story to tell. Without cigarettes and alcohol, it would be half the length. Nevertheless, it's beautifully shot in black and white by Timo Salminen.

The Paper
1994
**½
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, Marisa Tomei, Glenn Close

A reporter for the fictional New York Sun investigates a dodgy double homicide just when his wife is about to give birth. This drama comedy has sharp dialogue and a strong performance by Robert Duvall, but overall it's poorly scripted (Duvall's illness or Tomei's fit are irrelevant).

Once Were Warriors
1994
****½
Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Rena Owen, Temuere Morrison, Marnaengaroa Kerr-Bell, Julian Arahanga

An unflinchingly violent and emotionally harrowing drama about domestic violence in a Māori family. Rena Owen and Temuera Morrison are excellent as the mother and father whose relationship is brutal. Lee Tamahori hasn't made anything this powerful in his subsequent Hollywood career. Based on Alan Duff's novel.

North
1994
*
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

A disgustingly schmaltzy and incredibly unfunny comedy about a boy who wants to replace his neglectful biological parents. While he's checking out the candidates, who all have terrible flaws, his own parents begin to miss him. Bruce Willis appears pointlessly in multiple roles. Based on Alan Zweibel's novel North: The Tale of a 9-Year-Old Boy Who Becomes a Free Agent and Travels the World in Search of the Perfect Parents.

Nobody's Fool
1994
****½
Director: Robert Benton
Cast: Paul Newman, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, Dylan Walsh

A nearly plotless but absolutely disarming drama comedy about an ageing, bitter man who has become estranged from his son. Paul Newman gives one of his finest performances. Based on Richard Russo's novel.

Natural Born Killers
1994
**
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Julianne Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Sizemore

Mickey and Mallory, a pair of loverbirds, are vicious serial killers who become celebrities. Oliver Stone's purposefully controversial media satire doesn't judge its protagonists. This approach is bold but it leaves you desensitised after a while. The visuals are flashy and self-indulgent. Based on Quentin Tarantino's story.


The Naked Gun 33⅓
1994
***
Director: David Zucker
Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson

The third film in the series is not much better or worse than parts 1 and 2½, but it is short. In the meanwhile detective Frank Drebin has retired but he agrees to go undercover and get close to a suspected terrorist. This leads to the climactic Oscar ceremony sequence, which is way overlong.

Muriel's Wedding
1994
***½
Director: P.J. Hogan
Cast: Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Bill Hunter, Jeanie Drynan, Matt Day

Toni Collette is wonderful as Muriel, an Abba-loving overweight young woman who cannot find a man. This Australian comedy is definitely not your average chick flick. It's bold, bizarre and funny, and there's a serious undercurrent.

Maverick
1994
***
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, James Garner, James Coburn, Graham Greene

Maverick is a Western card shark who plans to win the poker championship. However, he has two obstacles: a female con artist who also wants the prize money and a lawman who wants to capture him. Mel Gibson gives a laid-back comic performance but William Goldman's script is weak. The story has twists and turns galore, but by the end it doesn't make any sense. Based on the 1950s TV series.

The Mask
1994
***½
Director: Charles Russell
Cast: Jim Carrey, Cameron Diaz, Peter Riegert, Peter Greene, Amy Yasbeck

This likeable film offers a mix of Roger Rabbitesque cartoon action and comedy. It tells a story of a nerdy man who finds a mask that turns him into a self-confident superhero. While Jim Carrey is the Mask the film is funny, but when he returns to regular Stanley, the narrative seems to come to a halt. Cameron Diaz makes a very memorable movie entrance. Based on a comic book.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
1994
**
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Helena Bonham Carter, Robert De Niro, Tom Hulce

Dr. Victor Frankenstein is determined to build a living, breathing creature from various body parts, but he creates a monster, as we know. This is a rather faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, but Kenneth Branagh's pompous mess makes you long for Frank Whale's unfaithful classics from the 1930s. Rolling Stone called this the "The Best Trailer and the Worst Film of the Year", which hits the nail right on the head. It looked promising in small flashes, but the final film is pretty awful. The actors give wooden performances in front of the camera which moves nonstop on the massive sets.

The Madness of King George
1994
***
Director: Nicholas Hytner
Cast: Nigel Hawthorne, Helen Mirren, Rupert Everett, Ian Holm, John Wood

King George seems to be going insane, which tempts his son to exploit the circumstances and overtake the throne. This slow-paced but interesting drama is based on the actual events and it is adapted from a stage play by Alan Bennett. Nigel Hawthorne is enjoyable in the lead.

Love Affair
1994
**½
Director: Glenn Gordon Caron
Cast: Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Katherine Hepburn, Garry Shandling

Mike and Terry meet and fall in love, and agree to end their currenr relationships and get together in three months, but destiny intervenes. This fairly watchable romantic drama is a remake of An Affair to Remember, and it feels like a vanity project for Warren Beatty and his wife Anette Bening. The film credits six writers for the screenplay, but it could have used some updating to improve credibility. Kathleen Hepburn's final film.

Little Women
1994
***½
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Cast: Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Gabriel Byrne, Trini Alvarado

A mother and her four daughters try to get by while the father is fighting in the Civil War. This charming drama is the umpteenth adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic "chick novel". A fine female cast.

Little Odessa
1994
****
Director: James Gray
Cast: Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Maximilian Schell, Vanessa Redgrave

A violent drama about a Russian immigrant family whose oldest son works for the mafia. His father detests him for it and his younger looks up to him for the same reason. The story is powerful and it never goes for the usual crime film clichés. The cast comes from around the world but, thanks to their great performances, they come across as a believable family.

The Lion King
1994
****½
Director: Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff
Cast: Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Matthew Broderick, Moira Kelly, Jeremy Irons

The lion cub Simba is the rightful heir to the throne, but his evil uncle tricks him to go in exile. This irresistible Disney animation film offers a strong story, wonderful characters, breathtaking visuals and some memorable tunes. Oscar winner for Best Original Score (Hans Zimmer) and Best Original Song "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" by Elton John and Tim Rice. The film spun a whole set of spin-off works (direct to video sequels, an animated TV series and a stage musical).

Leon / The Professional
1994
****
Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Jean Reno, Natalie Portman, Gary Oldman, Danny Aiello, Ellen Greene

A tough professional hitman develops a soft spot for a young girl whose family has just been slaughtered. It's no secret that Luc Besson has great visual skills, but this time he has also written a strong script, which contains some unexpected and uncomfortable sexual chemistry between the two main characters, especially in the long version of the film. Gary Oldman gives a juicy Ott performance as a corrupt cop.

Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses
1994
†
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Mato Valtonen, Sakke Järvenpää, Matti Pellonpää, Kari Väänänen, André Wilms, Nicky Tesco, Twist-Twist Erkinharju, Ben Granfelt, Jore Marjaranta, Mauri Sumén

After Mexican tequila wipes out most of the Leningrad Cowboys, the remaining band members run into Moses, the band's duplicitous former manager reborn as a man of God, and decide to return to Europe. Aki Kaurismäki's Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989) was a likeable one-joke comedy that outstayed its welcome. The sequel is another 15 minutes longer, and one of the most boring films ever made. In the original, the plotless road trip took the band through the United States, now they drive back home to Russia through France, Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland. The performances are abysmal, the humour is cringey and awkwardly unfunny, and the musical numbers are awful.

Legends of the Fall
1994
*½
Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn, Henry Thomas, Anthony Hopkins, Julia Ormond

A ludicrously over-blown soap opera Western about three brothers who all love the same woman at some point in their lives. Anthony Hopkins gives one of his most embarrassing performances as their father, especially in the scenes after the character suffers a stroke. The story starts before the First World War and ends somewhere in the 1930, but Brad Pitt's hair remains unchanged through the decades. Based on Jim Harrison's novella.

The Last Seduction
1994
****½
Director: John Dahl
Cast: Linda Fiorentino, Bill Pullman, Peter Berg, J.T. Walsh, Bill Nunn

A modern day film noir about a femme fatale who runs away with her boyfriend's stolen money and hooks up with a gullible divorcee. John Dahl's best film is tightly scripted thriller with a wonderfully nasty protagonist. Linda Fiorentino is excellent in the lead.

Ladybird, Ladybird
1994
**
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Crissy Rock, Vladimir Vega, Ray Winstone, Sandie Lavelle

This kitchen sink drama is based on a true story. Maggie is a troubled mother who is in danger of losing the custody of her four children. Ken Loach aims to tell an emotional story about injustice, and show how the system crushes an individual, but Maggie is so implausibly stupid and unpleasant that it's impossible to feel anything for her.

It Could Happen to You
1994
***
Director: Andrew Bergman
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Bridget Fonda, Rosie Perez, Wendell Pierce

An amusing and sympathetic comedy about an honest policeman who doesn't have money for a tip so he promises the waitress half of his lottery winnings. And then he wins the jackpot. The film doesn't offer surprises but it entertains while it's on. Rosie Perez is bubbly as the officer's wife, even if her character is a bit one-note. Inspired by true events.

Interview with the Vampire
1994
**½
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Antonio Banderas, Stephen Rea

In modern day San Francisco Louis talks to a reporter and describes his life as a vampire, which started in 1791 when he met Lestat. This visually dazzling vampire film examines the curse of eternal life, but its interesting themes are buried under pompous and corny dialogue. The sequel-proof ending also leaves a bad taste. However, Kirsten Dunst gives a stunning breakthrough performance as the young Claudia. Based on first part of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.

Immortal Beloved
1994
***
Director: Bernard Rose
Cast: Gary Oldman, Jeroen Krabbe, Isabella Rossellini, Johanna Ter Steege

Gary Oldman is having a blast playing Ludwig Van Beethoven in this enjoyable fictionalised biopic. The story is told in Citizen Kane-style flashbacks, as Beethoven's friend tries to discover the identity of the mystery woman who inherits the composer's fortune.

Imaginary Crimes
1994
*½
Director: Anthony Drazan
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Fairuza Balk, Kelly Lynch, Vincent D'Onofrio

A hustler with two girls tries to make ends meet in the early 1960s. The story is narrated by his oldest daughter. Her coming of age story was probably made with good intentions, but the resulting film offers clichés, corny dialogue and cardboard characters, so it's impossible to care about anything or anyone.

I.Q.
1994
***
Director: Fred Schepisi
Cast: Tim Robbins, Meg Ryan, Walter Matthau, Lou Jacobi, Gene Saks

A romantic comedy about a car mechanic and an academic. This manipulative and predictable but rather likeable film attempts to show that love overcomes intelligence. Walther Matthau gives a nice performance as Albert Einstein.

I'll Do Anything
1994
**
Director: James L. Brooks
Cast: Nick Nolte, Joely Richardson, Albert Brooks, Julie Kavner, Tracey Ullman

A disappointing drama comedy about an aging actor, played by the always watchable Nick Nolte. The film was originally conceived as a musical, but it seems nobody liked the songs and they were dropped. Maybe that's why it feels like something is missing.

I Love Trouble
1994
**½
Director: Charles Shyer
Cast: Nick Nolte, Julia Roberts, Saul Rubinek, James Rebhorn, Robert Loggia

Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts play two rivalling newspaper reporters. However, their combined charisma is not enough to save this mediocre drama comedy.

The Hudsucker Proxy
1994
*****
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: Tim Robbins, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Charles Durning

to devalue the stock and enable a takeover, a member of the board appoints a dorky mailroom clerk as the head of the Hudsucker Industries. This witty and hilarious screwball comedy is shot on amazing sets. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman and Tim Robbins are all fabulous, each in a very different role. Joel and Ethan Coen co-scripted their misunderstood gem with Sam Raimi.

Heavenly Creatures
1994
****½
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Kate Winslet, Melanie Lynskey, Sarah Peirse, Clive Merrison, Diana Kent, Simon O'Connor, Jed Brophy, Peter Elliott

In the 1950s, two sensitive and imaginative teenage girls, Pauline and Juliet, meet in Christchurch, New Zealand and develop an intense friendship which eventually leads to tragedy. Prior to this excellent drama, Peter Jackson was only known for his low budget horror movies like Bad Taste and Brain Dead. This brilliantly directed real-life story seemlessly blends various genres, as the girls increasingly live in a world of their own creation. The wonderful Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet both make their screen debuts.

Guarding Tess
1994
**½
Director: Hugh Wilson
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Shirley MacLaine, Austin Pendleton, Edward Albert

Former First Lady and her uptight Secret Service agent form a unique bond in this mediocre character drama. Heavily reminiscent of Driving Miss Daisy, bar the holes in the plot.

The Getaway
1994
***
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Kim Basinger, Alec Baldwin, Michael Madsen, James Woods

This remake is not up to Sam Peckinpah's original, but it's a perfectly watchable thriller. At least Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger have good chemistry as a couple who go on the run after a failed bank robbery.

Fresh
1994
***
Director: Boaz Yakin
Cast: Sean Nelson, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson, N'Bushe Wright

A 12-year-old black kid earns good money as a drug courier, but his life in the tough neighbourhood is becoming increasingly precarious. This is a realistic and watchable coming-of-age tale, although it's inhabited by stock characters from similar stories. The film lets the protagonist off pretty lightly, as he manages to outwit everyone.

Four Weddings and a Funeral
1994
****
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, Kristin Scott Thomas, Simon Callow

A light, funny and refreshing British comedy about a young man who goes to other people's weddings, but cannot find Miss Right for himself. Hugh Grant plays this clumsy stuttering Englishman, which has consequently become his trademark. The script by Richard Curtis established the formula for numerous other British romantic comedies (Notting Hill, Bridget Jones' Diary, Love Actually, Wimbledon, etc.).

Forrest Gump
1994
****
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright-Penn, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, Sally Field, Haley Joel Osment

Forrest Gump is a goodhearted simpleton who grows up in Greenbow, Alabama. While Forrest dreams of a life together with his troubled childhood sweetheart Jenny, he somehow sleepwalks through many of the key events in the late 20th century American history. Robert Zemeckis' film is funny, touching and inventive, and its special effects are subtle but brilliant. However, Forrest's long and episodic story has a very conservative undercurrent. Eric Roth's Oscar winning screenplay is based on Winston Groom's novel. The film was a massive sleeper hit and it won an additional five Academy awards, which include best film, best actor (Tom Hanks) and best director.

The Flintstones
1994
**
Director: Brian Levant
Cast: John Goodman, Ricky Moranis, Elizabeth Perkins, Rosie O'Donnell

This hit comedy is based on the popular cartoon series. It has a nice cast and some very inventive visuals but, as there is no story to speak of, the film is utterly boring. Followed by a prequel The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.

Exotica
1994
**
Director: Atom Egoyan
Cast: Bruce Greenwood, Mia Kirschner, Don McKellar, Arsinee Khanjian

Atom Egoyan's follow-up to the mindnumbingly dull The Adjuster is slightly more accessible, but it's still a rather tiresome drama about five disparate characters whose lives come together in the Exotica nightclub.

Esa ja Vesa - auringonlaskun ratsastajat (Sunset Riders)
1994
***
Director: Aleksi Mäkelä
Cast: Santeri Kinnunen, Juha Veijonen, Minna Pirilä, Aino Seppo

Aleksi Mäkelä's second film is a story of two likeable Finnish outlaws, and it's a major improvement on his debut Romanovin kivet. Juha Veijonen and Santeri Kinnunen give warm performances.

Ed Wood
1994
*****
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bill Murray, Jeffrey Jones, G.D. Spradlin, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lisa Marie, Patricia Arquette

An absolutely charming and consistently funny black and white comedy about Ed Wood, the most misunderstood director in the history of cinema. Johnny Depp is delightfully exuberant in the title role, but he's upstaged by Martin Landau, whose Oscar winning performance as Bela Lugosi is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking. The script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, which is based on Rudolph Grey's book Nightmare of Ecstacy, laughs with rather than at Ed Wood. Tim Burton's finest film obviously looks great, as well.

Eat Drink Man Woman
1994
***½
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Sihung Lung, Yu-Wen Wang, Chien-lien Wu, Kuei-Mei Yang, Sylvia Chang

A Taiwanese master chef is in the process of losing his sense of taste, while his three daughters are wrestling with their respective problems. Ang Lee's sympathetic family drama spends a large proportion of its running time on the meticulous food preparations, to a mouth-watering effect.

Dumb and Dumber
1994
***
Director: Peter Farrelly
Cast: Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Lauren Holly, Teri Garr, Karen Duffy, Mike Starr, Charles Rocket

When a beautiful woman forgets a suitcase at the airport, Lloyd and Harry drive across the country to return it to her. What these two dimwitted friends don't know is that the suitcase is filled with ransom money and the kidnappers are on their heels. The Farrelly brothers became a household name with this modest but likeable gross-out comedy. The central performances are good, but the movie is long and poorly paced. Followed by a prequel Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003) and a sequel Dumb and Dumber To (2014), which features the original cast.



Don Juan Demarco
1994
***½
Director: Jeremy Leven
Cast: Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando, Faye Dunaway, Geraldine Pailhas

A charming and inventive comedy about a modern day man, portrayed by the always reliable Johnny Depp, who believes he is Don Juan, the world's greatest lover. Unabashedly romantic but entertaining fluff.

Disclosure
1994
**½
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Michael Douglas, Demi Moore, Caroline Goodall, Donald Sutherland

Michael Douglas plays a manager who is hit by a double whammy. First he loses a promotion to his ex-lover, and then she sues him for sexual harassment. This stylish thriller is frustratingly OK. It starts as an interesting drama about office politics, but ends up as a black and white fight between good and evil. Based on Michael Crichton's novel.

Death and the Maiden
1994
****
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Stuart Wilson, Krystia Mova

Sigourney Weaver gives one her strongest performances as a South American woman who believes that her visitor is the man who raped and tortured her while she was imprisoned during the fascist regime.
This intense drama is based on a stage play by Ariel Dorfman. The film is stagy but very powerful.

The Crow
1994
*
Director: Alex Proyas
Cast: Brandon Lee, Ernie Hudson, Michael Wincott, David Patrick Kelly

A young couple is murdered and the male half comes back from the dead to right the wrongs. Why he doesn't simply stay in the afterlife and spend some quality time with his girlfriend, I don't know. Alex Proyas comes from the Mtv school of filmmaking and this gothic horror action movie is probably one of the longest and dullest music videos ever made. The film obviously has a big cult following, and it spawned several sequels. An accidental gun shot killed Brandon Lee during the shoot. Based on James O'Barr's comic book.

The Client
1994
**½
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Susan Sarandon, Brad Renfro, Tommy Lee Jones, Mary-Louise Parker

A young boy hears too much from a mob lawyer who is about to commit suicide. Soon he discovers that he cannot trust anyone, apart from a feisty lawyer played by Susan Sarandon. This John Grisham adaptation starts really well, but the rest of the story is not up to scratch. The protagonist is an irritating and implausibly precocious kid.

Clerks
1994
**½
Director: Kevin Smith
Cast: Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Lisa Spoonhauer, Jason Mewes

22-year-old Dante mans a convenience store while he tries to find direction in his life. His friend Randal, who runs the video rental store next door when he feels like it, is perfectly happy being the slacker he is. Kevin Smith's directorial debut was shot in black and white on a minimal budget. This cult comedy is moderately funny but not exactly cinematic. In fact it's so dialogue heavy that you occasionally find yourself tuning out. Followed by a 2006 sequel.

Clear and Present Danger
1994
**
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Willem Dafoe, James Earl Jones

In Harrison Ford's second film as Jack Ryan, the hero finds himself in the middle of an internationl drug war. Phillip Noyce is not able to inject any verve into this spy action film or, judging by Patriot Games, the whole franchise. It seems impossible to create an entertaining film out of Tom Clancy's militaristic novels; maybe the source material is just rubbish.


Clean Slate
1994
*½
Director: Mick Jackson
Cast: Dana Carvey, Valeria Golino, James Earl Jones, Kevin Pollak

Dana "Garth" Carvey plays a private eye who starts each morning with his memory wiped clean. This dreadfully unfunny comedy (version of Memento) wastes its potentially great premise.


Bullets Over Broadway
1994
****½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: John Cusack, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest, Mary-Louise Parker

In the late 1920s a cocky Broadwsy playwright desperately needs money to finance his play, and agrees to cast a gangster's talentless girfriend. During the production he grows close to the girl's bodyguard who is not all that he seems. This lovely comedy takes a surprising turn in the first half and it improves all the way to the end. The cast is pitch perfect, and Dianne Wiest won an Acadamy Award for her hilarious performance. Written by Allen and Douglas McGrath.

Blue Sky
1994
***
Director: Tony Richardson
Cast: Jessica Lange, Tommy Lee Jones, Powers Boothe, Carrie Snodgress

It's the early 1960s and Major Hank Marshall tries to balance between his groundbreaking work as a nuclear tester and his demanding, mentally unbalanced wife. This drama is interesting but it takes an odd turn in the second half and never recovers from it. Tony Richardson's final film sat on the shelf for three years before it was released, and then it earned Jessica Lange a well deserved Oscar.

Der Bewegte Mann (Maybe... Maybe Not)
1994
***
Director: Sönke Wortmann
Cast: Til Schweiger, Katja Riemann, Joachim Krol, Rufus Beck, Armin Rohde

A light and likeable German sex comedy about a young man who finds himself in a sticky situation. The girlfriend who dumped him is pregnant and the gay roommate is attracted to him. Based on Ralf König's comics.

Beverly Hills Cop III
1994
*½
Director: John Landis
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, Theresa Randle, Hector Elizondo

The third film in the series offers less humour and more action than parts I and II, but it seems that the seven year hiatus wasn't enough to write a decent screenplay. Detroit detective Axel Foley follows his boss' killer to a theme park in, surprise, Beverly Hills, where he discovers a secret counterfeit money operation. The premise is utterly stupid and the action scenes are by and large terrible. The top notch security guards at Wonder World are totally useless. They couldn't hit a ferris wheel with a bazooka if they were standing next to it.

Being Human
1994
**
Director: Bill Forsyth
Cast: Robin Williams, John Turturro, Anna Galiena, Vincent D'Onofrio

The same man, played by Robin Williams, reincarnates in different periods of history. Bill Forsyth's ambitious film was butchered in the editing room, so it's hard to judge if his version would have been equally dull and repetitive.

Bad Girls
1994
**
Director: Jonathan Kaplan
Cast: Madeleine Stowe, Drew Barrymore, Mary Stuart Masterson, Andie MacDowell, James Russo, James LeGros, Robert Loggia

Four mistreated prostitutes take the law into their own hands in this dull wish fulfilment Western which could have been titled Female Young Guns. When the push turns to shove, the hookers suddenly possess impressive shooting and horse handling skills.

Backbeat
1994
**½
Director: Iain Softley
Cast: Stephen Dorff, Sheryl Lee, Ian Hart, Gary Bakewell, Chris O'Neill

Stuart Sutcliffe was the original bass player of the Beatles who died suddenly at the age of 21. He is a minor footnote in the pop music history but, no offense, his life doesn't exactly fill a feature film. It's perfectly nice and well made, though.

Angie
1994
**½
Director: Martha Coolidge
Cast: Geena Davis, Steven Rea, James Gandolfini, Aida Turturro

A strong-willed pregnant woman decides to dump her baby's father, which causes an outrage in her New York neighbourhood. Geena Davis gives a warm performance, but the world this character inhabits seems incredibly archaic and conservative. Based on Avra Wing's novel Angie, I Says.

Airheads
1994
**
Director: Michael Lehmann
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, Joe Mantegna, Adam Sandler

An aspiring rock band resorts to desperate measures and take a radio station hostage in order to get some airplay for their demo. This is a nice premise for a comedy, but the jokes are scarce and only Steve Buscemi comes through as a credible rocker.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
1994
****
Director: Stephan Elliott
Cast: Guy Pearce, Terence Stamp, Hugo Weaving, Sarah Chadwick

An outrageous and often hilarious comedy about three drag artists who make a trip through Australia on their decrepit
bus, Priscilla. During the trip the trio test how open-minded Australians and the audience are. The film is full of catchy tunes (mostly by Abba) and colourful show numbers. The flamboyant costumes won an Academy Award.

Ace Ventura - Pet Detective
1994
**
Director: Tom Shadyac
Cast: Jim Carrey, Courteney Cox, Sean Young, Tone Loc, Dan Marino, John Capodice, Noble Willingham, Troy Evans

Ace Ventura is a detective who is specialised in tracking down missing animals. Now he is assigned to find the dolphin mascot of the Miami NFL team. In his breakthrough role, Jim Carrey gives one of his trademark over-the-top rubber face performances. There are some nice gags and catchphrases, but they cannot carry a 90-minute movie. Some of the jokes feel terribly dated. Followed by Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.

71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls (71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance)
1994
**½
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Gabriel Cosmin Urdes, Lukas Miko, Otto Grünmandl, Anne Bennent, Udo Samel

Following The Seventh Continent and Benny's Video, the final part in Haneke's glaciation trilogy offers, like the terrible title suggests, 71 fragments of Viennese life intercut with current news on TV. The lives of various troubled characters are ruled by chance, and the people don't meet each other until the climactic tragedy, which is incidentally based on a real event. Unfortunately the whole is not a sum of its fragmented parts. This feels like an academic exercise that leaves you wanting to know more about the characters.

The Young Americans
1993
**
Director: Danny Cannon
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Iain Glen, John Wood, Terence Rigby, Keith Allen, Viggo Mortensen

Harvey Keitel plays an American cop on an assignment in London. Danny Cannon's feature debut is a dull and confusing British crime drama.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
1993
*****
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Johnny Depp, Juliette Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mary Steenburgen

In a small town of Endora, Iowa Gilbert Grape lives with his unusual family which includes an insanely overweight mother and a mentally challenged younger brother. Gilbert himself delivers groceries to a horny housewife but finds himself attracted to a young woman passing through the town. Lasse Hallström's moodpiece is pretty much plotless but utterly charming. Young Leonardo DiCaprio gives an excellent performance as Gilbert's brother. Peter Hedges adapted his own novel.

The Wedding Banquet
1993
***
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Winston Chao, Mitchell Lichtenstein, May Chin, Ah Lei Gua, Sihung Lung

A gay Taiwanese man marries a woman in order to appease his parents who are on a visit in New York. This is a variation on Birdcage (or La Cage aux Folles) and a fairly predictable comedy of misunderstandings, but thankfully one with brain and heart. With his later films Ang Lee has become known as an actor's director, but the performances of the two male leads here are mediocre at best.

Wayne's World 2
1993
**½
Director: Stephen Surjik
Cast: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Tia Carrera, Christopher Walken

Wayne and Garth attempt to host a massive rock festival Waynestock but continuously run into obstacles. The sequel to Wayne's World offers some laughs but no surprises. Aerosmith play themselves and Charlton Heston has a terrific cameo towards the end.

The Vanishing
1993
***½
Director: George Sluizer
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Nancy Travis, Sandra Bullock

Jeff and Diane are on a holiday trip when she disappears without a trace. This is a rather gripping thriller, but apparently only a watered down version of George Sluizer's original Dutch film Spoorloss. Jeff Bridges gives another fine performance, this time as a psychopath.

True Romance
1993
***
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Michael Rapaport

Clarence, an Elvis-obsessed movie buff, and Alabama, a kind-hearted call girl, fall in love and get married. When the couple accidentally end up with a suitcase full of cocaine, they leave the town. Tony Scott's entertaining but disposable crime flick was written by Quentin Tarantino, whose fingerprint is all over the pulpy screenplay, which features plenty of violence and references to comic books and obscure kung-fu movies, but no storytelling gimmicks. The film includes some well-written characters, but sadly this doesn't include Alabama, who has no agency of her own. The performances are good, though.

Trois coleurs: Bleu (Blue)
1993
****
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Benoit Regent, Florence Pernel, Charlotte Very, Hélène Vincent, Philippe Volter, Emmanuelle Riva, Yann Trégouët

After Julie survives a horrific car crash which kills her husband and daughter, she attempts to cut all ties to her earlier life. But is she really free or merely alone? The first part of Kieslowski's colour trilogy is a meditative and beautifully shot film with a strong lead performance by Juliette Binoche. As Julie's husband was a famous composer, the wonderfully haunting score by Zbigniew Preisner plays an important role. Followed by White.


The Three Musketeers
1993
**
Director: Stephen Herek
Cast: Chris O'Donnell, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt, Tim Curry

This umpteenth adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' classic story is fluid but totally pointless. Tim Curry is a campy Cardinal Richelieu, bur the four actors who play the heroes are free of charisma.

This Boy's Life
1993
***½
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Ellen Barkin, Jonah Blechman

A touching coming-of-age story set in the late 1950s. A teenage boy and his mother try to find happiness, but her new husband is not the kind gentleman he seems at first. Leonardo DiCaprio carries the film with his excellent breakthrough performance, but the abusive stepfather played by Robert De Niro becomes a frustratingly one-dimensional villain in the second half. Based on Tobias Wolff's autobiographical book.

The Thing Called Love
1993
**
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Cast: River Phoenix, Samantha Mathis, Dermot Mulroney, Sandra Bullock

A group of wannabe country singers become friends and lovers in Nashville. These characters are likeable but the film is overlong and its dramatic turns have the subtlety of a country song. River Phoenix is a sad sight in one of his last films.

Tallinn pimeduses (City Unplugged)
1993
**
Director: Ilkka Järvi-Laturi
Cast: Ivo Uukkivi, Elina Aasa, Milena Gulbe, Jüri Järvet, Kristel Kärner, Kadri Kilvet, Salme Poopuu, Andres Raag, Enn Klooren

Following the restoration of independence in 1991, the Estonian government plans to bring back the gold reserves it hid from the Soviets, but a group of criminals are planning to steal it by creating a blackout in Tallinn. This fictional Finnish-Estonian heist movie is set against an interesting historical backdrop, but the end result is often clunky and occasionally laughably bad. The best moment occurs towards the end when the screen turns from black and white to colour by a flick of the switch.

Striking Distance
1993
*½
Director: Rowdy Herrington
Cast: Bruce Willis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Dennis Farina, Tom Sizemore

A Pittsburgh detective, whose father was shot, now pursues a serial killer. This action film is utterly dull and predictable. Bruce Willis is wooden, and the whole thing is best remembered for his poorly fitting toupée.

Stalingrad
1993
**½
Director: Joseph Vilsmeier
Cast: Dominique Horwitz, Thomas Kretschmann, Jochen Nickel, Dana Vavrova

A well made but uninvolving German war film about the Battle of Stalingrad, which turned the course of WW2. The German soldiers are portrayed as a group of disillusioned young men who fight for their lives. The battle is cruelling but the poorly developed characters just disappear into the wintery background.

Splitting Heirs
1993
**
Director: Robert Young
Cast: Rick Moranis, Eric Idle, Barbara Hershey, Catherine Zeta-Jones

A very uneven comedy about a aristocratic family whose heirs battle for its massive fortune. Eric Idle, who scripted the film, plays a dual role, and John Cleese makes a brief but amusing appearance. Barbara Hershey plays Idle's mother, although she is in fact five years younger.

Sommersby
1993
***
Director: Jon Amiel
Cast: Jodie Foster, Richard Gere, Bill Pullman, James Earl Jones

A captivating but slightly reserved story about a farmer who returns from the Civil War literally as a different man. This is a remake of a French film Le Retour de Martin Guerre (The Return of Martin Guerre), and it has a surprisingly un-Hollywood ending.

So I Married an Axe Murderer
1993
**
Director: Thomas Schlamme
Cast: Mike Myers, Nancy Travis, Anthony LaPaglia, Amanda Plummer

A predictable and uneven comedy about a man who marries a butcher and begins to suspect that she may be a serial killer. Michael Myers tries his best but the script is poor.

The Snapper
1993
****
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Colm Meaney, Tina Kellegher, Ruth McCabe, Colm O'Byrne

A young carefree Irish girl finds herself pregnant but she refuses to name the father. Colm Meaney is fantastic as the girl's dad who is climbing the walls. This hilarious slice of Irish life is based on Roddy Doyle's novel, which is the middle part of his Barrytown Trilogy.
The Commitments and The Van are the other two.

Sliver
1993
*½
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Sharon Stone, William Baldwin, Tom Berenger, Polly Walker

A sex-crazed divorcee moves into a posh apartment building and discovers that she has some strange and kinky neighbours, some of whom get murdered mysteriously. Basic Instinct writer Joe Eszterhas adapted Ira Levin's novel, but this erotic thriller is just sleazy and dull. The reshot ending, which changes the identity of the killer, is awful.


Sleepless in Seattle
1993
****
Director: Nora Ephron
Cast: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Bill Pullman, Ross Malinger, Rob Reiner

Practically the entire female population, including the reporter played Meg Ryan, falls in love with a Seattle widower when he calls into a radio show and talks about his dead wife. This romantic comedy is in danger of turning syrupy at several points, but it just simply charms you. However, I cannot completely surrender to a film that lifts so much of its story from another romantic classic, An Affair to Remember.

Short Cuts
1993
****½
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Tim Robbins, Andie MacDowell, Chris Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Anne Archer, Buck Henry, Huey Lewis, Lily Tomlin, Tom Waits, Bruce Davison, Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine, Fred Ward, Robert Downey Jr., Madeleine Stowe, Frances McDormand

Robert Altman makes a return to the style of his influential Nashville with another tapestry of intertwining lives set in Los Angeles. This is a long but wonderfully crafted film, based on Robert Carver's short stories that revolve around coincidence, infidelity, and death. The cast is amazing on paper and on screen. Altman's work had a massive influence on everything-is-connected films like Crash and Magnolia.

Shadowlands
1993
****
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Erward Hardwicke, Michael Denison

Sir Richard Attenborough's low-key (yet once again real-life) love story is probably his finest film. Anthony Hopkins gives a heartbreaking performance as C.S. Lewis, the famed author of The Chronicles of Narnia, who falls in love with an American writer Joy Gresham. Based on William Nicholson's TV film and stage production.

Searching for Bobby Fischer
1993
***
Director: Steven Zaillian
Cast: Joe Mantegna, Max Pomeranc, Joan Allen, Laurence Fishburne

The Waitzkin family discover that their son Joshua is a chess genius, and decide to exploit the skill. This mediocre drama first preaches against living through your children but then condones it anyway. Based on the book by Fred Waitzkin.

Schindler's List
1993
*****
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Embeth Davidtz

A powerful true story about a German businessman and Nazi sympathiser who used his influence and his finances to save over a thousand Jews during WW2. This brilliant three-hour Holocaust epic is understandably somber but always enthralling. It's strongly acted and beautifully filmed in black and white. A deserved winner of seven Academy Awards (best film, director, screenplay, cinematography, art direction, editing and score). Steven Zaillian adapted Thomas Keneally's book.

Romeo Is Bleeding
1993
***½
Director: Peter Medak
Cast: Gary Oldman, Lena Olin, Annabella Sciorra, Juliette Lewis, Roy Scheider

A darkly funny crime story about a corrupt cop who plays both sides of the law in order to earn some extra cash. Gary Oldman is great as the slimy antihero and Lena Olin is deliciously nasty as an extremely ruthless mob assassin. Unfortunately the story ceases to make much sense towards the end.

Romanovin kivet
1993
*½
Director: Aleksi Mäkelä
Cast: Santeri Kinnunen, Samuli Edelmann, Stig Fransman, Kari-Pekka Toivonen

Aleksi Mäkelä's directorial debut is the "first ever Finnish action movie", and it also looks like one. The story deals with a group of thugs who are after valuable jewels, but the film mostly consists of second rate action stunts. There's some funny dialogue towards the end, otherwise this is a dud.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights
1993
*
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Cary Elwes, Richard Lewis, Roger Rees, Amy Yasbeck, David Chappelle, Isaac Hayes, Tracey Ullman, Patrick Stewart, Dom DeLuise

Robin of Loxley returns home to England and finds himself at loggerheads with the Sheriff of Rottingham. Judging by this dreadful comedy, Mel Brooks is definitely ready for retirement. His dull and uninspired parody of Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves (1991) doesn't include one funny joke. This must be at least the fourth time Brooks uses the same old Walk this way gag. Cary Elwes doesn't have the necessary charisma to carry the movie.

Rising Sun
1993
**
Director: Philip Kaufmann
Cast: Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes, Harvey Keitel, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

When an escort girl is found murdered in the offices of the Nakamoto corporation, the police department employs the help of John Connor (Sean Connery), who is an expert in Japanese culture. The unusual premise is captivating for five minutes, but this is ultimately just a dull and predictable whodunnit. Based on a Michael Crichton novel.

The Remains of the Day
1993
****
Director: James Ivory
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Christopher Reeve

Prior to WW2 Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton both worked for Lord Darlington who ended up making some very foolish choices. This excellent, slow-burning drama tells their repressed love story. Emma Thompson is great as the housekeeper and Anthony Hopkins is awesome as the butler who never shows his emotions. Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel.



Red Rock West
1993
****
Director: John Dahl
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle, J.T. Walsh, Dwight Yoakam, Timothy Carhart, Dan Shor

A jobless war veteran walks into a bar in Red Rock, Wyoming, where he's mistaken for a hitman hired to kill the barkeeper's young wife. John Dahl's second film is a very enjoyable neo-noir with well-drawn characters and plenty of delicious twists and turns.

Point of No Return / Assassin
1993
**½
Director: John Badham
Cast: Bridget Fonda, Dermot Mulroney, Gabriel Byrne, Anne Bancroft

A down-and-out junkie faces death penalty, but she gets a second chance as a government assassin code named Nina. This faithful Hollywood remake of Nikita is pretty decent, but the transformation of the protagonist is not as credible as in the original.

The Piano
1993
*****
Director: Jane Campion
Cast: Holly Hunter, Sam Neill, Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin, Kerry Walker

In the mid-19th century a mute woman remarries and moves with her young daughter and her treasured piano to dreary New Zealand, where she is slowly drawn to her shy neighbour. This beautiful and hypnotic love triangle is built on powerful performances and Michael Nyman's dramatic score. Jane Campion's screenplay won an Academy Award, as did Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin for their wonderful acting work.



Philadelphia
1993
***
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Antonio Banderas, Jason Robards

This drama about a lawyer who believes he was fired from his job because he has AIDS is one of the first mainstream Hollywood productions to deal with the disease or to have an openly gay protagonist. But groundbreaking as it may be, this is not a terribly exciting film. In the second half especially it turns into a rather dire court room drama. Tom Hanks is impressive in his Oscar winning performance. Bruce Springsteen's Streets of Philadelphia also won an Academy Award for best original song.

A Perfect World
1993
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, Laura Dern, Keith Szarabajka

An impressive but admittedly overlong road movie set in the early 1960s. Clint appears as a Texas Ranger who pursues two escaped convicts. Kevin Costner plays one of them, and it's refreshing to see him as a bad guy for a change. This underrated drama was scripted by John Lee Hancock.

The Pelican Brief
1993
**½
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sam Shepard, John Heard

A law student writes a brief that seems to hit a nerve, and she's forced to go underground. (She does, however, seem to have a massive wardrobe while on the run.) This is a run-of-the-mill adaptation of John Grisham's novel.

Onnen maa (The Land of Happiness)
1993
****
Director: Markku Pölönen
Cast: Katariina Kaitue, Pertti Koivula, Anja Pohjola, Veikko Tiitinen, Tuula Väänänen, Taisto Reimaluoto, Riikka Räsänen, Tatu Kaihua, Heidi Hakkarainen, Reijo Taipale, Carl Mesterton, Jukka Puronlahti, Leo Raivio, Esa Halonen

Markku Pölönen's 60-minute feature debut tells a delightful coming-of-age story through the eyes of a young boy. While the boy's parents and grandmother run a farm, his grandfather is on his last legs, and his flashy but lazy uncle returns from the city. Pölönen's well-acted slice of nostalgia is set in his native eastern Finland, and it includes a typically Finnish serving of sex, death, alcohol, and tango.

Nowhere to Run
1993
*
Director: Robert Harmon
Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Rosanna Arquette, Kieran Culkin, Ted Levine

Some say this is Jean-Claude Van Damme's best film, and that may be true. It's still an inept romantic action film about an escaped convict who finds refuge with a lonely single mother. We've seen this story in Shane and its umpteen rip-offs. Co-scripted by Joe Eszterhas.

The Nightmare Before Christmas
1993
***½
Director: Henry Selick
Cast: Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey

This visually quirky stop motion animation is based on Tim Burton's story which mixes Halloween and Christmas mythologies into one unique horror comedy.
The film is dark and lovely to look at, but not terribly funny.

National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1
1993
*
Director: Gene Quintano
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Emilio Estevez, Jon Lovitz, Tim Curry, Frank McRae

A black detective is partnered with a psychotic white cop to investigate a murder. This dreadful spoof is based almost entirely on Lethal Weapon and its sequels. There are one or two funny cameos which warrant one star.

Naked in New York
1993
**½
Director: Dan Algrant
Cast: Eric Stoltz, Mary-Louise Parker, Raplh Macchio, Kathleen Turner

A likeable but predictable romantic comedy about a relationship between two creative people, played charismatically by Mary-Louise Parker and Eric Stoltz. Martin Scorsese returns to the theme of his New York, New York, this time as a producer.


Naked
1993
***
Director: Mike Leigh
Cast: David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Katrin Cartlidge, Greg Cruttwell, Claire Skinner, Peter Wight, Ewen Bremner, Susan Vidler, Gina McKee, Elizabeth Berrington, Darren Tunstall

Johnny, an articulate, sarcastic, and cynical drifter, takes a journey into the seedy underbelly of London, but his nihilistic world views and razor-sharp quips repeatedly land him in trouble. Mike Leigh's drama about urban alienation is gritty and funny, but I can't say I take any pleasure in watching the film. David Thewlis gives a terrific performance, but Johnny must be one of the most unpleasant protagonists in the history of cinema, and yet he seems like an angel compared to the sadistic rapist portrayed by Greg Cruttwell. The female characters have no agency of their own. Andrew Dickson's score is lovely, though.

My Boyfriend's Back
1993
*½
Director: Bob Balaban
Cast: Andrew Lowery, Traci Lind, Danny Zorn, Edward Hermann, Mary Beth Hurt, Jay O. Sanders

There's hardly any conceivable reason to see this idiotic comedy about a teenager who is determined to go to his high school prom, although he's inconveniently dead. The director Bob Balaban is better known as an actor, and for a reason.

Much Ado About Nothing
1993
***
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves

This adaptation of Shakespeare's romantic comedy is light and enjoyable, even if Kenneth Branagh has squeezed in too many distracting big star cameos. The story is set and filmed in In Italy, and the picture has a beautiful golden glow.

Mrs. Doubtfire
1993
***
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Robin Williams, Sally Field, Pierce Brosnan, Harvey Fierstein

Daniel Hillard is a recently divorced dad and unemployed actor who is forced to dress as a female housekeeper so he can spend more time with his three children. This modest comedy is a showcase for Robin Williams, and he is funny. The film around him is a bit manipulative and overlong. Based on Anne Fine's novel Alias Madame Doubtfire. Academy Award winner for best make-up.

Mr. Wonderful
1993
**
Director: Anthony Minghella
Cast: Matt Dillon, Annabella Sciorra, Mary-Louise Parker, William Hurt

Matt Dillon plays a man who tries to find a new husband for his ex-wife so he wouldn't have to pay alimony. Anthony Minghella's Hollywood debut aspires to be a romantic comedy, but it's neither funny nor romantic. The highly unpleasant protagonist is the film's downfall.



Menace II Society
1993
***
Director: The Hughes brothers
Cast: Tyrin Turner, Larenz Tate, Jada Pinkett, Vonte Sweet, Mc Eiht

This gritty and violent story about the lives of young black men is similar to Boyz n' the Hood, only more pessimistic. The directorial debut of Allen Hughes and Albert Hughes.

Matinee
1993
***
Director: Joe Dante
Cast: John Goodman, Cathy Moriarty, Simon Fenton, Kellie Martin

During the Cuban Missile Crisis a horror film producer wants his audience to really feel the chills while wtaching his movies. This is an amusing, partly true comedy with John Goodman wonderful in a role which pays homage to filmmaker William Castle. The film within the film, The Mant, is hilarious.

Manhattan Murder Mystery
1993
***
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Adler

Woody Allen's light and forgettable comedy follows in the footsteps of Rear Window. He reunites with Diane Keaton to play a couple who believe their next-door neighbour was murdered.

The Man Without a Face
1993
***½
Director: Mel Gibson
Cast: Mel Gibson, Nick Stahl, Margaret Whitton, Fay Masterson, Gaby Hoffman

A disfigured ex-teacher becomes a father figure to a troubled teenager in Mel Gibson's moving directorial debut, which is based on Isabelle Holland's novel. The film is reminiscent of Dead Poets Society, but that's not a bad thing.

Malice
1993
**
Director: Harold Becker
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Alec Baldwin, Bill Pullman, Bebe Neuwirth

When a pregnant teacher loses her fetus and both of her ovaries, she and her husband sue the arrogant surgeon for malpractice. But is that what really happened? This weak thriller doesn't have one character you can trust or care about, and the long subplot about a rapist is nothing but a clunky and over-egged plot device. The ending is especially flat. Aaron Sorkin and Scott Frank scripted from Jonas McCord's story, although the whole thing seems to be an uncredited remake of a TV film The Operation (1990).

Made in America
1993
*½
Director: Richard Benjamin
Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Danson, Will Smith, Paul Rodriguez

A black girl finds out that her biological father (courtesy of a sperm bank) is an intolerable white car salesman. Come the end of this absolutely useless comedy, we have one happy interracial family.

Mad Dog and Glory
1993
***½
Director: John McNaughton
Cast: Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman, Bill Murray, David Caruso, Kathy Baker

A nerdy crime scene photographer saves a gangster's life, who decides to reward the hero by lending his girlfriend. This weird romantic comedy has a great cast, although Bill Murray's mobster mannerisms begin to grate towards the end. Written by Richard Price.

Last Action Hero
1993
***
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, F. Murray Abraham, Art Carney, Charles Dance, Frank McRae, Tom Noonan, Robert Prosky, Anthony Quinn, Mercedes Ruehl, Austin O'Brien

Danny is a young movie buff who is magically transported to the silver screen, where he gets to play a sidekick to his favourite action hero, Jack Slater. To get back to the real world, Danny must convince Slater that he is just a movie character. This entertaining but overlong scifi action flick pokes fun at Hollywood movie tropes. The fantasy elements have stood the test of time and the script has plenty of clever gags, but the problem is that this is a parody of a movie genre which doesn't really exist anymore.

King of the Hill
1993
***
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Jeroen Krabbe, Jesse Bradford, Lisa Eichhorn, Karen Allen, Spalding Gray

During the Great Depression a young boy, who is practically an orphan, tries to fend for himself. His mother is ill and his father is rarely around. Steven Soderbergh's drama is based on the memoir of A.E. Hotchner. The film offers laughs and cries, but there isn't anything to make it stand out from other similar stories.

Jurassic Park
1993
***½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, BD Wong, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards

A wealthy but naive businessman is about to open a theme park filled with dinosaurs, which his team has created from preserved DNA. If there is one thing we've learned from science fiction movies, it is that you should not fiddle with nature. The story (from Michael Crichton's bestseller) is formulaic and it's rather easy to guess who gets killed and who doesn't. However, the groundbreaking computer effects are impressive and Steven Spielberg creates some tense and spectacular set pieces. Followed by The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park III, Jurassic World, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Jack the Bear
1993
***½
Director: Marshall Herskovitz
Cast: Danny De Vito, Robert J. Steinmiller, Miko Hughes, Gary Sinise

A sympathetic but sentimental drama comedy about a widower who tries to raise his two sons. He faces many challenges, and all of them are not ironed out, which is refreshing. Steven Zaillian scripted from Dan McCall's novel. Marshall Herskovitz made his name as the producer of Thirtysomething on TV, and this is his directorial debut.

Isä meidän (Our Father...)
1993
**
Director: Veikko Aaltonen
Cast: Hannu Kivioja, Martti Katajisto, Elina Hurme, Heikki Kujanpää

A young man returns home to confront his father about their shared secret. This dreary and dull Finnish film tells a story about the sins of the fathers. It's stylishly shot in black and white, but the performances mostly consist of brooding.

Indecent Proposal
1993
**
Director: Adrian Lyne
Cast: Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Robert Redford, Oliver Platt

A rich tycoon offers a young couple \$1M to spend one night with the missus. This lucrative proposition plunges their marriage into crisis. There's potential in this morality drama, but its characters become increasingly irritating as the story progresses. Based on Jack Engelhard's novel.

In the Name of the Father
1993
****
Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Pete Postletwaite, Emma Thompson, John Lynch

A tense real-life drama about the so-called Guildford Four, three men and a woman who were falsely imprisoned for a bombing carried out by the IRA in October 1974. The film concentrates on one of the men, Gerry Conlon, and the relationship with his father who is also in prison. Daniel Day-Lewis gives another intense performance, but Emma Thompson's role as his attorney is pretty thankless. Based on Conlon's autobiographical book Proved Innocent: The Story of Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four.

In the Line of Fire
1993
****
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Rene Russo, John Malkovich, Dylan McDermott

This time Clint Eastwood is only in front of the camera, where he gives one of his tenderest performances as a veteran Secret Service agent. The man failed to protect JFK 30 years earlier, and now he faces a nasty assassin who threatens the life of the President. This is a smart and highly entertaining thriller. Soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

The House of the Spirits
1993
**
Director: Bille August
Cast: Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave

This cheesy, pompous and lifeless family drama offers a crash course in Chile's history. The cast is impressive, but the story covers a long time span and they are forced to appear in a thick and unconvincing old age make-up through most of the running time. Based on Isabel Allende's novel.

Hot Shots! Part Deux
1993
**
Director: Jim Abrahams
Cast: Charlie Sheen, Valeria Golino, Lloyd Bridges, Richard Crenna

The sequal to Hot Shots! spoofs Rambo films but offers a less successful collection of visual and verbal gags. Charlie Sheen has pumped himself up but he's still no comedian.


Hocus Pocus
1993
*
Director: Kenny Ortega
Cast: Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Paker, Kathy Najimy, Omri Katz

It's Halloween and a teenager accidentally revives three witches, one of whom is played by the always energetic Bette Midler. Sadly she or anyone else cannot save this horrendously artificial and painfully unfunny horror comedy.

Hard Target
1993
**
Director: John Woo
Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lance Henriksen, Arnold Vosloo, Yancy Butler

John Woo made his name with his stylishly shot Hong Kong action films. His insipid Hollywood debut stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as a noble guy who fights a slimy villain. The action scenes are exciting, the rest isn't.

Groundhog Day
1993
*****
Director: Harold Ramis
Cast: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott, Stephen Tobolowsky, Brian Doyle-Murray, Marita Geraghty, Angela Paton, Rick Ducommun, Rick Overton, Robin Duke

Bill Murray gives one of his finest performances as Phil Connors, a smug and cynical TV weatherman who finds himself trapped in a time loop and forced to relive the same day—Groundhog Day—over and over again in the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. This brilliant and endlessly inventive dark comedy was scripted by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis, and it helped to launch an entire sub-genre of movies. Phil's journey is occasionally dark and consistently hilarious. As he experiences the repetition, he undergoes a transformative journey from selfishness to selflessness.

Geronimo: An American Legend
1993
**½
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Jason Patric, Wes Studi, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, Matt Damon

Walter Hill's Western biopic about the famous Indian warrior is never terribly exciting. Part of the blame must land on Jason Patric who is wooden in one of the leading roles. Written by John Milius.

The Fugitive
1993
***½
Director: Andrew Davis
Cast: Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, Jeroen Krabbé, Daniel Roebuck, Tom Wood

A massive manhunt ensues when Dr. Richard Kimble, who was framed for the murder of his wife, runs from the law in order to find the real killer. This thrilling and fast-paced action film has a tight script and a lovely cast of characters. It is based on a TV series which ran from 1963 to 1967. Tommy Lee Jones won an Oscar for his role as the cynical U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard. He reappears in the sequel U.S. Marshals, but Ford doesn't.

For Love or Money / Concierge
1993
*½
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Gabrielle Anwar, Anthony Higgins, Michael Tucker

Michael J. Fox is his usual reliable self, this time as a concierge who has to choose between love and money. It's not difficult to guess what his choice is. Barry Sonnenfeld's second film is an excruciatingly formulaic romantic comedy.

Flesh and Bone
1993
**½
Director: Steve Kloves
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Gwyneth Paltrow, James Caan

A fine cast is pretty much wasted in this disappointing drama about the sins of the fathers. The first half raises some interesting questions about a troubled relationship between a man (Quaid) and his father (Caan), but the second half fails to bring satisfactory closure. Meg Ryan appears in an unusually trashy role.

The Firm
1993
***
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Holly Hunter, Gary Busey

Sydney Pollack's John Grisham adaptation is a formulaic but entertaining story about a young lawyer who joins a shady law firm. It's a pleasure to watch a drama about lawyers without any actual court scenes. The performances are great, especially in the supporting roles (Gene Hackman, Gary Busey and Holly Hunter).

Fearless
1993
*****
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez, Isabella Rosselini, John Turturro, Tom Hulce, Benicio del Toro, Deirdre O'Connell, John de Lancie

Peter Weir's brilliant drama tells a story of a heroic plane crash survivor who is unable to return to his former life, but not because he is traumatised. Jeff Bridges is awesome in the lead, and so is Rosie Perez in a rare dramatic role as a fellow survivor who lost her child. This heartfelt film is poignant and endlessly rich in detail. Scripted by Rafael Yglesias from his own novel.

Fatal Instinct
1993
*½
Director: Carl Reiner
Cast: Sherilyn Fenn, Armand Assante, Kate Nelligan, Sean Young

This lame spoof tries to cash in on the popularity of Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, but it doesn't have any proper gags.



Falling Down
1993
****
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Frederic Forrest, Rachel Ticotin, Tuesday Weld, Lois Smith, D.W. Moffett

A deeply troubled man reaches his breaking point during a hot day when everything seems to work against him. At the same time, a retiring LAPD detective attempts to make sense of the man's acts of vigilantism across the city. Joel Schumacher's dark comedy is clever, original, and funny, and arguably the director's best work. However, the story does becomes a bit repetitive in the second half when everyone the protagonist meets on his route turns out to be an abrasive asshole. Michael Douglas gives one of his best performances since Wall Street.

Dream Lover
1993
**½
Director: Nicholas Kazan
Cast: James Spader, Mädchen Amick, Bess Armstrong, Fredric Lehne

An entertaining but formulaic thriller about a divorced architect whose new girlfriend is not all that she seems. By the time this trashy and twisty film is over, you're not sure who you should root for.

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
1993
**½
Director: Rob Cohen
Cast: Jason Scott Lee, Lauren Holly, Robert Wagner, Michael Learned

The story of Bruce Lee, the big martial arts star of the 1970s who died at the age of 32. Jason Scott Lee (no relation) is convincing in the role, but the film is a typical shapeless biopic that tries to fit everything in two hours. Based on two books, Bruce Lee: The Beginning by Robert Clouse and
Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew by
Linda Lee Cadwell.

Dennis the Menace
1993
**½
Director: Nick Castle
Cast: Walter Matthau, Joan Plowright, Mason Gamble, Christopher Lloyd

Producer John Hughes, the man behind Home Alone, also scripted this tiresome "cute child causes pain to grumpy grown-ups" scenario from Hank Ketcham's comic strip. Walter Matthau is a perfect Mr. Wilson, though.

Dazed and Confused
1993
**
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Jason London, Rory Cochrane, Wiley Wiggins, Sasha Jenson, Michelle Burke, Adam Goldberg, Matthew McConaughey, Marissa Ribisi, Kim Krizan, Parker Posey, Milla Jovovich, Ben Affleck

During the last day of school in 1976 seniors subject freshmen to cruel hazing rituals, but they all come together in the evening for a massive party. In his plotless cult film Richard Linklater aims to capture the vibe of this brief moment of joy before the uncertain future, but his autobiographical anecdote has nothing for me to relate to. He inhabits this alien world with warmly drawn but utterly uninteresting stock characters. The soundtrack is peppered with some of the most obvious 1970s hard rock hits.

Dave
1993
***
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Ben Kingsley

When the President suffers a stroke, the White House staff persuade a dead ringer to stand in until the real leader gets well. This light but charming political satire follows in the footsteps of Frank Capra, and Kevin Kline fills the shoes of James Stewart rather well. Written by Gary Ross.

Cool Runnings
1993
**
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: John Candy, Leon, Doug E. Doug, Rawle D. Lewis, Malik Yoba

The Jamaican bobsleigh team unexpectedly took part in the 1988 Olympics. It inspired this cute but not terribly funny comedy. There's one John Candy and four Jamaican Eddie Murphy wannabes.



Cliffhanger
1993
***½
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Janine Turner, John Lithgow, Michael Rooker, Leon, Paul Winfield, Ralph Waite, Rexx Linn, Caroline Goodall, Leon Robinson, Craig Fairbrass

A traumatised climber is coerced to assist a group of bad guys in their search for cash-filled armoured suitcases which fell out of a plane over the Rocky Mountains. Sylvester Stallone revived his career for a few years with this action movie, which is original and entertaining but needlessly violent. The villains are at times laughably villainous. The opening scene is terrific. Scripted by Stallone.

Carlito's Way
1993
****½
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller, John Leguizamo

An excellent crime drama about a career gangster who comes out of jail and tries to walk the straight and narrow. The almost unrecognisable Sean Penn gives a wonderful performance as Carlito's thoroughly corrupt lawyer who is nothing but trouble. Brian De Palma shows off his visual skills, especially in the gripping Grand Central Station finale, and he has a terrific story, as well. Based on Edwin Torres' crime novels Carlito's Way and After Hours.

A Bronx Tale
1993
****
Director: Robert De Niro
Cast: Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Lillo Brancato, Francis Capra

In the 1960s a young man looks up to the local mob boss, which doesn't please his hard working father. Robert De Niro's directorial debut takes its time to get going, but it turns out to be a charming, captivating and well-acted story about growing up in the Bronx. Chazz Palminteri, who plays the gangster, wrote the play the film is based on.

Born Yesterday
1993
**
Director: Luis Mandoki
Cast: Melanie Griffith, John Goodman, Don Johnson, Edward Herrmann

The always wooden Don Johnson educates a businessman's bimbo girlfriend (Melanie Griffith) into a bright lady in no time. This weak and implausible romantic comedy should probably be filed under science fiction. Based on Garson Kanin's play which was filmed once before in 1950.

Bopha!
1993
**½
Director: Morgan Freeman
Cast: Danny Glover, Malcolm McDowell, Alfre Woodard, Marius Weyers

Morgan Freeman's directorial debut is a well-meaning but slightly dry drama about a South-African black family in turmoil.

Bodies, Rest & Motion
1993
*½
Director: Michael Steinberg
Cast: Phoebe Cates, Tim Roth, Bridget Fonda, Eric Stoltz, Alicia Witt

A wonderful cast is wasted in an entirely pointless film about four people and their interconnected lives.

Blink
1993
***
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Madeleine Stowe, Aidan Quinn, Laurie Metcalf, James Remar

An entertaining by-the-numbers thriller about a woman who sees visions of a murder on her freshly restored corneas. The subplot about a detective who falls in love with the witness is not the most original twist in the world.

Bhaji on the Beach
1993
**½
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Cast: Kim Vithana, Jimmy Harkishin, Sarita Khajuria, Lalita Ahmed

A group of minority women make a daytrip to Blackpool. This British drama tries to tackle several controversial themes, but the end result is pretty useless.

Benny & Joon
1993
***½
Director: Jeremiah Chechik
Cast: Johnny Depp, Mary Stuart Masterson, Aidan Quinn, Julianne Moore

A warm romantic comedy about two peculiar individuals who fall in love. Johnny Depp gives a nice physical performance that pays a tribute to the silent comedians.

Another Stakeout
1993
***
Director: John Badham
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Emilio Estevez, Rosie O'Donnell, Dennis Farina

The cop duo from the 1987 original are literally on another stakeout, as they are asked to watch over a house by the lake where they hope a disappeared mob witness will show up. The plot gets stupider and increasingly implausible towards the end, but this is still a rather enjoyable sequel with a very funny performance from Richard Dreyfuss.



Alive
1993
***
Director: Frank Marshall
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Vincent Spano, Josh Hamilton, Bruce Ramsay, David Kriegel, Jack Noseworthy, Kevin Breznahan, David Cubitt, Illeanna Douglas, Ele Keats

In October 1972, a plane carrying an Uruguayan rugby team crashes into the Andes Mountains. With no sign of rescue, the survivors must decide whether they are ready to eat the dead passengers to survive. This fact-based drama is based on Piers Paul Read's book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. The crash is well staged and the film paints a believable picture of the circumstances, but a better director than Frank Marshall could probably squeeze proper tension out of this scenario. At its best, this is a moving portrayal of camaraderie and perseverance. At its worst, it is a clunky and poorly scripted drama that spends way too much time on theological discussions.

Akvaariorakkaus (Love in a Fish Bowl)
1993
***
Director: Claes Olsson
Cast: Tiina Lymi, Nikke Lignell, Petri Hanttu, Anna-Leena Härkönen

A heartfelt Finnish drama about a young couple and their sexual problems. The young actors are convincing in believable roles. Based on Anna-Leena Härkönen's novel.

The Age of Innocence
1993
**½
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder, Stuart Wilson

In the 1870s a wealthy New Yorker is engaged to be married to a socialite, but he falls in love with her cousin instead.
This adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel is a tragic love story and a depiction of social mores and things unsaid. The Oscar winning costumes, as well as the production design, cinematography, editing and acting are all first class, but the characters are lifeless and the film on the whole left me cold.

Addams Family Values
1993
**
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci

Many people seem to prefer this sequel over the first film, but this time there is no plot to speak of. Angelica Huston and Christina Ricci are once again excellent, otherwise this is something to forget.

White Sands
1992
**
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Mickey Rourke, Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, Samuel L. Jackson

Willem Dafoe plays a sheriff who finds a corpse in the desert and goes undercover to dig up the truth. What the truth is, I don't know. Everyone seems to be involved in the murder plot except the audience. A wonderful cast is completely wasted.

White Men Can't Jump
1992
**½
Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, Rosie Perez, Tyra Ferrell

A mediocre sports comedy about two basketballing hustlers whose massive egos clash on the street courts of Los Angeles. Shelton's dialogue is sharp and there are some occasional laughs. Rosie Perez is wonderfully outrageous again as Harrelson's girlfriend.

Whispers in the Dark
1992
**
Director: Christopher Crowe
Cast: Annabella Sciorra, Jamey Sheridan, Alan Alda, Jill Clayburgh

This psychological thriller about a female shrink whose powerful patient begins to affect her private life. The film starts in an interesting fashion but it goes off the tracks as the characters and their motives stop making sense.

Wayne's World
1992
***
Director: Penelope Spheeris
Cast: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Tia Carrera, Rob Lowe, Donna Dixon

A silly but amusing comedy about two goofy Hard Rock fans who run their own cult cable TV show. When a greedy TV executive learns of their popularity, he smells a good sponsorship deal. The comedy offers clever and not-so-clever gags and a steady flow of quotable one-liners. Alice Cooper appears as himself. Followed by a sequel.


La Vie de bohème
1992
***½
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Matti Pellonpää, Kari Väänänen, Evelyne Didi, André Wilms, Christine Murillo, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Carlos Salgado, Alexis Nitzer, Sylvie van den Elsen, Gilles Charmant, Dominique Marcas, Samuel Fuller

Three bohemian artists - an Albanian painter, a French poet, and an Irish composer - are forced to live from hand to mouth while they attempt to cling to their artistic integrity. Aki Kaurismäki's first film in French (the second one is Le Havre) is a charming black and white drama comedy that includes camaraderie, romance, and tragedy. It's supposedly set in present day Paris, but the depiction of misery and hopelessness feels lifted straight from Henri Murger's 1851 source novel Scènes de la vie de bohème. Timo Salminen's camerawork looks great, once again.


Unlawful Entry
1992
***
Director: Jonathan Kaplan
Cast: Kurt Russell, Madeleine Stowe, Ray Liotta, Roger E. Mosley

A seemingly trustworthy person once again turns out to be a psychopath, just like in Single White Female and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. The twist in this mediocre thriller is that the person in question is a police officer who has the hots for a pretty housewife. Kurt Russell gives one of his best performances as the victim's husband.

Unforgiven
1992
*****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris

Clint Eastwood's soft and lyrical Western is one of the finest films in its genre. David Webb Peoples wrote his insightful script in the 1970s but Clint waited until he was old enough to play the aging reformed killer who agrees to resort to his old skills to support his family. The story strips down the Western myths and shows that there is no glamour involved in killing a man. The elderly cast is outstanding, and Gene Hackman was singled out for an Oscar for his sinister performance. The other three Academy Awards were for best film, director and editing.



Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
1992
**
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Kyle MacLachlan, Mädchen Amick, David Bowie

The events in this disappointing spin-off predate those in the brilliant Twin Peaks series. What happened before Laura Palmer was brutally murdered? It's obvious that David Lynch of all people is not interested in easy answers, but his film is an effectively unsettling but baffling bore.

Trespass
1992
*½
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Bill Paxton, Ice-T, Ice Cube, William Sadler, De'Voreaux White

Two small town firemen go in search of stolen gold and end up playing cat and mouse in an abandoned house in a tough Chicago neighbourhood. Walter Hill loses the remains of his once stellar reputation with this annoying noisy mess with two moronic protagonists. Ice-T and Ice Cube portray a pair of utterly unconvincing gangstas.

Toys
1992
**½
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Robin Williams, Michael Gambon, Joan Cusack, Robin Wright

Robin Williams plays a man who tries to stop his father from turning the family's toy plant into an arms factory. The story is silly but the visuals are amazing, and this flop is better than its reputation.

Thunderheart
1992
***
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Val Kilmer, Graham Greene, Sam Shepard, Fred Ward, Fred Dalton

Someitme in the 1970s an FBI agent enters a Native American reservation to investigate a murder, but he faces widespread secrecy. Val Kilmer and Graham Greene are good but this thought-provoking crime drama never seems to take off.

This Is My Life
1992
**½
Director: Nora Ephron
Cast: Julie Kavner, Samantha Mathis, Gaby Hoffmann, Carrie Fisher

A single mother of two, played by Julie "Marge Simpson" Kavner, tries to make it alone in this mediocre film. The story is very similar to Gas Food Lodging. Based on Meg Wolitzer's novel This Is Your Life.

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer
1992
**½
Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Cast: Nobu Kanoka, Iwata, Keinosuke Tomioka, Sujin Kim, Hideaki Tezuka

A man's body turns into a weapon in this sequel to Tetsuo, the Iron Man. This Japanese cult film offers visual fireworks, but its story is frankly undecipherable.



Strictly Ballroom
1992
***½
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice, Bill Hunter, Barry Otto, Pat Thompson

Baz Luhrmann's directorial debut is set in his native Australia and it tells a story of an ambitious ballroom dancer. The film is based on a stage play and it's quirky, refreshing and visually striking.

