Non-Stop - review

On paper, Non-Stop could easily have been the plot for Taken 3.

Estranged from his family and an alcoholic, Air Marshall Bill Marks (similar in name to Taken's Bryan Mills) must use his particular set of skills to find someone on board his New York to London flight who is threatening to kill a passenger every twenty minutes until they are paid $150 million.

Marks' set of skills include:

Excellent smartphone touch typing without ever requiring autocorrect

Disabling the smoke alarm in the toilet to allow for a cheeky fag

Proficiency in hand-to-hand combat inside tiny airplane toilets

Knowledge of a bizarre airline protocol that states there is a place on the plane you can allow a bomb to explode and it is still flyable at a certain height

However the most valuable skill that Marks requires in this film is the ability to play Guess Who? onboard a crowded plane of 150 passengers.

Who is the hijacker? Do they have a mobile phone? Do they have a moustache? Have they had at least 30 seconds of character development? Are they played by an actor you kind of recognise from that thing? Is it "Angry Cop", "Racial Profiling Islamic Doctor" or "Oscar-nominated Air Stewardess"?

The fun is in the guessing and the script does a good job of keeping the whodunit mystery going for the majority of its flight-time and the finger of suspicion keeps jumping from passenger to passenger, from business class to coach with even Julianne Moore and Neeson seeming guilty at times.

The ending does jump the ridiculousness factor up a couple of notches once a ticking time bomb enters the mix but certainly nowhere near Snakes On A Plane levels.

Neeson's character retains his Northern Irish roots but thankfully the overall experience of Non-Stop has received an entertainment upgrade from its B-Movie roots to Business Class rather than being stuck for 105 minutes on his native Ryanair.

3 stars

The Book Thief - review

Despite being set in Germany during the Second World War, The Book Thief is based on a book by an Australian author which was extremely popular in the UK and US and it has clearly been made with this built-in audience in mind.

This has produced several linguistic inconsistencies throughout the film that include:

The characters speak English with German accents yet at times others speak in German with English subtitles.

Posters, shop signs and book covers are written in German text but the words written inside the books are in English.

Coupled with a narrative voiceover from Death (no, really. Apparently it is a big deal in the book) that is far too posh and infrequent to really have any effect other than perhaps signpost the ending, these elements serve to keep pulling you out of the film.

Everything about the film: based on a book, great cast (particularly young Sophie Nelisse), tough subject matter, inspiring message (reading is good), John Williams score, etc made it look like this would be a terrific final product but instead it is simply OK and the softest depiction of World War II I can remember in a long time which just proves that you can't judge The Book Thief by its cover.

3 stars

A New York Winter's Tale - review

There was me thinking that there wouldn't be a worse film in 2014 than I, Frankenstein, and just a few weeks later along comes A New York Winter's Tale.

The writing was on the wall following the trailer which starts as a rather soppy tale between loveable rogue and petty thief Colin Farrell and a young red-haired girl with TB from Downton Abbey in turn of the century America. THEN he is pushed off a bridge by the incredibly Oirishly-accented Russell Crowe and we find Farrell in modern day New York and it has become a supernatural tale involving angels, demons and Jennifer Connelly.

It was difficult to know the exact moment that you have to put your hands up, admit defeat and just embrace the awfulness of a film which has been played completely straight yet comes across as utterly ridiculous and unintentionally hilarious.

It could have been when the Irish-accented Farrell's German-sounding parents are refused entry to the US as they have Consumption and think that the best chance their son has for survival as they are being shipped back to where they came from is to blindly put him off in a little wooden model boat and dump him in the water near the Statue of Liberty.

Perhaps it is when the audience is meant to believe that a 110 year old would still be allowed to be the acting editor-in-chief of a major New York newspaper in 2014.

Maybe it is when Russell Crowe's demonic thug boss talks to Lucifer (played Will Smith) who wears a Jimi Hendrix t shirt in 1914.

Is it when it is discovered that sex with Colin Farrell is fatal as the girl with TB passes away instantly afterwards?

The point when we suddenly jump forward 100 years and to show this passage of time, Colin Farrell has grown long hair and a beard and spends his time doing chalk drawings in Central Park?

No, the moment of sheer lunacy is around 20 minutes into the film when Farrell's thief escapes from a gang of thugs when he is saved by a passing white horse that then grows wings and flys them off into the distance.

It is difficult to know what could have attracted the cast to the project considering that the novel it is based on was deemed unfilmable by Martin Scorsese before first-time director Akiva Goldsman got his hands on it. The same hands that typed the screenplay for Batman and Robin.

One can only presume that Goldsman had got some serious dirt on Crowe and Smith during the filming of A Beautiful Mind and I Am Legend and blackmailed them at gunpoint onto the set. It might explain why their performances are so bad.

In William Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale there is the stage direction "Exit pursued by a bear" which becomes a running joke in The World's End. If anyone asks you if you want to watch A New York Winter's Tale, unless you are a glutton for so-bad-it's-hilarious movie punishment, simply reply "Drink up, let's Boo Boo!" *exit pursued by a flying horse*

1 star

Prince Avalanche - review

Prince Avalanche is at heart a road movie. Albeit one which involves the main characters working on the road rather than travelling it.

Alvin (Paul Rudd) and his girlfriend's loser brother Lance (Emile Hirsch) are painting yellow lines along a road through the middle of an area of Texas devastated by bushfires in 1988.

There are many song titles that could be used to describe the film: "The Long And Winding Road", "Road To Nowhere", "Highway to Hell" for example.

There is no real plot to speak of, instead we find a character driven piece where both men are forced to confront issues within themselves brought on by the isolation and solitude of the surrounding area plus the seemingly endless, monotonous task ahead.

