Dir. J.J. Abrams Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon Pegg

Plot Star Trek: Into Darkness revisits the rookie crew of the fledgling starship Enterprise as they prepare to ‘boldly go…’ again, this time up against vengeful villain Kahn (a brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch). Harbouring hatred for Starfleet, Kahn’s vendetta reveals him as a man on a mission, endowed with superhuman strength, superior intellect and an uncompromising will.

Earth, divided and ready for war, feels the weighty wrath of an enemy of perverted principle and without the inconvenience of conscience to temper his utilitarian tactics. The young James T. Kirk (a charismatic Chris Pine), self styled space cowboy, is stripped of his captaincy when he risks the lives of his crew on a whim, violating every Starfleet protocol in the process.

Disillusioned and disgraced, a cavalier Kirk is left to count the cost of his devil may care attitude as a new terror emerges, reawakening in the young renegade a dormant sense of duty and perspective. As humanity winds up for a war it can’t win, Kirk and his cronies must fight the good fight, exposing the darkness within.

Review Benedict Cumberbatch seems to relish playing what he calls a ‘sympathetic’ baddie. In an interview with Click magazine the Sherlock actor (the voice of Smaug in The Hobbit movies) said he couldn’t think of a villain in recent Hollywood history that hasn’t been sympathetic. A recent trend in TV and film which means being the “bad guy” doesn’t necessarily make you a bad guy.

Kahn is likewise more identifiably human: the impassioned idealist, now a familiar fixture of the sci-fi genre, plugging the vile villain’s empathy gap with rogue ideologies and a rationalised resentment. Kahn’s actions are clearly reprehensible, and yet, “he believes in what he’s doing” and feels no need to justify it. “The means may be disgusting, the level of violence and death and destruction and distress caused. But often the intentions are noble – and I mean that in the broadest sense.”

In the J.J Abrams Star Trek universe there is an undeniable pseudo-political subtext, a thematic black hole towards which everything in the vicinity inexorably gravitates. Into Darkness playfully proposes that – whether in Gaza or a galaxy far, far away – however noble your intent, the means employed are often ignoble and symptomatic of a modern malaise which seeks to justify the unjustifiable.

Thematically Abrams gets ten points for ambition, despite biting off more than he chews. Given the buoyant build up, the film’s climax is really more of an anticlimax, disappointing as much as it dazzles. The film is primarily pre-occupied with the messy moral psychology of warfare and revisits the question of conscience in the context of modern militarism, wondering how we distinguish between terrorist and victim.

Verdict 4 out of 5 stars Star Trek: Into Darkness is very much a character piece in which the action, a satisfying spectacle in all of its IMAX enhanced glory, admirably strives to serve the story and the characters who tell it. At its heart is the friendship of Kirk and Spock. Particularly interesting is how their diametric duet develops throughout, defining them both in relation to the mission and to each other, affirming that true power is seeded by service and sacrifice.

Problematic content: Intense action scenes with brief, intense bursts of violence as well as an implied sex scene and a scene in which a woman is seen in her underwear.

Who’s in it? Johan Philip Asbæk, Soren Malling, Dar Salim

What’s it about? Less is more in Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s excruciating piracy drama. The tension of a desperate situation is drawn out like a knife in a masterful display of minimalist movie-making from the writer of The Hunt (2012). The film focuses on the anxiously deliberated response of a shipping company when one of its cargo vessels is hijacked by Somali pirates. This is methodical movie-making of substance and power offering a slow burning plot during which you earn every ounce of its protracted emotional payoff.

Memorable Moments? If art is less what you say more how you say it, Lindholm’s command of his craft amplifies his film’s laudable agenda. A telling scene sees CEO Peter Ludvigsen agonizing over a call to the bereaved wife of an employee. The dignified way the film conveys the quiet humanity of this and other poignant moments invites the audience to experience the emotion the camera seems reticent to relay.

Look who’s talking: ‘Harrowing. A Hijacking may last only a shade under 100 minutes, but the memory, like the captives’ trauma, will last much longer’. – Michael Leader, Little White Lies

Like that? Try this: In a Better World (2010) is another thoughtful Danish drama with a similarly solid moral centre. Director Susanne Bier (Love is all You Need) achieved something quite remarkable, aside from a Foreign Language Oscar, with a film that speaks to the very heart of the human condition. Why veer toward vengeance rather than forgiveness? Why abandon compassion for self-interest? The film unflinchingly testifies to the intimacy of our defects and weaknesses, endemic in Africa, suburban Denmark, wherever, making common truths simple and identifiable.

