Film Review - Countdown To Zero

We’re all going to die. Arguably, we just saved you the job of watching director Lucy Walker’s depressing documentary about the world’s nuclear arsenal. 

Revealing our frighteningly ongoing near-misses with atomic Armageddon, it’s a call for disarmament that’s too repetitive to land with the same impact as Oscar-winning eco-doc An Inconvenient Truth. 

Sobering stuff, especially when smart talkingheads – including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and ex-US Secretary Of Defence Robert McNamara – confirm it’s a matter of “when” not “if”. Eek
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Film Review - Bridesmaids

Bride Wars, Made Of Honour, 27 Dresses: the bargain bins at your local DVD store are full to busting with wedding-themed rom-coms.

Chances are, though, that they don’t begin with their heroines having rampant rumpy with Mad Men’s Jon Hamm in a wide variety of positions.

They’re not likely to feature someone dropping the c-bomb, shitting in the street or puking on hair. Nor, if memory serves, do they include a scene in which a woman likens her undercarriage to a triple-decker sandwich.

Offended? Not to worry – there’ll be another Kate Hudson vehicle along any minute. Yet for those who don’t mind raunch dressing on their wedding cake, say hi to Bridesmaids: a gleefully crude addition to the Judd Apatow canon that proves beyond reasonable doubt you don’t need to be hung to have a Hangover.

There’s arguably something a little tokenist about Hollywood’s reigning comedy king magnanimously extending his patronage to the gentler sex, after spending most of the last decade turning the likes of Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill into slacker superstars. But it would be unfair to regard Paul Feig’s pic as if it were some belated afterthought. The Judd juggernaut may well have been motored by man-child tomfoolery but it hasn’t lacked the essential infusions of eye-catching oestrogen.

Wedding belles 

Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids’ star and co-writer, is a case in point, having got her first big-screen break in Knocked Up, as Katherine Heigl’s bitchy co-worker. (Since then she’s also had cameos in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Apatow productions both.)

Rose Byrne has reason to be grateful too, her off-kilter casting in Get Him To The Greek as slutty rock-chick Jackie Q, opening up a whole new career path for the Troy and Damages actress.

Consider this latest offering, then, as the entrée to those earlier hors d’oeuvres. It may have been a while coming, but that doesn’t make it any less tasty.

It’s Wiig, by the way, who has that clinch with Don Draper, an extended bout of coitus that guarantees from the off you get some bang for your buck. No sooner has Jon had his fun, however, than Wiig is out on her ear – par for the course for luckless Annie, a failed baker reduced to sharing a house with two chubby siblings (Aussie Rebel Wilson and our own Matt Lucas) and hawking trinkets in Milwaukee’s version of H. Samuel.

Annie’s lot looks even sadder once her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) announces she’s tying the knot and insists on her being Pippa to her Kate.

Cue a string of prenuptial prerequisites – engagement bash, gown fittings, hen weekend – seemingly designed to show up her inadequacy, especially when set against Lillian’s über-wealthy new gal pal Helen (Byrne) and her polished ease with espousal etiquette.

Girls behaving badly 

Given the Tinseltown tendency to fetishise every clichéd aspect of the marital experience, Bridesmaids’ suggestion that matrimony is more an accumulation of inconvenient social obligations is positively revolutionary.

Yet this is as radical as Feig’s film gets, the seasoned TV helmer getting most of his yuks by attributing archetypally “male” signifiers – boorishness, drunkenness, sexual licentiousness – to his female characters and cranking up the Annie-Helen rivalry at every opportunity. Party toasts, tennis, bridal shower gifts – it’s all one big catfight for this adversarial pair. Hmm: maybe we’re not so far away from Bride Wars after all.

The big difference, of course, is that this film is funny – a testament not only to Wiig’s tireless willingness to make a plank of herself (the electric-gate gag is priceless), but also to game co-stars who take visible pleasure pushing the taste envelope.

The standout here is Melissa McCarthy, a rotund bundle of coarse impropriety who, as mannish, debauched vulgarian Megan, goes all out to be this flick’s Zach Galifianakis.

Rudolph has her moments too, the Saturday Night Live stalwart bringing enough kooky vivaciousness to Lillian to ensure she’s no mere passenger in the ensuing craziness.

OK, so the other two bridesmaids – harassed housefrau Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey) and mousy newlywed Becca (Ellie Kemper) – rather get lost in the crush. And don’t even ask about the groom: he scarcely gets a credit, let alone a line.

Chris O’Dowd fares better as Officer Rhodes, a traffic cop who becomes Annie’s confidante and boyfriend over the course of a leisurely two and a bit hours. It is worth noting, though, that his role – needy, kindly, easily wounded – is very much the “girl” part in this gender-reversed confection.

Sisters might be doing it for themselves this time out, but you don’t have to dig too deep to find a stereotype.

Verdict:

It’s uneven, unwieldy and overlong, but if it’s yucks you’re after you’ll find them in abundance in a side-splitting comedy that lifts the veil on every wedding’s unsung heroines

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Film Review - Akira

When you absolutely, positively have to get some anime in your life, accept no substitutes; 23 years on, Akira is still the genre’s crowning achievement. 

