Pacific Rim - Review

Director: Guillermo del Toro Writers: Travis Beacham, Guillermo del Toro Studios: Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman Release Date (UK): 12 July 2013 Rating: 12A Runtime: 131 min

“Pacific Rim” is a mega-budgeted summer blockbuster about giant robots doing battle with giant alien monsters, and it puts Michael Bay’s “Transformers” movies to shame. Inspired by the Japanese anime franchise “Neon Genesis Evangelion” and the Godzilla and Mothra B-movies of the '50s and '60s, it imagines a near-future world in which towering bioluminescent beasties emerge from an interdimensional portal deep beneath the Pacific and kill millions upon reaching land. In an effort to deal with the growing alien threat, humanity unites and initiates the Jaeger program, in which piloted, skyscraper-sized rock-em sock-em robots are constructed to go fist-to-face with the invading “Kaijus” and rescue mankind from the impending apocalypse.

This inevitably leads to senseless, city-destroying carnage and billions of dollars-worth of property damage, but unlike in Bay’s soulless cash cows, there’s a beating heart to be found amongst the wreckage. This is to be expected from director Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican filmmaker who gave us the enchanting dark fantasy “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the giddy comic-book actioner “Hellboy.” In the sequel to that last film, 2008’s “The Golden Army,” del Toro also paid loving tribute to the creature feature genre in a surprisingly poignant scene where a newborn fifty-foot plant-creature attacks a city — upon its death, there’s not joy but sadness, as it’s revealed that the exterminated creature was the last of its kind.

It’s that same heartfelt sense of humanity that fuels “Pacific Rim,” though you won’t be shedding any tears for these big ugly brutes: loud and ferocious, insectoid and crustaceous, the Kaijus are proper movie monsters who’ll turn a city and its entire population to dust without a second’s thought. You might, however, become misty-eyed in a scene where a frightened young Japanese girl named Mako flees from an attacking Kaiju in the street and cowers teary-eyed behind a bin in an alleyway. Years later (now played by Rinko Kikuchi), she’s a rookie Jaeger pilot who joins forces with the more experienced but recently washed-up Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam), who’s been left troubled after watching his brother (and former co-pilot) die at the hands of a Kaiju. Together, they pilot one of the last remaining Jaegers and make a last-ditch effort to defeat the Kaijus once and for all when a plan is devised to destroy the portal linking their world and ours.

Fun support comes from Idris Elba, who chews scenery just as much as the Kaijus demolish it as he plays the stern head of the Jaeger program, while Charlie Day and Burn Gorman provide rib-tickling comic relief as a pair of bickering rival science geeks. But stealing the show even from the destructive Jaeger-on-Kaiju action is the unbeatable Ron Perlman, who plays the strikingly monikered Hannibal Chau, a black market trafficker of harvested Kaiju parts — not even a mountainous mecha-bot bashing gargantuan hellspawn over the head with a full-sized cargo ship, as awesome as that may be, can top Perlman’s toothy grin and grizzled growls.

This film is enormous fun, perfectly capturing the boundless, boisterous spirit of a Saturday morning cartoon show and directed with such irresistible affection and enthusiasm by del Toro that only the grumpiest of grumps will struggle to get caught up in the fun of it all. Del Toro has said in interviews that working on this project reawakened his inner 11 year old — and now, thanks to its release, “Pacific Rim” can do the same for audiences worldwide.

Rating: 8/10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 72%
Metacritic Score: 64/100
IMDb Rating: 7.8/10

The Internship - Review

Director: Shawn Levy Writers: Jared Stern, Vince Vaughn Studios: 20th Century Fox, Regency Enterprises, Wild West Picture Show Productions, 21 Laps Entertainment, Dune Entertainment Cast: Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Rose Byrne, Aasif Mandvi, Max Minghella Release Date (UK): 4 July 2013 Certificate: 12A Runtime: 119 min

The glorified 120-minute Google ad “The Internship” might just be the most obscene piece of movie product placement since Ronald McDonald and a bunch of kids spontaneously danced their way through a McDonald’s restaurant in “Mac and Me” in 1988. A studio buddy comedy, it stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as Billy McMahon and Nick Campbell, a pair of recently out-of-work fortysomething watch salesmen who — get this, right — apply for an internship at Google. Vaughn and Wilson are good together, their comic chemistry strong, but viewers expecting another “The Wedding Crashers” will instead be greeted with the much less fun and much more cynical “The Google Pluggers.”