Trivia Pursuit: The film owes its alarming authenticity in some part to the fact that the ship on which Lindholm and his crew filmed was itself hijacked by pirates, as the director acknowledged in a interview with HeyUGuys.co.uk. “We had guys who not only knew about life as a hostage in general, but life as a hostage specifically on that ship. The production department didn’t like it too much, but we did it anyway and I believe it helped the film”.

I’m So Excited! (2013) Dir. Pedro Almodovar. QFT Belfast 10th – 16th May

Who’s in it? Javier Camara, Pepa Charro, Lola Duenas, Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz

What’s it about? When a plane full of panicked passengers realise the end is nigh it’s seems as good a time as any for the crew to engage in a spot of cabin-cabaret to cheer them up. As camp as a caravan park in Portrush but not nearly as wholesome, Pedro Almodavar’s gratuitous farce has its head in the clouds and its tongue in its cheek. The controversy-courting Spanish autuer’s trademark brand of amoral existentialism is shamelessly shoved down your throat in a film that makes Airplane look like a serious piece of mile-high moviemaking.

Memorable Moments? The flight deck’s crew camping it up to I’m So Excited at 30,000 feet as their passengers come to terms with their imminent death will no doubt tick the boxes for fans of Almodavar-light, while the film’s tediously tawdry sexualised humour will simply turn others off.

Look Who’s Talking: ‘This feels like a film Almodóvar had to get out of his system – a kind of cinematic kidney stone – and your gut will twinge in sympathy.’- Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

Like that? Try this: On a completely different plane (pardon the pun) to Almodovar’s soulless, airborne antics here, The Intouchables (2011) summarises a life lived well as a life well loved, in a film that’s worthy without the apparent worthiness of so many serious sojourns into the human condition, managing a meditation on mortality that’s human, heartfelt and hysterically funny.

Trivia Pursuit: Painstakingly peppered with plenty of silly set-pieces, long-time Almodovar collaborators Antonio Banderas (The Skin I Live In) and Penelope Cruz (Volver) open the film with a cameo as a couple of carefree baggage handlers , cashing in on the popular pair’s box office bounty and giving the uninitiated an easy in before the metro-sexual melodramatics really take off.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Dir. Mira Nair. QFT Belfast 10th – 15th May

Who’s in it? Riz Ahmed, Liev Schreiber, Keifer Sutherland, Kate Hudson

What’s it about? In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks a young Pakistani busy living the American dream in the U.S. sees his world take on nightmarish new dimensions. The film shows how Changez’ (Riz Ahmed) promising future takes a dark new direction as he’s poisoned by prejudice in the land of opportunity. Offering a new perspective on fundamentalism in line with a continuing crisis of confidence in the West, Nair eschews popular presumptions about the ideological deficit between East and West holding a mirror up to America’s most ingrained fears.

Memorable Moments? As Ahmed’s terror suspect is interviewed by Schreiber’s inquisitive journalist we get a colourful glimpse, via flashback, of the wave of wrongful arrests, strip searches and aggressive interrogations which quickly became a staple in the states in the wake of the nascent war on terror, now a lasting legacy of a progressively paranoid America post 9/11.

Look Who’s Talking: “Deliberately ambiguous, The Reluctant Fundamentalist provides just enough answers while leaving us with more than enough questions.” – Richard Roeper, richardroeper.com

Like that? Try this: As a companion to Nair’s film Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar nominated Zero Dark Thirty (2012) describes the motivation and mentality of those involved in the ruthless and relentless hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Methodical and thought provoking, the film’s painstaking deliberation will likely leave you numb and yet its best moments are an important reminder of the inherent hypocrisy of waging a war on terror.

Trivia Pursuit: In stark contrast to U.S. made reactionary films since 2001 and their assessment of changing worldviews in the west, Nair’s film is particularly interested in how America views its own part in the emergence of extremism now the Arab spring has irrevocably sprung.

Certificate: 15
Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, Kim Bodnia, Paprika Steen
Running time: 116 Mins

Plot Written by Anders Thomas Jensen (Brothers) and directed by Susanne Bier (Under the Tuscan Sun) the talent behind In a Better World (2010), Love is All You Need stars Pierce Brosnan (Mama Mia) as a lonely widower travelling to Italy for his estranged son’s wedding and Trine Dyrholm (In a Better World) as an emotionally bruised cancer survivor whose deadbeat husband leaves her for a younger woman. As their worlds collide they form an unlikely bond as their emotional baggage gets lost in transit as they travel to Italy for a family wedding.