Sneakers
1992
***
Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Cast: Robert Redford, Mary McDonnell, Sidney Poitier, River Phoenix

An enjoyable action comedy about a team of security testing experts who are hired to retrieve a decoder device. Their leader has a shady past that comes back to haunt him. The cast is wonderful and the film is fluffy and amusing, even if the Mission: Impossiblesque story is quite silly.

Sleepwalkers
1992
**
Director: Mick Garris
Cast: Mädchen Amick, Alice Krige, Brian Krause, Jim Haynie, Cindy Pickett

A pair of spooky creatures who feed on teenage virgins move into a small Midwestern town. This anaemic and clichéd horror film is based on Stephen King's story.

Sister Act
1992
**
Director: Emile Ardolino
Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Harvey Keitel, Maggie Smith, Kathy Najimy

A cabaret singer who witnessed a killing is forced to hide in a nunnery. Harvey Keitel gives a funny performance as the mob boss on her trail. This comedy is initially promising but ultimately tiresome and conservative. Followed by a sequel a year later.

Singles
1992
****
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Kyra Sedgwick, Campbell Scott, Bridget Fonda, Matt Dillon

Cameron Crowe's wonderful relationship comedy is built around a group of young people who live in the same apartment block in Seattle. This funny, witty and well-acted film avoids the usual traps of the genre. The soundtrack is full of excellent Seattle rock, and some of the members of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains appear in cameo roles.

Single White Female
1992
***
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Cast: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bridget Fonda, Steven Weber, Peter Friedman

A slick, entertaining and believable (except for the protagonist's gigantic apartment) thriller about a young woman whose new roommate turns out to be a psychopath. Barbet Schroeder tightens the tension screw slowly and surely until he unleashes a typical over-the-top Hollywood finale. Based on John Lutz's novel Swf Seeks Same.

Shining Through
1992
**½
Director: David Seltzer
Cast: Melanie Griffith, Michael Douglas, Joely Richardson, Liam Neeson

This multiple Razzie winner is not as bad its reputation might suggest. It's just a very predictable romantic spy drama set in Germany during WW2. Melanie Griffith is rarely convincing in any role, which is probably why the film was so poorly received. Loosely based on the novel by Susan Isaacs.

Scent of a Woman
1992
***½
Director: Martin Brest
Cast: Al Pacino, Chris O'Donnell, James Rebhorn, Gabrielle Anwar

An enjoyable drama about an unlikely friendship between an elderly blind man who has lost his will to live and a young student who is going through a bad patch himself. This is not one of Al Pacino's finest performances but he finally won his long overdue Oscar. The film is about 30 minutes too long and the ending panders to the audience. Adapted from Giovanni Arpino's novel Il buio e il miele which was previously filmed as Profumo di donna in 1974.

A River Runs Through It
1992
****
Director: Robert Redford
Cast: Graig Sheffer, Brad Pitt, Tom Skeritt, Emily Lloyd, Brenda Blethyn

Robert Redford remains behind the camera for this warm and touching family drama. Tom Skerritt is splendid as the father of two very different sons, whose only common denominator is their love of flyfishing. The film and especially the scenes by the river are beautifully shot by Philippe Rousselot, who won an Oscar for his work. Based on Norman Maclean's novella.

Reservoir Dogs
1992
*****
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Quentin Tarantino. Lawrence Tierney

A group of men, who only know each other by their code names, pull a heist that goes horribly wrong. The survivors meet in a warehouse and try to figure out what happened. In his directorial debut, Quentin Tarantino takes the best elements from his favourite heist movies (mostly City on Fire and The Taking on Pelham One Two Three), and recycles them into something fresh. He never shows the actual robbery, for example. The film is brilliantly scripted and acted, and Tarantino hasn't made anything this tight since. The excellent soundtrack has become a cult hit of its own.

Raising Cain
1992
***½
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: $2y$10$dNfpd9twAZX2TFERD0HNT.J5e4dmDIzcPo/Z8zSZhSwmvkMxURpf6

After the disaster that was The Bonfire of the Vanities, Brian De Palma returns to his bread and butter, Hitchcockian suspence. This self-penned thriller about a child psychologist who struggles to control his multiple personalities draws influence from Psycho. John Lithgow gives an enjoyably bonkers performance. De Palma deploys his entire box of cinematic tricks to tell this story, which often doesn't make any sense.

The Public Eye
1992
**½
Director: Howard Franklin
Cast: Joe Pesci, Barbara Hershey, Stanley Tucci, Jerry Adler, Jared Harris

It's a pleasure to have a film with Joe Pesci in a starring role, but this meandering drama is not very good. The story is set in the 1940s and he plays a "crime paparazzi" who finds himself in trouble.

Prelude to a Kiss
1992
***
Director: Norman Rene
Cast: Alec Baldwin, Meg Ryan, Kathy Bates, Sydney Walker, Ned Beatty

Two people meet, fall in love and get married, but they've barely made it to their honeymoon when she seems like a different person. This romantic drama is well-acted and moderately enjoyable, but it has a freaky and unexpected twist halfway through the film which probably divides the audience. Craig Lucas adapted his own play.

The Player
1992
*****
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Lyle Lovett, Fred Ward, Richard E. Grant

A film producer accidentally kills an embittered screenwriter in this superb satire on Hollywood movie industry. Robert Altman's clever and funny film starts with a wonderful, long tracking shot gag. A huge number of stars appear in small roles or as themselves. Scripted by Michael Tolkin from his own novel.

Peter's Friends
1992
****
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie

A wonderful light comedy drama about a group of friends who gather for a reunion. They've all grown older and each one seems to have a skeleton of their own in the closet. The film offers laughs and cries in a nice proportion. Heavily influenced by The Big Chill.

Pet Sematary Two
1992
*
Director: Mary Lambert
Cast: Edward Furlong, Athony Edwards, Clancy Brown, Jared Rushton

Pet Sematary didn't need a sequel, which is probably why this incredibly stupid and clichéd horror film doesn't have a story. More people get buried and come back to life.


Patriot Games
1992
**½
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Harrison Ford, Sean Bean, Anne Archer, Patrick Bergin, Thora Birch

While in London with his family, Jack Ryan saves the lives of some British bigwigs, which makes him the enemy of a radical wing of Ira. This limp action thriller is adapted from Tom Clancy's novel, and its politics are dubious, to say the least. The finale of this revenge story is disturbingly close to that of Cape Fear.

Passion Fish
1992
***½
Director: John Sayles
Cast: Mary McDonnell, David Strathairn, Alfre Woodard, Vondie Curtis-Hall

A disarming and uniformly well-acted drama about an embittered soap actress who, after being paralysed, has to start her life all over again. Scripted by Sayles.

Passenger 57
1992
*½
Director: Kevin Hooks
Cast: Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne, Tom Sizemore, Alex Datcher

Terrorists hijack a plane but don't know that an airline security expert John Cutter in on board. This dumb Die Hard pastiche is low on originality and credibility.


Passed Away
1992
**½
Director: Charlie Peters
Cast: Bob Hoskins, Jack Warden, William Petersen, Helen Lloyd Breed

A family gathers for a funeral, which gives everyone a chance to air their secrets. This is a modest comedy of misunderstandings with Bob Hoskins in the lead.

Orlando
1992
**
Director: Sally Potter
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane, Lothaire Bluteau, Charlotte Valandray

An ambitious and visually sumptuous, but disappointingly cold drama which follows the sex switching Orlando through the centuries. Based on Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography.

One False Move
1992
***
Director: Carl Franklin
Cast: Bill Paxton, Cynda Williams, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Beach

A small town sheriff assists LAPD detectives to catch three dangerous killers. This cult crime film has its twists and turns, but it doesn't live up to its overblown reputation. Still, it's nice to see Bill Paxton in one of his first leading roles. Scripted by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson.

Of Mice and Men
1992
***½
Director: Gary Sinise
Cast: Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, Sherilyn Fenn, Alexis Arquette

Gary Sinise's directorial debut is a well-acted and beautifully filmed adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella, which tells a story of George and Lennie, two friends who try to scrape a living during the Depression era. John Malkovich gives an excellent performance as Lennie, who is slightly retarded.

Night and the City
1992
**½
Director: Irwin Winkler
Cast: Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange, Cliff Gorman, Alan King, Jack Warden

At his best (Raging Bull) Robert De Niro is a wonderful chameleon, and at his worst (We're No Angels) an infuriating bundle of mannerisms. Here he plays a shady lawyer who tries to claw himself out of money troubles by organising a boxing match, but gets way over his head. The story is OK, but De Niro isn't. Based on Gerald Kersh's novel which was previously filmed in 1950.

Mistress
1992
*½
Director: Barry Primus
Cast: Robert De Niro, Robert Wuhl, Martin Landau, Jace Alexander

A filmmaker could have his project financed, but all of his sponsors demand to have their girlfriend cast in the film. This humourless parody of Hollywood was produced by Robert De Niro who plays one of the difficult men.

Medicine Man
1992
***
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Sean Connery, Lorraine Bracco, Jose Wilker, Rodolfo De Alexandre

John McTiernan takes a break from action films with this unusual but unsatisfying jungle drama about a scientist who believes he has discovered a cure for cancer.

El Mariachi
1992
**½
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gomez, Peter Marquardt, Jaime de Hoyos

Robert Rodriguez made his name with this cheap but expensive looking action film about a mariachi who is mistaken for a criminal. Forget the hype, this is a very ordinary and highly overpraised flick. Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico complete the so-called Mexico Trilogy.

Map of the Human Heart
1992
****
Director: Vincent Ward
Cast: Jason Scott Lee, Anne Parillaud, Patrick Bergin, John Cusack

In the 1930s a Canadian Inuit boy Avik is taken to a clinic in Montreal. There he meets Albertine, the love of his life, but will they be able to have a future together? This touching and beautifully shot drama reminds you of John Irving's sprawling novels. The scenes in the fiery inferno of Dresden are gripping and memorable.

The Mambo Kings
1992
**
Director: Arne Glimcher
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Armand Assante, Cathy Moriarty, Desi Arnaz Jr.

A soapy drama about two brothers who flee Cuba in the 1950s and try to launch a musical career in the U.S. The performances are the best part of the film, although their hit "Sweet Marie of My Soul" playa one too many times during the film. Adapted from Oscar Hijuelos' novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

Mac
1992
***
Director: John Turturro
Cast: John Turturro, Michael Badalucco, Carl Capotorto, Kathleen Borowitz

John Turturro is not quite as intense behind the camera as he is in front of it, but his directorial debut is a touching and enjoyable tale of three working class brothers.

Lorenzo's Oil
1992
***
Director: George Miller
Cast: Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Peter Ustinov, Kathleen Wilhoite

A touching real-life drama about a couple who desperately try to find a cure for their son's rare illness. The story is captivating but a bit overlong and monotonous. Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon are both excellent.

Live Wire
1992
**½
Director: Christian Duguay
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Ben Cross, Ron Silver, Lisa Eilbacher, Tony Plana

A mediocre action drama with a morbidly entertaining premise. Terrorists have developed a substance which, mixed with the water inside the body, turns human beings into time bombs. Pierce Brosnan plays an FBI agent who works the case.

Like Water for Chocolate
1992
***
Director: Alfonso Arau
Cast: Lumi Cavazos, Marco Leonardi, Regina Torne, Ada Carrasco

A rather enjoyable Mexican drama about a young woman who must express her forbidden love through cooking. This romance whets your appetite. Based on Laura Esquivel's novel.

Light Sleeper
1992
***
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon, Dana Delany, David Clennon

Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver tells another story about a loner who has problems to sleep. Ths time the protagonist is a small time drug courier. Schrader maintains a tense atmosphere but the film doesn't add up to much in the end.

Lethal Weapon 3
1992
**
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo, Stuart Wilson

Lethal Weapons 1 and 2 were entertaining action films, but the third part is a waste of time. While Riggs and Murtaugh try to nail a cop-turned-arms dealer, an LAPD detective (Russo) is on their case. The plot is thin, the explosions are big and loud, and the whole thing is dull and redundant. The outrageous humour is the only reason to watch this. Followed by one more sequel.

A League of Their Own
1992
***
Director: Penny Marshall
Cast: Geena Davis, Madonna, Tom Hanks, Lori Petty, David Strathairn

An entertaining true story about a women's baseball league which was set up in 1943 when the men were away fighting in WW2. The ladies have the leading roles, but Tom Hanks steals the show as their puffy and foul-mouthed coach.

The Last of the Mohicans
1992
****
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, Russell Means, Eric Schweig, Jodhi May, Steven Waddington, Wes Studi, Maurice Roëves, Patrice Chéreau

This captivating and visually superb romantic action drama is set in 1757. Hawkeye, an adopted Mohican, falls in love with Colonel Munro's daughter and attempts to keep her safe, while the French and English armies are at war and a group of Huron warriors are out for blood. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a commanding lead performance in a rare action hero role. The action set pieces are terrific and set against fabulous locations and a first-rate soundtrack by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman. Michael Mann and Christopher Crowe adapted James Fenimore Cooper's novel.

Kurenai no buta (Porco Rosso)
1992
***
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast: Shuichiro Moriyama, Tokiko Kato, Akemi Okamura, Akio Otsuka

A former World War One fighter ace who has turned into a pig now makes a living catching air pirates in the Adriatic Sea. A cocky American pilot arrives in the scene and attempts to gain fame by shooting Porco Rosso down. This Japanese film takes us back to the early days of aviation. This period of history is fascinating and the animation work is lovely to look at. The story follows the Studio Ghibli's usual dream-like logic, but it doesn't work so well in the more realistic setting. As a result, the confounding characters remain at arm's length. Hayao Miyazaki based the animation on his own manga.

Jennifer 8
1992
**
Director: Bruce Robinson
Cast: Andy Garcia, Uma Thurman, Lance Henriksen, Kathy Baker

A disappointingly cliché-ridden thriller about a resilient cop who pursues a serial killer who targets blind girls. Uma Thurman plays a potential victim, and she overdoes the blind girl role.

Into the West
1992
***
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Colm Meaney, Ellen Barkin, Ciaran Fitzgerald

A social realist fantasy about two Irish boys who run away on a white horse. The story seems captivating, but the rest of the film doesn't live up to the initial promise. Written by Jim Sheridan
and David Keating.

Innocent Blood
1992
**½
Director: John Landis
Cast: Anne Parillaud, Riobert Loggia, Anthony LaPaglia, David Proval

John Landis' horror comedy mixes vampires into a gangster film, or the other way around, with rather mediocre results. Nevertheless, Anne Parillaud has bite as a pretty Pittsburgh vampire.

In the Soup
1992
***
Director: Alexandre Rockwell
Cast: Steve Buscemi, Seymour Cassel, Jennifer Beals, Pat Moya

A likeable comedy about movie business. Steve Buscemi plays an ambitious screenwriter who tries to get his project off the ground. Seymour Cassel is hilarious as a gangster who comes up with the money.

Howards End
1992
****
Director: James Ivory
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, James Wilby

The lives of the members of different social classes intersect with dramatic consequences in the early 20th century England. This high quality Merchant-Ivory costume drama is based on E.M. Forster's novel. A winner of three Oscars, which include Emma Thompson's great lead performance and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's screenplay.

Housesitter
1992
**
Director: Frank Oz
Cast: Steve Martin, Goldie Hawn, Dana Delany, Julie Harris, Donald Moffat

A dull and obvious comedy about an architect who cannot choose between two women. Steve Martin plays the man with the dilemma.

Honeymoon in Vegas
1992
*½
Director: Andrew Bergman
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Sarah Jessica Parker, James Caan, Pat Morita

A dumb and unfunny comedy about a couple whose wedding in Las Vegas runs into many obstacles, including skydiving Elvis impersonators. Nicolas Cage is annoyingly noisy and out of control in the lead.

Honey I Blew Up the Kid
1992
**½
Director: Randal Kleiser
Cast: Rick Moranis, Marcia Strassman, Robert Oliveri, Lloyd Bridges

In the sequel to Honey I Shrunk the Kids the inventor/family man turns his toddler into a giant. The film has its moments and the special effects are once again impressive, but at under 90 minutes, it still feels a bit, er, blown up.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
1992
**½
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard, Tim Curry, Brenda Fricker, Catherine O'Hara

The McCallister family attempts to make another Christmas trip, this time to Florida, but the 10-year-old Kevin gets lost at the airport and ends up alone in New York City, where he runs into a familiar pair of burglars who have just escaped from prison. Home Alone was a massive sleeper hit, and the sequel sticks close to formula. The film is quite entertaining but it doesn't offer a single surprise. Home Alone 3 (1997) doesn't feature Macaulay Culkin.

Hoffa
1992
**
Director: Danny De Vito
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Danny De Vito, Armand Assante, J.T. Walsh

A long, muddled biopic of Jimmy Hoffa, a controversial Teamsters Union boss who disappeared mysteriously in 1975. Jack Nicholson gives a lively performance despite the heavy layer of makeup, but the dull script by David Mamet tells its hero's life story without emotional highs or lows.

Hero / Accidental Hero
1992
**
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis, Andy Garcia, Kevin J. O'Connor

An unassuming petty criminal wants no credit for pulling people out of a plane wreck until an impostor tries to claim the glory. This media satire sounds promising but it doesn't work because Dustin Hoffman's mistreated hero is thoroughly unpleasant.

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth
1992
*½
Director: Anthony Hickox
Cast: Terry Farrell, Doug Bradley, Paula Marshall, Kevin Bernhardt

The third part of Hellraiser continues to explore the Pinhead character, but the end result is a mindnumbingly boring and clichéd horror film.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
1992
***
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Rebecca De Mornay, Annabella Sciorra, Matt McCoy, Julianne Moore

A traumatised widow loses her baby as well and plots revenge. She seeks employment as a nanny for a mother whose life she wants to destroy. This slick, trashy and entertaining thriller starts well, but its climax is predictably over the top. The film turned Rebecca De Mornay into a star for five minutes.

Glengarry Glen Ross
1992
****
Director: James Foley
Cast: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, Jonathan Pryce, Alan Arkin, Bruce Altman, Jude Ciccolella

A group of real estate salesmen face the crunch. The top two sellers win a prize and the others face the sack. This superb drama is not terribly cinematic, but it is an excellent showcase for its wonderful cast, who get to recite David Mamet's razor sharp dialogue. Mamet adapted his own 1984 stage play and he added Alec Baldwin's iconic and brutal motivational speech to the film version.

Gas Food Lodging
1992
**½
Director: Allison Anders
Cast: Brooke Adams, Ione Skye, Fairuza Balk, James Brolin, Robert Knepper

A sympathetic but disappointingly clichéd film about a single mother and her two daughters. The performances are good but the story is too familiar. Based on Richard Peck's novel Don't Look and It Won't Hurt.

Forever Young
1992
**
Director: Steve Miner
Cast: Mel Gibson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Elijah Wood, Isabel Glasser

After his wife is dying, a bereaved test pilot agrees to have himself cryogenically frozen for a year. However, he wakes up 53 years in the future. This romantic time travel drama has an interesting premise, but it's either too short or just poorly written. The film is over before it manages to develop any of its themes properly. Scripted by J.J. Abrams.

A Few Good Men
1992
**½
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Jack Nicholson, Kiefer Sutherland

A long and dull court(-martial) drama about a young Navy lawyer who defends two marines accused of murdering a third one. Jack Nicholson's 10-minute performance as the secretive commander is memorable. Demi Moore’s character, on the other hand, adds female presence but serves no purpose. Aaron Sorkin adapted his own play.

Far and Away
1992
**
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Thomas Gibson, Robert Prosky

A long, lame and pompous drama about Irish immigrants who turn on a new leaf in the New World. Tom Cruise struggles to convince as an Irishman in this two-hour film about nothing. The Irish locations are beautiful.

The Distinguished Gentleman
1992
**½
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Lane Smith, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Joe Don Baker

This mild political satire plays like a reverse Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. If Mr. Smith was an idealistic politician who disovered the corruption in Washington, Mr. Johnson here is a hustler who cons himself to Congress but then discovers that he has a conscience. This Eddie Murphy comedy has a bit more brain, but it's very predictable.

Diggstown / Midnight Sting
1992
**
Director: Michael Ritchie
Cast: James Woods, Louis Gossett Jr., Bruce Dern, Randall "Tex" Cobb

James Woods plays a con man who plans to fix a boxing match. He's good, but otherwise this is a dry and uninteresting hustling comedy.

Death Becomes Her
1992
*½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, Isabella Rosselini

A dreadful dark comedy (wannabe) about two vain ladies who dream of eternal youth but end up as zombies. The cast is promising but the story is a shapeless and unfunny mess. The visual effects, which are an end in themselves, won an Academy Award.

Damage
1992
**
Director: Louis Malle
Cast: Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Miranda Richardson, Rupert Graves

A clinical and implausible drama about a middle-aged British politician who begins a passionate affair with his son's girlfriend. The central relationship is purely physical, the sex scenes are by and large off-putting, and, predictably, the protagonist must pay a terrible price for his betrayal.

The Crying Game
1992
*****
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Steven Rea, Jaye Davidson, Forest Whitaker, Miranda Richardson, Adrian Dunbar, Tony Slattery, Jim Broadbent, Birdy Sweeney, Ralph Brown

Fergus, a member of the IRA, forms an unusual relationship with a British soldier captured near Belfast, and later to his girlfriend in London. Neil Jordan's weird and wonderful film takes a left turn every time you think you know where it's heading. It starts as a grim political drama and ends as an unexpectedly sweet love story. Jordan's Oscar winning screenplay is peppered with offbeat humour. Steven Rea and Jaye Davidson give memorable performances.

Consenting Adults
1992
*½
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Kevin Kline, Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, Kevin Spacey, Rebecca Miller

A trashy, stupid and unsuspenseful thriller about a couple whose new neighbour turns their lives into a living hell. The screenplay has very little credibility. Kevin Spacey is quite enjoyable as the bad guy but Kevin Kline is totally wooden.

Chaplin
1992
**½
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Moira Kelly, Geraldine Chaplin

Richard Attenborough's ambitious biopic attempts to squeeze Charlie Chaplin's entire life into 2½ hours, and it just doesn't work. We witness the childhood poverty, the days in the vaudeville tour, the film career and the many failed marriages, among many other things. The result is a rushed and superficial scratch at the surface. Robert Downey Jr gives a very strong performance, although his Chaplin is oddly miserable all of the time.

Candyman
1992
****
Director: Bernard Rose
Cast: Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Estelle Williams, DeJuan Guy, Gilbert Lewis, Carolyn Lowery, Stanley DeSantis

A graduate student who is researching urban legends learns of Candyman, who can be invoked by calling his name five times in front of a mirror. Is he a myth or an actual person? This haunting and slow-burning horror film has stood the test of time. Virginia Madsen and Tony Todd give strong lead performances. Based on Cliver Barker's short story The Forbidden. Remade in 2021.

Bram Stoker's Dracula
1992
***
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Hopkins

Count Dracula travels from Transylvania to London when he sees a picture of a woman who looks like the reincarnation of his dead wife. Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation is relatively faithful to Bram Stoker's source novel, and it turns Dracula from a monotonous bloodsucker to a fully-rounded, tragic character. The film is visually sumptuous, but it's shot almost entirely indoors and feels slightly stiff and stagy. Gary Oldman is excellent in the title role, and Keanu Reeves' awful performance as an English solicitor is comedy gold.


Braindead / Dead Alive
1992
***
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Timothy Balme, Diana Penalver, Liz Moody, Brenda Kendall

A funny but extremely gory horror comedy about a nerdy young man who is forced to take care of his mother, and a group of other zombies. Peter Jackson continues in the vein of Bad Taste, only with a slightly bigger budget.

Boomerang
1992
*
Director: Reginald Hudlin
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Robin Givens, Halle Berry, David Alan Grier, Grace Jones

Eddie Murphy plays a selfish womaniser who finally meets his match in Robin Givens. Murphy's comedy is surprisingly and delightfully restrained, but the film itself is an overlong celebration of chauvinism (there's about ten minutes worth of material stretched over two hours).

The Bodyguard
1992
*½
Director: Mick Jackson
Cast: Kevin Costner, Whitney Houston, Gary Kemp, Bill Cobbs, Ralph Waite

It would be injustice to call this depressingly long and numbing romantic drama about a singer and her bodyguard a thriller, but that's what it aspires to be. Kevin Costner has the expressiveness of the monolith from
2001: A Space Odyssey and Whitney Houston sings every 30 minutes.

Bob Roberts
1992
***½
Director: Tim Robbins
Cast: Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, Ray Wise, Rebecca Jenkins

Tim Robbins' directorial debut, which he also scripted, is a dry but sharp political satire. He portrays a ruthless senator candidate who will do anything to get elected, and I do mean anything.

Bitter Moon
1992
***½
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Hugh Grant. Kristin Scott-Thomas, Peter Coyote, Emmanuelle Seigner

On a cruise in the Mediterranean an uptight English couple get sucked into the erotic power game between a beautiful French woman and her wheelchair-bound American husband. Roman Polanski's drama is funny, captivating and sexy.

Benny's Video
1992
***
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mühe, Ingrid Stassner

The second part of Haneke's "glaciation trilogy" tells a story of Benny, an emotionally detached teenager and an obsessive fan of filmed violence. While his parents are away, he brings a girl to the apartment, kills her in cold blood and captures it all on video. It's an affecting but obvious (heavy metal music and gory films lead to violent behaviour) study of middle class negligence.

Batman Returns
1992
**
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken

Tim Burton's second Batman behind the camera is slightly darker than the dull first one, and it has Cat Woman and Penguin. But I suppose you have to a be a true fan of the comics to enjoy this dull film.

Basic Instinct
1992
***
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, Jeanne Tripplehorn, George Dzundza

A rock star is murdered with an ice pick, and the clues lead the detectives to a sexy and smart crime novelist. This trashy, stylish and hugely successful erotic thriller solves itself in ten minutes, but it takes another two hours until it's over. Michael Douglas is once again typecast as a man who has no control of what is happening to him, but Sharon Stone uncrosses her legs memorably in her terrific breakthrough performance. Followed by a poorly received sequel in 2006.

Bad Lieutenant
1992
***
Director: Abel Ferrara
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Frankie Thorn, Paul Hipp, Victor Argo, Paul Calderone

Harvey Keitel gives a strong performance as a thoroughly decadent cop whose facade begins to crack when he investigates the rape of a nun. The story, which is full of Catholic imagery, is mostly a distraction from its degenerate protagonist, who drinks, snorts and wanks for 90 minutes. Ferrara attempts to create something slightly different, but the finished film delivers shock value rather than poignancy. Remade as The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009).

Alien³
1992
**
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Paul McGann

Just when you thought all the aliens were killed, another egg turns up. Sigourney Weaver shaved her head in vain for the third part, which doesn't offer a single surprise, unless you consider a climax by the furnace to be one. David Fincher's feature debut was apparently taken out of his hands, but there is no evidence that this was ever going to be a follow-up to match the excellent Alien and Aliens. The story could work as an end to the series but it was followed by another turgid sequel, Alien Resurrection.

Aladdin
1992
****
Director: John Musker, Ron Clements
Cast: Robin Williams, Scott Weinger, Linda Larkin, Jonathan Freeman

The grand vizier Jafar forces Aladdin, a kind-hearted street kid, to enter the Cave of Wonders and retrieve a magic lamp, but Aladdin summons the Genie himself. This colourful and fast-paced Disney animation is based on the Aladdin and the Magic Lamp tale in the Arabian Nights collection of stories. Great fun for the entire family. Robin Williams steals the show as the voice of the Genie. Academy Award winner for best score and song A Whole New World. Remade in 2019 as a live action film.


Year of the Gun
1991
**
Director: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Andrew McCarthy, Valeria Golino, Sharon Stone, John Pankow

John Frankenheimer's political thriller, which is set in 1970s Italy, looks like a cheap 80s B film. Sharon Stone strips in a supporting role just prior to her breakthrough role in Basic Instinct.

White Fang
1991
**½
Director: Randal Kleiser
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Seymour Cassel, Susan Hogan

A moderately entertaining adventure film about life in the wilderness. Based on a Jack London novel.

What About Bob?
1991
***½
Director: Frank Oz
Cast: Bill Murray, Richard Dreyfuss, Julie Hagerty, Charlie Korsmo

Bill Murray is funny as the neurotic Bob who is unable to leave his therapist in peace on his holiday. As the two Stakeout films showed, Richard Dreyfuss, who plays the shrink, is also an excellent comedian. This is an enjoyable comedy, even if it stretches one idea pretty thin.

Voyager
1991
****
Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Cast: Sam Shepard, Julie Delpy, Barbara Sukowa, Dieter Kirchlechner

This fine drama about a middle-aged engineer who meets a younger woman remains gripping until the very end, as the film keeps saving the "big twist". Based on Max Frisch's novel Homo Faber.

V.I. Warshawski
1991
*
Director: Jeff Kanew
Cast: Kathleen Turner, Jay O. Sanders, Charles Durning, Angela Goethals

A silly and instantly forgettable film about a female private eye who investigates the murder of her boyfriend. A bit puffier Kathleen Turner tries her best in the lead. The character is based on Sara Paretsky's detective novels, and especially on Deadlock.

Thelma and Louise
1991
****½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Brad Pitt

A wonderful "feminist road movie" about two women whose road trip turns into a nightmare. This funny and touching drama has brilliant performances and a very memorable final scene. However, would Thelma, who was almost raped, go to bed with a stranger a few days later? Callie Khouri's script won an Oscar.

Terminator 2: The Judgment Day
1991
*****
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Earl Boen, Joe Morton, Robert Patrick, Jenette Goldstein, Xander Berkeley

This magnificent science fiction action sequel takes place some years after the The Terminator, and this time John Connor, the leader of the revolution in the future, sends Arnold back in time to protect his younger self from T-1000, the new liquid metal Terminator model, who was created with the groundbreaking digital effects. The story offers few surprises, but the gripping drama and stunning action set pieces more than make up for it. James Cameron delivers an ending that would perfectly wrap up this franchise, but Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and further sequels and spin-offs have followed. An Academy Award winner for best sound effects editing, sound, makeup, and visual effects.


Sleeping with the Enemy
1991
**
Director: Joseph Ruben
Cast: Julia Roberts, Patrick Bergin, Kevin Anderson, Elizabeth Lawrence

A boring and predictable domestic abuse thriller which Julia Roberts made in the wake of the mega success of Pretty Woman. Patrick Bergin is about as scary as Lassie.

The Silence of the Lambs
1991
****½
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald, Ted Levine, Brooke Smith, Diane Baker, Kasi Lemmons, Frankie Faison

FBI trainee Clarice Starling is assigned to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, an incarcerated serial killer, in order to profile an active serial killer known as Buffalo Bill. This brilliant thriller delivers a unique and captivating psychological chess match between two smart individuals. Ted Tally's screenplay is based on a 1988 novel by Thomas Harris. Jodie Foster gives a wonderfully layered performance as Starling and Anthony Hopkins is genuinely chilling as Lecter. The film, Demme, Tally, Foster, and Hopkins all won Academy Awards. Followed by Hannibal (sequel) and Red Dragon (prequel).

Shattered
1991
**½
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Tom Berenger, Bob Hoskins, Greta Scacchi, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer

A man survives a horrific car crash but his memory is, erm, shattered. But what do his haunting flashbacks signify? Wolfgang Petersen's first Hollywood film is a rather uninvolving thriller until its terrific twist ending. Based on Richard Neely's novel.



Shadows and Fog
1991
**
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Jodie Foster, John Malkovich, Kathy Bates, John Cusack, Madonna

Woody Allen's impressive looking homage to German Expressionism contains
circus folks, prostitutes and a serial killer, but no cohesive story to keep you interested. The cast is incredible but pretty much wasted.


Rush
1991
*½
Director: Lili Fini Zanuck
Cast: Jason Patric, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sam Elliott, Max Perlich

It's the 1970s and two narcotics detectives go undercover and become drug addicts. The premise is interesting but this drama is shapeless and painfully slow-paced. Jason Patric is entirely lost with his character and even the usually reliable Jennifer Jason Leigh cannot save the day. Based on Kim Wozencraft's novel.

Rocketeer
1991
***
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Bill Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Timothy Dalton, Alan Arkin

In the late 1930s a stunt pilot finds a jetpack. Soon after he's fighting Nazis as the Rocketeer. This fast-moving but rather fomulaic adventure film is based on a lesser known comic by Dave Stevens.

Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves
1991
****
Director: Kevin Reynolds
Cast: Kevin Costner, Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, Alan Rickman, Morgan Freeman

If you can accept Kevin Costner as an Englishman, although he doesn't even try, this is a rather enjoyable adventure film with a slightly different Robin Hood story. However, towards the end the events get murkier and the fights get longer. The rating should perhaps be reassessed for unleashing Bryan Adams' horrid (Everything I Do) I Do It for You on the world.


Ricochet
1991
*
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Cast: John Lithgow, Denzel Washington, Ice-T, Kevin Pollak, Lindsay Wagner

Eight years after the Assistant D.A. of Los Angeles put him away, a ruthless killer breaks out and comes back for revenge. This dreadful action thriller takes the revenge plot straight from Cape Fear, although admittedly this one came out first. However, if Scorsese's remake was a stylish genre piece, this is an illogical and unoriginal B film with an a level cast.

Regarding Henry
1991
***½
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Harrison Ford, Annette Bening, Bill Nunn, Donald Moffat, Mikki Allen

A moving but not terribly believable drama about a selfish lawyer who only learns to appreciate others, especially his family, after being shot in the head. Harrison Ford is nicely cast against type. The Doctor, which was released around the same time, basically tells the same story.

Rambling Rose
1991
**
Director: Martha Coolidge
Cast: Laura Dern, Robert Duvall, Diane Ladd, Lukas Haas, John Heard

An over-sexed housekeeper corrupts her employer's household in this adaptation of Calder Willingham's novel. The story has potential, but the film never seems to take off. This is a showcase for Laura Dern but Robert Duvall steals the show with his supporting performance.

The Prince of Tides
1991
****
Director: Barbra Streisand
Cast: Nick Nolte, Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner, Kate Nelligan

An unhappy middle aged man goes to help his sister who has just tried to commit suicide, and ends up falling in love with her shrink. This compelling drama has a slowly unravelling backstory and Nick Nolte gives a wonderfully gruffy performance in the lead. Adapted from Pat Conroy's novel.

Point Break
1991
**½
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Gary Busey, John McGinley

An FBI agent goes undercover and joins a group of surfers who are suspected of a series of bank robberies. Kathryn Bigelow's overlong cult film contains exciting action scenes on the waves and in the air, although they seem to consume half of the running time. The crime plot, however, is ridiculous and cliché-ridden.

The People Under the Stairs
1991
***
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Brandon Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, Ving Rhames

A group of teenagers break into a house and discover something horrific. Wes Craven's snappy horror film tells a decent story without supernatural elements.

Oscar
1991
**
Director: John Landis
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Ornella Muti, Don Ameche, Peter Riegert

A modest and overwrought comedy about a mobster who promises to his dying father that he will walk the straight and narrow. Predictably, Sylvester Stallone is not very funny. Award-wise the film didn't live up to its name. Based on Claude Magnier's play which was previously filmed in France in 1967.

Only the Lonely
1991
***
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: John Candy, Maureen O'Hara, Ally Sheedy, James Belushi

John Candy plays an Irish-American bachelor who can't decide between the love for his girlfriend and the loyalty toward his domineering mother. This light and frothy comedy includes a great performance by Maureen O'Hara as the mother.

Once Around
1991
***
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Holly Hunter, Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Aiello, Laura San Giacomo

An unwordly young woman is desperate to find a man to marry. She does, but her family doesn't approve the eccentric fiance. This family drama is believable and captivating, but a bit all over the place. Very strong performances across the board. Incidentally, the film could be retitled Two Weddings and Two Funerals.

The Object of Beauty
1991
**½
Director: Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Cast: John Malkovich, Andie MacDowell, Lolita Davidovich, Rudi Davies

A snobbish couple run out of money in London and concoct an insurance scam. Good actors do their best in a somewhat pointless story.

Nothing But Trouble
1991
†
Director: Dan Aykroyd
Cast: Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Demi Moore, John Candy, Taylor Negron

A group of people are on a road trip which seems to go from bad to worse. The premise is awful and bizarre, and the film is pretty much unwatchable. It has obviously beocme somewhat of a cult classic. Dan Aykroyd's directorial debut, which he also scripted.

Night On Earth
1991
****
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Roberto Benigni, Beatrice Dalle, Matti Pellonpää, Winona Ryder

Jim Jarmusch's enjoyable episode film takes place in five taxis around the world at the same time. New York and Rome are the highlights, the remaining segments are set in Paris, Helsinki and Los Angeles.

New Jack City
1991
**
Director: Mario Van Peebles
Cast: Wesley Snipes, Ice-t, Allen Payne, Chris Rock, Mario Van Peebles

A dull and overrated crime drama about the rise and fall of a black crack dealer. The directorial debut of actor Mario Van Peebles.

Naked Lunch
1991
*
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider

David Cronenberg hits rock bottom with his adaptation of William Burrough's novel. The book was called unfilmable and he should have heeded the warning. This is a mindnumbingly boring and utterly incomprehensible two-hour drug hallucination about an exterminator, played by Peter Weller. It is an accomplishment to watch it to the end.

The Naked Gun 2½
1991
***½
Director: David Zucker
Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson

The sequel to The Naked Gun is a more uneven collection of gags. However, there's plenty of laughs. The plot revolves around the battle over America's energy policy. Followed by 33⅓.

My Own Private Idaho
1991
*½
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, James Russo, William Richert

An incredibly slow and tedious drama about two male prostitutes, one of whom suffers from narcolepsy. This film was supposed to prove that Keanu Reeves can act, but he's more wooden than ever.

Mortal Thoughts
1991
*½
Director: Alan Rudolph
Cast: Demi Moore, Bruce Willis, Glenne Headly, John Pankow, Harvey Keitel

In flashbacks Bruce Willis and Glenne Headly play an unhappily married couple. In the present Demi Moore plays a woman who tells a pair of detectives how the best friend's abusive husband died. For 90 minutes we listen to her story, and then it turns out to be a lie. Could there be a more pointless story?

The Marrying Man
1991
***
Director: Jerry Rees
Cast: Kim Basinger, Alec Baldwin, Robert Loggia, Elisabeth Shue

An incredible true story about a couple who marry and divorce time and time again. This comedy is quite enjoyable and Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin, who were married at the time, are a charismatic couple.

Little Man Tate
1991
**½
Director: Jodie Foster
Cast: Jodie Foster, Dianne Wiest, Adam Hann-Byrd, Harry Connick Jr.

Jodie Foster's directorial debut is an intelligent and touching but rather long-winded drama about a child genius and his working class mother who seem to be drifting apart.

Life Stinks
1991
**
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Mel Brooks, Lesley Ann Warren, Jeffrey Tambor, Stuart Pankin

In order to take over a valuable piece of land an arrogant millionaire makes a wager that he can survive without his riches for 30 days. Mel Brooks' film combines comedy with social commentary, and the results are pretty lame.

The Last Boy Scout
1991
**
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Bruce Willis, Damon Wayans, Chelsea Field, Noble Willingham

This action film from Shane Black's script is undeniably funny but terribly noisy and violent (the bypassers are pretty much shot with no questions asked). The story revolves around a corrupt professional football team. Bruce Willis plays a cynical P.I. who gets sucked in to the scheme.

L.A. Story
1991
***
Director: Mick Jackson
Cast: Steve Martin, Victoria Tennant, Richard E. Grant, Marilu Henner

Steve Martin plays a weatherman who is frustrated with his job (the sun shines every day) and his relationship (the girlfriend is a gold digger). He also scripted this comedy which is a mediocre homage to Manhattan, with some funny and clever observations about Los Angeles.

Kuutamosonaatti 2: Kadunlakaisijat
1991
*½
Director: Olli Soinio
Cast: Kari Sorvali, Soli Labbart, Mikko Kivinen, Erkki Pajala, Matti Tuominen

In the sequel the action moves from the countryside to the city. However, the result is even more boring than the original.

A Kiss Before Dying
1991
*½
Director: James Dearden
Cast: Matt Dillon, Sean Young, Max von Sydow, Diane Ladd, James Russo

A young man kills his way to the top in this dull but thankfully short thriller. The film forgets to give the protagonist a believable motive, and the whole thing seems pointless. Ira Levin's novel was previously filmed in 1956.

K2
1991
**
Director: Franc Roddam
Cast: Michael Biehn, Matt Craven, Raymond J. Barry, Hiroshi Fujioka

Two mountain climbing enthusiasts join a team led by a billionaire who plans to reach the summit of K2. This potentially interesting drama about the dramatic climb fails to deliver, mostly thanks to its unpleasant leading characters.

Jungle Fever
1991
***½
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra, Lonette McKee, Ossie Davis

Spike Lee's powerful drama examines the far-reaching effects of a cross-racial love affair. Lee's main flaw is that he gives more time to the friends and families than to the lovers, who end up feeling rather remote. But there are some fine performances and a couple of terrifically poignant scenes.

JFK
1991
*****
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Kevin Costner, Joe Pesci, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Oldman

Oliver Stone "solves" the Jfk assassination in his long but magnificently gripping drama. The story is told through the eyes of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison who refuses to accept the official truth. You may disagree with Stone's conspiracy theory, but he puts forward a wonderful piece of filmaking. The film is brilliantly shot and edited, and both were rewarded with an Oscar. A first-rate emsemble cast adds the icing on the cake. The screenplay is based on Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins and on Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs.

The Inner Circle
1991
**
Director: Andrei Konchalovsky
Cast: Tom Hulce, Lolita Davidovich, Bob Hoskins, Alexandre Zbruev

Stalin was a film buff and this stiff drama tells a story about his real-life projectionist. Before the end of Cold War it was a privilege to shoot behind the Iron Curtain, so this film spends half of the running time on driving around Moscow or walking the long corridors of Kremlin.

The Indian Runner
1991
***
Director: Sean Penn
Cast: David Morse, Viggo Mortensen, Valeria Golino, Patricia Arquette

A story of two brothers, one a dedicated police- and family man, the other one a troubled Vietnam vet who cannot stay away from trouble. Sean Penn's slow-moving directorial debut was inspired by a Bruce Springsteen song, and it relies more on mood than story. It's a decent drama, even if it's difficult to get inside the head of the troubled brother.

If Looks Could Kill
1991
*
Director: William Dear
Cast: Richard Grieco, Linda Hunt, Roger Rees, Gabrielle Anwar, Robin Bartlett

A lazy high school student is on his way to France when he's mistaken for a CIA agent. A terrible James Bond spoof, even Austin Powers produced more laughs. It's hard to believe that for a minute the wooden Richard Grieco was the hottest prospect in Hollywood.

Hudson Hawk
1991
**
Director: Michael Lehmann
Cast: Bruce Willis, Andie MacDowell, Danny Aiello, James Coburn

This silly action comedy about a master thief was written by its star Bruce Willis. The film is vividly directed but instantly forgettable.

Hot Shots!
1991
**½
Director: Jim Abrahams
Cast: Charlie Sheen, Valeria Golino, Lloyd Bridges, Cary Elwes, Kevin Dunn

Topper Harley is a Navy pilot with serious father issues. His career is in jeopardy and now he also falls for his therapist. This comedy follows in the footsteps of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker classics like Airplane and Top Secret, although only Abrahams is left behind the camera. This spoof is occasionally hilarious but it's purely based on other movies, Top Gun and Dances with Wolves in particular.

Hook
1991
**
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Robin Williams, Caroline Goodall, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts

This Peter Pan adaptation updates J. M. Barrie's book but ultimately tells the same story. In Steven Spielberg's film Peter is a middle-aged workaholic attorney who has neglected his children. A trip to Neverland puts things into perspective. The expensive sets look great but this epic adventure is messy and boring.



Homicide
1991
**½
Director: David Mamet
Cast: Joe Mantegna, William H. Macy, Natalija Nogulich, Ving Rhames

A Jewish homicide detective investigates an apparently straightforward murder which may be racially motivated. David Mamet's crime drama is smart and unusual but hopelessly dull.

Hearts of Darkness
1991
****
Director: Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper
Cast:

A fascinating documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, which took years to complete and turned out to be a journey to the heart of darkness itself. The footage shot on location by Eleanor Coppola is mixed in with the present day interviews with the cast and crew, who look back at the chaotic creation process behind the monumental film.

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man
1991
*½
Director: Simon Wincer
Cast: Don Johnson, Mickey Rourke, Chelsea Field, Daniel Baldwin

This terrible action film takes product placement to a new level. Two biker dudes, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, plan to rob a money transport, but bite more than they can chew. Some isolated funny oneliners and the cool long leather jackets that the villains wear cannot save this turkey.

The Hard Way
1991
***
Director: John Badham
Cast: James Woods, Michael J. Fox, Stephen Lang, Annabella Sciorra

A clever but overlong comedy about a Hollywood star who prepares for his upcoming role by partnering a streetwise cop. James Woods and Michael J. Fox both make fun of their usual roles.

Guilty By Suspicion
1991
**½
Director: Irwin Winkler
Cast: Robert De Niro, Annette Bening, George Wendt, Patricia Wettig

Robert De Niro plays a movie director who finds himself unemployable in 1950s Hollywood as the communist witch-hunt gathers momentum. Sadly this potentially interesting premise falls flat as this dry film plods along. Martin Scorsese appears in an amusing cameo.

Grand Canyon
1991
****
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: Kevin Kline, Mary McDonnell, Danny Glover, Mary-Louise Parker

A realistic portrayal of everyday life in Los Angeles, told through an everyone-is-connected tapestry of characters. The performances are uniformly great, but the film suffers slightly from its numerous story lines. Written by Lawrence Kasdan and his wife Meg.

Fried Green Tomatoes
1991
****
Director: Jon Avnet
Cast: Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker

An elderly lady recounts her colourful life to a frustrated housewife in a modern day nursing home. The flashbacks take us back to her youth in Alabama before WW2. This funny and touching drama is based on Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. The film is a strong showcase for its predominantly female cast.


Frankie and Johnny
1991
****
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kate Nelligan, Hector Elizondo

Frankie is a waitress and Johnny is an ex-con who now flips burgers. This funny and sharp working class comedy tells the story of their romance. The cast is impressive, and especially Kate Nelligan and Al Pacino give warm performances. Terrence McNally adapted his own play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.

For the Boys
1991
**½
Director: Mark Rydell
Cast: Bette Midler, James Caan, George Segal, Patrick O'Neal, Arye Gross

Bette Midler and James Caan give excellent performances as two bickering entertainment professionals. The jokes are funny but the dramatic side follows a predictable path. The story spans over 50 years, and the old age makeup is frankly awful.

The Fisher King
1991
****½
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Mercedes Ruehl, Amanda Plummer

The lives of a world-weary radio Dj and a tragic homeless man overlap in Terry Gilliam's weird, captivating and original film. The story mixes humour, drama and fantasy to great effect, but it goes on a bit too long. However, the waltz scene at the Grand Central Station is its own little masterpiece. The performances are brilliant all around, but Mercedes Ruehl was singled out for an Oscar.

Father of the Bride
1991
*½
Director: Charles Shyer
Cast: Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, Martin Short, Kimberly Williams

When his daughter is about to get married the father suddenly feels very old and possessive. Steve Martin takes over from Spencer Tracy in this lame and dreadfully predictable family comedy remake.

F/X2
1991
***½
Director: Richard Franklin
Cast: Bryan Brown, Brian Dennehy, Rachel Ticotin, Joanna Gleason

The special effects guru from F/X helps a cop to catch a serial killer, but finds himself in another fine mess. This entertaining sequel doesn't merely repeat the original but it comes up with its own twists and turns. With pros and cons, about as good as the original.


Dying Young
1991
**
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Julia Roberts, Campbell Scott, Vincent D'Onofrio, Colleen Dewhurst

A terrible tearjerker about a woman who nurses a terminally ill man, and obviously falls in love with him. The story offers sugar and misery. Based on Marti Leimbach's novel.

La double vie de Véronique (The Double Life of Veronique)
1991
**½
Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski
Cast: Irène Jacob, Philippe Volter, Sandrine Dumas, Aleksander Bardini, Louis Ducreux, Claude Duneton, Halina Gryglaszewska, Kalina Jędrusik

Weronika in a Polish choir singer and Véronique is a French music teacher. These two identical looking women share a mysterious psychic connection. Krzysztof Kieślowski's drama about fate and identity has an interesting premise, but it doesn't properly explore the doppelgänger concept. When the action moves from Poland to France after 30 minutes, the narrative becomes aimless, baffling, and somewhat disturbing. The film is beautifully shot, even if the image is yellow-tinted throughout. Zbigniew Preisner's powerful score plays a key role.

The Doors
1991
***
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Val Kilmer, Meg Ryan, Kathleen Quinlan, Kyle MacLachlan, Frank Whaley

Oliver Stone's vivid but muddled biopic of Jim Morrison comes uncomfortably close to worship at times. After all, we are only talking about a rock singer. One thing is for sure, the film won't leave you cold. Val Kilmer’s strong performance deserves recognition.

The Doctor
1991
***
Director: Randal Haines
Cast: William Hurt, Christine Lahti, Elizabeth Perkins, Mandy Patinkin

This fairly moving drama about a cocky surgeon who gets cancer was released almost simultaneously with Regarding Henry, another story about a selfish person who has to reassess his values whe faced with a grave misfortune. Based on Edward Ronsebaum's book A Taste of My Own Medicine.

Doc Hollywood
1991
**
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Woody Harrelson, Julie Warner, Bridget Fonda

A cocky doctor is on his way to Hollywood to become a plastic surgeon when he crashes his car and gets stranded in South Carolina. The small town oddballs are quite funny, but otherwise this is a very forgettable comedy which is built on the old "big city = bad/small town = good" cliché.

Dead Again
1991
**½
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi

A phony but surprisingly entertaining film noir about a detective who tries to solve the mystery of a woman who is suffering from amnesia. Emma Thompson is good, but it's hard to accept Kenneth Branagh as an American with all his Rada mannerisms.

Crooked Hearts
1991
***
Director: Michael Bortman
Cast: Vincent D'Onofrio, Peter Coyote, Peter Berg, Jennifer Jason Leigh

A fine drama with a great cast about a seriously dysfunctional family. The story teeters on the edge of credibility, at least as far as Vincent D'Onofrio's character is concerned.

The Commitments
1991
****½
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Robert Arkins, Michael Aherne, Andrew Strong, Angeline Ball

An enjoyable music comedy about the rise and fall of an Irish soul band. The story is funny, the music is good and the amateur actors give excellent performances. Based on Roddy Doyle's novel, which is the first part of the so-called Barrytown Trilogy. The other two parts (The Snapper and The Van) were also filmed.



Class Action
1991
**½
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Gene Hackman, Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, Colin Friels, Larry Fishburne

Gene Hackman and Mary-Elizabeth Mastrantonio do their best, but this is a rather modest court room drama about a father and daughter, both lawyers, who end up battling each other in a class action case.

City Slickers
1991
**½
Director: Ron Underwood
Cast: Billy Crystal, Jack Palance, Daniel Stern, Bruno Kirby, Helen Slater

A group of middle-aged men try to overcome their stress on an adventure holiday. There's some funny dialogue but the story is predictably life-affirming. Jack Palance's Oscar winning performance is the highlight of this comedy. Followed by City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold in 1994.

City of Hope
1991
**½
Director: John Sayles
Cast: Vincent Spano, Tony Lo Bianco, Joe Morton, Angela Bassett

This big city drama with multiple storylines was written and directed by John Sayles. It's initially hard to follow and ultimately quite redundant. The performances are good, however.

Cape Fear
1991
****½
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, Juliette Lewis, Joe Don Baker

A strongly acted, powerful remake of the 1962 revenge thriller. Once again Max Cady, a convicted rapist, seeks revenge on his defence attorney who wronged him years ago. This time the lawyer is not squeaky-clean and his Lolitaesque daughter ends up in the eye of the storm. Martin Scorsese seems to be enjoying himself with this genre film, which is stunningly shot, edited and directed. The ending, however, is not the strongest part. The haunting Bernard Herrmann score from the original sticks to your head.

Bugsy
1991
**
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley

Barry Levinson's visually impressive but unconvincing and uninvolving biopic of Ben "Bugsy" Siegel, the gangster who built Las Vegas in the middle of the desert. Warren Beatty is his usual wooden self. Oscar winner for best art direction and costume design.

Boyz n the Hood
1991
****½
Director: John Singleton
Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Larry Fishburne, Angela Bassett, Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, Tyra Ferrell, Redge Green, Desi Arnez Hines II, Baha Jackson, Donovan McCrary

17-year-old Tre and his childhood friends attempt to navigate the dangers of their neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. While some in the group have hope of a better future, others struggle to escape the spiral of gang culture. John Singleton's writing and directing debut is an incredibly assured piece of work for a 23-year-old. It tells a thoroughly believable and authentic coming-of-age story, which is funny, moving, and engrossing. The young cast is great, but Larry Fishburne steals the show as Tre’s strict but loving father.

Billy Bathgate
1991
**
Director: Robert Benton
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Loren Dean, Bruce Willis, Steven Hill

In this stiff and slow-paced gangster film a teenage boy joins Dutch Schultz's mob organisation. Dustin Hoffman is good as the crime boss, otherwise there's very little to recommend. Bruce Willis has a funny cameo. Tom Stoppard adapted E.L. Doctorow's novel.

Barton Fink
1991
****
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judie Davis, Michael Lerner

An ambitious writer goes to Hollywood in the 1940s, but ends up writing a lowbrow wrestling movie. He hits a writer's block, and the mysterious salesman next door certainly doesn't help him to concentrate. The fourth film by the Coen brothers is probably their least accessible one. This is an odd and heavy-going but viaually impressive and strangely captivating film.


Backdraft
1991
**½
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Robert De Niro, Jennifer Jason Leigh

While a nasty arsonist is creating terror in Chicago, two firefighting brothers try to get over their differences. This melodrama has impressive special effects, but not much more. Donald Sutherland and Robert De Niro give nice supporting performances.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord
1991
***½
Director: Hector Babenco
Cast: Tom Berenger, Aidan Quinn, John Lithgow, Kathy Bates, Daryl Hannah

A powerful but flawed character drama set in the rain forest, where a group of white people attempt to help a native tribe, each one in their own futile way. The story is poignant but too long at three hours. However, it's beautifully shot on location and the performances are bold. Based on Peter Matthiessen's novel.

The Adjuster
1991
*½
Director: Atom Egoyan
Cast: Elias Koteas, Arsinee Khanjian, Maury Chaykin, Gabrielle Rose

A long-winded drama from the eccentric Canadian director Atom Egoyan. The protagonist is an insurance company adjuster, not that you'd want to know anything more about any of these characters. Once the incomprehensible story is over it leaves you with a lot questions, but you feel relieved rather than curious.

The Addams Family
1991
***½
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Cast: Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci

This horror comedy about a macabre family is based on a well liked 1960s TV series. The film is funny, vividly shot and wonderfully cast, but quite disposable. Directorial debut for the renowned cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld. Followed by Addams Family Values.

Women and Men: Stories of Seduction
1990
**
Director: Frederic Raphael, Tony Richardson, Ken Russell
Cast: Beau Bridges, Melanie Griffith, Peter Weller, James Woods, Ray Liotta

A vanity project for three known directors and a bunch of famous actors. Three episodes about a man and a woman, all of them modest.

The Witches
1990
****
Director: Nicholas Roeg
Cast: Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher, Rowan Atkinson

A convention of witches takes place in a seaside hotel in this funny and horrific tale based on Roald Dahl's book. Angelica Huston is excellent as the main witch.

Wild at Heart
1990
*****
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Harry Dean Stanton

A visually dazzling road movie about Sailor and Lula, two rebellious lovers. There isn't a single sane character in David Lynch's surreal world, and we're all the better for it. The story is full of wonderful moments and excellent use of music. Based on Barry Gifford's novel.

White Palace
1990
***
Director: Luis Mandoki
Cast: Susan Sarandon, James Spader, Jason Alexander, Kathy Bates

A believable love story between a young educated man and a middle-aged working class woman. The story is pretty clichéd but the strong performances by Spader and Sarandon make it worth your while. Based on Glenn Savan's novel.

White Hunter, Black Heart
1990
***
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Jeff Fahey, George Dzundza, Alun Armstrong

A film director becomes obsessed with killing an elephant while on location in Africa. This homage to John Huston and The African Queen is interesting but dry and slow-paced. Clint is the perfect choice for the grumpy lead role.

Wheels of Terror
1990
*
Director: Christopher Cain
Cast: Joanna Cassidy, Marcie Leeds, Gary Cervantes, Arlen Dean Snyder

A preposterous thriller about a mother who chases her daughter's kidnapper with a school bus (that must have an extraordinary setup). The film is one neverending chase scene.

Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
1990
***
Director: Jim Abrahams
Cast: Winona Ryder, Jeff Daniels, Laila Robins, Thomas Wilson Brown

A modest comedy about a small town community who wait for their famous daughter to return home. Winona Ryder is fresh in the lead.

The Two Jakes
1990
****
Director: Jack Nicholson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, Meg Tilly, Madeleine Stowe, Eli Wallach

The belated sequel to the film noir classic Chinatown is a more conventional crime mystery, but a very entertaining one all the same. Harvey Keitel is excellent as the second Jake who hires the first one to catch his promiscuous wife in the act. Written by Robert Towne, like the original.

Tune in Tomorrow...
1990
****
Director: Jon Amiel
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Barbara Hershey, Peter Falk, Patricia Clarkson

A slow-paced but very enjoyable story about a young man who falls in love with his "aunt". Peter Falk plays a writer who creates a radio play about the affair as it develops. Based on Mario Vargas Llosa's novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.

Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö (The Match Factory Girl)
1990
****
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Kati Outinen, Elina Salo, Esko Nikkari, Vesa Vierikko, Silu Seppälä, Reijo Taipale, Outi Mäenpää, Marja Packalén

Iris is a lonely young woman who leads a mundane life. She works at a match factory and lives with her dismissive mother and stepfather. After a romantic night, she believes her luck may change, but her Romeo is not all he cracked up to be. Following Shadows in Paradise and Ariel, the third and final part in Aki Kaurismäki's so-called Proletariat Trilogy is a grim and cynical black comedy with a deliciously nasty twist. This is a short, minimalistic, and wonderfully controlled little film.

Trust
1990
****
Director: Hal Hartley
Cast: Martin Donovan, Adrienne Shelley, Merritt Nelson, John McKay

A teenage girl is thrown on the street after she reveals that she's pregnant, which causes her father to die of a heart attack. Hal Hartley's quirky indie film is full of wonderfully colourful characters. Martin Donovan is superb in the male lead.

Tremors
1990
***
Director: Ron Underwood
Cast: Fred Ward, Kevin Bacon, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, Reba McEntire

Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon play two handymen who are chased by a giant worm. This enjoyably tongue-in-cheek horror comedy has become a bit of a cult classic. Followed by several sequels.

Total Recall
1990
**½
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Michael Ironside, Sharon Stone

Paul Verhoeven's follow-up to Robocop is also set in the future. In the year 2084 a man dreams of a trip to Mars, which finally becomes reality through a memory implant. But the real world is not the same when he returns.
The story is complex and fascinating, but it's buried under a mountain of special effects and steady wall of noise. Based on Philip K. Dick's novelette We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.

Taking Care of Business / Filofax
1990
**
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cast: James Belushi, Charles Grodin, Anne DeSalvo, Loryn Locklin

James Belushi is on holiday from prison and assumes the identity of another man. Unfunny jokes and misunderstandings ensue.

State of Grace
1990
**½
Director: Phil Joanou
Cast: Sean Penn, Gary Oldman, Ed Harris, Robin Wright, John Turturro, John C. Reilly

An undercover cop returns to his old neighbourhood in Hell's Kitchen and reconnects with his old gangster friends and his old flame. Soon he's not sure where his allegiance lies. The cast is excellent, but this lifeless crime drama never seems to get going.

Stanley & Iris
1990
***
Director: Martin Ritt
Cast: Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Swoosie Kurtz, Martha Plimpton

Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda give fine performances in this sweet love story between a woman and an illiterate man. Based on Pat Barker's novel Union Street.

Sibling Rivalry
1990
**
Director: Carl Reiner
Cast: Kirstie Alley, Sam Elliott, Bill Pullman, Carrie Fisher, Jami Gertz

An unhappy housewife is unfaithful for the first time in her life and immediately ends up with a corpse in her bed. Carl Reiner's comedy has a promising set-up, but the film is terrible. Bill Pullman appears in an entirely pointless supporting role.

The Russia House
1990
**
Director: Fred Schepisi
Cast: Sean Connery, Michelle Pfeiffer, Roy Scheider, Klaus Maria Brandauer

A British publisher is on a business trip to Moscow where he learns of a secret manuscript, and meets a beuatiful Russian woman. This spy thriller cum love story is well acted but utterly boring. Based on a John le Carré novel.

The Rookie
1990
*½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Charlie Sheen, Raul Julia, Sonia Braga, Tom Skerritt

A grumpy old cop is forced to partner a rookie detective, just as he attempts to bring down a car theft ring. Clint Eastwood basically plays Dirty Harry under a different character name. This is a very formulaic and forgettable crime film.

Robocop 2
1990
**
Director: Irvin Kershner
Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O'Herlihy, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan

An extremely disappointing sequel to Robocop. There's a powerful scene in the beginning when the hero meets his wife from his human life, but the rest of the film is just one long special effect shot. Followed by another sequel in 1993.

Reversal of Fortune
1990
**
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Cast: Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Ron Silver, Annabella Sciorra, Uta Hagen

An incredibly uninteresting true story about an aristocrat who was accused of attempting to murder his wife. There's some intriguing ambiguity as to his guilt, but the film is helplessly dull. Jeremy Irons won an Academy Award, probably because he plays a character with an accent. Based on Alan Dershowitz's book Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case.

Revenge
1990
*½
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Kevin Costner, Madeleine Stowe, Athony Quinn, Sally Kirkland

A Navy pliot falls in love with the wife of a Mexican crime boss and, as the title suggests, things don't end well. Kevin Costner is absolutely wooden in Tony Scott's dull and slimy B film. Based on Jim Harrison's novel.

The Reflecting Skin
1990
****
Director: Philip Ridley
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Cooper, Sheila Moore, Duncan Fraser, David Longworth, Robert Koons, Evan Hall, Coole Lucas Wilbee

Philip Ridley's feature debut is a dreamy if slightly overdramatic horror drama set in rural Idaho in the 1950s, where someone is kidnapping and killing children. Eight-year-old Seth becomes convinced that his neighbour is a vampire who is out to get his brother, who has just returned home. Ridley's wonderful script unravels a haunting story with a distinctly Lynchian feel. On the other hand, the beautiful visuals of the golden wheatfields bring back memories of Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven.

Quigley Down Under
1990
***
Director: Simon Wincer
Cast: Tom Selleck, Laura San Giacomo, Alan Rickman, Chris Haywood

Tom Selleck plays an American sharpshooter who travels to Australia.
This Western has an unusual premise, but it's good fun.

Quick Change
1990
***½
Director: Howard Franklin, Bill Murray
Cast: Bill Murray, Geena Davis, Randy Quaid, Jason Robards, Bob Elliott

A clown walks into a bank in the middle of the day and robs it clean. This clever comedy starts with an ingenious heist, but the story begins to fall apart in the second half when the robbers don't manage to get out of the city. Based on Jay Cronley's book.

Pretty Woman
1990
***
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Ralph Bellamy, Jason Alexander

A millionaire falls in love with a prostitute in this quintessential romantic comedy. Julia Roberts is a breath of fresh air in her breakthrough role as a hooker with a heart of gold, but the film is just a very predictable Cinderella story with a (famously reshot) happy ending. Marshall, Gere and Roberts later reunited in Runaway Bride.

Presumed Innocent
1990
**½
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Harrison Ford, Bonnie Bedelia, Brian Dennehy, Greta Scacchi

A lawyer's mistress is found dead and he becomes the main suspect. Alan J. Pakula takes a perfectly serviceable thriller plot and turns it into a plodding mess (once again). This whodunnit continues to wallow in the events after everything is wrapped up. The film is probably best remembered for Harrison Ford's unusual hair.

Predator 2
1990
**
Director: Stephen Hopkins
Cast: Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Ruben Blades, Maria Conchita Alonso

The sequel to the overrated Predator plays out in the city. There's plenty of action and the whole thing is quite well directed, but none of it makes sense.

Postcards from the Edge
1990
*½
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman

A story about a mother and daughter whose gigantic egos clash in Hollywood. Sadly this parody doesn't contain any good jokes, and Meryl Streep is extremely annoying in her first comedy role. Adapted from the semi-autobiographical book by Carrie "Princess Leia" Fisher, who is the daughter od Debbie Reynolds.

Pacific Heights
1990
**
Director: John Schlesinger
Cast: Matthew Modine, Melanie Griffith, Michael Keaton, Nobu McCarthy

Michael Keaton is about as scary as a puppy in this overly formulaic thriller about a couple who rent out part of their house to a potential psychopath.

Nikita (La Femme Nikita)
1990
***
Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Anne Parillaud, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Jean Reno, Jeanne Moreau

Luc Besson's entertaining and visually arresting but not terribly believable action film tells a story of a junkie who is reformed into a top government assassin. Remade in Hollywood as The Point of No Return / The Assassin.

Nightbreed
1990
**½
Director: Clive Barker
Cast: Graig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg, Charles Haid

After the excellent Hellraiser Clive Barker's second film is a disappointing horror flick about a community of mutants. David Cronenberg, who seems to be better as an actor than as a director, is a wonderfully sinister serial killer. Based on Barker's own novel Cabal.

Narrow Margin
1990
***
Director: Peter Hyams
Cast: Gene Hackman, Anne Archer, James B. Sikking, J.T. Walsh

An exciting but disposable chase film which takes place almost entirely on a train. Luckily the story hasn't been stretched over 90 minutes.

My Blue Heaven
1990
***½
Director: Herbert Ross
Cast: Steve Martin, Ricky Moranis, Joan Cusack, Melanie Mayron

A slow-building but enjoyable comedy about a group of gangsters who live in a witness relocation programme but plot to start over. Steve Martin is a splendid mobster.

Mo' Better Blues
1990
**½
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Wesley Snipes, Giancarlo Esposito

Denzel Washington plays a jazz trumpeter who is his own worst enemy. Spike Lee's ambitious drama, however, is overlong and heavy-going.

Misery
1990
***½
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen, Lauren Bacall

When Paul Sheldon, a famous romance novelist, drives off a snowy road, he is rescued and held captive by a deranged nurse, who forces Paul to rewrite his unpublished manuscript. William Goldman scripted this gripping, slow-burning thriller cum black comedy from Stephen King's novel, which can be viewed as a scathing commentary on the relationship between a writer and a critic. The Oscar winning Kathy Bates and James Caan both very fine performances.

