FILM: A Haunted House (dir: Michael Tiddes, 2013)

"I just wanted to see how far you would go."

The only real recommendation for A Haunted House that it has over the similarly awful Scary Movie V is its leads: Essence Atkins plays the girlfriend role mercifully straight and with some pleasing personality, and Marlon Wayans can be a strong writer/actor with an amiable screen presence, which is occasionally seen here.  The first two-thirds are a well-staged recreation of (mostly the first of the) the Paranormal Activity series, but the limited scenario gives rise to very few laughs, and it does not improve when the final act takes the form of a horror greatest hits medley.  However, so much of the film is empty screen time, the now-standard homophobic/misogynistic/racist elements are unpleasant, even more so as they are supposedly played for 'owned' laughs, and this film even demonstrates that rape (both female and male) by a ghost is not comedy gold.  The days of the original Scary Movie are long gone, Airplane!, Hot Shots and The Naked Gun even longer, and whilst A Haunted House is not as wretchedly unwatchable as Meet The Spartans, it is nevertheless a very depressing viewing experience.  These cheaply-made, quick-turnaround, weakly-scripted parodies are still hugely profitable for the studios, but there seems little hope that any of them will actually be given the time, wit and care to make any of them truly funny and enjoyable.

FILM: Despicable Me 2 3D (dirs: Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, 2013)

"I miss being evil."

One of the strengths of the first Despicable Me was the use of strong themes such as parenthood, super-villainy and redemption, whereas this sequel finds these replaced by more lightweight takes on romance and an underdeveloped undercover/spy thread.  However, the other main strengths of the original - the Minions and Steve Carell's wonderful Gru - work terrifically again, with the Minions getting much more screen time and most of the laughs (and two genius musical numbers at the end), and Carell displays voice work of consistently high quality, as does Kristen Wiig, even if her character shifts from feisty equal in the early stages to 'love interest needing to be rescued' by the end. Even if the scale feels slightly smaller (the shopping mall setting is somewhat underwhelming) and the content rather bland and universally small-child-friendly, the slapstick and general pace rarely flags, making Despicable Me 2 good sweet solid entertainment, but never breaking out into greatness.

FILM: World War Z 3D (dir: Marc Forster, 2013)

"Movement is life."

World War Z is much better than its troubled production and delayed release would suggest, but it still feels like a good salvage job rather than a completely satisfying film.  There is very little scene-setting before everything goes to hell, and unpredictable kinetic camerawork helps to generate the sense of swift chaos and threat of the rapid rabid virus-transmitters - the fast-gestating virus creates the pure desire to infect healthy potential hosts here rather than eat their brains - to the extent that the lack of gore on display is mostly made up for by the constant threat of being imminently overwhelmed.  The big set pieces of the fall of Jerusalem and the aeroplane disaster are terrific, but the newly-written final sequence goes small and intimate in scale rather than the originally-planned huge Moscow showdown, and whilst fairly effective in conventional horror terms (even if the logic seems questionable), this large-scale large-budget film lacks the big ending to which it seems to be building and eventually limps along to the finishing line.  This is very much Brad Pitt's film, and as usual he is good if intensely one-note, and apart from a well-pitched cameo by the wonderful David Morse, no-one else really makes any impression.  Marco Beltrami provides one of his stronger scores, the colour palette is grimly dank, and the CGI are surprisingly effective in the full context of the film, and whilst the overall components are good, the script and overall shape of the film don't quite get there.

FILM: Admission (dir: Paul Weitz, 2013)

"You're not the only one here that reeks of cow placenta."

The marketing suggested Admission would be very comedic, but the reality is a pleasant but tepid emotional drama with a few genuinely funny moments along the way.  The film features a far more dialled-down Tina Fey than usual as a stuck-in-a rut Princeton admissions officer, which allows her to display surprisingly effective characterisation and a pleasingly controlled range, and the always-reliable Paul Rudd  gives a nicely-played occasional emotional edge to a very limited character.  Like the title, the themes and metaphors are literal and unsubtly used, but the two leads and a number of creditable supporting performances (especially Lily Tomlin as Fey's mother, Travaris Meeks-Spear as Rudd's adopted son and Nat Woolf as the gifted but unusual student around whom the central stories revolve) give the film a degree of warmth that just about keeps it afloat.

FILM: Summer In February (dir: Chrisopher Menaul, 2013)

"Horribly wet."

