Made in 1964, it's back on the silver screen for its 50th anniversary and you won't believe how something from such a different world could be so influential still today.
Showing at the Electric Cinema, Station Street - the UK's oldest working cinema - tonight and tomorrow.
Click here for the full review.
]]> A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (U)THE BEATLES' seminal debut film now seems to have been set in an ancient world - yet its plotless genius is that it still seems to be reflecting today's social media revolution scene by scene.
It might have been shot in black and white, but this is a full-colour kaleidoscope in every other sense.
From its post-war reflections, sense of invention, innocent fun, daring cinematography, timeless music and pioneering spirit, US director Richard Lester's high-impact feature is an all-time classic.
Watch this and you can see how everyone from filmmakers like Danny Boyle (Trainspotting), TV presenters Ant and Dec and endless spy series and pop video directors have been influenced by it, consciously or otherwise.
The film's brilliant cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, who died in August last year aged 99, even went on to shoot Star Wars (1977), while Lester, who has approved the new version, made Superman II and III in 1980 and 1983.
Now viewers can see it really shine on the silver screen thanks to a restored 4K version of the film which is of such high resolution you can see tiny beads of sweat on the Fab Four's faces during the on-stage climax.
Originally released on July 6, 1964, it is showing again in Birmingham tonight (Tuesday 8, 8.30pm) and tomorrow (Wednesday 9, 12.30pm / 6pm) at the Electric Cinema on Station Street, the UK's oldest working picture house.
And, if there is public demand, it could be rebooked in for next week, too.
The film opens in glorious fashion with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon all being chased by girls as they dash to catch a train.
Once on board, they meet Paul's grandfather played by Wilfred Brambell
(repeatedly described as a 'very clean man' compared with the famous TV reference in Steptoe & Son that he was 'dirty').
In London, the band feel trapped and grandfather causes trouble at a casino.
We then go to the theatre where the band will be filmed live before an audience of screaming teenagers - but only if Ringo can be found in time after he wanders off to possibly invent the 'selfie' with disastrous consequences.
A Hard Day's Night was Oscar-nominated for best screenplay (Alun Owen) and also for best music, scoring of music, adaptation or treatment (George Martin), losing out to André Previn for My Fair Lady.
Knowing now how life turned out for Lennon and Harrison in particular gives the film a deep, emotional core.
And it's depressing to think that we'll never see anyone on The X Factor coming up with original songs like these.
Above all, A Hard Day's Night is a chance to experience to the joyous, early days of pop, while at the same time noting how the pressures of re-energising national life were beginning to close in on the enchanting innocence of youth.
Former Batman, Christian Bale... come on down!
The result is a powerful thriller which doesn't seek to put a Hollywood gloss on to real life in Pennsylvania's Rust Belt.
To read my full, no-holds-barred interview with the very British-film literate Scott, click on the link below.
]]> Inspired by our own Ken Loach, debut director Scott Cooper helped Jeff Bridges to win his first best actor Oscar. Now he's back with an all-star film about the perils of industrial decay.THEY say in music that it's always difficult to follow-up your first album, but Scott Cooper has pulled several big rabbits out of Hollywood's hat for his second movie.
Former Batman star Christian Bale has been joined by Avatar's Zoe Saldana, Natural Born Killers' Woody Harrelson, Platoon's Willem Dafoe, The Last King of Scotland's Forest Whitaker and Casey Affleck - one of the most underrated actors around.
All were keen to feel the heat in Out of the Furnace, a no-nonsense film which feels like the kind of heavily industrialised metal video that even Birmingham-rockers Black Sabbath have never been bold enough to make.
When Russell (Bale) is jailed and his brother Rodney (Affleck) gets into trouble in the heartland of America's 'Rust Belt', he comes out of prison seeking justice for his sibling.
Although by no means all US critics have warmed to this 'depressing' story of violence and retribution set in an a decaying urban area of Pennsylvania, Scott rises above the barbs.
"I know what I've made and I'm very proud of it," says the man whose own debut movie, Crazy Heart (2010), saw the great Jeff Bridges finally win his first best actor Oscar.