Review Despite appearances Susanne Bier’s Love is all You Need is not the film you think it is. Sun-kissed and melodramatic with Pierce Brosnan on another island in the sun, anticipating another wedding, in another distinctly Scandinavian scented soap opera. Mercifully absent this time is the pitifullly pilfered Abba back catalogue, substituted for a very Danish dose of realism re romance, with comedy blissfully teased out of tragedy.

This is very much the grown up, mature Mama Mia makeover you might expect from the Oscar winning director of In a Better World, a film whose calm and unrelenting power to break your heart and prick your conscience in equal measure rightly raised expectations ahead of Love is all You Need. But don’t let the title fool you.

Perhaps a nod to the often inanely indolent approach of Hollywood to habitually re-hash the same old tired and perpetually predictable rom-com motifs, Bier’s playful approach to Ida and Philip’s romantic reawakening belies her delicate dab hand at giving this alternative date night option a bittersweet aftertaste.

Yes, they rediscover themselves in an exciting new light glimpsed fleetingly in each other’s eyes after stealing a furtive glances across a crowded room. They even engage in a typically awkward romantic preamble before eventually ending up with a promising new perspective on their hitherto hopeless love-lives. And yet how we get there is emotional, unexpected, frequently embarrassing and, in more than one instance, regrettably surplus to the heart of the story.

Borrowing a little too excessively from the colourful tradition of sitcom soaps (perhaps Italian, maybe South American, always over the top) Love is all You Need lingers a little too long at times on the drama within the human, occasionally overlooking the human amid the drama, distracting attention from the exquisite tenderness between Brosnan and Dyrholm’s fragile Forty somethings looking for a new start.

Verdict Dyrholm is a delight and Brosnan is charismatic in an entirely new way post-Bond, in a surprising and brave new direction for the Irish actor, this time without the folly of crooning queasy karaoke (a la Mama Mia) to soften the tone, when the plot gets carried away by its melodramatic mood swings. Bier is happy enough to let her film have fun in the sun but graciously insists on sticking around for the awkward aftermath. 3 out of 5 stars

Chimpanzee (2012) – Nationwide from Friday 3rd May

Who’s in it? Oscar (the chimp), Tim Allen (the narrator).

What’s it about? Released under the Disneynature label and directed by Alastair Fothergill, producer of the astounding David Attenborough voiced Blue Planet and Plant Earth documentary series, Oscar tells the charming tale of a cute and cuddly chimp toddler who, left orphaned and alone in the African rainforest after an attack by a rival troop, is adopted by a solitary adult male chimp who raises him as his own.

Memorable Moments? Chimpanzee plays the delightfully entertaining angle with the naturalness of a bright and breezy Curious George episode grounded by the real, often heartbreaking brutality of the natural world as seen through the eyes of Oscar and narrated by Buzz Lightyear himself Tim Allen. As Oscar wanders the rainforest looking for his mother, unaware that she won’t be coming back to look after him, hearts are undoubtedly in mouths, lumps in throats.

Look who’s talking: ‘Has the makings of a great nature documentary … If only Allen didn’t keep elbowing us in the ribs to make sure that we get it.’ – Steven D. Greydanus, Decent Films Guide

If you like that, try this: For an altogether un-Disney chimp adoption documentary look no further than 2011’s Project Nim. Starring the eponymous ‘Nim Chimpsky’ so-called by the scientists who adopted him in the 1970s as part of a ‘landmark experiment’ (read: hippie-funded social disaster) into whether a chimp could be taught basic language skills as part of a modern American family. A disturbing insight into the often harrowing results of the ungodly marriage of science and liberalism.

Trivia Pursuit: Released in the US on April 22nd, just in time for Earth Day 2013, a hefty chunk of the film’s opening weekend box office windfall was donated to chimp charity ‘See Chimpanzee, Save Chimpanzees’. Groundbreaking in documentary terms, the film boasts the capturing on film of previously unrecorded chimp behaviour.

Dir. Richard Linklater. Cast: Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConnaughey

Linklater indulges in a generous smothering of curious intrigue, reflecting on the quaint notion of old fashioned goodness… with a murder mystery thrown in for good measure.

Plot
Based on the events described in his own 1998 Texas Monthly magazine article ‘Midnight in the Garden of East Texas’, screenwriter Chip Hollandsorth irresistibly recaptures the peculiar fascination sparked by the 1996 murder of 81 year old millionaire Marjorie Nugent, in the small Texan town of Carthage, by its new assistant funeral director and all round good guy Bernie Tiede.