It’s telling that they play salesmen. All throughout the movie, Google products are name-dropped with stupefying regularity: those being Google Search, GMail, Google Maps, etc. Once accepted, Billy and Nick must complete a series of Google-centric challenges if they are to win a coveted position in the company: creating a Google app, for one, and convincing a local business to join Google’s amazing advertising system. Meanwhile, Google Headquarters, which looks to be the meeting point between a workplace and a children’s playground, is repeatedly praised as “the greatest place to work in America,” probably because it has a slide in its lobby. Vaughn (also a co-writer and producer) has essentially made a career out of being the salesman (as he was in “Couples Retreat” and “The Dilemma”), but never before has this been so blatant or shameless.

Good support comes from Aasif Mandvi, playing the whip-cracking head of the intern program, and the always splendid Rose Byrne in an otherwise thankless role as Wilson’s love interest. The central gag — two dinosaurs surrounded by tech-savvy geeks in one of the world's biggest tech companies — gets stale somewhere around the halfway point, while messages about overcoming your limitations and fulfilling your dreams drown in the sea of Google signs and Google products. I’d complain about the whole thing being 30 minutes too long, but given the film’s true intentions this really shouldn’t have lasted longer than 30 seconds.

Rating: 4/10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 36%
Metacritic Score: 42/100
IMDb Rating: 6.5/10

Now You See Me - Review

Director: Louis Leterrier Writers: Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin, Edward Ricourt Studios: K/O Paper Products, Summit Entertainment Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fischer, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine Release Date (UK): July 3 2013 Rating: 12A Runtime: 115 min

Pitched as a collision of “Ocean’s Eleven” and “The Prestige,” the elaborate crime caper “Now You See Me” is a ludicrous, overplotted muddle that, while dazzling along the way, gets lost in its own self-created labyrinth of twists and turns. Like the earlier (and much more satisfying) “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” it’s set in the world of magic, and sees four gifted, loosely connected tricksters (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fischer and Dave Franco) assembled, Avengers-style, by a mysterious hooded figure to become master thieves.

One year later they’re the superstar illusionists The Four Horsemen, who pull off daring bank robberies on-stage and shower the audience in the stolen loot - during their lavish, sold-out Vegas act, for example, they seemingly teleport a randomly selected audience member to his bank in Paris and suck up millions of dollars worth of Euros from its locked-up vault. Catching the eye of the authorities, they’re soon the targets of Mark Ruffalo’s scruffy FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes and Melanie Laurent’s fetching Interpol detective Alma Dray, who with the aid of Morgan Freeman’s wise and all-knowing magic debunker Thaddeus Bradley, attempt to solve the Horsemen’s tricks before their grand finale, where things really should amaze.

If only that were so. French action maestro Louis Leterrier - the man behind the fun “Transporter” movies and the rotten “Clash of the Titans” remake - directs the magic shows with plenty of flashy panache, but lacks the cinematic sleight of hand to pull off the film’s logic-defying plot turns. The self-satisfied script by Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricouri isn’t nearly as clever as it thinks it is, and the whole thing is undermined by an overuse of crummy CGI that ruins any sense of wonder the stage tricks would otherwise have had. It all comes down to a final twist that, while certainly unexpected, is more likely to leave viewers feeling cheated rather than amazed.

Rating: 5/10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 47%
Metacritic Score: 50/100
IMDb Rating: 7.5/10

Monsters University - Review

Director: Dan Scanlon Writers: Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird, Dan Scanlon Studios: Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures Cast: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Helen Mirren, Nathan Fillion, Steve Buscemi Release Date (UK): 12 July 2013 Certificate: U Runtime: 104 min

In “Monsters University,” studios Disney and Pixar pay a grand revisit to the world of workaday boogeymen first brought to the big screen twelve long years ago in the wonderfully inventive computer-animated hit “Monsters, Inc.,” where the monsters in our closets were revealed to be harvesting our screams of terror to power their city. A belated prequel to that 2001 gem, this delightfully witty and thoroughly engaging follow-up transports us back to the college years of future best buds Mike Wazowski and James P. “Sulley” Sullivan, who before becoming the top scare team at the Monsters, Inc. factory were enrolled at the prestigious Monsters University with the same determined goal: to become the biggest scarer in all of Monstropolis.