"After Crazy Heart was embraced like it was there was a burden of expectation, so I could have taken on a much less risky project than Out of the Furnace.
"But the people who have influenced me include British directors like Mike Leigh and (Nuneaton-born) Ken Loach who make films that feel real," he says.
One of the people who has backed Out of the Furnace is the mayor of Braddock, the Pennsylvanian town where the film was shot.
John Fetterman has been re-elected three times and at 6ft 8in and 30lbs has plenty of room on his arms to keep adding the tattooed dates of every person murdered on his watch.
"The community lost 90 per cent of its population, businesses, buildings and homes," he told US magazine Variety.
"The poverty, chaos and insecurity seep in and saturate nearly all facets of life in Braddock. This is a central narrative of the American experience.
"We push against an insurmountable deficit of accrued hardship. I am never more than one phone call away from this grim realisation."
Fetterman added: "This is indisputably Christian Bale's most authentic performance.
"It truly would be an injustice for this film, director and these actors not to be formally recognised on behalf of the Braddock community they have so powerfully represented."
For Scott, such words are more important than any review - and a grim warning for what can happen when deprivation overtakes innovation.
"This film is such an honest and accurate portrayal of what Mayor Fetterman lives with," he says.
"Third rate reviews and critics... I couldn't care about them, not when I've had support from colleagues like Michael Mann (Heat), William Friedkin (The Exorcist) and The Godfather star Robert Duvall."
Scott is especially delighted with the look of the film, having developed a close working relationship with Japanese cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi.
"It's expressive and beautiful but not painterly," he says.
"It has the look of work by photographers like Robert Frank, Walker Evans and the painter Caravaggio.
"We had discussions about where to place the camera, when we would move it, what lens, which lighting...
"You have to give him great leeway like you do with the actors, but at the same time you need to have a firm and sympathetic point of view.
"It means a lot to me to work with collaborators who share my sense - who don't just feel the need to please people.
"We are trying to tell the truth."
Scott says he wrote Crazy Heart with Jeff in mind, and Out of the Furnace with his new leading man firmly in his sights, too.
"I think Christian Bale is one of the great actors of any generation," says Scott.
"I didn't know him, but I'd long admired his work."
Newly Oscar-nominated for his other current film, American Hustle, Bale's latest hairy appearance resulted from studying the town's indigenous population.
"Christian is one of the most off-the-set sweet people I know," says Scott.
"He's a great husband and father who has become one of my best friends.
"I couldn't have more enjoyed working with him.
"These guys are all just pushing each other to make the best film.
"They care about the truth and only want to serve the story."
Of Casey Affleck, Scott says: "He's the most wonderful talent who just happens to have a famous brother (Ben Affleck, coincidentally the new Batman after Bale).
"He is under-appreciated and understood, but he's also one of the best actors of my generation."
When Bale's last film, The Dark Knight Rises was premiered in July, 2012, a gunman ran amock inside a Colorado cinema.
"We'd finished shooting Out of the Furnace when that happened and we were editing it," Scott reveals.
"This kind of thing happens too often where the access to high capacity guns is influencing our society in very negative ways.
"We could do better with gun control and mental health issues.
"On too many occasions we are missing the signs."
How, then, does he defend the violence in his own movie?
"You just hope it doesn't influence someone in real life," he admits.
"But we are being truthful and I've written about things that have happened to me.
"I went into woods once and when I saw a deer. I had a chance to kill it and I just couldn't do it.
"Afterwards I said hadn't seen it.
"I lost a sibling (a sister) at a young age (to natural causes).
"But Woody (Harrelson) is like someone who attacked my family in a tragic way.
"My uncle's murdered fiancée was a long time family friend and he then took his own life.
"You write it down.
"In Natural Born Killers, Woody was winking at the camera. His performance here for me is very realistic and he's (also) one of the best actors we have.
"He went to places that are tough for actors to go to.
"We do scenes in two, three or four takes, no rehearsals."
I counted 24 producers on this film - including Leonardo DiCaprio and British film-making brothers Ridley and the late Tony Scott, but this Scott insists Out of the Furnace is his own film down to the last frame.