Review
In an unprecedented manifestation of U.S jurisprudence the case for the prosecution, led by district attorney Danny Buck, requested that the trial be moved sixty miles to San Augustine as it was feared Tiede’s popularity in Carthage would not allow him a fair trial. Buck’s dogged determination for justice, pitched perfectly by Matthew McConnaughey between hometown hero and self-absorbed glory hunter, is a near parody of his turn as a similarly conscientious but less laughable lawyer in A Time to Kill (1996).

Made mockumentary style with a knowing nod to the provincial peculiarities of small town America, Bernie uses talking head testimony from Carthage residents (mostly palyed by actors with a few real-life residents in the mix) to gradually reveal the kind of man Bernie Tiede was to the people of Carthage, in the context of his close relationship with Ms Nugent.

Tiede befriends and accompanies the solitary and unpopular widow on trips abroad as confidante and finanical adviser. She is eventually discovered, following her murder, underneath the pork chops in the meat Freezer of her home, leaving the town shocked, not so much by the murder but that Bernie could have done it. A realization accompanied by a general feeling of sympathy, in the close-knit community, for the unlikely killer.

Black dazzles as the sincere and patient people person determined to see the best in everyone, while Shirley MacLaine is perfect as the miserable old lady who eventually brings out the worst in him. The pair combine beautifully in a subtle story of human drama and intrigue, habitually funny, occasionally profound and consistently sincere.

In an interview with Little White Lies magazine, Black himself admitted to being “thoroughly charmed” by Bernie Tiede when he visited him in prison to compare his mental image with the real deal, asserting that Tiede “…deserves to be in prison. He murdered a person. But our feeling is it’s been enough time. Thirteen years is a long time to have been in prison. There was no premeditation there, he isn’t a danger to society. In fact, the whole town wants him back because he’s done a lot of good. He can do more good outside than in”.

Verdict 5 out of 5 stars
Due in no small part to Black’s performance, Bernie is relentlessly entertaining and profoundly human, as fascinating and curious as the true-life events which inspire it. Refreshingly devoid of cynicism, Linklater’s film dotes on the notion of a quaint, old fashioned goodness in small town America without ignoring the personal failings of the people who make it tick.

Vertigo (1958) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock – Strule Arts Centre Omagh, Friday 26th April

Who’s in it? James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes

What’s it about? Picturesque San Francisco sets the scene as the backdrop to one man’s journey into suburban psychosis. Arguably the master of suspense’s greatest film, Vertigo (1958) is Alfred Hitchcock’s highly acclaimed, hyper-real thriller, attracting superlatives like ‘significant’ and ‘groundbreaking’ wherever it goes. Hitchcock regular James Stewart plays retired detective John “Scottie” Ferguson who suffers from Vertigo and, as the plot develops, a dangerous obsession, leading Hitch’s unsuspecting audience on a downward spiral of progressive paranoia and dastardly intrigue.

Memorable Moments? Used most memorably during the vertigo inducing stairwell sequences which bookend the action, the legendary “reverse tracking technique”, “trombone shot” or “Hitchcock zoom” for which the film is famous, was ingeniously engineered on set during filming by cameraman Irmin Roberts. This tried and tested technique has since been used to great effect in Hollywood classics like Jaws, Goodfellas and The Lord of the Rings.

Quotable Quotes? ‘You shouldn’t keep souvenirs of a killing. You shouldn’t have been that sentimental.’ – James Stewart (Scottie)

Like that? Try this: With a purely Hitchcockian twist in the tail, Vertigo’s artfully autistic sensibilities were perhaps most playfully popularised in Bryan Singer’s cult crime classic The Usual Suspects (1995), starring Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey, Benicio Del Toro and Stephen Baldwin as a motley crew of career crooks duped by mysterious master criminal Keyser Soze.

Trivia pursuit: In the days before CGI or Photoshop, ever the innovator, Hitchcock used “trick photography”, cutting edge then, customarily quaint now, to shoot the dramatic sequences atop the Bell Tower of San Juan Batista mission. The spectacular scene of the film’s climactic cliff-hanger, the old mission building never actually had a bell tower, just a steeple long since consumed in a fire by the time Hitch came along.

Final Cut (2013) Dir. György Pàlfi – 7pm 21st April, Movie House Dublin Road. #BelfastFilmFes1/www.belfastfilmfestival.org

Who’s in it? Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Chan and many more.