Biker gangs roam post-WWIII streets of Neo-Tokyo and when one of their number gains stupendous psychic powers, all hell breaks lose. 

In truth, it’s a pretty confused plot (inevitable, given the 2,000-page source material), but who cares? 

Pretty much every frame delivers startling new peaks of animation, and the sheer ambition of the thing takes the breath away. 

Give yourself a reward, if you can understand the ending, though.

Release Date Jun 17th 2011
Genre
Action/adventure,
Animation,
Drama,
Mystery/suspense,
Science Fiction,
Thriller
Starring
Mitsuo Iwata,
Nozomu Sasaki,
Mami Koyama,
Tesshô Genda,
Hiroshi Ôtake
Director
Katsuhiro Ôtomo

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Film Review - Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Plot
Cap’n Jack Sparrow (Depp) is alarmed to learn that someone claiming his name is raising a crew to seek the mythical Fountain Of Youth. The race is on to find it, with Captain Barbossa (Rush), now the King’s privateer, Captain Blackbeard (McShane), old flame Angelica (Cruz) and a Spanish fleet all after the same secret.

Review
Another visit from Cap’n Jack is something devoutly to be wished for, but this fourth outing for Johnny Depp’s still-likable louche can’t recapture the magic of the first, or even match the narrative drive of its immediate predecessors. Instead we have a race to a prize that no-one needs bar, perhaps, the villain, and a lack of piratical vim and vigour.

The odd thing about this whole series is that the filmmakers apparently view it very differently from the audience. For most, Pirates is a swashbuckling, comedy blockbuster with the puckish Cap’n Jack at its heart. For the filmmakers, it seems to be a philosophical exercise that just happens to have big action set-pieces, an examination of a world where no character can trust another, and Cap’n Jack is merely one of an ensemble.

Such lofty ambitions are not necessarily fatal, but here they cripple the plot. After just minutes it’s clear that, as in At World’s End, the next double-cross is always just around the corner. It’s impossible to invest in any plan of action, since you know that there will be a reverse within moments. Perversely, this doesn’t create tension but an odd sense of boredom. There’s no game element, no intellectual puzzle because the audience is not given enough information to play with. Nor is the romantic tension between Jack and Penélope Cruz’s Angelica ever truly engaging, since you can’t imagine either being around long enough to get undressed, never mind living happily ever after.

Characters are introduced and discarded on a whim, and the Chekhov’s gun maxim (any object introduced in a story should be used) is broken over and over again. Sure, it looks nifty that Blackbeard’s ship comes with optional ginormous flamethrowers — but unless you’re going to use them convincingly, who cares? And while we’re on the subject, what exactly are Blackbeard’s powers? And why are there zombie sailors, generally?

There are, of course, still bombastic action scenes and high production values. We’re treated to an improbably high-speed carriage chase through London, and a brewery-based duel that riffs on the first film’s forge fight. Best of the lot, however, is a mermaid attack. Forget any notions you had about Ariel and her sisters: this lot are fishily vicious. But even here, there is no single jaw-drop moment, no Davy Jones, no skeletal pirate parade, no cannibal cage.

As for the newcomers, it is a surprise to learn how much we miss Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom. Their straight-arrow lovers gave the series balance, and the young pretenders here — missionary Phillip (Claflin) and mermaid Syrena (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) — don’t get enough of a look-in to fill their boots. McShane’s Blackbeard needs more time for either his menace or the tragedy of his prophesised death to grab us, while Rush’s Barbossa is a shadow of his former self. Even Jack rarely seems to be having fun. With fewer characters and an abbreviated running time, this might have been a return to form. As it is, it’s a further decline for the franchise.

Verdict
An overly complicated plot and poorly thought-out characters detract from the flashes of charm that Cap’n Jack still emits. Despite quality set-pieces and the best efforts of the cast, this is dull and crossbones. 

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Film Review - Senna

Plot
Documentary charting the astonishing Formula 1 career of the charismatic and controversial Brazilian racer, Ayrton Senna — also, tragically, the final decade of his life.

Review
In most cases, it’s the quality of the human drama that makes a documentary great, not the detail on the arena in which that drama plays out. You don’t need to be into The Dandy Warhols to dig Ondi Timoner’s Dig!. You don’t have to be a bear enthusiast to revel in Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. And if all Formula 1 means to you is the incessant roar- whine of pimped-up go-karts on Sunday afternoon telly, that’s no reason not to discover Asif Kapadia’s Senna, a truly remarkable and affecting film.

The Hackney-born Kapadia has (aside from 2006 horror The Return) thus far marked himself out as a purveyor of epic arthouse, setting taut dramas against vast, real-world backdrops: subcontinental deserts in his impressive 2001 debut The Warrior, arctic tundra in his underrated last movie, Far North. So it’s no surprise that his first foray into documentary should find him balancing the epic and the intimate, with Kapadia shunning the dark art of reconstruction and small-set structure of talking-head interviews, instead going for something far more ambitious.