"I haven't even met some of them," he says.
"But I now share with Ridley the loss of a sibling and it's always sad when you lose someone."
Next up for Scott will be another self-penned film that Leonardo DiCaprio is producing for him.
"I haven't given it a title yet, but it's set in the depression era about corruption and the opium trade.
"I'm eager to explore big stories."
Hopefully this fan of European cinema will one day find one to tell in the West Midlands...
]]>Right!
This film hasn't been to everyone's taste, but it's location is brilliant, the performances top notch and it feels like a journey.
Look out for my interview soon with its em>Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper.
But first, to read the review, click on the link below.
]]> HE'S JUST been Oscar nominated for American Hustle, but the brilliant Christian Bale returns with some fresh facial fuzz and a deadly desire for vengeance.The all-star action is set in similar post-industrial, Pennsylvanian territory to Sylvester Stallone's thriller Grudge Match, except this is ten times the harder-hitting movie.
It's inspired by life in Braddock, a 'Rust Belt' town where the real life mayor's tattoos include the names of local murder victims.
Everyone's struggling in the dying economy, except, perhaps, for Edward Kennedy who is batting on TV for Barack Obama 'to restore America'.
Following an opening which signals the heinous brutality of bearded bruiser Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), everything seems to be blue - from the workers' collars to the bed sheets, jeans, trucks, factories, t-shirts, caps, doors and, of course, tattoos.
Steel mill worker Russell Baze (Bale) tries to help with his brother's debt, only for post traumatic stress disorder sufferer Rodney (Casey Affleck) to be incapable of throwing a fight he's lured into by Petty (Willem Dafoe).
As the heat is turned up on Rodney, how will Russell deal with the risks to himself
Looking totally unlike his fattened self in American Hustle, the unrestrained Bale offers explosive unpredictability fuelled by family loyalties.
Directed by Scott Cooper, whose debut film Crazy Heart (2010) finally turned its veteran star Jeff Bridges into a best actor Oscar winner, the hand-held camera-work overseen by Japanese cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi (Silver Linings Playbook) is of an engrossingly high standard.
Furnace tries to blend The Deer Hunter sensibilities with Fight Club's punch-ups, while using Harrelson's tattooed fists to reference Robert Mitchum in the recent re-released 1955 noir classic, The Night of the Hunter.
But the over-arced plot under uses the Oscar-winning Forest Whitaker as police chief Wesley, who is seeing Russell's teacher girlfriend Linda (Avatar's Zoe Saldana).
]]>Four US Navy Seals try to escape with the lives while descending a mountain at the same time.
Mind how you come back down stairs tomorrow morning.
To read my full review, click on the link below.
]]> ACTOR turned director Peter Berg is just one of many film-makers to have fallen foul of the post 9/11 era, with politically-charged war movies like The Kingdom and Lions for Lambs.But he makes amends here with a visceral enemy-to-enemy combat thriller which combines personal heroism with every soldier's 'band of brothers' mentality and gut instinct to survive.
Even though the title and some opening medical shots give too much away and it's all a bit jingoistic, you'll still be on the edge of your seat about the outcome as four US Navy Seals try to escape with their lives against overwhelming numerical and physical odds in war-torn Afghanistan.
Based on a true story and a US best-seller, the pre-credits sequence offers a masterclass in how to set up a film, with lines like: 'I'm going to introduce you to something called 'Not being able to breathe'.
A stunning landscape shot features an approaching helicopter flying under the stationary camera.
The development of characters like Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), Matt Axelson (Ben Foster), Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and Mike Murphy (Taylor Kitsch) is never as impressive as the action sequences, which will leave even James Cameron breathless when he sees them.
Berg is effectively offering four Rambos for the price of one and the Seals' bullet-whistling gunfight scenes are a combination of Saving Private Ryan on a ridge, Heat on a hill and Open Range out in the open.
Bang, bang, bang! And bang again!
The mountainous terrain offers eye-watering reminders of the broken bones in Touching The Void (2003), fleshed out with rifles, machine guns, bullets and bombs instead of ice picks and climbing boots.