Miller's Crossing
1990
***½
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, Albert Finney, Jon Polito, John Turturro, J. E. Freeman, Steve Buscemi , Michael Jeter

While an Irish and an Italian gangster are having a turf war during Prohibition, Tom Reagan changes his allegiance according to changing circumstances. This clever and twisty gangster drama is visually one of the best ones the Coen brothers have made. The film is a bit of a slog, though, not least because Gabriel Byrne is so one-note as Tom, who is an unlikable character to begin with.

Miami Blues
1990
***
Director: George Armitage
Cast: Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward, Nora Dunn

An anarchistic crime caper about an impulsive and volatile thug who goes a step too far when he mugs a police detective and steals his badge, gun and dentures. There are moments of hilarity in this clunky film, but it struggles to strike a balance between laughs and bloodshed. And so does Alec Baldwin in the lead. He tries to play "Junior" as likeably wacky, but the character simply doesn't have any redeeming features.

Men Don't Leave
1990
**½
Director: Paul Brickman
Cast: Jessica Lange, Arliss Howard, Joan Cusack, Chris O'Donnell

Life is practically impossible without a man in the house. That is the message of this likeable but predictable single parent drama. Jessica Lange gives another fine performance.

Memphis Belle
1990
***
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Cast: Matthew Modine, Eric Stoltz, Tate Donovan, D.B. Sweeney

The first hour of this WW2 bomber drama is deadly boring introduction to the story and the characters, but the second half in the air is exciting stuff, and brilliantly acted and directed.

Madhouse
1990
*½
Director: Tom Ropelowski
Cast: John Larroquette, Kirstie Alely, Alison LaPlaca, John Diehl

A dim comedy about a suburban couple whose grating relatives begin to drive them (and us) mad.

Love at Large
1990
**½
Director: Alan Rudolph
Cast: Tom Berenger, Anne Archer, Elizabeth Perkins, Kate Capshaw

A lackluster romantic mystery about two detectives who trail each other. The cast is good but the story never seems to take off.

Loose Cannons
1990
*½
Director: Bob Clark
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Gene Hackman, Dom DeLuise, Nancy Travis

Dan Aykroyd ánd Gene Hackman play mismatching detectives in a dumb and messy buddy cop comedy. Aykroyd has a few bright moments, that's all.

Look Who's Talking Too
1990
*
Director: Amy Heckerling
Cast: John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Olympia Dukakis, Bruce Willis, Roseanne Barr

In the sequel to Look Who's Talking the Bruce Willis-voiced baby must get used the idea of having a kid sister (Roseanne Barr). Even with a gratuitous John Travolta dance scene this dull and long-winded comedy only manages a meagre 80 minute running time.

Kindergarten Cop
1990
**½
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Penelope Ann Miller, Pamela Reed, Linda Hunt

A macho detective is forced to go undercover and work in a kindergarten. The violent beginning and end, and the cute and cuddly comedy inbetween produce an uneven whole. It has its moments, though.

Joe Versus the Volcano
1990
**½
Director: John Patrick Shanley
Cast: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Dan Hedaya

A man who has six months to live and nothing to lose agrees a deal with a rich tycoon who wants him to jump into a volcano on a remote Pacific island. This is a watchable but forgettable comedy which stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (in a triple role) before their respective breakthroughs.

Jacob's Ladder
1990
****½
Director: Adrian Lyne
Cast: Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Matt Craven, Jason Alexander

Jacob Singer is a Vietnam veteran who suffers from odd hallucinations. Did something happen to him and his comrades during the war or what is going on? Bruce Joel Rubin's bleak and unpredictable story keeps you in its clutches until the end, and then leaves you unsettled. Adrian Lyne is known for vacuous blockbusters, and this is his first proper film.

Internal Affairs
1990
**½
Director: Mike Figgis
Cast: Richard Gere, Andy Garcia, Nancy Travis, Richard Bradford

A corrupt cop has an Iad investigator on his case. Richard Gere gives one his finest performances as the crooked one, but the story sadly never rises above the standard good cop/bad cop scenario.

Impulse
1990
***
Director: Sondra Locke
Cast: Theresa Russell, Jeff Fahey, George Dzundza, Alan Rosenburg

This compelling story about a female undercover detective offers a slight departure from your average police film. It's not completely successful, however.

I Love You to Death
1990
***
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, River Phoenix, William Hurt, Keanu Reeves

An enjoyable black comedy about a man who is impossible to kill. Keanu Reeves and especially William Hurt are hilarious as two permanently stoned "hitmen". Not a typical Lawrence Kasdan film.

I Hired a Contract Killer
1990
**
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Margi Clarke, Kenneth Colley, Serge Reggiani, Kenneth Cranham, T.R. Bowen, Imogen Clare, Jools Holland, Johnny Shannon, Tracey Wilkinson

Henri Boulanger is a jobless, lonely, and squeamish Frenchman who lives in London. Just as he hires a hitman to put himself out of his misery, a new love changes his outlook on life. For his only work shot in the UK, Aki Kaurismäki expands an original story by Peter von Bagh. The intriguing premise sadly doesn't go anywhere, and the resulting film feels clunky and long even at 79 minutes. It's all about the unpredictability of life, and Kaurismäki makes London feel like the smallest village in the world. Jean-Pierre Léaud's performance in English is awkward and wooden, and the dreadful dialogue certainly doesn't help.

The Hunt for Red October
1990
**½
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones

The first and most famous Tom Clancy adaptation is a dry and militaristic drama about a mysterious Soviet super submarine. It's well made but rarely captivating. Sean Connery is good as captain Ramius, though. Followed by other equally forgettable adaptations like Patriot Games, A Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears.

The Hot Spot
1990
**
Director: Dennis Hopper
Cast: Don Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Virginia Madsen, William Sadler

Don Johnson plays a drifter who is drawn to two beautiful women (Virginia Madsen and Jennifer Connelly). The leading ladies are definitely easy on the eye, but this sweaty and slow burning erotic film noir doesn't seem to go anywhere. Based on the novel Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams.

Home Alone
1990
****
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Catherine O'Hara, Daniel Stern, John Heard, Roberts Blossom

The McCallister family go on a Christmas trip to Paris, but accidentally leave their 8-year-old son Kevin home alone just when a pair of nasty burglars are going from house to house. However, Kevin is ready to protect his home. This enjoyable comedy was a massive sleeper hit and it has become an enduring classic, thanks to its comical violence and warm-hearted Christmas message. Macaulay Culkin is a revelation in the starring role, and Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern give hilarious performances as the burglars. Followed by Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and two other sequels without the usual cast.

Henry and June
1990
**
Director: Philip Kaufman
Cast: Fred Ward, Uma Thurman, Maria de Medeiros, Richard E. Grant

Philip Kaufman follows The Unbearable Lightness of Being with another literary adaptation set in 20th century Europe. He has adapted Anaïs Nin's book which describes her relationship with author Henry James and his wife June. The film is beautifully made and wonderfully acted but it never draws you in, and these characters only encage your intellect.

Havana
1990
**½
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Robert Redford, Lena Olin, Alan Arkin, Tomas Milian, Daniel Davis

Sydney Pollack tries and fails to reproduce the magic of Casablanca in this politically flavoured romantic drama. The story is set on the eve of the Cuban Revolution when an American gambler (Robert Redford) falls in love with the wife of a revolutionary (Lena Olin). It's all perfectly watchable but not particularly memorable.

The Grifters
1990
***½
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle, Henry Jones

A tough drama about a trio of con artists which includes a mother, her son and his girlfriend, all of whom think only of themselves. The story, from Jim Thompson's novel, is entertaining and darkly funny but the cynical characters may be hard to stomach. Annette Bening and Angelica Huston are great in the female roles.

Gremlins 2 the New Batch
1990
**
Director: Joe Dante
Cast: Phoebe Cates, Zach Galligan, John Glover, Robert Prosky

The sequel to Gremlins offers no improvement on the original. There's one good laugh when film critic Leonard Maltin, who didn't care for the first film, gets killed.

Green Gard
1990
**½
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Gerard Depardieu, Andie MacDowell, Bebe Neuwirth, Gregg Edelman

Peter Weir's entertaining but utterly forgettable romantic comedy about a Frenchman and an American woman who form a marriage of convenience. He gets a green card and she gets the apartment of her dreams. They don't get along but we all know that they will.

Goodfellas
1990
*****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino

As a young boy Henry Hill idolises the local mobsters, and as a young man he's one of their key members. However, as the years roll by (the story covers the time period from 1955 to 1980), the life of excess begins to take its toll. Martin Scorsese offers comprehensive cinematic brilliance in this real-life gangster drama, which is arguably one of his finest films. The Oscar winning Joe Pesci is dynamite as the unpredictable Tommy. Based on Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy.

The Godfather Part III
1990
****
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, Sofia Coppola, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire

The third film in the saga is nowhere near the brilliance of parts I and II, but also not nearly as bad as it reputation would suggest. The aging Michael Corleone is riddled with guilt and ready to step down, and his over-zealous nephew is waiting in the wings. Al Pacino and Andy Garcia are great as the past and future of organised crime, but Sofia Coppola is famously useless in a pivotal role.

Ghost
1990
**
Director: Jerry Zucker
Cast: Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Goldwyn

A silly and sugary blockbuster fantasy about a man who protects his girlfriend from beyond the grave. Whoopi Goldberg clinched an Oscar for her supporting role. Heaven knows why.

The Freshman
1990
***½
Director: Andrew Bergman
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Marlon Brando, Maximilian Schell, Bruno Kirby

An enjoyably clever dark comedy about a young student and an honest gangster, hilariously portrayed by Marlon Brando with the old cotton wads in his cheeks.

Flatliners
1990
**
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin

Five medical students want to find out if there's life after death, and agree to flatline and then resuscitate each other. And we all know what happens to movie characters who experiment with the natural order of things. If you are ready to watch 45 minutes of CPR and an additional hour of long-winded philosophising, this is your film.

The Field
1990
****
Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: Richard Harris, Sean Bean, Tom Berenger, John Hurt, Brenda Fricker

This tough drama is set in rural Ireland and it tells a story of a stubborn old man who refuses to let go of his piece of rented land. The film brilliantly sums up the Irish obsession with land. Richard Harris gives a wonderful performance as Bull McCabe. Based on John B. Keane's 1965 play.

Edward Scissorhands
1990
*****
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Alan Arkin, Anthony Michael Hall, Kathy Baker, Vincent Price

An old inventor creates a man named Edward, but dies before he is complete, so Edward ends up alone in an empty mansion with scissors for hands. This funny, sad, and touching fable deals with prejudice and fear of the unknown. Johnny Depp is wonderfully clumsy and awkward in the title role, and Dianne Wiest and Alan Arkin are simply adorable as the overly affable suburban parents who take him in. The film is visually stunning, like you can expect from Tim Burton. The colourful suburban houses, cars, and costumes are a treat. Danny Elfman wrote the memorable score.

Die Hard 2
1990
***½
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, William Sadler, William Atherton, Franco Nero, John Amos, Reginald VelJohnson

A group of terrorists take over the Dulles airport and its air traffic control systems in Washington D.C., which leaves a number of planes in the air in danger of running out of fuel. This includes a plane carrying Mrs. John McClane. The first sequel to Die Hard is an entertaining action movie, but, to paraphrase the protagonist, how can the same shit happen to the same guy twice? Based on Walter Wager's novel 58 Minutes. Followed by Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Desperate Hours
1990
*½
Director: Michael Cimino
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Lindsay Crouse, Anthony Hopkins, Mimi Rogers

Michael Cimino is behind the camera and there's a brilliant cast in front of it, but this is an absolutely ghastly remake of the 1955 film which sterred Humphrey Bogart. Mickey Rourke plays an allegedly ingenious criminal who breaks out from jail and takes a family hostage. However, the second half of the story requires him to be as stupid as a bag of hammers.

Days of Thunder
1990
*
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes

Tom Cruise and Tony Scott reunite in a maddeningly predictable and laughably implausible rehash of Top Gun, which is set in the world of Nascar racing. This is one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite films.

Darkman
1990
**
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, Colin Friels, Larry Drake, Nelson Mashita, Ted Raimi, Nicholas Worth, Dan Hicks

Just when Dr. Peyton Westlake is about to perfect synthetic skin, a crime boss and his henchmen blow up his lab. The disfigured but superstrong scientist uses his invention to inflict revenge. Although Sam Raimi's low budget superhero film is sympathetic and lovingly made, it is let down by a nonsensical script and awful performances. The story starts well, but it stops making any sense in the final 30 minutes. The synthetic skin disintegrates after 99 minutes, yet Westlake has a massive arsenal of prefabricated faces towards the end, even after his makeshift lab blows up. The climax at the top of an unfinished skyscraper is one of the stupidest I can remember.

Dances with Wolves
1990
****
Director: Kevin Costner
Cast: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant

Kevin Costner's directorial debut is a heavy but beautifully crafted story about a disillusioned Civil War veteran who ends up a member of the Sioux tribe. This entertaining old-fashioned Western won seven Oscars, which include best director and best screenplay (Michael Blake adapted his own novel). The original version is nearly three hours long, the director's cut is close to four hours.

Cry-Baby
1990
***½
Director: John Waters
Cast: Johnny Depp, Amy Locane, Susan Tyrrell, Polly Bergen, Iggy Pop

A cute comedy musical about a group of teens in the 50s. The story is wacky and funny, and the songs are catchy. Johnny Depp is wonderful as the rebellious "Cry-Baby" whose single tear drives the girls wild.

Coupe De Ville
1990
**
Director: Joe Roth
Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Arye Gross, Daniel Stern, Alan Arkin, Rita Taggart

It's 1963 and three feuding brothers try to settle their differences on an emotional road trip in their father's car. Sadly this road movie down the nostalgia route is dull and predictable. Patrick Dempsey gives an irritating performance as the youngest brother.

Cadillac Man
1990
**½
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Robin Williams, Tim Robbins, Pamela Reed, Fran Drescher

A modest comedy about a car salesman whose life goes from bad to worse. The beginning is funny but the story takes an unexpected turn to the wrong direction. Tim Robbins plays a dork once again.

The Bonfire of the Vanities
1990
*
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, Kim Cattrall, Saul Rubinek

This adaptation of Tom Wolfe's highly rated novel opens with a stunning five minute tracking shot, and everything that follows is utter rubbish. It tells a story of a cocky yuppie whose world falls apart when he and his mistress have a hit and run accident. This famously disastrous turkey stars Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith and Bruce Willis, all of who are badly miscast.

Blue Steel
1990
*½
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Ron Silver, Clancy Brown, Elisabeth Pena

Jamie Lee Curtis plays a rookie police officer who lands in trouble after she shoots a robber and the incredibly slimy Ron Silver is a psychopath who taunts her. Kathryn Bigelow has directed a co-scripted a thriller so stupid and illogical that it makes you want to throw things at the screen.

Bird on a Wire
1990
*
Director: John Badham
Cast: Goldie Hawn, Mel Gibson, David Carradine, Stephen Tobolowsky

A man runs into his old flame, but the catch is that he's now in a witness relocation programme. Soon they are both on the run. This dreadful action comedy is pretty much plotless and jokeless, the only thing carrying it is the combined charisma of Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson, and that isn't much.

Bad Influence
1990
**
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Rob Lowe, James Spader, Lisa Zane, Christian Clemenson

A chilly and predictable thriller about a gullible yuppie who befriends a latent psychopath, played rather unconvincingly by Rob Lowe. The highlight of the film is a scene in which the psychopath joins a party hosted by the hero's in-law's and plays a tape of their son-in-law's one night stand.

Back to the Future Part III
1990
***½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson

In the end of Part II Doc was accidentally transported to 1885, and now Marty must find a way to travel back in time once more to save his friend's life. The final part of the trilogy is suspenseful and inventive, and certainly more light-hearted than its predecessor, but still no match to the original. The movie pokes great fun at Western clichés (Marty goes by the name of Clint Eastwood) and brings the trilogy to a nice conclusion.

Awakenings
1990
***½
Director: Penny Marshall
Cast: Robin Williams, Robert De Niro, Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson

A true story about a doctor who, thanks to a new medicine, manages to awaken a patient from a catatonic state that has lasted for 30 years. This is a moving medical drama and an enjoyable fish out of water story. Robert De Niro and Robin Williams are both very good. Based on the memoirs of neurologist Oliver Sacks.

Arachnophobia
1990
**½
Director: Frank Marshall
Cast: Jeff Daniels, John Goodman, Harley Jane Kozak, Julian Sands

A family-friendly horror film about a Venezuelan super spider who accidentally ends up wreaking havoc in a small American town. John Goodman is funny as an exterminator, but the film just seems to go through the motions all the way to its flat finale.

Another 48 Hrs
1990
**
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy, Brion James, Kevin Tighe, Ed O'Ross

Walter Hill, Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy regroup for an uninspired sequel to 48 Hrs. Nothing much has changed since the first film. Now the cop/crook duo is after a ruthless drug dealer. Every scene seems to involve someone flying through a window, but it doesn't make the proceedings any more exciting.

The Amityville Curse
1990
*
Director: Tom Berry
Cast: Kim Coates, Dawna Wightman, Helen Hughes, Anthony Dean Rubes

The fourth sequel to The Amityville Horror sees another family move into the cursed house on Long Island. However, this time absolutely nothing happens, apart from a few cheap scares.

Amazon
1990
*
Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Cast: Kari Väänänen, Robert Davi, Rae Dawn Chong, Pirkko Hämäläinen

A Finnish man and his two daughters travel to the Amazon, where they have an eye-opening experience. Mika Kaurismäki's drama has its heart in the right place, but it's plotless and mind-numbingly dull.

Air America
1990
***
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Cast: Mel Gibson, Robert Downey Jr., Nancy Travis, David Marshall Grant

Two airline pilots fly supplies to Laos during the Vietnam War, but unknowingly end up in the middle of political wheeling and dealing. This uneven film is at its best as an old-fashioned adventure, but once it tries to get serious, the story starts to lose momentum. Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. have great chemistry in the lead. Based on a non-fiction book by Christopher Robbins.

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
1990
***
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Andrew Dice Clay, Priscilla Presley, Wayne Newton, Robert Englund

A laid-back comedy about a "Rock n' Roll Detective" who is hired to track down a missing groupee who could solve the murder of a famous rock singer. Andrew Dice Clay attempted to break to the scene, but left with the tail between his leg when this film flopped both critically and commercially. However, as crass and immature as his comedy is, it's occasionally funny.

Wilt
1989
**
Director: Michael Tuchner
Cast: Mel Smith, Griff Rhys-Jones, Alison Steadman, Jeremy Clyde

This black comedy about a teacher who dreams of killing his wife, with TV comedians Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones, has some genuinely funny moments, but as a whole it's flat.

Wild Orchid
1989
*
Director: Zalman King
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Carre Otis, Jacqueline Bisset, Assumpta Serna

A young law firm intern on a work assignment in Rio gets caught in a web of kinky sex games. This ghastly "erotic" film marked the turning point in Mickey Rourke's career. From stardom to oblivion.

Who's Harry Crumb?
1989
*½
Director: Paul Flaherty
Cast: John Candy, Jeffrey Jones, Annie Potts, Tim Thomerson, Barry Corbin

John Candy is often a charming clown, but without a proper script and jokes his private eye character can do only so much.

When Harry Met Sally
1989
****
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby, Steven Ford

This enjoyable romantic comedy asks whether it is possible for a man and a woman to be just friends. Terrific dialogue and bubbly performances make this a nearly irresistible piece of fluff. The film is best known for the scene in which Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in a crowded restaurant.

We're No Angels
1989
*
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Demi Moore, Hoyt Axton, Bruno Kirby

First rate actors (Robert De Niro and Sean Penn), a talented director (Neil Jordan) and a screenwriter (David Mamet) famous for his wit have produced a dreadful comedy about two fugitives who impersonate priests. De Niro's grinning becomes extremely annoying.

The War of the Roses
1989
**½
Director: Danny De Vito
Cast: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Marianne Sägebrecht

This black comedy about a constantly quarrelling couple starts well, but it loses all credibility in the second half.

Uncle Buck
1989
***½
Director: John Hughes
Cast: John Candy, Jean Louisa Kelly, Macaulay Culkin, Gaby Hoffmann, Garrett M. Brown, Elaine Bromka, Amy Madigan, Jay Underwood, Brian Tarantina, Laurie Metcalf

When her father suffers a heart attack, Cindy and her husband Bob urgently need someone to watch over their three children. Their only option is Bob's brother Buck, a goodhearted but unreliable slacker. John Candy gives one of his most likeable performances in this warmhearted family comedy. It's not groundbreaking, but there is a nice mix of laughs and poignant moments. Macaulay Culkin, who plays one of the children, returned a year later in Home Alone, also scripted by Hughes.

Turner & Hooch
1989
*½
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mare Winningham, Graig T. Nelson, Reginald VelJohnson

A one joke comedy about a detective who partners up with a dog.

True Believer
1989
**½
Director: Joseph Ruben
Cast: James Woods, Robert Downey Jr., Yuji Okumoto, Margaret Colin

James Woods tries his best, but this law drama about a murder in prison is sadly dull and devoid of surprises.

Three Fugitives
1989
***
Director: Francis Veber
Cast: Nick Nolte, Martin Short, Sarah Rowland Doroff, James Earl Jones

The first 30 minutes in this action comedy, which kicks off with a bank robbery, are so hilarious that once the speed slows down the rest is not up to scratch.

Tango & Cash
1989
*
Director: Andrei Konchalovsky
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, Teri Hatcher, Jack Palance

Two LAPD detectives reluctantly work together to bring down a crime boss in this awful (but quintessential) 1980s buddy cop action comedy. A formulaic demolition fest from start to finish, with extremely uncharismatic performances by Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone.

Talvisota (The Winter War)
1989
****
Director: Pekka Parikka
Cast: Taneli Mäkelä, Vesa Vierikko, Konsta Mäkelä, Timo Torikka, Antti Raivio

A well-acted and gripping Finnish war film that carries pretty well through its three hour length.

Steel Magnolias
1989
*½
Director: Herbert Ross
Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton, Sally Field, Daryl Hannah

A manipulative tearjerker set in a small American town. For some reason Julia Roberts received an Oscar nomination for her supporting role as a dying young woman.

Der siebente Kontinent (The Seventh Continent)
1989
***½
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Birgit Doll, Dieter Berner, Leni Tanzer, Udo Samel, Georg Friedrich

Michael Haneke's feature debut is a partly true story of an Austrian family who systematically abandon their secure but suffocating middle-class existence. This grim and uncompromising film is comprised of long slow takes. Powerful but very tough to watch.

Shocker
1989
*
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Michael Murphy, Peter Berg, Cami Cooper, Mitch Pileggi, Sam Scarber

An awful rehash of the oldest horror film clichés. The same man later made Scream? Now, isn't that ironic? The title fits like a glove.

She-Devil
1989
**
Director: Susan Seidelman
Cast: Roseanne Barr, Meryl Streep, Ed Begley Jr., Linda Hunt, Sylvia Miles

A watered-down version of the British TV series (I haven't read Fay Weldon's novel) about an esthetically challenged woman who plots revenge on her two-timing hubby. The presence of Roseanne Barr in the title role doesn't exactly improve it.

Sex, Lies and Videotape
1989
****
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Laura San Giacomo, Peter Gallagher

Steven Soderbergh's impressive debut is a talky but captivating study of intertwining relationships. It depicts a few days in the lives of a married couple, her sister and his old friend. A terrific cast.

Sea of Love
1989
***½
Director: Harold Becker
Cast: Al Pacino, Ellen Barkin, John Goodman, Michael Rooker, William Hickey

Al Pacino is excellent as a recently divorced detective with a drinking problem in an otherwise conventional crime drama about a serial killer who finds his victims via classified ads.

Say Anything
1989
***½
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney, Lili Taylor, Amy Brooks

At the end of high school, Lloyd falls for Diane, a girl who is out of his league, academically speaking. Cameron Crowe's directorial debut is a likeable romantic comedy, where the protagonist is a genuinely nice guy. The film offers refreshing innocence compared to today's teen comedies, which are filled with sex- and drug-obsessed assholes.

Road House
1989
*
Director: Rowdy Herrington
Cast: Patrick Swayze, Sam Elliott, Kelly Lynch, Ben Gazzara, Kevin Tighe

An idiotic fighting film in which bar brawls form the "plot" and getting beaten up is good fun.

Pink Cadillac
1989
*
Director: Buddy Van Horn
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Bernadette Peters, Timothy Carhart, Tiffany Gail Robinson

Clint Eastwood plays a bounty hunter in a plotless and pointless action comedy, which is one of his weakest.

Physical Evidence
1989
*
Director: Michael Crichton
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Theresa Russell, Ned Beatty, Ted McGinley

Second rate TV procedurals don't have plots as predictable as Michael Crichton's lifeless court drama. No chemistry whatsoever between Burt Reynolds and Theresa Russell.

Pet Sematary
1989
***
Director: Mary Lambert
Cast: Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, Brad Greenquist, Michael Lombard, Miko Hughes, Blaze Berdahl, Mary Louise Wilson

A doctor, his wife, and their two small children move to a rural town. When the family is hit by a tragedy, he decides to try the ancient Miꞌkmaq burial ground that can allegedly resurrect the dead. This gripping horror movie has a wicked sense of humour, but it feels a bit clunky and rushed at times. The second rate cast doesn't help either. Stephen King scripted from his own 1983 novel. Followed by a sequel and a 2019 remake.

Parenthood
1989
****
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Steve Martin, Dianne Wiest, Mary Steenburgen, Ricky Moranis

A smart and amusing multi-character comedy about parents and children. The film poignantly shows that parental responsibilities never end and parental ties are never completely broken, no matter what age the children or the parents are. Shame about the dreadful ending that doesn't want to leave any conflicts unsolved.

The Package
1989
**½
Director: Andrew Davis
Cast: Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy, Tommy Lee Jones, John Heard

This gripping but implausible film builds from a standard thriller to full-blown Cold War conspiracy. It relies heavily on Gene Hackman's charisma.

A Nightmare On Elm Street: The Dream Child
1989
*
Director: Stephen Hopkins
Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Kelly Jo Minter, Erika Anderson

In this incomprehensible fifth part we barely see a glimpse of Freddy Krueger, as he tries to do his evil deeds through an unborn child.

New York Stories
1989
***
Director: Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Francis Fo
Cast: Nick Nolte, Rosanna Arquette, Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Talia Shire

An episode film with three stories that are loosely linked by New York City. Martin Scorsese's Life Lessons is an excellent short film about a temperamental artist. The other two segments, Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks and Francis Ford Coppola's Life Without Zoë, are rather dismal.

Mystery Train
1989
***
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Masatoshi Nagase, Youki Kudoh, Cinque Lee, Nicoletta Braschi

Jim Jarmusch's three separate stories attempt to come together in one hotel. Typical Jarmusch but not entirely successful.

My Left Foot
1989
*****
Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Ray McAnally, Brenda Fricker, Cyril Cusack, Fiona Shaw, Hugh O'Conor, Adrian Dunbar, Ruth McCabe, Alison Whelan

Jim Sheridan's feature debut is a funny and touching adaptation of Christy Brown's autobiography. He was an Irish writer and painter who was born with cerebral palsy. The film doesn't portray him as a pitiful victim but as a strong-willed and often difficult man. Daniel Day-Lewis gives an astonishing performance as Brown and Brenda Fricker is wonderfully warm as his loving mother. They both won Academy Awards for their performances.

Music Box
1989
***½
Director: Costa Gavras
Cast: Jessica Lange, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Frederic Forrest, Donald Moffat

A compelling drama about a female lawyer whose immigrant father is accused of hideous war crimes. For a change Joe Esterhaz (Basic Instinct and Showgirls) has written a screenplay that doesn't dwell on sex and trash.

Major League
1989
*½
Director: David S. Ward
Cast: Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bernsen, Margaret Whitton

If you know and like baseball, you may be able to get something out of this dull and unfunny comedy. Otherwise forget it.

Majo no Takkyūbinn (Kiki's Delivery Service)
1989
***½
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast: Minami Takayama, Rei Sakuma, Kappei Yamaguchi, Keiko Toda, Kōichi Yamadera, Kōichi Miura, Mieko Nobusawa

13-year-old witch Kiki follows the traditions and leaves home for a year. With the help of her flying broom, she sets up a delivery service in a coastal city, but independent life is no bed of roses. Hayao Miyazaki's follow-up to My Neighbour Totoro is based on Eiko Kadono's 1985 novel. A Western film about a teenager who moves on her own would probably tell a scary and cautionary tale. Studio Ghibli's animation is filled with wonderful, unexpected innocence. Kiki is a lovely character, and her venture into adulthood is sad, funny and moving, even if the slow-paced story doesn't seem to amount to much.

Look Who's Talking
1989
***
Director: Amy Heckerling
Cast: John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Olympia Dukakis, Bruce Willis

A funny and inventive but conservative comedy about a baby whose thoughts are voiced by Bruce Willis. Followed by Look Who's Talking Too and Look Who's Talking Now.

Lock Up
1989
*
Director: John Flynn
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Donald Sutherland, Darlanne Fluegel, John Amos

A crushingly formulaic and seemingly endless prison film. Donald Sutherland plays the obligatory sadistic warden.

Licence to Kill
1989
**
Director: John Glen
Cast: Timothy Dalton, Robert Davi, Carey Lowell, Talisa Soto, Frank McRae

007 goes rogue to pursue a personal vendetta. Half-decent action scenes make this deadly serious James Bond film just about watchable. Timothy Dalton threw in the towel after this turkey.

Lethal Weapon 2
1989
***½
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Joss Ackland, Patsy Kensit, Derrick O'Connor, Darlene Love, Traci Wolfe, Mark Rolston, Steve Kahan

While the mismatched cop duo, Riggs and Murtaugh, investigate a money laundering operation linked to South African diplomats, they are assigned to protect a federal witness. The sequel to Lethal Weapon builds on the wonderful camaraderie between the two detectives. Mel Gibson and Daniel Glover are once again terrific, but Patsy Kensit is pretty poor in an underwritten role. The added humour and Joe Pesci's hilarious supporting role make this the strongest film in the series.

Leningrad Cowboys Go America
1989
**½
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Matti Pellonpää, Kari Väänänen, Sakke Järvenpää, Heikki Keskinen, Pimme Korhonen, Sakari Kuosmanen, Puka Oinonen, Silu Seppälä, Mauri Sumén, Mato Valtonen, Pekka Virtanen, Nicky Tesco

Leningrad Cowboys, a Russian rock band, embark on a road trip across the United States in pursuit of fame and fortune, but their journey is instead filled with misfortune, mostly due to the band's greedy manager. This comedic road movie, which is perhaps as mainstream as Aki Kaurismäki will ever get, is like a Finnish version of Blues Brothers. There are some laughs and catchy tunes, but despite its 80-minute running time, the film peters out towards the end. Followed by Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses.

Kill Me Again
1989
***
Director: John Dahl
Cast: Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Michael Madsen, Jonathan Gries

John Dahl's first film is a successful film noir in which you shouldn't trust anyone or anything until the end titles roll. The downside is that it's difficult to care about any of the characters.

The Karate Kid, Part III
1989
†
Director: John G. Avildsen
Cast: Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Robyn Elaine Lively, Sean Kanan

The second sequel is unbelievably moronic and badly scripted, and complete waste of time and film. It's difficult to think of a protagonist who is less intelligent and likeable than our own Karate Kid. The film requires its own rating scale.

K-9
1989
*½
Director: Rod Daniel
Cast: James Belushi, Mel Harris, Kevin Tighe, Ed O'Neill, Jerry Lee

No better or worse than Turner and Hooch, the other dog and police film from the same year.

Johnny Handsome
1989
**
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Ellen Barkin, Elisabeth McGovern, Morgan Freeman

A betrayed criminal gets a new chance with a new face in this dark and slimy film. The good cast may help you to sit through this.

An Innocent Man
1989
***
Director: Peter Yates
Cast: Tom Selleck, F. Murray Abraham, Laila Robins, David Rasche

A watchable crime film about a man who is framed and sent to prison. Tom Selleck is surprisingly tolerable as the title character, but F. Murray Abraham steals the show as the obligatory seen-it-all inmate.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
1989
***½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Alison Doody, Denholm Elliott, Julian Glover, John Rhys-Davies, Michael Byrne, Kevork Malikyan, Robert Eddison

The third movie jumps forward to 1938. Indiana Jones learns that his father has disappeared somewhere in Europe while looking for the Holy Grail. The Nazis and some of the supporting characters from Raiders of the Lost Ark return, and Sean Connery as Professor Henry Jones is a welcome addition to the cast. This is probably the funniest one in the franchise, but its action set pieces are beginning to feel a bit mechanical. Followed by Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 19 years later.

Honey I Shrunk the Kids
1989
***
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Ricky Moranis, Matt Frewer, Marcia Strassman, Kristine Sutherland

An eccentric inventor accidentally shrinks his kids into Lilliputian size. A modest comedy that relies heavily on its fabulous production design. The fact that it all takes place in the back yard is its best feature.

Great Balls of Fire!
1989
****
Director: Jim McBride
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Winona Ryder, Alec Baldwin, Lisa Blount, Trey Wilson

A frenetic biopic of Jerry Lee Lewis. We see how he becomes a rock n' roll star and falls in love with his 13-year old cousin. Dennis Quaid is a great choice for the lead.

Glory
1989
***
Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman

A dry but compelling story about Colonel Robert Gould Shaw who led the first entirely coloured unit in the Civil War. This worthy story is about black men, but it's told from a white man's point of view. It's hard to ídentify with this many characters, which becomes an issue when the men start falling like flies. The screenplay is based on Shaw's personal letters and two novels.

Gleaming the Cube
1989
*
Director: Graeme Clifford
Cast: Christian Slater, Steven Bauer, Ed Lauter, Micole Mercurio

An atrocious skateboard thriller. Not Christian Slater's proudest moment.

Ghostbusters II
1989
**½
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Peter MacNicol

Five years later most New Yorkers have forgotten that anything supernatural ever took place in the city and Ghostbusters have become obsolete. This gives the scriptwriters Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis an excuse to retell the same story. Murray gets to woo Weaver for the second time and the team again struggle to convince the Mayor that something sinister and paranormal is about to happen. Aside from a few funny gags, this is a pretty tired sequel. Followed by a reboot with a female cast in 2016 and a belated sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 2022.

The Fly 2
1989
**
Director: Chris Walas
Cast: Eric Stoltz, Daphen Zuniga, Lee Richardson, Frank Turner

The dull adventures of the son of The Fly. This sequel starts well but then turns into a special effect mess. It's no surprise when an F/X designer directs a film.

Field of Dreams
1989
**½
Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Cast: Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Gaby Hoffmann, Timothy Busfield, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Burt Lancaster, Kelly Coffield Park, Frank Whaley

An Iowa farmer hears a voice that says "If you build it, he will come". Phil Alden Robinson's Capraesque fantasy doesn't dwell on the mystery of this message. 20 minutes in and the farmer has built a baseball diamond in his cornfield, where the ghosts of famous players come to play. I have never understood the charm of this crowdpleasing and overrated piece of Americana. The premise is incredibly silly and the film makes no attempt to explain the rules of this world. Based on W.P. Kinsella's 1982 novel Shoeless Joe.

Family Business
1989
**½
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Matthew Broderick, Sean Connery, Rosana DeSoto

Three generations of the same family pull a heist together in this fairly compelling drama which takes a wrong turn in the second half. Matthew Broderick, Sean Connery and Dustin Hoffman make a very unlikely family.

The Fabulous Baker Boys
1989
****
Director: Steve Kloves
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Tilly

A very enjoyable drama about two musicians and a singer who comes between them. The Baker Boys are played by real life brothers Beau and Jeff Bridges. There's some funny lounge music on the soundtrack.

Drugstore Cowboy
1989
***
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, James Remar, James Le Gros, Heather Graham

Gus Van Sant's breakthrough film is an interesting but monotonous depiction of drug addiction.

Driving Miss Daisy
1989
***
Director: Bruce Beresford
Cast: Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman, Dan Aykroyd, Patti LuPone

A well-acted but rather unremarkable drama about an elderly lady and her chauffeur. Jessica Tandy won one of the four Academy Awards. Based on Alfred Uhry's play.

Do the Right Thing
1989
*****
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Spike Lee, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, John Savage

Spike Lee's best film is a true original in terms of story and style. This funny, thought-provoking, and poignant drama centres around a pizzeria run by an Italian-American family in a black Brooklyn neighbourhood. During another hot day, tempers fly and racial tensions reach a boiling point. The film features a number of wonderfully drawn characters and plenty of colourful and foul-mouthed dialogue. Needless to say, the cast is excellent. Did the climax influence the riots in Los Angeles in 1991?

Dead Poets Society
1989
*****
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles

A wonderfully funny and uplifting drama set in a conservative prep school in the 1950s. Robin Williams is superb as an idealistic English teacher who tries to inspire his students through poetry to seize the day and think for themselves. Tom Schulman's screenplay won an Academy Award.

Dead Calm
1989
**
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, Billy Zane, Rod Mullinar, Joshua Tilden

An Australian thriller about a couple whose sailing trip turns into a nightmare. The film has a promising start but its contrived and illogical twists makes you increasingly angry. Nicole Kidman is good in her breakthrough role. Heavily influenced by Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water.

Crimes and Misdemeanors
1989
****
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Martin Landau, Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Anjelica Huston, Alan Alda

A very fine Woody Allen film which combines dramatic and comical elements. Martin Landau plays a married man whose lover becomes a liability. Woody himself gives a funny performance as a neurotic documentary filmmaker.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
1989
**
Director: Peter Greenaway
Cast: Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Tim Roth, Richard Bohringer

A boorish gangster and his wife are regular customers in Le Hollandais. Their unorthodox relationship turns violent when she starts having an affair in the restaurant. The production design, costumes and cinematography are first class, but Peter Greenaway's pompous and off-putting drama aspires to be art with a capital A. Michael Gambon hams it big in the lead.

Casualties of War
1989
**
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, John Leguizamo, John C. Reilly

Back in the days every self-respecting director had to make his own Vietnam War film, preferably based on a true story like this one. This is Brian De Palma's take on the subject. The resulting film is a long and dull character drama set in the jungle, with Michael J. Fox in an atypical dramatic role.

Breaking In
1989
**
Director: Bill Forsyth
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Casey Siemaszko, Sheila Kelley, Lorraine Toussaint

Burt Reynolds plays a skilled burglar who has seen it all before in this formulaic story that we have all seen before.

Born on the Fourth of July
1989
****
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe, Raymond J. Barry, Caroline Kava

Following Platoon, the second part of Oliver Stone's Vietnam war trilogy is a tough and ambitious but not entirely successful true story about a patriotic young man who goes to war full of confidence but returns home paralysed. Tom Cruise gives one of his better performances in a demanding role. The directing and editing won Oscars.

Blaze
1989
**½
Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Paul Newman, Lolita Davidovich, Jerry Hardin, Gailard Sartain

Paul Newman gives a funny performance in an otherwise stale drama about a senator who falls in love with a stripper.

Black Rain
1989
**
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, Ken Takakura, Kate Capshaw

An extremely formulaic crime film about American cops who are on an assignment in Japan. The exotic Japanese locations are nice, but Ridley Scott and Michael Douglas are just going through the motions here.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
1989
*½
Director: Stephen Herek
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin, Bernie Casey

An infantile comedy about two goofy teenagers who go on a time travel trip in order to write a history report. The film is full of annoying oneliners which were later made famous in Wayne's World. Keanu Reeves acts on his normal level.

Batman
1989
**
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl

This superhero movie is based on the popular comic book created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. The film was a massive hit but it doesn't entertain at any point. Even Jack Nicholson as Joker cannot bring it to life. It's visually impressive, though. Michael Keaton appeared in the sequel Batman Returns, but gave up the successful franchise after that.


Back to the Future Part II
1989
***½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson

The second part of the trilogy continues right where Back to the Future ended. Doc persuades Marty and Jennifer to travel to 2015 to prevent a mistake their child is about to make. However, this short trip to the future creates an alternate present day reality, and to fix it, Marty must go back to 1955 once more. The sequel understandably doesn't feel as fresh as the original, especially when it recreates some of its scenes, but the clever script just keeps adding inventive new twists to the story. The alternate reality is perhaps a bit too grim, but all in all the movie is very entertaining. The story concludes in Part III.

Always
1989
**
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, Brad Johnson

This remake of A Guy Named Joe is an overly sugary romantic fantasy about a pilot and his girlfriend. They both fight forest fires, and there's some visually impressive scenes of their work, but that's about it. Audrey Hepburn appears in her final performance.

The Abyss
1989
*****
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Ed Harris, Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn, Leo Burmester, J.C. Quinn, Kimberly Scott, Todd Graff

When the nuclear submarine USS Montana sinks under mysterious circumstances at the height of the Cold War, the U.S. military dispatches a SEAL team to Deep Core, an underwater drilling platform, which is operated by a tight-knit crew, and the foreman's soon-to-be ex-wife. James Cameron’s insanely ambitious science fiction spectacle was actually shot underwater, which gives it a heightened feeling of realism. On the other hand, it is one of the first films to use ILM's groundbreaking digital effects, which deliver a sense of otherworldliness. However, this is really about human drama, and Cameron gives us more than two incredibly claustrophobic and suspenseful hours of that. How you feel about the pacifist ending is a matter of taste. The Special Edition, which is 25 minutes longer, is the one to watch.

Young Guns
1988
**
Director: Christopher Cain
Cast: Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips

A redundant and predictable teen western with a star cast. Followed by a sequel.

Working Girl
1988
**
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Alec Baldwin

An utterly predictable romantic wish fulfilment drama set in the business world. The nice blonde gets the guy and the job, and nasty brunette gets her comeuppance.

Willow
1988
***½
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley, Warwick Davis, Patricia Hayes, Billy Barty, Jean Marsh, Pat Roach, Gavan O'Herlihy

A baby girl with a special birthmark is prophesied to bring the downfall of Queen Bavmorda. The baby is sent down the river to safety, but an aspiring sorcerer Willow Ufgood, from a race of small people, volunteers to return the baby to the tall people. Between his Star Wars trilogies, George Lucas produced this silly and goofy but charming adventure movie set in an undefined time and place. His fantasy story draws influence from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and the Bible. Some of the special effects look outdated, but the likeable performances by Warwick Davis and Val Kilmer have stood the test of time. Followed by a short-lived TV series in 2022.


Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
1988
****½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Joanna Cassidy, Kathleen Turner, Charles Fleischer, Stubby Kaye, Alan Tilvern, Richard LeParmentier

In 1940s Los Angeles, where humans and cartoon characters live side by side, toon-hating PI Eddie Valiant stumbles on a conspiracy when he is investigating whether the wife of toon star Roger Rabbit is having an affair. This film noir comedy offers a highly original and brilliantly made mix of live action and animation. The technical quality of the visuals may not be today's standard, but the interaction between the humans and toons still looks amazingly seemless. But most importantly, the film is full of hilarious visual and verbal gags, and numerous funny cameos by classic cartoon characters. Based on Gary K. Wolf's book Who Censored Roger Rabbit?.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
1988
***
Director: Philip Kaufman
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Erland Josephson

Also known as the Unbearable Numbness of the Butt. To be fair, this story about three people and their relationship in 1960s Czechoslovakia unravels like a great novel (by Milan Kundera), bit by bit, but it's still an overlong and slightly sterile drama.

Twins
1988
***
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito, Kelly Preston, Chloe Webb

35 years ago, a group of scientists experimented with the sperm of six different fathers to produce a prime specimen. Julius Benedict turned out pretty much perfect, but the unexpected twin brother Vincent ended up a short, bald scoundrel. The boys were separated at birth. The brothers are played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny De Vito, which acts as the catalyst for the entire premise. This is a thinly scripted but rather likeable comedy with very good central performances.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream
1988
****½
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Joan Allen, Martin Landau, Frederic Forrest, Mako, Elias Koteas, Christian Slater, Nina Siemaszko

In post-World War II America, Preston Tucker, an ambitious and innovative car designer, plans to revolutionise the market with his groundbreaking car, but the Michigan authorities and the Big Three automakers in Detroit are determined to sabotage his plans. This captivating and supremely entertaining fact-based drama is an ode to ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit, which offers fascinating parallels to Francis Ford Coppola's own struggles and triumphs in Hollywood. While the entire cast is great, Jeff Bridges is a standout as as the endlessly optimistic Tucker.

Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbour Totoro)
1988
****½
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast: Chika Sakamoto, Noriko Hidaka, Hitoshi Takagi, Shigesato Itoi, Sumi Shimamoto, Naoko Tatsuka

Two small girls move to a country house with their father, while their ill mother is in the nearby hospital. In the adjacent forest the girls befriend a kind spirit. Satsuki and Mei are lovely, authentically childlike characters whose close bond is very moving. This deceptively simple but absolutely delightful animation captures perfectly the joys, griefs, fears and wonders of childhood.

Things Change
1988
**½
Director: David Mamet
Cast: Don Ameche, Joe Mantegna, Robert Prosky, J.J. Johnson, Ricky Jay

A modest comedy about a low level gangster who entertains an old man who has agreed go to jail for a crime he didn't commit. Don Ameche is enjoyable as the old simpleton who reminds you of Mr. Chance from Being There.

The Thin Blue Line
1988
****½
Director: Errol Morris
Cast:

This film made a difference. Errol Morris worked on another project when he interviewed Randall Adams, a prisoner on deathrow for killing a cop in Dallas in 1976. This powerful documentary mixes dramatisation and interviews, and questions the validity of the police investigation and the subsequent trial. Adams was acquitted soon after the film was released.

The Telephone
1988
†
Director: Rip Torn
Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Severn Darden, Amy Wright, Elliott Gould

Whoopi Goldberg talks on the phone and to herself for 90 minutes. Who pitched this one to the studio?

Talk Radio
1988
***
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Eric Bogosian, Alec Baldwin, Ellen Greene, John C. McGinley

This is an interesting one room drama about an abusive radio show host, but it's not your typical Oliver Stone film. Based on Eric Bogosian's play.

Sunset
1988
*½
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Bruce Willis, James Garner, Malcolm McDowell, Mariel Hemingway

Blake Edwards' terrible comedy in set in Hollywood in the 1920s. It's silly and plotless.

Stormy Monday
1988
**
Director: Mike Figgis
Cast: Melanie Griffith, Sting, Tommy Lee Jones, Sean Bean, James Cosmo

A dreary crime story set in Newcastle, starring Melanie Griffith and Sting. Definitely gritty but not gripping.

The Seventh Sign
1988
**½
Director: Carl Schultz
Cast: Demi Moore, Michael Biehn, Jürgen Prochnow, Peter Friedman

A half-decent religious horror film, which is clearly influenced by The Exorcist. Jürgen Prochnow is a convincing baddie and Demi Moore sighs credibly for ninety minutes.

The Serpent and the Rainbow
1988
***
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Bill Pullman, Cathy Tyson, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield, Brent Jennings

Wes Craven's captivating horror film is set in the world of voodoo and it contains some creepy scenes about being buried alive. Sadly the ending is one supernatural mess.

Scrooged
1988
*½
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, David Johansen, John Glover

A modern version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This horror comedy is neither scary nor funny, it's just plain horror.

Running On Empty
1988
***½
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: River Phoenix, Christine Lahti, Judd Hirsch, Martha Plimpton

A credible portrayal of a family who have been running from the law for years. River Phoenix is good as the son who wants to stay put.

Red Heat
1988
**
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Belushi, Peter Boyle, Ed O'Ross

A Russian policeman follows a drug lord to the US and buddies up with an American cop. The jokes that arise from the cultural differences save this standard Arnold action film. Director Walter Hill continues his downward spiral.

Rambo 3
1988
*
Director: Peter Macdonald
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Marc de Jonge, Kurtwood Smith

Sometimes reality outpaces the movie industry. John Rambo comes to save Afghanistan after the Soviets had already left. To be fair, this would be a dreadful film even without historical inaccuracies.

Rain Man
1988
****
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino, Jerry Molen, Ralph Seymour, Michael D. Roberts, Bonnie Hunt, Beth Grant, Lucinda Jenney, Barry Levinson

Charlie, a self-centered car dealer, learns that his estranged father has died and left his fortune to Raymond, his older brother he didn't even know existed. Barry Levinson's funny and moving road movie tells a story of a selfish man who learns to see things under a different light. Tom Cruise gives a believable performances as Charlie, but he is overshadowed by Dustin Hoffman's showy but brilliant turn as Raymond, who is an autistic savant. An Academy Award winner for best picture, director, screenplay and actor (Hoffman).

Punchline
1988
**½
Director: David Seltzer
Cast: Tom Hanks, Sally Field, John Goodman, Mark Rydell, Kim Greist

This comedy drama about stand-up comedians is in short supply of good jokes.

The Presidio
1988
**
Director: Peter Hyams
Cast: Sean Connery, Mark Harmon, Meg Ryan, Jack Warden, Mark Blum

Sean Connery plays an officer who helps/hinders a police investigation into a murder in the army base. This boring thriller ignores the plot (which could be an episode of a second rate procedural) and concentrates on the car chases.

Pohjanmaa
1988
***
Director: Pekka Parikka
Cast: Esko Salminen, Taneli Mäkelä, Vesa Mäkelä, Esko Nikkari

A tough and well-acted drama about three brothers. If The Field summed up the Irish mentality, this film does the same for the people from the west coast of Finland.

Pelle Erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror)
1988
****
Director: Bille August
Cast: Max von Sydow, Pelle Hvenegaard, Erik paaske, Kristina Törnqvist

A very touching drama about Swedish immigrants in Denmark in the 19th century. Max von Sydow is excellent as the sensitive father. Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film. The bleak scenery plays a key role in the story.

Out of Rosenheim (Bagdad Café)
1988
***
Director: Percy Adlon
Cast: Marianne Sägebrecht, Cch Pounder, Jack Palance, Christine Kaufmann

A simple comedy about a German woman who dumps her husband in the middle of their holiday in the U.S. This likeable film relies on mood rather than story.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
1988
**½
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Robert Englund, Rodney Eastman, Danny Hassel, Andras Jones

We head back to Freddy Krueger's origins in the half-decent fourth part, which has good scares and impressive special effects, but no surprises.

The Naked Gun
1988
****
Director: Peter Segal
Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson

This hilarious collection of verbal and visual gags and film references is based on a short-lived TV comedy Police Squad. Deadpan Leslie Nielsen is great as the hapless detective Frank Drebin. The overlong baseball finale is a bit disappointing. Followed by two sequels, The Naked Gun 2½ and 33⅓.

My Stepmother Is an Alien
1988
**
Director: Richard Benjamin
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Kim Basinger, Jon Lovitz, Alyson Hannigan, Joseph Maher

The title tells everything you need to know about this second-rate light weight comedy. Dan Aykroyd is funny and Kim Basinger is attractive, but that's not enough.

Monkey Shines
1988
***
Director: George A. Romero
Cast: Jason Beghe, John Pankow, Kate McNeil, Joyce Van Patten

George Romero's interesting but monotonous horror film about a handicapped man who has a trained monkey as his assistant.

Mississippi Burning
1988
****
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, Frances McDormand, Brad Dourif, R. Lee Ermey, Gailard Sartain, Stephen Tobolowsky, Michael Rooker, Pruitt Taylor Vince

In 1964, two FBI agents travel to the deeply racist Jessup County, Mississippi to investigate the disappearance of two Jewish and one black civil rights worker. Alan Parker's gripping and thought-provoking but occasionally monotonous drama is loosely based on real events. Gene Hackman gives a terrific performance as the charming and street-smart agent Anderson. Peter Biziou's stunning cinematography won an Academy Award.

The Milagro Beanfield War
1988
**½
Director: Robert Redford
Cast: Ruben Blades, Richard Bradford, Sonia Braga, Julie Carmen

The past and the future collide in Robert Redford's kind-hearted but meandering drama about a small town community who fight for their way of life. The ending seems awfully idealistic. Based on a novel by John Nichols.

Midnight Run
1988
****
Director: Martin Brest
Cast: Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, Dennis Farina, Yaphet Kotto

A wonderfully twisty and entertaining buddie action comedy about a bounty hunter who tries to bring a mob bookkeeper from New York to Los Angeles. The oddly laid-back Robert De Niro and the sarcastic Charles Grodin have great chemistry, and the supporting cast excels as well.

Masquerade
1988
***
Director: Bob Swaim
Cast: Rob Lowe, Meg Tilly, Kim Cattrall, Doug Savant, John Glover

A smart and entertaining but overelaborate thriller about three greedy men who plot individually and collectively to kill a rich heiress and take her money. The men are all unpleasant and by the time they've all double-crossed each other, you will have lost all interest in the outcome.

License to Drive
1988
*
Director: Greg Beeman
Cast: Corey Feldman, Corey Haim, Carol Kane, Heather Graham

An idiotic and nfunny teen comedy about a teenager who struggles to get his driver's license. The film stars the incredibly annoying Coreys, Feldman and Haim,

The Last Temptation of Christ
1988
****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, Harry Dean Stanton

Martin Scorsese's pet project is a controversial alternative look at the life of Jesus Christ. Willem Dafoe and Harvey Keitel are very good as Jesus and Judas, respectively. This long but captivating drama was adapted from Nikos Kazantzakis' novel by Paul Schrader.

Kuutamosonaatti
1988
**
Director: Olli Soinio
Cast: Tiina Björkman, Kim Gunell, Ville-Veikko Salminen, Kari Sorvali

A Finnish horror film about a model whose holiday in the countryside turns into a nightmare. This is as stupid and illogical as all the films that inspired it. Kari Sorvali as a crazy redneck is the film's saving grace.

Johnny Be Good
1988
†
Director: Bud Smith
Cast: Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr., Uma Thurman, Paul Gleason

A godawful teen film about a hotshot quarterback who is trying to decide which college to signs for. This dud is below any grading scale. Uma Thurman appears in her first role.

Homeboy
1988
**
Director: Michael Seresin
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken, Debra Feuer, Thomas Quinn

Boxer/actor Mickey Rourke wrote this overlong boxing drama, and he also gives one of his better performances in the lead. However, this isn't exactly Raging Bull. Soundtrack by Eric Clapton.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II
1988
**
Director: Tony Randel
Cast: Ashley Laurence, Clare Higgins, Kenneth Granham, Doug Bradley

A dull and dreary sequel to Hellraiser. Clive Barker's involvement is minimal and it shows. There are some immortal oneliners, though.



Heathers
1988
***½
Director: Michael Lehmann
Cast: Christian Slater, Winona Ryder, Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Kim Walker, Penelope Milford, Glenn Shadix, Lance Fenton, Patrick Labyorteaux

Veronica is a reluctant member of a clique of popular high school girls, who are all named Heather. She moves from the frying pan into the fire when she falls for J.D., a murderously rebellious new student. Michael Lehmann's directorial debut is a nasty and entertainingly obnoxious black comedy. Although this film is a true original, the hairdos are not the only aspect that has dated poorly since its release. Daniel Waters' screenplay includes some wonderful dialogue, but also elements (gay shaming, school shootings and teenage suicides) which would not pass as jokes these days.

Heartbreak Hotel
1988
**½
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: David Keith, Tuesday Weld, Charlie Schlatter, Jacque Lynn Colton

A boy loves his mom so much that he kidnaps Elvis for her. This wacky premise provides some occasional laughs but it cannot carry an entire film.

Le Grand Bleu / The Big Blue
1988
**
Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Jean Reno, Rosanna Arquette, Jean-Marc Barr, Paul Shenar

Luc Besson's overlong drama is visually spectacular but it's story about two competing divers is shallow.

Gorillas in the Mist
1988
***
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Bryan Brown, Julie Harris, John Omirah Miluwi

A gripping but sentimental true story of Dian Fossey, zoologist who traveled to Rwanda to protect the mountain gorillas from being poached to death. Sigourney Weaver gives a very strong performance in the lead.

Full Moon in Blue Water
1988
**
Director: Peter Masterson
Cast: Gene Hackman, Burgess Meredith, Teri Garr, Elias Koteas, David Doty

A modest film about a male widower, played by Gene Hackman. Burgess Meredith is funny as his father.

Frantic
1988
****
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Harrison Ford, Emmanuelle Seigner, Betty Buckley, Gérard Klein, Dominique Pinon, Yves Rénier, Robert M. Ground, John Mahoney, Jimmie Ray Weeks, Thomas M. Pollar

The wife of an American doctor mysteriously disappears from their hotel room in Paris. Faced with a language barrier and indifference from the French and American authorities, he must track down his wife with the help of a young Parisian woman. Roman Polanski's Hitchcockian thriller is smart, classy, and entertaining, but a bit too long. Despite the similarities in the premise, this is not Taken. The protagonist is an everyman who mostly has to rely on his own wits and determination. Harrison Ford is compelling in the lead and Emmanuel Seigner is delightful in her debut. The unusual score was written by Ennio Morricone.

A Fish Called Wanda
1988
****
Director: Charles Crichton
Cast: John Cleese, Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin, Maria Aitken, Tom Georgeson, Cynthia Cleese, Patricia Hayes

A criminal gang pull off a diamond heist in London. When the gang leader ends up in jail, his duplicitous American associates plan to exploit his attorney in order to find out where their boss hid the diamonds. This terrific comedy was scripted by John Cleese and it's full of memorable scenes. The characters and naturally the performances are unforgettable: John Cleese as the uptight barrister Archie, Michael Palin as the stuttering animal lover Ken, Jamie Lee Curtis as the sexy and crafty con artist Wanda, and the Academy Award winning Kevin Kline as the hilariously psychotic Otto. Some of the jokes have not dated so well in the intervening years. The same cast reunited later in Fierce Creatures.

Farewell to the King
1988
***
Director: John Milius
Cast: Nick Nolte, Nigel Havers, James Fox, Marilyn Tokuda, Frank McRae

Nick Nolte plays a war deserter who becomes a tribal leader in Borneo. The premise is odd and fascinating, and the performances are good, but the story runs out of steam in the second half. Based on Pierre Schoendoerffer's novel L'Adieu au Roi.

Eight Men Out
1988
**½
Director: John Sayles
Cast: John Cusack, Clifton James, Michale Lerner, Christopher Lloyd

A true story about eight members of Chicago White Sox who were paid to lose the 1919 World Series. John Sayles turns this interesting historical anecdote into a long, dry and dull drama. He is also wooden as one of the journalists in the film.

Earth Girls Are Easy
1988
**
Director: Julien Temple
Cast: Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, Julie Brown

An unsuccessful comedy about horny visitors from outer space. The song Cause I'm a Blonde is the highlight of the film.

Dominick and Eugene
1988
****
Director: Robert M. Young
Cast: Ray Liotta, Tom Hulce, Jamie Lee Curtis, Todd Graff, Mimi Cecchini

A well acted, enjoyable story about the bond between two very different brothers. Ray Liotta and Tom Hulce play the siblings.

Distant Thunder
1988
**½
Director: Rick Rosenthal
Cast: John Lithgow, Ralph Macchio, Kerrie Keane, Reb Brown, James Margolin

A mediocre drama about as a Vietnam veteran whose war experiences turned him into a hermit. However, now he tries to reconnect with his teenage son.
John Lithgow is great as the father, Ralph Macchio is useless as the son.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
1988
***
Director: Frank Oz
Cast: Michael Caine, Steve Martin, Glenne Headly, Anton Rodgers

An amusing and well scripted comedy about two conmen who try to outwit one another on the French Riviera. Good fun but no major surprises.

Die Hard
1988
*****
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov

A group of terrorists turn a Christmas party in a new L.A. skyscraper into a hostage situation, and the only man who can save the day (and his captured wife) is an NYPD detective John McClane. This excellent action movie laid the groundwork for its genre for the years to come, and it has influenced dozens of good and bad imitations. It also turned Bruce Willis from a TV comedian to an unlikely action hero. Despite the confined settings, the brilliant script by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza keeps coming up with fresh twists. Based on Roderick Thorp’s novel Nothing Lasts Forever. Followed by Die Hard 2, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Die Hard 4.0, and A Good Day to Die Hard.

Deadly Pursuit / Shoot to Kill
1988
***
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Cast: Sydney Poitier, Tom Berenger, Kirstie Alley, Andrew Robinson

An enjoyable and fast paced action film set in the wilderness. Tom Berenger is excellent as a hick who helps an FBI agent to catch a ruthless criminal. The overlong finale in the city is a letdown.

Dead Ringers
1988
**
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Jeremy Irons, Genevieve Bujold, Heidi Von Palleske, Barbara Gordon

David Cronenberg's cold and clinical touch ruins an intriguing premise about a pair of twins who share everything. The story gets bleaker, more confusing and less interesting towards the end. Based on the novel Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland.

The Dead Pool
1988
**
Director: Buddy Van Horn
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Liam Neeson, Patricia Clarkson, Evan C. Kim

Clint Eastwood plays Dirty Harry for the fifth and final time in this uninspired film. Jim Carrey has a small role as a rock musician who becomes the first victim of a serial killer. The members of Guns n' Roses have brief cameos. The model car chase is quite enjoyable and creative.

Dangerous Liaisons
1988
***½
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman

A sharply scripted emotional conspiracy drama set in the 18th century. John Malkovich and Glenn Close, as two ruthless manipulators, stand out in a strong cast. Based on Christopher Hampton's play which was adapted from the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.



D.O.A.
1988
***½
Director: Rocky Morton, Annabel Jankel
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Daniel Stern, Charlotte Rampling

A successful remake of the 1950 film about a man who tries to find the person who poisoned him before he dies. The directors have a background in music videos, but luckily the visual look is not an end in itself.

A Cry in the Dark
1988
***
Director: Fred Schepisi
Cast: Meryl Streep, Sam Neill, Bruce Myles, Charles Tingwell, Nick Tate

A fascinating but not entirely balanced real life story about an Australian family who lose their newborn baby. The mother is charged with murder but she blames a dingo. Meryl Streep is in fine form.

Crocodile Dundee II
1988
**
Director: John Cornell
Cast: Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski, John Meillon, Hechter Ubarry

A disappointing sequel which rehashes the original in reverse. This time the action begins in New York and ends in Australia. The films offers with less humour and more violence.

Coming to America
1988
***
Director: John Landis
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones, John Amos, Madge Sinclair, Shari Headley, Eriq La Salle, Frankie Faison, Allison Dean

Prince Akeem, the pampered heir to the throne of Zamunda, refuses his arranged bride and travels to Queens to experience some real life. Director John Landis and Eddie Murphy reunite for a likeable but not terribly funny culture clash comedy. Two characters from Trading Places, their previous collaboration, have brief but amusing cameos. Murphy and Arsenio Hall both play multiple characters. Followed by a 2021 sequel.

Cocktail
1988
*
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Tom Cruise, Elisabeth Shue, Bryan Brown, Lisa Banes, Kelly Lynch

Compared to this horrid Tom Cruise vehicle about a hotshot bartender, Top Gun was a masterpiece. Plenty of hit songs and beautiful people, but no surprises in the plot department.

Cinema Paradiso
1988
****
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Cast: Philippe Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Antonella Attili, Pupella Maggio, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Agnese Nano

After World War II, the local movie house Cinema Paradiso is the focal point of the village of Giancaldo. The playful 8-year-old Salvatore is drawn to the movies and the man behind the scenes, projectionist Alfredo. This funny, warm-hearted, and nostalgic coming-of-age story is a moving tribute to the power of cinema. The characters are wonderfully drawn and portrayed. A lovely score by Ennio and Andrea Morricone. An Academy Award winner for best foreign language film.

Camille Claudel
1988
***
Director: Bruno Nuytten
Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Gerard Depardieu, Laurent Grevill, Alain Cuny

A fascinating but terribly long biopic of famed French sculptress Camille Claudel who had a tumultuous love/work rlationship with Auguste Rodin. Period detail is top notch and Isabelle Adjani is convincing in the lead.

Bull Durham
1988
***
Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Trey Wilson

Baseball films are usually a waste of time, but this one is rather watchable. There's some snappy dialogue, palpable sexual tension and Tim Robbins gives a likeable goofy performance.

Bright Lights, Big City
1988
*½
Director: James Bridges
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Kiefer Sutherland, Phoebe Cates, Swoosie Kurtz

This bleak look at the drug-fuelled yuppie lifestyle in 1980s New York offers 110 minutes of miserablism without a second of inspiration. Michael J. Fox seems lost for the entire duration of the film, or maybe he's on drugs for real. Based on Jay McInerney's novel.

The Bourne Identity
1988
**½
Director: Roger Young
Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Jacklyn Smith, Anthony Quayle, Donald Moffat

A captivating story (with mediocre TV actors) about a mysterious amnesiac Jason Bourne. When his memory comes back, so does his violent past. Robert Ludlum's novel was filmed again in 2002 when it launched a very successful franchise.

Blue Jean Cop / Shakedown
1988
**
Director: James Glickenhaus
Cast: Peter Weller, Sam Elliott, Patricia Charbonneau, Blanche Baker

A lawyer and a cop team up to fight police corruption in this run-of-the-mill crime film. Just when you expect something interesting to happen, it ends.

The Blob
1988
*½
Director: Chuck Russell
Cast: Shawnee Smith, Donovan Leitch, Ricky Paull Goldin, Kevin Dillon

A stupid and only unintentionally funny horror film remake about murderous gooy substance. The script (by Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont) repeats every cliché in the genre, but it's not camp enough to be enjoyable.

Big Business
1988
***
Director: Jim Abrahams
Cast: Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin, Fred Ward, Edward Herrmann, Michele Placido

A clever and well made comedy about two pairs of identical twins who get mixed up at birth. Juicy dual roles for the leading ladies.

Big
1988
***
Director: Penny Marshall
Cast: Tom Hanks, Elisabeth Perkins, John Heard, Robert Loggia

12-year-old Josh, sick of being a kid, makes a wish that comes through. He wakes up in a grown man's body. While he is forced to hide from his family, he lands a job at a toy company. This slow-paced fantasy comedy is adorably innocent or deeply disturbing, depending on your viewpoint. There are some troubling story aspects that the script simply decides to ignore, like the fact that Josh's mother thinks the boy was kidnapped or that a grown woman seduces a young boy. Nevertheless, Tom Hanks gives a perfectly balanced performance in the lead.

Beetle Juice
1988
**½
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Michael Keaton, Jeffrey Jones

Tim Burton buries his fairly funny ghost comedy under a mountain of special effects, with less than aweinspiring results. Michael Keaton in the lead doesn't help either.

The Bear
1988
***
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Bart, Douce, Jack Wallace, Tcheky Karyo, Andre Lacombe

A cute and well made live action film about a bear cub who comes of age. The trained animals give impressive anthropomorphic performances, which means that the story is pure make-believe.

Bad Taste
1988
**½
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Peter Jackson, Pete O'Herne, Mike Minett, Terry Potter, Graig Smith

Peter Jackson's cult film about zombie aliens looks like a home video and its humour is of the worst taste. There are some hilarious gags, but ultimately it's an overlong joke which is not improved by its not very special effects.