Kapadia has assembled a vast array of material (about 15,000 hours), from home movies to newsreel to on-car camera recordings, and even never-seen backroom videos of drivers’ briefings to tell Senna’s inspiring, tragic story entirely through original footage and voiceover (although never Kapadia’s own). This gives the film a fluidity and strength unimpeded by cutaways to people reminiscing in their studies — although you do suspect that the depth and breadth of Kapadia’s access involved its own compromises. Because Senna is very much a panegyric, its subject undoubtedly lionised. The film treads lightly over Senna’s personal life (not mentioning his relationship with a 15 year-old girl), and avoids playing up the driver’s darker professional side (his assault on Eddie Irvine in 1993).

Kapadia can argue the irrelevance of such things to the story that he’s telling, and with good reason. One could just as easily mention the director’s play-down of the incident where the three-time world champion once dived to the aid of crashed French driver Érik Comas mid-race, seriously risking his own life (it only appears as footage over the end credits); or his omission of the fact that in the wreckage of Senna’s fatal crash was a furled Austrian flag, which the driver had planned to wave during his (likely) victory lap in tribute to Roland Ratzenberger, who had died one day earlier during a qualifying race. Quite simply, you can’t include everything.

Besides, it would have been hard for anyone collating this material not to become enamoured of Senna. While his is hardly a rags-to-riches story (Formula 1 teams hardly go talent-spotting in the favelas, and Senna was indeed born into enough wealth that Daddy could pay for his go-karts), he’s a compelling individual. It’s not just his aquiline looks, that boyish smile or the soft-spoken appeal that leavened his towering self-confidence.

It’s also because, as Kapadia highlights, Senna challenged the politics of Formula 1, channelling a naive faith in the best man winning into his famous clashes with one-time McLaren team-mate Alain Prost — portrayed here, perhaps unfairly, as a weaselly character (only emphasised by Kapadia including Prost’s clumsy letching over Selina Scott on the Wogan chat-show) — and pitbullish former FIA boss Jean-Marie Balestre. “If you no longer go for a gap, you’re no longer a racing driver,” Senna once blustered, not accepting that he should have gone easy on Prost while at McLaren. Prost retorted with a comment that was, of course, horribly prophetic: “Ayrton has a small problem. He thinks that he can’t kill himself. And that’s very dangerous.” Which is fair comment from a man who’s collided with Senna at 170mph.

Senna’s maverick nature, and the battles it caused, form the thrust of Kapadia’s film, and it results in some astonishing moments, such as Senna’s devastated reaction to the death of Ratzenberger and the hospitalisation of Rubens Barrichello during that fateful weekend in Imola, San Marino, which ironically inspired Senna to recreate the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association to improve track safety, mere hours before his own death. (There hasn’t been an F1 fatality since Senna’s.)

It’s also finally worth noting one other major achievement of Kapadia’s film: while Senna himself is the subject rather than Formula 1, Kapadia’s use of race footage — particularly of Senna’s own brilliance on the track, best illustrated by the driver’s talent in exploiting wet conditions — will make even those who find motor-racing a noisy bore feel the visceral thrill of high-velocity competition.

Verdict
Ambitiously constructed, deeply compelling, thrilling and in no way only for those who like watching cars drive in circles. A worthy paean to a true talent. 

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Film Review - Screwed

Plot
Back from a gruelling tour in Iraq, Sam Norwood (James D’Arcy) takes a job as a screw in his local prison. He soon realises that his new life also has its share of dangers.

Review
After barely surviving a tour of Iraq, James D’Arcy’s squaddie takes a job as a prison officer at HMP Romwell, where bent screws, blunt violence and a constantly frowning Noel Clarke begin to take their toll. Despite its claims of credibility (it’s based on the experiences of warden-turned-author Ronnie Thompson), Reg Traviss’ film is stubbornly retro stuff. Laundry room shivvings, corrupt guvnors, kingpins, riots, snitches, bang-ups... It’s like a WikiPorridge of every British clink flick you’ve ever seen, and all shot in a familiar cold, hard stare. Still, at least the cast are committed to the cause — D’Arcy is convincingly feral, and the fearsome Frank Harper supplies plenty of callous crackle as a coke-snorting daddy screw.

Verdict
D’Arcy and Harper excel and there's the odd punch packed, but otherwise it's an identity parade of prison clichés you've seen a thousand times.

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Film Review - X-Men: First Class

Plot
1962. Mutant supremacist Sebastian Shaw (Bacon) plots to manipulate the world towards nuclear armageddon. Genetics expert Charles Xavier (McAvoy) joins forces with Shaw’s one-time protégé (or rather, test subject) Erik Lehnsherr (Fassbender), both overseen by a secret US government organisation, to stop him.