Once again voiced by Billy Crystal and John Goodman respectively, the walking, talking, hopelessly neurotic eyeball and blue-furred gentle giant initially clash heads in the institution's famous “scare program”: Mike is the brainy, unscary nerd with his eye always buried in a textbook while Sulley is the jockish party animal skating along on natural talent (and his loud, ferocious growl). When their classroom bickering goes one step too far and sees them unexpectedly booted from the program, the collegiate rivals decide to join forces along with a ragtag fraternity of misfits to win the annual Scare Games in a bid to prove to the tyrannical, dragon-winged, centipede-legged Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren, “Hitchcock”) that they truly are scarers worthy of MU.

Along the way are the expected nods and winks to coming events seen in the previous film — Steve Buscemi’s slithering future-nemesis Randall is greeted with a villainous music cue before he’s cheekily revealed to be a nervous dweeb — but unlike most tampering movie prequels, this leaves little to snarl at as it seamlessly expands upon the universe and character backstory of the first film while standing mightily on its own two furry feet. Writer-director Dan Scanlon and co-writers Daniel Gerson and Robert L. Baird have fun in paying homage to other, more adult-oriented campus comedies — older viewers will be reminded of the likes of “Animal House” and “Revenge of the Nerds” — while filling the screen with colourful characters sporting jagged fangs and multiple heads.

Messages about the values of teamwork and honesty are touching and well delivered, but where the film’s throbbing heart truly lies is in the growing central relationship between Mike and Sulley, whose bromance blossoms once the Scare Games begin and whose friendship in the original “Monsters, Inc.” is enriched rather than spoiled by this heartfelt and often hilarious origin tale — that is, after all, what prequels are supposed to do, aren’t they? Worries that Pixar had lost their way following the clunky mechanics of the needless “Cars 2” should now be well and truly dispelled: this, alongside their enchanting 2012 feature “Brave,” helps recrown the computer animation company as the undisputed kings of American animation.

Rating: 8/10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%
Metacritic Score: 64/100
IMDb Rating: 7.8/10

Man of Steel - Review

Director: Zack Snyder Writer: David S. Goyer Studio: Warner Bros. Cast: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane Release Date (UK): 14 June 2013 Certificate: 12A Runtime: 143 min

A common criticism of “Superman Returns,” director Bryan Singer’s spiritual 2006 follow-up to Richard Donner’s triumphant 1980 comic-book sequel “Superman II,” is that at no point during the film’s sizable 154-minute length does Brandon Routh’s titular superhero get to throw a punch. Instead, he’s far too busy lifting a series of increasingly heavy objects: he starts, ambitiously, with a free falling jumbo jet and slowly but surely works his way up to an entire island made of solid Kryptonite. All impressive feats of physical strength, I’m sure you’ll agree, but viewers were left dissatisfied with the film’s disappointing lack of blood-pumping action: where’s the excitement, the summer crowd cawed, and where exactly is the punching?

It’s a complaint that cannot and will not be launched against “Man of Steel,” director Zack Snyder’s bombastic, $225 million blockbuster which acts as a reboot of both the three-decades-old film franchise and the iconic DC Comics character who has prevailed for three quarters of a century. In it, Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer retell Supe’s well-known origin story — an alien infant from the dying planet Krypton is sent to live on Earth, where he grows up to become the colourfully costumed protector of mankind — with the straight face of Christopher Nolan’s masterfully handled “The Dark Knight” trilogy (Nolan serves as producer here) and the grandiose, pumped-up stylisation of Snyder’s previous two comic-book adaptations: those being his blood-splattered big-screen renditions of Frank Miller’s “300” and Alan Moore’s “Watchmen.”

“Man of Steel," of course, isn't as icky or gooey as either of those last two films — it is, after all, rated a teen-friendly 12A — but what is shares with them is a bare-knuckle brawniness and a testosterone-pumped energy the likes of which have never before been seen from the Last Son of Krypton. Here, Superman hurtles between — and often through — the skyscrapers of Metropolis with a jet trail behind him and a sonic boom at his feet, Snyder staying true to the age-old notion that Supes is faster than a speeding bullet. The result is exhilarating and redefines Superman as an absolute badass: “Superman Returns” detractors will be thrilled to hear that in 2013, Superman fights for truth, justice and the American way primarily by bashing badguys in the face.