Lone Survivor illustrates how soldiers have to be trained to the nth degree to enable their instinct to override a mere mortal's desire to either wilt, panic or die.
By embracing the inanity and sheer stupidity of war to this level, it also raises the cinematic bar for wannabe recruits to seriously wonder if they have what it takes.
As for viewers watching a film that could just as easily have been called The Hurt Shocker, this is not 'entertainment' as such - many will desire painkillers, not popcorn.
After briefly detailing a 2,000-year-old ethical code called Pashtunwali, to explain the contextual nature of what is a surprisingly moving ending, the end credits salute the real-life members of Operation Red Wings.
]]>If truth be told... they get away with it. Just.
To read my full review, click on the link below.
]]> THEIR combined ages are now 137 and counting... but if you need two veteran actors to star as two washed-up ex-boxers climbing back into the ring, who ya gonna call?The answer of course, is Sylvester 'Rocky Bilboa' Stallone and Robert 'Jake La Motta' De Niro.
They might be 67 and 70 respectively, but watching them with shirts off and gloves on demands a certain respect.
The result isn't pretty (they both look like they're just coming out of plastic surgery ops by the end) but it's certainly effective and you'll be left guessing who might win throughout.
De Niro won his only best actor Oscar in 1981 for Raging Bull, going one better than Stallone whose sole best actor nomination came five years earlier with Rocky.
That kind of history and rivalry between the two New Yorkers is tattooed through their latest characters here.
Both from Pittsburgh, Henry 'Razor' Sharp (Sylvester Stallone) and Billy 'The Kid' McDonnen (De Niro) saw their careers flounder 30 years ago after Razor retired before they had a chance to have a third, deciding fight.
And it's always rankled that it never happened.
A better director than Peter Segal (Get Smart / Anger Management) might have lost 15 minutes from the 113-minute script and given the project a touch more energy to make up for the actors' ages.
But, though gently humorous and with a love interest from the still attractive 60-year-old Kim Basinger thrown in, it's never overtly cliched nor sentimental.
Even though much of this film was shot in New Orleans (probably to keep the actors warm!) the industrial locations - reminiscent of the late Tony Scott's Unstoppable which was also set in Pittsburgh / Pennsylvania - are well shot by Dances With Wolves' Oscar-winning cinematographer Dean Semler.
Worth a look if you fancy a punch-bag trip down memory lane more than any chance of Oscars this time around.
]]>So how does he get on with another film made purely for Hollywood fun?
To read my full review, click on the link below.
]]> KENNETH Branagh's 13th film behind the camera is also the first time he's put himself in front of it since Love's Labour's Lost (2000).And he's on pretty menacing form as Viktor Cherevin, a Russian bad boy who is planning to profit on Wall Street via a post 9/11 terror attack in New York.
What he doesn't count on, of course, is the opposition he will face from covert CIA analyst Jack Ryan.
He's a character from a 1984 Tom Clancy novel who first appeared on screen in the 1990 film of the same name, The Hunt For Red October.
Alec Baldwin's interpretation was followed by Harrison Ford taking over in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear And Present Danger (1994), before Hollywood's latest Batman star Ben Affleck had a go in The Sum Of All Fears (2002).
Star Trek's Chris Pine now steps into the limelight as Ryan, but he still feels like a second rate James Bond.
Despite the most heavy duty bathroom scene since David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2007), any sense that the younger Ryan might now be more agile is tempered by having been injured on military duty.
Medic Cathy Muller (Kiera Knightley) turns his life around, only to be kept in the dark about her man's real job in the manner of Arnold Schwarzenegger's True Lies (1994).
While it's good to see Kevin Costner back in naval uniform, a crisp reminder of his own No Way Out (1987), the Moscow scenes are underdone by memories of The Bourne Supremacy (2004).
With digital cameras enabling Branagh to cut corners at every turn, Shadow Recruit offers plenty of action.
Which it needs in order to overcome clunky single lines of dialogue like: 'I need a cross section of what's underneath this building and I need it now'.