Review
It is a strange world we live in where an X-Men movie without Wolverine turns out to be better than a Wolverine movie without X-Men. Although, that really says more about the awfulness of Fox’s first ‘Origins’ story (a spin-off with prequel DNA) than the brilliance of its latest (a prequel with mild retcon tendencies). Still, we should be heartened that, with the help of Brit genre-sharpeners Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman (who gleefully bruised the comic-book movie’s well-toned posterior with last year’s Kick-Ass), the X-franchise is back on the tracks laid 11 years ago by Bryan Singer. Even if they do only head towards the point where Singer first laid them.

Vaughn and Goldman prove a suitably bad influence on the franchise. This is easily the most brutal X-Men movie yet, pushing the rating to Dark Knight levels with some pretty raw violence. One superb sequence finds Jason Flemyng’s devilish teleporter Azazel revealing an especially nasty way of using his powers (think vertically). Another sees Michael Fassbender’s Lehnsherr employing his metal-manipulating talents on a slimy Swiss banker in a manner befitting Larry Olivier in Marathon Man.

On the sexy side, we see lingerie-clad dolly birds (prompting Rose Byrne’s go-getting secret agent to strip down to her bra, panties and suspenders in a contrivance on which Austin Powers would groove) and one raunchy/cheeky moment which involves Lehnsherr and James McAvoy’s Xavier inviting a mutant stripper to show them hers if they show her theirs. It’s especially telling that this is the first X-Men movie in which the f-word is growled, albeit just once. And we can’t think of a better character to have the honour of saying it.

The absence from the action of everyone’s favourite adamantium-clawed, cigar-gnawing semi-psycho isn’t too keenly felt, even given the more adult shadings. This is primarily because Fassbender’s Magneto more than capably fills the Wolvie-shaped hole. Indeed, in many ways First Class replays the first X-Men’s story: Professor X has a team, and along the way he brings in a powerful outsider with a dark past and unstable personality, who he attempts to convert to his ideology. Here, of course, that outsider is Lehnsherr, whose early Nazi-hunting scenes portray him as Connery-era 007… with superpowers. And yes, that is as entertaining as it sounds. It’s just a shame it doesn’t last that long.

In fact, nothing really lasts that long in X-Men: First Class, and that is its biggest weaknesses. It is so single-mindedly plot-driven that it whips along at too brisk a pace, rushing through scenes to an end point which feels too neat, too wrapped up, too contrived for a story which still has at least 40 years to go before we get to X-Men. It’s here that you really catch the scent of compromise, feel the pressures on the film-makers (also evidenced in a few too many disappointing FX moments — and don’t get us started on what they’ve done to Beast) to meet their release-date deadline. Why, for example, does Lehnsherr suddenly turn Irish — Fassbender’s natural twang — in the final 20 minutes? We suspect there may not have been time for a much-needed ADR session.

The too-many-characters problem is also felt, with the minor mutants given little more than a few token character moments. There is nothing which comes close to X2’s superb ‘coming out’ scene with Iceman — and we could have lived without the cheesy “Let’s all have codenames!” episode. Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique in particular reduced to a single-issue cipher: she’s the shapeshifter who just wants to look ‘normal’… but should she? Plot holes, meanwhile, are disappointingly numerous; why, for example, does Nicholas Hoult’s Hank McCoy believe his special serum will normalise his freakish appearance (monkey feet) but not remove his special abilities, when those abilities are patently dependent on his physical form?

A more steadily paced, character-driven story which focuses more on the Xavier/Lehnsherr relationship would have made for a much, much stronger entry in the X-canon. Just as the ’60s backdrop is squandered (the Civil Rights movement isn’t even mentioned; instead it’s the Cuban Missile Crisis as channelled through Dr Strangelove and The Man From UNCLE), so is the chemistry between Fassbender and McAvoy. Who cares about all those kids with powers that are just slightly different variations on what we’ve seen in the series already, when you’ve got these guys in your movie?

Verdict
All you’d expect from an X-Men film (or spin-off, or prequel), but not all you’d hope for. It smacks of rush and compromise, but there’s thankfully enough to make you feel optimistic about the series’ future once more. 

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Film Review - Mother's Day

Plot
When a bank heist goes wrong, three criminal brothers head tp their mother's house for refuge. But she's moved, and the house is now occupied by a young couple (Jaime King, Frank Grillo), who are taken hostage by the brothers. Then their mum (Rebecca De Mornay) turns up and things go south.

Review
The Original Hand That Rocks The Cradle psycho Rebecca De Mornay, now 51 and ageing beautifully, plays the matriarch of a criminal family which, after a robbery goes south, holes up at the house they used to own — with the new owners and their friends as hostages. As the tension ratchets up, along with the threat level, the friends begin to turn on each other in a desperate effort to save themselves and those closest to them. Darren Lynn Bousman, director of Saw II to IV, sticks the knife in and twists it slowly — with perhaps a couple of twists too many. Nevertheless, for those who like their horror with a little more character meat, this is a gory, effective chiller, with a dash of social satire (it could have used a dash more) and a faint whiff of misogyny.

Verdict
A nasty little chiller from the Saw director with the evergreen De Mornay on top form.