Taking over the red cape and S symbol (but thanks to a nifty costume update, not the Y-fronts) from Routh is Henry Cavill, a Brit best known for his supporting role in historical TV drama “The Tudors.” Cavill has the look, the voice and the gravitas to pull off playing a godlike super-being, if perhaps not the authoritative, wholesome charm that Christopher Reeve brought to the role in 1978 — though to be fair, that is a tough act to follow. Following the dizzying spectacle of the opening half-hour, in which Superman/Kal-El's birth to proud parents Jor-El (Russell Crowe, a terrific replacement for Brando) and Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer, “Angels & Demons”) is depicted against the explosive and vividly rendered backdrop of a dying, war-torn alien planet, the film settles down, and we fast-forward thirty years or so to find that Cavill’s Clark Kent is a drifter, wandering from town to town and job to job, searching for clues to his true identity and occasionally saving endangered civilians from a burning oil rig or two.

It is in this section, which is interspersed with flashbacks to Clark’s childhood as he is raised on a rural Kansas farm by foster parents Jonathan (Kevin Costner, “The Company Men”) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane, “Secretariat”), that the title becomes important, as “Man of Steel” focuses on the man behind the costume, the man who is a troubled outsider, the man who wishes to do good with his powers, the man told by Costner's Pa Kent to hide and keep his true nature a secret until both he and the world around him are ready. It is in these quieter, more grounded scenes that “Man of Steel” is at its most poignant and arguably its most effective (Clark’s classroom freak-out is a touching highlight), even if the clunky, back-and-forth flashback structure stifles some forward momentum.

It's not long before the action picks up again, as General Zod (Michael Shannon, “The Iceman”), a mutinous Kryptonian military man who has recently escaped from imprisonment in the Phantom Zone, arrives on Earth and demands over the airwaves that the fugitive known as Kal-El turn himself in... or else. As played by Shannon, whose trademark wide-eyed intensity makes for bone-chilling viewing, Zod is a terrifying nemesis, capable of acts of savage cruelty and fitted with a fierce determination to protect his people no matter the cost — even if that means wiping out an entire population (say, oh I dunno, the people of Earth?) to make way for a brand new Krypton.

He's also capable, it turns out, of kicking Superman's ass, as is proven in an epic and jaw-slackening 45-minute finale in which the two, along with Zod’s team of Kryptonian cronies, go toe-to-toe, and fist-to-face, amidst the crumbling skyscrapers of downtown Metropolis. Fuelled by Hans Zimmer’s thunderous score and Snyder’s clear love of cataclysmic destruction, it’s a chaotic and thoroughly exhausting showdown which gives the geek-tastic, New York-busting climax of Joss Whedon's "The Avengers” a run for its money (and that's quite a hefty sum).

Even when it does at points become so noisy and overblown that it teeters dangerously close to dreaded “Transformers” territory, it's difficult not to get caught up in the awesome grandeur of it all. Like the rest of the movie, it's best to just sit back and let it all wash over you, and the shining spectacle dazzle your eyes, and the colossal weight leave you breathless. This is Superman redefined for a whole new generation, Snyder, Goyer and Nolan having boldly reinvented the mythos and character for the 21st century, and in doing so making the man in the bright blue tights exciting again. Perhaps it doesn't quite soar to the towering heights of Nolan's brilliant “Batman Begins” (the balance between action and drama falls a little too heavily on the former), but if Warner Bros. are looking to kick-start their next big superhero franchise — and, if the rumours are true, a “Justice League” movie — they’re off to a solid and promising start.

Rating: 8/10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 56%
Metacritic Score: 55/100
IMDb Rating: 7.8/10

Iron Man 3

And so Marvel’s Phase Two begins, with a crash, a bang, a wallop and, strangely enough, the unmistakable, toe-tapping intro to Eiffel 65’s late-’90s Europop hit, “I’m Blue (Da Ba Dee, Da Ba Da).” “Iron Man 3” is Marvel Studio’s first theatrical release since their epic superhero team-up “The Avengers” kicked movie-goers’ butts in the summer of 2012 (and in doing so, raked in over $1 billion at the international box office), and it was feared that everyone's favourite man-in-a-can would crumble under the immense weight of Joss Whedon’s huge-scale juggernaut - just how would Tony Stark’s next solo outing fare without the rest of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes tagging along for the ride?