Adapted by Jonathan Smith from his own novel, with some occasionally very effective scripting, this period drama set in an artists' community on the Cornwall coast wavers between a reasonable dissection of art and the artist A.J. Munnings and a relentlessly predictable love triangle, playing like an inverted and relocated D.H. Lawrence novel.  Emily Browning gives mercifully increasing life to Florence and her dilemma, torn between two stereotypically-drawn men: Dominic Cooper as slightly libertine Munnings (he smokes! he knows crude limericks!) gives another well-defined character performance, and Dan Stevens as the emotionally-restrained army man does not stray too far from his Downton persona but creates occasional depth. The film uses stunning locations, it is technically well-made and the period settings and detail are very well realised, but the pace is lethargic and some of the narrative and character leaps feel rather quick, convenient and too melodramatic.  If you are a fan of this style of earnest and languorous period drama, Summer In February will play very well.

FILM: Man Of Steel 3D IMAX (dir: Zack Snyder, 2013)

"I grew up in Kansas, General.  I'm about as American as you can get."

Man Of Steel is a fantastic blockbuster spectacle.  It is HUGE, ambitious and extremely entertaining.  Shot like JJ Abrams with a Chris Nolan sensibility, it is nevertheless a recognisably Zack Snyder movie, but thankfully definitely more Watchmen than Sucker Punch.  The clever non-linear narrative structure demands attention, and whilst many franchise touchstone moments are present, they are used efficiently and/or smartly, notably for the Krypton back-story and Clark growing up.  This is more of a grown-ups' comic book movie than previous incarnations, and the largely serious tone definitely works to give this sometimes insipid character a genuine contemporary feel.  Cavill was a superb choice, a terrific actor who gives Clark strength and makes him surprisingly easy to like without resorting to the bumbling idiot of the previous movies.  There are so many strong performances providing the backbone of the movie: Amy Adams is a wonderfully straight Lois; Kevin Costner and especially Diane Lane are superb as Clark's adoptive Earth parents; and Michael Shannon is quite simply a brilliant, powerful villain as Zod.  Hans Zimmer's wonderful score is by turns brooding, thunderous and utterly beautiful, and the effects are on a massive and genuinely Earth-threatening scale (and the 'super'-smackdowns make The Avengers look quite puny by comparison). There are moments of Snyder's usual visual-magpie approach (there are occasional obvious nods to Independence Day, The Matrix, Spiderman 2, The Terminator movies, and the like), but what the director achieves in this film is the ability to create some hugely affecting sudden emotional beats out of seemingly thin air.  There have been some grumblings about the lack of character development, which on this evidence are not strictly accurate; Superman is not the most psychologically deeply-drawn superhero, yet here he is given a successfully grounded and credible reading that has eluded film-makers previously.  In an already hugely enjoyable Summer of cinema, Man Of Steel might actually turn out to be the best of the bunch and deserves fully to be a huge hit.

FILM: Behind The Candelabra (dir: Steven Soderbergh, 2013)

"Men, women - who cares?  All that matters is to be yourself."

Steven Soderbergh's apparently final film as director (for now?) displays all his strengths: an actors' director, the semi-documentary style that gives a high level of verisimilitude, complete control of shifting tone, and the utter ability to hold the viewer throughout.  The double whammy of the already-familiar public story and a fairly standard tragic 70s/80s-AIDS/drugs/plastic surgery tale could have made this film perfunctory, but two absolutely superb nuanced performances by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon and Richard LaGravenese’s warm, knowing, funny but emotionally honest script (based on Scott Thorson's accounts of his relationship with Liberace) raise the level of this biopic considerably.  The stars are virtually inseparable on-screen for almost the whole running time, making the view of the relationship intimate and almost voyeuristic, but the film is also littered with small but hugely effective performances, such as Rob Lowe as an hilariously facially-immobile plastic surgeon.  The finale - a bold and touching fantasy sequence seen through Thorson's eyes at Liberace's funeral - sums up the whole film by staying on the right side of kitsch and allowing the two fantastic leads to put across what Behind The Candelabra is all about - a love story, pure and simple.

FILM: After Earth IMAX (dir: M. Night Shyamalan, 2013)

"That sucked."
"That is correct."

The potential with this film is very apparent, but it misses the mark.  M. Night Shyamalan brings a very distinctive directing style to his movies, and whilst this movie is a notable improvement on his recent outings, the dour tone applied appropriately to The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable simply does not fit well with what should be more action-oriented and passionate genre material such The Happening and indeed After Earth could have been.  By deliberately stunting (crippling?) the emotional responses of the two leads - Smith Snr is a locked-in military chief, Smith Jnr is his damaged and struggling teen son - the result is a rather underwhelming father-son character study punctuated by some absolutely wonderful location shooting and some very undernourished but occasionally thrilling action set pieces (note that the IMAX format adds very little indeed).  In this respect, it is interesting to see the much-needed warmth injected by Sophie Okonedo as the wife/mother in her too-brief appearances.  Will Smith does play some scenes well in terms of control, but he has to take second seat to son Jaden whose performance, as the active protagonist,  varies wildly from showing some effective nuance to simple immaturity.  The sci-fi premise of a super-evolved predator-filled Earth is interesting, as is some design, such as the organic-styled interiors of spacecraft, but this is not enough to compensate for the general lack of emotional engagement this film displays and indeed generates with the viewer.

