DVD: Taken 2 (dir: Olivier Megaton, 2012)

"Do you know how to shoot?"
"No."
"Then drive!"

Taken 2 is a truly disappointing sequel to an enjoyable action-thriller.  The premise is fine - this time it is Neeson and his wife who are 'taken' - but the straightforward revenge story provides such a thin narrative that very little actually happens, and what does occur is incredibly simplistic.  Liam Neeson and Famke Janssen try their very best to wring something from weak material, and Maggie Grace might have well have not turned up at all as she is given hardly anything to do.  The Far Eastern locations look good, but the action sequences are not particularly well executed or impressive, and this is another example of a film franchise chasing a younger (wider) audience and sacrificing the full-on effect that made it work in the first place.

DVD: Frankenweenie (dir: Tim Burton, 2012)

"You meet in the middle - everyone's happy."

Frankenweenie is undoubtedly a beautifully-crafted stop-motion animation, enhanced by gloriously crisp black-and-white, based around the simple emotional premise of a boy and his pet dog who meets a tragic accident.  There are some pitch-black comedy moments which provide some real laughs - although these are all too few, and the dramatic pathos of the central relationship comes across well, and yet...maybe it is over-familiarity with the original short from which the movie is expanded, Tim Burton's regular tropes and the none-too-subtle filmic references which perhaps make Frankenweenie a little less sparkling than expected, and this may be a case where the shorter original version works better than the expanded form.

FILM: Robot & Frank (dir: Jake Schreier, 2013)

"You two are really funny."

Robot & Frank is a delight.  Essentially a two-hander for the most part, it is easy to suspend disbelief for this near-future tale of a mis-matched buddy story that is by turns wry, daft, thought-provoking and heartbreaking.  The basic concept of highlighting issues such as old age,
memory, identity, parent-child relationships and the ever-encroaching loss of the pre-digital era through the juxtaposition of a toweringly human and genuine performance by Frank Langella and his newly-acquired 'helper' robot, who becomes not only his accomplice but also a surrogate child, is genuinely engaging.  James Marsden and Liv Tyler are fine as Frank's rather diametrically-opposite children (utilitarian and anti-robot respectively), as is Susan Sarandon in an intriguing role of the local librarian.  This is a confident, fresh and hugely appealing film, with an utterly wonderful performance by Langella at its heart.

FILM: Side Effects (dir: Steven Soderbergh, 2013)

"Everybody takes them."

One of the most enjoyable aspects of watching Side Effects is that the trailer misdirects the audience not only in narrative terms very cleverly but also with the kind of film to expect - this is no drug-industry Erin Brockovich, but a beautifully-constructed 80s-style thriller that packs many punches and surprises.  Rooney Mara portrays incredible fragility here, Catherine Zeta-Jones is gloriously icy, and Jude Law carries the film with a strong and considered performance.  Thomas Newman provides a superior music score, which complements the starkly chilling cinematography and Soderbergh's forensically-precise and controlled direction.  Plot twists keep coming right up to the end, and even if the tone can become a little one-note, Side Effects is an extremely entertaining and admirable adult thriller.

FILM: Oz - The Great And Powerful 3D (dir: Sam Raimi, 2013)

"THAT is The Wizard?"
"Is there a problem with that?"
"Yes."

Sam Raimi delivers a huge-scale and expensive-looking spectacle with this 2013 take on the Oz origin story.  Thankfully, the film gets much better as it goes along, which comes as a great relief, as the opening scenes in Kansas and then Oz do not play well.  The move from black-and-white to stylised, saturated widescreen colour works well, and throughout the use of 3D is quite stunning.  There are sufficient enjoyable well-placed nods to Victor Fleming's film, and as a prequel the film works very well.  As the sideshow conjuror Oz, James Franco plays James Franco, never an actor for displaying subtle shifts and detail, but here he manages the transition from conman to hero appropriately, and as for the three witches, Michelle Williams delights, Rachel Weisz oozes malevolence well, and Mila Kunis - with perhaps the biggest character arc of all - only misses the mark occasionally in her full transition to green-skinned revenger.  The China Girl is a fantastically-realised creation, the Zach Braff-voiced monkey sidekick is fun, and the film is visually rich and detailed.  Danny Elfman provides another superb score, and Raimi marshals both big and small-scale moments effectively.  Like the Star Wars prequels, this should be approached as a film for children (who, in the audience, laughed, cowered and seemed to enjoy the ride) and as such succeeds well, once its initial uncertainty is overcome.

FILM: The Guilt Trip (dir: Anne Fletcher, 2013)

"Just shut up!  Just shut up!"