]]>But were they trying just a little bit too hard with this one?
And why did so many songs just go on and on?
To read my full review, click on the link below.
]]> THE COEN Bros are back with another stylish, enigmatic and fiercely independent film.But, while Ethan and Joel's latest story has been clearly designed to be admired, it's a little harder to like.
It's 1961, when the fictional Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is trying to get ahead in New York's folk music scene.
The opening song goes on forever, correctly predicting that every time we see Davis sing, he won't be stopping any time soon.
That would be fine if you'd gone to a club to see a folk star and liked his stuff, but although this is a film with the kind of first class production skills that you would expect, there's something missing.
Friend Jean (Carey Mulligan) wonders if she's pregnant by Davis or by Jim (a scarcely recognisable Justin Timberlake) and, yes, there's a remarkable performance by a tail-high, orange cat.
But why are we really here dramatically speaking when the lead character's musical partner has already committed suicide?
Will it actually take us anywhere - or simply book-end itself by returning to where we began?
And couldn't we have had more than a token reference to Bob Dylan?
There are some lovely shots of instruments and period cars - I could have stayed on the road with John Goodman's irascible jazz musician character Roland Turner for hours - but I never really felt we were in Greenwich Village itself.
The film's two Oscar nominations typically include one for cinematography, with Amelie's Bruno Delbonnel replacing the Coen's regular choice, Torquay-born Roger Deakins.
Five of Deakins' ten, unrewarded Oscar nominations have been for Coen Bros' films, most recently in 2011 for True Grit.
Although the (unrecognised genius) recently lensed Skyfall and Prisoners for other directors, he is shooting Unbroken (2015), which Angelina Jolie is directing from a Coen Bros' script.
Perhaps he - and they - will have better luck there.
]]>But the great thing about her is that she seems to treat each role as if it's first.
This film, like so many others she has made, will take you on quite an emotional journey.
And it's very funny, too.
To ready my full review, click on the link below.
]]> THE TITLE of this moving yet very funny film is so obscure it might as well be called Sausage Country in August.But don't let that put you off.
Meryl Streep's on fire and chewing more than just fat.
With her record 18th Oscar nomination fully justified, she's now got six more nods than even the great Katharine Hepburn managed between 1934-82.
Streep's character Violet is suffering from a 'burning' mouth cancer and an addiction to pills.
Her poet husband Beverley Weston (Sam Shepard), an alcoholic, has hired a native American carer and cook called Johnna (Misty Upham).
Meanwhile, an all-star supporting cast is heading for the family house in Oklahoma's Osage County one seriously hot August.
Violet's daughters include her eldest Barbara (played by the revitalised and Oscar-nominated Julia Roberts), her bearded, separated husband Bill (Ewan McGregor) and 14-year-old daughter Jean (Abigail Breslin).
Armed with sleazy businessman boyfriend Steve Huberbrecht (Dermot Mulroney), Juliette Lewis plays middle daughter Karen while the only local is the still-single youngest daughter Ivy (Julianne Nicholson).
The volatile mix includes Violet's sister Mattie Fae Aiken (Margo Martindale), husband Charles (Chris Cooper) and, eventually, their shy son, Little Charles (played by the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch).
The less familiar you are with Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play the more 'skeletons in cupboard' surprises there will be.
And, while anyone who dislikes shouting in movies might find Violet's reactionary demeanour overbearing, there are many other positives from director John Wells (The Company Men).
The richly dark edges of the many interior scenes shot by City of Men cinematographer Adriano Goldman seem to drip like treacle, yet the faces and table items are somehow bathed in light.
Streep gives the kind of old school performance you thought had died with the likes of Bette Davis and she's armed with plenty of bolt-cutting, Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-style lines including: 'The only woman pretty enough to go without make-up was Elizabeth Taylor... and she wore a ton!'.
And the heartfelt: 'Let's tell the truth, women aren't sexy when they're old'.
Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla won back to back Oscars from 2006-7 for Brokeback Mountain and Babel.
But, although he's powerless to weave together all of the loose plot strands, you'll feel that these people really have lived with each other and, like you, had quite a journey.