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Film Review - Kaboom

Plot
Eighteen year-old Smith (Dekker) has problems figuring out whether he's straight or gay. Heading off to college with his best friend Stella (Bennett), he finds a note announcing that he's the chosen one. Things soon get weird...

Review
With 2005's Mysterious Skin, indie gay cinema pioneer Gregg Araki hinted he might have the chops to follow Gus Van Sant into mainstream melodrama, while 2007’s Smiley Face showed he could easily do a David Gordon Green and make stoner comedies for studios. Kaboom, though, is a return to the erotically charged delirium of his earlier “queer John Hughes” movies; inspired by a conversation with John Waters, it’s a light but fun teen comedy in which a sexually undecided high-schooler (Thomas Dekker) is plagued by visions of a corridor, an apartment door to a room numbered 19 and a dumpster. As he tries to solve the riddle, things get stranger and stranger, with witches, ESP and millennial cults, plus the kind of hilariously bawdy dialogue (“Dude, it’s a vagina, not a bowl of spaghetti”) that we might have heard if only Joan Rivers had scripted Clueless.

Verdict
Gregg Araki's sci-fi is a weird and, just occasionally, wonderful skew on the college comedy. Slight but fun.

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Film Review - Point Blank

Plot
Samuel (Lellouche) is a nurse who saves a thief (Zem). But when his pregnant wife (Anaya) is taken hostage, Samuel has to spring his patient from hospital to save her life.

Review
As Fred Cavayé’s Anything For Her drove a wedge between husband and wife, so Point Blank pulls a couple apart through the machinations of circumstance and sheer bad luck. Sam (Gilles Lellouche) is a nursing aide who thwarts an attack on his patient; his good deed sees his pregnant wife kidnapped with her fate now in the hapless Sam’s hands. So far, so so, but it’s Cavayé’s insistent execution of this simple premise that’s so thrilling, that and the idea that there are no clear-cut good or bad guys in this murky world, just men on the margins doing anything to stay one step ahead. Roschdy Zem is fantastic as the dead-eyed villain, Hugo Sartet, while Gérard Lanvin is also brilliantly bleak as his nemesis, the chilling Commandant Werner — the two a pair of death’s head skulls driven towards an inexorable end.

Verdict
Another sparkling thriller from the Anything For Her director. See it, then wait for the inevitable US remake.

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Film Review - Kung Fu Panda 2

Plot
Hero panda Dragon Warrior Po (Black) begins a new phase of training — finding inner peace — with Master Shifu (Hoffman). But when psychotic albino peacock Lord Shen (Oldman) threatens to conquer China and destroy kung fu, Po and pals must leave the Valley Of Peace and sock it to the chops.

Review
2008’s Kung Fu Panda was cute and funny and had some great animated action, but didn’t seem an instant classic. Nevertheless, it entertained audiences to the tune of $600 million-plus and became significant enough in popular culture for a cuddly but fierce American baseball star, Pablo Sandoval, to be known thereafter as Kung Fu Panda and for the Atlanta Zoo to name its new baby panda Po.

DreamWorks’ sequel has been lavished with everything it takes to make it bigger and arguably better, and it does not disappoint in the awesomeness. Furiously flying fists, feet and wings are just one aspect of a fine, fun tale of destiny, beautifully directed by Panda head of story Jennifer Yuh Nelson, written by Panda screenwriters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, with a standout score by Hans Zimmer and Brit John Powell.

Now that Po and the Furious Five (Angelina Jolie’s tough Tigress, Jackie Chan’s Monkey, Seth Rogen’s Mantis, Lucy Liu’s Viper and David Cross’ Crane) are buddies in sync, there’s a bit of badinage about the temple dojo but little time is wasted on auld lang syne.

Villainous Lord Shen is introduced (in an exquisite Ancient Chinese-ey fable) as a bonkers noble who misused the gift of fireworks to make a terrible weapon, was banished, but has returned to make all China bow at his feet. Luckily it has been foretold that a black-and-white warrior can defeat him! Gary Oldman is fabulous as the feathered fiend and his character animators do his performance proud with a stunning, balletic fighting style, the fan tail flicking with lethal fascination.

The pantheon of new characters includes Danny McBride’s one-eyed leader of Shen’s wolf army, a trio of legendary kung fu masters in Victor Garber’s Thundering Rhino, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Croc and Dennis Haysbert’s Storming Ox, with marvellous Michelle Yeoh as a soothsayer sheep. The excellence of the voice cast is matched with absolutely breathtaking, epic landscapes and gorgeous sets in an eclectic, computer-generated mix of animation styles and techniques. Sensational sequences abound, from a runaway rickshaw chase to a black, white and red hand-painted-looking ‘flashback’, hyperrealistic water scenes and 3D’ed-to-the-max aerial views of the Battle Of Gongmen City, the solitary silhouette of Po poised (as iconically as Dirty Harry on the bridge) on a pagoda rooftop above Shen’s dragonship.