FILM: The Last Exorcism Part II (dir: Ed Gass-Donnelly, 2013)

"So, are you from a cult in the woods or something?"


Just like the follow-up to The Blair With Project, this superfluous sequel abandons first-person shaky-cam and is a straightforward and largely unremarkable demonic- possession movie, but thankfully it is more watchable than the truly dire Book Of Shadows.  This movie ties in neatly with the original at various points, but the storylining is somewhat wayward and it increasingly plays like a souped-up genre greatest hits exercise.  It is a shame that a lot of characters and ideas seem to lack full development, especially the central 'corruption of the flesh/soul' theme, but Ashley Bell returns as the still partly-possessed Nell and does adequately.  Sound stings are extraordinarily loud, there are occasional moments of real interest and tension, and there is evident effort made by all concerned to make a well-mounted and stylish film, but overall there is little here that raises it above a rather ordinary horror viewing experience.  The direction taken with the character at the very end is a little surprising, but it is unlikely that a second sequel would be able to have the budget or ambition to really run with it.  

FILM: The Purge (dir: James DeMonaco, 2013)

"It works 99 per cent of the time."

The Purge is a slick, well-executed near-future home-invasion thriller.  The preposterous premise - that by 2022, a 'reborn' America allows cathartic free-for-all criminality for a 12-hour period each year in return for virtually crime-free existence - is given some credence by the intimate focus on one family and some good character work by Lena Headey and Ethan Hawke as the parents.  Echoes of Assault On Precinct 13 and Funny Games do not hurt the film, which is shot and edited very tightly.  Apart from one extraordinary where-the-heck-did-that-come-from? moment involving the daughter's boyfriend, the plot is earnest if somewhat routine, but Idiot Plot (the kids do keep wandering off to serve the story) and some cliched lines are kept to a reasonable level.  The film displays its social and political allegories quite unsubtly, but the moral vacuum created by Purge Night offers the characters and indeed the viewers some interesting choices.  This is a slight, small-scale but well-made film that definitely achieves beyond its premise.

FILM: Byzantium (dir: Neil Jordan, 2013)

"It's as if Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe got together and had a strange little child."

Neil Jordan does an excellent directorial job with this elegant, subdued and melancholy take on vampirism.  Tonally, Byzantium is not as dull as Jordan's previous Interview With The Vampire, as Moira Buffini's well-considered script is often quite beautiful to listen to, as is Javier Navarrete's haunting score, and the mix of modern horror/thriller tropes with the well-mounted historical costume-drama scenes is very effective.  Saoirse Ronan more than makes up for her weak showing in The Host, Gemma Arterton steps up and for the most part delivers in a complex role, with interesting supporting work by Caleb Landry-Jones, Jonny Lee Miller and the ever-watchable Daniel Mays.  The fading seaside town setting is used evocatively, tying in nicely with the elemental motifs, and the recurring themes of storytelling and identity work well within the overall narrative.  The somewhat deliberate pacing may put off some viewers, but Byzantium is a thoughtful, adult  and admirable film.

FILM: The Big Wedding (dir: Justin Zackham, 2013)

"Hell it is, then."

The best aspect of watching The Big Wedding is that Lionsgate's flashy new ident at the start is quite impressive in a Universal way.  The film itself features impossible characters in nonsensical situations behaving completely unrealistically, with a terrific cast also having to contend with some quite horrible dialogue.  The tumbleweed store has been cleared out for this movie judging by the number of 'funny' lines that crash and burn, no predictable stone has been left unturned, and the actual end wedding itself is less witty farce than forced car-crash scripting.   Only Susan Sarandon's considerable talent proves indestructible here in an astonishingly disappointing film.

FILM: Epic 3D (dir: Chris Wedge, 2013)

"So serious..."

Although the story comes across as Avatar-lite at times, Epic is a strong children's CG animation.  This forest-based tale is visually rich and lushly realised, with truly deep 3D and spacious, well-staged sound design.  Both the male and female leads (voiced by Josh Hutcherson and Amanda Seyfried) are solid characters whom the younger audience members can root for, with able support from a good voice cast including Colin Farrell, Chris O'Dowd, Beyonce and Christoph Waltz.  Action/chase/battle sequences are all handled very effectively, and there is convincing fluidity in the 'human' characters' movement.  There is an alarming mis-step about halfway through with an ill-judged song-and-dance number - which is thankfully not repeated - and rather weighty themes of grief, decay and the inevitability of death occasionally overwhelm, but overall Epic is a spirited, well-executed tale that has a well-structured story and holds attention throughout.