But if you watch this, you'll wish he had.
To read my full review, click on the link below.
]]> MARTIN Scorsese will appreciate the timeless, sinister malevolence at the heart of this restored, all-American horror movie directed in 1955 by the brilliant British actor Charles Laughton.Already a best actor Oscar winner in 1934 for The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Night of the Hunter was so far ahead of its time when released that few critics respected its power and it duly became such a financial disaster that Laughton was never trusted to direct again.
Yet here's a man who truly understood cinema from expressionism onwards.
The Night... is replete with an extraordinary range of visual ideas.
They lace together a multi-faceted plot dominated by the shockingly manipulative 'preacher' Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum).
He is after the money that only two young children know about following the hanging of their father Ben Harper (Peter Graves, later of TV series Mission: Impossible).
And he will seemingly stop at nothing to get it.
With Love and Hate tattooed on his vast knuckles, this is a career-best performance from the great Mitchum, even though he was so good as Max Cady in Cape Fear (1962) that Scorsese remade it with Robert De Niro in 1991.
Here, Laughton manages to find shades of lightness and humour in a dark film that would have even had Frankenstein's monster running for cover.
After the over-cooked, white water barrel sequence in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I defy anyone to say they don't prefer the more atmospheric river scenes here in which the two children are trying to escape by boat while Mitchum follows on his horse.
Scarborough born - like fellow Oscar-winner Sir Ben Kingsley - Laughton was nominated again in 1958 for his performance in Witness for the Prosecution.
But after playing Gracchus in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960), he died in Hollywood in 1962 aged just 63.
]]>But did it prove you can have too much of a good thing?
In the end, Leo lost out to co-star Matthew McConaughey - who gave an unforgettable performance in Dallas Buyers Club.
Click on the link below to read my full review.
]]> YOU'LL need a forgiving nature and lots of stamina to survive Martin Scorsese's fifth feature with Leonardo DiCaprio as his leading man.A no-holds-barred hedonistic ride into the 1990s' financial world that lasts just five seconds short of three hours, its Roman orgy-style excesses become, collectively, excessive.
You really can have too much of a good thing.
DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a real-life stockbroker whose initially faltering career rises and then explodes like a multi-bomb firework.
By combining unrivalled expertise with the brio of a man half of his 71 years, Scorsese almost seems to have Tarantinofied himself.
Yet the unrelenting unpleasantness of Belfort's character could be yet another reason why DiCaprio again leaves the Oscars empty handed.
As the shock factor increases with nobody caring about any victims, DiCaprio breaks the film's spell by unselfconciously talking directly to the camera: 'Is all of this legal?' he asks.
'Absolutely not. But we were making more money than we knew what to do with'.
Joanna Lumley plays British Aunt Emma who turns up at Belfont's wedding extravaganza to say: 'I lived through the '60s my dear. Enjoy the day'.
But the best scene is the simplest - when the FBI arrive to quiz Belfont man-to-man, on board his yacht.
The script by Terence Winter (The Sopranos / Boardwalk Empire) is as polished as it is foul-mouthed to a record-breaking degree.
Sharp turns of phrase like 'All nuns are lesbians' are attention-grabbing given Scorsese's former priesthood ambitions.
And 'golden ticket' references, relentless drugs use and some hanky panky in a see-through lift radically reinterpret Roald Dahl's book 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator'.
Even Belfort's father Max (Rob Reiner) engages his son with a chat about bodily hair and people being 'bald from the eyebrows down'.
As DiCaprio moves on he bellows to staff: "There is no nobility in poverty. I've been a rich man and I've been a poor man and I choose rich every ******* time.
"Pick up the phone and start dialling. I want you to deal with your problems by becoming rich."
Scorsese, DiCaprio and Winter are to be congratulated for making a rumbustious rollercoaster ride this resolutely amoral.
And yet, because it's so over the top, and from a different century, it lacks the contemporary relevance of Jeremy Irons' Oscar-nominated Margin Call (2012), a brilliant but limited-release 'credit crunch' drama which played for just seven days two years ago this week.