Ariel
1988
**½
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Turo Pajala, Susanna Haavisto, Matti Pellonpää, Eetu Hilkamo, Erkki Pajala, Matti Jaaranen, Hannu Viholainen, Jorma Markkula, Tarja Keinänen, Eino Kuusela

A jobless miner moves from Northern Finland to Helsinki, but his life turns from bad to worse. A romance with a single mother is the only bright spot in his life. Following Shadows in Paradise, this is the second part in a so-called Proletariat Trilogy, which concludes with The Match Factory Girl. This overstylised and absurdist dark comedy is the weakest of the trio. Apparently Kaurismäki wrote the script over a weekend, and I can definitely believe that. Things happen for no rhyme or reason and the characters are ready to make stupid decisions without a moment's hesitation. However, they are never responsible for their own actions, just unlucky or ruthlessly exploited.

Alien Nation
1988
***
Director: Graham Baker
Cast: James Caan, Mandy Patinkin, Terence Stamp, Kevin Major Howard

A likeable scifi yarn set in the future where humans and aliens live side by side. This is a rather heavy-handed allegory on racism, and the ending is weak.

The Adventures of Baron Münchausen
1988
***½
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: John Neville, Eric Idle, Sarah Polley, Oliver Reed, Charles McKeown

A fascinating, ambitious and visually spectacular story about Baron Münchausen and his tall tales. Terry Gilliam's film is also wacky and pompous, which is probably why it was a massive box office flop. Uma Thurman has a small but very memorable role.

Action Jackson
1988
*
Director: Graig R. Baxley
Cast: Carl Weathers, Vanity, Graig T. Nelson, Sharon Stone, Bill Duke

One of producer Joel Silver's first action films is clumsy, cheap and badly made. Not the kind of characteristics associated with the consequent producer of Lethal Weapon, Die Hard and The Matrix.

Accused
1988
***
Director: Jonathan Kaplan
Cast: Jodie Foster, Kelly McGillis; Bernie Coulson, Leo Rossi, Ann Hearn

A manipulative and sensationalistic "erotic thriller" about rape. Jodie Foster won an Oscar for her strong performance as the victim who becomes the accused. The crucial scene is left to the end, which is a good call.

Accidental Tourist
1988
***½
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: William Hurt, Geena Davis, Kathleen Turner, Amy Wright, Bill Pullman

A charming but heavy-going story about a man who tries to put his life back together after his wife dumps him. William Hurt is good in a tricky role and Geena Davis win an Oscar for her supporting performance.

Above the Law / Nico
1988
*
Director: Andrew Davis
Cast: Steven Seagal, Sharon Stone, Pam Grier, Henry Silva, Ron Dean

Steven Seagal's film debut is probably no better or worse than any of the crappy action films he has made since. He plays a detective (and ex-CIA agent) who has a run-in with his old nemesis. Sharon Stone plays his wife.

18 Again
1988
*½
Director: Paul Flaherty
Cast: George Burns, Charlie Schlatter, Tony Roberts, Anita Morris

A familiar and uninspired story about an old man and a young man who temporarily change bodies. George Burns does his best as the (originally) old man. See Big instead.

The Witches of Eastwick
1987
****
Director: George Miller
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, Veronica Cartwright

The Devil himself comes to town and seduces three women in this enjoyable horror comedy from John Updike's novel. Sadly the final 30 minutes offer an overload of special effects. Jack Nicholson's over the top performance is fun to watch.

Wisdom
1987
*
Director: Emilio Estevez
Cast: Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright

Emilio Estevez directs himself in this clumsy, implausible and populistic story about a modern day Robin Hood who steals loan and mortgage documents from banks.

White Water Summer
1987
*½
Director: Jeff Bleckner
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Sean Astin, Jonathan Ward, K.C. Martel, Matt Adler

A bunch of nerds join a survival trip to become men. The story is stupid, but the film is ultimately destroyed by its protagonist who keeps giving dull monologues to the camera.

Weeds
1987
***
Director: John Hancock
Cast: Nick Nolte, Rita Taggart, Lane Smith, William Forsythe, Joe Mantegna

This weird but intriguing story about a theatre group made up of convicts doesn't quite hold together. Nick Nolte is fine in the lead.

Wanted: Dead Or Alive
1987
*½
Director: Gary Sherman
Cast: Rutger Hauer, Gene Simmons, Robert Guillaume, Mel Harris

A terrible low-budget action film in which Rutger Hauer for once plays a good guy who's after a nasty Arab terrorist played by Gene Simmons of Kiss. The unintentionally funny ending is just about the only positive thing you can say about the film.

Wall Street
1987
****
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, Darryl Hannah, Hal Holbrook

Oliver Stone's follow-up to Platoon is a captivating drama and a scathing commentary on greed and moral corruption. Michael Douglas is deliciously nasty and charming in his Oscar winning role as Gordon Gekko, a ruthless stock market manipulator who gives a young go-getter a chance of a lifetime. Followed by Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps 23 years later.

The Untouchables
1987
****
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Charles Martin Smith, Robert De Niro, Andy Garcia, Billy Drago, Patricia Clarkson, Richard Bradford

Brian De Palma's assured and supremely entertaining crime drama is set in 1930s Chicago, where Treasury agent Eliot Ness puts together a small team of uncorruptible agents to uphold prohibition and put Al Capone behind bars. David Mamet's screenplay is loosely based on a book by Oscar Fraley and Eliot Ness. The Academy Award winning Sean Connery as a veteran cop and Robert De Niro as Al Capone are both terrific. The climactic railway station showdown (and Potemkin homage) is its own little gem. Ennio Morricone wrote the moving score.

Tough Guys Don't Dance
1987
**
Director: Norman Mailer
Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Isabella Rossellini, Debra Sandlund, Wings Hauser

An alcoholic writer wakes up from a long binge and discovers a pool of blood. Norman Mailer directed his own novel and the result is a dull and confusing thriller which plays on several time levels, all of them equally uninteresting. A better cast could've helped a bit. There's some nice black humour, though.

Tin Men
1987
****
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito, Barbara Hershey, John Mahoney

A charmingly enjoyable comedy about two aluminum-siding salesmen whose feud in 1960s Baltimore escalates and turns personal. The cast is great and the soundtrack is full of excellent period music (this is before it became a cliché).

Throw Momma from the Train
1987
**½
Director: Danny De Vito
Cast: Danny DeVito, Billy Crystal, Anne Ramsey, Kim Greist, Kate Mulgrew

This darkly comedic version of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train isn't all that funny. Barry Sonnenfeld's camera work is showy, though.

Three Men and a Baby
1987
*
Director: Leonard Nimoy
Cast: Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson, Nancy Travis

Three single, hunky roommates are forced to bring up a baby in this cheesy and manipulative comedy which relies solely on the charm of the cute child. Based on the French film Trois hommes et un couffin . Followed by Three Men and a Little Lady in 1990.

Tai-Pan
1987
*½
Director: Daryl Duke
Cast: Bryan Brown, Joan Chen, John Stanton, Bill Leadbitter, Tim Guinee

A lifeless romantic adventure based on James Clavell's novel and starring Bryan Brown.

Suspect
1987
***
Director: Peter Yates
Cast: Cher, Dennis Quaid, Liam Neeson, John Mahoney, Joe Mantegna

A by-the-numbers court drama with a good cast. Cher plays a public defender whose deaf-mute client is charged with murder.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
1987
*½
Director: Sidney J. Furie
Cast: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Jackie Copper, Mark McClure, Jon Cryer, Sam Wanamaker, Mark Pillow, Mariel Hemingway, Margot Kidder

While the world is at the brink of nuclear war, Lex Luthor concocts another plan to defeat his arch nemesis. He steals Superman's DNA and creates Nuclear Man, a fierce villain powered by the sun. Christopher Reeve's final Superman movie is all over the place. The plot is stupid and full of holes, and the special effects look extremely cheap. After a break in Superman III, Clark Kent and Lois Lane get back on the will they/won't they seesaw, and Mariel Hemingway's rivalling love interest is nothing but a red herring. At 90 minutes, this still feels like the longest of the four movies.

Summer School
1987
**
Director: Carl Reiner
Cast: Mark Harmon, Kirstie Alley, Robin Thomas, Dean Cameron

Mark Harmon has to teach in the summer school against his will, but of course he slowly accepts his responsibility. A predictable and educational film.

Stand and Deliver
1987
**½
Director: Ramon Menendez
Cast: Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips, Rosana de Soto, Andy Garcia

An earnest but quite redundant film about an unrelenting maths teacher who teaches a group of tough kids. Clear influence on Dangerous Minds.

Stakeout
1987
***½
Director: John Badham
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Madeleine Stowe, Emilio Estevez, Aidan Quinn

An enjoyable action comedy about two detectives who are put on a stakeout assignment. Richard Dreyfuss is splendid as the detective who begins to fall in love with his target. However, the climax is overlong and not particularly funny. Followed by Another Stakeout.

Spaceballs
1987
***½
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman, John Candy, Mel Brooks, Daphne Zuniga, Dick Van Patten, George Wyner, Joan Rivers

The evil President of planet Spaceball schemes to steal the atmosphere from the neighboring planet of Druidia, but thankfully Lone Starr and his furry companion Barf are available to save the day. Mel Brooks' amusing science fiction parody revolves almost purely around the original Star Wars trilogy. However, this time the jokes have dated much better than in some of his other comedies.

Someone to Watch Over Me
1987
**
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Tom Berenger, Mimi Rogers, Lorraine Bracco, Jerry Orbach

A detective falls in love with his witness in this completely predictable drama. A waste of the talents of Tom Berenger and Ridley Scott.

Some Kind of Wonderful
1987
**
Director: Howard Deutch
Cast: Eric Stoltz, Lea Thompson, Mary Stuart Masterson, Graig Sheffer

A teen film without a shred of originality. The boy tries to get the most popular girl in school with the help of a less popular girl, who turns out to be the right one.

Slam Dance
1987
***½
Director: Wayne Wang
Cast: Tom Hulce, Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, Virginia Madsen, Adam Ant

An enjoyable and stylish thriller about a cartoonist who is engulfed in a murder plot. Tom Hulce in a rare starring role.

The Sicilian
1987
**½
Director: Michael Cimino
Cast: Christopher Lambert, John Turturro, Terence Stamp, Barbara Sukowa

A mediocre biopic of Salvatore Giuliano, the real-life Robin Hood of Sicily. The film is pompous and its star (Christopher Lambert) is lifeless.

September
1987
*½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Mia Farrow, Denholm Elliott, Sam Waterston, Jack Warden

Woody Allen's cold and numbing chamber drama from his Ingmar Bergman period. One of his weakest films.

The Secret of My Success
1987
**½
Director: Herbert Ross
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Helen Slater, Richard Jordan, Margaret Whitton

A marginally funny wish fulfilment comedy about a graduate who rises from rags to riches. Michael J. Fox is on autopilot and Helen Slater is terribly stale as his love interest.

Running Man
1987
**
Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Jim Brown

A fairly interesting idea about extreme reality TV is sadly wasted in a film that uses violence purely for entertainment purposes. Based on Stephen King's book.

Roxanne
1987
***½
Director: Fred Schepisi
Cast: Steve Martin, Daryl Hannah, Rick Rossovich, Shelley Duvall

Steve Martin's update of Cyrano de Bergerac is a funny and sympathetic comedy about a shy, big nosed man. Martin is maybe not at his funniest but surely at his sweetest.

Robocop
1987
*****
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ron Cox, Curtwood Smith, Daniel O'Herlihy, Miguel Ferrer, Ray Wise, Paul McCrane, Jesse D. Goins

In the near future, Detroit is overrun by crime and the city's police department is controlled by OCP, a massive consumer product company. When officer Murphy is shot on duty, OCP converts him into a cybernetically enhanced RoboCop. This highly original and brilliantly satirical science fiction action movie was scripted by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. Paul Verhoeven's middle name is excess, and his best English-language feature is extremely violent but irresistibly entertaining. Followed by RoboCop 2 and 3, and a 2014 reboot.

Rampage
1987
*
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: Michael Biehn, Alex McArthur, Nicholas Campbell, John Harkins

The guards open the handcuffs so a serial killer can eat a donut. He kills the guards and escapes. That scene pretty much sums up the quality of this abysmal thriller.

Raising Arizona
1987
*****
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Trey Wilson, Sam McMurray, Frances McDormand, Randall "Tex" Cobb, T.J. Kuhn

H.I. and Edwina are a childless couple who decide to kidnap a baby from a wealthy business tycoon whose wife has just given birth to quintuplets. They attempt to start a family while they evade the law, H.I's old cellmates, and a ruthless bounty hunter. The second feature from the Coen brothers is a brilliantly funny and endlessly energetic comedy. The film is certainly goofy, sometimes exceedingly so, but the pace is so relentless that you won't have time to care. Barry Sonnenfeld's kinetic camerawork is breathtaking and the cast is great. Nicolas Cage will probably never give an equally likeable performance. The 15 minute prologue deserves to be mentioned separately.

Radio Days
1987
***½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Julie Kavner, Seth Green, Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow, Michael Tucker

Woody reminisces the days when radio was the centrepiece of every household, i.e. the 1940s. Little vignettes about a Jewish family in New York are juxtaposed against public events of the time, especially those related to radio celebrities. A charming and entertaining if not completely satisfactory nostalgia piece.

Prison
1987
**
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Lane Smith, Viggo Mortensen, Chelsea Field, Andre De Shields

A supernatural low-budget horror film. It was shot in a real prison, but that doesn't help when the script is rubbish.

The Principal
1987
**
Director: Christopher Cain
Cast: James Belushi, Louis Gossett Jr., Rae Dawn Chong, Michael Wright

James Belushi tries his best as a principal of a high school in a tough neighbourhood. The idea is nice but the film isn't.

Princess Bride
1987
**
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Gary Elwes, Mandy Parinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest

For some reason this unfunny, clumsy and visually primitive adventure comedy has a lot of fans. Sounds like a typical cult film.

Prince of Darkness
1987
****
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Donald Pleasance, Lisa Blount, Jameson Parker, Victor Wong

A group of scientists and a vicar discover Satan in the basement of a derelict church. John Carpenter's last memorable work is a gripping, dark and gloomy religious horror film.

Predator
1987
**
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Bill Duke

A heavily overrated action film about soldiers, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who encounter an alien life form in the jungle. Dull and uninteresting. Followed by Predator 2.

A Prayer for the Dying
1987
***½
Director: Mike Hodges
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Bob Hoskins, Alan Bates, Sammi Davis, Liam Neeson

Mickey Rourke was at the peak of his career when he starred in this enjoyable drama about an IRA hitman who wants to pull out of the game. The redundant subplots (the blind girl and the terrorist colleagues) weaken the film. Based on a novel by Jack Higgins.

Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol
1987
*
Director: Jim Drake
Cast: Steve Guttenberg, Bubba Smith, David Graf, Michael Winslow

The fourth part has no memorable jokes. Having lost all his dignity by now, Steve Guttenberg gave up the series after this one.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles
1987
****
Director: John Hughes
Cast: Steve Martin, John Candy, Laila Robins, Michael McKean, Kevin Bacon

Two strangers try to fly home from New York to Chicago in time for Thanksgiving. but everything possible goes wrong and the men are forced to travel together with every conceivable mode of transport. John Hughes' influential buddy comedy is a hilarious and ultimately moving clash of different personalities. The characters are nicely drawn and wonderfuly played Steve Martin and John Candy.

The Pick-Up Artist
1987
*½
Director: James Toback
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Molly Ringwald, Dennis Hopper, Danny Aiello

A predictably educational teen film. Young Robert Downey Jr. tries to launch his career as a teenage womanizer.

Petos
1987
**
Director: Taavi Kassila
Cast: Paavo Pentikäinen, Eeva Litmanen, Martti Tschokkinen, Pekka Räty

Before he became a yoga teacher, Taavi Kassila directed this uninspired true story about a real-life Finnish bank robber who gained notoriety in the 1950s.

Overboard
1987
**
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Edward Herrmann, Katherine Helmond

A sympathetic but utterly obvious romantic comedy about an arrogant heiress who loses her memory. The film stars a real life couple, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

Over the Top
1987
*
Director: Menahem Golan
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Robert Loggia, Susan Blakely, Rick Zumwalt

Sylvester Stallone scripted this stupid and formulaic Rocky rehash. Now he is the arm wrestling champion of the world.

Outrageous Fortune
1987
**
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cast: Bette Midler, Shelley Long, Robert Prosky, Peter Coyote, John Schuck

Two women who can't stand each other find out that they've been dating the same man. This mildly funny comedy turns into a mess in the end. The female leads are good and Robert Prosky has a funny double role.

No Way Out
1987
****
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Kevin Costner, Sean Young, Gene Hackman, Will Patton, Howard Duff, George Dzundza, Jason Bernard, Iman, Fred Dalton Thompson

When Secretary of Defense accidentally kills his mistress, there is a cover-up to pin the blame on an illusive KGB sleeper agent. The investigation is led by Navy officer Tom Farrell, who knows that all the evidence will falsely point to him because he dated the same woman. This entertaining Cold War thriller offers sustained suspense and terrific twists, although it could have perhaps left out the one in the final five minutes. Robert Garland's screenplay is based on Kenneth Fearing's 1946 novel The Big Clock, which was previously filmed in 1948 and 1976. Maurice Jarre's soundtrack is wonderfully weird.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
1987
***
Director: Charles Russell
Cast: Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, Patricia Arquette, Larry Fishburne

In the third film Freddy Krueger invades the dreams of the kids who are placed in a psychiatric hospital. Along with the original this is probably the most successful part in the series.

Near Dark
1987
**
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein

Kathryn Bigelow's murky vampire film is criminally overrated. It mixes horror and western influences, but the end product is dull.

Nadine
1987
*
Director: Robert Benton
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Rip Torn, Gwen Verdon, Glenne Headly

A terrible comedy about a woman who resorts to her ex-husband's help to save her face. Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger waste away their talents in a film which doesn't have a story worth of five minutes.

Moonstruck
1987
***
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis, Danny Aiello, Julie Bovasso, Louis Guss, John Mahoney, Feodor Chaliapin Jr.

Loretta accepts a marriage proposal, but while her fiancé is away, she falls in love with his younger brother. This silly and sympathetic romantic comedy revolves around Italian-American families living in New York. The performances are lively and relaxed (apart from Nicolas Cage), and Cher and Olivia Dukakis were singled out for Academy Awards. However, John Patrick Shanley's Oscar winning screenplay is the weakest aspect of the film. The events unfold too fast and too easily, and there ie barely a believable moment in the 90 minutes.

Matewan
1987
****
Director: John Sayles
Cast: Chris Cooper, Will Oldham, Mary McDonnell, James Earl Jones

John Sayles' captivating real-life story about a miners strike in the 1920s. This drama builds tension slowly towards its violent climax.

Masters of the Universe
1987
*
Director: Gary Goddard
Cast: Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Courteney Cox, James Tolkan

Is this a drama or a comedy? This silly film based on action figures is unintentionally funny in any case. He-Man and Skeletor are having a war on the streets, but nobody seems to be bothered, least of all the audience.

Malone
1987
**
Director: Harley Cokliss
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Cliff Robertson, Kenneth McMillan, Cynthia Gibb

Burt Reynolds cleans a town of corruption in a predictable action film.

Making Mr. Right
1987
***
Director: Susan Seidelman
Cast: John Malkovich, Ann Magnuson, Glenne Headly, Ben Masters

A scientist falls in love with an android in this mediocre comedy. John Malkovich is fun to watch as the love object.

The Lost Boys
1987
**
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Kiefer Sutherland, Dianne Wiest

Two brothers have a face-off with teenage vampires in this glitzy cult film. It's a typical Joel Schumacher product, vacuous but good looking.

The Living Daylights
1987
*½
Director: John Glen
Cast: Timothy Dalton, Maryam D'Abo, Jeroen Krabbe, Joe Don Baker

Timothy Dalton's first appearance as 007 is one of the dullest films in the franchise. He is forgettable, and so is Maryam D'Abo as the Bond girl and Jeroen Krabbe as the villain (a defecting KGB agent).

Like Father, Like Son
1987
*
Director: Rod Daniel
Cast: Dudley Moore, Kirk Cameron, Margaret Colin, Catherine Hicks

A stupid and unoriginal teen film about father and son who exchange bodies (a bit like in 18 Again and href=/search2.php?query=228>Big). Dudley Moore adds insult to injury.

Lethal Weapon
1987
***
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Mitchell Ryan, Tom Atkins, Darlene Love, Traci Wolfe, Jackie Swanson, Steve Kahan

After a young woman dies under mysterious circumstances, Roger Murtaugh, a veteran detective and family man, is partnered with Martin Riggs, a younger colleague who has become a loose cannon following his wife's tragic death. This iconic buddy cop action movie, which was scripted by Shane Black, has some exciting set pieces and nice banter between two well-written and well-played characters. However, in the final third, the events and the detectives turn rather unpleasant, and the climactic fist fight is just dumb. Followed by Lethal Weapon 2 and two other sequels, plus a TV spin-off (2016-2019).

The Last Emperor
1987
****
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Cast: John Lone, Peter O'Toole, Joan Chen, Ying Ruocheng, Victor Wong

A long and visually impressive but occasionally heavy-going spectacle about the last Emperor of China. The film was shot in the authentic locations in Beijing. John Lone is good in the title role. A winner of nine Academy Awards.

Lain ulkopuolella
1987
***
Director: Ville Mäkelä
Cast: Taneli Mäkelä, Kari Heiskanen, Antti Litja, Pirjo Luoma-aho

A well-acted and gripping but not entirely credible Finnish drama about rape and its repercussions.

Jaws: The Revenge
1987
*
Director: Joseph Sargent
Cast: Lorraine Gray, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles, Karen Young

The great white returns, and this time it's personal. The third sequel to Jaws is a mind-numbing and neverending thriller that features a ridiculously stiff rubber shark.

Ishtar
1987
*
Director: Elaine May
Cast: Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin

Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman play a a pair of second-rate singers whose gig in Morocco turns into an international incident. This turkey was a massive box office flop, and the reasons are clear. There's hardly any plot to tie the unfunny jokes together.

Ironweed
1987
**
Director: Hector Babenco
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Carroll Baker, Michael O'Keefe

Thanks to the attractive cast, you can just about watch this overlong drama about homeless people. Tom Waits is very strong in a supporting role. Based on William Kennedy's novel.

Innerspace
1987
***½
Director: Joe Dante
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Short, Kevin McCarthy, Fiona Lewis, Robert Picardo, Vernon Wells, Henry Gibson, Wendy Schaal

Just as a group of scientists are about to minituarise a pod with its pilot and inject it inside a rabbit's body, the bad guys bust in and the pod ends up inside a bumbling hypochondriac. Joe Dante's anatomical adventure was inspired by Fantastic Voyage, but he takes a more comedic approach to the proceedings. The resulting film is enjoyable if you're a fan of Martin Short's comedy. The Oscar winning visual effects have stood the test of time amazingly well.

The House On Carroll Street
1987
**
Director: Peter Yates
Cast: Kelly McGillis, Jeff Daniels, Mandy Patinkin, Jessica Tandy, Jonathan Hogan

In the 1950s a tarnished woman overhears an argument which whets her curiosity. The story is promising, but this sloppy film is almost free of suspense. The Hitchcock references are a bit too blatant.

House of Games
1987
****
Director: David Mamet
Cast: Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, Mike Nussbaum, Lilia Skala, Ricky Jay

David Mamet's directorial debut is probably his finest film. This is a sharply written and cleverly constructed con drama. Lindsay Crouse is brilliant as a self-assured female psychiatrist who doesn't take humiliation very well.

Helsinki Napoli All Night Long
1987
**
Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Cast: Kari Väänänen, Roberta Manfredi, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, Samuel Fuller,

Mika Kaurismäki's euro thriller is set in Berlin. This story about a Finnish-Italian couple is a slow and aimless yawner. There are some famous directors cast in supporting roles, such as Wim Wenders and Samuel Fuller, the last of whom has some extremely phony dialogue.

Hellraiser
1987
****
Director: Clive Barker
Cast: Andrew Robinson, Ashley Laurence, Clare Higgins, Sean Chapman

A man who has been through hell needs human blood to rebuild his body in this modern horror classic which was written and directed by Clive Barker. Full of sharp and funny dialogue, but sadly the ending with its not at all special effects is a slight letdown. Followed by Hellbound: Hellraiser II.

Heat
1987
*
Director: R.M. Richards
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Karen Young, Peter MacNicol, Howard Hesseman

Burt Reynolds in a bottom of the barrel crime film. Not a drop of originality and even the same old stuff is done sloppily.

Harry and the Hendersons
1987
***
Director: William Dear
Cast: John Lithgow, Melinda Dillon, Margaret Langrick, David Suchet

This tale of a family who bring a Bigfoot home from the woods follows the story structure of E.T. Rick Baker's make-up work and John Lithgow's performance are worth the watch.

Hamlet liikemaailmassa (Hamlet Goes Business)
1987
**½
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Pirkka-Pekka Petelius, Esko Salminen, Kati Outinen, Elina Salo, Esko Nikkari, Kari Väänänen, Puntti Valtonen, Mari Rantasila, Turo Pajala, Aake Kalliala

This black and white dark comedy reimagines Shakespeare's Hamlet in a contemporary corporate setting. Hamlet, a modern-day businessman, navigates betrayal and revenge after his uncle kills his father and marries his mother. Aki Kaurismäki's fourth feature must be the most plot-heavy work in his catalogue, and perhaps that is why it is not working. The director's emotionless deadpan style clashes with the complicated story about ambition and deceit, and it feels like the film is just going through the motions.


Hamburger Hill
1987
**½
Director: John Irvin
Cast: Anthony Barrile, Michale Patrick Boatman, Don Cheadle, Michael Dolan

A fact-based Vietnam War film about a battle for a strategically meaningless (but symbolically vital) hill that ended in a bloodbath. The film has no real lead characters, and this is both its strength and its weakness. The continuous fighting also becomes monotonous.

Good Morning, Vietnam
1987
****
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, Tung Thanh Tran, Bruno Kirby, Chintara Sukapatana, Robert Wuhl, J. T. Walsh, Noble Willingham, Richard Edson, Richard Portnow

In 1965, Armed Forces Network DJ Adrian Cronauer arrives in Saigon. His irreverent attitude and unconventional humour endear him to the troops but land him in trouble with his superior officers. Robin Williams gives a wild, whirlwind of a performance in this fictionalised story about a real-life AFN DJ. His radio shows and English courses include plenty of laughs, but the film also take a poignant look at military censorship and how the Vietnam War affected the local people.

A Gathering of Old Men
1987
***
Director: Volker Schlöndorf
Cast: Louis Gossett Jr., James Michael Bailey, Holly Hunter, Will Patton

A short, simple and believable story about a short uprising of black men in racist Louisiana.

Gardens of Stone
1987
**½
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: James Cann, Anjelica Huston, James Earl Jones, D.B. Sweeney

Francis Ford Coppola made the ultimate Vietnam War film in Apocalypse Now. His second shot at the subject moves the action from the jungle to the homefront. This drama is touching but trivial. The good cast does its best, nevertheless.

Full Metal Jacket
1987
****
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Mathew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Baldwin

U.S. marines go through dehumanising training but are still not prepared for the war that awaits for them in Vietnam. Stanley Kubrick's excellent war film has one major weakness: the first half in training is so riveting that the second half in battle can't possibly match it. A fine cast of unknowns. Filmed in England. Based on Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers.


The Fourth Protocol
1987
**
Director: John Mackenzie
Cast: Roy Scheider, Pierce Brosnan, Joanna Cassidy, Ned Beatty

This overlong Cold War thriller holds back the suspence until the last few minutes. Based on Frederick Forsyth's novel. Pierce Brosnan plays a nasty KGB agent.

Five Corners
1987
**
Director: Tony Bill
Cast: Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins, John Turturro, Todd Graff, Elisabeth Berridge

A lame drama about a group of people in New York City in the 1960s. A great cast has nothing to do for 1½ hours.

Fatal Attraction
1987
**
Director: Adrian Lyne
Cast: Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer, Ellen Hamilton Latzen

A married man has a one night stand with a woman who refuses to leave him or his family alone. Or alternatively, this is a story of a married man who knocks up and dumps a woman who fights for her rights. This hit thriller is very well acted but ultra-conservative and extremely manipulative. The ending was famously reshot to please the bloodthirsty audience.

Extreme Prejudice
1987
**
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Michael Ironside, Maria Conchita Alonso

A sweaty and testosterone-fuelled film about old friends who are now at odds with each other. All characters are equally slimy and unappealing, so who cares who dies.

Evil Dead 2
1987
**½
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Srah Berry, Dan Hicks, Theodore Raimi, Kassie Wesley

The remaining survivor continues his fight against demonic possession in this tongue in cheek sequel to The Evil Dead. There's some nice pit black humour when the protagonist loses the control over one of his hands, but the film on the whole is pretty tiresome. Followed by Army of Darkness in 1993.

Empire of the Sun
1987
**½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson, Nigel Havers

A young boy gets lost from his parents in Shanghai during WW2 and ends up spending years in an internment camp. This drama is beautifully done, but the story leaves you indifferent. Young Christian Bale does well in the lead. Based on J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel.

Eat the Rich
1987
*½
Director: Peter Richardson
Cast: Nosher Powell, Lanah Pellay, Fiona Richmond, Ronald Allen

A lazy and tasteless cannibal comedy (pun intended).

Dragnet
1987
***
Director: Tom Mankiewicz
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, Christopher Plummer, Harry Morgan

A moderately funny comedy based on an old TV series. Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd are a funny yet diverse pair of detectives.

Cry Freedom
1987
**
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Denzel Washington, Kevin Kline, Penelope Wilton, Kevin McNally

Apartheid in South-Africa is a worthy subject, but Richard Attenborough's half-hearted drama spends too much time on the troubles of a white middle class family, when the entire country is about to implode.

Cop
1987
***½
Director: James B. Harris
Cast: James Woods, Lesley Ann Warren, Charles Durning, Charles Haid

This otherwise typical police film is held together by sharp direction and a convincing performance by James Woods. A snappy ending. Based on a James Ellroy novel.

Cobra Verde
1987
***
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Klaus Kinski, King Ampaw, Jose Lewgoy, Nana Agyefi Kwame II

The last film Werner Herzog made with Klaus Kinski is a story of a 19th century thief whose assignment to pick up slaves from Africa doesn't quite go as planned. However, the story is secondary to the spectacle. Herzog visits some of his favourite themes and paints the screen with some striking images. Not one of the duo's best pictures but worth seeing all the same.

Can't Buy Me Love
1987
*½
Director: Steve Rash
Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Amanda Peterson, Courtney Gains, Tina Caspary

An extremely predictable teen film about a nerd who hires the school beauty to play his girlfriend.

Burglar
1987
*
Director: Hugh Wilson
Cast: Whoopie Goldberg, Bob Goldthwait, G.W. Bailey, Lesley Ann Warren

Whoopie Goldberg plays a retired burglar, but it looks like the cameras were rolling before there was even a script treatment. This comedy is dull as hell.


Broadcast News
1987
***
Director: James L. Brooks
Cast: Holly Hunter, William Hurt, Albert Brooks, Robert Prosky, Lois Chiles

James L. Brooks follows in the footsteps of Network with his realistic behind-the-scenes portrayal of TV news (and commantary on the ethics of journalism). The story is bookended with an inventive prologue and epilogue. Jack Nicholson has an amusing cameo.

Boss' Wife
1987
†
Director: Ziggy Steinberg
Cast: Daniel Stern, Arielle Dombasle, Fisher Stevens, Melanie Mayron

What to do when your boss' wife fancies you? This teethgrindingly awful comedy has no answers, and no laughs.

Blind Date
1987
**
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Bruce Willis, Kim Basinger, John Larroquette, William Daniels

In his first starring tole Bruce Willis has a blind date which goes from bad to worse. This is a modestly funny comedy which becomes more and more annoying and noisy as it goes along.

Black Widow
1987
**
Director: Bob Rafelson
Cast: Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, Sami Frey, Dennis Hopper

The female leads and the premise about a woman who marries and kills her husbands are promising, but the plot of this dreary thriller resembles an episode of Matlock. Sami Frey is offputting in the male lead.

Biloxi Blues
1987
***½
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken, Matt Mulhern, Corey Parker

A nice coming of age story about young men in military training, without any actual military training in it.

The Big Easy
1987
***½
Director: Jim McBride
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Ellen Barkin, Ned Beatty, John Goodman

A formulaic and predictable but very likeable little crime film with a protagonist who is a slightly corrupt cop. Ellen Barkin is great as a feisty lawyer. Excellent Cajun music on the soundtrack.

Beverly Hills Cop II
1987
**½
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, Brigitte Nielsen, John Ashton, Jürgen Prochnow, Ronny Cox, Allen Garfield, Dean Stockwell, Paul Reiser

Detective Axel Foley returns to Los Angeles when Captain Bogomil is shot by a group known as the Alphabet Bandits. If Beverly Hills Cop was an entertaining but overly custom-made Eddie Murphy comedy vehicle, the derivative sequel just repeats all the favourite bits from the first movie. These include a gratuitous trip to a strip club and an over-the-top climactic shootout. However, there are some enjoyable comedy moments and Brigitte Nielsen makes for a striking villain. Followed by Beverly Hills Cop III.

Best Seller
1987
***
Director: John Flynn
Cast: Brian Dennehy, James Woods, Victoria Tennant, Allison Balson

James Woods and Brian Dennehy are terrific as a hitman and a cop/author respectively (this is before Dennehy launched a very successful straight-to-video career). This is a gripping drama which is let down by a terrible ending.

The Bedroom Window
1987
***½
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Steve Guttenberg, Elisabeth McGovern, Isabelle Hubbert, Paul Shenar

Curtis Hanson's slick and entertaining Hitchcockian thriller about a man who claims to have seen an assault, because the real witness, his married lover, cannot come forward. Steve Guttenberg is sadly no James Stewart. Based on Anne Holden's novel The Witnesses.

Beaches
1987
**½
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey, John Heard, Spalding Gray

This schmaltzy drama about two longtime friends is a classic chick flick. The two female leads give fine performances. Midler also sings the hit song Wind Beneath My Wings on the soundtrack.

Barfly
1987
****
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige, Frank Stallone, Jack Nance, J.C. Quinn, Sandy Martin

Henry Chinanski is a drunk poet whose only worry in life is where he is going to get his next drink. Cult novelist/poet Charles Bukowski's semi-autobiographical script is funny, charming, and full of quotable dialogue. However, the film offers a somewhat romanticised, not to mention implausible depiction of alcoholism (the bum-like Chinanski is irresistible to beautiful women). Mickey Rourke does not give a performance, he inhabits the character.

Babettes gaestebud (Babette's Feast)
1987
***
Director: Gabriel Axel
Cast: Stephane Audran, Birgitte Federspeil, Bodil Kjer, Jean-Philippe Lafont

In the 19th century two beautiful pastor's daughters snub their many suitors in order to dedicate their lives to the church. Years later they take in a mysterious French refugee who brings a breath of fresh air to the small community. This cute Danish drama is a joy to watch, especially in the second half, but it cannot live up to its somewhat bloated reputation. Chocolat obviously picked up a thing or two from this film. Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

Angel Heart
1987
****
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet, Charlotte Rampling, Stocker Fontelieu, Brownie McGhee, Michael Higgins, Elizabeth Whitcraft, Charles Gordone

In 1955, private detective Harry Angel is hired to find a crooner named Johnny Favourite, but the case turns out to be as much about self-discovery. Alan Parker's stylish, twisty, and original mystery is based on William Hjortsberg's 1978 novel Falling Angel. Mickey Rourke gives one of of his best performances in the lead and Robert De Niro is memorable as his mysterious client.

Amazing Stories: The Movie
1987
**
Director: Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Willi
Cast: Kevin Costner, Casey Siemaszko, Kiefer Sutherland, John Philbin

Amazing Stories was a horror/fantasy TV series that ran from 1985 to 1987. This rip-off film puts together three of those episodes. Without William Dear's Mummy Daddy this would be total waste of time. The other two stories, Steven Spielberg's The Mission and Robert Zemeckis' Go to the Head of the Class are rubbish.

Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold
1987
*
Director: Gray Nelson
Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, James Earl Jones, Henry Silva

A rehash of King Solomon's Mines, which in turn was a rip-off of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sharon Stone is desperately trying to launch her career.

Youngblood
1986
*½
Director: Peter Markle
Cast: Rob Lowe, Cynthia Gibb, Patrick Swayze, Ed Lauter, Eric Nesterenko

A formulaic teen film about a cocky and ambitious hockey player. Rob Lowe skates in the lead and manages to play a team sport all by himself.

Wise Guys
1986
*½
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Danny DeVito, Joe Piscopo, Harvey Keitel, Ray Sharkey, Dan Hedaya

Brian De Palma is not famous for comedies and it's clear why. This redundant gangster farce is only memorable for using the title originally planned for GoodFellas.

Varjoja paratiisissa (Shadows in Paradise)
1986
****
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Matti Pellonpää, Kati Outinen, Sakari Kuosmanen, Esko Nikkari, Kylli Köngäs, Pekka Laiho, Jukka-Pekka Palo, Svante Korkiakoski, Mato Valtonen

Nikander is a bin man and Ilona is a supermarket cashier. These two lonely people meet and quietly fall in love. Aki Kaurismäki's third feature is where he lays down his trademark style (working class characters, minimalistic visuals, laconic humour, deadpan performances, vintage cars, and idiosyncratic music choices). This enjoyable film is the first part in a so-called Proletariat Trilogy, which continues with Ariel.

Under the Cherry Moon
1986
*½
Director: Prince
Cast: Prince, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jerome Benton, Steven Berkoff

A redundant black and white film about a pair of conmen who target rich women in the French Riviera. Prince's directorial debut has one or two memorable moments.

Trouble in Mind
1986
**
Director: Alan Rudolph
Cast: Kris Kristofersson, Keith Carradine, Lori Singer, Genevieve Bujold

Alan Rudolph's uninspired tale about people in a small town doesn't offer emotional highs or lows.

Top Gun
1986
**½
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerritt, Michael Ironside, John Stockwell, Barry Tubb, Rick Rossovich, Tim Robbins

Naval aviator Pete "Maverick" Mitchell and his co-pilot Nick "Goose" Bradshaw join the highly competitive TOPGUN program at the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School. This iconic but shallow 1980s hit movie is very much a product of its time. It's flashy, cheesy, jingoistic, and macho (albeit with strongly homoerotic undertones). Tony Scott is famous for his visual style, and occasionally this feels like an extended music video. Perhaps this is the right approach, because the dialogue is simply awful. The central romance feels unconvincing, thanks to lack of chemistry between the actors, but the movie is at its best during the flight scenes, although Scott attempts to make them needlessly confusing with his choppy editing. However, the excellent soundtrack has stood the test of time. Followed by Top Gun: Maverick 36 years later.

Three Amigos
1986
**½
Director: John Landis
Cast: Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Martin Short, Patrice Martinez

A desperate Mexican woman mistakes three silent movie stars for real heroes and hires them to protect her village from a bad guy named El Guapo, but the Three Amigos believe they are putting on a show. This sympathetic comedy has its enjoyable moments, but its script doesn't make any sense at times and the pacing feels very slow even by 80s comedy standards. Randy Newman wrote the amusing songs.

That's Life!
1986
***
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Julie Andrews, Jack Lemmon, Sally Kellerman, Robert Loggia

Julie Andrews and Jack Lemmon make a believable old couple in a familiar but entertaining family drama.

Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta (Laputa: Castle in the Sky)
1986
****
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast: Keiko Yokozawa, Mayumi Tanaka, Kotoe Hatsui, Minori Terada

Sheeta carries a mysterious crystal amulet, which is coveted by goverment agents and sky pirates alike. After a narrow escape, Sheeta meets Pazu who is determined to find Laputa, the legedary floating city, to which the amulet could hold the key. Ghibli's first feature film lays down the groundwork for the animation studio's recognisable brand: wonderful hand-drawn visuals, lovely characterisation, and a sense of wonder with an undercurrent of dread. The film is long but filled with imagination, especially in the final third.

Stand By Me
1986
*****
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, Kiefer Sutherland

In 1959, four 12-year-old boys, all of them dealing with some kind of trauma in their lives, go on a long and formative trip to find the body of a missing boy, which was spotted by the railway track. The four friends are not aware that this is the last summer they will spend together. This beautifully filmed depiction of friendship is based on Stephen King's short story The Body. The script is charming and moving, and the performances of the young cast are exceptional.

Soul Man
1986
*½
Director: Steve Miner
Cast: C. Thomas Howell, Arye Gross, Rae Dawn Chong, James Earl Jones

An educational and predictable teen film about a young man who pretends to be black in order to get a place in college. Yo brother, you shouldn't try ta be no black man, be yaself!

Something Wild
1986
***
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels, Ray Liotta, Margaret Collin, Dana Preu

An uptight man gets a ride of his life with a wild and uninhibited girl. This is the 1980s version of Dharma and Greg. This enjoyable but overrated yuppie comedy follows in the footsteps of the superior Into the Night and After Hours.

Solarbabies
1986
*
Director: Alan Johnson
Cast: Richard Jordan, Jami Gertz, Jaosn Patric, Charles Durning

This Mel Brooks-produced science fiction film for teenagers lies somewhere between ludicrous and pathetic. Rollerblades and laser pistols galore.

Sid and Nancy
1986
**½
Director: Alex Cox
Cast: Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, Drew Schofield, David Hayman

It seems Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen did nothing else but take drugs, and this is a long anti-drug infomercial, not much else. Gary Oldman is a convincing Sid, however.

Shanghai Surprise
1986
*
Director: Jim Goddard
Cast: Sean Penn, Madonna, Paul Freeman, Richard Griffiths, Philip Sayer

A famously awful romantic adventure set in China. One-time happy couple Madonna and Sean Penn are as bad as the ludicrous script and the clumsy direction. Based on Tony Kenrick's novel Faraday's Flowers.

Seize the Day
1986
***½
Director: Fielder Cook
Cast: Robin Williams, Joseph Wiseman, Jerry Stiller, Glenne Headly

Robin Williams plays a man whose life is unavoidably heading to disaster. This nice intimate drama is based on Saul Bellow's novel.

Salvador
1986
*****
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: James Woods, James Belushi, John Savage, Michael Murphy

A terrifically gripping drama about an arrogant journalist who gets a wake-up call while covering the civil war in El Salvador. James Woods and James Belushi are excellent slimeballs. Oliver Stone's first proper film is also one of his best.

Ruthless People
1986
***½
Director: David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker
Cast: Bette Midler, Danny De Vito, Judge Rheinhold, Helen Slater, Anita Morris, Bill Pullman

A duplicitous businessman is planning to have his wealthy wife killed, when she is kidnapped and held for ransom. This enjoyable dark comedy has an abundance of twists, turns, and double-crosses. The cast is great but some of the performances are a bit hammy.

Running Scared
1986
*½
Director: Peter Hyams
Cast: Billy Crystal, Gregory Hines, Steven Bauer, Darlanne Fluegel

A lousy buddy comedy. The minds behind this film had faith in the combined charisma of Bill Crystal and Gregory Hines, and forgot the script altogether.

Runaway Train
1986
*½
Director: Andrei Konchalovsky
Cast: Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca De Mornay, Kyle Heffner

An annoyingly loud and illogical prison escape story with Jon Voight dreadfully monotonous in the lead. Nevertheless, the film has a good reputation, maybe because it's based on Akira Kurosawa's story.

Round Midnight
1986
*
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Cast: Dexter Gordon, Lonette McKee, Francois Cluzet, Gabrielle Haker

You don't need to hate jazz to hate this film, but after seeing it you probably do. Endless two odd hours about a drunk saxophone player who alternates between drinking and playing. 10 people walked out of the cinema during the film.

Raw Deal
1986
*
Director: John Irvin
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kathry Harrold, Darren McGavin, Paul Shenar

A sheriff infiltrates the mob overnight in one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's most embarrassing action films. A plenty of unintentional laughs.

Psycho 3
1986
*½
Director: Anthony Perkins
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Diana Scarwid, Jeff Fahey, Roberta Maxwell

Anthony Perkins takes over the directing duties in this totally dull, self-parodying third part. Some prefer this to the second film.

Pretty in Pink
1986
**
Director: Howard Deutch
Cast: Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer, Harry Dean Stanton

A formulaic Romeo and Juliet story (bar the deaths) disguised as a teen film. Molly Ringwald is likeable in the lead, but that's not enough.

Poltergeist 2
1986
*½
Director: Brian Gibson
Cast: Graig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Oliver Robins, Heather O'Rourke

The same cast is back in this stupid and needless sequel. Kane is a scary character, otherwise there's nothing good to say.

Police Academy 3: Back in Training
1986
*
Director: Jerry Paris
Cast: Steve Guttenberg, Bubba Smith, David Graf, Michael Winslow

Another forced sequel to a series that ran out of steam in the second half of the original film.

Platoon
1986
****
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Forest Whitaker, Keith David, Francesco Quinn, Kevin Dillon, John C. McGinley, Reggie Johnson, Mark Moses, Corey Glover, Johnny Depp, Chris Pedersen

In 1967, Chris Taylor volunteers for the Vietnam War, but he quickly learns the harsh realities of combat life. His infantry platoon is led by Staff Sergeants Barnes and Elias. While Barnes is battle-hardened and disillusioned, Elias has not yet allowed the war to dehumanise himself. Oliver Stone's directorial breakthrough is a gripping and thought-provoking grassroots war movie, which brought the realism of battle scenes to a new level. The film is based on Stone's own experiences and it explores the moral and psychological challenges faced by the grunts. The cast inludes a number of young unknowns, such as Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, and Johnny Depp. An Academy Award winner for best picture, director, sound, and film editing. Stone made two further movies about the Vietnam War, Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Heaven & Earth (1993).

Peking Opera Blues
1986
**½
Director: Tsui Hark
Cast: Ling Ching-Hsia, Sally Yeh, Cherie Chung, Mark Cheng, Po-chih Leong

A visually spectacular Asian violence ballet which becomes boring towards the end.

Peggy Sue Got Married
1986
***½
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Kathleen Turner, Barry Miller, Catherine Hicks

A sympathetic Back to the Futuresque story about a woman who gets a second chance when she travels back in time. Nicholas Cage steals the show with his funny and irritating voice.

Nothing in Common
1986
**
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Tom Hanks, Jackie Gleason, Eva Marie Saint, Hector Elizondo

An overlong and predictable story about a young man who tries to come to terms with his parents' divorce. Tom Hanks is credible in the lead.

No Mercy
1986
*½
Director: Richard Pearce
Cast: Kim Basinger, Richard Gere, Jeroen Krabbe, George Dzundza

A clichéd story about a detective and a gangster's girlfriend who are on the lam. Richard Gere and Kim Basinger are tolerable separately, but they have no chemistry together.

Night of the Creeps
1986
**½
Director: Fred Dekker
Cast: Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow, Tom Atkins, Wally Taylor

An occasionally creepy shocker about killer leeches. Some decent special effects and good humour.

The Name of the Rose
1986
***
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Sean Connery, Christian Slater, F. Murray Abraham, Elya Baskin

A complex and mystical detective story set in a 13th century abbey. Sean Connery and F. Murray Abraham are charismatic in the leading roles. Stripped from Umberto Eco's novel.

Murphy's Law
1986
**
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Cast: Charles Bronson, Kathleen Wilhoite, Carrie Snodgress, Robert F. Lyons

Charles Bronson plays a framed detective who is handcuffed to a crude young female felon. A formulaic but not completely hopeless film.

The Mosquito Coast
1986
****
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Harrison Ford, River Phoenix, Helen Mirren, Jadrien Steele

An intriguing and exciting (but also a bit uneven) drama about a man who wants to build a new civilization in the jungle. Harrison Ford gives one of his best and definitely one of his most demanding performances as the "mad" scientist. Adapted from Paul Theroux's novel.

The Morning After
1986
**
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges, Raul Julia, Diane Salinger, Richard Foronjy

This film begins like Tough Guys Don't Dance - the protagonist wakes up with a hangover and a dead body - and the end result is equally bad. Jane Fonda seems totally lost with her character.

The Money Pit
1986
**½
Director: Richard Benjamin
Cast: Tom Hanks, Shelley Long, Alexander Godunov, Maureen Stapleton

A happy couple's marriage is put to test when they buy a house that turns out to be rotten to the core. A light comedy that draws all of its humour from the dilapidated house. Some funny moments, but eventually enough is enough.

Mona Lisa
1986
****
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane

Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a chauffeur who falls in love with the prostitute he's driving around. A nicely offbeat drama which especially in the end reminds you of The Crying Game, Neil Jordan's later film.

Little Shop of Horrors
1986
***½
Director: Frank Oz
Cast: Ricky Moranis, Ellen Greene, Steve Martin, Vincent Gardenia

A splendid musical comedy with an over-the-top ending about a man-eating monster plant. Bill Murray and Steve Martin are hilarious in supporting roles. Adapted from Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's stage musical which was based on Roger Corman's 1960 film.

Legal Eagles
1986
**
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Robert Redford, Debra Winger, Daryl Hannah, Brian Dennehy

A boringly flat (like all Ivan Reitman's films, come to think of it) drama comedy about two lawyers who get romantically involved. Debra Winger and Robert Redford do not produce sparks together.

La Bamba
1986
***½
Director: Luis Valdez
Cast: Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Rosana De Soto, Elizabeth Pena

An entertaining biopic of rock star Richie Valens who died in the same plane crash with Buddy Holly. Lou Diamond Phillips is a bit stale as the young rocker, but Esai Morales is dynamite as his troubled brother.

The Karate Kid, Part II
1986
**
Director: John G. Avildsen
Cast: Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Nobu McCarthy, Danny Kamekona

The teacher takes a trip home to the island of Okinawa where he's joined by his apprentice. This rather awful sequel is clichéd, predictable and preachy. Followed by Part III.

Jumpin' Jack Flash
1986
**
Director: Penny Marshall
Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Stephen Collins, John Wood, Carol Kane

A comedy about a computer programmer who unwittingly becomes involved in international espionage. The film cannot find a balance between comedy and drama, and the over-exuberant Whoopi Goldberg doesn't help.

Howard the Duck
1986
*½
Director: Willard Huyck
Cast: Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones, Tim Robbins, Paul Guilfoyle

Between the two Star Wars trilogies George Lucas produced this special effect-heavy adventure about a heroic duck. This film, however, is a turkey. Based on Steve Gerber's comic book.

The Hitcher
1986
*½
Director: Robert Harmon
Cast: Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jeffrey DeMunn

This overrated thriller about a murderous hitchhiker starts well, but it becomes illogical and extremely annoying very quickly. Rutger Hauer is amusing in the title role, but then again, he could play this role with his eyes closed.

Highlander
1986
***
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Cast: Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown, Roxanne Hart, Beatie Edney, Alan North, Jon Polito, Sheila Gish, Hugh Quarshie, Christopher Malcolm

In 16th century Scotland, Connor MacLeod survives a mortal wound and remains immortal unless he is beheaded. After centuries of existence, he lives in modern day New York City, where he must battle the remaining villainous immortals. This pompous cult adventure has an intriguing and tragic premise, as Connor must watch his loved ones get old and die while he remains the same age through the centuries. Russell Mulcahy has visualised the story with some wacky camerawork and nice transitions, and the fitting soundtrack includes a number of songs by Queen. On the downside, Christopher Lambert is absolutely useless with accents and acting in general, and the film is often too silly to take seriously. The action set pieces indulge in all the worst aspects of 1980s cinema (screaming, shattered glass, and infernally loud sound effects), and the climactic battle is especially dull. Followed by several dreadful sequels.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
1986
***
Director: Jim McNaughton
Cast: Michael Rooker, Tracy Arnold, Tom Towles, David Katz, Mary Demas

A chilly and reserved crime drama about a serial killer (loosely based on Henry Lee Lucas). The story portrays Henry's atrocities without judgment, and the narrative doesn't offer traditional dramatic high or low points. This approach is fresh but the result is underwhelming.

Heartburn
1986
**½
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, Maureen Stapleton

Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep play an on-and-off-and-on-again couple who go through a marital crisis because of his infidelity. This is a believable but rather monotonous drama. Milos Forman give his debut performance. Scripted by Nora Ephron from her own novel.

Heartbreak Ridge
1986
***
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Marsha Mason, Mario Van Peebles, Everett McGill

Clint Eastwood is appropriately tough as a military trainer in this conservative military drama. The funny and entertaining training sequences are followed by an overlong and jingoistic second half.

Hannah and Her Sisters
1986
****
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Mia Farrow, Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, Maureen O'Sullivan

Woody Allen's excellent multi-character drama follows the lives of three sisters. The film is very strongly scripted and acted (the screenplay, Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest won Academy Awards). Woody himself provides some comic relief as Hannah's hypochondriac ex-husband.

Gung Ho
1986
***
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Michael Keaton, Gedde Watanabe, George Wendt, Mimi Rogers

The robotic, hard working Japanese businessmen set up an automobile factory in a laid-back American town. This culture clash comedy offers some funny moments, but its ending is utterly predictable.

The Golden Child
1986
*
Director: Michael Ritchie
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Charlotte Lewis, Charles Dance, Victor Wong

Eddie Murphy at his worst. Some sporadically funny dialogue in this awful fairy tale about a magical child.

The Fly
1986
****½
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel, Leslie Carlson

An eccentric scientist has invented teleportation between two pods. When he is finally ready to teleport himself, he is unaware that there is a fly inside the pod. This remake of the 1958 film tells a classic cautionary tale of how science should not mess with nature. However, David Cronenberg's smart, brilliant, and surprisingly funny horror film always feels sympathy for the monster. Jeff Goldblum gives a wonderfully wacky performance, Geena Davis is less convincing. The Academy Award winning makeup effects by Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis have stood the test of time. Followed by Fly 2 with a different cast and crew.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off
1986
**½
Director: John Hughes
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jeffrey Jones, Jennifer Grey, Cindy Pickett, Edie McClurg, Lyman Ward, Charlie Sheen

Ferris Bueller pretends to be ill so he can have a day of fun with his girlfriend and best friend, but the school's persistent principal is onto his plan. John Hughes' influential comedy is loved by many, but I didn't warm up to it in 1986 and I fail to see its appeal today. My main problem is that Ferris is a smug and selfish prick, yet he always comes on top. The film has a few nice moments, but it's mostly a tourist commercial for the city of Chicago. Followed by a short-lived TV series in 1990.

F/X
1986
***½
Director: Robert Mandel
Cast: Bryan Brown, Brian Dennehy, Diane Venora, Cliff De Young

An enjoyably inventive but not entirely believable thriller about a special effect designer who must use his skills to get out of trouble. Bryan Brown is charming in the lead. Followed by F/X 2.

Extremities
1986
*½
Director: Robert M. Young
Cast: Farrah Fawcett, James Russo, Diana Scarwid, Alfre Woodard

Farrah Fawcett plays a rape victim, but the role would require some real acting skills. The story is based on William Mastrosimone's play, and it's crass and manipulative.

Down By Law
1986
***½
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Tom Waits, John Lurie, Roberto Benigni, Ellen Barkin, Nicoletta Braschi, Billie Neal, Rockets Redglare, Vernel Bagneris, Timothea, L.C. Drane, Joy N. Houck, Jr.

Three misfits - a radio DJ, a pimp, and an Italian tourist - end up in the same Louisiana prison cell, which they plan to escape. Jim Jarmusch's minimalistic indie comedy is funny and charming but extremely slow-paced. Robby Müller's black and white cinematography looks stunning.

Down and Out in Beverly Hills
1986
***½
Director: Paul Mazursky
Cast: Nick Nolte, Bette Midler, Richard Dreyfuss, Little Richard, Tracy Nelson

A nice story about a rich man who takes in a hobo who ends up changing the lives of everyone in his family. However, somehow the film doesn't hit the bullseye. The dog wins the best actor award.

Delta Force
1986
*
Director: Menahem Golan
Cast: Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin, Martin Balsam, Robert Forster, Joey Bishop

A stupid Chuck Norris film about a special forces team who are called in to stop a plane hijacking. Short of cash, Lee Marvin has joined the cast.

Deadly Friend
1986
**
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Matthew Laborteaux, Kristy Swanson, Anne Twomey, Michale Sharrett

A geeky teenager resurrects his dead neighbour in Wes Craven's weak horror film, which stars Matthew Laborteaux, best known for his role in The Little House on the Prairie. Now, that's scary!

Crocodile Dundee
1986
***
Director: Peter Faiman
Cast: Paul Hogan, Linda Kozlowski, John Meillon, David Gulpilil

An American female reporter brings an Australian "man of the wilderness" to New York City. This is a sympathetic and entertaining fish out of water comedy, but it turns predictable and soppy towards the end. Followed by Crocodile Dundee 2 two years later.

Critters
1986
**½
Director: Stephen Herek
Cast: Dee Wallace Stone, M. Emmet Walsh, Billy Green Bush, Scott Grimes

A decent horror comedy about nasty space aliens. Nevertheless, a lot of horror film cliches on offer.

The Color Purple
1986
***½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Margaret Avery, Akosua Busia, Adolph Caesar, Rae Dawn Chong

In the early 20th century, Celie Harris Johnson, a young black woman, is separated from her beloved sister and forced to marry an abusive farmer. Celie's long journey through adversity and self-discovery is Steven Spielberg's first venture into serious drama after a number of blockbusters. His well-acted and handsomely mounted film compellingly explores racism, sexism, and empowerment, but it feels a bit too safe, sterile, and crowdpleasing. Based on Alice Walker's 1982 novel, which unfolds through a series of letters.

The Color of Money
1986
***½
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, Helen Shaver

The sequel to The Hustler is a slightly overlong drama about an old and a young pool hustler. Paul Newman deserved his Oscar and Tom Cruise is also good. Martin Scorsese was hired to direct.

Cobra
1986
*
Director: George Pan Cosmatos
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen, Reni Santoni, Andrew Robinson

Marion "Cobra" Cobretti is a tough detective who is after a group of Neo-Nazis. A few nice action sequences cannot save this dud from oblivion. Stallone's character is laughably cool, he even eats pizza with his gloves on. The end is pure Rambo.

Clockwise
1986
*½
Director: Christopher Morahan
Cast: John Cleese, Penelope Wilton, Alison Steadman, Stephen Moore

Even John Cleese is not able to trigger laughs in an annoyingly mindless comedy about a headmaster who is obsessed with punctuality.

The Clan of the Cave Bear
1986
*½
Director: Michael Chapman
Cast: Darryl Hannah, Pamela Reed, James Remar, Thomas G. Waites

The plot is the only authentically prehistorical element in this silly and dull cavewoman film. Based on Jean Auel's novel.

Children of a Lesser God
1986
**½
Director: Randa Haines
Cast: Marlee Matlin, William Hurt, Piper Laurie, Philip Bosco, Alison Gompf

A love story between a teacher and a young deaf woman. There are funny and touching moments, but the film becomes a bit tiresome, not to mention illogical, when he has to speak out every line of her dialogue so we know what she says. Marlee Matlin is good in her Oscar winning role. Based on Mark Medoff's stage play.

Born American
1986
*
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Mike Norris, Steve Durham, David Coburn, Thalmus Rasulala

Three Americans find themselves in trouble once they cross the border to the Soviet Union. Renny Harlin's low budget debut looks impressive, but the script is pure Cold War propaganda. The film was banned for a while in his native Finland.

Blue Velvet
1986
****½
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rosselini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern

David Lynch's best known film paints a highly original and sinister picture of the American suburbia. Kyle McLachlan plays an overcurious young man who gets to see more than he wanted. The film opens more and more with each repeated viewing. Isabella Rosselini's appalling performance fails to improve with repetition, though.

Black Moon Rising
1986
**
Director: Harley Cokliss
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Hamilton, Robert Vaughn, Richard Jaeckel

This bog standard action film about a stolen super car is based on director John Carpenter's "original idea". At times the story comes uncomfortably close to Knight Rider TV series.

Big Trouble in Little China
1986
*
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong, Victor Wong

A truck driver gets sucked into the mysterious Chinatown underworld in this utterly silly and dull special effect adventure. The start of the end titles is the single enjoyable moment. A cult film, obviously.

Betty Blue
1986
**½
Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Cast: Beatrice Dalle, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Consuelo de Havilland, Gerard Darmon

This French cult classic is in fact a mediocre and quite obvious drama about a mentally unstable woman.

The Best of Times
1986
**½
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Cast: Kurt Russell, Robin Williams, Pamela Reed, Holly Palance

Kurt Russell and Robin Williams star in a modest comedy about a football match replay. Ultimately it's as inaccessible as any other film about American football.

Band of the Hand
1986
*
Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Cast: Stephen Lang, Michael Carmine, Lauren Holly, James Remar

A brainless action film in which hard boiled criminals are trained into upright citizens overnight. Why hasn't anyone done this in real life? Oh, because it's fiction.

At Close Range
1986
**
Director: James Foley
Cast: Sean Penn, Christopher Walken, Christopher Penn, Mary Stuart Masterson

This father and son morality drama has potential but it doesn't deliver. Sean Penn is whining annoyingly in the lead but luckily Christopher Walken plays his father.

Apology
1986
**
Director: Robert Bierman
Cast: Lesley Ann Warren, Peter Weller, George Loros, John Glover

A watchable if predictable thriller about a woman under harassment.

An American Tail
1986
***
Director: Don Bluth
Cast: Dom DeLuise, Christopher Plummer, Nehemiah Persoff, Madeline Kahn

A beautifully made but not particularly entertaining animation about a little mouse and his trip to the New World.

American Ninja
1986
*
Director: Sam Firstenberg
Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Steve James, Judie Aronson, Guich Koock

It is impossible to summarise the plot of this idiotic ninja film. Poorly made as well.

Aliens
1986
*****
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, Carrie Henn, William Hope, Al Matthews, Mark Rolston

After she wakes up from a 57-year hypersleep, Ripley reluctantly joins a group of marines to LV-426, the exomoon where Nostromo picked up the creature, after contact is lost with the moon's colony. During the first hour, James Cameron recreates the haunting atmosphere of Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). Then he kicks into gear and transforms the whole thing into a relentless, exciting, and inventive action movie. The whole is surely one of the finest sequels in cinematic history. Sigourney Weaver kicks ass in the lead. The impressive special effects won two Academy Awards. Followed by Alien³.

About Last Night
1986
**½
Director: Edward Zwick
Cast: Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, James Belushi, Elisabeth Perkins

A forgettable romantic drama in which Rob Lowe and Demi Moore spend most of the running time talking on the bed semi-naked. This is not much more than a filmed play, even if it's a David Mamet play (Sexual Perversity in Chicago).

8 Million Ways to Die
1986
**½
Director: Hal Ashby
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Andy Garcia, Rosanna Arquette, Alexandra Paul

Jeff Bridges in the lead enables you to watch this very conventional crime film that was incidentally penned by Oliver Stone before his breakthrough as a director. The horrific hangover scene gives you second thoughts about drinking.

52 Pick-Up
1986
*½
Director: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Roy Scheider, Vanity, Ann-Margret, John Glover, Rober Trebor

The one-face Roy Scheider adds no value to a blackmail thriller that is lifeless to begin with. This dud offers a sad memory of director John Frankenheimer's glory days in the 1960s.

A Zed & Two Noughts
1985
***½
Director: Peter Greenaway
Cast: Andrea Ferreol, Brian Deacon, Eric Deacon, Frances Barber, Joss Ackland

A highly original and outlandish if also a very confusing study about life and death by Peter Greenaway.

Young Sherlock Holmes
1985
***
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Nicholas Rowe, Alan Cox, Sophie Ward, Anthony Higgins, Freddie Jones

A smart and funny fantasy film about Sherlock Holmes during his teenage years. Unfortunately the ending with its special effect overload seems to be from an entirely different film.

Year of the Dragon
1985
****
Director: Michael Cimino
Cast: Mickey Rourke, John Lone, Ariane, Leonard Termo, Ray Barry

A fierce and captivating (but pompous) crime story about a relentless cop who starts his personal war against the mafia in New York Chinatown. Mickey Rourke is good, although he's a bit too young for the role. Some of the supporting performances, on the other hand, are pretty amateurish, to say the least.

Witness
1985
*****
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Alexander Godunov, Josef Sommer

Peter Weir's excellent crime drama has thrills, romance and a strong sense of community. In his first proper acting job Harrison Ford plays a wounded big city detective who is forced to hide in an Amish village. The editing and the script by Earl W. Wallace and William Kelley won Academy Awards.

White Nights
1985
**
Director: Taylor Hackford
Cast: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines, Isabella Rossellini, Helen Mirren

The impressive dance scenes with Michael Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines are the highlight of this lightly plotted and heavily overlong Cold War defection drama.

Volunteers
1985
**
Director: Nicholas Meyer
Cast: Tom Hanks, John Candy, Rita Wilson, Tim Thomerson, Gedde Watanabe

Tom Hanks joins the Peace Corps in this instantly forgettable comedy. John Candy provides some nice parody on The Bridge on the River Kwai.

A View to a Kill
1985
**
Director: John Glen
Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Grace Jones, Tanya Roberts

Roger Moore is "too old for this shit" in his last James Bond film in which he faces a madman who wants to destroy Silicon Valley. Tanya Roberts is the most irritating Bond girl ever but luckily Fiona Fullerton lights up the screen as a Russian agent.

Twice in a Lifetime
1985
***
Director: Bud Yorkin
Cast: Gene Hackman, Ann-Margret, Ellen Burstyn, Amy Madigan

A realistic depiction of divorce and its effects on the entire family. A well acted drama that luckily doesn't go for a forced happy ending.

Turk 182!
1985
***
Director: Bob Clark
Cast: Timothy Hutton, Robert Urich, Kim Cattrall, Robert Culp, Steven Keats

A likeable but thinly plotted drama about a New York graffiti activist who becomes a celebrity. Timothy Hutton is very good in the lead.

Tough Guys
1985
**½
Director: Jeff Kanew
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Charles Durning, Alexis Smith

Two elderly criminals want to pull off their last heist. The aged charisma of Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster comes handy, because without them this crime comedy is barely watchable.

To Live and Die in L.A.
1985
***
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: William L. Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Pankow, Debra Feuer

This gritty but overrated crime film tells a story of a Secret Service agent who goes undercover. The script is not predictable but it is dull. The cast is good and a there's one sharply directed car chase, which is obligatory for a William Friedkin film.

Teen Wolf
1985
**½
Director: Rod Daniel
Cast: Michael J. Fox, James Hampton, Scott Paulin, Susan Ursitti

Michael J. Fox stars as a teen who turns into a werewolf. This comedy starts well but turns typically educational and predictable towards the end.

Target
1985
***
Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Gene Hackman, Matt Dillon, Gayle Hunnicutt, Victoria Fyodorova

When an American woman is kidnapped in Paris, her husband and son are forced to put aside their difference and really get to know each other in order to find her. Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon are good as the father and son, but otherwise this is a rather mediocre thriller.