Quite well, it turns out: co-written and directed by legendary “Lethal Weapon” scribe and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” helmer Shane Black - as should be obvious from the get-go, what with Robert Downey, Jr.'s meta-riffic opening narration and the otherwise inexplicable Christmastime setting - this first film in the build-up to 2015’s “The Avengers 2” stands sturdily and mightily on its own two feet, bursting with personality, sizzling with wicked humour, soaring with high-octane thrills and packing an almighty wallop of a plot twist that’s guaranteed to split the comic-book crowd in two - in the age of pesky internet spoilers and overly revelatory studio marketing, it’s refreshing to see a blockbuster with genuine shocks and surprises in store.

Most surprising of all though, is how mature Marvel’s latest output is - have you ever seen a superhero movie tackling the harrowing effects of PTSD? That’s what super-snarky superhero Tony Stark is having to deal with, and it’s turned his high life upside down: following his near-death experience in New York (i.e. the alien-busting finale of “The Avengers,” wherein Tony travelled through a wormhole into space), the self-described “genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist” is now an insomniac, frightened for the safety of his beloved Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), crippled by anxiety attacks and spending his nights in the basement of his ocean-view pad, obsessively building new armours to help keep his mind busy and distracted.

As it turns out, he has more to worry about than panic attacks and sleep deprivation: hooded, ethnically nondescript terrorist mastermind The Mandarin, played with chilling, scenery-chewing menace by British thesp Sir Ben Kingsley (clearly having a ball), is hijacking the American airwaves, broadcasting hyper-edited videos in which he threatens to teach the American populace a lesson or two - chiefly by bombing the US to kingdom come. Aiding the Mandarin in his reign of terror is Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce, “Lockout”), a slimy, devilishly handsome scientist whose science experiment Extremis is sure to get Tony hot under the collar: a biological enhancement, it either a) transforms its subject into a nigh-unstoppable, auto-repairing T-1000 crossed with a lava lamp, or b) turns its subject into a walking lava bomb, a bug the Mandarin has been using to stage untracable terror attacks.

And when a loyal friend is caught in one of these attacks and sent into a coma, Tony publicly swears revenge, a move that sees his swanky Malibu home visited by a trio of attack-choppers, blasted by missiles and sent hurtling down the side of a cliff. This is portrayed in a spectacular action set-piece - one of many - which leaves Tony armourless, homeless and stranded in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, forced to rely on his wits rather than his fire-power to survive.

This is a development that’s crucial to the success of “Iron Man 3:” though its predecessors solved the potential problem of the Iron Man exoskeleton being an impersonal CG creation with the ingenious device of an in-helmet face-cam, “Iron Man 3” goes one step further, keeping Tony out of his metal suit for the majority of the action. This leaves Downey, Jr. to be Downey, Jr., stripped of the armour he so naturally outshines and given a few extra doses of vulnerability. Add to that the possibility of Tony’s recent mental instability meaning he could at any second be reduced to a quivering wreck, and you’ve got yourself a compelling action hero, faults and all.

Also crucial is the involvement of Black, whose dialogue (written alongside Scottish newbie Drew Pearce) fizzes with wit and who brings to the proceedings a subversive quality: constantly, expectations are defied, be it through Tony’s amusingly harsh remarks to a friendless, fatherless boy he’s just befriended (young Ty Simpkins, wonderful), or through a rug pull that catches us off-guard and instantly reshapes our entire understanding of the plot. Then, of course, there’s the buddy-cop element for which Black is most famous, and which he practically invented in 1987, here shared between loose-cannon Tony and straight-arrow Rhodes (Don Cheadle), aka War Machine, aka Iron Patriot; bantering and bickering together amidst fiery chaos, they’re like a 21st century Riggs and Murtaugh, albeit clad in weaponised metal suits.

And then, of course, there’s the grand finale, which leaps and dives through the levels of an abandoned oil rig and which damn near gives “The Avengers"' climax a run for its money (and that’s quite a hefty sum): it may not have a Hulk, but it has a Hulkbuster, along with the rest of the toys Tony’s been tinkering with in his basement, finally taken out for a spin to do battle with indestructible volcano people. It was a problem with director Jon Favreau’s previous instalments that their climaxes consisted of monotonous, “Transformers”-esque robot-bashing-robot action. This one blows the both of them out of the water, with Tony out of his armour, bloodied and bashed, and fighting like a human being - for once, an “Iron Man" movie nears its finishing line with a genuine sense of peril, and we’re gripped at every second.