]]>Happily, this is not one of them.
To read my full review, click on the link below.
]]> NOBODY would ever expect a movie starring Vince Vaughn to begin to rival heavyweight films like The Railway Man and 12 Years a Slave.But here's the big surprise - this is the third of today's releases which genuinely moved me.
Vaughn is one of those actors who I always want to like, except he tends to get stuck in some pretty dumb pictures.
Delivery Man proves that he can, after all, deliver.
Just when pregnant girlfriend Emma (Colbie Smulders) has rejected him and he's been listening to 'don't become a dad or you'll lose your hair' advice from a pal, Vaughn's under-achieving, in-debt-to-the-mob character David Wozniak is hit with some shock news.
Having donated sperm as a young man, the meat truck driver learns he's fathered 533 twentysomethings - 142 of whom want to know who 'Starbuck' is.
Anyone demanding a ribald comedy to rival Anchorman probably shouldn't bother heading towards a gentle court case after lawyer Bret (Chris Pratt), has practised his speeches in front of his own delightful children.
But, if you have lost your father or, more significantly here, never known who he was, then Delivery Man is quite likely to tug gently at your heartstrings.
It's not that the script is especially brilliant - it feels as long as its 104 minutes - or that Vaughn is Oscar bound.
What counts is that both Vaughn, and the film, recognise the importance of identity, belonging and of selfless acts of kindness towards others.
Writer-director Ken Stott has remade his under-appreciated French-Canadian film Starbuck (2011) without feeling the need to resort to the lowest common denominator.
Delivery Man has a beginning, a middle and an end. And, for modern Hollywood, a pertinent everyman story to tell, too.
]]>It had too many faults despite its cleverly-calculated approach to doing well in the awards seasons.
But it's still a compelling watch - and a real tribute to all of the people whose sufferings help so many to draw inspiration for the right to freedom today.
To read my full review, click the link below.
]]> THE true story of a slave who managed to escape back into American society provides the whiplashed, backbone of this harrowing, Best Picture Oscar-winning drama.Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an upstate New Yorker tricked and sold in Washington into a life of chains and cotton picking - but who retains his well-bred dignity against insurmountable odds.
With beatings, thrashings and hangings, the London-born, uncompromising black filmmaker Steve McQueen (Hunger / Shame) takes us down history's tortuous path.
While the heartfelt performances overcome the story's inherently one-dimensional worthiness, the cinematography by Sean Bobbitt (The Place Beyond The Pines) sometimes feels too colourfully crisp for such depressing 1840s' subject matter in the pre-Civil War era.
And Hans Zimmer's initially blood-curdling score changes mood instead of becoming the most distinctive since Jonny Greenwood's screechy music for There Will Be Blood (2007).
That film also starred Paul Dano (Prisoners), who is on psychopathic form here as Tibeats.
His jealous behaviour forces the relatively kind plantation owner Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) to sell Solomon to evil planter Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender).
Northup's chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist called Bass offers hope, but using producer Brad Pitt for this Angelina-style campaigning role undermines the cast's otherwise non-starry nature, best personified by the brilliant Mexican-born, Kenyan newcomer (and now Oscar-winning) Lupita Nyong'o as the hard-working, but horrifically abused Patsey.
Sidney Poitier (1963), Denzel Washington (2001), Jamie Foxx (2004) and Forest Whitaker (2006) are the only black, best actor Oscar winners to date.
Suddenly, Britain's own Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) and Ejiofor were rivals with very similar historical films about personal heroism overcoming institutionalised racism.
Who could split them?
In the end, Elba wasn't nominated at the Oscars, and Dirty Pretty Things star Ejiofor, 36, was unable to become the youngest black actor Oscar winner.
The film's third Oscar, for best writing, adapted screenplay, went to John Ridley.
]]>But, one day, will Colin Firth come to look at it as his finest, and most important, performance?
To read the full review, click the link below.
Like the West's decision to wage war on Iraq, filmmakers suddenly had to deal with the combination of trigger fingers and a lack of real context.
Just what were cameramen supposed to be shooting at and why?