Stick
1985
*½
Director: Burt Reynolds
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Candice Bergen, George Segal, Charles Durning

A run-of-the-mill Burt Reynolds yawner which is based on Elmore Leonard's novel. This is no Get Shorty or even Jackie Brown, that's for sure.

Steaming
1985
**½
Director: Joseph Losey
Cast: Sarah Miles, Vanessa Redgrave, Diana Dors, Patti Love, Brenda Bruce

Joseph Losey's final film is an uninspired stagy drama about a group of women of different age and background who regularly meet in the sauna. Based on Neil Dunn's play.

St. Elmo's Fire
1985
***
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Mare Winningham, Judd Nelson

This moderately intelligent coming-of-age film about a group of 20-somethings takes the road less traveled. A load of one time stars in the leading roles.

Spies Like Us
1985
***
Director: John Landis
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Donna Dixon, Bruce Davison, Steve Forrest

A moderately funny comedy with Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase as spies who are hired as decoys to take the heat away from the real agents.

Silverado
1985
****
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, John Cleese, Kevin Costner

A quite conventional but highly entertaining western about a group of men who take stand against a sheriff and his thugs who terrorise the town of Silverado. A great big name cast.

Rosso
1985
***
Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Cast: Kari Väänänen, Martti Syrjä, Leena Harjupatana, Mirja Oksanen

One of Mika Kaurismäki most enjoyable films tells a story of an Italian hitman who is on an assignment in Finland. Funny interplay between Väänänen and Syrjä.

A Room with a View
1985
****
Director: James Ivory
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Daniel Day-Lewis, Maggie Smith, Julian Sands

A young woman about to be married is having second thoughts in this entertaining, charming and elegant period film. A wonderful cast. Based on an E.M. Forster novel.

Revolution
1985
**
Director: Hugh Hudson
Cast: Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland, Nastassja Kinski, Joan Plowright

Al Pacino sinks with this pompous and nonsensical historical drama set in the time of the American Revolution. Pacino gave up film acting for several years after this one flopped.

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins...
1985
***
Director: Guy Hamilton
Cast: Fred Ward, Joel Grey, Wilford Brimley, J.A. Preston, George Coe

An entertaining action film about a cop who is trained into a super agent. Plenty of impressive action scenes to compensate for the non-existent story. Joel Grey steals the show as the oriental fighting guru. Based on popular pulp novels.

Rebel
1985
**
Director: Michael Jenkins
Cast: Matt Dillon, Debbie Byrne, Bryan Brown, Bill Hunter, Ray Barrett

Stuck in the S.E. Hinton mode, Matt Dillon portrays a tough young rebel. If only they had given him a script.

Real Genius
1985
**
Director: Martha Coolidge
Cast: Val Kilmer, Gabe Jarret, Michelle Myrink, William Atherton

The title is misleading. This is in fact a brainless comedy about students in a technical university and it has one or two laughs in it.

Ran
1985
****½
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu

Akira Kurosawa's masterful and visually beautiful family saga is in fact an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear.

Rambo: First Blood Part 2
1985
*
Director: George Pan Cosmatos
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Julia Nickson

In this brainless and jingoistic sequel to First Blood green beret John Rambo single-handedly frees the remaining Vietnam War POWs and kills about 70 enemies (mostly Soviets) in the process. This Cold War action film turned Rambo into a word. Scripted by Sylvester Stallone and James Cameron.

The Purple Rose of Cairo
1985
***½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Jeff Daniels, Mia Farrow, Danny Aiello, Dienne Wiest, Van Johnson

The characters on the cinema screen come alive in this charming romantic comedy which mixes reality and movie magic. Woody Allen stays behind the camera.

Prizzi's Honor
1985
****
Director: John Huston
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner, Anjelica Huston, Robert Loggia

A splendid black comedy about two professional killers who fall in love with each other. Jack Nicholson is funny in a brandoesque "tissue in the cheeks"-role.

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
1985
*
Director: Jerry Paris
Cast: Steve Guttenberg, Bubba Smith, David Graf, Michael Winslow

The students have graduated but the sequel just repeats the events of the first film without any fresh ideas.

Pale Rider
1985
***
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Carrie Snodgress, Michael Moriarty, Richard Dysart

A preacher with a shady past arrives in a mining town where the locals are trying to fight against a ruthless landowner. This Western and its hero are rather conventional, but the locations in the cold, snowy mountains feel fresh.

Out of Africa
1985
***
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Klaus-Maria Brandauer, Michael Kitchen

An old-fashioned romantic drama set in Africa, where Karen Blixen, a married woman and later a writer, falls in love with an English explorer. Beautifully shot, well-acted and entertaining, but trivial. A winner of seven Academy Awards.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
1985
*
Director: Jack Sholder
Cast: Robert Englund, Mark Patton, Kim Myers, Robert Rusler, Hope Lange

This dreadful sequel has nothing to add to the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. There's plenty of scares but very little plot. Freddy Krueger has one or two memorable oneliners.

National Lampoon's European Vacation
1985
*½
Director: Amy Heckerling
Cast: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Jason Lively, Dana Hill, Eric Idle

The sequel to National Lampoon's Vacation is a tired and formulaic comedy. If you find it funny that an American family on holiday in England drive on the wrong side of the road, this is your movie.

The Naked Face
1985
*½
Director: Bryan Forbes
Cast: Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, Elliott Gould, Anne Archer, Art Carney

A clumsy thriller about a psychiatrist who gets mixed up in murder. After years of being James Bond, Roger Moore is feels lost as a man who doesn't have all the answers.

My Beautiful Laundrette
1985
***
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Saeed Jaffrey, Roshan Seth, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gordon Warnecke, Shirley Anne Field, Derrick Branche, Rita Wolf, Souad Faress, Richard Graham, Stephen Marcus

Omar, a young British Pakistani man, takes over his uncle's laundromat and plans to renovate and operate it with Johnny, his former school friend and lover. Stephen Frears' iconic comedy drama provides a nice time capsule of Thatcher-era Britain and it features some lovely performances, including Daniel Day-Lewis in a breakthrough role. However, Hanif Kureishi's script attempts to tackle a few too many topics in the 97 minutes: racism, unemployment, socialism vs. capitalism, arranged marriage, gay love, drug trafficking, etc.

Morons from Outer Space
1985
**
Director: Mike Hodges
Cast: Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones, James B. Sikking, Dinsdale Landen

TV comedians Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones play two dorky space creatures in this plotless and uneven collection of gags. There's some nice parody of alien invasion films.

Mitt liv som hund (My Life As a Dog)
1985
****
Director: Lasse Hallström
Cast: Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Liden, Melinda Kinnaman

When his mother falls ill, the troublesome 12-year-old Ingemar is sent to Småland to live with his uncle. This funny and touching coming-of-age story, which launched Lasse Hallström's uneven Hollywood career, is set in Sweden in the late 1950s.
Based on Reidar Jönsson's novel.

The Mission
1985
**½
Director: Ronald Joffe
Cast: Jeremy Irons, Robert De Niro, Ray MacAnally, Aidan Quinn

In the 18th century an idealistic Jesuit sets up a mission in the South American jungle in order to convert the indigenous people. However, it all ends badly when the colonial powers Spain and Portugal have other plans. An attractive cast, beautiful scenery and Ennio Morricone's haunting music are not enough to compensate for a jumbled script and poorly developed characters.

Mean Season
1985
*½
Director: Philip Borsos
Cast: Kurt Russell, Mariel Hemingway, Richard Jordan, Richard Masur

Kurt Russell stars in a very predictable thriller involving a serial killer.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
1985
**½
Director: George Miller, George Ogilvie
Cast: Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, Angela Rossitto, Helen Buday, Rod Zuanic

The anaemic third Mad Max film had a bigger budget, but it's a match to the first two only in the first half as Max battles his way through new obstacles. The quiet middle section sticks out like a sore thumb.

Legend
1985
**
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, Tim Curry, David Bennent, Alice Playten

Ridley Scott's silly romantic fantasy has no plot to speak of, but it has beautiful visuals galore. Tom Cruise in one his least proud roles.

Kiss of the Spider Woman
1985
**½
Director: Hector Babenco
Cast: William Hurt, Raul Julia, Sonia Braga, Jose Lewgoy, Nuno Leal Maia

William Hurt is very good in his Oscar winning role as a gay prisoner, but this adaptation of Manuel Puig's novel is a long, stagy and slow-moving drama which only gets going in the last few minutes.

King Solomon's Mines
1985
*
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, Herbert Lom, John Rhys-Davies

A very rich and detailed ripoff of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The characters, costumes, events and even music are faithfully duplicated. Sharon Stone plays the Karen Allen role.

King David
1985
*½
Director: Bruce Beresford
Cast: Richard Gere, Edward Woodward, Alice Krige, Denis Quilley

A feeble biblical film. Richard Gere is badly miscast in the title role.

The Jewel of the Nile
1985
**
Director: Lewis Teague
Cast: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny De Vito, Spiros Focas

The star power of Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny De Vito is not enough to save a sloppy and pointless sequel to Romancing the Stone. This time the action takes place in the Middle East.

Jagged Edge
1985
**½
Director: Richard Marquand
Cast: Glenn Close, Jeff Bridges, Peter Coyote, Robert Loggia, John Dehner

A mediocre thriller about a female lawyer who defends a man accused of murdering his wife. This is a typical mix of sex, violence and sleaze from the pen of Joe Esterhaz, who later wrote Basic Instinct. Close and Bridges keep you awake during the boring court trial.

Invasion USA
1985
*
Director: Joseph Zito
Cast: Chuck Norris, Richard Lynch, Melissa Prophet, Alex Colon

As bad as any other Chuck Norris film, but this time with some jingoistic Cold War elements.

Into the Night
1985
****
Director: John Landis
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard Farnsworth, Irene Papas, Kathryn Harrold, Paul Mazursky, Vera Miles, Roger Vadim, Clu Gulager, Dan Aykroyd, David Bowie, Bruce McGill

Ed is an insomniac whose career and marriage are in the doldrums. One night he runs into Diana, a vivacious young woman who is in trouble. This laid-back caper comedy came out in the same period as After Hours (1985) and Something Wild (1986). All three tell a story about a bored office drone who undergoes a transformative experience. Jeff Goldblum is wonderfully restrained as Ed, Michelle Pfeiffer is just lovely as Diana, and David Bowie has a hilarious supporting role as an English henchman. John Landis plays one of the buffoonish Iranian gunmen, and he has given many of his fellow filmmakers cameo roles. These include Don Siegel, Jonathan Demme, Lawrence Kasdan, Amy Heckerling, Jim Henson, and Rick Baker. The soundtrack includes several tracks by B.B. King.

Grace Quickley
1985
**
Director: Anthony Harvey
Cast: Kathleen Hepburn, Nick Nolte, Elizabeth Wilson, Chip Zien

A pit black comedy about an elderly woman who, with the help of a hitman, starts killing other unhappy elderly people. The film starts well but turns tasteless towards the end.

The Goonies
1985
****
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Corey Feldman, Kerri Green, Martha Plimpton, Ke Huy Quan, John Matuszak, Anne Ramsey, Robert Davi, Joe Pantoliano

A group of kids discover a map which could lead them to the treasure of One-Eyed Willy, a 17th century pirate. They embark on an adventure, with a family of nasty criminals on their heels. This fast-paced adventure movie is funny, action-packed, and entertaining, even if its characters are drawn with very broad strokes. Scripted by Chris Columbus from Steven Spielberg's story.

Fright Night
1985
***
Director: Tom Holland
Cast: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse, Roddy McDowall

A teenager who is a horror buff discovers that his new neighbour is a vampire. This is a rather ordinary horror film, but the make-up work is still impressive and Chris Sarandon is very charismatic as the primary bloodsucker. Remade in 2011.

Fletch
1985
**
Director: Michael Ritchie
Cast: Chevy Chase, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Tim Matheson, Geena Davis

Fletch is an investigative journalist of many disguises, but the film itself is a standard Chevy Chase comedy, that is, more annoying than funny. Followed by Fletch Lives.

Flesh + Blood
1985
*½
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Burlinson, Jack Thompson

Paul Verhoeven's first English language film is a tasteless and pointless historical adventure, but it does bear some of his trademarks. That is, nudity and violence.

The Falcon and the Snowman
1985
***
Director: John Schlesinger
Cast: Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, David Suchet, Lori Singer, Pat Hingle

An interesting true story about two youngsters who become Soviet spies has resulted in a rather uninspired film. Sean Penn is an extremely annoying whiner as the Snowman. Based on Robert Lindsey's book The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage.

Enemy Mine
1985
***½
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Louis Gossett Jr., Brion James, Richard Marcus

A charmingly original and touching science fiction allegory about a man and an alien who are forced to become friends after crashlanding on the same planet. The story grips you but the special effects and the music seem a bit outdated.

Desperately Seeking Susan
1985
****
Director: Susan Seidelman
Cast: Rosanna Arquette, Madonna, Aidan Quinn, Mark Blum, Robert Joy

A witty comedy about a frustrated housewife who goes out to look for the mysterious Susan. Rosanna Arquette is wonderful and Madonna gives probably her finest performance in one of her earliest films.

Death Wish 3
1985
*
Director: Michael Winner
Cast: Charles Bronson, Deborah Raffin, Ed Lauter, Martin Balsam

In the third film everybody's favourite vigilante is having his private war with bazookas and machine guns on the streets of Los Angeles. No sign of the police, though. This is simply awful.

Crimewave
1985
**½
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Louise Lasser, Paul L. Smith, Brion James, Sheree J. Wilson

Sam Raimi and the Coen brothers co-wrote this delightfully brainless but helplessly uneven slapstick comedy where the plot is of secondary importance. A very uneven cast, as well.

Commando
1985
*
Director: Mark L. Lester
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells

The unintentional humour is the only reason to watch this clumsy action film about a soldier whose military mission turns personal when his daughter is kidnapped.

Cocoon
1985
***
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Don Ameche, Hume Cronyn, Wilford Brimley, Brian Dennehy

A considerably entertaining fairy tale about pensioners who rediscover their youth. Amiably directed by the family friendly Ron Howard. The ending is literally too far-fetched.

Clue
1985
**
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Cast: Eileen Brennan, Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Leslie Ann Warren

A modest crime comedy which is based on the well known board game. Three alternative endings are on offer but, all in all, the game itself is more interesting.

Cat's Eye
1985
***
Director: Lewis Teague
Cast: Drew Barrymore, James Woods, Alan King, Kenneth McMillan

This lesser known collection of Stephen King's short stories is in fact funnier and scarier than the more famous Creepshow. Some clever injokes for film buffs.

Calamari Union
1985
***
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Timo Eränkö, Kari Heiskanen, Asmo Hurula, Sakke Järvenpää, Sakari Kuosmanen, Dave Lindholm, Mikko Mattila, Pate Mustajärvi, Tuomari Nurmio, Pirkka-Pekka Petelius, Matti Pellonpää, Pertti Sveholm, Martti Syrjä, Pantse Syrjä, Markku Toikka, Mato Valtonen, Puntti Valtonen, Kari Väänänen

15 agitated men, all of them named Frank, plus one Pekka embark on a journey from one district of Helsinki to another, but they face many internal and external obstacles on this short trip. Aki Kaurismäki's second feature is a likeable but disposable collection of absurdist vignettes. The cast features some professional actors and a number of Finnish rock musicians, and the plotless film feels like these guys made it all up as they were shooting. The black and white cinematography looks great.

Brewster's Millions
1985
*½
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Richard Pryor, John Candy, Lonette McKee, Stephen Collins

A baseball player is challenged to spend \$30M in one month in order to win ten times that sum. This promising premise is turned into a stupid and tiresome comedy, and the fault lies mainly with Richard Pryor's exhausting performance. Based on George Barr McCutcheon's novel.

Breakfast Club
1985
***
Director: John Hughes
Cast: Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, John Kapelos, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Paul Gleason, Ron Dean, Mercedes Hall

Five high school kids are forced to spend their Saturday in detention to mull over their misdeeds. The two girls and the three boys represent the teen film stock characters (the princess, the athlete, the nerd, the rebel and the recluse) who gradually discover that they have more in common that they thought. John Hughes' best known film is an uncinematic one-room character drama whose continuous and entertainingly profane dialogue is disrupted only by the occasional song. And yet, despite the lack of action Hughes manages to turn the quintet into living breathing human beings. The ending with its rushed and contrived romances is ridiculous, though.

Brazil
1985
****½
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Ian Richardson, Peter Vaughan, Kim Greist

In an Orwellian society characterised by oppressive bureaucracy and surveillance, a low-level bureaucrat, who wants to track down a woman that appears in his recurring dream, is drawn into a conspiracy to overthrow the regime. Terry Gilliam's dark science fiction comedy is highly original and visually rich, if a bit long. In this inventively realised world, technology is everywhere but, more often than not, it is malfunctioning. This dystopia is often very funny and occasionally very grim, and Jonathan Pryce gives a terrific performance in the lead. Scripted by Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, and Charles McKeown. The title comes from the 1939 song Aquarela do Brasil, which recurs throughout the film.

Better Off Dead
1985
**
Director: Savage Steve Holland
Cast: John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, Kim Darby, Demian Slade

An utterly formulaic teen film. You don't get the prettiest girl in the school until you become popular, and once you do you realise how shallow she is.

Back to the Future
1985
*****
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Grispin Glover

Marty McFly is a teenager who accidentally ends up using a time machine built by his eccentric friend Doc Emmett Brown. He ends up in 1955, where he has to play a matchmaker to his own parents to make sure he will be born. This supremely entertaining time travel adventure has become a genuine classic for a reason. It offers great performances, lovely characterisation, and an incredibly inventive script. Followed by two sequels, Part II and Part III.

After Hours
1985
****½
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom, Thomas Chong, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, Richard Cheech Marin, Catherine O'Hara, Dick Miller, Will Patton

Paul is a mild-mannered word processor who goes out to meet a beautiful woman he ran into in a café, but finds himself caught in a surreal series of events during a single night in New York City. Martin Scorsese's short and breezy dark comedy, which shares DNA with Into the Night (1985) and Something Wild (1986), is like a cinematic reimagining of a nightmare you cannot wake up from. Paul encounters eccentric characters and bizarre situations, but struggles to escape his desperate predicament. Howard Shore's soundtrack is wonderful.

9½ Weeks
1985
*½
Director: Adrian Lyne
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Margaret Whitton, David Margulies

This very popular erotic thriller looks good like all Adrian Lyne's films, but its story about a short but passionate love affair is ridiculously sketchy. The film that made Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger stars is one of their worst.

Top Secret!
1984
****½
Director: David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker
Cast: Val Kilmer, Lucy Cutteridge, Christopher Villiers, Omar Sharif

In one of his first performances Val Kilmer plays a cocky American pop singer who gets mixed up with political intrigue while visiting East Germany. The plot is frankly irrelevant, but since this is a typical Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker gag comedy, you won't have time to pay attention from all the laughing.

Tightrope
1984
****
Director: Richard Tuggle
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Genevieve Bujold, Alison Eastwood, Jennifer Beck

An odd and original thriller about a detective whose kinky habits make him a suspect in his own murder investigation.

This Is Spinal Tap
1984
*****
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, June Chadwick, Tony Hendra, Bruno Kirby, Fran Drescher

A brilliant rockumentary about an over the hill British Heavy Metal band, who embark on a disastrous US tour. This immensely influential comedy, which created an entirely new sub-genre, offers wonderful show business parody, amusing music and lyrics, quotable dialogue, and iconic comedy set pieces. Christopher Guest, who plays the lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel, made a career out of similar type of comedies (for example, Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show).

The Terminator
1984
****
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen, Earl Boen, Bess Motta, Rick Rossovich

In his signature role, the appropriately stone-faced Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a relentless cyborg who travels back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill the mother of an unborn child who leads a rebellion against the machines in the future. James Cameron's science fiction movie is captivating and sharply written, but its squeaky tyre action scenes and stop motion effects haven't aged well. This influential movie launched a long running franchise, which includes releases such as Terminator 2, Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on TV.

Streets of Fire
1984
**½
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Michael Paré, Willem Dafoe, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan

Diane Lane is hot as a rock chick who is kidnapped by a biker gang. Michael Paré, on the other hand, is absolutely useless as the ex-boyfriend who attempts to rescue her. This ambitious rock fairy tale draws influence from various different sources, but it's underwhelming on almost every level.

Starman
1984
****
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel

A charming, funny, touching and in some sense plausible story about a visitor from another planet who tries to get to his rendezvous point. Jeff Bridges is great in the title role.

A Soldier's Story
1984
***
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Howard E. Rollins Jr., Adolph Caesar, Dennis Lipscomb, Art Evans

A captivating murder mystery which deals with racism in the military. This stagy film is based on Charles Fuller's Soldier's Play. Adolphe Caesar is great as the murdered sergeant.

Romancing the Stone
1984
***
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Zach Norman

Joan Wilder writes rousing romance novels but leads a dull and lonely life. Joan discovers a new side to herself when her sister is kidnapped and she is forced to bring a mysterious treasure map to Colombia, where she meets a roguish adventurer named Jack Colton. This romantic adventure came in the wake of the Indiana Jones franchise, but it hasn't aged nearly as well as Steven Spielberg's movies. The central treasure hunt seems totally trivial and the tone and characterisation are often all over the place. However, the movie is not without charm. The years have not diminished the wonderful chemistry between Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Followed by The Jewel of the Nile.

The River
1984
***
Director: Mark Rydell
Cast: Mel Gibson, Sissy Spacek, Scott Glenn, Shane Bailey, Becky Jo Lynch

A story about a resilient family who try to hold on to their farm. The film is credible but overlong and a bit monotonous.

Rhinestone
1984
*½
Director: Bob Clark
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Dolly Parton, Richard Farnsworth, Ron Leibman

Sylvester Stallone's early attempt at comedy is as flawed as his later attempts. But at least you get to hear him sing country music.

Red Dawn
1984
*
Director: John Milius
Cast: Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen

An idiotic and jingoistic Cold War drama about a Soviet invasion of the USA, starring the Young Guns.

Purple Rain
1984
**½
Director: Albert Magnoli
Cast: Prince, Apollonia Kotero, Morris Day, Clarence Williams III

A naive but watchable story about an ambitious young musician, played by Prince. A very memorable soundtrack, obviously by Prince as well.

Police Academy
1984
**½
Director: Hugh Wilson
Cast: Steve Guttenberg, Bubba Smith, Kim Cattrall, George Gaynes

A comedy hit about a group of losers who join the police academy. The film has some actual funny moments, especially when Inspector Lassard is on screen, but it's ruined by the silly feelgood finale. Followed by Police Academy 2 and five further sequels.

A Passage to India
1984
**½
Director: David Lean
Cast: Judie Davis, Victor Banerjee, Peggy Ashcroft, Alec Guinness

David Lean's final film, adapted from E.M. Forster's novel, is not in the same league with his earlier masterpieces, such as Lawrence of Arabia. The locations in India are gorgeous and the film is beautiful to look at, but the characters and the story, about an English woman who goes to India, leave you cold.

Paris, Texas
1984
****
Director: Wim Wenders
Cast: Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Aurore Clement

Wim Wenders' charming road movie about an enigmatic man who once abandoned his family but now wants to find his ex-wife with the help if his son. The film relies more on mood than on plot. Harry Dean Stanton plays the lead for once.

Once Upon a Time in America
1984
*****
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Tuesday Weld, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Burt Young, Treat Williams, Danny Aiello, James Hayden, William Forsythe

Sergio Leone's final work is a long, ambitious, and mesmerising drama about four Jewish boys from New York who grow up to be gangsters. This epic film covers a time span of over 40 years in its four hour running time. Thematically it deals with regrets and memories, and once it's over, I'm not sure whether some or most of it is just a dream. With first class cinematography, production design, and Ennio Morricone's haunting music, I feel like I'm watching a true work of art. The film contains two separate rape scenes, which are hard to stomach, although they do make thematic sense. Based on by Harry Grey's book The Hoods.

A Nightmare On Elm Street
1984
***
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Robert Englund, Ronee Blackley, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon

Freddy Krueger, a mysterious man with knives for fingers, is killing teenagers in their sleep in Wes Craven's darkly comic horror movie classic. The premise is original and the villain is iconic, but the film hasn't aged that well. Followed by half a dozen sequels and a remake in 2010. Young Johnny Depp makes a short appearance.

The Neverending Story
1984
***
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Noah Hathaway, Barret Oliver, Tami Stronach, Moses Gunn

A visually beautiful but somewhat lacklustre fantasy film about a young boy who imagines the events in Fantasia as he reads the book. Based on Michael Ende's fantasy novel.

Mrs. Soffel
1984
***
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Cast: Mel Gibson, Diane Keaton, Matthew Modine, Edward Herrmann

A slow-paced but touching drama about a doomed romance between a prisoner and a warden's wife. A tragic true story without a tagged-on happy ending.

Moscow on the Hudson
1984
****
Director: Paul Mazursky
Cast: Robin Williams, Maria Conchita Alonso, Cleavant Derricks, Alejandro Rey

A delightful drama comedy about a Russian saxophone player who defects to the West. As it turns out his life in New York is no bed of roses either. The film is truthful about the immigrant experience and the balanced script is nicely critical of both the Soviet Union and the USA.

Missing in Action
1984
*
Director: Joseph Zito
Cast: Chuck Norris, M. Emmet Walsh, David Tress, Lenore Kasdorf

Since Rambo couldn't finish the job, stoneface Chuck Norris saves the remaining Vietnam POWs in this brainless copy. A truly bad film.

Maria's Lovers
1984
**
Director: Andrei Konchalovsky
Cast: Nastassja Kinski, John Savage, Robert Mitchum, Keith Carradine, Anita Morris, Vincent Spano

Maria is irresistible to men, young or old, but her heart belongs to Ivan. Ivan, however, is a traumatised WW2 veteran who cannot make love to her. This overblown and overacted romantic drama is full of grand emotions, but none of it transcends the screen. For the story to work we must want them to be happy together, but we're never given any reason to do that. We do feel sorry for Maria, though, mostly because she chose to marry Ivan.

The Lonely Guy
1984
**½
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cast: Steve Martin, Charles Grodin, Judith Ivey, Robyn Douglass

A forgettable comedy about a man who gets dumped. It's not up there with Steve Martin's better films from the same era.

The Little Drummer Girl
1984
*½
Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Diane Keaton, Yorgo Voyagis, Klaus Kinski, Michael Cristofer

An utterly dull terrorist drama which could have been improved by changing absolutely everything. Based on John le Carré's novel.

Lifeforce
1984
***
Director: Tobe Hooper
Cast: Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, Patrick Stewart

A decent horror film about zombies who overtake a city. One of them is played by Mathilda May who walks nude through the entire film.

The Killing Fields
1984
****
Director: Roland Joffe
Cast: Sam Waterston, Hains S. Ngor, John Malkovich, Julian Sands

A shocking and impressively believable drama about a journalist who witnesses the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. The story is based on real events. The three Academy Awards include Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Supporting Actor (Hains S. Ngor).

The Karate Kid
1984
***½
Director: John G. Avildsen
Cast: Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Elisabeth Shue, Randee Heller, Martin Kove, William Zabka, Chad McQueen

Daniel reluctantly moved to California with his mother. Things get even worse when he is constantly attacked by bullies. Daniel befriends his building's janitor Mr. Miyagi, who agrees to teach him karate with unusual methods. This classic underdog story follows in the footsteps of Rocky, also directed by John G. Avildsen. The resulting film is likeable if not terribly believable. Noriyuki "Pat" Morita is good fun as Mr. Miyagi. Followed by Part II, Part III, a revamped female version (The Next Karate Kid) in 1994 and a remake in 2010.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
1984
****
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Amrish Puri, Ke Huy Quan, Roshan Seth

Indy starts his second adventure in Shanghai but winds up in India where he helps villagers to find their captured children. There are some breathtaking action scenes, but the story is bleak and uneven. The leading female role is clichéd compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Followed by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Iceman
1984
***
Director: Fred Schepisi
Cast: Timothy Hutton, Lindsay Crouse, John Lone, David Strathairn

Scientists discover a prehistoric man inside a block of ice and manage to resurrect him. The wonderful premise offers a wealth of possibilities, but this mediocre science fiction drama fails to exploit them.

The Hotel New Hampshire
1984
**½
Director: Tony Richardson
Cast: Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, Beau Bridges, Nastassja Kinski, Paul McCrane

A tragicomic story about an eccentric family whose move to Vienna has dramatic consequences. John Irving's sprawling novel was an enjoyable read but this rushed adaptation struggles to deal with all of its themes and story strands. Tony Richardson even goes as far as to speed up some scenes into silly slapstick.

Greystoke
1984
****
Director: Hugh Hudson
Cast: Christopher Lambert, Andie MacDowell, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm

A quality Tarzan film in which Rick Baker's ape make-up takes the centre stage. Well, his creatures are definitely more expressive than Christopher Lambert as Lord Greystoke. Sir Ralph Richardson is great in his last role. The second half in England is a letdown.

Gremlins
1984
**
Director: Joe Dante
Cast: Phoebe Cates, Zach Galligan, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain

A popular horror comedy about a family whose new and cute exotic pet, a Mogwai, turns into a group of nasty monsters. The creatures are well made, but the film is dull. Followed by Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

Ghostbusters
1984
***
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver

Three scientists form a ghost capturing team just as paranormal activity is on the increase in New York City. Murray plays a deadpan womaniser and provides the jokes, Aykroyd and Ramis (who scripted the film) play it straight and give the expositional scientific gobbledygook. This fantasy comedy hit is sympathetically goofy but tonally all over the place. Followed by Ghostbusters II five years later.

Flashpoint
1984
***
Director: William Tannen
Cast: Kris Kristofersson, Treat Williams, Rip Torn, Kevin Conway

This entertaining thriller puts a new spin on the old JFK assassination conspiracy. It tells a story of two border patrolmen who find a mysterious jeep in the desert.

Firestarter
1984
**
Director: Mark L. Lester
Cast: Keith David, Drew Barrymore, George C. Scott, Martin Sheen

A watchable but very predictable low budget horror film about a young girl who has superpowers. Drew Barrymore in one of her first starring roles. Based on Stephen King's novel.

Dune
1984
*½
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Brad Dourif, Jose Ferrer, Sting

A long and utterly boring science fiction film from Frank Herbert's novel. The special effects are impressive but irrelevant when the story is uninteresting, the performances are wooden and the dialogue is gibberish. It's extremely hard to pick out any Lynchian elements from this film.

Dreamscape
1984
***
Director: Joseph Ruben
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Christopher Plummer, Max von Sydow, Eddie Albert, Kate Capshaw, David Patrick Kelly, George Wendt, Chris Mulkey

The gifted but selfish Alex joins a secret project where psychics like him enter people's dreams for therapy purposes. However, he discovers that a government agent is harnessing the mefhod to assassinate people in their sleep. This clever science fiction thriller is like a cross between The Dead Zone (1983) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), with a little bit of Inception (2010) thrown in for good measure. The story is intriguing but everything else, the not so special effects in particular, have dated poorly.

The Cotton Club
1984
***
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Richard Gere, Diane Lane, James Remar, Gregory Hines, Bob Hoskins

A stylish gangster film about a fictional musician who gets into bed with real-life gangsters. The events centre around the famous Harlem night club in the 1930s. The story doesn't offer too many surprise and Richard Gere doesn't quite have the charisma to carry the film. However, the dance and music numbers are excellent.

Conan the Destroyer
1984
*
Director: Richard Fleischer
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, Mako

There is no sign of mystique in this redundant sequel to Conan the Barbarian. Sword fights alone do not a film make.

The Company of Wolves
1984
**
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Angela Lansbury, David Warner, Steven Rea, Tusse Silberg

Neil Jordan's dull fantasy about a young girl and her werewolf dreams has an oddly bloated reputation. It's visually ambitious but looks hopelessly staged. Based on Angela Carter's short story.

Comfort and Joy
1984
**
Director: Bill Forsyth
Cast: Bill Paterson, Eleanor David, Alex Norton, Patrick Malahide, Roberto Bernardi

Morning radio Dj ventures into investigative journalism and ends up right in the middle of a brutal battle for the local ice cream business. This Scottish comedy is reasonably sympathetic and low-key but too silly, clumsy and pointless to be worth your while.

City Heat
1984
*½
Director: Richard Benjamin
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Jane Alexander, Madeline Kahn

This silly and clumsy gangster comedy is one of Clint Eastwood's worst. At the time it was one of Burt Reynolds' better ones.

Children of the Corn
1984
*½
Director: Fritz Kiersch
Cast: Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, R.G. Armstrong, John Franklin

A small budget horror film based on Stephen King's novel about a couple who get stranded in a spooky town. There are a few scary moments but all in all it's clichéd and cheap-looking.

Cannonball Run 2
1984
*½
Director: Hal Needham,
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Shirley MacLaine, Marilu Henner

A complete rehash of the original Cannonball Run, with more or less the same cast.

Broadway Danny Rose
1984
***
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte, Corbett Monica

An amusing but lightly plotted comedy about a second-rate talent manager who bites more than he can chew. Woody Allen's performance is wonderfully kinetic and the agent's protégés are quite hilarious.

The Bounty
1984
**
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins, Daniel Day-Lewis, Laurence Olivier

This retelling of the mutiny on the Bounty legend looks great but it's dramatically flat. Captain Bligh is portrayed as an insecure leader who suddenly turns into a raving lunatic. In the other corner we have the crew who deserve the wrath of their commander. Who are we supposed to root for? The matters are made worse by Mel Gibson, who gives his blandest ever performance as Fletcher Christian, the leader of the revolt. The soundtrack by Vangelis is nicely untypical. Previously filmed as Mutiny on the Bounty in 1935 and 1962.

Body Double
1984
***
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Graig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Deborah Stelton

A trashy but entertaining thriller about a claustrophobic actor who witnesses a murder while he house-sits for his new friend. Brian De Palma's film combines elements from Hitchcock's Rear Window and Vertigo, and it could be seen as a parody of the genre. Unfortunately Graig Wasson doesn't convince as a B film actor, despite being one himself.

Blood Simple
1984
****½
Director: Joel Coen
Cast: John Getz, Dan Hedaya, Frances McDormand, M. Emmet Walsh, Samm-Art Williams

The writing and directing debut of the Coen brothers is a bleak and darkly funny neo-noir. A jealous husband hires a dirty private eye to kill his wife and her lover, but that is only the beginning of the twisty story. This stylish and deliberately paced film is a work of young but confident filmmakers. The dialogue-free 15-minute burial scene is the clear highlight. Frances McDormand appears in her first screen role.

Birdy
1984
****
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Matthew Modine, John Harkins, Sandy Baron

A sympathetic drama about two longtime friends, one of whom is now mentally unstable. The friends are nicely portrayed by Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage. The story loses its grip a bit towards the end. Based on William Wharton's novel.

Beverly Hills Cop
1984
***½
Director: Martin Brest
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Lisa Eilbacher, Ronny Cox, Steven Berkoff, Jonathan Banks, James Russo, Stephen Elliott

In a tailor-made role, Eddie Murphy plays an ill-disciplined and motormouthed Detroit cop who goes to Los Angeles to investigate the murder of his best friend. This is a funny and likeable action comedy with a very memorable soundtrack. The climactic shootout is preposterous, though. Followed by two inferior sequels, Beverly Hills Cop II and III.

Best Defense
1984
*
Director: Willard Huyck
Cast: Dudley Moore, Eddie Murphy, Kate Capshaw, George Dzundza

Dudley Moore plays an engineer who designed a tank and Eddie Murphy plays a commander who must use it in combat years later. The stars apparently never met during the shoot. This depressingly awful comedy is stitched together from unrelated unfunny clips.

Amadeus
1984
*****
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: Tom Hulce, F. Murray Abraham, Elisabeth Berridge, Jeffrey Jones

A fictionalised biopic of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as told through the eyes of Antonio Salieri, his mediocre contemporary. This magical film is a joy to both eyes and ears. The excellent Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham fought over the same Best Actor Oscar, and the latter won. The other seven Academy Awards include Best Picture and Best Director. Peter Schaffer scripted his own play.

All of Me
1984
**½
Director: Carl Reiner
Cast: Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Victoria Tennant, Madolyn Smith

A fantasy comedy about a lawyer whose body is partly taken over by the soul of an obnoxious rich woman. Although the story is based on Edwin Davis' novel Me Two, Steve Martin and Carl Reiner have basically remade The Man with Two Brains. Now the protagonist doesn't fall in love with a brain in the jar, but with the woman inside him. Martin is very good but the film isn't.


Against All Odds
1984
**
Director: Taylor Hackford
Cast: Jeff Bridges, James Woods, Rachel Ward, Alex Karras, Jane Greer

A plotless and greatly overlong crime drama which is held together by James Woods and Jeff Bridges with their solid performances. The stunning Rachel Ward and a decent car race scene provide some much needed distraction from the dull proceedings.

84 Charing Cross Road
1984
***
Director: David Jones
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft, Judi Dench, Jean De Baer

A very likeable but not terribly cinematic story about two long-time pen friends and book lovers who correspond across the Atlantic Ocean. Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins are great in the lead.

Zelig
1983
****
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Garrett Brown, Stephanie Farrow, Will Holt

A brilliantly executed pseudo-documentary about Zelig, a human chameleon who changes with the world. Simultaneously a very typical and untypical Woody Allen film.

Yellowbeard
1983
**
Director: Mel Damski
Cast: Graham Chapman, Peter Boyle, Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong

This very uneven pirate comedy stars three members of Monty Python.

War Games
1983
***
Director: John Badham
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman, John Wood

An entertaining but highly implausible drama about a teen whose computer game playing brings the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust. It takes too long until Game Over.

Videodrome
1983
***½
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: James Woods, Sonja Smits, Deborah Harry, Peter Dvorsky, Jack Creley, Les Carlson, Lynne Gorman

Max Renn, the president of a trashy TV station, becomes obsessed with Videodrome, a mysterious broadcast which appears to depict real-life torture and murder. David Cronenberg's cult body horror film is often uncomfortable viewing, but there is no denying that it deals with a topic which seems even more topical now 40 years later, namely how moving images can influence us or make us question our reality. Max's journey down a disturbingly hallucinatory path is wonderfully visualised with Rick Baker's special effects.

Under Fire
1983
****
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Cast: Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy, Jean-Louis Trintignant

A gripping and well acted political drama about war correspondents who defy danger in Nicaragua. The Year of Living Dangerously and Salvador covered similar ground some time later.

Uncommon Valor
1983
*½
Director: Ted Kotcheff
Cast: Gene Hackman, Robert Stack, Fred Ward, Randall "Tex" Cobb

Gene Hackman's talents are wasted in this idiotic action film. The story revolves around an attempt to free Vietnam POWs. It takes half of the running time before the pre-Rambo silliness begins.

Trading Places
1983
****
Director: John Landis
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Denholm Elliott, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Kristin Holby, Paul Gleason

When the wealthy Duke brothers cannot agree on the question of nature versus nurture, they arrange a social experiment, in which an affluent broker and a homeless street hustler swap places. ´This smart and funny comedy is an enduring 1980s classic. The script by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod offers a clever premise and wonderfully drawn characters. The performances are great all-around. Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy come from two different schools of comedy, and Jamie Lee Curtis is a revelation in her first non-horror role. The climactic stock exchange ending is somewhat baffling.

To Be or Not to Be
1983
****
Director: Alan Johnson
Cast: Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Tim Matheson, Charles Durning, José Ferrer, George Gaynes, Christopher Lloyd, George Wyner, Lewis J. Stadlen, Jack Riley

When Germany invades Poland, a Polish theatre company becomes unwittingly involved in a plot to thwart the Nazis. Its star actors Fredrick and Anna Bronski must give the best performances of their lives. Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft are excellent in this funny and inventive comedy remake. The film is thoroughly enjoyable but it's no match to the 1942 original, which came out during the war.

Terms of Endearment
1983
****
Director: James L. Brooks
Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Debra Winger, Danny DeVito, Jeff Daniels, John Lithgow, Lisa Hart Carroll, Huckleberry Fox, Troy Bishop

This funny and moving drama tells a story of a widow and her daughter. Aurora and Emma are two strong-willed individuals, and their relationship is loving but turbulent. These characters feel raw and authentic, and their story is well observed and heartbreaking. James L. Brooks adapted Larry McMurtry's 1975 novel for his feature debut, and ended up winning an Academy Award for writing, directing, and producing. The film is wonderfully acted, so it comes as no surprise that Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson went home with Oscars of their own.

The Survivors
1983
**½
Director: Michel Ritchie
Cast: Robin Williams, Walter Matthau, Jerry Reed, James Wainwright

This modest comedy is set in a survival camp. The whole thing relies too heavily on the charisma of Robin Williams and Walter Matthau.

Superman III
1983
**½
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Annette O'Toole, Jackie Cooper, Marc McClure, Annie Ross, Pamela Stephenson, Robert Vaughn, Margot Kidder

Ruthless business magnate Ross Webster plans to rule the world. Only Superman stands in the way, but he hopes to fix that with self-made kryptonite. The third movie in the series manages to maintain some of the old-fashioned charm from parts I and II, but ultimately offers an odd mix of campy humour and grim violence when Superman becomes a selfish, brooding bastard. Lois Lane makes an appearance only for continuity, as Clark Kent gets reacquainted with his high school sweetheart. Richard Pryor gives a terrible performance as a clever but dumb computer programmer. Followed by Superman Iv: The Quest for Peace (1987).

Sudden Impact
1983
**
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, Bradford Dillman

The anaemic fourth Dirty Harry film, directed by Clint himself, is nowhere near the brilliance of the original, or even its first two sequels. This time he's after a female vigilante. A nicely bleak ending. Followed by The Dead Pool.

Streamers
1983
**½
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Matthew Modine, Michale Wright, Mitchell Lichtenstein, Guy Boyd

Robert Altman's drama about a group of soldiers a day before they go to war. This one room film is based on a play and it's a bit monotonous.

Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi
1983
***
Director: Richard Marquand
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, David Prowse, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, Frank Oz

In the final part of the original trilogy, the Rebel Alliance plans to make a final, risky attack against the Galactic Empire while they are still in the process of rebuilding the Death Star. At the same time, Luke confronts Darth Vader and the Emperor. The third movie is the longest one of the three, but this fast-paced and entertaining space adventure brings the story to a gratifying conclusion. The furry Ewoks are a matter of taste.

The Star Chamber
1983
**½
Director: Peter Hyams
Cast: Michael Doglas, Hal Holbrook, Yaphet Kotto, James B. Sikking

A group of frustrated lawyers take the law into their own hands, but the plan backfires. This is an interesting but uninspired morality tale.

Silkwood
1983
***
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Meryl Streep, Cher, Kurt Russell, Graig T. Nelson, Diana Scarwid

A captivating but a bit dry true story of a woman who discovers that the nuclear power plant where she works is ignoring safety measures. Meryl Streep is as good as always.

Scarface
1983
****
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio, Michelle Pfeiffer

An epic crime drama remake about the rise and fall of a Cuban gangster in 1980s Miami. Al Pacino's lead performance is magnificently over-the-top. The film is long, violent and extremely pompous, but disarmingly entertaining. Scripted by Oliver Stone. A memorable synthetic soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder.

Rumble Fish
1983
****½
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Dennis Hopper, Diane Lane, Diana Scarwid, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Spano, William Smith

Released only about six months after The Outsiders, Francis Ford Coppola's second S.E. Hinton adaptation tells a story about an explosive and foolhardy teenager who looks up to his legendary older brother. This stylised and original mood piece is beautifully shot in black and white. Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke are excellent as the two brothers.

Risky Business
1983
*
Director: Paul Brickman
Cast: Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay, Curtis Armstrong, Bronson Pinchot

In his breakthrough role Tom Cruise plays a teenager who has the house to himself when his parents go on holiday. Unfortunately he does nothing of interest. A stupid teen film which was a big hit.

Rikos ja rangaistus (Crime and Punishment)
1983
***
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Markku Toikka, Aino Seppo, Esko Nikkari, Hannu Lauri, Olli Tuominen, Matti Pellonpää, Kari Sorvali, Pentti Auer, Asmo Hurula, Risto Aaltonen, Tarja Keinänen, Tiina Pirhonen

A few minutes after a former law student kills a man in cold blood, a young woman arrives at the scene. As he grapples with the consequences of his actions, he begins to fall in love with the eye witness. For his feature debut, Aki Kaurismäki tackles no less than Fyodor Dostoevsky's iconic 1866 novel. This adaptation results in a likeable but rather conventional drama, which shows flickers of Kaurismäki's unique style in the making, namely stilted performances and total disregard of credibility.

Psycho 2
1983
***
Director: Richard Franklin
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Meg Tilly, Robert Loggia, Dennis Franz

23 years later Norman Bates is free again, but he finds himself in trouble again. This sequel to Hitchcock's Psycho is surprisingly decent.

The Outsiders
1983
***½
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Diane Lane, Leif Garrett

The turf war between two rival gangs, the Greasers and the Socs, in a small American town in the 1960s ends in tragedy, and two teenage boys go on the run. Francis Ford Coppola's moving coming-of-age drama is based on S.E. Hinton's 1967 novel, which explores friendship and the complexities of adolescence. Coppola followed the film with another Hinton adaptation, Rumble Fish. The cast includes a remarkable collection of (future) stars.

The Osterman Weekend
1983
**
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Rutger Hauer, Burt Lancaster, John Hurt, Graig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper

Sam Peckinpah must have been constantly drunk while directing his last film. This uninteresting conspiracy thriller is full of silly gaffes and continuity errors. Based on Robert Ludlum's novel.

Of Unknown Origin
1983
**½
Director: George Pan Cosmatos
Cast: Peter Weller, Jennifer Dale, Lawrence Dane, Kenneth Welsh

A man lives in a house that is infested with rats. This is a formulaic horror film with some genuinely scary and disgusting moments.

Octopussy
1983
***
Director: John Glen
Cast: Roger Moore, Maud Adams, Louis Jordan, Kristina Wayborn

One of Roger Moore's better James Bond films. The events are mostly set in India and the story offers an enjoyable mix of humour and action. Maud Adams plays a Bond girl for the second time.

Never Say Never Again
1983
**½
Director: Irvin Kershner
Cast: Sean Connery, Barbara Carrera, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max von Sydow

Sean Connery returns as 007 in this unofficial James Bond film. It's perfectly watchable but really just a remake of Thunderball.

National Lampoon's Vacation
1983
**½
Director: Harold Ramis
Cast: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Imogene Coca, Randy Quaid, Miriam Flynn, Anthony Michael Hall, Dana Barron, John Candy, Christie Brinkley

The Griswold family lives in Chicago. They embark on a vacation trip to the Walley World theme park in California, but nothing seems to go to plan. This popular road trip comedy is fueled by clichés, or maybe the movie is responsible for the entire genre and its tropes. There are some enjoyable moments, but they are few and far apart due to the pacing, which is both refreshingly and painfully slow. Followed by National Lampoon's European Vacation.

Monty Python's the Meaning of Life
1983
***
Director: Terry Jones
Cast: John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman

Monty Python's collection of short stories desperately tries to form into a cohesive whole. Some funny and some not so successful moments.

The Man with Two Brains
1983
*****
Director: Carl Reiner
Cast: Steve Martin, Kathleen Turner, David Warner, Sissy Spacek, Paul Benedict, George Furth, Peter Hobbs, Earl Boen, Randi Brooks

A brilliant brain surgeon, who marries a nasty gold digger, meets the woman of his dreams. Unfortunately she is only a disembodied brain in a jar. This fantastically wacky comedy is the finest collaboration between Steve Martin and Carl Reiner. There is a a simple but outrageously brilliant set-up and a steady 90 minute stream of gags and quotable lines. The jokes can be a bit hit and miss at times, but the characters and the film as a whole are simply too likeable to resist.

Lone Wolf Mcquade
1983
**
Director: Steve Carver
Cast: Chuck Norris, David Carradine, Barbara Carrera, Robert Beltran

This routine action film is not one of Chuck Norris' worst. He plays a Texas Ranger like in his dreadful TV series Walker.

Local Hero
1983
***½
Director: Bill Forsyth
Cast: Peter Riegert, Burt Lancaster, Fulton Mackay, Denis Lawson, Norman Chancer, Peter Capaldi, Rikki Fulton, Alex Norton, Jenny Seagrove, Jennifer Black

An American oil company finds the perfect location for a refinery in western Scotland and sends their representative to purchase the land in and around the village of Ferness. The lonely and matter-of-fact businessman predictably clashes with the laid-back and close-knit rural community but, even more predictably, falls in love with it. However, this melancholic comedy wins you over with its subtle humour and lovely characterisation. Soundtrack by Mark Knopfler.

The King of Comedy
1983
****½
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Diahnne Abbott, Sandra Bernhard, Shelley Hack, Tony Randall, Ed Herlihy

Robert De Niro gives a wonderfully exuberant and creepy performance as Rupert Pupkin, an aspiring comedian who dreams of his big break. This delusional funny man begins to stalk the host of a popular talk show until the man agrees to give him what he wants. Martin Scorsese's terrific dark comedy deals with our obsession with fame and celebrity. In this day and age when there are people who are famous for being famous and fans who feel like they own the celebrities, the film seems even more topical now than when it came out. The story is funny, touching, and occasionally very uncomfortable viewing. By the end, this feels like a companion piece to Scorsese's Taxi Driver. These two films heavily influenced Todd Phillips' Joker.

Gorky Park
1983
**
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: William Hurt, Joanna Pacula, Lee Marvin, Brian Dennehy, Ian Bannen

A sterile and uninspired Cold War thriller from a Martin Cruz Smith novel. Helsinki stands in for Moscow, where the film is set.

Flashdance
1983
**
Director: Adrian Lyne
Cast: Jennifer Beals, Michael Nouri, Lilia Skala, Sunny Johnson, Lee Ving

A young woman makes a living as a welder but dreams of becoming a professional dancer. She is also falling in love with her boss. This box office hit is actually even sillier than it sounds but, not to worry, there's only about 10 minutes worth of plot anyway. The rest of the time is taken by the dance numbers.

Doctor Detroit
1983
**
Director: Michael Pressman
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Howard Hesseman, T.K. Carter, Donna Dixon

The usually amiable Dan Aykroyd can't save an utterly redundant comedy about a geeky doctor.

The Dead Zone
1983
****
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Martin Sheen, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Dewhurst

Following a car crash, Johnny wakes up from a 5-year-coma to learn that his girlfriend is now married with a child. He also discovers that when he touches a person, he has psychic visions about their past, present, or future. This smart and captivating thriller may not be one of David Cronenberg’s most original works, but it certainly is one of his most accessible ones. Christopher Walken gives a very good lead performance. Based on a Stephen King novel.

Curse of the Pink Panther
1983
*
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Ted Wass, David Niven, Robert Wagner, Herbert Lom, Joanna Lumley

The Pink Panther films are almost solely based on Inspector Clouseau played by Peter Sellers. What's left if he's not in it?

Christine
1983
***½
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky, Harry Dean Stanton, Christine Belford, Roberts Blossom, William Ostrander

Arnie Cunningham, a nerdy and bullied teenager becomes obsessed with a decrepit 1958 Plymouth Fury, whose previous owner died mysteriously. The car, which seems to have a mind of its own, begins to affect Arnie's personality. John Carpenter's creepy and entertaining horror movie is based on Stephen King's novel. It tells an original story and it features well-drawn characters and superb visuals. The practical special effects look amazing to this day.

Breathless
1983
***
Director: Jim McBride
Cast: Richard Gere, Valerie Kaprisky, Art Metrano, John P. Ryan

Richard Gere gives one of his best performances in this vigorous road movie remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Á bout de souffle. Valerie Kaprinski, on the other hand, is only good at looking stunning. Nice rock music on the soundtrack.

Brainstorm
1983
***
Director: Douglas Trumbull
Cast: Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher, Cliff Robertson

This science fiction film takes its time to get going but it has a fascinating premise (a helmet that can record and replay sensations) and rather impressive special effects. Best remembered as Natalie Wood's final film.

Blue Thunder
1983
***
Director: John Badham
Cast: Roy Scheider, Malcolm McDowell, Candy Clark, Daniel Stern

This action film about a stolen super helicopter is enjoyable and interesting, but a bit over-stretched. Malcolm McDowell is an amusing villain, though.

The Big Chill
1983
****
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: Kevin Kline, Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, William Hurt, Meg Tilly

Old friends from college get together for their friend's funeral and discover that many a thing has changed. Along with Blade Runner this sophisticated and well acted adult drama is probably the most influential and the most copied film of the 1980s. A fine cast. Kevin Costner's cameo as the dead friend was cut out in the end.

Young Doctors in Love
1982
*½
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Michael McKean, Sean Young, Harry Dean Stanton, Patrick Macnee

A miserably lame hospital comedy starring Michael McKean, aka Derek St. Hubbins from This is Spinal Tap.

The Year of Living Dangerously
1982
**½
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt, Michael Murphy, Bill Kerr

Peter Weir's uninspired romantically flavoured drama about a war correspondent in Indonesia is not on the same level with films like Salvador or Under Fire. The main problem is that it's hard to connect with these characters. Linda Hunt gives a fine Oscar winning performance as a man.

The World According to Garp
1982
****
Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Robin Williams, Mary Beth Hurt, John Lithgow, Glenn Close

A funny, crazy, touching but also slightly tame adaptation of John Irving's popular novel about the colourful life of T.S. Garp. Robin Williams, Glenn Close and John Lithgow are wonderful.

White Dog
1982
****
Director: Samuel Fuller
Cast: Paul Winfield, Kristy McNichol, Burt Ives, Jameson Parker, Lynn Moody, Parley Baer

An actress, who lives alone in Los Angeles, takes home a stray White Shepherd, who displays bouts of aggression. She learns that the dog was trained to attack black people. Samuel Fuller's final American film is a captivating allegory about racism. While the dog is being retrained, the authorities do not seem to care that the dog has killed black people. That is either a glaring plot hole or a commentary on systemic racism in policing. The central question is whether the behaviour can be unlearned or is it too deeply ingrained to be cured? Sadly this thought-provoking film only received a limited cinematic release, because the studio considered its subject matter too controversial at the time. Ennio Morricone wrote the beautiful score. The script by Fuller and Curtis Hanson is loosely based on Romain Gary's 1970 novel.

Victor/Victoria
1982
**
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Julie Andrews, Jamse Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren

A monotonous and offputting musical comedy in which Julie Andrews plays a woman who pretends to be a man who plays a woman. And everyone turns out to be gay, how amusing.

The Verdict
1982
****
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, Lindsay Crouse

Paul Newman gives a superb performance as a down-and-out lawyer who gets more than he bargained for when he takes on a large hospital in a malpractice case. The strong story about one man's belief in justice carries us through some formulaic court room proceedings and an ending that seems glued on. Scripted by David Mamet.

Ulvova mylläri
1982
***
Director: Jaakko Pakkasvirta
Cast: Vesa-Matti Loiri, Eija Ahvo, Ahti Kuoppala, Juha Muje, Harri Tirkkonen

Vesa-Matti Loiri gives a wonderful performance as the local eccentric in a film based on Arto Paasilinna's novel.

Tron
1982
***
Director: Steven Lisberger
Cast: Jeff Bridges, David Warner, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan

A cocky programmer is transported into a computer game where he is forced take part in deadly martial games. This science fiction film looks totally unique and its visual look has stood the test of time. The story is occasionally confusing, though. Followed by Tron: Legacy 28 years later.

Trail of the Pink Panther
1982
*½
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Peter Sellers, David Niven, Herbert Lom, Rochard Mulligan, Joanna Lumley

This Pink Panther movie was made after the death of Peter Sellers, and it uses outtakes from his previous performances as Jacques Clouseau. As a cinematic experience, this is a total rip off.

Tootsie
1982
****
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Bill Murray, Dabney Coleman

This very enjoyable comedy about an actor who can only get work as an actress follows in the footsteps of Some Like It Hot. Dustin Hoffman is excellent in the lead. Lange won an Oscar for her supporting role.

The Thing
1982
****½
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Donald Moffat, Richard Dysart, T. K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Joel Polis, Thomas G. Waites

In The Thing from Another World a hulky creature from outer space terrorised an arctic research station. This brilliant remake takes place in Antarctica and the mostly invisible alien can assimilate and imitate living organisms. John Carpenter's version makes the most of a small group of people and the confined setting. This is an atmospheric, claustrophobic, and fatalistic horror film, which has become a classic for a reason. Rob Bottin's gruesome practical effects have stood the test of time, and so has Ennio Morricone's unusual electronic score. Followed by a 2011 prequel.

Still of the Night
1982
**
Director: Robert Benton
Cast: Meryl Streep, Roy Scheider, Jessica Tandy, Joe Gtrifasi, Sara Botsford

Or rather, stiff of the night. A very uninspired psychological thriller with Roy Scheider as a shrink and Meryl Streep as his mysterious client.

Sophie's Choice
1982
**
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter MacNicol, Greta Turken, Rita Karin, Stephen D. Newman, Josh Mostel, Robin Bartlett, Eugene Lipinski

In 1947, an aspiring writer Stingo moves next door to Sophie Zawistowska, a Polish Catholic woman who survived Auschwitz, and her unstable Jewish boyfiend Nathan. He gradually learns the truth about both of them. Meryl Streep conveys emotions in three different languages in her astonishing Academy Award winning performance. Sadly I can't say the same about the film. Most people know the concept of Sophie's choice, even if they haven't seen the film or read the book. It has become an analogy for a decision where both options are equally unpleasant. Sophie's story is gripping and moving, but Slingo's quest to lose his virginity and Nathan's struggles with mental issues are a complete waste of time. Alan J. Pakula scripted from William Styron's 1979 novel.

Poltergeist
1982
****
Director: Tobe Hooper
Cast: Graig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight, Heather O'Rourke

A story of a family whose house is taken over by Poltergeist. This is a tight horror film with good effects and a fine cast. There are claims that the film was actually directed by its producer Steven Spielberg. Followed by Poltergeist 2 and 3.

Pink Floyd-The Wall
1982
***½
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Bob Geldof, Chritine Hargreaves, James Laurenson, Eleanor David

An original mixture of cartoon and film that has probably more to offer to those who are into Pink Floyd and the Wall album.

Night Shift
1982
***
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Henry Winkler, Michael Keaton, Shelley Long, Gina Hecht, Pat Corley

Ron Howard's harmless comedy about two friends who run an escort service from a morgue. Henry "Fonzie" Winkler is amusing and Michael Keaton is a pain in the neck.

Missing
1982
****
Director: Costa Gavras
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea

A gripping and realistic drama about a middle-aged man who goes in search of his son in a turbulent Latin American country. Jack Lemmon as the father and Sissy Spacek as his daughter-in-law are excellent.

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
1982
***
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Tony Roberts, Mary Steenburgen

A light and harmless Woody Allen comedy about three couples who all seem to find new soul mates during a weekend in the country.

Koyaanisqatsi
1982
****
Director: Godfrey Reggio
Cast:

Godfrey Reggio's groundbreaking documentary begins in slow pace. He shows us clouds, waves and natural landscapes shaped by time. The pace picks up when the focus moves to human involvement on Earth and the hectic, speeded-up life in the cities. The message is not positive: the overcrowded planet is suffering. There is no dialogue, only Philip Glass' omnipresent and repetitive score which turns the film into a powerful audio-visual symphony.

Honkytonk Man
1982
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Kyle Eastwood, John McIntire, Alexa Kenin

Clint's early try at serious filmmaking is a funny and charming tale about a terminally ill country singer, his nephew and their trip to Nashville.

Hammett
1982
**
Director: Wim Wenders
Cast: Frederic Forrest, Peter Boyle, Marilu Henner, R.G. Armstrong

A fictionalised film noir pastiche about crime writer Dashiel Hammett. With first rate costumes, cinematography and production design, the film is visually impressive but dull and confusing. It was allegedly directed in parts by its producer Francis Ford Coppola. Based on the novel by Joe Gores.

Fitzcarraldo
1982
****
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Claudia Gardinale, Jose Lewgoy, Miguel Angel Fuentes

An aweinspiring story about an explorer/opera lover whose plans to chart the Amazon require a ship to be hauled over a hill. The story has a dozen different interpretations, all of them fascinating. Kinski is palpably intense in the title role. The process of making this film was even more of an epic than the end result.

First Blood
1982
***½
Director: Ted Kotcheff
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Brian Dennehy, Richard Crenna, Bill McKinney, Jack Starrett, Michael Talbott, Chris Mulkey, David Caruso, John McLiam

A small town sheriff picks a fight with a war veteran who is only passing through, unaware that his opponent is John Rambo, a highly skilled Green Beret. Unlike the sequels, the first Rambo film is a poignant and thought-provoking drama, which deals with the personal and collective trauma caused by the disastrous war in Vietnam. However, it is also a gritty and entertaining action movie. Based on David Morrell's 1972 novel. Followed by Rambo: First Blood Part 2 (1985), Rambo 3 (1988), Rambo (2008), and Rambo: Last Blood (2016).


Firefox
1982
*
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Freddie Jones, David Huffman, Warren Clarke

This jingoistic Cold War film is easily one of Clint Eastwood's weakest efforts, both as an actor and as a director. He plays a Major whose mission is to steal a Russian super jet. This is an action movie that moves like a snail. Based on Graig Thomas' novel.

Fast Walking
1982
****
Director: James B. Harris
Cast: James Woods, Tim McIntire, Kay Lenz, M. Emmet Walsh

A powerful prison drama about a guard who is hired to kill an inmate. The same director-actor duo later collaborated in Cop.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High
1982
**½
Director: Amy Heckerling
Cast: Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Liegh, Judge Reinhold, Robert Romanus

Cameron Crowe scripted this watchable high school comedy. It has girls who want to get laid because they feel they should and boys who want to get laid. One could enjoy the film more if it wasn't so two-faced about its message: it's very frank about matters such as abortion and masturbation, but it also portrays all sexual experiences as unpleasant and disastrous.

Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander)
1982
****
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Bertil Guve, Pernill Allwin, Ewa Fröling, Alla Edwall, Jan Malmsjö

Fanny and Alexander lose their father, and their mother marries an abusive minister. Bergman mixes his trademark miserablism with magical realism with powerful results. This lavish production is set in the early 20th century Sweden. The three hour film is edited from a longer TV version. A winner of four Oscars.

The Entity
1982
***½
Director: Sidney J. Furie
Cast: Barbara Hershey, Ron Silver, Jacqueline Brooks, David Lablosa

A tasteful and entertaining horror film about a woman who is haunted and raped by a spirit. The story avoids typical horror genre clichés.

E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial
1982
*****
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Peter Coyote, Drew Barrymore

A heartwarming and magical science fiction classic about a young boy who befriends a friendly space alien. Steven Spielberg's small and personal film became one of his biggest hits.

Diner
1982
****
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Daniel Stern, Steve Guttenberg

Barry Levinson's autobiographical film about a group of friends relies heavily on its strong cast and good dialogue. Many of its fine actors later became stars (for fifteen minutes).

Death Wish 2
1982
*½
Director: Michael Winner
Cast: Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Vincent Gardenia, J.D. Cannon

Paul Kersey, the unluckiest man in the world, switches on the vigilante mode again in an utterly useless sequel.

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
1982
***
Director: Carl Reiner
Cast: Steve Martin, Rachel Ward, Carl Reiner, Reni Santoni, George Gaynes, Adrian Ricard, Francis X. McCarthy, Gene LeBell, Cheryl Smith

Private investigator Rigby Reardon is hired to look into the murder of a renowned cheese-maker, which leads him to a web of deceit and intrigue, and to encounters with tough guys and femme fatales. Carl Reiner's parodic love letter to film noir and pulpy crime stories seamlessly integrates new black and white footage with old film clips. In the process, Steve Martin shares the screen with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, and Ava Gardner. This is a clever and unique technique, but with dozens of clips from classic movies, the gimmick takes control and the story becomes a convoluted mess. Nevertheless, Martin is in fine form and there are some genuinely funny moments.

Creepshow
1982
**
Director: George A. Romero
Cast: Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Fritz Weaver, Leslie Nielsen

A massively overrated episode film based on Stephen King's short stories. King himself plays one of the characters.

Conan the Barbarian
1982
***
Director: John Milius
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Sandahl Bergman, Gerry Lopez

Arnold Schwarzenegger's breakthrough film is a pompous and mystical story about a warrior. Based on pulp novels. Cinematography, costumes and battle scenes all deserve a mention.

Cat People
1982
***
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Nastassia Kinski, Malcom McDowell, John Heard, Annette O'Toole

Paul Schrader's successful but needlessly explicit remake of the classic horror film has some nice special effects that have stood the test of time.

Blade Runner
1982
****½
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Sean Young, Joanna Cassidy

Ridley Scott's highly influential science fiction drama is captivating and visually spectacular. It's set in Los Angeles in 2019, where detective Rick Deckard pursues a group of runaway androids knows as replicants. The film is smart and stylish, but a bit cold. Based on Philip K. Dick's short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. There are several different cuts in circulation, with and without narration. Followed by Blade Runner 2049 35 years later.

Author! Author!
1982
****
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cast: Al Pacino, Dyan Cannon, Tuesday Weld, Eric Gurry, Alan King

A credible and enjoyable drama comedy about a playwright who is simultaneously trying to produce his play and act as a single father to his many children. An oddly soft Al Pacino performance.

Arvottomat (The Worthless)
1982
***
Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Cast: Matti Pellonpää, Pirkko Hämäläinen, Juuso Hirvikangas, Esko Nikkari, Jorma Markkula, Asmo Hurula, Ari Piispa, Aki Kaurismäki, Aino Seppo, Veikko Aaltonen, Elina Kivihalme

Mika Kaurismäki's first feature, which he co-wrote with his brother Aki, is a long but likeable road movie which started a new phase in Finnish film industry. It tells a story of two men and a woman who drive around Finland in a Volga in pursuit of happiness and freedom. The vibes are more important than the story, which often doesn't make any sense. The criminals and the police who chase the trio pop out of nowhere at any given moment.

Airplane 2: The Sequel
1982
***
Director: Ken Finkleman
Cast: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges

An uneven sequel to Airplane, this time on a space shuttle flight.

48 Hrs.
1982
**½
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy, Annette O'Toole, Frank McRae, James Remar, David Patrick Kelly, Sonny Landham

A cantankerous SFPD detective teams up with a street smart convict, who is released from prison for 48 hours, in order to track down a pair of ruthless killers. Walter Hill's action movie about a mismatched duo may be one the first releases in the buddy cop genre, but its racism, sexism, and misogyny haven't aged well. While Eddie Murphy is fine in his debut performance, Nick Nolte's detective is a laughably one-note bundle of rage and bigotry. The main villain, although menacingly played by James Remar, has no personality whatsoever. Followed by Another 48 Hrs (1990).


Wolfen
1981
***
Director: Michael Wadleigh
Cast: Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines

A conventional horror film that is memorable for its clever use of heat camera.