The journey and the saving of the day are interwoven pleasingly with Po’s inner journey of self-discovery. Every superhero rates an origin story and Po’s emerges now that he has finally got around to asking what every five-year-old piped up in the first adventure: why is the panda’s dad a goose? (Why the panda’s dad is a goose who wears clothes and makes noodles we just roll with.) Po has disturbing visions of his infancy, when pressed his adoptive father Mr. Ping (James Hong) has a touching tale to tell of discovering the adorable baby panda, and the sage soothsayer makes revelations that — mark our words — pave the way for KFP3.

Verdict
A richer plot, life lessons and loving Chinese cultural references rendered by turns sweet, scary and charming, with yet more fantastical kung fu, make this an engaging winner. Stunning visuals make it real art as well.

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Film Review - Green Lantern

Plot
Test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is given a ring which grants super-powers by a dying alien and recruited into an intergalactic peace-keeping force. Hal tries to avoid the responsibility, but a threat to the Earth and the Green Lantern Corps forces him to become a hero.

Review
Though seemingly every Marvel character short of Howard The Duck and the Disco Dazzler is either a big-screen franchise or in fast-track development, DC Comics has lagged behind its longtime rival. Tentpole superheroes Batman and Superman remain the world’s finest heroes, but hog all the action. Longtime DC fans have got used to slap-in-the-face disappointments like Swamp Thing, Steel, Catwoman, Constantine and Jonah Hex. Green Lantern is the first of DC’s second-tier stars — a status not to be ashamed of, since being on the rung below pop culture icons Bats and Supes still means looking down on Johnny-come-latelys like Spider-Man and Wolverine — to benefit from the major summer movie mounting which has made hits of Iron Man and Thor and established an ongoing Marvel film universe.

This take on Green Lantern — daredevil test pilot-turned-space cop — is based on the 1959 science-fiction reboot of a formerly magic character, but draws most on the recent reworking of the Lantern mythos material by writer Geoff Johns (who even gets a buy-his-books ad in the end credits). Elements carried over from the comic differentiate this outing from standard a-man-can-fly super-heroics since Hal Jordan’s adventures run to stretches of spacefaring action and awe-inspiring sci-fi/comic book/’70s concept album imagery (in 3D), though the Earthbound sections rather slavishly try to follow the Marvel method. Former Deadpool Ryan Reynolds plays a cocky slacker foul-up with dead daddy issues (yawn!), whose recruitment into the Green Lantern Corps prompts his own sidekick (Taika Waititi) to wonder whether “on their planet, ‘responsible’ means ‘asshole’”. Like the movies’ Peter Parker or Tony Stark — and unlike the comics’ straighter-arrow Hal Jordan — Reynolds does panicky comedy schtick to delay hard-to-sell oath-reciting heroism. Love interest Carol Ferris (Blake Lively) is a patchwork of Lois and Pepper — an exasperated ex who will come back to Hal when he becomes more heroic but is mainly here to be imperilled in the climax and poke fun at the skintight CGI outfit.

Though Warner/DC aren’t apparently building up to a Justice League movie the way Marvel are shooting The Avengers, this seems like a prologue for a bigger story to come. Thousands of CG Green Lanterns are seen in a crowd scene, but only two get to speak — Geoffrey Rush-voiced fish humanoid Tomar-Re, and Michael Clarke Duncan-voiced hippo/hulk drill sergeant Kilowog. Hal has to battle on his own, since the rest of the Corps sit this one out and let the rookie defend our expendable galactic sector. Peter Sarsgaard’s head-enlarged nerd Hector Hammond, the traditional distorted mirror/rival of the hero, seems more a preliminary sparring partner than a title fight opponent, while the film’s major menace is an angry, tentacled cloud. Mark Strong simmers on the sidelines as a Corps member in good standing whose 1950s-coined name (Sinestro — it was a more innocent age) and moustache suggest he might go evil before Green Lantern 2. And Jordan’s extended circle of family members, work colleagues, rivals and political connections just crowds Reynolds’ big kid with a power ring into a corner of his own film. When the climax comes, it feels less apocalyptic than just rushed, as the hero goes from complete wash-out to standing up to a primal force of the universe in about five minutes.

Verdict
Martin Campbell made Zorro and Bond work as contemporary heroes, but doesn’t quite have the feel for poor old Hal Jordan. Green Lantern is dazzling in pieces, but we’ve seen too many sharper versions of the superhero origin story in the last few years. It’s not Jonah Hex, but the battery runs low too quickly.

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Film Review - Life In A Day

Plot
Conceived as a YouTube experiment in which people from all around the world submitted footage of their day, the result is a documentary offering snapshots of the planet from a world of different perspectives.

Review
Goats play a surprisingly large part in the world today. That’s just one of the surprises in this portmanteau film, culled from 80,000 submissions from filmmakers all over the world, all shot on a single day in 2010. Covering everyday life from birth to death and from extreme poverty to Western decadence, this is mundane, tragic, moving and often very funny. It’s also — in scenes of cattle slaughter and a fatal festival crush — sometimes shocking. In other words, much of human life is here, and if bits are significantly less attractive than other bits, that’s to be expected. More disappointing is the relevant underrepresentation of women and certain geographical areas (much of Africa, for instance), but all credit to Macdonald and editor Joe Walker for crafting a coherent and wide-ranging portrait of humanity now.