The Guilt Trip is a somewhat subdued comedy-drama that has little to set the pulse racing.  The pairing of Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand works well, with Streisand again demonstrating her effortless comedic professionalism and Rogen taking his usual performance down a notch with a little unevenness of characterisation.  The road trip element keeps the film moving and provides some good use of typical American tourist sites.  The whole film comes across as deliberately low-key, and at times the relentless banter becomes wearing, but there are some good emotional pay-offs towards the end.

FILM: Stoker (dir: Park Chan-wook, 2013)

"Just as a flower does not choose its colour, we are not responsible for what we have come to be."


Park Chan-wook's long-awaited first English-language film is an absorbing, coolly-deranged melodrama that holds not only narrative surprises but also a very high level of visual control and creativity.  At its heart lies three terrific performances: Kidman reminds us of her nuance-playing at its best, Mia Wasikowska makes up for the memory of Alice with a hauntingly twisted portrayal of the bereaved daughter, and Matthew Goode makes Uncle Charlie a beguiling and compelling character.  Wentworth Miller's script is spare and wonderfully precise, and the level of directorial and performance control is at times breathtaking, even though occasionally it can come across as a little too self-conscious, especially the overt sexual 'openings' metaphors and double entendres.  It may play like Woody Allen's Interiors filtered through Michael Haneke, but Stoker has an unique identity in today's market.

FILM: Hansel and Gretel - Witch Hunters 3D IMAX (dir: Tommy Wirkola, 2013)

"The Curse of Hunger for Crawling Things - I f**king hate that one!"

Hansel and Gretel is nothing more than a daft, fun, empty-headed high-concept Friday-night popcorn flick, and on that level it delivers.  Constantly on the move, after a brief set-up of the fairy tale we all know and an excellent 3D-animated title montage, Renner and Arterton make for stoic leads (ridiculously straight-faced at times) as the grown-up witch hunters, and Famke Janssen chews the scenery wonderfully as their main adversary.    There is plenty of (3D) bang for your buck, only let down by some occasionally cheap-looking CG splatter. This incarnation of witches as Evil Dead-style possessed creatures works very well, and there are some neat twists on the traditional story - there is even some nice King Kong-inspired business with a troll.  The amount of violence meted out to Gretel is at times disturbing - at one point, Gretel suffers a real kicking at the hands of a group of men whilst Hansel gets off with a local girl in a pool!  In the hands of a Hollywood hack this film would have been dreadful, but thankfully Tommy Wirkola manages to imbue the film with some of the wit and energy that made Dead Snow so enjoyable, and he certainly proves here (more than once) that he can make a visceral and dynamic action scene way beyond those seen in most standard action films.

FILM: Mama (dir: Andy Muschietti, 2013)

"Am I safe?"
"From what? A crazy eight-year-old girl?  Give me a break."

Mama may be cliche-ridden, but for the most part it is a solidly-made supernatural thriller with some nice touches and a couple of good jolts, even if the overall effect is just mildly unsettling.  In its favour, Mama is lushly shot, the little girls are terrific, the foregrounding of the female characters and motivations is refreshing, and - as the couple who take on the feral girls - Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau are given characters they can work with (rock guitarist and artist respectively) against the usual type who do not expect to be parent figures or caught up in this scenario (Chastain's reaction to the first full reveal of Mama is unusually truthful for this type of movie).  Sadly, the narrative wheels fall off towards the oddly-operatic ending, but Mama is one of the better-made entries in this currently-popular genre.

DVD: Universal Soldier - Day Of Reckoning (dir: John Hyams, 2013)

"That's the spirit, soldier!"

This latest and utterly bizarre contribution into the Universal Soldier franchise should completely bemuse genre fans, as it comes across as an art-house-action-thriller created and directed by David Lynch.  The opening five minutes are a superbly executed gruelling POV sequence that sets up the motivation for new super-soldier 'John' (Scott Adkins, who as an actor is clearly a very good martial artist), and ten minutes in one wonders if the disc is accidentally playing a surrealist film in error.  Day Of Reckoning is ambitious (lofty themes of identity, memory and revenge abound), styles change without warning and the soundtrack is like a particularly trippy episode of Space: 1999.  Director John Hyams returns as director from 2010's Regeneration, and amongst the strangeness shows that he can create strong action set-pieces as well, including a knock-out smackdown in a sports store and another seemingly single-take sequence in which John systematically takes out a succession of soldiers.  Van Damme (looking increasingly like Bruce Willis's dad) and Lundgren are used sparingly but purposefully.  Echoes of Apocalypse Now and Memento are significant, making this an intriguing, unpredictable and totally unexpected direct-to-DVD franchise entry.