True Confessions
1981
**½
Director: Ulu Grosbard
Cast: Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Charles Durning, Burgess Meredith

A stubborn detective works on a complicated murder case which also involves his younger brother, a Monsignor. This confusing and uninteresting drama never seems to engage your attention, despite the excellent leading actors.

Time Bandits
1981
****
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, Ralph Richardson

Terry Gilliam's captivating, hilarious and visually rich time travel adventure. John Cleese's Robin Hood is an instant cult character in this episodic film.

Superman II
1981
***
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty, Sarah Douglas, Margot Kidder, Jack O'Halloran, Valerie Perrine, Susannah York, Terence Stamp

While Clark Kent attempts to keep his secret identity hidden from Lois Lane, Superman is again in need when three bad guys from Krypton inflict their fury upon the Earth. By now the main characters are familiar, so this entertaining but slow-paced sequel can concentrate on action and humour, with intermittent silliness. Followed by Superman III.

Stripes
1981
**
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Bill Murray, John Candy, Harold Ramis, Sean Young, Warren Oates

This military comedy is quite enjoyable during its early training scenes, but the gung-ho ending in Czechoslovakia is awful. Bill Murray in one his first leading roles.

Southern Comfort
1981
***
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Powers Boothe, Keith Carradine, Fred Ward, Franklyn Seales

Members of the National Guard have a maneuver in the Louisiana swamps, but they are not alone. This thriller never shows the pursuers, which makes it more powerful. This rather ordinary cat and mouse story is heavily influenced by Deliverance.

S.O.B.
1981
***
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Julie Andrews, William Holden, Richard Mulligan, Robert Preston

Blake Edwards' charmingly odd Hollywood parody is occasionally a bit too much to swallow, especially when Richard Mulligan's character goes haywire.

Roadgames
1981
**½
Director: Richard Franklin
Cast: Stacy Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis, Marion Edward, Grant Page

A routine thriller in which somebody is killing hitchhikers.

Raiders of the Lost Ark
1981
*****
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, John Rhys-Davies

A fabulously entertaining adventure about archeologist Indiana Jones who attempts to discover the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis. This collaboration between Steven Spielberg and George Lucas is a funny, exciting and endlessly inventive action film. It launched a franchise and was followed by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and two further sequels, and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on TV. A winner of five technical Academy Awards.

Ragtime
1981
**
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: James Cagney, Elizabeth McGovern, Howard E. Rollins Jr., James Olson

Milos Forman's disappointing drama is set in the turn of the 20th century, and it has multiple storylines. In the beginning we follow several parallel stories, but the second half concentrates on only one of them. Based on E.L. Doctorow's novel.

Quest for Fire
1981
****
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Everett McGill, Rae Dawn Chong, Ron Perlman, Nameer El Kadi

A highly fascinating film about pre-historical men and their fight for life. Anthony Burgess created a language for the characters.

Prince of the City
1981
**½
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach, Richard Foronjy, Don Billett

A long and numbing true drama about a cop who decides to rat on his corrupt colleagues. It's hard to understand why he does what he does. Watch Serpico instead.

The Postman Always Rings Twice
1981
**
Director: Bob Rafelson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Jessica Lange, John Colicos, Michael Lerner

David Mamet's adaptation of James M. Cain's film noir classic is overlong and it pales in comparison with the previous two film versions of the story. The famous sex-on-the-dining-table scene cannot rescue the film.

Porky's
1981
*
Director: Bob Clark
Cast: Dan Monahan, Mark Herrier, Wyatt Knight, Roger Wilson, Kim Cattrall

An idiotic and predictable teen film which revolves around you-know-what.

Pixote
1981
*****
Director: Hector Babenco
Cast: Fernando Ramos da Silva, Marilia Pera, Jorge Juliano, Gilberto Moura

A wonderful, documentary-like drama about Brazilian slum children. Shocking and realistic, but not dull or manipulative.

Outland
1981
***½
Director: Peter Hyams
Cast: Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen, James B. Sikking

An ordinary whodunnit, but set in the moon of Jupiter. A nice and sympathetic scifi film, although there's a bit too much slow fighting in zero gravity.

On Golden Pond
1981
***
Director: Mark Rydell
Cast: Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda, Kathleen Hepburn, Doug McKeon

Oscar winners Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn are lovely as an old couple who have alienated from their daughter. A touching but manipulative tearjerker.

Nighthawks
1981
**
Director: Bruce Malmuth
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Rutger Hauer, Billy Dee Williams, Lindsay Wagner

A stiff action film about cops and terrorists. Sylvester Stallone has facial hair and Rutger Hauer does his villain routine for the first time.

My Dinner with Andre
1981
**
Director: Louis Malle
Cast: André Gregory, Wallace Shawn

Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory are old friends and colleagues who reunite for a dinner at a New York City restaurant. Over the course of their long conversation, they share their diverse experiences. Louis Malle's cult piece is a static 110 minute film about two people talking. This doesn't sound like a barrel of fun, and it certainly isn't. There is nothing cinematic at display here, and the meeting is not even a proper conversation if one person talks for ages and the other says "and then what happened?".

Mephisto
1981
***½
Director: Istvan Szabo
Cast: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Krystyna Janda, Ildigo Bansagi, Karin Boyd

A captivating drama about a narcissistic theatre actor whose idealistic principles begin to crumble when Nazis come to power. Like Mephisto (in Faust), the character in his most famous stage role, he sells his soul to the devil for personal gain. The film takes its time to get going, but it rewards the patience in the end. Klaus Maria Brandauer shines in the main role.

Mad Max 2
1981
*****
Director: George Miller
Cast: Mel Gibson, Vernon Wells, Bruce Spence, Mike Preston, Emil Minty, Max Phipps, Kjell Nilsson, Virginia Hey

In post-apocalyptic Australian desert, the remaining survivors fight over the last drops of fuel. Max, a loner with a selfish agenda, helps a group of people protect their oil refinery from a gang of vicious thugs. Mad Max was an entertaining but clunky action movie, but this brutal and exciting survival story is a true original and arguably one of the finest sequels ever made. The junkyard look of the sets, cars, and costumes have influenced countless other dystopian dramas. The action set pieces still look fresh and visceral. Mel Gibson gives one of his most memorable performance as Max. Followed by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). Mad Max: Fury Road revived the franchise 30 years later.

The Loveless
1981
***½
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Monty Montgomery, J. Don Ferguson, Marin Kanter

Kathryn Bigelow's entirely plotless but stylish and irresistible biker movie. Willem Dafoe is a hilarious sight as the "cool" lead.

Looker
1981
**
Director: Michael Crichton
Cast: Albert Finney, James Coburn, Susan Dey, Leigh Taylor-Young

An interesting but far-fetched thriller set in the world of early virtual reality.

Lola
1981
***
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Mario Adorf, Matthias Fuchs

An idealistic building commissioner arrives in a small German town in the late 1950s. His fight against local corruption becomes difficult when he falls in love with the mysterious "Lola". A poignant but cynical look at the post-war economic miracle in Germany when, Fassbinder claims, everything and everyone was for sale for the right price.

History of the World Part I
1981
**
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Mel Brooks, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Ron Carey, Gregory Hines, Pamela Stephenson, Shecky Greene, Sid Caesar, Mary-Margaret Humes

Mel Brooks' episodic parody of historical epics makes fun of the Stone Age, Roman Empire, and the French Revolution, and other periods in history. Unfortunately, almost all of his poorly dated jokes revolve around sexual innuendo. However, the 90 minutes include a few memorable sketches, musical numbers, and lines of dialogue. Followed by a TV show (Part II) in 2023.

The Hand
1981
*
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Michael Caine, Andrea Marcovicci, Annie McEnroe, Bruce McGill

Oliver Stone's early effort is a clumsy and ludicrous horror film about a man whose severed hand goes on a killing spree. This story is free of conspiracy theories or political agenda.

Halloween 2
1981
*½
Director: Rick Rosenthal
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Charles Cyphers, Jeffrey Kramer

The first Halloween was no genre masterpiece, but the sequel contains no horror whatsoever, just plain killing for 90 minutes.

The Gods Must Be Crazy
1981
***
Director: Jamie Uys
Cast: Marius Weyers, Sandra Prinsloo, N!xau, Louw Verwey, Michael Thys

A charming African comedy about a tribe who begin to worship an empty Coke bottle as God. Occasionally the film turns into clumsy slapstick with its silly speeded-up sequences.

Gallipoli
1981
**½
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Mel Gibson, Mark Lee, Bill Kerr, Robert Grubb, Tim McKenzie

Peter Weir's unremarkable WW1 drama shows the unpredictability of war, but it's unfocused, and we join the battle only in the last fifteen minutes. Prior to that the characters have a running competition and get lost in the desert.

The French Lieutenant's Woman
1981
****
Director: Karel Reisz
Cast: Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Leo McKern, Hilton MacRae, Emily Morgan

This beautiful and inventive drama offers two parallel love stories, one between an actor and an actress and the other one between the characters they play. Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons are strong in the lead. Adapted from a novel by John Fowles.

Fort Apache the Bronx
1981
***
Director: Daniel Petrie
Cast: Paul Newman, Edward Asner, Ken Wahl, Danny Aiello, Pam Grier

An enjoyable if unspectacular police film in which Paul Newman plays a uniformed police officer with unorthodox working methods.

For Your Eyes Only
1981
***
Director: John Glen
Cast: Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Julian Glover, Lynn-Holly Johnson

While looking for a sunk Ministry of Defence communication gizmo, 007 helps the daughter of a murdered marine archaeologist. This is possibly Roger Moore's best James Bond film. There's not much plot to speak of, just plenty of pure action.

Eyewitness
1981
**
Director: Peter Yates
Cast: William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, James Woods, Christopher Plummer

A janitor has a crush on a TV reporter (these days known as stalking) and suggests that he may know something about a murder of a Vietnamese businessman. A lame romantically flavoured thriller with a story that is built around coincidences and too many false clues. Hurt and Weaver have no chemistry together.

The Eye of the Needle
1981
***½
Director: Richard Marquand
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Kate Nelligan, Ian Bannen, Christopher Cazenove

A lonely woman unknowingly gives shelter to a Nazi spy in this entertaining but a bit predictable spy drama. Based on Ken Follett's novel. Kate Nelligan and Donald Sutherland are great in the leading roles.

The Evil Dead
1981
**
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, Hal Delrich

Five kids spend a weekend in a mountain cottage where they unknowingly unleash a deadly evil spirit. Sam Raimi's early horror film has become a cult favourite, but it's a clumsy piece of work and responsible for about half of the clichés in its genre. Followed by Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.

Escape from New York
1981
***½
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine

Manhattan is a big walled prison and one man, Snake Plissken, has to go inside for a rescue mission in this wonderfully cynical and original look at the future (the past actually, as it's 1997). The pessimistic ending is the icing on the cake. A bit outdated but still fun.

Continental Divide
1981
***
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: John Belushi, Blair Brown, Allen Garfield, Carlin Glynn, Tony Ganyos

A nicely cosy comedy about a journalist who goes to meet an eagle enthusiast. John Belushi plays a sane person for once and Blair Brown is refreshing in the female lead. Doesn't quite hold up until the end. Screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan.

Chariots of Fire
1981
***
Director: Hugh Hudson
Cast: Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Nick Farrell, Alice Krige, Ian Holm

A consistently interesting but somewhat uninspired true story about two talented athletes who are determined to run in the 1924 Paris Olympics. One is a compulsive competitor, while the other one wants to honour God with his win. Oscar winner for best picture, screenplay, costumes and soundtrack.

Cannonball Run
1981
**
Director: Hal Needham
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Farrah Fawcett, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise

Many half-decent actors and singers are wasted in a plotless car chase. Directed by a stunt man, maybe that explains it.

Buddy Buddy
1981
***
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Paula Prentiss, Klaus Kinski

Billy Wilder's final film reunites the comic talents of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in a hilarious premise about a hitman whose work is constantly disturbed by an intruder. The film doesn't quite have the drive of the best Wilder films.

Das Boot
1981
*****
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Cast: Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, Klaus Wennemann, Hubertus Bengsch

WW2 films rarely portray Germans as more than robotic evildoers, but Wolfgang Petersen's riveting thriller shows the German U-boat crew as a group of young men who make a journey from extreme boredom to absolute terror. A sharply directed film with pioneering camerawork.

Body Heat
1981
*****
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Mickey Rourke, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, J. A. Preston, Kim Zimmer, Jane Hallaren, Lanna Saunders

Lawrence Kasdan's directorial debut is a terrific erotically charged neo-noir about a horny South Florida lawyer who falls in love with a married woman. Her rich husband is the only obstacle to their happiness. Kasdan's screenplay was heavily influenced by Double Indemnity (1944), but it is wonderfully constructed and filled with razor-sharp dialogue. William Hurt and Kathleen Turner are excellent in their breakthrough roles.

Blow Out
1981
****
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz, Peter Boyden

A clever and fascinating thriller about a soundman who thinks he may have recorded an assassination. John Travolta gives one his best performances. Masterfully directed by Brian De Palma. Heavily influenced by Blow-Up.

An American Werewolf in London
1981
***½
Director: John Landis
Cast: David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne, John Woodvine

This effective horror comedy offers a nice mix of thrills and laughs, and its special effects have stood the test of time. Griffin Dunne's characters is torn to shreds by wolves, and his visits from beyond the grave are amusing. Followed by an unrelated sequel 16 years later.

Absence of Malice
1981
**½
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Paul Newman, Sally Field, Bob Balaban, Melinda Dillon, Luther Adler

The charisma of Paul Newman and Sally Field makes Sydney Pollack's mediocre and overlong romantic drama just about watchable.

Used Cars
1980
***½
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Kurt Russell, Jack Warden, Gerrit Graham, Deborah Harmon, Frank McRae

This early Robert Zemeckis comedy about rivalling used car dealers is witty and funny. Jack Warden has a nice dual role.

Stardust Memories
1980
***
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper, Marie-Christine Barrault, Tony Roberts, Daniel Stern, Amy Wright, Helen Hanft, John Rothman

Sandy Bates is a popular comedian, actor and director who wants to make more serious films. At a weekend retrospective of his own work, he is constantly harrassed by fans and hangers-on, and he finds himself torn between two very different women, and reminiscing about a third one. Woody Allen's existential drama comedy is keenly observed but somewhat nasty and condescending. The story feels uncomfortably autobiographical, no matter what Allen claims. Like Manhattan, the film is shot in black and white. This time, however, Gordon Willis' grotesque camera work doesn't flatter the actors.

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
1980
****
Director: Irvin Kershner
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams

As the Rebel Alliance attempts to remain under the radar, Luke flies off to the Dagobah system to train with Jedi Master Yoda. Although the story is bleak and the ending leaves everything open, this is possibly the best episode in the series, maybe because George Lucas neither scripted nor directed it. Seriously speaking, the movie works so well because it has properly fleshed-out characters, striking action scenes, and great Oscar-winning special effects. In the most iconic scene, Luke learns the truth about his father. Scripted by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan. Academy Award winner for best sound and special effects. Followed by Return of the Jedi.

Smokey and the Bandit II
1980
*½
Director: Hal Needham
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed, Dom DeLuise, Sally Field

Burt Reynolds does some more pointless car racing in the footsteps of Cannonball Run.

The Shining
1980
*****
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Barry Nlelson, Philip Stone, Anne Jackson, Tony Burton

A writer takes a job as a winter caretaker in an isolated hotel in the Rocky Mountains. He is joined by his wife and young son Danny, who sees visions of the hotel's grim past. Stanley Kubrick's brilliant psychological horror film is loosely based on Stephen King's novel. Jack Nicholson gradually goes insane in one of his most iconic roles. But what is it all about? Room 237 offers an enjoyably wacky analysis of the meaning. John Alcott's stunning Steadycam camerawork has stood the test of time, and so has the haunting score by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind. Followed by Doctor Sleep (2019).

Raise the Titanic!
1980
*½
Director: Jerry Jameson
Cast: Jason Robards, Richard Jordan, David Selby, Alec Guinness

Credibility is not a cause for concern for the people behind this film. Titanic, which has been lying in the bottom of the ocean for the last 70 years (and which we now know was broken in two), is lifted up and towed to the nearest harbour? Based on Clive Cussler's novel.

Raging Bull
1980
*****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty, Nicholas Colasanto

A breathtaking black and white drama about Jake La Motta, who is a first rate boxer but a terrible human being. This modern classic offers cinematic brilliance in all departments: direction, script, cinematography, editing (which won an Oscar) and acting. Robert De Niro's insanely detailed performance earned him an Academy Award.

Private Benjamin
1980
**½
Director: Howard Zieff
Cast: Goldie Hawn, Eileen Brennan, Armand Assante, Robert Webber

A young widow decides to join the army in one of Goldie Hawn's better films. This box office hit doesn't offer originality, just enjoyable disposable fluff.

Ordinary People
1980
***
Director: Robert Redford
Cast: Timothy Hutton, Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Elizabeth McGovern

A teenage boy is recovering from a suicide attempt and trying to come to terms with his brother's accidental death. So are his parents in their own idiosyncratic way. This family drama is solid work, but perhaps a bit too neatly wrapped up. A winner of four Oscars, which include Best Director and Best Supporting Actor (Hutton).

The Long Riders
1980
**½
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: James Keach, Stacy Keach, David Carradine, Robert Carradine, Keith Carradine, Dennis Quaid, Randy Quaid, Christopher Guest, Nicholas Guest

Walter Hill's western is best remembered for featuring four sets of brothers who play four sets of brothers. Other than that it’s best left forgotten. The film depicts the rise and fall of the James-Younger gang, who play cat and mouse with the Pinkerton detectives. The characters are poorly sketched and it’s unsure who we should root for. This is not helped by the fact that James Keach is an absolutely wooden Jesse James. As a result the story never draws us in. The violence is realistically and stylishly shot, but The Wild Bunch influences are a bit too obvious.

The Long Good Friday
1980
***
Director: John MacKenzie
Cast: Bob Hoskins, Helsen Mirren, Eddie Constantine, Dave King

This dry British gangster film is captivating but terribly overrated. Bob Hoskins gives a good performance in his breakthrough role.

The Fog
1980
**½
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Hal Holbrook, Janet Leigh

John Carpenter follows Halloween with this average horror film about a town that is covered by an ominous fog. The film is scary as long as he doesn't show the bad guys. Remade in 2005.

Ffolkes / North Sea Hijack
1980
***½
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen
Cast: Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins, James Mason, Michael Parks

Terrorists, lead by Anthony Perkins, threaten to blow up two oil rigs in the North Sea in this charming, actionless action film. Roger Moore takes a break from his 007 duties to play a suave mercenary.

Fame
1980
**½
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Irene Cara, Lee Curreri, Eddie Barth, Laura Dean, Paul McCrane

Alan Parker's film follows a group of students at the New York High School of Performing Arts. There's drama, comedy and spontaneous singing and dancing on the street, all of which looks somewhat silly. Followed by a long running TV series.

The Elephant Man
1980
*****
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, John Gielgud, Anne Bancroft, Wendy Hiller

A touching true story of Joseph Merrick, a severely deformed man who lived a short but eventful life in 19th century London. John Hurt, who is unrecognisable under the heavy make-up, is excellent, and so are the rest of the cast. Beautifully shot in black and white. This is a Very bleak drama but still one of David Lynch's most accessible films.

Dressed to Kill
1980
***½
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Michael Caine, Nancy Allen, Angie Dickinson, Keith Gordon, Dennis Franz

A killer is stalking two women in Brian De Palma's flashy thriller. The director turns the suspense screw tighter and tighter but the ending doesn't quite pay off.

Cruising
1980
**
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: Al Pacino, Nancy Allen, Paul Sorvino, Richard Cox, Don Scardino

Al Pacino plays an undercover detective who attempts to track down a serial killer who is targeting gay men. This slow and sleazy homophobic thriller was controversial when it came out, and time hasn't done it any favours.

Coal Miner's Daughter
1980
***½
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D'Angelo, Levon Helm, William Sanderson, Phyllis Boyens, Bob Hannah, Grant Turner

Lorretta Lynn (1932-2022) grew up in poverty in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, got married at 15, and gradually became a country music star in the 1960s. This captivating musical biopic is not a conventional highlights of the career story. It's as much about the person behind the songs as it is about the artist performing them. Sissy Spacek, who sings the songs, is terrific in her Academy Award winning performance. Based on Lynn's 1976 biography by George Vecse.

Brubaker
1980
***
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Cast: Robert Redford, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Alexander, Murray Hamilton

Robert Redford gives a solid performance in this compelling and enjoyable but not terribly original prison drama.

Bronco Billy
1980
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis, Scatman Crothers

Clint Eastwood plays the head of a western show with surprising softness in this sympathetic and lighthearted comedy, which he also directed.

Blues Brothers
1980
****
Director: John Landis
Cast: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Carrie Fisher, Cab Calloway, John Candy

This long but entertaining music comedy was a flop upon release but it has subsequently become a contemporary classic. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi are great as two delinquent brothers on a mission from God to save an orphanage. The soundtrack is filled with excellent soul songs, and many of their famous performers have cameos. Followed by Blues Brothers 2000 almost 20 years later.

The Big Red One
1980
***½
Director: Samuel Fuller
Cast: Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby Di Gicco

Samuel Fuller's autobiographical WW2 film is compelling but slightly monotonous. The childbirth in the tank is the highlight of the film.

Any Which Way You Can
1980
*
Director: Buddy Van Horn
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis, William Smith, Ruth Gordon

Clint and the orangutang are back in the sequel to Every Which Way But Loose, with more fist fighting and bad comedy. The only good thing you can say about this turkey is that it's at least as good as the original.

American Gigolo
1980
**
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, Hector Elizondo, Nina Van Pallandt

Paul Schrader's mildly daring thriller about a male prostitute seems very outdated, or perhaps it's just plain bad. Richard Gere is constantly topless in his breakthrough role.

Alligator
1980
**½
Director: Lewis Teague
Cast: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael Gazzo, Perry Lang

A predictable but cutely silly shocker about a giant alligator that is roaming in the sewers of Chicago. One of the many of its kind that arrived in the wake of Alien.

Airplane!
1980
****½
Director: David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker
Cast: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Lorna Patterson, Stephen Stucker, Frank Ashmore, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

On a flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, some of the passengers and crew members are hit by food poisoning, and the only person who could conceivably land the plane is a traumatised war veteran. Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker (ZAZ) made their name with this enjoyable disaster film spoof, which spawned its own comedy sub-genre. The film is a loosely plotted and somewhat uneven collection of gags, but the jokes come so thick and fast that you won't have time to notice the flaws. The dialogue features some iconic lines. Followed by Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982).

Woyzeck
1979
**
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann, Willy Semmelrogge

Fueled by jealousy and dodgy medical experiments, a lowly soldier stationed in a German town (sometime in the 19th century) goes insane. This dreary and disappointing Herzog film is based on Georg Büchner's play, which becomes obvious when the characters give eloquent monologues one after the other. Kinski plays the madness with his usual brilliance, but the film is too short, thankfully, to give Woyzeck any kind of believable character arc.

Winter Kills
1979
**
Director: William Richert
Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Sterling Hayden, Eli Wallach

This baffling and disastrous conspiracy thriller uses the circumstances surrounding the JFK assassination as the outline for a story about a young man who receives new information that could help him to solve the killing of his brother, U.S. President. The film is destroyed by a timeline that doesn't make any sense, a protagonist who is as perceptive as Forrest Gump and casting choices that give away potentially surprising plot twists.

The Warriors
1979
***
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Michael Beck, James Remar, Thomas Waites, Dorsey Wright

Walter Hill's early drama is a respectable story about clashing New York street gangs. Very violent but believable, with impressive performances from its young cast.

The Wanderers
1979
***½
Director: Philip Kaufman
Cast: Ken Wahl, John Friedrich, Karen Allen, Toni Kalem, Alan Rosenberg

A colourful and believable high school portrayal set in 1963. Fine performances and a memorable soundtrack make this worth a look.

Stalker
1979
**
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Cast: Alexander Kaidanovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Alisa Freindlich, Nikolai Grinko, Natasha Abramova, Faime Jurno, Evgeniy Kostin, Raimo Rendi, Vladimir Zamansky

A man known as Stalker agrees to guide two academics through the Zone, a mysterious sealed-off area with extraterrestrial presence, to the Room, which allegedly grants the wishes of anyone who enters it. Andrei Tarkovsky's most celebrated film is an intriguing philosophical and intellectual exercise. As a cinematic experience, however, it is long, slow, static, and dull. Based on Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

Rocky II
1979
**½
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Burgess Meredith

Stallone took over the directing duties for this unnecessary sequel in which Rocky gets a second chance at the title match. A lazy rehash that doesn't offer anything new.

North Dallas Forty
1979
***½
Director: Ted Kotcheff
Cast: Nick Nolte, Mac Davis, Charles Durning, Dayle Haddon, G.D. Spradlin

I suppose this is as close as you can get to an interesting film about American football. A compelling drama about a labour dispute in the football league. Nick Nolte in one of his better performances.

Moonraker
1979
**
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Roger Moore, Michael Lonsdale, Lois Chiles, Richard Kiel, Corinne Clery

007's world rescue mission takes him into space in this extremely sluggish and overlong action film. Easily Roger Moore's worst Bond film.

Manhattan
1979
*****
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Michael Murphy

A writer never seems to be happy with what he has, especially as far as relationships are concerned. Woody Allen's stunning homage to his beloved New York is more melancholic than his earlier comedies. Beautifully shot by Gordon Willis in black and white.

Mad Max
1979
***½
Director: George Miller
Cast: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley

In the near future a special police unit tries to keep law and order while violent gangs terrorise Australia. This is an exciting and original low budget action film. Followed by a terrific sequel Mad Max 2.

Life of Brian
1979
****
Director: Terry Jones
Cast: John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones

A hilarious Monty Python comedy about Brian, a man who is born next door to Jesus Christ on the same day. The group pokes fun at religious fanaticism and no creed comes out of it unscathed. A bit noisy and exhausting like all Python films.

Kramer Vs. Kramer
1979
***½
Director: Robert Benton
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Jane Alexander, Justin Henry, George Coe

A well-acted and sharply written but overly sentimental drama about a man whose wife leaves him to raise their son alone. Hoffman and Streep both won Oscars for their solid but unspectacular performances, as did the picture, the screenplay and the director.

The Jerk
1979
****
Director: Carl Reiner
Cast: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Catlin Adams, Mable King, Richard Ward

A hilarious comedy about a dimwitted white man (played by Steve Martin) who discovers that he is not the biological son of his black parents, and leaves home to find his true self. Gag after gag, some of which work, some of which don't.

Hair
1979
***
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: John Savage, Treat Williams, Beverly D'Angelo, Annie Golden, Dorsey Wright, Don Dacus, Nell Carter

An entertaining musical about hippies and the Vietnam War. Adapted from a popular Broadway show by Galt MacDermot, Gerome Ragni and Jim Rado which came out in the middle of the war. The film is a bit of an afterthought. Treat Williams gives his breakthrough performance as the leader of the hippies.

The Great Train Robbery
1979
***
Director: Michael Crichton
Cast: Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, Lesley-Anne Down, Alan Webb

Two 19th century gentlemen and their lady companion attempt to rob a train carrying gold. An entertaining but unspectacular story which benefits from its charismatic stars. Crichton adapted his own novel.

Escape from Alcatraz
1979
****
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Roberts Blossom, Jack Thibeau

This exciting no-nonsense drama is set in 1962, when a few prisoners did the impossible and escaped from Alcatraz, which led to the closure of the prison. Clint Eastwood is perfect for the stonefaced leading role.

Elvis
1979
***
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, Shelley Winters, Pat Hingle, Season Hubley, Bing Russell

This entertaining Elvis biopic was made for TV. John Carpenter is a surprising choice for a director after his success with Halloween. Kurt Russell impresses as the King.

The Electric Horseman
1979
****
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Valerie Perrine, Willie Nelson, John Saxon

An over-the-hill show cowboy steals a pricy thoroughbred and heads for the hills in this interesting and entertaining study of commercialisation. Nice pairing of Redford and Fonda helps as well.

The China Syndrome
1979
****
Director: James Bridges
Cast: Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Scott Brady, James Hampton

A captivating matter-of-fact drama about a news crew who discover that the local nuclear plant may be covering up a serious accident. Credible nailbiting suspense. Jack Lemmon is terrific in an untypically dramatic role as a nuclear technician.

The Champ
1979
**½
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Cast: Jon Voight, Faye Dunaway, Ricky Schroder, Jack Warden, Arthur Hill

A manipulative tearjerker about a dim-witted boxer and his small son. Mostly memorable for Ricky Schroder's fine performance as the boy.

Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum)
1979
****½
Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Cast: David Bennent, Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf, Daniel Olbrychski, Berta Drews

Fazed with adulthood, 3-year-old Oscar decides to stop growing and dives down the stairs. This excellent adaptation of Gunter Grass' allegorical novel concentrates on the years around WW2 as we follow Oscar's surreal journey through life. David Bennent is precociously superb in the lead. A visually striking film with a wonderfully weird score by Maurice Jarre. Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

The Black Hole
1979
***
Director: Gary Nelson
Cast: Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Ernest Borgnine, Roddy McDowall, Slim Pickens, Tom McLoughlin

Nearby a black hole, the USS Palomino, with a crew of five people and one robot, discover the long-lost USS Cygnus, captained by the elusive Dr. Reinhardt, who plans to fly into the black hole. Disney clearly jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon with this intriguing science fiction drama, which was released 2½ years after George Lucas' smash hit. There's an air of familiarity to the laser gun fights, talking robots, and weaponed drones in matching outfits. However, storywise this unusual film is closer to grown-up scifi like Forbidden Planet. Even if the science, visuals, and performances have dated badly, some of the special effects still look decent.

Being There
1979
****
Director: Hal Ashby
Cast: Peter Sellers, Jack Warden, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas

A clever and amusing political satire about a slow-witted gardener whose botanical comments are interpreted as metaphorical pieces of political wisdom. Peter Sellers is excellent in the leading role. Melvyn Douglas won an Academy Award for his supporting performance. A bit too long.

Apocalypse Now
1979
*****
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Frederic Forrest, Robert Duvall

In Francis Ford Coppola's ambitious Vietnam War masterpiece a special agent and his team journey upriver to confront Colonel Kurtz, who has gone mad and started his own war. This vivid, surreal journey into the heart of darkness (adapted from Joseph Conrad's novel with the same name) reveals more about the absurdity of war than any number of battle scenes could. Oscar for Vittorio Storaro's striking cinematography. The new edit, Apocalypse Now Redux, from 2001 is about 45 mins longer.

And Justice for All
1979
***
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Al Pacino, John Forsythe, Jack Warden, Lee Strasberg, Jeffrey Tambor

A disillusioned lawyer begins to lose his confidence in the judicial system when he discovers that everyone can be bought. A thought-provoking and strongly acted but not entirely believable drama.

Alien
1979
*****
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm, Veronica Cartwright, Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton

A commercial spaceship Nostromo and its crew of seven unwittingly pick up a deadly alien life form in this claustrophobic horror film. Ridley Scott's highly influential science fiction classic delivers a perfect fusion of atmosphere, suspense, and design, and it not only spawned several sequels (Aliens, Alien³, and Alien Resurrection), prequels (Prometheus), and spin-offs, but also established the formula for dozens or second rate imitations.

1941
1979
***½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, Treat Williams, Nancy Allen

Steven Spielberg's underrated WW2 comedy is set in L.A., where people are taken over by fear after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Big, bombastic and not entirely successful, but funny all the same.

10
1979
**
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Dudley Moore, Bo Derek, Julie Andrews, Robert Webber, Dee Wallace

A tiresome, unfunny and overlong Dudley Moore hit comedy. He plays a middle-aged man who cannot stop obsessing about the stunning Bo Derek character.

Who'll Stop the Rain
1978
****
Director: Karel Reisz
Cast: Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty, Anthony Zerbe

An untypical Vietnam War film where we follow drug traffic from Asia to the Us. A slow-paced and occasionally meandering drama with terrific performances.

Up in Smoke
1978
***
Director: Lou Adler
Cast: Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Edie Adams, Strother Martin, Stacy Keach, Tom Skerritt

In their first feature film the comedy duo Cheech & Chong play two potheads who unknowingly drive a van made of marihuana from Mexico to the Us. This is a goofy, sympathetic and reasonably funny comedy where barely a moment passes without someone lighting up a joint.

Superman
1978
****
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper, Glenn Ford, Trevor Howard, Margot Kidder, Valerie Perrine, Maria Schell, Terence Stamp, Phyllis Thaxter, Susannah York

The story of Superman from his tragic escape from Krypton to his life as Clark Kent in Metropolis is wonderfully told in one of the most successful comic book films. Good storytelling with believable special effects, although the pace could be a tad faster. Marlon Brando has a small but memorable role as our hero's father. Followed by Superman II and several other sequels.

Revenge of the Pink Panther
1978
**½
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Robert Webber, Dyan Cannon, Burt Kwouk

A French crime boss attempts to impress his American partners by having the celebrated Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau assassinated, but it is easier said than done. In his last performance as Clouseau, Peter Sellers seems somewhat old and frail, and the comedy around him is definitely not among the best in the series. The pacing is all over the place at times, but there are just about enough of funny lines and set pieces.


National Lampoon's Animal House
1978
****
Director: John Landis
Cast: Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert, John Belushi, Karen Allen, Tom Hulce, John Vernon, Verna Bloom, Donald Sutherland, Stephen Furst, James Daughton, Mark Metcalf

In 1962, Faber College freshmen seek to join a fraternity. While the Omega house is run by uptight and smug overachievers, the Delta house focuses mostly on outrageous pranks and wild parties. John Landis' anarchistic college comedy advocates rebelling against authority, getting laid, and having a good time. This iconic film features great performances, memorable gags, and catchy music, but some aspects of the misogynistic humour (catfishing, stalking, and grooming) haven't aged well.


Midnight Express
1978
**½
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Brad Davis, Irene Miracle, Bo Hopkins, Randy Quaid, John Hurt

A manipulative, partly true story about an American who serves a sentence in a brutal Turkish prison for drug offences. Oliver Stone won an Oscar for his screenplay, as did Giorgio Moroder for the score. This sensationalistic drama seems to forget that its protagonist is a drug smuggler.

Magic
1978
**½
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith, Jerry Houser

Richard Attenborough is known for his biopics of famous people, and not for thrillers about ventriloquists and their sinister dummys. A disappoinment, although the young Anthony Hopkins tries his best.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
1978
**½
Director: Philip Kauffman
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum

A remake of Don Siegel's 1950s scifi classic about aliens who gradually take over the world. The story is consistently interesting, but the film falls flat in the second half. The ending, on the other hand, is a nice one.

Heaven Can Wait
1978
**½
Director: Warren Beatty, Buck Henry
Cast: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Jack Warden, Dyan Cannon, Charles Grodin, James Mason, Buck Henry, Vincent Gardenia

Los Angeles Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton dies before his time, but he is allowed to return to Earth in the body of a millionaire. This fantasy comedy is likeable but its script and visual storytelling haven't aged well. It's odd that Joe's soul swaps bodies, but we just see the same Warren Beatty. Considering that we follow the fate of Joe's soul for more than 90 minutes, the ending is totally baffling. Tonally the movie is also all over the place. The wife and her lover repeatedly try to kill the millionaire, but it's never treated as anything but slapstick. Based on Harry Segall’s play, which was filmed once before as Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Academy Award winner for Best Production Design.

Halloween
1978
****
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Nancy Loomis, P.J. Soles

This impressive small budget horror film put director John Carpenter on the map, and it's spawning new sequels even today. Michael Myers, who killed his sister and her boyfriend as a small boy (in the rightfully famous opening scene filmed from the boy's point of view) is on the prowl again during Halloween many years later. Jamie Lee Curtis in her breakthrough scream queen role.

Grease
1978
***½
Director: Randal Kleiser
Cast: John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Jeff Conaway

A thoroughly enjoyable high school musical based on Warren Casey's and Jim Jacobs's stage show. Definitely silly but helped by catchy tunes and charismatic performances.

Goin' South
1978
****
Director: Jack Nicholson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Mary Steenburgen, Christopher Llloyd, John Belushi

Jack Nicholson plays Henry Moon, a layabout who is saved from hanging by marriage. A very enjoyable western comedy.

The Fury
1978
***
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Kirk Douglas, John Cassavettes, Carrie Snodgress, Amy Irving

A consistently interesting but ultimately flawed supernatural thriller about a young girl who has telekinetic powers. A very impressive cast, though.

Foul Play
1978
**½
Director: Colin Higgins
Cast: Goldie Hawn, Chevy Chase, Burgess Meredith, Dudley Moore

A detective protects a woman who has been sucked into a web of murder. This typically mediocre Goldie Hawn vehicle from her glory days doesn't work as a thriller. And it ain't funny either.

Force 10 from Navarone
1978
**
Director: Guy Hamilton
Cast: Robert Shaw, Harrison Ford, Erward Fox, Franco Nero, Barbara Bach

A limp sequel to The Guns of Navarone. The cannons have been replaced by a bridge which must be destroyed by a colourful group of characters, among them a Nazi traitor, as expected.

F.I.S.T.
1978
***
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Rod Steiger, Peter Boyle, Melinda Dillon, David Huffman

Sylvester Stallone's acting skills and overall credibility are put to test when he plays a charismatic labour union leader. Sadly he doesn't score very high points. Otherwise a respectable drama.

Every Which Way But Loose
1978
*
Director: James Fargo
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis, Beverly D'Angelo

Clint pairs up with an orangutang and makes his way through dozen barefist fights. A brainless dud, which was naturally a box office hit. Followed by Any Which Way You Can.

The End
1978
**½
Director: Burt Reynolds
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Dom DeLuise, Joanne Woodward

A black comedy about a terminally ill man who wants to kill himself. This untypical Burt Reynolds vehicle has potential but it doesn't deliver.

The Driver
1978
**½
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern, Isabelle Adjani, Ronee Blakley, Matt Clark, Felice Orlandi

This overrated action film gives us one car chase after another, but very little else in terms of plot or characters. Stoneface Ryan O'Neal is a getaway car driver and Bruce Dern is a detective on his trail. Walter Hill's early effort is a fine example of bare-bones filmmaking, but it's dull.

The Deer Hunter
1978
*****
Director: Michael Cimino
Cast: Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, John Savage

A mesmerising drama about the lives of three Pennsylvania men before, during and after the Vietnam War. Long and, at times, hard to watch, but rewarding. Wonderful performances all around, but Christopher Walken was singled out for an Oscar. Additional Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Editing. A memorable title tune by Stanley Myers.

Days of Heaven
1978
****
Director: Terrence Malick
Cast: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz, Robert Wilke

A beautiful, tragic love story between two migrant workers set in the wheatfields of America in the end of the 19th century. Thoughtful and demanding, like other Malick films. A visually stunning moodpiece which deservedly picked up an Academy Award for its cinematography.

Convoy
1978
**½
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, Ernest Borgnine, Burt Young, Madge Sinclair, Brian Davies, Seymour Cassel

A modern day cowboy movie about a handful of truckers who get in a confrontation with a bigoted sheriff. Peckipah's modest drama was inspired by a country song and it also feels like one. It's pompous, melodramatic and low on subtlety.

Coming Home
1978
****
Director: Hal Ashby
Cast: Jon Voight, Jane Fonda, Bruce Dern, Robert Carradine, Robert Ginty

This captivating drama studies the Vietnam War in the homefront, as a soldier's wife falls in love with a paraplegic veteran. The screenplay, Jane Fonda and Jon Voight all won Oscars.

Coma
1978
***
Director: Michael Crichton
Cast: Genevieve Bujold, Michael Douglas, Richard Widmark, Elisabeth Ashley

A female doctor becomes suspicious when patients in her hospital begin to die unexpectedly and their bodies disappear. A compelling conspiracy thriller with a good cast. Based on Robin Cook's novel.

The Boys from Brazil
1978
**½
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen

Laurence Olivier plays a Jewish Nazi hunter who is on the trail of Josef Mengele, portrayed by Gregory Peck. An interesting but trashy drama.

The Big Sleep
1978
*½
Director: Michael Winner
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Candy Clark, Oliver Reed, Richard Boone

Could a film have a more appropriate title? Robert Mitchum sleepwalks as Philip Marlowe in this useless adaptation of Raymond Chandler's detective story, which was filmed before in the 1940s with Humphrey Bogart in the lead.

Agatha
1978
***
Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Vanessa Redgrave, Dustin Hoffman, Timothy Dalton, Helen Morse

A fascinating but somewhat uninspired fictional drama set against the actual events in 1926 when Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared for eleven days. Vanessa Redgrave shines in the lead.

Suspiria
1977
**½
Director: Dario Argento
Cast: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Barbara Magnolfi, Susanna Javicoli, Eva Axén, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett

An American ballet student joins a prestigious dance academy in Freiburg, Germany, but she soon discovers that something dark and sinister is taking place within its walls. Dario Argento's supernatural horror movie has become a cult favourite thanks to its vivid and saturated colours and Goblin's weird and wonderful soundtrack. However, the performances have not aged well and the story, which is loosely based on Thomas De Quincey's 1845 essay Suspiria de Profundis, is complete nonsense. Remade by Luca Guadagnino in 2018.

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
1977
****
Director: George Lucas
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, James Earl Jones, Peter Cushing, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew

As the Rebel Alliance is locked in a battle with the Galactic Empire, led by the evil Darth Vader, young Luke Skywalker meets a retired Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi who tells him about the Force. The unexpected commercial success of George Lucas' space opera transformed the movie industry for good, and turned Star Wars mythology into a pivotal part of popular culture. These days, massive multi-part movie franchises geared for the teenage audience are the norm rather than the exception. The first, or, well, the fourth, episode in the series offers a simple and somewhat silly story, some dubious acting and clumsy special effects, but it's great fun all the way through. It earned seven Academy Awards for technical merits and for the unforgettable John Williams score. Followed by The Empire Strikes Back.

The Spy Who Loved Me
1977
***
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Curt Jurgens, Richard Kiel, Caroline Munro

007 joins forces with the enemy, a Soviet spy played by Barbara Bach, in order to defeat a megalomaniacal villain. This entertaining Bond film is best remembered for the agent's cool submersible Lotus car.

Smokey and the Bandit
1977
**½
Director: Hal Needham
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed, Mike Henry

A mildly entertaining chase film about a bootlegger who is being pursued by a persistent sheriff. A lot of car stunts, very little story.

Slap Shot
1977
****
Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Michael Ontkean, Lindsay Crouse, Jennifer Warren

A struggling ice hockey club decides to change its tactics and concentrate on fighting, with excellent results. This comedy is definitely crass, violent and adolescent but also great fun.

Saturday Night Fever
1977
****
Director: John Badham
Cast: John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney, Barry Miller, Joseph Cali, Paul Pape, Donna Pescow, Bruce Ornstein, Martin Shakar, Julie Bovasso, Fran Drescher

Tony Manero is a cocky 19-year-old New Yorker who lives with his parents and works in a dead-end job. Saturday night in the local discotheque is the highlight of his week. There Tony wants to take part in a dance contest, which he hopes will act as a launching pad to a better life. John Badham's enjoyable and electric dance drama has become synonymous with its groovy, best-selling soundtrack by the Bee Gees, but this gritty coming-of-age story has much more to offer. John Travolta is full of energy in his breakthrough performance. Norman Wexler's script is based on a New York magazine article Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night by Nik Cohn

New York, New York
1977
***
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Liza Minnelli, Lionel Stander, Georgie Auld, Mary Kay Place

A saxophonist and a singer discover that it's nearly impossible for two creative people to have a harmonious relationship. Scorsese's personal drama is long and difficult to watch, but it's occasionally worth your while.

High Anxiety
1977
****
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Dick Van Patten, Ron Carey, Howard Morris, Jack Riley, Charlie Callas, Rudy De Luca, Barry Levinson

Renowned psychiatrist Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke is hired to run the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous in Los Angeles. To solve the mysterious events at the institute, Thorndyke must first overcome his own traumas. Mel Brooks' lovingly made parody pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock's best known thrillers: Psycho, Birds, Vertigo, and many others. This funny and understated comedy features wonderfully drawn characters and it relies less on smutty jokes than some of the director's more famous works.

The Gauntlet
1977
***
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney

Clint plays a detective who escorts a female witness to the court house through - what seems an understatement - a hail of bullets. This enjoyable drama is a bit low on credibility.

Eraserhead
1977
***½
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near, jack Fisk

David Lynch's feature debut started as a student project and took years to complete, but this surreal story of a man called Henry Spencer already carries the hallmarks of his later work. It looks and sounds haunting, but what is it all about? Lynch himself would probably describe it a sensory experience, rather than a traditional narrative film.

The Eagle Has Landed
1977
**½
Director: John Sturges
Cast: Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Jenny Agutter

This mediocre WW2 film centres around a Nazi plot to capture Winston Churchill. A nice cast but not terribly exciting. Based on a Jack Higgins novel.

The Deep
1977
***
Director: Peter Yates
Cast: Nick Nolte, Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Shaw, Louis Gossett, Eli Wallach

A diving couple find a shipwreck and get more than they bargained for. The story (Based on Peter Benchley's novel) is captivating and the film looks great, but it's dramatically flat. Well, at least you have Jacqueline Bisset in a bikini, continuously.

Cross of Iron
1977
***½
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: James Coburn, Maximilian Schell, James Mason, David Warner

Two German officers clash on the Eastern Front in Sam Peckinpah's taut WW2 character drama.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1977
****½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Francois Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, Cary Guffey; bob Balaban

After numerous UFO sighting across the world, a group of scientists attempt to form a means of communication with the extraterrestrial beings, while a blue collar worker from Indiana becomes obsessed with the visions that follow his close encounter with the visitors. Steven Spielberg's intimate science fiction spectacle was one of the first ones to depict aliens who come in peace, and five years later the director explored the same topic in E.T.. This is an intelligent and captivating drama which has an unusually unsympathetic protagonist, manically played by Richard Dreyfuss. Vilmos Zsigmond's stunning cinematography won an Academy award and Douglas Trumbull's special effects still look amazing. Spielberg twice returned to tweak the details of his film in the 1980 Special Edition and the 1998 Collector's Edition.

A Bridge Too Far
1977
**
Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Michael Caine, James Caan, Sean Connery, Edward Fox

A long WW2 drama about an airdrop into Holland with a very impressive cast. This is a feeble attempt to recreate the success of The Longest Day, which itself was dull and overlong.

Annie Hall
1977
*****
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Paul Simon, Carol Kane

After the "early funny films" Woody Allen found a perfect mix of humour and sentiment in this masterpiece about a comedian and his troubled relationship with Annie Hall. This ultimate romantic comedy has witty observations, hilarious moments and unforgettable dialogue. Oscar winner for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress (Keaton).

The Tenant
1976
***
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Jo Van Fleet, Rufus, Shelley Winters, Bernard Fresson, Lila Kedrova

Trelkovsky, a mild-mannered Polish man, rents an apartment in Paris whose previous tenant attempted to commit suicide. He slowly begins to sink into paranoia and becomes convinced that the other tenants in the building are conspiring against him. Roman Polanski's slow-building psychological thriller takes its time to get going, but it builds to a satisfyingly unsettling conclusion. However, the director bites a bit more than he can chew by playing the demanding leading role.

Taxi Driver
1976
*****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks, Leonard Harris, Steven Prince, Martin Scorsese

Robert De Niro is phenomenal as Travis Bickle, God's Lonely Man, an insomniac Vietnam War veteran turned New York City taxi driver, who becomes increasingly disconnected from the world as he plans to rid the city of decadence and corruption. This hypnotic, unsettling, and violent study of loneliness was scripted by Paul Schrader, and it is one of Martin Scorsese's finest works. The film was beautifully shot by Michael Chapman and Bernard Herrmann's final score fits like a glove.


Silent Movie
1976
**½
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Mel Brooks, Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise, Bernadette Peters, Sid Caesar, Harold Gould, Ron Carey, Paul Newman, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Anne Bancroft

Mel Funn, a film director who destroyed his career with drinking, is convinced that he can make a comeback by directing a silent movie in the sound era, but he needs to sign a few stars to convince the studio. Mel Brooks tells this story in the form of a silent movie, obviously. His film is filled with slapstick humour and celebrity cameos, but the end result is cute rather than funny. The only spoken word comes from an unexpected source.

The Shootist
1976
****
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, James Stewart, Richard Boone

A fascinating, melancholic Western about an ageing gunfighter who discovers that he is dying of cancer (like John Wayne was around the same time). A slow-paced but entertaining film with a strong lead performance.

Rocky
1976
***
Director: John G. Avildsen
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Burgess Meredith

Sylvester Stallone gives one his better performances in this crowd-pleasing tale of a second-rate boxer who gets the chance of a lifetime. This mediocre drama was scripted by Stallone, and it won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. Followed by five sequels.

Robin and Marian
1976
**
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Nicol Williamson, Ronnie Barkin, Richard Harris, Denholm Elliott, Ian Holm

The aging Robin Hood returns to Sherwood Forest after 20 years in the Crusades and finds it hard to get back to his old ways. This revisionist take on the legend boldly blends goofy comedy, sweet romance, historical drama and brutal violence, but it never gets the tone right. Richard Lester aims to tell a melancholic story about aging, but his characters don't seem to be on the same page and the resulting film is all over the shop. One moment Robin is recounting his traumatic war experiences, the next he's shooting someone in the back.
Maid Marian, in turn, is torn between her vow to God and her love for Robin, and ends up betraying both. The Sheriff of Nottingham seems permanently uninterested in any of this, and is almost reluctant to take part in the inevitable climactic duel. On a positive note, Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn give warm performances.

The Pink Panther Strikes Again
1976
***½
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Colin Blakely, Lesley-Anne Down

Inspector Clouseau's ex-boss Dreyfus escapes from an insane asylum, builds a doomsday machine and blackmails the world leaders to have his former subordinate killed. This enjoyable sequel spoofs Bond films and it's consistently funny, as Clouseau gets himself into new unforgettably hilarious situations.

The Outlaw Josey Wales
1976
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney

When his family is brutally killed, a farmer turns into a ruthless outlaw at the end of the Civil War. This impressive Western also has some very funny bits but it goes on a bit too long. Clint Eastwood took over the directing duties from Philip Kaufman.

The Omen
1976
**½
Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, Billy Whitelaw, David Warner, Harvey Stephens, Patrick Troughton, Martin Benson, Robert Rietty

When his son dies in childbirth, American diplomat secretly adopts an orphan boy born on the same day, but unfortunately he turns out to be the Antichrist. This religion-tinted horror movie came in the wake of The Exorcist. It is a delightfully low-key picture, which is intermittently creepy and silly. Followed by several sequels and a remake in 2006.


Obsession
1976
**
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Cliff Robertson, Genevieve Bujold, John Lithgow, Sylvia Kuumba Williams

A man's wife dies but he "rediscovers" her. Hitchcock influences have always been evident in Brian De Palma's work, but this time he blatantly rips off the master's best film, Vertigo.

Network
1976
****½
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Beatrice Straight

A tightly scripted, wonderfully acted and sharply directed satire about a television network. The channel's obsession with ratings over anything else may seem obvious now, but the film remains funny and poignant. Three actors (Dunaway, Finch, Straight) and the screenplay were rewarded with Academy Awards.

The Missouri Breaks
1976
**½
Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Harry Dean Stanton, Kathleen Lloyd

A flawed Western with a great cast. Nicholson plays a man who buys a farm as a front for his horse thieving and Brando plays a bounty hunter who wants to nail him. Brando in women's clothing is not the only odd thing in this weird genre piece.

Marathon Man
1976
***
Director: John Schlesinger
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane

A student (and avid runner) is sucked into a web of international intrique, thanks to his brother. This mediocre thriller carries an over-inflated reputation. However, Laurence Olivier is very good in a creepy role.

The Last Tycoon
1976
**½
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Robert De Niro, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Jeanne Moreau

Robert De Niro plays a 1930s movie producer in Elia Kazan's final film which is a snail-paced drama that never seems to take off. Based on a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Family Plot
1976
***
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, Karen Black, William Devane, Cathleen Nesbitt

Two con artists hope to collect a reward by tracking down an heir to a fortune. However, the man in question turns out to be a professional kidnapper. Hitchcock's final film is an entertaining but unsuccessful mix of thriller and comedy. The farcical car chase scenes seem especially out of place.

The Enforcer
1976
**½
Director: James Fargo
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Tyne Daly, Harry Guardino, Bradford Dillman, John Mitchum

Dirty Harry is paired with a female detective as he chases terrorists in this mediocre third film. There's a memorable climax in Alcatraz, though. Followed by Sudden Impact.

The Drowning Pool
1976
***
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Cast: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Franciosa, Murray Hamilton

In this sequel to Harper, P.I. Lee Harper is called in to help his former lover. An enjoyable if not terribly original detective mystery.

Carrie
1976
****
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, Piper Laurie, William Katt, John Travolta

Carrie is a repressed, bullied teenager with a strict Calvinistic mother. She also has telekinetic powers and everything comes to a head in the prom. This sharply directed and entertaining thriller is the first film to be adapted from a Stephen King novel.

Bugsy Malone
1976
***
Director: Alan Parker
Cast: Jodie Foster, Scott Baio, Florrie Dugger, John Cassisi, Martin Lev

A cute gangster comedy in which children play all the roles. It's good fun, but what the point of it all is, I'm not quite sure.

All the President's Men
1976
****
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook

A captivating, matter-of-fact drama about two Washington Post reporters who investigate the Watergate scandal. William Goldman's Oscar winning screenplay is based on the actual events, as described by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the book. This solidly acted film won three more Academy Awards, which include Jason Robards' supporting performance.

1900
1976
***
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Cast: Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, Burt Lancaster

Two Italian baby boys are born on the same day in 1901, one to the landowners and the other to the peasants who work their fields. This sweeping but deeply flawed epic charts Italy's political history and tells the story of these two men from 1901 to 1945. The film is more than 5 hours long but it doesn't offer a dull moment. On the contrary, there are several memorable scenes, some of which would not pass the censors today. Politically, however, this is black-and-white communist propaganda; you have the honest, hardworking communists and the sadistic, sexually perverse fascists.

Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum)
1975
***
Director: Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe Von Trotta
Cast: Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf, Dieter Laser, Jürgen Prochnow

Katharina Blum, a young innocent woman, spends a night with a suspected radical. In the morning she is arrested and interrogated, and her life becomes tabloid fodder. This adaptation of Heinrich Böll's novel is a scathing but heavy-handed commentary on political hysteria and media manipulation. The novel and the film came out when RAF was terrorising Germany, but the story has relevance today,

Three Days of the Condor
1975
****
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow

A harmless researcher for the CIA finds himself in a situation where he has to play a real spy in order to stay alive. This is an entertaining thriller with a slightly odd romantic interlude. Incidentally, the conspiracy that Condor discovers seems more topical now than it probably was at the time.

Rollerball
1975
**
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn

In the near future violence is banned and the only place where it can be practised is in a rollerball game. The sport may be an allegory for one thing or another, but deep down this is just a stupid and ultra-violent action film. Remade in 2002.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show
1975
***
Director: Jim Sharman
Cast: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'Brien, Meatloaf

An uptight couple drifts into a house full of strange characters in this horror comedy musical, which has become a cult favourite. How much you enjoy this will depend on your tolerance for camp and less than great rock music. Some snappy tunes, though.

The Return of the Pink Panther
1975
***½
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Christopher Plummer, Catherine Schell

The third Inspector Clouseau film returns to where it all started from, Pink Panther, the world's largest diamond. Peters Sellers is as hilarious as ever but the story and the supporting characters are not among the best in the series.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1975
*****
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Brad Dourif, Christopher Lloyd

A brilliantly funny and touching drama based on Ken Kesey's "unfilmable" novel. Jack Nicholson plays a nonconformist insane asylum patient who fights a system which seems to create more mental problems than it can cure. It won all the five major Oscars, and deservedly so.

Night Moves
1975
****
Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Susan Clark, Melanie Griffith

A wonderfully atmospheric and gripping drama about a private investigator whose search for a missing teenage girl leads him to Florida. One of the little known gems of the 1970s. Gene Hackman shines in the lead.

Nashville
1975
**½
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Henry Gibson, Karen Black, Ronee Blackley, Keith Carradine, Lily Tomlin

A very influential but tragically overrated assortment of intertwining characters and stories during a political rally in Nashville. It's an admirable acting and film making exercise, but also endless and seemingly pointless. Worst of all, it's peppered with numerous awful country songs.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail
1975
****
Director: Terry Jones
Cast: John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones

Monty Python's parody of the knights of the Round Table and the quest for the Holy Grail is hilarious but exhausting like most of their feature films. In any case, it includes numerous unforgettable gags.

Love and Death
1975
****
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, James Tolkan, Olga Georges-Picot, Harold Gould

The last of Woody Allen's early purely comedic films is set in Russia. Boris Grushenko is a coward who becomes an accidental hero during the Napoleonic wars. He hopes this will finally help him to woo the woman of his dreams. Allen offers a steady but uneven flow of verbal and visual gags, anachronisms, philosophical discussions and parody on Russian literature.

The Killer Elite
1975
**
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: James Caan, Robert Duvall, Arthur Hill, Bo Hopkins, Mako, Burt Young

Agents and mercenaries fight each other in this trashy and uninspired drama. The pairing of Caan and Duvall and the occasional Peckinpah flair cannot raise this dud above mediocrity. Based on Robert Rostand's novel Monkey in the Middle.


Jaws
1975
*****
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Murray Hamilton

As the beautiful Amity Island off the coast of New England is preparing to welcome tourists for the Fourth of July weekend, police chief Brody struggles to convince the mayor that all the beaches should be closed because of an imminent shark threat. Steven Spielberg became a household name with this riveting thriller, which showcases what a brilliant director can do with pulp material. The first half gradually builds the tension, and the second half is all-out action at sea. The movie was followed by numerous awful sequels and rip-offs, but the original has stood the test of time. An Academy Award winner for best sound, editing, and John Williams' unforgettable score. Based on Peter Benchley's book.

The Great Waldo Pepper
1975
***½
Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Robert Redford, Bo Svenson, Susan Sarandon, Bo Brundin, Geoffrey Lewis

A captivating and entertaining story about Waldo Pepper, one of the aviation pioneers in the beginning of the 20th century. The excellent aerial scenes show what the grim reality was back then. Susan Sarandon has a memorable small role.

French Connection II
1975
**½
Director: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Bernard Fresson, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, Philippe Léotard, Ed Lauter, Charles Millot, Cathleen Nesbitt, André Penvern

Four years after the events of The French Connection, detective Doyle arrives in Marseille, still pursuing Charnier, the slippery drug kingpin. This gritty but unnecessary sequel tells a fish out of water story, as Doyle is surprised that the French are not receptive to his obnoxious behaviour and lawless policing methods. In the first film, Doyle was a believably dogged and stubborn character, but now his actions (shooting people, burning down buildings) become ridiculous. John Frankenheimer's follow-up is too long and slow-paced, especially during the endless midsection, in which the hero gains some first-hand experience of drug addiction and rehabilitation. The original is famous for the scene in which Doyle chases a train by car, now he chases a trolleybus and boat on foot.

The Fortune
1975
**
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Stockard Channing, Scatman Crothers

This short but seemingly endless dark comedy is set in the 1920s, where two men decide to kill a heiress for her money. All styles of comedy are mixed into the concoction, but none of them manage to produce laughs.

The Eiger Sanction
1975
**
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy, Vonetta McGee, Jack Cassidy

This long and dull espionage drama about an assassin/mountaineer is about as exciting as watching a man climb up a mountain. One of Clint Eastwood's weakest directorial efforts. Based on Trevanian's novel.

Dog Day Afternoon
1975
****½
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Al Pacino, John Gazale, Charles Durning, James Broderick, Carol Kane

Two guys plan to rob a bank but their poorly planned attempt turns into a massive hostage situation and media event. This is a sharply directed character drama which relies on strong storytelling. Al Pacino gives one of his best performances. Inspired by an article in the Life magazine about a real-life robbery.

Death Race 2000
1975
***
Director: Paul Bartel
Cast: David Carradine, Simone Griffeth, Sylvester Stallone, Louisa Moritz

A black comedy set in the future where the public has gone berserk for a sinister car race in which you score points by killing people. Extremely silly and campy but occasionally hilarious. Based on Ib Melchior's short story The Racer. Remade as Death Race in 2008.

The Count of Monte Cristo
1975
***
Director: David Greene
Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Tony Curtis, Kate Nelligan, Louis Jourdan

An entertaining but unspectacular adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' novel about Edmond Dantes, a man who escapes from prison after being unjustly incarcerated, and vows revenge on his wrongdoers. Richard Chamberlain is not the most charismatic of actors to play the leading role.

Barry Lyndon
1975
*****
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Steven Berkoff, Hardy Krüger, Gay Hamilton, Godfrey Quigley, Leonard Rossiter, Leon Vitali

In the 1750s, young man named Redmond Barry is forced to leave his home in Ireland and embark on a quest to find wealth, social status and happiness. Stanley Kubrick's long and sprawling but majestic period film is one of the most beautiful films ever made. Every exterior shot is like a painting. For the interior scenes, the director used innovative techniques to capture images in low lighting. This impeccable fusion of visuals and classical music won Academy Awards for cinematography, art direction, costume design and score. Based on William Makepeace Thackeray's 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon.


Young Frankenstein
1974
*****
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman, Kenneth Mars

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein is eager to dissociate himself from his family's reputation. However, when he inherits the family estate in Transylvania, he is gradually drawn to his late grandfather's experiments with reanimation. Mel Brooks' finest comedy is a sweet, funny, and lovingly staged black and white parody of the classic Frankenstein movies of the 1930s. The characters are wonderfully drawn and the film includes many unforgettable moments. Some of the props are from James Whale's 1931 film.

The Towering Inferno
1974
**½
Director: John Guillermin, Irwin Allen
Cast: Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway

A state-of-the-art skyscraper is on fire, and its designer and a fire chief, played by Paul Newman and Steve McQueen respectively, try to prevent tragedy. This disaster film is OK but it's overlong and predictable. A winner of three Academy Awards.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
1974
***
Director: Michael Cimino
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy, Geoffrey Lewis

In Michael Cimino's feature debut Clint Eastwood plays a robber and Jeff Bridges plays his young partner. A likeable if quite forgettable drama.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
1974
****
Director: Joseph Sargent
Cast: Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo

In this adaptation of John Godey's novel, a group of bad guys hijack a subway train and hold it to a ransom of \$1M. This very entertaining but under-valued thriller has a first-rate cast. Remade as The Taking of Pelham 123 in 2009.

The Sugarland Express
1974
***½
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Goldie Hawn, William Atherton, Ben Johnson, Michael Sacks

A young couple hijack a police car and head for Sugarland, Texas to get their son back. Spielberg's first proper feature film is a well-acted, captivating road drama.

Phantom of the Paradise
1974
***½
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Paul Williams, William Finley, Jessica Harper, George Memmoli

A musician takes revenge on a dishonest record producer in this utterly weird but charming and funny spoof of Phantom of the Opera. Some amusing, i.e. bad rock music on the soundtrack.

The Parallax View
1974
***
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss, William Daniels, Walter McGinn

A watchable conspiracy thriller about a reporter who investigates an assassination which leads him to more shocking discoveries. Tension builds nicely but the payoff is a letdown.

The Odessa File
1974
***
Director: Ronald Neame
Cast: Jon Voight, Maximilian Schell, Maria Schell, Mary Tamm, Derek Jacobi

A consistently interesting but slightly muddled thriller about a man who discovers an organisation that protects escaped Nazis. Based on Frederick Forsyth's novel.

Murder on the Orient Express
1974
***
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Martin Balsam, Sean Connery

Master detective Hercule Poirot investigates a murder onboard the Orient Express in this entertaining Agatha Christie adaptation. The murder mystery is quite predictable, the ending less so. Much like the massive disaster films of the 1970s, there is an impressive big name ensemble cast. Remade in 2017.

The Man with the Golden Gun
1974
**½
Director: Guy Hamilton
Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, Maud Adams, Clifton James

This lacklustre Bond film is memorable mainly for Christopher Lee's performance as the villain; Scaramanga, the man with three nipples. There are some clever gadgets, such as the golden gun or the flying car but, all in all, there's not enough excitement.

The Longest Yard
1974
***
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert, Michael Conrad, Ed Lauter, Jim Hampton

A tough macho film about an imprisoned football coach who is trying to put together a team of prisoners to play against the wardens. Very violent but nevertheless enjoyable. Remade in 2005 with Adam Sandler in the lead.

Lenny
1974
****
Director: Bob Fosse
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine, Jan Miner, Stanley Beck, Gary Morton

An impressive biopic of Lenny Bruce, controversial stand-up comedian who managed to offend just about everyone. Dustin Hoffman is first-class as this comic/tragic figure. Beautifully shot in black and white.

Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser)
1974
***
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Bruno S., Walter Ladengast, Brigitte Mira, Willy Semmelrogge, Michael Kroecher, Hans Musäus

A drama based on the legend of Kaspar Hauser who claimed to have grown up locked in a basement without human contact. In 1828 this simpleton arrives in Nuremberg where some want to protect and educate him, while others would like to put him on display as a freak. He's played by Bruno S., a totally inexperienced actor with a history of mental problems, and he's well suited to the role. Werner Herzog is quite faithful to Hauser's life story, but he approaches this fascinating character with intellectual detachment, and the film doesn't leave a long lasting impression.

The Great Gatsby
1974
**
Director: Jack Clayton
Cast: Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Scott Wilson

This dull adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel captures the glossy surface of the life in the Jazz Age, but it's not able to bring its tragic characters alive, and the resulting film feels like an overlong costume show. Scripted by Francis Ford Coppola.

The Godfather Part II
1974
*****
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, John Cazale, Talia Shire, Lee Strasberg, Michael V. Gazzo, G.D. Spradlin, Richard Bright

The sequel to The Godfather is one of the finest sequels in cinema history, perhaps even better than the original. The film intertwines the lives of Michael Corleone, the new godfather who attempts to expand the family empire in the late 1950s, and his father Vito, an immigrant who tries to build a life for his young family in the beginning of the century. This is a long, emotionally and structurally complex, and simply stunning drama that won Academy Awards for best picture, director, adapted screenplay, art direction, score, and supporting actor (De Niro). Al Pacino gives one of his finest performances as Michael, who develops into one of the most intriguing and tragic screen characters of all time. Followed by Part III (1990).

The Front Page
1974
****
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Carol Burnett, Susan Sarandon

This story about two feuding reporters covering a murder story is based on a play and has been filmed twice before, the most famous version being Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday. Billy Wilder's penultimate film is very funny but a bit stagy and not one of his best.

The Four Musketeers
1974
****
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch

This entertaining sequel was filmed back-to-back with The Three Musketeers. It doesn't offer anything new but it retains the same cast and the same loveable tongue-in-cheek mood.