Verdict
Moving and insightful. Not a classic by any means, but a fascinating glimpse of the way we live today.

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Film Review - Just Do It

Plot
A documentary delving behind the scenes of the direct action protest movement, taking in guerilla protests and the heavy-handed tactics used to combat them.

Review
Environmental direct action is, by necessity, a clandestine world, much maligned and misunderstood — not least because of unsympathetic media coverage. This insider’s view of such groups as Climate Camp and Plane Stupid is, therefore, extremely welcome. Crowd-funded, and made with a home-brewed, anarchistic vibe, the film contextualises direct actions by activists and groups, giving voice to the other side of a misrepresented cause. Current enough to cover the unlawful death of Ian Tomlinson — but not, sadly, revelations about infiltration by undercover police — the film features some scary footage of the state’s ‘bully boy’ tactics, and the protestors’ inspired strategies to flummox them in order to make their point. Rousing stuff.

Verdict
Seriously topical but never so serious that it gets caught up in polemic, it's a terrific story packed with characters and told with passion.

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Film Review - Potiche

Plot
It's 1970s France and factory heiress Suzanne Pujol (Deneuve) twiddles her thumbs at home while her domineering husband Robert (Luchini) runs her family business. But when Robert falls ill she takes over his role. With the encouragement of old flame and union boss Maurice Babin (Depardieu), her ambitions for the business grow.

Review
Catherine Deneuve is a bundle of fun in this ’70s-set comedy. She’s the patient, put-upon trophy housewife of a right-wing factory owner. Stepping into his shoes while he’s ill, she proves herself up to the job with a caring, sharing approach that wins over striking factory workers. Based on a play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy, it’s both an inspiring tale of female empowerment and a jolly good laugh: director François Ozon sends up the ’70s beautifully with Farrah flicks, constant smoking and bed-hopping. Meanwhile Gérard Depardieu lends his considerable weight as Deneuve’s political ex, who’s keen to lend a hand in more ways than one. This outstays its welcome with a baggy third act but it’s still a vibrant period pastiche that recalls the fighting spirit of Dolly Parton classic Nine To Five.

Verdict
Like a Gallic Nine To Five ('Neuf a Cinq'?), Ozon's comedy is a uniquely French skew on the gender politics of the home and the workplace. It's mostly funny, fast and fondly made although it drags a little towards the end.

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Film Review - Stake Land

Plot
Vampires overrun the world. A veteran hunter (Damici) and his orphan teenager apprentice (Paolo) wander between enclaves of survivors, and are harried by both the vampires and a cult, led by the charismatic Jebedia (Cerveris), who believe the monsters are instruments of God’s justice.

Review
The most refreshing thing about Stake Land is that its monsters are proper vampires. There’s none of that embarrassed ‘dark seeker’ nonsense which showed the film of I Am Legend didn’t understand Richard Matheson’s novel, though these bloodsuckers have interesting features. One of the best plot threads is the suggestion (taken from Matheson) that after initial infection, the disease mutates and the monsters get cleverer and more dangerous — so creatures which seemed as mindless and instinctual as the cliché zombie start planning, thinking and talking.

Like The Road, Zombieland, The Book Of Eli and The Walking Dead (to take a recent sampling), this is an archetypal post-apocalypse horror. Its scruffy, energetic, melancholy feel reclaims the form for the low-budget, art-exploitation area where it’s most comfortable (think The Day The World Ended, A Boy And His Dog or Mad Max 2) in an era when comparable films and TV shows have drifted towards the mainstream. This takes pride in its rough-hewn, on-the-road manner, with plot developments that surprise and unsettle precisely because they’ve not been processed through the system of previews or focus groups which try to turn a film about the end of the world into a feelgood experience. Stakeland isn’t a complete downer, but its streak of hope is hard-won and all the more precious for it.

Director Jim Mickle and writer-actor Nick Damici made a Dungeon Break-Out direct-to-DVD debut with the New York City-set rat-man epidemic movie Mulberry Street (more bluntly retitled Zombie Virus On Mulberry Street). Here, they graduate to a theatrical release and the casting of a few select names (Kelly McGillis, missing in action for a few years, makes a surprise return as a middle-aged nun). From their debut, they carry over a blue-collar, practical feel and ambiguous feelings about organised religion (some very nasty people call themselves Christians), but it’s more expansive as it wanders between frontier settlements. It’s to be hoped Mickle and Damici stick around at this level for a while, if only because the horror film needs a flow of 1970s-style indie movies to stay alive.

Verdict
A vampire post-apocalypse road movie with blood, brains and heart — and not just in the literal, splattered-on-the-screen sense. It’s a good little genre piece, edgy rather than slick, and well worth a look. 