What’s it about? Composed entirely of clips from other movies, with its own original narrative imaginatively engineered using the plotlines and story arcs of some of cinema’s favourite films, Hungarian director György Pàlfi has achieved something rare in cinema, using age old techniques to create something new and exciting in a film that is simple, original and yet pleasantly familiar. Like meeting an old friend for coffee and seeing them in a revealing new light.

Memorable Moments? The appeal of Final Cut is that this one off unforgettable montage of movie making is just one memorable moment after another, turned upside down and inside out to offer a dazzling new mosaic of magical movie memories. Taking classic films and giving them new life in homage to our favourite actors and the movies they made memorable, Final Cut is a technical triumph in sentimental, cinematic, editorial taxidermy.

Quotable quotes? ‘A master class in both film history and editing, the story is told via clips that last just a few seconds yet cleverly move the action forward. Men and women take in a show, fall in love, marry and honeymoon.’

If you like that, try this: The Man with the Movie Camera (1929). Dziga Vertov’s pre-war, silent film is an epic of editorial ingenuity steeped in the Soviet montage tradition, a textbook example of Avant Garde cinema and a visual how to for aspirant editors.

Trivia Pursuit: Maverick moviemaker György Pàlfi, frustrated by the financial frigidity within the industry for funding small projects like his Hungary based and dialogue light mystery Hukkle (2002), proved with Final Cut’s debut in the Cannes Classics section for 2012 that a miniscule budget needn’t stand in the way of success as long as you’re willing to improvise.

Less is more in Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s excruciating piracy drama. The tension of a desperate situation is drawn out like a knife in a masterful display of minimalist movie-making from the writer of The Hunt.

Whoever coined the phrase “less is more” may well have had in mind the kind of ice cold stomach churner that is A Hijacking. Delivering drama on a knife edge has never been so undramatic. When the stakes are this high there’s no time for melodrama, no room for shouty amatuer dramatics, just an insight into modern day piracy by turns elegant and excruciating.

The most distinguishing factor of Lindholm’s low key hostage film is its reluctance to show too much. The film’s willingness to allow the audience’s imagination to work overtime is a refreshing alternative to films of a similar theme within the reality approximating crisis genre which insist on showing every nauseating detail, often when completely unnecessary.

A Hijacking focuses on the anxiously deliberated response of a shipping company when one its cargo ships is hijacked by Somali pirates who hold the crew hostage asking for a ransom of $12 million dollars. Every furtive pause and carefully thought out question from corporate CEO Peter Ludvigsen (Soren Malling) could potentially cost the lives of those aboard the Rosen.

As the days drag relentlessly on, the pressure builds, irresistibly taking hold of Peter and his team of associates as they desperately try to bargain with the pirates while reassuring their families and keeping the company board members at bay as they gradually grow tired and impatient, threatening to pull the plug on the increasingly fragile negotiations.

Through an exhausting game of cat and mouse, fraught with a tension that builds on nothing more than a pregnant pause or a potentially deadly silence, A Hijacking is a rare example of cinema which is material appropriate in its unhurried delivery and devastating in its calm, collected consistency of tone.

There is a measured intensity in the performances of Soren Mallin as the emotionally resolute leader searching for a solution against the clock, and from Johan Phillip Asbaek as the hijacked ship’s cook whose wife and young daughter anxiously await his return.

Lindholm shifts perspective from the hijacked ship, as two of the men desperately attempt to form some kind of despairing bond with their captors in the hope it might save their skin, to the fractious atmosphere of a conference room in Denmark where strategies and ransom demands are systematically weighed up and debated.

All the while the growing urgency of the ransom negotiations, finely balanced and with no margin for error, gradually draws the plot towards its gripping climax.

A Hijacking is formidable filmmaking. A suspenseful tour de force of unusual proportions. If art is ‘not about what you say but how you say it’ then Lindholm’s artistry feeds off and forms a part of his film’s message, a reflection on the importance of personal responsibility.

A telling scene towards the end of the film shows the company CEO agonizing over a call to the bereaved wife of an employee. The dignified restraint with which the film conveys the quiet humanity of this, and other similarly poignant moments, invites the audience to feel the emotion the camera seems reticent to capture.

Immersed in a culture of current affairs fed cynicism, seemingly devoid of empathy, Lindholm’s A Hijacking crucially disregards popular notions of contemporary capitalist ideology and puts a premium on compassion, valuing the human cost of corporate accountability.

This is methodical film-making of substance and power, offering a slow burning plot which makes the audience earn every ounce of its protracted emotional payoff.

5 out of 5 stars