F for Fake
1974
***
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Joseph Cotten, Francois Reichenbach

Welles planned a documentary about art forger Elmyr de Hory but he expanded it into this study of forgery in general. A flawed but interesting concoction of tricks, mystery, satire and deceit.

Earthquake
1974
**
Director: Mark Robson
Cast: Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Genevieve Bujold

A run-of-the-mill disaster film about, er, earthquake. This long and dull drama with a cast of stars doesn't rock my world.

Death Wish
1974
**½
Director: Michael Winner
Cast: Charles Bronson, Hope Lange, Vincent Gardenia, Steven Keats

In one of his most iconic roles, Charles Bronson plays a man who becomes a vigilante after his wife is raped and killed. This manipulative drama has dodgy politics and the repetitive acts of violence get pretty tiresome towards the end.

Dark Star
1974
****½
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Dan O'Bannon, Dre Pahich, Brian Narelle, Cal Kuniholm, Nick Castle

John Carpenter's first film is a hilarious low-budget scifi comedy about a group of hirsute astronauts who destroy unstable planets. The adorable beachball alien is the centrepiece of this loveable film.

The Conversation
1974
****
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Gene Hackman, John Gazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest

A wonderful character study about a paranoid surveillance expert who gets a taste of his own medicine. Coppola filmed this personal gem between the first two Godfather episodes. Gene Hackman gives a great performance in the lead. Harrison Ford appears in a small role.

Chinatown
1974
*****
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Burt Young, Darrell Zwerling, Diane Ladd, Belinda Palmer

In Roman Polanski's film noir masterpiece, private investigator Jake Gittes follows a potentially unfaithful husband and uncovers a conspiracy that revolves around the water supply in Los Angeles. Excellent performances, beautiful recreation of the time and place, and razor-sharp dialogue are some of the reasons why this film has become a classic. Robert Towne won an Oscar for his screenplay, which is now considered to be one of the finest ever written. Nicholson later directed a sequel The Two Jakes.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
1974
**
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Gig Young, Robert Webber, Helmut Dantine

The title says it all. A Mexican criminal wants Alfredo Garcia dead and an American musician gets sucked into the events. The story has potential as a dark comedy, as Alfredo's head makes its journey in a canvas bag, but the end result is a sweaty, unpleasant and seemingly endless crime film.

Blazing Saddles
1974
***
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Gene Wilder, Cleavon Little, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Mel Brooks, Slim Pickens, Burton Gilliam, Alex Karras, David Huddleston, Liam Dunn, John Hillerman

In 1874, a corrupt politician hopes to profit from the arrival of the railroad. In order to drive away the racist townsfolk of Rock Ridge, he appoints a black man as the town's sheriff. Mel Brooks' irreverent parody features some great performances (Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, and Harvey Korman), but it is a bit of a hit and miss in terms of gags and pacing. While Brooks ridicules racists in one scene, he makes a homophobic joke in the next. The fourth-wall-breaking ending is wacky and memorable. Ironically, this is still one of the highest grossing Westerns of all time.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
1974
****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofersson, Billy Green Bush, Alfred Lutter

A widow and her young son hit the road in search of livelihood and happiness. A charming but untypical Scorsese film. Ellen Burstyn won an Oscar for her fine lead performance.

Westworld
1973
***
Director: Michael Crichton
Cast: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Alan Oppenheimer

20 years before Jurassic Park Michael Crichton wrote and directed this entertaining but campy film about a fantasy world recreation centre that goes haywire. Yul Brynner is memorable as a malfunctioning robot in the western town.

The Three Musketeers
1973
****
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch

A highly entertaining tongue-in-cheek version of Alexandre Dumas' musketeer story, which offers a great mix of action, romance and comedy. A wonderful cast. Followed by The Four Musketeers.

The Sting
1973
****
Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning, Ray Walston

Paul Newman and Robert Redford have great chemistry in the lead as two petty conmen who join forces to pull off their biggest scam yet. It's all very entertaining, but it's hard to comprehend how this rather trivial film managed to win seven Oscars. Memorable ragtime music on the soundtrack.

Sleeper
1973
****
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, John Beck, Mary Gregory, Don Keefer

An outrageous science fiction comedy about a man whose routine operation goes wrong and he wakes up 200 years later in a totalitarian society. This untypically visual Woody Allen film is weird but very enjoyable.

Serpico
1973
****½
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Al Pacino, John Randolph, Barbara Eda-Young, Jack Kehoe, Biff McGuire, Cornelia Sharpe, Tony Roberts, Allan Rich, Edward Grove

Frank Serpico is an honest NYPD detective who refuses to submit to corruption, which turns him into an outcast in any police department he works in. This captivating drama depicts true events, and Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler's script is based on Peter Maas' book. The increasingly hirsute Al Pacino gives one of his strongest and most likeable performances in the title role.

Scarecrow
1973
****½
Director: Jerry Schatzberg
Cast: Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Dorothy Tristan, Eileen Brennan

A wonderfully warm-hearted and enjoyable drama about two drifters who become friends. Gene Hackman and Al Pacino are superb as these two men.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
1973
***
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: James Coburn, Kris Kristofersson, Richard Jaeckel, Bob Dylan

Peckinpah's western about the famous lawman and outlaw is not one of his best, but it's a nice film nonetheless. Bob Dylan provides a small performance as well as music for the soundtrack.

Papillon
1973
***
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Cast: Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman, Victor Jory, Don Gordon, Anthony Zerbe

A pedestrian adaptation of Henri Charriere's exciting biographical bestseller about his life in prisons and his escape attempt from Devil's Island. The film has to compress years of imprisonment into minutes and the story of Papillon never really draws you in like it should.

O Lucky Man!
1973
*****
Director: Lindsay Anderson
Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Ralph Richardson, Rachel Roberts, Arthur Lowe, Helen Mirren, Graham Crowden, Dandy Nichols

Young Mick Travis starts as a coffee salesman and in the end of this incredible 3-hour story he auditions for a Lindsay Anderson film. The journey inbetween offers stunning surrealistic twists and turns as he's thrown around like a pawn in a game. All of this is interspersed with songs performed on-screen by Alan Price. It's an unusual and ambitious but thoroughly enjoyable film, and a scathing commentary on capitalism. Several of the leading actors play multiple roles.

My Name Is Nobody
1973
**
Director: Tonino Valerii
Cast: Terence Hill, Henry Fonda, Jean Martin, Leo Gordon, Mario Brega, Piero Lulli

A confusing and seldomly amusing Spaghetti Western comedy about an ageing gunman who is idolised and followed by a young hotshot. Sergio Leone produced but didn't direct his own story idea, which is obvious when you witness the lacklustre pacing and less than impressive visuals. At least the film has another weird and wonderful Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

Mean Streets
1973
****
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, David Proval, Amy Robinson, Cesare Danova

Scorsese's first major work is a personal story about small time criminals in Little Italy. Robert De Niro shines in his breakthrough role. Exciting, visceral filmmaking where the story is secondary.

Magnum Force
1973
***
Director: Ted Post
Cast: Clint Eastwood, David Soul, Hal Holbrook, Mitchell Ryan, Felton Perry

In the first sequel, Dirty Harry's adversary is within his own police department. This decent action thriller is nowhere near the quality of the original, but it's a nice time filler. Written by John Milius (this time under his own name) and Michael Cimino. Followed by The Enforcer.

The Long Goodbye
1973
****½
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Elliott Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, Jim Bouton, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell, Henry Gibson

Philip Marlowe has come a long way since Humphrey Bogart played him as a sharp-tongued tough guy in The Big Sleep. In Robert Altman's laid-back and subversive crime film he's a scruffy and not terribly sharp private eye who is falsely implicated in the murder of his friend's wife. He's hired to help another troubled couple, but it doesn't pan out much better. Elliot Gould is wonderful as the cat-loving Marlowe. Memorable music by John Williams.

Live and Let Die
1973
***
Director: Guy Hamilton
Cast: Roger Moore, Jean Seymour, Yaphet Kotto, Clifton James, Geoffrey Holder

Roger Moore kicked off his James Bond career with this entertaining film set in the world of drugs and voodoo. Memorable scenes include an escape on a double-decker bus and 007's walk over crocodiles. Jean Seymour is a memorably stunning Bond girl.

Last Tango in Paris
1973
***
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Cast: Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Darling Legitimus

An American living in Paris embarks on an emotionally violent relationship with a younger woman in this controversial drama. A compelling but pretentious film which offers a good lead performance by Brando.

The Last of Sheila
1973
****
Director: Herbert Ross
Cast: James Coburn, James Mason, Dyan Cannon, Ian McShane, Joan Hackett

A mysterious man invites a group of seemingly unrelated people for an elaborate game that turns into something more sinister. An excellent crafty thriller which doesn't quite recover from a twist halfway through, but remains entertaining until the end. Written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim.

The Last Detail
1973
****
Director: Hal Ashby
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Otis Young, Clifton James, Carol Kane

Two sailors escort a young prisoner and decide to show him some action. A very funny and very foul-mouthed comedy. Script by Robert Towne.

High Plains Drifter
1973
***½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom, Marianna Hill, Mitchell Ryan, Jack Ging

In his first western behind the camera, Clint builds on his Dollars trilogy inheritance but takes it a step further, making almost a parody of the genre. He plays a man (with no name, obviously) who frightens men and excites women while he helps a small town fight against a group of outlaws.

The Exorcist
1973
****½
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Linda Blair, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Rudolf Schündler

A disturbing and haunting story about a 12-year-old girl who becomes possessed by an evil spirit. A priest, who is battling demons of his own, attempts to help her. This hugely popular and immeasurably influential horror film is still very powerful. It's famous for its visual shocks, but most of the dread is in the quiet scenes. William Peter Blatty adapted his own 1971 novel and won an Oscar for the screenplay.

Enter the Dragon
1973
***
Director: Robert Clouse
Cast: Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Jim Kelly, Ahna Capri, Yang Tse, Angela Mao

In his last film Bruce Lee goes undercover to investigate a mysterious millonaire and his brutal martial arts competition. The fight scenes are exciting but that's basically all that is on offer. All in all this kung fu classic is utterly silly but good fun.

Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel (Three Wishes for Cinderella)
1973
***
Director: Václav Vorlíček
Cast: Libuše Šafránková, Pavel Trávníček, Carola Braunbock, Rolf Hoppe, Karin Lesch, Daniela Hlaváčová, Vladimír Menšík, Jan Libíček, Vítězslav Jandák, Jaroslav Drbohlav

While the prince struggles to find a suitable young woman to wed, Cinderella is in with a chance after she receives three magical hazelnuts which enable her to attend the royal ball. This Czechoslovak-East German co-production has become a Christmas classic across Central Europe. It tells a sweet, likeable, and occasionally silly version of the Cinderella story. The colourful costumes look great.


Don't Look Now
1973
***
Director: Nicholas Roeg
Cast: Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania, Nicholas Salter

An arty mystery that mixes supernatural and psychological elements into a gripping but frustrating thriller. Donald Sutherland and Julie Andrews are excellent as a couple on a trip to Venice who are struggling to get over their daughter's tragic death. The girl in the red jacket has become an iconic symbol of this film. Based on Daphne du Maurier's short story.

The Day of the Jackal
1973
**½
Director: Fred Zinneman
Cast: Edward Fox, Alan Badel, Tony Britton, Cyril Cusack, Michel Lonsdale

A long, tiresome and overrated adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's thriller about a professional hitman and his attempt to assassinate Charles De Gaulle. Remade as Jackal.

Charley Varrick
1973
***½
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Felicia Farr, Andy Robinson, John Vernon

Walter Matthau does well in an untypical dramatic role as a bank robber who steals money from the wrong people. A captivating and laid-back drama.

Breezy
1973
****
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: William Holden, Kay Lenz, Roger C. Carmel, Marj Dusay, Joan Hotchkis, Lynn Borden, Shelley Morrison

Breezy is a wide-eyed and free-spirited young woman and Frank is a cynical middle-aged divorcee. These two meet by chance and end in a relationship that defies everybody's expectations, most of all Frank's. Clint Eastwood's third film behind the camera is the first one not to feature him in front of it. This is an unexpectedly sweet and funny love story between a hippy and a square. The dialogue and the central performances are great, and the adorably care-free Breezy must be one of the most likeable characters to have graced the screen.

Badlands
1973
****
Director: Terrence Malick
Cast: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Ramon Bieri, Alan Vint

A young hothead kills the father of his girlfriend and the couple are forced to go on the lam. Terrence Malick's influential debut is impressive but slightly aloof. Sheen and Spacek are excellent in the lead.

American Graffiti
1973
****
Director: George Lucas
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Harrison Ford, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams, Wolfman Jack

In 1962, a group of high school graduates spend their last night in Modesto, California, where they cruise the streets in their classic cars, listen to rock and roll music, and contemplate their futures. George Lucas' semiautobiographical second film is a lightly plotted coming-of-age story, which wonderfully captures the aimlessness of youth. This slice of nostalgia looks gorgeous.

Ulzana's Raid
1972
***
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Bruce Davison, Jorge Luke, Richard Jaeckel

A violent western about an indian scout who helps the cavalry to track a murderous Apache. Burt Lancaster is not the obvious choice to play an indian but he does well, and the film is sharply directed but not terribly original.

Sleuth
1972
***
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Alec Cawthorne, John Matthews

A mystery writer, exuberantly played by Laurence Olivier, decides to teach his wife's lover a lesson. This con drama has a good reputation, but today it seems overlong, obvious and cinematically dull. This two-actors-in-one-house drama is based on a stage play (by Anthony Shaffer). Remade in 2007.

Silent Running
1972
***
Director: Douglas Trumbull
Cast: Bruce Dern, Ron Rifkin, Cliff Potts, Jesse Vint, Joseph Campanella

In the future Earth can no longer sustain vegetation and the last remaining trees and plants have been preserved into floating greenhouses in space. When the order arrives to destroy the nature reserves, one of the crew members is determined to keep the samples alive, even if it means killing fellow human beings. This thinking man's science fiction film and its ecological themes and humanised robots have clearly influenced numerous subsequent works in the genre. The film is short and captivating but its age shows in places, i.e. every time Joan Baez starts singing on the soundtrack. The pacing is also a bit slow, even if it is a meditation on loneliness. Bruce Dern seems completely false at first, but utterly compelling once he's left alone with his solitude.

The Poseidon Adventure
1972
***
Director: Ronald Neame
Cast: Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Roddy McDowall

This entertaining and trashy disaster film is one of the better ones in its genre. After predictable exposition we get to know the characters, then the luxury cruise ship is capsized and the survivors must make their way up to the bottom. Remade as Poseidon in 2006.

Play It Again, Sam
1972
***
Director: Herbert Ross
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Jerry Lacy, Susan Anspach

A film critic doesn't seem to have luck with women, so as a Casablanca fan he asks advice from Humphrey Bogart himself. Woody does some nice physical comedy, but the film as a whole is rather ordinary, if enjoyable. Based on Allen's own stage play.

The Mechanic
1972
**½
Director: Michael Winner
Cast: Charles Bronson, Jan-Michael Vincent, Keenan Wynn, Jill Ireland

Charles Bronson plays a professional hitman who gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to take on a young apprentice. A typical Bronson/Winner vehicle with a memorable ending. The film includes some wonderfully inventive ways to kill people. Remade in 2011.

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
1972
***
Director: John Huston
Cast: Paul Newman, Ava Gardner, Victoria Principal, Jacqualine Bisset

Paul Newman is having fun in this real-life story about a self-appointed judge in the wild west. An entertaining if somewhat odd western. Screenplay by John Milius.

The King of Marvin Gardens
1972
**½
Director: Bob Rafelson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Julia Anne Robinson

Jack Nicholson gives a restrained performance as a man who tries to stop his brother from destroying his life. This potentially interesting drama never seems to get going and the ending seems too inevitable.

Kahdeksan surmanluotia (Eight Deadly Shots)
1972
****
Director: Mikko Niskanen
Cast: Mikko Niskanen, Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala, Paavo Pentikäinen, Sulo Hokkanen, Olavi Tervahartiala, Kaarlo Wilska, Yrjö Liehunen, Tauno Paananen

In 1969 Tauno Pasanen shot four policemen who had come over to calm him down during another one of his binges. This horrific event lead Mikko Niskanen to speculate the circumstances which led to the senseless act of violence. Pasi is a poor farmer with a wife and four kids. As farming doesn't pay and job oppurtinities are scarce, he numbs his frustration by cooking moonshine and getting drunk. This powerful black and white Finnish film is a wonderful portrayal of old school manual labour and a harrowing depiction of alcoholism. The 145 minute film was shown on television in a 316 minute edit. The long version feels repetitive towards the end but it really conveys the subtle change in the protagonist. The director gives a very commanding leading performance, but some of the amateur actors he has employed in the supporting roles are frankly awful. In retrospect, Niskanen's hypothesis was misjudged because Pasanen later murdered his wife as well.

Junior Bonner
1972
***½
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Steve McQueen, Ida Lupino, Robert Preston, Ben Johnson, Joe Don Baker

A rodeo professional returns home in this compelling character drama which has none of Sam Peckinpah's trademark flourishes, such as violence. Just a good story well told.

Joe Kidd
1972
**
Director: John Sturges
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Robert Duvall, John Saxon, Don Stroud, Stella Garcia

This insipid but short western is written by Elmore Leonard, but it doesn't offer any memorable moments. Clint plays a man who is hired to hunt down a group of bandits.

Jeremiah Johnson
1972
***½
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Robert Redford, Will Geer, Stefan Gierasch, Allyn Ann McLerie

An absorbing and entertaining drama about Jeremiah Johnson, a man of the wilderness. Bearded Robert Redford is dynamic in an untypically unglamorous leading role. Beautiful locations.

Harold and Maude
1972
*****
Director: Hal Ashby
Cast: Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, Vivian Pickles, Cyril Cusack, Charles Tyner

A morbid young man, whose favourite hobbies include faking suicides and attending funerals, meets his soulmate in the shape of an 80-year-old woman. A brilliantly whimsical dark comedy with a melancholic love story between two disconnected individuals. A memorable Cat Stevens soundtrack.

The Godfather
1972
*****
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard S. Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire.

Francis Ford Coppola's breakthrough is a majestic family drama set in the world of organised crime, which covers a 10-year time period from 1945 to 1955. Marlon Brando plays Vito Corleone, a patriarch of a crime family, and Al Pacino portrays his youngest son Michael, a war hero who is gradually pulled into the family business. This genuine American classic features unforgettable scenes and performances, first-rate cinematography and set design, and stunning music by Nino Rota. Academy Award winner for best film, actor (Brando), and adapted screenplay (from Mario Puzo's 1969 novel). Followed by Part II (1974)and Part III (1990).

The Getaway
1972
****
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Ben Johnson, Sally Struthers, Al Lettieri

A heist goes wrong, like they usually do in films. One of the robbers takes off with his wife, while his cohorts try to get him. An ordinary action drama which is made exciting by Sam Peckinpah's sharp direction and Steve McQueen's charismatic deadpan performance.

Frenzy
1972
***½
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Jon Finch, Alec McCowen, Barry Foster, Billie Whitelaw, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Vivien Merchant, Michael Bates, Jean Marsh, Clive Swift

Alfred Hitchcock's penultimate film is not among his best, but it is an enjoyable and darkly comic thriller about a jobless man who is mistaken for the Necktie Murderer, a serial killer who is terrorising the women of London. Hitchcock shows us the grisly details of the first murder, then inventively lets us imagine the second one. His wicked black humour reaches its low point in the opening minutes with a rape joke and its high point in the second half, when the killer attempts to retrieve incriminating evidence from one of his victims. Based on Arthur La Bern's 1966 novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)
1972
***½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, John Carradine, Lou Jacobi, Louise Lasser, Gene Wilder

A very funny but uneven collection of stories revolving around sex, loosely based on the famous guide book. Woody as a sperm who is afraid to take the plunge and Gene Wilder as a man who falls in love with a sheep are among the highlights.

Duck, You Sucker / A Fistful of Dynamite
1972
****
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: James Coburn, Rod Steiger, Romolo Valli, Maria Monti

Sergio Leone's final western begins as a light-hearted buddy comedy about a Mexican bandit and an Irish terrorist but slowly builds into a touching drama about Mexican revolution and its human price. However, Rod Steiger and James Coburn are questionable choices for the leading roles. Another wonderful albeit weird Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

Deliverance
1972
*****
Director: John Boorman
Cast: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty, Billy McKinney

Four men from Atlanta go on a canoeing trip which turns into a harrowing nightmare as they clash with the local rednecks. Or is that what happens? This disturbing and enthralling drama could be interpreted as a story about the nature taking its revenge on the humans. There are some unforgettable moments and wonderful performances. Adapted from James Dickey's 1970 novel.

The Candidate
1972
***½
Director: Michael Ritchie
Cast: Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, Melvyn Dougkas, Don Porter, Allen Garfield

A sharp political satire about a fresh-faced candidate who is persuaded to challenge the incumbent senator in the upcoming election. He wants to talk about real issues but is forced to conform to the political mechanics. The topic is still potent today.

Cabaret
1972
****
Director: Bob Fosse
Cast: Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Helmut Griem, Marisa Berenson, Joel Grey

A very enjoyable musical set in Berlin before WW2. Captivating story and entertaining musical numbers resulted in eight Oscars, which include Bob Fosse for directing and Liza Minnelli for her performance as an American nightclub singer.

Avanti!
1972
****
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills, Clive Revill, Edward Andrews, Gianfranco Barra

A loveable romantic comedy about an uptight businessman who travels to Italy to pick up his father's body, only to discover that the old man died alongside his mistress. Overlong but funny and endearing, and shot on beautiful locations.

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre: The Wrath of God)
1972
***½
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Ruy Guerra, Peter Berling

A haunting story of a group of 16th century conquistadors who go in search of the mythical El Dorado. The plot is secondary in this hypnotic and meditative but slightly aloof journey down the river into the heart of darkness. Klaus Kinski is a powerhouse in the title role. Clearly a big influence on Apocalypse Now.

Straw Dogs
1971
***
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan, T.P. McKenna

An American academic and his English wife move to her small home village where the locals treat him like leper. Peckinpah's controversial drama attempts to show that any man will resort to violence if pushed far enough. I'm not completely convinced. Remade in 2011.

Sometimes a Great Notion
1971
***
Director: Paul Newman
Cast: Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, Lee Remick, Michael Sarrazin

An interesting but somewhat uninspired drama about a family who run a logging business in Oregon. This film directed by and starring Paul Newman is memorable for a gripping death scene towards the end. Based on Ken Kesey's novel.

Shaft
1971
**½
Director: Gordon Parks
Cast: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, Gwenn Mitchell

Iconic blaxpoitation film about a tough and street smart private detective who is hired to find a kidnapped girl. This is very much a product of its time which doesn't offer much cinematic significance. Shaft himself is so cool that he becomes almost unintentionally comical. However, Isaac Hayes' Oscar-winning song Theme from Shaft has stood the test of time. Followed by two sequels, Shaft's Big Score and Shaft in Africa. Remade in 2000 with Samuel L. Jackson in the lead.

Play Misty for Me
1971
***½
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills, John Larch, Irene Hervey

In his directorial debut Clint Eastwood plays a night radio Dj whose new fan becomes overly obsessive. His role in this effective thriller is a bit more vulnerable than we've come to expect from him. Nice soundtrack.

The Panic in the Needle Park
1971
**½
Director: Jerry Schatzberg
Cast: Al Pacino, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint, Richard Bright, Michael McClanathan

Although the performances are impressive and the anti-drug message is a worthy one, this story about two heroin addicts is moving but, frankly, quite an ordeal to watch.

Mccabe & Mrs. Miller
1971
*****
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, John Schuck, Bert Remsen

A brilliantly original and atmospheric anti-western. Warren Beatty plays a businessman who opens a brothel in a frontier town and Julie Christie is a prostitute who runs the place. They are both excellent. Robert Altman's view of the west is a far cry from the glamorous heroes who ride through beautiful prairies into the sunset.

The Last Picture Show
1971
****
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Cast: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn

A poignant and atmospheric black and white drama about the people of a small Texan town in the 1950s. Great performances all around, but Johnson and Leachman got singled out for Oscars. Followed by Texasville 19 years later.

Klute
1971
****
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi, Roy Scheider, Rita Gam

An influential and captivating but flawed drama about a P.I. whose search for a lost man brings him together with a call girl. Jane Fonda won a deserved Oscar for her lead performance.

The French Connection
1971
****
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider, Tony LoBianco, Marcel Bozzuffi, Frédéric de Pasquale, Bill Hickman, Ann Rebbot, Harold Gary

Two relentless NYPD narcotics detectives, Doyle and Russo, are determined to bring down a heroin ring and capture its French leader. William Friedkin's tense and realistic crime film is most famous for its gritty documentary style, which has influenced dozens of filmakers. The celebrated car chase still looks impressive. Ernest Tidyman's script, on the other hand, is not much more than a 100-minute tailing scene. Gene Hackman gives a strong performance as Doyle, a bigot whose dogged determination pushes him to the edge. The film won Academy Awards for best picture, directing, writing, editing, and acting (Hackman). Based on Robin Moore's 1969 non-fiction book. Followed by French Connection II.


Duel
1971
****
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Dennis Weaver, Tim Herbert, Charles Seel, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell

Steven Spielberg made his name with this nailbiting nuts-and-bolts thriller about a traveling businessman, who is terrorised by a tanker truck for no apparent reason. The truck doesn't give up and the tension doesn't drop. There is very little material in Richard Matheson's screenplay, but Spielberg manages to squeeze every drop of tension out of it with his visual storytelling skills.

Dirty Harry
1971
*****
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Andrew Robinson, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni, John Vernon, John Larch, John Mitchum, Mae Mercer

Harry Callahan is a tough but effective detective, who doesn't often do it by the book. Now he must catch a serial killer who is terrorising San Francisco. This massively influential crime film was made as a reaction to a time period when the criminal's rights were becoming more important than those of the victim. The hero's methods may seem unlawful at times, but the film is full of unforgettable moments and quotable dialogue, and it gave Clint Eastwood another iconic role besides the Man with No Name. Scripted by John Milius under a pseudonym. Followed by four progressively poorer sequels: Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool.

Diamonds Are Forever
1971
***
Director: Guy Hamilton
Cast: Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Charles Gray, Lana Wood, Jimmy Dean

After handing over the reins to George Lazenby for one film, Sean Connery returns as 007 in this story set in the world of diamond smuggling. An entertaining Bond film which takes place in the unusual setting of Las Vegas.

A Clockwork Orange
1971
*****
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke

Young Alex and his gang terrorise the neighbourhood until he is arrested for murder and subjected to a new treatment which is to cure him of any criminal urges. Kubrick's chilly and cynical dystopia is based on Anthony Burgess' novel. The unique visual look, perfect soundtrack and thought-provoking subject matter contribute to one of Kubrick's most endurable films. Malcolm McDowell is awesome in the lead.

The Beguiled
1971
***½
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris

Clint Eastwood in an untypically restrained and, dare I say, romantic mode as he plays a wounded Civil War soldier who is forced to hide in a girls' school. A slow-paced but enjoyable drama that offers a change of pace for Clint.

Bananas
1971
****½
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalban, Howard Cosell

Woody Allen's second film is a hilarious comedy about a man who will do anything to impress a girl, even join the revolution in a banana republic. Not as story-driven as Allen's later comedies but enough funny jokes to keep you entertained.

The Andromeda Strain
1971
**½
Director: Robert Wise
Cast: Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid, David Wayne, Paula Kelly, George Mitchell, Ramon Bieri, Kermit Murdock, Richard O'Brien

A team of scientists are summoned to Wildfire, a top-secret underground facility, to study a crashed satellite which mysteriously killed almost everyone around it. This adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1969 novel takes the term science fiction very literally. After an intriguing start at the crash site, we must sit through a 20-minute orientation video about the decontamination procedures on the five levels of Wildfire, and then watch four scientists at work for the rest of the runtime. The long and self-satisfied film milks every minute out of its futuristic sets, costumes, and gadgets. The characters are dry and the proceedings are dull, but Robert Wise's use of split screen and Gil Mellé's unusual soundtrack spice things up a bit.

Two Mules for Sister Sara
1970
***
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Shirley McLaine, Manolo Fabregas, Alberto Morin

An entertaining western in which a drifter played by Clint hooks up with a nun. Good fun but not very memorable.

The Twelve Chairs
1970
***½
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Frank Langella, Ron Moody, Dom DeLuise, Mel Brooks, Bridget Brice

This enjoyable slapstick comedy set in Russia tells a story of a poor man who is desperate to locate a set of 12 dining chairs, because one of them has hidden jewels. A typically outrageous Mel Brooks comedy, but based on a story that has been filmed many times before.

There's a Girl in My Soup
1970
***
Director: Roy Boulting
Cast: Peter Sellers, Goldie Hawn, Tony Britton, Nicky Henson, Diana Dors, John Comer

A light, frivolous and forgettable comedy about an Englishman whose womanising ways come to an end when he meets a young, strong-willed American girl. Based on a stage play by Terence Frisby. Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn are delightful in the lead.

Ryan's Daughter
1970
**
Director: David Lean
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard, Sarah Miles, Christopher Jones, John Mills

David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago were epic stories that needed to be painted on a large canvas, but this simple love triangle set in Ireland is laughably pompous and about an hour too long. The scenery is nice and the film won a deserved Oscar for its cinematography. John Mills was also awarded for his Academy friendly performance as a village simpleton.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
1970
**½
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Robert Stephens, Geneviève Page, Colin Blakely, Christopher Lee, Irene Handl, Clive Revill

Billy Wilder's ambitious but flawed comedy tries to dig deeper into the character and the myth of Sherlock Holmes. This long jumble of satire, detective story and spy drama which features the Loch Ness monster is not on a par with his best work.

Patton
1970
***½
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Cast: George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Stephen Young, Michael Strong

George C. Scott turned down the Oscar he earned for his strong lead performance in this interesting but a bit matter-of-fact biopic of General Patton. A winner of seven Oscars, including Francis Ford Coppola for his screenplay.

MASH
1970
****
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Roger Bowen, René Auberjonois, David Arkin, Jo Ann Pflug

During the Korean War, medical personnel at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) mask the horrors of war with pranks and misbehaviour. Robert Altman's breakthrough is a funny and strikingly original dark comedy, but very much a product of its time. In today's cinema, you would not be able to tackle war with such irreverence or feature three main characters who are all are sexist bullies. Nevertheless, the cast is great. The film spawned a TV series that ran from 1972 to 1983.

A Man Called Horse
1970
***
Director: Elliot Silverstein
Cast: Richard Harris, Judith Anderson, Jean Gascon, Corinna Tsopei

Dances with Wolves with a lot of pain. An English gentleman is captured by the Sioux and later becomes part of the tribe through an extremely painful initiation process. A shocking but manipulative western drama that tails off after the initial shock. Followed by two sequels.

Love Story
1970
**½
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cast: Ali MacGraw, Ryan O'Neal, Ray Milland, John Marley, Katherine Balfour

A quintessential tearjerker about a young couple whose beautiful love story turns sour when she falls terminally ill. A watchable but terribly manipulative and soppy melodrama with weak leading actors. A very memorable title song.

Little Big Man
1970
****
Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, Richard Mulligan

An incredible western yarn about a 121-year-old white man who looks back at his younger days when he, among many other things, lived the life of a Cheyenne and stood alongside General Custer in his Last Stand. The ambitious story paints a brutally frank picture of the Native American genocide, but the overall comedic approach somewhat dampens the impact of the heartbreaking moments. Dustin Hoffman is strong in a wonderfully versatile and colourful role. Based on a novel by Thomas Berger.

Kelly's Heroes
1970
**½
Director: Brian G. Hutton
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles

During WW2 a group of American soldiers go behing enemy lines in search of Nazi gold. This enjoyable but seemingly endless film doesn't offer any insight into war - unlike The Three Kings - or into anything else, for that matter. It's all entertainment.

Get Carter
1970
***½
Director: Mike Hodges
Cast: Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland, John Osborne, Tony Beckley

A taut and cynical story of a hitman who wants to avenge his brother's death. The story doesn't beat around the bush and Michael Caine is excellent in the brutal leading role.

Five Easy Pieces
1970
****
Director: Bob Rafelson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Billy Green Bush, Fannie Flagg

A wonderfully atmospheric and perceptive low-key drama about a man working on an oil rig whose promising life as a musician has turned into a series of disappointments. Jack Nicholson in one of his best performances. More character-driven than story-driven.

Brewster Mccloud
1970
**½
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Bud Cort, Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, William Windom, Stacy Keach

An original but exceedingly weird drama about an introverted boy who dreams about being able to fly. There are some nice moments but the point of it all is lost on me.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue
1970
***
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, David Warner, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Slim Pickens, Peter Whitney, R. G. Armstrong

Cable Hogue, a prospector abandoned in the desert, discovers water in an unexpected place. He sets up a stagecoach station and hopes to share its success with a good-hearted prostitute. Sam Peckinpah's follow-up to The Wild Bunch is a mellow and sympathetic but tonally messy Western, which alternates between grim drama and silly slapstick. The contrived ending comes out of nowhere. Nevertheless, Jason Robards gives a nice lead performance.

The Wild Bunch
1969
*****
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sánchez, Ben Johnson

Sam Peckinpah's finest work is a melancholic Western about a group of aging outlaws who want to retire in style, but discover that time has caught up with them. Their quiet self-discovery is poignant and their final, violent showdown in Mexico is part of cinema history. The film is famous for its graphic violence, but that's because Peckinpah's shooting and editing rewrote the grammar of film. Excellent performances all around.

Where Eagles Dare
1969
****
Director: Brian G. Hutton
Cast: Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure, Patrick Wymark, Michael Hordern, Donald Houston, Peter Barkworth

A classic men-on-a-mission movie about a group of British and American commandos who parachute to the Alps to rescue a captured U.S. Army General from the Nazis. This is an irresistibly entertaining action film, even if the story is pure fiction and it's much longer than it needs to be. Based on Alistair McLean's novel.

Topaz
1969
*½
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Frederick Stafford, Dany Robin, Claude Jade, Michel Subor, John Forsythe, Karin Dor, John Vernon

In the wake of the James Bond franchise Hitchcock directed his own globetrotting spy story in which American, French and Soviet intelligence agencies battle it out during the Cold War. Sadly this is his dullest film. The characters are uninteresting and so is the story, which seems e-n-d-less. Adapted from a novel by Leon Uris.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
1969
***½
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Susannah York, Gig Young, Red Buttons, Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Dern, Allyn Ann McLerie

Men and women from all walks of life come to compete in a dance marathon on the Santa Monica Pier for the grand prize of \$1,500. This desperate group of people includes a young and embittered woman named Gloria, strongly played by Jane Fonda. This adaptation of Horace McCoy's 1935 novel is a long and stagy but very moving character drama about broken dreams. It's set in the Depression era, but the story has relevance still today. In particular the greedy and opportunistic Mc who, much like reality television in the present day, manipulates the contest in order to maximise profits. Gig Young won an Academy Award for the role.


Take the Money and Run
1969
***
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Janet Margolin, Louise Lasser, Marcel Hillaire, Lonny Chapman, James Anderson

In his first film as a director, writer and actor Woody Allen plays a hapless criminal who learns that crime doesn't pay. This is a hilarious but uneven collection of gags with the thinnest of plots around it.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
1969
**½
Director: Peter Hunt
Cast: George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Joanna Lumley, Bernard Lee, Ilse Steppat

George Lazenby's first and last appearance as 007 has become somewhat of a cult item. That's not due to Lazenby's charisma - he's useless - but because James Bond seems almost like an ordinary human being. While 007 is undercover investigating what his nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld is up to, he meets the woman of his dreams. There are some memorable scenes (the downbeat ending) and characters (Blofeld's cohort Irma Bunt), but this is the longest film in the franchise, and you can feel it.

Midnight Cowboy
1969
*****
Director: John Schlesinger
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes

Joe is a naive young man who moves from Texas to New York City to works as a male prostitute. Things don't work out the way he planned, but he meets Ratso Rizzo, a cripple with plenty of street-smarts. These two men form a warm friendship which is the heart and soul of this lovely, wonderfully acted drama. Oscar winner for best film, director and adapted screenplay (by Waldo Salt from James Leo Herlihy's novel). Harry Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin' and John Barry's title theme are vital parts of this landmark film.

The Italian Job
1969
***½
Director: Peter Collinson
Cast: Michael Caine, Noël Coward, Benny Hill, Raf Vallone, Tony Beckley, Rossano Brazzi

An enjoyable but disposable caper movie about a professional criminal who puts together a team to steal a gold shipment from the Fiat factory in Turin. The plan includes creating a traffic chaos and using three Mini Coopers to navigate through it. This influential film has a nice cast, an exciting chase scene and a memorable cliffhanger ending. Remade in 2003.

Easy Rider
1969
***
Director: Dennis Hopper
Cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Luke Askew, Phil Spector, Karen Black

Dennis Hopper's directorial debut is the quintessential hippie movie in many ways. It came from outside the studio system but was a big hit with the counterculture movement. It tells a story of two bikers who dream of living free of conservative constraints, but they repeatedly run into prejudice. It's very much a product of its time and it doesn't have the same impact now. Jack Nicholson gives a breakthrough performance as a fellow traveller. Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" has become synonymous with this film.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1969
****
Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross, Strother Martin, Henry Jones, Jeff Corey, George Furth

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were two real life outlaws who robbed banks and trains in the U.S. and in Bolivia. This entertaining and very popular Western tells their story, and it turned Paul Newman and Robert Redford into movie stars. The film came right after Once Upon a Time in the West and The Wild Bunch, and seems almost like a throwback compared to those trailblaizing genre pieces. William Goldman's screenplay, Conrad L. Hall's cinematography and Burt Bacharach's music, including the memorable "Raindrops Keeps Fallin' on My Head", won Academy Awards.

Rosemary's Baby
1968
****½
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy

Rosemary is a pregnant young wife who becomes increasingly convinced that her new neighbours and even her own husband are out to harm the baby. This subtle and deeply unsettling psychological horror film is based on Ira Levin's novel. Polanski's chilly visuals, Krzysztof Komeda's haunting score, and Mia Farrow's iconic haircut have made this an enduring classic. Ruth Gordon won an Oscar for her supporting performance.

The Producers
1968
***
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Lee Meredith, Estelle Winwood, Christopher Hewett, Dick Shawn, Renée Taylor, Andreas Voutsinas, Bill Macy

An unscrupulous Broadway producer and his accountant plan to finance their new musical with a Ponzi scheme, make sure that the show flops, and make off with the excess money. They find a script for a Nazi musical called Springtime for Hitler, but there's no accounting for bad taste. Mel Brooks stays behind the camera in his directorial debut, but he won an Academy Award for his screenplay. Unfortunately the performances by Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, and Kenneth Mars are so loud, shrill, and over-the-top, that it's sometimes easy to forget that this is a clever and wonderfully nasty comedy with enjoyable song and dance numbers. The film was turned into a Broadway musical in 2001, which was then remade as a film in 2005.

Planet of the Apes
1968
****½
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Cast: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly, Linda Harrison

A spaceship has travelled far into the future where it crashlands on a mysterious planet run by anthropomorphic apes. You could take this as an allegory on racism, as a nasty jibe at creationism, or simply enjoy it as a very entertaining science fiction film. The impressive make-up earned an honorary Oscar. Followed by four sequels between 1970 and 1973, a dreadful remake in 2001 and a terrific franchise reboot in 2011. Based on Pierre Boulle's novel La planète des singes.

The Party
1968
***½
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Gavin MacLeod, J. Edward McKinley, Denny Miller, Steve Franken

After two Pink Panther movies, Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers reunite in another comedy about a bumbling foreigner, this time an Indian film actor who is mistakenly invited to a Hollywood dinner party. Like Inspector Clouseau, Hrundi V. Bakshi is a walking disaster who creates chaos and destruction everywhere he goes. This is a very loosely scripted hit-and-miss comedy, but an excellent showcase for Sellers' talent.

Night of the Living Dead
1968
***½
Director: George A. Romero
Cast: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon

In his directorial debut, George A. Romero's locks a group of people in a country house, where they attempt to survive a zombie attack. This low budget black and white horror film made tons of money, influenced a number of directors, and launched an entire subgenre. Romero's gritty, bare-bones filmmaking still seems fresh, but the script he co-wrote with John Russo is skeletal. The entire second act seems to be about two characters arguing whether they should stay upstairs or go down to the cellar. The film has been remade multiple times and Romero directed several sequels (some of which have also been remade).

If....
1968
***
Director: Lindsay Anderson
Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Richard Warwick, Christine Noonan, David Wood, Robert Swann, Peter Jeffrey

In his breakthrough role Malcolm McDowell plays one of the public school students who are increasingly at odds with the school authorities. This influential counter-culture drama is subtle and provocative, but it feels rather dated. McDowell plays the same character in Anderson's later films, O Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital.

Hang 'Em High
1968
***
Director: Ted Post
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Inger Stevens, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Ben Johnson, Charles McGraw, Ruth White

Clint Eastwood's first Western after the Dollar Trilogy is perfectly enjoyable, but terribly ordinary compared to Sergio Leone's fresh approach. He plays a man who becomes a justice-seeking marshal after surviving a lynching.

Coogan's Bluff
1968
***
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee J. Cobb, Susan Clark, Tisha Sterling, Don Stroud, Betty Field

Walt Coogan is a small town sheriff who goes to New York City to fetch a man charged with murder. Coogan is a man who doesn't care for bureaucracy, he just wants to get the job done, pretty much like Clint's signature character Dirty Harry a few years later. This entertaining but unremarkable film mixes fish out of water elements into a predictable good small town vs. bad big city story. The first of five films Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel made together.

C'era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West)
1968
*****
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Gabriele Ferzetti, Paolo Stoppa, Woody Strode

The Dollars Trilogy films were cool and refreshingly subversive, but pure escapism. Sergio Leone's masterpiece takes a more somber look at how the west was conquered. The railroad usually brings hope and prosperity to the frontier, but this time it is the source of all evil. A gunman hired by the railroad company makes a widow of a landowner's new bride and lays the blame for the killing on a known bandit. At the same time a mysterious loner has come to settle an old score with the real killer. Leone has taken elements of every Western that ever influenced him and applied his slow pacing and stylised visuals to create something breathtakingly original and purely cinematic. However, all of his images would be only half as effective without Ennio Morricone's majestic score. When the first chords hit you 15 minutes into the film, you have one of the finest moments in cinema history. The original story was conceived by Leone, Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci.

Bullitt
1968
**½
Director: Peter Yates
Cast: Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, James Hagan, Vic Tayback, Georg Stanford Brown

In his signature role Steve McQueen plays a tough San Francisco detective who gets pulled into a web of intrigue when he's ordered to protect an important witness. This thriller is most famous for its car chase, which is pretty much all it has to offer. And if it seemed groundbreaking at the time, it doesn't seem like much now. Oscar winner for best editing. Adapted from Robert L. Fish's novel "Mute Witness".

Asfalttilampaat
1968
**
Director: Mikko Niskanen
Cast: Eero Melasniemi, Kirsti Wallasvaara, Paavo Tuominen, Pekka Autiovuori, Mirjami Manninen, Jörn Donner, Ville Salminen

Two young people, Ville and Liisa, meet and fall in love, but the narrow-minded townsfolk are standing in the way of their happiness. Mikko Niskanen's black and white adaptation of Sakari Haara's 1959 novel is a companion piece to Käpy selän alla (1966), and it offers even more style over substance. Eero Melasniemi and Kirsti Wallasvaara are good in the lead, but the story is silly and its twists are anachronistic or just incompherensible.

2001: A Space Odyssey
1968
*****
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter, Douglas Rain, Leonard Rossiter

This influential science fiction film ambitiously charts the past and future of mankind in mere 140 minutes, from the early humans who discover the use of tools to the future when a man-made computer tries to outwit its creator; all under the watchful eye of a mysterious black monolith. Kubrick's adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's book is cinema at its purest. With the groundbreaking special effects and minimal dialogue he creates iconic images, and his use of music, most famously by Johann and Richard Strauss, is ingenious. It's a fascinating, exhilarating, and confounding film which defies interpretation.

You Only Live Twice
1967
**½
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Sean Connery, Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama, Donald Pleasence, Tetsurō Tamba, Teru Shimada

007 goes to Japan in his fifth adventure. Bond teams up with a local agent to find out what happened to a hijacked American spaceship, and he has his first face to face encounter with Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Roald Dahl scripted the film, but this is a rather formulaic and unremarkable episode in the series. It spends a lot of pointless time immersing Bond to the Japanese culture. Nevertheless, Nancy Sinatra sings one of the finest title themes.

Who's That Knocking at My Door?
1967
***
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Zina Bethune, Anne Collette, Harry Northup

Martin Scorsese's feature debut deals with his favourite topic, Catholic guilt. Harvey Keitel plays a young New Yorker who is morally conflicted by what he learns about his new girlfriend. Scorsese's enthusiasm for cinema is already there, but the low budget and the poor script place serious contraints on his vision.

Wait Until Dark
1967
***½
Director: Terence Young
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Jack Weston, Samantha Jones, Julie Herrod, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

Audrey Hepburn plays a woman who is home alone when a group of hardened criminals need to gain access to her apartment. The twist is that she's blind. The story is based on a stage play by Frederick Knott and it takes mostly place in her apartment, but it makes for an entertaining if not always credible thriller.

Two for the Road
1967
****
Director: Stanley Donen
Cast: Albert Finney, Audrey Hepburn, William Daniels, Eleanor Bron, Gabrielle Middleton, Claude Dauphin

An English couple on holiday in France reflect on their previous travels and their 12-year-old relationship. We see how they meet, get married, have a child and go through difficult periods. All of this is told in an inventive scrambled structure which moves smoothly and unpredictably between the past and the present. The transitions between the memories are especially well executed. The result is a funny, charming and poignant romantic comedy drama in which Finney and Hepburn are both terrific.

Point Blank
1967
***½
Director: John Boorman
Cast: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O'Connor, Lloyd Bochner, Michael Strong

A tough and nihilistic crime film about a gangster who seeks revenge on a man who took his money and left him to die. Lee Marvin is appropriately cool as this brutal and cynical good bad guy. Based on Richard Stark's novel "The Hunter". Remade as Payback in 1999.

Pähkähullu Suomi
1967
*****
Director: Jukka Virtanen
Cast: Spede Pasanen, Simo Salminen, Esko Salminen, Leo Jokela, Toivo Mäkelä, Jukka Virtanen

A Finnish-American millionaire returns to his roots in Finland. He flees the money-hungry government official to travels across the country of his ancestors. The film makes fun of Finland's efforts to attract tourists and investment. Spede Pasanen's finest work is a wonderfully wacky comedy full of verbal and visual gags.

The Jungle Book
1967
****½
Director: Wolfgang Reitherman
Cast: Bruce Reitherman, Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, Louis Prima, George Sanders, Sterling Holloway

Mowgli is a young boy who was brought up by wolves in the jungles of India. Now that the vicious tiger Shere Khan is about to return, the other animals feel that he should flee to safety to the man village. The only one who doesn't agree with the plan is Mowgli himself. This Disney animation has become an enduring classic thanks to the short and simple story, lovely characterisation, and catchy songs. Loosely based on Rudyard Kipling's stories. Followed by a 1994 live-action film and a 2003 sequel.

In the Heat of the Night
1967
***
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Larry Gates, James Patterson

A black big city detective comes to Sparta, Mississippi to investigate a murder. However, this small town is not hospitable to strangers, especially coloured ones. This character drama examines worthy themes, but ultimately it's just a politically correct whodunnit. Nevertheless, the film won five Academy Awards for best film, screenplay, editing, sound and actor (Steiger). The film spawned two sequels and a long-running TV series. Based on John Ball's novel.

In Cold Blood
1967
****½
Director: Richard Brooks
Cast: Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, John Forsythe, Paul Stewart, Gerald S. O'Loughlin, Jeff Corey, John Gallaudet

This influential adaptation of Truman Capote's non-fiction novel dissects the famous 1959 mass murder in Kansas. Two ex-convicts on parole planned to rob a wealthy farmer but ended up killing a family of four for a measly \$40. The film is not a traditional whodunnit, but an in-depth study of crime and (a commentary on capital) punishment. It's long but very powerful, and stunningly shot in black and white by Conrad Hall. The newcomers Blake and Wilson give strong performances.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
1967
***
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Houghton, Cecil Kellaway, Beah Richards, Roy E. Glenn

The "original Meet the Parents" is a stagy but well-acted drama about a white upper class couple who face a crisis of conscience when their daughter's husband-to-be turns out be black. All of this amounts to moving issuetainment which deals with prejudice between the races and within the black community, but the ultra-liberal in-laws and the flawless son-in-law candidate somewhat take the edge off the proceedings. Katherine Hepburn earned an Oscar for her performance, as did William Rose for his screenplay. Spencer Tracy's final film.

The Graduate
1967
*****
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross, William Daniels, Murray Hamilton, Elizabeth Wilson, Buck Henry, Brian Avery, Walter Brooke, Norman Fell

Benjamin is a college graduate who is overwhelmed by the high expectations of his parents and family friends. While his future is on hold, Benjamin embarks on an affair with an older married woman, but falls in love with her daughter. This subtle, subversive, and unique romantic comedy is a modern classic for a reason. The memorable images and the songs by Simon & Garfunkel have become a part of our consciousness. The film is inventively directed by Mike Nichols, who deservedly won an Academy Award. Calder Willingham and Buck Henry scripted from Charles Webb's 1963 novel.

The Fearless Vampire Killers
1967
**½
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jack MacGowran, Roman Polanski, Ferdy Mayne, Iain Quarrier, Alfie Bass, Terry Downes, Sharon Tate

An elderly professor and his apprentice travel to Transylvania to hunt for vampires in Polanski's horror comedy in which he stars himself. The film is lavishly staged but it's dated and not terribly funny.

The Dirty Dozen
1967
***½
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy

On the eve of D-Day a group of thugs are selected and trained for a suicide mission in Nazi-occupied France. This entertaining and influential but overlong action drama spawned a whole genre (there certainly wouldn't be Inglourious Basterds without the Dirty Dozen), and its motley group of heroic dissenters have become stock characters of numerous subsequent films. Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes and Telly Savalas give memorable performances.

Cool Hand Luke
1967
****
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Cast: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, J.D. Cannon, Lou Antonio, Robert Drivas, Strother Martin, Jo Van Fleet

In one of his most unforgettable roles, Paul Newman plays Luke Jackson, a non-conformist convict in a Florida prison who tries to escape time and time again. Luke's attempt to eat 50 boiled eggs in an hour is one of the many memorable scenes. This is a tense, funny and sad drama which is probably responsible for the majority of prison film clichés. George Kennedy won an Oscar for his performance as a charismatic leader.

Casino Royale
1967
**
Director: Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, Val Guest, Richard Talmadge
Cast: David Niven, Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Barbara Bouchet, Deborah Kerr

There's a handful of directors behind the camera, a large number of big egos (some of them directors) in front of it, and many uncredited contributors behind the scenes. No wonder this James Bond spoof is a total mess. Sir James Bond is now a retired spy who must return to active duty. The first thing he does is create a decoy by renaming all MI6 agents after himself. Woody Allen plays the evil mastermind, which is pretty much the funniest gag in the film. The story is loosely based on Ian Fleming's novel, which was refilmed in 2006 as Daniel Craig's first outing as 007.

Bonnie and Clyde
1967
****
Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Denver Pyle

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were real-life lovers and leaders of a gang of outlaws who became infamous during the Great Depression. In Arthur Penn's exciting drama their crime spree starts as rebellious fun, but turns serious when people end up dead. They are probably portrayed as more likeable that they were, but the story doesn't shy away from the violence they inflicted and provoked. In fact, the film redefined what you could and couldn't show. Parsons and cinematographer Burnett Coffey earned Oscars.

Billion Dollar Brain
1967
**
Director: Ken Russell
Cast: Michael Caine, Karl Malden, Ed Begley, Oscar Homolka, Françoise Dorléac

In his third film (following the Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin) former spy Harry Palmer is tricked into delivering a dubious package to Helsinki (where he obviously tests a snow mobile and goes to sauna with free-spirited local women). This is an utterly forgettable second rate James Bond rip-off which is based on Len Deighton's series of novels.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1966
****
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis

A riveting, emotionally drenching drama based on Edward Albee's award-winning stage play. On a college campus a middle-aged academic couple invite the new professor and his wife over for drinks. The guests soon discover the twisted nature of their hosts' relationship, which is based on emotional abuse and fueled by alcohol. It's very stagy, but the text and the performances are raw. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, an on-and-off real-life couple, are the obvious stars of this verbal sparring. Taylor and Dennis won two of the film's five Academy Awards.

Torn Curtain
1966
**½
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Paul Newman, Julie Andrews, Lila Kedrova, Hansjörg Felmy, Tamara Toumanova, David Opatoshu, Ludwig Donath

Paul Newman is a scientist who pretends to defect to the East and Julie Andrews is his baffled fiancée in Hitchcock's mediocre Cold War thriller. This is a long and very plot-heavy film which is memorable mostly for the shocking scene which shows us how difficult it can be to kill another person.

Seconds
1966
***
Director: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, John Randolph, Will Geer, Jeff Corey, Richard Anderson, Murray Hamilton

An interesting but messy drama about a worn-down middle-aged man who is offered a fresh start by a mysterious and cynical Company. Through reconstructive surgery grey, chubby and balding John Randolph turns into tall and handsome Rock Hudson. The science behind the transformation seems dubious, but the character's ambivalence regarding his two identities feels very real. James Wong Howe's eerie black and white photography with its wonky angles creates an appropriately disorienting (and deliberately weird) mood. There's drama, romance, paranoia and some gratuitous nudity. Maybe there's a little bit too much of everything in fact.

A Man for All Seasons
1966
**½
Director: Fred Zinneman
Cast: Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, Orson Welles, Robert Shaw, Susannah York, John Hurt

Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More knows he must pay a price for refusing to accept King Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon or his position as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Fred Zinneman's adaptation of Robert Bolt's 1960 play portrays More as a deeply devout Catholic and as the only principled, uncorrupt and decent man in 16th century England. This set-up unfortunately sucks all tension out of the proceedings, and Bolt's leaden dialogue doesn't help at all. This dull and stagy drama becomes halfway gripping only in the final 30 minutes. Nevertheless, the film won six Academy Awards, which include Zinneman for Best Direction and Scofield for Best Actor.

Käpy selän alla (Skin, Skin)
1966
***½
Director: Mikko Niskanen
Cast: Eero Melasniemi, Kristiina Halkola, Pekka Autiovuori, Kirsti Wallasvaara, Anneli Sauli, Jukka Sipilä

Two young couples from Helsinki go camping in the countryside. The days by the lake are charged with sexual tension and the trip ends up being a major turning point for all four. The film's plotless, improvisational style is highly influenced by the French New Wave. The performances are relaxed and the visuals still look amazingly fresh. However, some elements, namely the songs, feel silly and dated.

The Fortune Cookie
1966
***
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich, Judi West, Cliff Osmond, Lurene Tuttle

In their first collaboration, Jack Lemmon is an injured TV cameraman and Walter Matthau is his cunning brother-in-law who wants to exploit the situation to scam \$1M from the insurance company. This is a sharply written but disappointingly static one-room comedy. Matthau won an Oscar for his performance.

Fantastic Voyage
1966
***½
Director: Richard Fleischer
Cast: Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, Arthur O'Connell, William Redfield, Arthur Kennedy

American scientists miniaturize and inject a submarine with its crew inside their colleague's body to treat a blood clot before it's too late. However, they face attacks from the immune system and from a Soviet agent. This exciting adventure is a mix of science fiction fantasy and Cold War thriller. The film won Academy Awards for best art direction and special effects which are impressive if inevitably dated. The story is based on Sheila Burnford's novel. Joe Dante used the same premise for his comedy Innerspace.

Django
1966
**
Director: Sergio Gorbucci
Cast: Franco Nero, Eduardo Fajardo, José Bódalo, Loredana Nusciak, Ángel Álvarez, Rafael Albaicín, Jimmy Douglas, Simón Arriaga

Django, a mysterious man who drags a closed coffin, arrives in a border town where Major Jackson's racist Klansmen and General Rodriguez's Mexican bandits fight for power. Django seeks revenge on his wife's death and decides to play both gangs against each other. Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars established the visual style for Spaghetti Westerns. Sergio Corbucci's mechanical and uninspired genre piece borrows not only the aestetics but the plot from the first part of the Dollars Trilogy. He also breaks the first rule of filmmaking: "show, don't tell." Where Leone was a masterful visual storyteller, Gorbucci has Django explain us his motives and actions in the dialogue. This results in a dull and clunky Western which is notable only for its body count, which is in the hundreds. However, the movie was immensely popular, and it spawned one official and dozens of unofficial sequels.

Cul-de-sac
1966
**
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Donald Pleasence, Françoise Dorléac, Lionel Stander, Jack MacGowran, Iain Quarrier, Geoffrey Sumner, Renée Houston, Robert Dorning, Marie Kean

After a bungled robbery, a gruff criminal flees to a tidal island, where he invades the home of a married couple. Roman Polanski's follow-up to Repulsion is an irritating black comedy, which offers neither thrills nor laughs. The script is all over the place and the performances are an acquired taste. Krzysztof Komeda's eccentric soundtrack is the saving grace.

The Chase
1966
****
Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, E. G. Marshall, Angie Dickinson

A long but powerful morality drama about small town folks who go all vigilante when they learn that a known criminal broke out from prison and is headed back home. Brando, at his mumbling best, plays a sheriff who seems to be the sole voice of reason. Redford gives one his earliest performances as the escapee. This underrated film was scripted by Lilian Hellman from Horton Foote's play.

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly)
1966
*****
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, Aldo Giuffrè, Mario Brega, Luigi Pistilli, Al Muloch

A gunslinger (The Good), a ruthless mercenary (The Bad), and a wanted bandit (The Ugly) try to outwit each other and find the stolen gold buried in a grave in the final and best known part of the Dollars Trilogy (following A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More). This time Leone turns everything to eleven. The plot is more elaborate, the shots hang longer, and Morricone's music plays a more pivotal role than ever before. The result is a supremely enjoyable Spaghetti Western, even if it can't quite justify its nearly 3-hour runtime.

Blow-Up
1966
***
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, Jan Birkin, Gillian Hills

A fashion photographer shoots away in a London park. When he blows up one of the pictures, he spots something that he shouldn't have seen. A mystery ensues, but not the kind that is solved on screen. Antonioni's first film in English offers late 1960s filmmaking at its best and at its worst. It's alternately gripping and disaffecting. It's fresh and unpredictable but its jazzy score and druggy orgies have become a tired cliché of the whole era. Nevertheless, it has influenced a number of subsequent films, most notably Blow Out. Based on Julio Cortázar's short story.

The Battle of Algiers
1966
****
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
Cast: Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi, Samia Kerbash, Ugo Paletti, Fusia El Kader

A gritty and hard-hitting political drama about the Algerian Civil War, and more specifically about the Battle of Algiers in 1957 when the Algerian revolutionaries attempted to overthrow the French. This influential film caused an uproar upon its release, but due to its brutal autheticity, it remains poignant today. The Algerians are mostly played by amateur actors.

Thunderball
1965
**½
Director: Terence Young
Cast: Sean Connery, Adolfo Celi, Claudine Auger, Luciana Paluzzi, Rik Van Nutter, Bernard Lee, Guy Doleman

If Goldfinger established the formula for the entire franchise, Thunderball is a bog-standard James Bond film without any high ideals. The plot revolves around 007's attempts to recover two stolen nukes before Spectre uses them to blow up a major metropol. The film is perfectly watchable, but it gives too much time to its extended underwater fights. The same story was remade as an "unofficial" Bond film Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery in the lead.

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
1965
***½
Director: Ken Annakin
Cast: Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles, Terry-Thomas, Robert Morley, James Fox, Gert Fröbe, Yujro Ishihara

An amusing episodic comedy about a fictional air race from London to Paris in 1910. There's a wonderful international ensemble cast and the story is especially enjoyable for anyone interested in the early days of aviation. The film came out pretty much at the same time with The Great Race, a very similar type of comedy about a car race.

The Sound of Music
1965
***
Director: Robert Wise
Cast: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr

This adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical is one of the most successful films ever made. It tells a fact-based story of a young woman who becomes a governess to a widower's seven children just as Austria is about to be annexed to the Third Reich. Many of the songs have become part of the Western culture (The Sound of Music, Edelweiss, My Favorite Things, So Long, Farewell, etc.), but three hours of this sweetness is enough to beat you into submission. A winner of five Academy Awards, which inlude best film, director and sound. Based on Maria von Trapp's autobiographical book "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers".

Repulsion
1965
*****
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Yvonne Furneaux, Patrick Wymark, Renee Houston

Polanski's first film in English in a haunting psychological drama about mental breakdown. Carol is a fragile, sexually reserved young woman who lives in London with her sister. When she's left alone, the walls start to close in on her. Deneuve is terrific in the lead, and Polanski creates a truly unsettling mood with his black and white cinematography and editing. This classic has influenced numerous thrillers.

Per qualche dollaro in più (For a Few Dollars More)
1965
****½
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volonté, Luigi Pistilli, Klaus Kinski, Benito Stefanelli

A Fistful of Dollars was a remake, but the middle part of the Dollars Trilogy offers an original story in which Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef play two rivalling bounty hunters who are both after the same ruthless outlaw and his gang. By now, Sergio Leone has polished the style and he offers us more or less everything his Spaghetti Western are famous for: brutal violence, dry humour, wacky camera angles, long takes, close-ups, and Ennio Morricone's music. Followed by The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Hill
1965
****
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Sean Connery, Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen, Ossie Davis, Ian Hendry, Roy Kinnear, Michael Redgrave

A gripping WW2 character drama set in a military prison in North Africa where an overzealous guard is determined to break down the new prisoners by making them run up and down the titular hill. The film is adapted from a play by Ray Rigby and R.S. Allen. It is a bit stagy but very strongly acted.

The Great Race
1965
***½
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn, Arthur O'Connell, Vivian Vance

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, the stars of Some Like It Hot, reunite to play two rivalling contentants in a cross-continental car race. This sprawling comedy follows in the footsteps of Around the World in 80 Days. It's long and rambling but funny and exciting, especially for children.

The Flight of the Phoenix
1965
****
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Hardy Krüger, Ian Bannen, Ernest Borgnine, Peter Finch, Dan Duryea

A cargo plane carrying a group of professionals gets caught in a sandstorm and crash-lands in the Sahara desert. A fight against time ensues as the men try to put aside their differences and device a survival plan. This long but captivating drama offers unexpected character dynamics and a memorably original conclusion. Based on Elleston Trevor's novel. Remade in 2004.

A Shot in the Dark
1964
*****
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Peter Sellers, Elke Sommer, George Sanders, Herbert Lom, Burt Kwouk, Tracy Reed

There's no Pink Panther in the title but this is the second film in the series, and by far the best one. At a posh Parisian home a man has been shot and his lover is found at the scene with a smoking gun. Inspector Clouseau is immediately enamoured by the woman, and the only one convinced of her innocence. This was released only a few months after The Pink Panther, but Sellers has now perfected the character's accent and buffoonery with hilarious results. The story is adapted from Marcel Achard's stage play L'Idiote, which didn't feature Clouseau. Followed by The Return of the Pink Panther in 1975.

Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars)
1964
****
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, José Calvo, Joseph Egger, Antonio Prieto

This Western remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo put Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone on the map, and turned a little known TV actor called Clint Eastwood into a global movie star. He plays a Man with No Name, who arrives in a small town of San Miguel and decides to make some money by feigning allegiance to both of the town's feuding crime families. The Italian Spaghetti Westerns put a new spin on a tired genre, and although Leone's style feels fresh, it's still a work in progress at this stage. He perfected it in For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. These three loosely connected movies are known as the Dollars Trilogy.

The Night of the Iguana
1964
***½
Director: John Huston
Cast: Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon, James Ward, Grayson Hall

Richard Burton is in fine form in this adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play. He plays a former minister who now works as a tour guide in Mexico where he must fight his temptation for alcohol and two beautiful women. It goes on a bit longer than it needs to, but the drama is tense and the dialogue is excellent. Academy Award winner for best costumes.

Mary Poppins
1964
****½
Director: Robert Stevenson
Cast: Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, Karen Dotrice, Matthew Garber, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns

This irresistible Disney musical is set in London in the early years of the 20th century, and it's based on a series of books by P.L. Travers. The Banks family hire a new magical nanny, Mary Poppins, who is practically perfect in every way. The moving story contains light and dark moments, and the Academy Award winning songs by the Sherman brothers (A Spoonful of Sugar, Chim Chim Cher-ee, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, etc.) are unforgettable. The film earned Julie Andrews an Oscar and made her a star. Two more Oscars for editing and visual effects.

Marnie
1964
****
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Martin Gabel, Louise Latham, Mariette Hartley

Marnie is a frigid cleptomaniac and a deeply traumatised individual. She agrees to marry a businessman who is determined to get to the bottom of her troubles. This unsettling psychological thriller may not be Alfred Hitchcock's finest work, but it is certainly one of his darkest, bravest, and kinkiest films. Sean Connery is a slightly odd choice for the male lead and Tippi Hedren occasionally struggles with the demanding title role. Based on Winston Graham's 1961 novel.

Goldfinger
1964
****
Director: Guy Hamilton
Cast: Sean Connery, Shirley Eaton, Gert Fröbe, Honor Blackman, Harold Sakata, Bernard Lee, Tania Mallet

007 tries to get close to Auric Goldfinger, a mysterious and sinister millionaire who is obsessed with gold. The third and one of the finest James Bond films fine-tuned the formula and laid the groundwork for the subsequent adventures in the franchise. Goldfinger is one of the first in a long line of megalomaniacal super villains 007 must stop. All in all, there's a nice mix of action, humour, gadgets, characters (Oddjob), girls (Pussy Galore), and the Aston Martin. And who could forget Shirley Bassey's title song.

Fail-Safe
1964
***
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, Ed Binns, Fritz Weaver, Larry Hagman, William Hansen

Due to computer error, US bombers receive instructions to drop their nuclear bombs on Moscow. Fueled by paranoia, the military has developed a system which makes it impossible to countermand the attack order. A few months earlier Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove turned a similar scenario into a scathing satire. Sidney Lumet's bleak Cold War thriller, however, takes itself very seriously. This is a cinematically dull mix of stagy one-room scenes and poor quality stock footage, but the story is gripping, even if the ending is rather idealistic. Adapted from a novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. Remade for TV in 2000.

Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
1964
*****
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, Jack Creley, Peter Bull, James Earl Jones, Tracy Reed

The President and his aides in the Pentagon War Room attempt to recall a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, which was launched by a paranoid general. Stanley Kubrick's incredible nuclear holocaust comedy was released a little more than a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The world probably didn't expect to laugh at their greatest fears, but laugh they did. This bold, thought-provoking, and hilarious satire is based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George. Peter Sellers is memorable in his multiple roles, and the ending with Vera Lynn's song We'll Meet Again has become iconic.