Rudd is excellent in a rare dramatic role that still allows for the odd comedic moment as the idyllic world he has built slowly comes crumbling down as fast as an oncoming wildfire.

There might have been a point to the film but unfortunately I couldn't find it as it seemed as far off in the distance as the end of the road that the guys were painting.

2 stars

Nymphomaniac Vol I & Vol II - review

After Lars Von Trier's last cinematic outing into the world of sex ended with Charlotte Gainsbourg smashing Willem Dafoe's penis with a tree stump and cutting off her clitoris, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I sat down for four hours of Nymphomaniac at the special One Night Stand event.

Found beaten and unconscious in an alleyway, a woman called Joe (Gainsbourg) recounts her life's sexual exploits to the sympathetic and curious ear of the kind-hearted Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard).

This framing device reminded me of The Usual Suspects and Slumdog Millionnaire, as Joe used objects from around the room to inspire her stories and Seligman would find bizarrely coincidental elements from the tales to link behavioural aspects of nymphomania to such topics as fly fishing, vocal harmonising, etc.

However Von Trier's script is self-aware enough to allow both characters to call each other on the more unbelievable aspects of their stories or observations.

The film was always going to be controversial and hardcore in terms of sex (there was an amusing silence in the audience as they watched Gainsbourg's bemused face framed between two erect penises) but it was never pornographic. As Skarsgard said during the post-film Q&A, it is not a film you can jerk off to.

What was surprising was how much of Nymphomaniac was a film you could laugh at. There was a wickedly dark sense of humour running through the story with the highlight of the film being the chapter called "Mrs. H" and featured Uma Thurman as a woman who brings her sons to young Joe's flat to show them the "whoring bed" their father had left them for.

The best chapters are "The Compleat Angler", "Mrs. H" and "The Eastern and Western Church (The Silent Duck)" and features the film's strongest performances from newcomer (pardon the pun) Stacy Martin, Thurman and Jamie Bell.

By telling her story chronologically, Volume II focuses on the grown up Joe's experiences it suffers from a lack of Stacy Martin and the continuation of Shia Labouef's woeful attempt at an English accent (I believe that was what he was going for even though for Volume I I thought he was meant to be Australian).

Plus it features the film's worst chapter "The Gun" which has little to do with sexual desire and instead becomes a generic crime story before the whole story comes to a close with a horribly misjudged ending that is not in keeping with the characters up to that point.

Ultimately Nymphomaniac is similar to many sexual encounters.
It starts off rather promisingly, there is a spark, chemistry, everyone is having a good time but soon you find yourself in uncomfortable positions before the whole affair limps to an unsatisfying climax.

Volume I - 4 stars
Volume II - 2 stars

Stalingrad... In 3D! - review

War, huh, yeah, what is it good for? Making movies that's what.

There have been some truly great films made about war. Downfall, The Thin Red Line, Apocalypse Now, Star Wars...

But until now, none of them had attempted to capture the horror of war in gut-wrenching 3D, which is exactly what Russia's first 3D and IMAX production Stalingrad has done.

Initially bemused by having the film start with a framing device of a man helping out in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake/tsunami telling the story of his mother during WWII, we are thrown into battle scenes of an attack on the German forces by Russian soldiers which are filmed in a slo-mo, hyper-stylised way that was used in 300.

While it does offer some striking images such as soldiers on fire from destroyed oil tanks, coming over a hill to attack the Germans, it doesn't have the weight and gravity that other war films have when it comes to their battle scenes. There isn't the same harsh reality of war, with the blood and guts, pain and loss being lost amongst the CHI and green screen effects used to make the film look as good as possible (including it must be admitted very impressive 3D work).

The story focuses on one small band of soldiers who attempt to hold a pivotal location against the Germans, whilst protecting a young girl who has been living there amongst the rubble.

With it being a Russian production, it was odd to see that the main group of soldiers didn't really have much character development beyond The Leader, The Sniper, The Old Guy, The Young Guy and The Opera Singer.

The most interesting and complex character was in fact a German solider (played by the terrific Thomas Kretschmann) who had fallen in love with a Russian girl who reminded him of his wife, even though they didn't speak each others languages and she might not have felt the same way instead seeing him as an opportunity to survive the war.

As the initial OTT battle scenes give way to the quieter character-focused moments and Angelo Badalamenti's score began to soar, the film improves and becomes more than just a 3D exercise in explosions.

It's not Stalin-bad but won't join the ranks of the classic war films either.

3 stars

The Monuments Men - review

In the 2013 film Trance, art auctioneer Simon says "No piece of art is worth a human life".

The Monuments Men spends its 118 minute running time arguing that it is, several of them in fact.

The plot sounds like Ocean's WWII with George Clooney assembling a team of art experts to go into the war zone and protect and retrieve some of the most important historical and cultural artefacts.

The team includes people like Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin and Hugh Bonneville but one of the film's biggest problems is that as soon as they get together, they split off into pairs or solo missions and you spend so little time with each person it is difficult for them to make any real impression, which makes it difficult when some of the cast meet their maker.

It feels like a waste of a cast that clearly has genuine chemistry together (as evidenced by Damon, Bonneville and Murray on the Graham Norton show) but there is never the chance for them to display it here.

With the cast spread out over Europe, tonally the film is similarly all over the place. Is it meant to be a light-hearted WWII romp a la The Great Escape, hard-hitting war movie or art history lesson on this forgotten tale? The film never seems sure in itself and suffers as a result.

The Monuments Men is unlikely to be a film that anyone will give their life to try and save in order to protect it over other classics in cinema history.

2 stars