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Film Review - The Messenger

Plot
Assigned to a Casualty Notification unit, Sgt. Will Montgomery (Foster) is paired with disillusioned captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson). When he becomes close with the wife of a serviceman killed in action, Foster is faced with the fall-out of crossing an unspoken line.

Review
Despite grabbing two Oscar nominations, this directorial debut from Israel-born screenwriter Oren Moverman has languished on the UK distribution shelf for nearly two years. True, it’s no multiplex popcorn premise: locked-down US Army Captain Stone (Woody Harrelson) and his on-edge Sergeant, Montgomery (Ben Foster) notifying families of loved ones killed in action. Yet, gradually, The Messenger reveals a softer, more human film underneath. Montgomery starts a faltering romance with bereaved mother Olivia (Samantha Morton), while the two soldiers establish an awkward, endearing relationship. Shot through with a hazy morning light, buoyed by remarkable performances, The Messenger never really hangs together, but drifts with a dreamlike sadness that’s somehow suited to its characters: a broken, good-hearted film about broken, good-hearted people. 

Verdict
A worthy addition to the canon of Iraq war films, The Messenger has a gentle humanity that creeps under your skin. Look out for a terrific Harrelson turn, too.

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Film Review - Bad Teacher

Plot
Foul-mouthed seventh grade teacher (Cameron Diaz) is dumped by her sugar daddy. To bounce back, she sets her sights instead on colleague Scott's (Timberlake) affections, but the school's model teacher takes exception to this - and conflict ensues.

Review
It’s a surprise, in some ways, that it’s taken so long for a film to obviously trade on the success of Bad Santa. Right off the bat, it’s clear that Bad Teacher is no Bad Santa – it’s too broad for that, while the character stuff is not quite as developed as Terry Zwigoff’s classic – although it is very funny in parts. As a venal, greedy, vulgar teacher only in it to make enough money for a new pair of boobs (and who, pleasingly, doesn’t go through a complete 180-degree personality change), Cameron Diaz is fearless, even taking part in the year’s funniest sex scene... with her real-life ex, Justin Timberlake. It’s patchy and sometimes obsessed with quirk, but it’s good fun throughout, and Lucy Punch walks away with an A+ as the too-good-to-be-true villain of the piece. Can’t wait for Bad Gynecologist.

Verdict
Broader than Bad Santa and less consistently funny, it's still gleefully rude, crude and often a lot of fun.

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Film review - The Beaver

Plot
Businessman Walter Black (Gibson) is clinically depressed and ready to end it all. But when a ratty puppet ends up on his hand, it takes over his life and begins to turn his fortunes around.

Review
Amid all the high-octane lunacy of 2011’s summer season — aliens, robots, more aliens, pirates, even more aliens — the demented image to beat will be that of a ménage à trois between Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and a furry beaver hand puppet. The threesome takes place midway through The Beaver, by which point you will have become acclimatised to seeing Gibson manipulating the puppet on his hand, not to mention making it speak in gruff, Cockney tones reminiscent of his Edge Of Darkness co-star Ray Winstone. The Beaver is not what you might expect — a silly comedy designed to rebuild Gibson’s image.

Instead, it’s a darkly funny psychodrama that deliberately draws on its star’s troubled past to intensify the action. The opening shot of Walter Black sees him sprawled across a lilo, arms extended to look eerily like Jesus on the cross. It’s soon clear that Walter is an alcoholic and deeply depressed. Gibson, with heavy bags under his eyes, staggers through the action as if crushed under the weight of his character’s ennui. It’s a phenomenal performance — if, indeed, you can call it acting.

The film as a whole is more problematic. There are several ways this story could have been played — as a wacky Jim Carrey vehicle (which, at one point in development, it was), say, or as a creature-feature horror where the puppet has a mind of its own. Foster, who both directs and plays Walter’s wife, swerves away from the fantastical and makes The Beaver, for the most part, a deadly serious treatise on mental illness. She and Gibson are the perfect people to make that movie — the two are long-time friends and it’s unlikely anyone else could have coaxed such a raw performance out of him — but the vérité mood makes it difficult to buy into the unlikelier elements of the story, such as Walter’s meteoric rise to fame (in a Hudsucker Proxy-esque sequence, everyone in America suddenly wants their own Beaver). The subplot between Walter’s bitter son (Anton Yelchin) and his high-school crush (Jennifer Lawrence) is well-acted but feels shoehorned in and unconvincing, especially the reveal that the cheerleader is secretly a Banksy-esque street artist.

Had Foster ditched the romance and whimsy, and played the story out solely through Walter’s tortured eyes, The Beaver could have been a batty rival to Black Swan. As it is, tonal inconsistency stops it short of being more than a fascinating oddity, with one great performance by Gibson and another by his wrist.

Verdict
Don’t expect the puppet to wisecrack — there’s more pain here than in The Passion Of The Christ. It never quite comes together in a satisfying way, but it’s still a brave, strange, brain-stirring piece of filmmaking.

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