The Pink Panther
1963
***
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: David Niven, Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner, Capucine, Claudia Cardinale, Brenda De Banzie

Inspector Jacques Clouseau, famous jewel thief "The Phantom" and the lady who owns the world's largest diamond try to outwit each other at a posh ski resort. This sophisticated but unspectacular caper movie introduced the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, although Peter Sellers hasn't quite perfected the character at this stage. The film also gave us Henry Mancini's unforgettable title theme and Pink Panther, the animated character. Followed by A Shot in the Dark and several other sequels.

From Russia with Love
1963
***
Director: Terence Young
Cast: Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Pedro Armendáriz

007 hooks up with a Russian beauty in Istanbul while he tries to discover a Soviet decoding device before Spectre does. The second James Bond film is very highly regarded because it's a tough and gritty, no-nonsense spy thriller which doesn't dwell on the gimmicks and gadgets. But it's also a bit drab and joyless, to be honest. Rosa Klebb is a wonderful villain, though.

Cleopatra
1963
***
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall, Martin Landau, Hume Cronyn, George Cole

Historical epics were immensely popular during the late 1950s and early 1960. In order to compete, each film had to be bigger than the one before. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's story of Cleopatra, Marc Anthony and Julius Caesar put an end to this era. It was a massive hit but so expensive that it couldn't possibly recoup its costs. The actual film is a bloated drama that you can enjoy for the excess on display. Different cuts of the film vary between 3 and 4 hours in length. Academy Award winner for cinematography, art direction, costumes and visual effects.

The Birds
1963
***½
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, Veronica Cartwright, Ethel Griffies, Ruth McDevitt, Lonny Chapman, Joe Mantell

A young woman is infatuated by a handsome lawyer and tracks down where he lives. Just as she arrives in the coastal town of Bodega Bay, all the birds start to act in a menacing manner. In one of his most iconic films, Hitchcock builds suspense extremely slowly. It's almost halfway point before flocks of hostile birds begin to attack the townsfolk. Thankfully no attempt is made to explain any of the events. Due to Hitchcock's brilliant filmmaking skills, the special effects, which are more than 60 years old, still look convincing. Based on Daphne du Maurier's 1952 short story.

8½
1963
****
Director: Federico Fellini
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, Rossella Falk, Barbara Steele, Madeleine Lebeau, Caterina Boratto, Eddra Gale, Guido Alberti

Federico Fellini's most celebrated film is a heavily autobiographical drama about Guido Anselmi, a renowned film director, who is going through an artistic and existential crisis. As he struggles with the demands of his film crew, wife, and lovers, Guido embarks on a dream-like journey that mixes reality, fantasy, and childhood memories. This personal and ambitious film is perhaps easier to admire than to enjoy. It is often confusing and sometimes exhausting, but the whole thing is beautifully shot by Gianni Di Venanzo and wonderfully orchestrated by Fellini.

To Kill a Mockingbird
1962
****
Director: Robert Mulligan
Cast: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Robert Duvall, John Megna, Brock Peters

A moving drama set in 1930s Alabama where two young children learn a valuable life lesson when they follow their lawyer father's attempts to defend a black man accused for raping a white woman. Gregory Peck won an Academy Award for his warm portrayal of Atticus Finch, one of the humblest but best-loved screen heroes of all time. The children's performances have not aged equally well, though. Horton Foote also won an Oscar for adapting Harper Lee's tremendous novel.

Ride the High Country
1962
****
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Mariette Hartley, Ron Starr, Edgar Buchanan

Peckinpah's second film is a subdued, melancholic Western about two ex-marshals who now make a living protecting a gold shipment. Like his masterpiece The Wild Bunch, this is a moving story of aging men who are becoming obsolete. Randolph Scott's final performance.

The Nutty Professor
1962
****
Director: Jerry Lewis
Cast: Jerry Lewis, Stella Stevens, Del Moore, Kathleen Freeman, Howard Morris, lvia Allman, Milton Frome

A shy, nerdy scientist Julius Kelp invents a potion that turns him into a smooth ladies man Buddy Love. However, the effect wears off fast which turns this into an enjoyable Cinderella story on a loop. Jerry Lewis gives a hilarious (vocal) performance in one of his most enduring comedies. Remade by Eddie Murphy in 1996.

Mutiny on the Bounty
1962
***
Director: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, Richard Harris, Hugh Griffith, Richard Haydn, Tarita Teriipia

In the late 18th century the Bounty sets sail under the rule of Captain Bligh. However, his increasingly domineering behaviour leads to mutiny aboard the ship. This entertaining drama looks terrific, but it's overegged and overlong. The film pits two strong characters and two schools of acting against each other: Trevor Howard and his Rada background vs. Marlon Brando and his method acting. Adapted from a novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall which is based on the real-life mutiny. The story was filmed before in 1935 and again in 1984 as The Bounty.

The Manchurian Candidate
1962
****½
Director: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, James Gregory, Leslie Parrish

This hypnotic conspiracy thriller tells a fantastically paranoid story about literal Communist brainwash. The stepson of a U.S. Senator returns home from the Korean War as a decorated war hero, but some of the men in his platoon have recurring nightmares about what may have really happened. The film is tense, bold and weird, and it's quite amazing that something like this was released at the height of Cold War. Laurence Harvey gives an intense lead performance and Angela Lansbury is wonderfully nasty as his overbearing mother. The story is adapted from Richard Condon's novel, which was refilmed in 2004 by Jonathan Demme.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
1962
****
Director: John Ford
Cast: John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond O'Brien, Woody Strode, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Lee Van Cleef

An elderly US Senator reminisces of the days when he arrived in the town of Shinbone as an idealistic lawyer but was forced to pick up a gun when the push came to shove. John Ford's last great Western concentrates on its characters and doesn't offer the expansive landscapes of his best known films, such as The Searchers. The film deals with Western mythology ("When the legend becomes fact, print the legend") and its melancholic story signals the end of the golden age of the Hollywood western. That's why you can accept Stewart and Wayne in the lead although they are both about 30 years too old for their roles. Based on a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson.

The Longest Day
1962
**
Director: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Gerd Oswald
Cast: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery, Curd Jürgens, Richard Burton, Peter Lawford, Rod Steiger, Irina Demick

A holier-than-thou WW2 drama about the D-Day invasion. The events are meticulously and respectfully staged, but this smug three-hour epic is a historical record rather than a dramatic film, and the 6th of June truly feels like the longest day. The cast reads out like the who is who of the early 60s world cinema. Based on the book by Cornelius Ryan. Academy Award winner for best cinematography and special effects.

Lonely Are the Brave
1962
***½
Director: David Miller
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau, Michael Kane, Carroll O'Connor, William Schallert, George Kennedy, Karl Swenson, Bill Mims

Jack Burns is an old school cowboy who lives outside the grid. As Jack attempts to break his friend out of jail, he ends up being pursued by the law himself. This contemporary Western was scripted by Dalton Trumbo from Edward Abbey's 1956 novel The Brave Cowboy. It tells a simple story of a man who is at odds with the world changing around him. As Jack and his horse Whiskey flee the law, the second half in the mountains is tense but a bit overlong. Kirk Douglas gives a likeably laid-back performance.

Lolita
1962
***½
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, Peter Sellers, Gary Cockrell, Jerry Stovin

Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's eloquent novel, which he co-scripted with the author, is a bold but long film which tones down the book's controversial content. Its protagonist Humbert Humbert is a college professor who is hypnotized by his landlady's sexy 14-year-old daughter. The skeptics say that this is nothing but a smutty story about a dirty old man, but it's a clever and captivating dark comedy about obsessiveness and possessiveness. The book was refilmed by Adrian Lyne in 1997.

Le Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face)
1962
**½
Director: Georges Franju
Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Edith Scob, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, François Guérin, Alexandre Rignault, Beatrice Altariba

With the help of his assistant, the solemn plastic surgeon Dr. Génessier kidnaps young women in order to transplant their face on his daughter Christiane who was disfigured in a car crash. This black and white French horror classic has clearly influenced many modern filmmakers, but it hasn't stood the test of time. The premise is creepy but the pacing is dead slow, the script is downright silly at times, and the film is never terribly scary. The soundtrack by Maurice Jarre is wonderfully weird, though. Based on Jean Redon's novel.

Lawrence of Arabia
1962
*****
Director: David Lean
Cast: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif, José Ferrer, Anthony Quayle

T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) was a British officer whose allegiance to the Crown began to quaver when he was consumed with the idea of uniting the Arab states. The phrase "they don't make them like they used to" certainly applies to David Lean's magnificent bio(e)pic. His stunningly beautiful film was shot in Jordania, Morocco and Spain in scorching temperatures, and the feeling of vast landscape and the sense of reality it conveys cannot be reproduced with computer effects. Lean lets some of his famous shots linger for an eternity during the 215 minutes, but there isn't a dull moment. Peter O'Toole gives a mesmerizing performance that captures Lawrence's idealism and obsessiveness. The Seven Academy Awards include Lean's direction, Frederick A. Young's breathtaking cinematography and Maurice Jarre's lovely score.

Hatari!
1962
***½
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: John Wayne, Hardy Krüger, Elsa Martinelli, Red Buttons, Gérard Blain, Bruce Cabot, Michèle Girardon

After umpteen Westerns John Wayne plays an American hunter who captures wild animals in Africa in order to sell them to zoos. In the current politically correct world Hollywood would probably balk at making a light comedy about a man who traps innocent creatures for a living, but this is an irresistibly entertaining story with light and bubbly performances. However, it's also terribly long for a film with very little plot. It was shot on location, even if the hunting scenes are mostly done with back projection. Incidentally, Hatari is Swahili for danger.

Experiment in Terror
1962
**
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Glenn Ford, Lee Remick, Stefanie Powers, Ross Martin, Roy Poole, Ned Glass, Anita Loo, Patricia Huston, Gilbert Green, Clifton James

Blake Edwards' black and white thriller has a terrific start. A young woman drives through San Francisco to the tune of Henry Mancini's lovely score and arrives in her home, where a mysterious asthmatic criminal threatens to kill her and her younger sister unless she steals $100,000 from the bank in which she works. When she contacts the FBI, the film turns into a long, dull, and dumb procedural filled with red herrings. Mildred Gordon and Gordon Gordon scripted from their 1961 novel Operation Terror.

Dr. No
1962
***½
Director: Terence Young
Cast: Sean Connery, Joseph Wiseman, Ursula Andress, Jack Lord, John Kitzmiller

In his first adventure the globetrotting MI6 agent James Bond travels to Jamaica to investigate his colleague's disappearance which leads him to the enigmatic Dr. No. This is an introduction to the world of 007 and it launched one of the most successful and long-running franchises in motion picture history. It's an entertaining and understated spy story which doesn't rely on the gadgets, like many of the later films. Ursula Andress is memorable as the first Bond girl.

Cape Fear
1962
****
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Cast: Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Lori Martin, Martin Balsam, Jack Kruschen

A wonderfully tense thriller about an intimidating brute who terrorizes a lawyer (and his family) for putting him away for eight years. Bernard Herrmann's menacing score and the dramatic black and white photography account for half of the suspense. Remade by Martin Scorsese in 1991 (Cape Fear).

One, Two, Three
1961
*****
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Liselotte Pulver, Howard St. John

The head of the Coca Cola company in West Berlin hopes to win a promotion and leave the torn city behind him, but he has a mountain to climb after his boss' daughter marries an East German Communist under his own watchful eye. Billy Wilder's Cold War comedy is a fascinating time capsule of an era gone by, but most importantly it's a hilarious film which ridicules communism and capitalism with equal force. James Cagney deliver the rapid-fire dialogue with style is one his last roles.

The Misfits
1961
**½
Director: John Huston
Cast: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach, Kevin McCarthy, James Barton

Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe's final film was scripted by Arthur Miller, her husband at the time. It's a lackluster drama set in Reno where sparks fly between a newly divorced beauty and an ageing cowboy. The performances are solid, however.

The Hustler
1961
****½
Director: Robert Rossen
Cast: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Myron McCormick, Murray Hamilton, Stefan Gierasch

A terrific drama about "Fast Eddie" Felson, a young arrogant pool hustler who gets a heartbreaking lesson about winning and losing. The moody black and white cinematography and art direction/set decoration earned Academy Awards. Newman, who is excellent, had to wait for his Oscar for another 25 years when he reprised the role in The Color of Money. Adapted from a novel by Walter Tevis.

The Guns of Navarone
1961
***½
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Cast: Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker, James Darren

A fictional WW2 film from Alistair MacLean's novel about a mission by the Allied forces to destroy a German artillery base off the Greek coast. A long but enjoyable action drama with a star-studded cast. Followed by Force 10 from Navarone 17 years later.

El Cid
1961
**½
Director: Anthony Mann
Cast: Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, Raf Vallone, Geneviève Page, John Fraser, Gary Raymond, Douglas Wilmer

A bog-standard historical epic about El Cid, a heroic Spanish Christian who fought the African Muslims in the 12th century. This film is painted on large canvas and it offers massive sets, huge battle scenes and more than three hours of story. However, all this pomposity trumps the characters. The final scenes are memorable, though.

Breakfast at Tiffany's
1961
****
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal, Buddy Ebsen, Martin Balsam, Mickey Rooney

An unusual but delightful romantic comedy from Truman Capote's novella. Holly is a socialite who makes a living dating generous rich men, Paul is a struggling writer who is sponsored by a wealthy married woman, and they both live in the same apartment building. It's the early 1960s, yet the characters are not young and pure but complex individuals with flaws and secrets. Audrey Hepburn, who is at her loveliest, memorably sings Henry Mancini's "Moon River".

The Absent-Minded Professor
1961
***
Director: Robert Stevenson
Cast: Fred MacMurray, Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk, Leon Ames, Elliott Reid, Edward Andrews

A silly but endearing children's film about Professor Brainard who invents Flubber (a.k.a flying rubber) but neglects his girfriend. This is good fun for the entire family and its special effects still look pretty decent. Followed by Son of Flubber and remade as Flubber 35 years later.

The Sundowners
1960
***½
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, Peter Ustinov, Glynis Johns, Dina Merrill, Chips Rafferty

A charming drama about an Australian family of sheep drovers. The father is a wandering soul, but the rest of the family would finally like to settle down. Robert Mitchum doesn't convince as an Aussie, but otherwise he and the rest of cast give fine performances. Based on the novel by Jon Cleary.

Spartacus
1960
***½
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov, John Gavin, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Tony Curtis

This entertaining and visually stunning swords and sandals film about Spartacus, a slave who leads a doomed revolt against Rome, is long and pompous like many of the big historical epics produced in the 1950s and 1960s. Kirk Douglas recruited Stanley Kubrick to direct, and this indeed seems like one of the director's least personal works. Peter Ustinov, who plays a slave trader, won an Academy Award for his performance. The film won three additional Oscars for costume design, art direction, and cinematography. Based on Howard Fast's 1951 novel.

Psycho
1960
*****
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, Simon Oakland

Hitchcock's masterpiece starts as a story of a young woman who runs away with the stolen \$40,000, but it makes a complete U-turn when she is brutally murdered in her motel room in one of the most iconic scenes in film history. This is one of Hitchcock's most visuals films, but his cinematic brilliance serves an unpredictable and terrifically gripping story. Anthony Perkins is a memorable Norman Bates. Based on the novel by Robert Bloch. Followed by two pointless sequels, Psycho 2 and Psycho 3, and Gus Van Sant's utterly baffling shot-by-shot remake in 1998.

Peeping Tom
1960
****
Director: Michael Powell
Cast: Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley, Brenda Bruce, Miles Malleson

Michael Powell's gripping thriller is essentially a story about moviemaking. It shows how far to the extreme an aspiring filmmaker would go to capture the perfect shot. In this case a member of a film crew kills women to capture their deaths on camera. Carl Boehm is a rather unconvincing Englishman but he's suitably chilling in the lead. This influential but controversial film just about destroyed Powell's career when it came out.

The Magnificent Seven
1960
***
Director: John Sturges
Cast: Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Horst Buchholz, Brad Dexter

Akira Kurosawa was a big fan of American westerns, and Hollywood returned the favour by remaking his Seven Samurai. In this version Mexican villagers, who are terrorized by a group of bandits, hire seven gunmen to protect them. These men predictably have different skill sets and personalities, and they are played by a colourful cast, many of whom later became major stars. This is an entertaining but very ordinary Western, not more. Followed by three sequels.

The Little Shop of Horrors
1960
***
Director: Roger Corman
Cast: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Dick Miller, Jack Nicholson, John Shaner

A short and enjoyable low budget horror comedy about a florist who accidentally crossbreeds a plant that feasts on human blood. The story was later turned into a stage musical and re-adapted to the screen in 1986. Jack Nicholson gives one of his earliest performances.

Komisario Palmun erehdys (Inspector Palmu's Error)
1960
****½
Director: Matti Kassila
Cast: Joel Rinne, Matti Ranin, Leo Jokela, Jussi Jurkka, Leevi Kuuranne, Saara Ranin

The first of the Inspector Palmu films is wonderful entertainment. The inspector is called to investigate the death of a rich, cocky playboy, who he determined was murdered. Matti Kassila puts together a gripping mystery with terrific characterisation and lively banter, all eerily photographed in black and white. Based on Mika Waltari's detective novel.

The Apartment
1960
*****
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Jack Kruschen, Ray Walston, David Lewis

An absolutely delightful romantic comedy about a desk jockey who tries to advance his career by allowing his bosses to use his apartment for their extramarital flings. The man finds himself in Catch-22 when he falls in love with his manager's girlfriend. This is not laugh out loud funny like Some Like It Hot, but it's certainly Billy Wilder's sweetest comedy. The central performances are all excellent. The film won five Academy Awards, and Wilder took home three of them for producing, directing and co-writing.

À bout de souffle (Breathless)
1960
***
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard, Roger Hanin

Godard's feature debut is one of the key films of the French New Wave. Its gritty camerawork and jump cuts introduced a new style which feels fresh even today. The story, acting and dialogue have not aged equally well. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Michel, a reckless and annoyingly kinetic deliquent who shoots a policeman and hides in Paris with his American girlfriend. Remade as Breathless in 1983.

Some Like It Hot
1959
*****
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O'Brien, Nehemiah Persoff

Two musicians accidentally witness the St. Valentine's Day massacre and are forced to disguise as women and join an all-girl band in order to flee the city. Billy Wilder's brilliant, trailblazing sex comedy offers terrific gags, unforgettable performances (Lemmon, Curtis, Brown, etc.) and Marilyn Monroe at her lushest. A hilarious film with one of the finest last lines. Academy Award winner for Orry-Kelly's costume design.

On the Beach
1959
****
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire, Donna Anderson, John Tate, Guy Doleman

Nuclear holocaust has ravaged the Earth and the remains of humanity wait for the fallout to reach the last safe haven, Australia. This grim and realistic Cold War drama from Nevil Shute's novel offers no hope to the survivors (or the audience). The story is sad but heartfelt, and it's not afraid to pose big questions. How would you spend your last moments alive? What would you do if you knew you couldn't protect your loved ones? Five years later Stanley Kubrick made fun of this very same scenario in Dr. Strangelove.

North By Northwest
1959
****
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau, Philip Ober, Josephine Hutchinson

An advertising executive is mistaken for another man and he suddenly finds himself drawn into a web of international intrigue. This entertaining thriller is built around Hitchcock's trademark wrong man scenario. It also contains some of his most iconic scenes, like the cropduster chase and the climax on Mt. Rushmore. However, the film is long and baggy, and not one of his strongest efforts.

Imitation of Life
1959
****½
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin, Sandra Dee, Susan Kohner, Robert Alda, Dan O'Herlihy, Karin Dicker, Terry Burnham, Mahalia Jackson

An aspiring actress and single mother is determined to make it on Broadway. She couldn't do it without her loving and devoted black housekeeper, whose daughter passes as white and is ashamed of her own racial identity. Douglas Sirk's final film is a powerful and very moving melodrama that deals with the complexities of race, identity, motherhood, societal pressures, and personal ambitions. Based on Fannie Hurst's 1933 novel, which was previously filmed in 1934.

Hiroshima Mon Amour
1959
***½
Director: Alain Resnais
Cast: Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Bernard Fresson, Stella Dassas, Pierre Barbaud

A French actress and a Japanese architect have a brief but passionate encounter in post-war Hiroshima. During these 24 hours, the two share their painful memories and losses. Along with Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and Francois Truffaut's 400 Blows, this romantic drama is one of the key works of the French New Wave. The film is poignant but heavy on dialogue. Alain Resnais's use of brief flashbacks still feels fresh and innovative. Emmanuelle Riva gives a strong lead performance.

The Young Lions
1958
***½
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Cast: Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, Barbara Rush, Hope Lange, May Britt, Maximilian Schell

A long drama about three young men - one German and two Americans - whose lives are transformed by their involvement in World War II. The story, which is adapted from Irwin Shaw's novel, is gripping but somewhat manipulative, and its ending feels a bit pat. The central performances are very good, though.

Vertigo
1958
*****
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore

An intriguing psychological mystery about a retired detective who is hired to follow a deeply troubled young woman. He saves the lady's life and falls in love with her, but tragedy is inevitable. The protagonist (James Stewart in fine form) is a fascinatingly complex individual who transforms from a naive, vulnerable hero to a cold and emotionless obsessive. Hitchcock's highly influential thriller was ignored upon release, but it is now widely recognized as one of his best films. The picture looks stunning and Bernard Herrmann's haunting score is unforgettable. Adapted from a novel by Boileau-Narcejac.

Touch of Evil
1958
*****
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Joanna Cook Moore, Ray Collins, Dennis Weaver

At Charlton Heston's wish, Orson Welles returned to Hollywood to direct and star in one of the finest film noirs of all time. He plays Hank Quinlan, a corrupt detective and one of slimiest characters ever put on film, who clashes with a Mexican special prosecutor during an investigation to a car bombing on the border. There is terrific dialogue, excellent performances, and Welles is firing on all cylinders behind the camera. The film opens with the famous long tracking shot, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.

A Time to Love and a Time to Die
1958
****
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: John Gavin, Liselotte Pulver, Jock Mahoney, Don DeFore, Keenan Wynn, Erich Maria Remarque, Dieter Borsche, Barbara Rütting, Thayer David, Charles Régnier, Dorothea Wieck

Ernst Gräber, a disillusioned German soldier on leave from the Eastern Front, discovers his home town in ruins. While he attempts to locate his parents amidst the air raids, he falls in love with a local woman. For this romantically flavoured war drama, Douglas Sirk returns to his native Germany to tell an unusual story about the fleeting nature of life and love. This personal film was shot in Germany and the cast includes a mix of American and German actors. Based on a 1954 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, who has a small role as Gräber's former teacher.

Rio Bravo
1958
****½
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, John Russell

John Wayne plays a principled sheriff who arrests a murderer but faces the wrath of a powerful rancher who is prepared to break his brother out of jail. The only people in town willing to back the lawman are his two deputies, a drunk (Dean Martin making fun of himself) and an old cripple (wonderful Walter Brennan), as well as a young gunslinger (teen idol Ricky Nelson). Howard Hawks' influential Western classic is overlong (with several song interludes) but it's irresistibly entertaining. Based on a short story by B.H. McCampbell.

Cat On a Hot Tin Roof
1958
****
Director: Richard Brooks
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Judith Anderson, Jack Carson, Madeleine Sherwood, Larry Gates, Vaughn Taylor

This grown-up drama about a troubled Southern family is based on the Pulitzer Price winning 1955 play by Tennessee Williams. The excellent Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor play Brick and Maggie, whose marriage is not built on solid foundations. This adaptation has all but removed the allusions to Brick's homosexuality, but what remains is a feisty, sexy and entertaining film full of great dialogue.

The Tarnished Angels
1957
***
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Jack Carson, Robert Middleton, Alan Reed, Alexander Lockwood, Chris Olsen, Robert J. Wilke, Troy Donahue, William Schallert

During the Great Depression, a reporter goes to an airshow and becomes intrigued by a daredevil stunt pilot, and particularly by his beautiful and neglected wife. Douglas Sirk's black and white drama is not one of his best. The setting is captivating and the flying scenes are well made, but the tragic twists in the story are very predictable, and the whole thing seems like much ado about nothing. Based on William Faulkner's 1935 novel Pylon.

Sweet Smell of Success
1957
***
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene, Chico Hamilton, Emile Meyer, Barbara Nichols

This matter-of-fact drama is adapted from Ernest Lehman's novelette, and it's about a press agent and a newspaper columnist who are both shrewd at manipulating the truth for their own purposes. The script is smart, the dialogue is sharp and the performances are strong. However, the characters are cynical and remote, and the story is never terribly captivating. James Wong Howe's striking black and white cinematography and Elmer Bernstein's groovy score ensure that the film at least looks and sounds great.

Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries)
1957
****½
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Victor Sjöström, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand, Jullan Kindahl, Folke Sundquist, Björn Bjelfvenstam, Naima Wifstrand

A lovely, lyrical drama about an embittered elderly Professor who reflects on his past during a road trip with his daughter-in-law. This black and white gem is one of Ingmar Bergman's sweetest and most accessible films. Victor Sjöström makes his last screen appearance.

Paths of Glory
1957
*****
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Wayne Morris, Richard Anderson, Joe Turkel

In the trenches of World War I, the French soldiers refuse to attack on German positions in a certain suicide mission, and the consequences are devastating. This short but brilliant drama makes a very strong anti-war statement. The final scene (which features the director's future wife Christiane Harlan) is extremely powerful. Stanley Kubrick, Jim Thompson and Calder Willingham scripted from Humphrey Cobb's novel, which is loosely based on a true story.

Love in the Afternoon
1957
**
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, John McGiver, Van Doude, Lise Bourdin

In this adaptation of Claude Anet's novel Ariane, jeune fille russe, a young French cellist finds herself drawn to an American playboy who is visiting Paris. Billy Wilder's romantic comedy has plenty of wit and snappy dialogue, but the romance between an impressionable teenage virgin and a slimy middle-aged womaniser is frankly creepy; their mutual attraction lacks charm and doesn't feels believable. Audrey Hepburn and Cary Copper are both good, though.

The Incredible Shrinking Man
1957
****
Director: Jack Arnold
Cast: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, Paul Langton, Billy Curtis

A businessman is exposed to radiation and he begins shrink, with no help in sight. This wonderfully entertaining science fiction film is based on Richard Matheson's novel The Shrinking Man. It doesn't actually have much in terms of story, but the incredible, there's the word, set design and special effects have stood the test of time.

The Bridge on the River Kwai
1957
****
Director: David Lean
Cast: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa, James Donald, Geoffrey Horne, André Morell, Peter Williams

David Lean's first historical epic is a long but captivating drama about a group of British prisoners of war who are forced to build a bridge for their Japanese captors. The British soldiers are led by the proud and principled Colonel Nicholson, intensely played by Alec Guinness. Lean and Guinness won two of the film's seven Academy Awards. The whistled Colonel Bogey march has become an iconic element of the film. Adapted from Pierre Boulle's 1952 novel.

An Affair to Remember
1957
***½
Director: Leo McCarey
Cast: Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Richard Denning, Neva Patterson, Cathleen Nesbitt, Robert Q. Lewis, Charles Watts, Fortunio Bonanova

Nickie and Terry meet on a transatlantic cruise, fall in love, and agree to sort out their lives and reunite six months later, but tragedy intervenes in their plans. It's second time lucky for Leo McCarey, who created this melodrama by remaking his own 1939 film Love Affair. The believable characters and the slow-burning romance have made this an enduring classic. It was remade as Love Affair, and it inspired Sleepless in Seattle.

Written on the Wind
1956
****
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith, Grant Williams, Robert J. Wilke, Edward Platt, Harry Shannon, John Larch, Joseph Granby, Roy Glenn

The Hadley family's facade of wealth and power begins to crumble as secrets are unearthed, betrayals come to light, and tragedy strikes. Douglas Sirk's delightful melodrama delivers a healthy serving of unrequited love, betrayal, and moral decay. Dorothy Malone won an Academy Award for her tragic performance. Based on Robert Wilder's 1946 novel.

There's Always Tomorrow
1956
***½
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Joan Bennett, William Reynolds, Pat Crowley, Gigi Perreau, Jane Darwell, Race Gentry, Myrna Hansen, Judy Nugent

A toy manufacturer feels trapped with his wife and three children, who take him for granted. When he is enamored by his former employee, now a divorcee, he must reassess his past and future. In Douglas Sirk's melodramas like All That Heaven Allows, the American family ideal is not all it's cracked out to be, and that applies to this story about a man who feels the loneliest at home. This is a moving and unpredictable romantic drama with some needlessly soapy turns. Based on Ursula Parrott's 1934 novel.

The Searchers
1956
*****
Director: John Ford
Cast: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, John Qualen, Olive Carey

John Ford's majestic Western gives us one of the most complex and ambiguous heroes in the genre. Ethan Edwards, wonderfully played by John Wayne, is a Civil War veteran whose niece is abducted by the Comanche Indians. Ethan and his adopted nephew spend years searching for the girl, which turns this stubborn, racist man increasingly bitter and single-minded. The visually stunning film is shot in Monument Valley in beautiful Technicolor. Frank S. Nugent's screenplay is based on Alan Le May's 1954 novel.

The Man Who Knew Too Much
1956
****
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: James Stewart, Doris Day, Brenda De Banzie, Bernard Miles, Alan Mowbray, Hillary Brooke, Christopher Olsen

An American family are on holiday in Morocco, when they suddenly find themselves in the middle of an international conspiracy to assassinate a statesman in London. Hitchcock's remake of his own 1934 film is a longish but terrific suspense drama which builds up to a brilliant climax at the Royal Albert Hall. Doris Day memorably sings the Academy Award winning song "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)", which plays a crucial role in the story.

The Killing
1956
****½
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Elisha Cook Jr, Marie Windsor

Stanley Kubrick's first serious directorial effort is a highly influential film noir. As in href=/search2.php?query=2693>The Asphalt Jungle, Sterling Hayden plays a career criminal who's involved in a plan to rob the money counting room at a racetrack. Kubrick and Jim Thompson's tight script is based on Lionel White's novel Clean Break. The gripping story of the heist is told from different perspectives, and the dialogue sizzles all the way through.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
1956
****
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Larry Gates

Don Siegel's influential science fiction film is set in a small Californian town where a number of people report that the people they know have been replaced with replicas. This snappy horror story works as an allegory on McCarthyism; it even stars Kevin McCarthy. The story is based on Jack Finney's novel The Body Snatchers, which has been remade as Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1978, as Body Snatchers in 1993, and as The Invasion in 2007.

Giant
1956
****
Director: George Stevens
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Mercedes McCambridge

A Texas rancher returns home with his beautiful new wife, only to be welcomed with a cold shoulder by his sister. The escalating family saga coincides with the transformation of the Texas economy from ranching to oil. This epic drama was adapted from Edna Ferber's novel. The sprawling story takes more than three hours to tell, but it remains gripping all the way through. George Stevens won an Academy award for directing. James Dean's final film performance.

Forbidden Planet
1956
****
Director: Fred M. Wilcox
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Jack Kelly, Warren Stevens, Richard Anderson, Earl Holliman, George Wallace

Like The Day the Earth Stood Still a few years earlier, this loose retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest is one of the finest examples of thinking man's science fiction. Leslie Nielsen stars in one of his first film appearances as the captain of a 23rd century spaceship which travels to a distant planet to discover what happened to a lost expedition 20 years earlier. The special effects, including Robby the Robot, have obviously dated, but the story is still intriguing.

Tuntematon Sotilas (The Unknown Soldier)
1955
****
Director: Edvin Laine
Cast: Kosti Klemelä, Heikki Savolainen, Reino Tolvanen, Veikko Sinisalo, Åke Lindman, Pentti Siimes, Leo Riuttu, Kaarlo Halttunen

This adaptation of Väinö Linna's fantastic novel gives us a group of Finnish soldiers who fight in the Continuation war against the Soviet Union. The men provide a crosscut of the Finnish population, they come from around the country and represent different social backgrounds, but they all share a hate of authority. The novel managed to avoid any kind of flag waving, which the film doesn't. The book was refilmed in 1985.

To Catch a Thief
1955
***
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John Williams, Charles Vanel, Brigitte Auber

A very ordinary Hitchcock thriller about a cat burglar who has retired to the French Riviera. Now he wants to prove his innocence and attempts to capture the real jewel thief. The stars are attractive but the story is forgettable. Robert Burks' cinematography won an Academy Award. Loosely based on David Dodge's novel.

The Seven Year Itch
1955
****
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Tom Ewell, Marilyn Monroe, Evelyn Keyes, Sonny Tufts, Robert Strauss, Oscar Homolka, Marguerite Chapman

While the rest of his family are on holiday, a man in the midst of seven-year itch becomes hopelessly attracted to the beautiful actress who has rented the apartment upstairs. Billy Wilder's comedy on adultery is very enjoyable but almost entirely set in one room, as it's an adaptation of George Axelrod's play. Tom Ewell reprises his stage role and Marilyn Monroe stands over the subway grate in the iconic shot.

Rebel Without a Cause
1955
*****
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Ann Doran, Corey Allen, William Hopper, Rochelle Hudson

Nicholas Ray's powerful and highly influential drama is the quintessential portrayal of teenage angst. Its rebellious hero Jim Stark defies his parents, the school bullies, and the authorities alike, but he has a soft spot for the beautiful Judy. The film is still potent and it look great in Technicolor. James Dean redefines screen acting in his most iconic role. Incidentally, the three stars of the film - Dean, Wood and Mineo - all died premature tragic deaths.


The Night of the Hunter
1955
*****
Director: Charles Laughton
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Billy Chapin, Evelyn Varden, Peter Graves, Sally Jane Bruce

A man who killed two people in a bank robbery hides the loot, and only his two small children know where. Shortly after his execution, his widow and children are approached by a self-appointed preacher who will do anything to find the money. Actor Charles Laughton's first and last directorial work is a haunting thriller James Agee scripted from Davis Grubb's 1953 novel. This atmospheric and totally unique black and white film offers unusual but stunning visuals and a sinister lead performance by Robert Mitchum, who memorably has the words Love and Hate tattooed on his knuckles.

Mr. Arkadin / Confidential Report
1955
**
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Orson Welles, Robert Arden, Paola Mori, Akim Tamiroff, Michael Redgrave

The words of a dying man lead an American smuggler to Gregory Arkadin, a business magnate who hires the man to investigate his own enigmatic past. The story is based on the radio show The Lives of Harry Lime (the character Orson Welles played in The Third Man) and the film is structured like his masterpiece Citizen Kane. Sadly this clumsy and uninteresting drama looks like a B-film made by a hack. This European co-production was shot across on the continent on a low budget, and it certainly shows in the technically substandard quality. The film comes in at least five different edits.

The Ladykillers
1955
****
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Cast: Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Danny Green, Jack Warner, Katie Johnson

An old and credulous English lady rents out a room to a nice gentleman, unknowing that the man and his cohorts use the space to plot a robbery. This sweet comedy has a wonderfully simple premise, warm characterisation and several lovely performances. No wonder it has become a classic. The Coen brothers made a very disappointing remake in 2004.

Kiss Me Deadly
1955
****½
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez, Wesley Addy, Maxine Cooper, Cloris Leachman, Gaby Rodgers, Nick Dennis, Jack Elam, Jack Lambert

When a traumatised woman he picked up in his car is killed, private investigator Mike Hammer delves into a complex and dangerous conspiracy that seems to revolve around a mysterious box and its contents. Robert Aldrich's cynical crime drama from Mickey Spillane's 1952 novel is one of the grimmest and most influential works in the film noir genre. It has plenty of atmosphere, innovative camera work and editing, and an unforgettable ending.

East of Eden
1955
****
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Julie Harris, James Dean, Raymond Massey, Burl Ives, Richard Davalos, Jo Van Fleet

This loose adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel tells a story of a farmer and his two sons, Cal and Aron, the first of whom is desperate to earn his father's approval. The drama is gripping and the Technicolor image looks stunning. James Dean as Cal is impressive in his first major film performance. Jo Van Fleet, who plays the boy's estranged mother, won an Academy Award.

All That Heaven Allows
1955
****
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Conrad Nagel, Virginia Grey, Gloria Talbott, William Reynolds, Charles Drake, Hayden Rorke, Donald Curtis

When a wealthy widow with two college-aged children plans to marry a younger man who is uninterested in material wealth, she finds herself snubbed by her family and social circle. Douglas Sirk's influential romantic drama is a scathing portrait of small-town America. Even if the suburban small-mindedness portrayed in the film seems dated (the children are more conservative than their parents), the story is sharply observed and beautifully shot in Technicolor.

Shichinin no Samurai (Seven Samurai)
1954
*****
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Takashi Shimura, Toshirō Mifune, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Kato, Minoru Chiaki, Seiji Miyaguchi

Akira's Kurosawa's best known film tells a story of villagers who hire seven samurai warriors to protect them from a group of bandits. It's full of groundbreaking action scenes and lovely knockabout comedy, and three hours pass in a flash. Kurosawa himself was influenced by American Westerns and this is a direct influence to The Magnificent Seven and indirect influence to many other action and caper movies.

Sabrina
1954
***
Director: Biily Wilder
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, John Williams

The daughter of the Larrabee family's chauffeur is in love with the family's empty-headed playboy son, but is he really the right man for her? Billy Wilder's romantic comedy is enjoyable but rather forgettable. Although the cast is wonderful, the chemistry between Hepburn and Bogart is non-existent. The film is based on Samuel A. Taylor's play Sabrina Fair, which was refilmed in 1995 by Sydney Pollack.

Rear Window
1954
*****
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey, Raymond Burr

An injured photographer is stuck at home. He passes the days by spying on his neighbours and becomes convinced that the salesman opposite his apartment has killed his wife. The story is deceptively simple and the film is shot entirely in a studio, but this is one of Hitchcock's most intriguing and influential thrillers. The subtext about vouyerism is open to interpretations. Based on Cornell Woolrich's story "It Had to Be Murder".

On the Waterfront
1954
****
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, Eva Marie Saint

A ruthless gangster has a stranglehold on the port and its workers. A dockworker (and former boxer) fights with his conscience whether to let his own brother down and stand against the mob boss. This very compelling but slightly overrated drama is based on newspaper articles about real-life corruption on the waterfront. Marlon Brando earned an Oscar for his strong(ly mumbling) performance. The film produced seven additional Academy Award winners, which include Eva Marie Saint for her performance, Budd Schulberg for his screenplay and Elia Kazan for directing. The film's famous quote "I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am" reappears in Raging Bull and Boogie Nights.

Magnificent Obsession
1954
***½
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Agnes Moorehead, Otto Kruger, Gregg Palmer, Paul Cavanagh, Sara Shane, Richard H. Cutting, Judy Nugent, Helen Kleeb

After causing repeated heartache to a widow and her family, a wealthy and selfish playboy decides to dedicate his life to helping others without credit. Along the way, he falls in love with the widow. Douglas Sirk's romantic drama is based on a 1929 novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, which was previously filmed in 1935. This soapy story about love, sacrifice, and pursuing a fulfilling life is moving but it doesn't have the drama and intrigue of his best work.


Johnny Guitar
1954
****½
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ward Bond, Ben Cooper, Ernest Borgnine

A wonderfully trashy Western about a bull-headed saloonkeeper who is on a collision course with her townsfolk, particularly with a cattle rancher who hates her guts. The ensuing catfight is sexy and wonderfully over-the-top. You can read the story as an allegory on McCarthyism or homosexuality, or just enjoy it as it is. Based on Roy Chanslor's novel. The famous title song was written by Peggy Lee and Victor Young.

Dial M for Murder
1954
***½
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams, Anthony Dawson, Patrick Allen

A thriller about a retired tennis player who devises a foolproof plan to murder his cheating wife. The story is set almost entirely in one apartment, but Hitchcock somehow manages to make this stagy and conventional mystery entertaining. Adapted from Frederick Knott's play. Remade as A Perfect Murder in 1998.

Creature from the Black Lagoon
1954
**½
Director: Jack Arnold
Cast: Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Nestor Paiva, Whit Bissell, Ben Chapman, Ricou Browning

A scientific expedition travels downriver in the Amazon. When their boat enters a black lagoon, they are attacked by an amphibious creature. This iconic monster movie may enjoy cult status but, in all honesty, it offers 80 minutes of boring and monotonous scares. The underwater shots are impressive, even if they were clearly not filmed in a river, but there is really no reason to spend so much time on these snail-paced and repetitive scenes. The creature is wonderfully designed, but sadly it has no personality whatsoever. The badly dated screenplay champions the people who invade the creature's habitat and try to kill it because it wants to protect its home.

The Caine Mutiny
1954
**½
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Robert Francis, May Wynn, Tom Tully

Humphrey Bogart gives a strong performance as the Commander of the fictional U.S.S. Caine who cracks under pressure and faces mutiny. This well-acted but overlong military drama is based on Herman Wouk's novel. The story plays out on the ship and in the court room in a rather stagy manner.

The Wild One
1953
**½
Director: László Benedek
Cast: Marlon Brando, Mary Murphy, Robert Keith, Lee Marvin, Jay C. Flippen, Peggy Maley, Hugh Sanders

The arrival of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club in a small Californian town upsets the townsfolk and the local authorities. Marlon Brando's iconic role as the gang leader Johnny Strabler has stood the the test of time, the film itself hasn't. This was once a provocative counterculture drama, now it seems mostly unintentionally funny. Adapted from Frank Rooney's short story The Cyclists' Raid.

Stalag 17
1953
***½
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves, Sig Ruman

This black comedy about American prisoners of war in Germany who suspect that one of them is a traitor is more of a prison film than a war film; it entertains but doesn't really have anything to say. It's adapted from the play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, and is set mostly inside the barracks. William Holden plays a cynical prisoner who runs the black market on the camp, and he won a deserved Academy Award for his performance.

The Naked Spur
1953
****½
Director: Anthony Mann
Cast: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, Millard Mitchell

James Stewart gives a hypnotic performance as Howard Kemp, a destitute Civil War veteran who will stop at nothing to bring a wanted murderer to justice in order to claim the \$5,000 reward. Like Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, Kemp is a morally intriguing protagonist. Anthony Mann's gripping Western is one of the forgotten gems in the genre.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
1953
***
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Charles Coburn, Elliott Reid, Tommy Noonan, Taylor Holmes, Norma Varden

Lorelai and Dorothy are showgirls who both have an eye out for Mr. Right. Lorelai likes her men rich and Dorothy likes her's handsome. This adaptation of a stage musical written by Joseph Fields and Anita Loos is entertaining but rather empty-headed fluff. Marilyn Monroe sings "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in the iconic scene.

Viva Zapata!
1952
***½
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Marlon Brando, Jean Peters, Anthony Quinn, Joseph Wiseman, Arnold Moss, Alan Reed, Margo

This biopic of Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919) is a captivating drama, although it doesn't hesitate to paint the Mexican revolutionary as a squeaky-clean hero. On paper Marlon Brando seems wrong for the role, but he's totally convincing. Anthony Quinn, who plays his brother, won an Academy Award for his performance. Scripted by John Steinbeck.

A Streetcar Named Desire
1952
****
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, Rudy Bond, Nick Dennis, Peg Hillias

Stanley and Stella Kowalski are a New Orleans couple whose rocky marriage is built on emotional abuse and primal sexuality. Things finally come to a head when Stella's unstable sister Blanche moves in. This static but powerful adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play is wonderfully acted. Marlon Brando broke to the scene with his raw performance, but it's his three co-stars - Leigh, Hunter and Malden - who won the Academy Awards.

The Quiet Man
1952
****½
Director: John Ford
Cast: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen

John Ford and John wayne took time off their Westerns to make this goofy but enchanting romantic drama comedy set in 1930s Ireland. Wayne plays a former boxer who returns from America to his birth home and falls in love with a feisty local girl. The Irish scenery in Technicolor looks beautiful and almost unreal, a bit like the film's view of life in Ireland. Academy Award winner for best directing and cinematography.

High Noon
1952
****
Director: Fred Zinneman
Cast: Gary Cooper, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, Grace Kelly, Ian MacDonald

Will Kane, the long-serving marshal of Hadleyville, finds himself abandoned by his townsfolk just when he needs to face a gang of vengeful outlaws. Fred Zinneman's classy and streamlined Western is an entertaining but somewhat idealistic story of one man's fight against the odds. Cary Cooper won his second Oscar, and the film picked up another three awards.

The Bad and the Beautiful
1952
*****
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame

Vincente Minnelli's Hollywood drama is magnificent, although its story and its structure owe a great deal to Citizen Kane. Kirk Douglas plays a ruthless but talented producer who wants to make a film with his old collaborators who all had an acrimonious falling-out with him. The writer, director and actress in question tell us what happened through flashbacks. Dreams and reality collide in (George Bradshaw's and) Charles Schnee's beautifully woven, Academy Award winning screenplay. Four more Oscars for best cinematography, costumes, art direction and best supporting actress (Gloria Grahame).

The Thing from Another World
1951
**½
Director: Christian Nyby (Howard Hawks)
Cast: Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Douglas Spencer, Robert O. Cornthwaite, James R. Young, Dewey Martin, Robert Nichols, William Self, Eduard Franz

Military men and scientists working on the North Pole discover a crashed UFO and an alien trapped in a block of ice. When the ice thaws, all hell breaks loose. Or, in this case, a big guy in a cheap monster suit breaks loose. This sympathetic but rather silly film has dated less favourably than the idea-based science fiction of The Day the Earth Stood Still or Forbidden Planet. Here the world is still innocent and there's even time for romance, which is a far cry from John Carpenter's bleak and claustrophobic remake The Thing 30 years later. The screenplay is based on John W. Campbell's novella Who Goes There? and it was allegedly directed by its producer Howard Hawks.

Strangers On a Train
1951
*****
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock, Laura Elliott

Guy hates his deceitful wife and Bruno can't stand his overbearing father. Bruno suggests that they murder each other's pet peeves so as not to have a motive for the crime. Guy takes it as a joke but Bruno proceeds to carry out the plan. This simple story, which is adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel, results in one of Hitchcock's tightest and tensest thrillers. Bruno is a wonderfully sinister character and the movie contains many unforgettable visual flourishes. The film inspired Danny DeVito's comedy Throw Momma from the Train.

A Place in the Sun
1951
****
Director: George Stevens
Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Keefe Brasselle, Fred Clark, Raymond Burr

This powerful drama looks to the dark side of the American Dream. George Eastman is a poor man who dreams of better things. Just when he has a chance to rise above his station, his pregnant working glass girlfriend gets in the way. Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters shine in these roles. The film won six Academy Awards, which include best director and best screenplay (by Michael Wilson and Harry Brown). Adapted from Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
1951
*****
Director: Robert Wise
Cast: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Billy Gray, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Frances Bavier

During the height of the Communist paranoia, a flying saucer lands in Washington D.C. A humanoid named Klaatu and his gigantic robot Gort have come to deliver a message to the leaders of the world, but the reception is hostile. This thinking man's science fiction film and Christ allegory has stood the test of time because it offers big ideas instead of big spectacle. Bernard Herrmann wrote the memorable score. Based on Harry Bates' short story Farewell to the Master. Remade in 2008.

The African Queen
1951
****½
Director: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley, Peter Bull, Theodore Bikel, Walter Gotell

An irresistibly fluffy romantic adventure set in Africa where an uptight missionary is forced to join a boorish captain on his boat down the river in order to flee the approaching Germans during Word War I. This is a classic "opposites attract" story with both actors in fine for. Bogart won an Oscar for his performance. Based on C. S. Forester's novel.

Ace in the Hole / The Big Carnival
1951
****
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady, Richard Benedict, Ray Teal

Billy Wilder's captivating, misanthropic drama shows humanity at its worst. A tainted big city reporter, now working in remote New Mexico, learns of a man trapped in an ancient Indian cave, and decides to milk the story for all its worth. Wilder boldly takes the story to its cynical conclusion but then adds an unnecessary coda which provides instant justice. Kirk Douglas plays this depraved man with intensity that occasionally veers into overacting.

Sunset Boulevard
1950
*****
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough

Not every film starts with the dead protagonist narrating the story, but this is not every film. The dead man is a struggling screenwriter who describes his unusual relationship with a self-deluding former star of the silent film, who dreams of a comeback. Billy Wilder's stunning film noir is the ultimate drama about Hollywood, which offers everything Tinseltown has to offer: the dreams and the disappointments, the glamour and the sleaze. An Academy Award winner for best screenplay, art direction, and music. This iconic film was later turned into a musical.

Rashomon
1950
***
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Noriko Honma, Daisuke Katō, Kichijiro Ueda

After a bandit is arrested for murdering a samurai and assaulting his wife, the perpetrator and the witnesses give contradictory accounts of the events. Akira Kurosawa's influential drama about the subjectivity of truth explores the grey area of human perception and morality. The premise is intriguing and it's nicely shot, but the film is a bit clunky and repetitive, and some of the performances are hammy.

In a Lonely Place
1950
****
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell, Martha Stewart, Jeff Donnell, Robert Warwick, Morris Ankrum, William Ching

A young woman is drawn to her neighbour, a charismatic but volatile screenwriter, who is the prime suspect in a murder investigation. She must weigh her affections for the man against her growing fears and doubts. Nicholas Ray's short but compelling psychological drama deals with suspicion, paranoia, and jealousy against the backdrop of 1950s Hollywood. Humphrey Bogart gives one of the most intriguing performances of his career as a man who is forced to battle his inner demons. Based on a 1947 movel by Dorothy B. Hughes.

D.O.A.
1950
****
Director: Rudolph Maté
Cast: Edmond O'Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler, Lynn Baggett, William Ching, Henry Hart, Beverly Garland, Neville Brand

This terrific film noir has a memorable opening scene. The protagonist arrives at a police station to report his own murder. He is an accountant who was poisoned and there isn't much time left to find the culprit. This short and taut 80 minute drama doesn't attempt to stretch this gimmicky premise further than it has to. Remade in 1988.

The Asphalt Jungle
1950
****
Director: John Huston
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, Marilyn Monroe

A group of career criminals rob a jewellery store, but things end badly. John Huston's film noir tells the classic story of a heist gone wrong, and it has influenced an entire genre of films, from The Killing to Reservoir Dogs. However, this grim and moody drama isn't always as tightly scripted as you would hope. Marilyn Monroe appears briefly as the girlfriend of one of the men.

All About Eve
1950
****
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe, Thelma Ritter, Gregory Ratoff, Marilyn Monroe

Margo Channing, the biggest star on Broadway, takes Eve Harrington, an unworldly fan, under her wing. However, Eve's tragic and innocent facade hides a fiendish and manipulative performer at par with her idol. This Hollywood classic is a subtle psychological drama and a great showcase for its female stars, especially Bette Davis, who is on fire. The film is stagy, there probably isn't a scene that was shot outdoors, but it's entertaining all the same, and the dialogue in particular is deliciously sharp. The six Academy Awards include Joseph L. Mankiewicz for directing and writing (from Mary Orr's short story The Wisdom of Eve), and George Sanders for acting.

Kind Hearts and Coronets
1949
****
Director: Robert Hamer
Cast: Dennis Price, Valerie Hobson, Joan Greenwood, Alec Guinness, Audrey Fildes, Miles Malleson, Clive Morton, John Penrose

Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini, whose late mother was disowned by her aristocratic family, seeks revenge by murdering the relatives who are ahead of him in the line of succession to the title of Duke of Chalfont. This dark comedy from Ealing Studios is loosely based on Roy Horniman's 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal. The film is not laugh-out-loud funny like The Ladykillers (1955), but it is smart and delightful. The wonderful Alec Guinness plays eight different members of the D'Ascoyne family.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1948
*****
Director: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett, Barton MacLane, Alfonso Bedoya, Arturo Soto Rangel

Two men down on their luck in Mexico join an elderly prospector to mine for riches in the Sierra Madre mountains. As soon as the men discover gold, they are consumed by paranoia and selfishness. This definitive study of greed is founded on a gripping story and three strong performances. John Huston won Academy Awards for writing and directing, and his father Walter took the third one for his supporting role. Based on the novel by B. Traven.

The Third Man
1948
*****
Director: Carol Reed
Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Erich Ponto, Ernst Deutsch

A masterful film noir mystery based on Graham Greene's original screenplay. An American pulp novelist comes to Vienna, which is divided into four occupation zones. He is desperate to find out what happened to his friend, but he keeps running into a stone wall. Although Orson Welles is on screen for about 10 minutes, the film is best remembered for his commanding cameo, and for Robert Krasker's dramatic, Oscar-winning black and white cinematography. Anton Karas's title theme on the zither and the climactic showdown in the bowels of the city are some of the other enduring elements of this classic.

Out of the Past
1947
****
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb, Steve Brodie, Virginia Huston, Paul Valentine, Dickie Moore, Ken Niles, Theresa Harris

A former private detective once fell in love with an alluring woman he was hired to track down. Now he is pulled back into a world of lies and deception, when she returns to his life. Jacques Tourneur's grim drama is a quintessential film noir, with suitably moody cinematography and snappy dialogue. Robert Mitchum is great as the man whose past comes back to haunt him and Jane Greer is his equal as one of the craftiest femme fatales in the genre. Based on Daniel Mainwaring's 1946 novel Build My Gallows High.

The Lady from Shanghai
1947
****
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted de Corsia, Erskine Sanford, Gus Schilling, Carl Frank, Louis Merrill, Evelyn Ellis

Irish sailor Michael O'Hara is hired to work on the yacht of a wealthy but disabled attorney and his alluringly beautiful wife. The simple assignment leads to dark secrets, double-crosses, and murder. This conventional but entertaining film noir is based on Raymond Sherwood King's 1938 novel If I Die Before I Wake. The story takes its sweet time to get going, but the second half is terrific, and the climactic scene in the hall of mirrors is iconic. Orson Welles, who dons the least convincing Irish accent of all time, didn't take a directing credit after the studio butchered the film.

A Matter of Life and Death / Stairway to Heaven
1946
***
Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cast: David Niven, Roger Livesey, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Raymond Massey, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron

During WW2 a British airman cheats certain death. When the administrators in heaven discover the error, they return to claim his life, but in the meanwhile he has fallen in love with an American air controller. This well-loved romantic fantasy is memorable for its otherwordly visuals and lavish production design which have stood the test of time. There is a massive stairway to heaven, and Powell and Pressburger reverse the colour scheme of The Wizard of Oz by showing heaven in black and white and reality in Technicolor. Some of the story elements, like the dubious lightning romance or the overlong climactic trial which revolves around obsolescent transatlantic relations, haven't dated as gracefully. Up to the final minutes it is actually unclear whether the whole thing is playing out in the pilot's head, but the ending sadly put a stop to this ambiguity. All in all, however, this is a wildly ambitious and delightfully odd film.

The Killers
1946
****½
Director: Robert Siodmak
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Sam Levene, Albert Dekker, Virginia Christine

A terrific film noir about an insurance investigator who looks into the killing of a small time criminal known as the Swede (Burt Lancaster in his memorable screen debut). Through flashbacks we discover the events that lead to his death. This tough drama may not be the most original work in its genre, but it offers a wonderfully structured story with sharp dialogue. Expanded from Ernest Hemingway's short story. Remade by Don Siegel in 1964.

It's a Wonderful Life
1946
*****
Director: Frank Capra
Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi, Frank Faylen, Ward Bond, Gloria Grahame, H. B. Warner, Todd Karns

Frank Capra's much-loved film classic is a celebration of life. It tells a deeply moving story of George Bailey, who is about to kill himself on Christmas Eve. As a young man, he dreamt of exploring the world, but he gave it all up to help his family, friends, and his community. Now he feels that his life has been for nothing. Capra adds fantasy elements to his signature story about an everyman hero, and creates his finest film. Only a hardened cynic will not be moved by this wonderful story about the "richest man in town". Based on Philip Van Doren Stern's short story The Greatest Gift.

Scarlet Street
1945
****½
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, Margaret Lindsay, Jess Barker, Rosalind Ivan, Arthur Loft

A married but desperately lonely amateur painter falls for a beautiful femme fatale, who ruthlessly exploits his gullibility. Fritz's Lang's excellent film noir is a notch darker than Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), and its ending is particularly grim. Edward G. Robinson's is great and his character is a wonderful creation. In this genre of tough guys, he plays a kindhearted, pussy-whipped man who wears a flowery apron at home. Adapted from Georges de La Fouchardière's 1931 novel La Chienne.

To Have and Have Not
1944
****½
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Lauren Bacall, Dolores Moran, Hoagy Carmichael

In 1940 the war in France has reached the island of Martinique in the Caribbean. Bogart plays a captain of a fishing boat who wants to go about his business and not take sides. This highly entertaining romantic drama is loosely based on Ernest Hemingway's novel. Lauren Bacall makes her memorable debut.

To Be or Not to Be
1942
*****
Director: Ernst Lubitch
Cast: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Sig Ruman, Stanley Ridges

Like Chaplin's the Great Dictator, Ernst Lubitch's incredible satire was released in the middle of World War 2, but it makes fun of the Nazis and their atrocities without hesitation. It's a story of a group of actors in a Warsaw theater company who must put their acting chops to a test in order to fool the occupying German forces. This comedy is fearless, subversive and, most importantly, very funny. Mel Brooks remade the film in 1983.

Casablanca
1942
*****
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Conrad Veidt

During World War 2 an American expat runs a night club in Casablanca which has become a hub for refugess escaping Nazi oppression to America. One day his former lover walks in with her husband, and the old wounds are reopened. This definitive romantic drama was a happy accident in which everything came together perfectly: wonderful casting and characterisation, a dynamite script with imminently quotable dialogue and the unforgettable song(s). Not to forget director Michael Curtiz, who put it all together and won an Academy Award. As did the film and its screenplay which is based on "Everybody Comes to Rick's", an unpublished play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison.

The Maltese Falcon
1941
*****
Director: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet

John Huston's brilliant directorial debut is based on Dashiel Hammett's novel. Humphrey Bogart plays Sam Spade, a private detective who finds himself sucked into a web of intrigue which revolves around a valuable falcon statuette. This quintessential film noir has all the key ingredients: the tough hero, the femme fatale and some memorably shady characters played by Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet.

The Lady Eve
1941
****
Director: Preston Sturges
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, Eric Blore, Melville Cooper

An entertaining romantic screwball comedy about a con woman who woos a wealthy bachelor not once but twice. Predictably love conquers all, but there are some amusing and wonderfully absurd twists on the way there.

How Green Was My Valley
1941
*****
Director: John Ford
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, Sara Allgood, Patric Knowles, John Loder, Barry Fitzgerald, Rhys Williams, Morton Lowry

A wonderfully moving and warm-hearted drama about a Welsh family who go through a transition at the turn of the 20th century. Their lives revolve around the local coal mine, which brings both prosperity and heartbreak. John Ford and Donald Crisp won two of the film's five Academy Awards. The film which pipped Citizen Kane at the Oscars is a worthy recipient. Adapted from Richard Llewellyn's 1939 novel.

High Sierra
1941
****½
Director: Raoul Walsh
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Alan Curtis, Arthur Kennedy, Joan Leslie, Henry Hull,

Humphrey Bogart plays a veteran gangster who is recruited to pull off a big heist, and Ida Lupino plays a young woman drawn to him. This tough, gritty and tight crime film doesn't have the reputation of Bogart's better known films, but it's up there with the best. A memorable climax on the mountains. Scripted by John Huston from a novel by William R. Burnett.

Citizen Kane
1941
*****
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, George Coulouris, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Stewart

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane dies a lonely old man. His life story unfolds in flashbacks, as Kane's family, friends, lovers and co-workers try to decipher what this enigmatic man meant with his last word, "Rosebud". The Oscar-winning screenplay by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz is brilliant, but this is one of the most audaciously directed films ever made. In his debut Orson Welles used every cinematic trick in the book and invented a few new ones to boot. Kane's story was controversially based on the life of William Randolph Hearst who almost had the negatives destroyed. Now it's widely hailed as the finest film ever made, and rightly so.

The Great Dictator
1940
*****
Director: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner, Henry Daniell, Billy Gilbert

Charles Chaplin and Adolf Hitler were born four days apart, and it's ironic that the world's most popular comedy character and its most notorious dictator should bear such a strong physical resemblance. When World War 2 was just about to break out, Chaplin took a massive risk to make this brilliant, scathing satire of Hitler and Nazism. He plays the fascist ruler of Tomainia and a Jewish barber who both look alike. This is his first proper film with sound, although there's still plenty of memorable physical comedy and slapstick.

Foreign Correspondent
1940
****
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Albert Basserman, Robert Benchley, Edmund Gwenn, Eduardo Ciannelli, Harry Davenport

In August 1939, New York Morning Globe sends their crime reporter to Europe to investigate whether a war is about to break out. He walks right in the middle of a conspiracy involving a kidnapped Dutch diplomat. Alfred Hitchcock's prescient spy drama tells a fictional story set in a time of real war, and it is amazing that it was released more than a year before the U.S. declared war on Germany. This is an entertaining film with some memorable set pieces.

Modern Times
1936
*****
Director: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford, Chester Conklin

In his damning commentary on industrialisation Chaplin plays a man who can't catch a break in the modern world. His mundane assembly line job drives him to a breakdown, but that is only the beginning of his struggles. A homeless girl brings him hope, and together they attempt to make the most of having nothing. This masterpiece offers iconic images, a heartwarming love story and an endless array of unforgettable comedy set pieces. Chaplin's first talky uses sound sparingly; The Tramp doesn't speak but he does sing. The soundtrack includes the lovely "Smile", also written by the director.

Night at the Opera
1935
****
Director: Leo McCarey
Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Kitty Carlisle, Allan Jones, Margaret Dumont

The first Marx Brothers film without Zeppo is set in the world of opera where the trio attempt to help two young singers/lovers. There are some wonderfully funny moments, such as the scene in the crowded cabin, but a bit too much plot, romance and music compared to the earlier anarchic comedies.

Bride of Frankenstein
1935
****½
Director: James Whale
Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Elsa Lanchester, Ernest Thesiger, E. E. Clive, Oliver Peters Heggie, Una O'Connor, Dwight Frye

After his experiment failed catastrophically, Henry Frankenstein wants to concentrate on his marriage, but he is forced back by his old mentor Dr. Pretorius, who wants to build a mate for the monster. The first sequel to Frankenstein, and the last one directed by James Whale, has become an enduring classic because of its iconic design and terrific character development. The monster is no longer a one-dimensional bad guy, but a tragic and desperately lonely man who seeks companionship and acceptance. As a consequence, Whale's melancholic film deals with prejudice.

The 39 Steps
1935
****
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle, Peggy Ashcroft, John Laurie, Helen Haye, Frank Cellier, Wylie Watson

After a mysterious woman is murdered in his London apartment, a Canadian tourist must go on the run all the way to Scotland to uncover a plot he only knows as The 39 Steps. Alfred Hitchcock's light-hearted and entertaining spy thriller is based on John Buchan's 1915 novel.

The Black Cat
1934
**
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Cast: Boris Karloff, Béla Lugosi, David Manners, Jacqueline Wells, Lucille Lund, Egon Brecher, Harry Cording

An American couple and a Hungarian psychiatrist end up travelling together in Hungary. When their bus crashes, they become stranded at the home of a mysterious Austrian architect. This pre-Code horror film features two big stars and some dark and daring themes, but it is incredibly dull and long-winded even at 66 minutes. While James Whale was making the brilliant Bride of Frankenstein around the same time, Edgar G. Ulmer's cheap-looking work looks like he doesn't know the first thing about filmmaking. It is nice to see Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi share the screen, but their performances sadly remind us why they were most famous for playing monsters. Peter Ruric's script was suggested by Edgar Allan Poe's short story.

Sons of the Desert
1933
*****
Director: William A. Seitler
Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charley Chase, Mae Busch, Dorothy Christy, Lucien Littlefield

This is the finest of Laurel and Hardy's feature length films. They play lodge members who pretend to go on a sea cruise to Hawaii in order to attend a meeting in Chicago. The plan backfires when their wives learn that the ship they were supposed to be on sinks in the Pacific. A winning mix of physical and verbal comedy.

Horse Feathers
1932
*****
Director: Norman McLeod
Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx, Thelma Todd, Reginald Barlow

The fourth Marx Brothers comedy is one of their best. It's short and hilarious, and it contains some of their most memorable songs, such as "I'm Against It" and "Everyone Says I Love You", the last of which Woody Allen later used in his film with the same name. Groucho plays the president of the Huxley College who resorts to desperate measures to win a football match against a rivalling school. Chico and Harpo are a pair of resourceful misfits who end up playing for the team.

Frankenstein
1931
****
Director: James Whale
Cast: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Boris Karloff, Dwight Frye, Edward van Sloan, Frederick Kerr, Dwight Frye, Lionel Belmore

With the help of his assistant, Henry Frankenstein builds a man from various body parts and brings it to life, but the abnormal brain makes his creation dangerous and unpredictable. James Whale's iconic horror movie was adapted from a 1927 play by Peggy Webling, which is based on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This origin story tells a classic cautionary tale of a man's attempt to play God, and it features a monster who is one-dimensionally monstrous. The film's visuals still look wonderful.

Metropolis
1927
****½
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Fritz Rasp, Theodor Loos, Erwin Biswanger, Heinrich George, Brigitte Helm, Heinrich Gotho

In Metropolis, the wealthy elite live above the ground in luxury, while the working class slave away underground to keep the city running. The son of the city's ruler strays down and falls in love with a woman from the lower class. Fritz Lang's dystopic science fiction film is a seminal work of the silent era. It deals with timeless themes, such as love, sacrifice, inequality, and artificial intelligence. The sets, costumes, and special effects still look great.

The General
1926
*****
Director: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
Cast: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender, Jim Farley, Frederick Vroom

When the Civil War breaks out, train engineer Johnnie Gray fails to enlist in the Confederate Army. However, he has a chance to become a war hero when Union spies steal his locomotive and capture the girl he loves. Buster Keaton's brilliant and irresistibly charming silent comedy masterpiece delivers action, romance, and an endless stream of delightful gags. No wonder the film had a massive budget, because all the incredible train set pieces were done for real.

The Gold Rush
1925
*****
Director: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite

Like many Americans the Tramp is bitten by the gold bug and he travels to Klondike to take part in the Gold Rush. Chaplin draws wonderfully warm comedy out of suffering in one of his best loved films. He eats his shoe and performs the roll dance in some of the most iconic scenes of the silent era.

The Kid
1921
*****
Director: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Jackie Coogan, Carl Miller

The Little Tramp brings up an abandoned baby boy like he's his own. However, when things seem too good to be true, they usually are. Chaplin's first feature length film contains some of his loveliest physical comedy and some of his most heartbreaking drama. Jackie Coogan gives an incredibly natural performance as the kid.