Not since Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker (2009) has there been a war film as powerful as The Railway Man.
More than Steven Spielberg's War Horse (2011), this movie has the ability to engross and set you emotionally on edge at the same time.
And all on behalf of generations of World War servicemen who were unable - and unwilling - to talk about the horrors they'd encountered.
Based on a true story, The Railway Man begins with Eric Lomax travelling north.
He's a railway enthusiast, as opposed to a train spotter, and there are mentions for Birmingham, Warrington, Wigan, Preston and Carnforth, re Celia Jonhson's Brief Encounter (1945).
Listening is Patricia Wallace (Nicole Kidman), a future wife who will later want to know more about Mr Lomax's hidden depths.
Former comrade in arms Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård) might be a conduit, but, even then, will her man open up?
Set in 1942 and 1980, the story is laced with flashbacks to his capture in Singapore, the building of the Thai-Burma railway and how British prisoners of war were treated by the Japanese.
Takashi Nagase (played by Hiroyuki Sanada and Tanroh Ishida) is Lomax's violent nemesis, but the story hinges on how Patti will react to her man confronting his darkest hour four decades later.
War Horse star Jeremy Irvine (who wouldn't have looked out of place in The Great Escape), plays the younger Lomax who is taken to a room that Firth's elder version thinks he cannot revisit.
Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce (Millions) and directed by little known Jonathan Teplitzky (Burning Man), this is a fabulously-measured film.
The score by Australian composer David Hirschfelder (Shine / Strictly Ballroom) is exemplary and every 2D frame has been beautifully shot with a depth that eliminates any need for gimmicky 3D.
As an Oscar winner for The King's Speech (2010), Firth has nothing to prove.
But this is a performance which he might eventually consider to be his finest, speaking volumes for men who quietly carried the burdens of evil on their shoulders.
In time, it might provide some comfort about man's struggle to keep the faith with the power of the sea.
To read my full review, click here.
In November, Gravity opened with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock alone in space.
Now, All Is Lost simply features Robert Redford in a boat... at the start of a 106-minute film about an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation.
The film begins by saying it's 4.50pm on July 13 and that we're 1,700 nautical miles from the Sumatra Straits.
Writer-director J. C. Chandor (Margin Call, 2011) instantly generates a wonderful sense of claustrophobia by blending the lyrical beauty of a Terrence Malick project with the virtuosity of Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
With the confined space inside the boat requiring lots of handheld camerawork, All Is Lost ('except body and soul') will keep you on the edge of your seat like a high class version of Paranormal Activity.
Redford, 77, gives a truly memorable, tour-de-force later-life performance.
It's one to rank alongside Butch Cassidy colleague Paul Newman in Road To Perdition (2002), Peter O'Toole in Venus (2006), Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino (2008) and Bruce Dern in Nebraska (2013).
Even in Hollywood, sometimes it pays to be wrinkled.
]]>And, when you ask that question, the answer comes back to you loud and clear.
To read the full review, click here.
]]> AFTER the first of four Paranormal Activity movies arrived on October 16, 2009, here's a spin-off instalment which I hoped would be so poor as to throttle and then decapitate the entire franchise.At least the completely remodelled set-up has broken free of the old premise of 'couple in a house being tormented while video cameras stay on to record absolutely nothing'.
Crossing Jackass with The Exorcist vibe might be fun, but the basic format is still a one-trick 'found footage' pony.
So do not ask yourself: 'Why is even half of this being filmed at all?'
Or 'Why is every Bad Thing telegraphed so much?'.
The strange mark on Jesse's (Andrew Jacobs) arm is leading to even stranger things happening.
Can his friends save him from the same demon which claimed Kristi and Katie earlier in the series?
Having penned the last three Paranormal movies, writer-director Christopher Landon uses a merciless degree of shaky hand-held camera-work.
Woooah... what's happening to my eyes, man!
Unfortunately this is not a 30-second 'Shake and Vac' ad, but 84 minutes of visual hell for anyone wanting characters to care about, good stories and expert camerawork.
And Paranormal Activity 5 will be out in October 2014.
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