It’s hinted at in the film’s final moments that this may be the final “Iron Man” movie. If this is true (and one doubts it very much), then Mr Stark has gone out on an all-time high: “Iron Man 3” is the best of the “Iron Man” movies, Black giving the clunky “Iron Man 2” a good, hard kick up the backside and tying up the trilogy in a neat and tidy bow while looking ahead to the future. It’s not perfect - Rebecca Hall’s Maya Hansen, an old flame of Tony’s and employee of Killian, is cruelly short-changed with minimal screen-time - but it’s difficult to imagine Phase Two getting off to a more exciting start. Put simply, Cap, Thor and the yet-to-be-unveiled Guardians of the Galaxy have their work cut out in topping Tony’s third, and possibly final, adventure. But if anyone can do it, it’s Marvel.

9/10

Olympus Has Fallen

‘“Die Hard” in the White House’ was presumably the six-word pitch for Antoine Fuqua’s “Olympus Has Fallen,” a brawny action blockbuster which, given how piss-poor John McClane’s 2013 Russian vacation turned out, can pride itself as the best darn “Die Hard” movie of the year so far. Standing in for Nakatomi Plaza, 1600 Penn is under siege: following a devastating airborne assault on D.C. that results in the legs-crossing destruction of the famously phallic Washington Monument, North Korean goons armed with guns and grenades storm the White House and take hunky President Asher (Aaron Eckhart, “Rabbit Hole”) hostage in the building’s impenetrable underground bunker.

Their goal: get the US government to order the retreat of Western forces in Korea while extracting nuclear launch codes from the President and his staff. If the government fails to comply, Mr President gets it in the back of the head. Enter Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, “Playing for Keeps”), an ex-Secret Service agent who sneaks in through the front door unnoticed during the initial attack and whose very particular set of skills sure come in handy: one by one, he takes out the terrorist scumbags like an unstoppable cross between John McClane and Jack Bauer, albeit with a Scottish brogue dancing merrily on the tip of his supposedly all-American tongue.

Watching “Olympus Has Fallen," one can’t help but recall just how great John McTiernan’s ‘88 action masterpiece really was: not just thrilling Friday-night entertainment, it boasted a bravura, star-making performance from Bruce Willis and was particularly impressive in how it maintained a perfect balance between McClane’s cocky heroics, Cali’s clueless police force and Alan Rickman’s smarmy villainy. Fuqua’s film doesn’t quite nail that balance, with Banning’s butt-kicking not as prominent as it should be, and frankly, Butler’s no Brucie. Yet the film is enjoyable, with the action refreshingly brutal and bloody, Rick Yune (“Die Another Day”) making for a coldly sinister villain and Butler getting in some memorable wise-ass cracks: “How about we play a game of fuck off?” he snaps at Yune’s terrorist mastermind via walkie talkie. “You go first.” Fuqua, meanwhile, keeps the action tough, tense and pleasingly preposterous, though it’s often let down by crummy VFX — considering the $70 million budget, you’d think Fuqua and his crew could afford digital effects rendered after the turn of the century.

Coincidentally, another ‘“Die Hard” in the White House’ flick is coming in September: Roland Emmerich’s “White House Down,” which, in a bold move, dresses leading man Channing Tatum in McClane’s iconic muddied wife-beater. Beating “Olympus Has Fallen” in the fun department would be a fair, if not extraordinary feat, but topping its corny, flag-waving jingoism will be tough: count the number of times Old Glory is seen fluttering majestically in the wind while a drum-martial score thunders triumphantly in the background. Oh, and there’s a scene in the Oval Office where Butler bashes a badguy’s brains in with an iron bust of Abraham Lincoln. God bless America.

6/10

Oblivion

American commercials director Joseph Kosinski made an ambitious feature debut in 2010 with Disney’s “TRON: Legacy,” the anticipated sequel to the game-changing 1982 cult sci-fi flick “TRON” which, both in spite of and because of the hype, proved a disappointment for many: though visually dazzling, it was emotionally vacant and featured a leading performance so wooden it could be boxed up and sold at IKEA. Kosinski’s follow-up, a $120-million sci-fi thriller adapted from his unpublished graphic novel “Oblivion,” is a minor upgrade, flaunting big ideas, an intriguing plot and a leading actor who isn’t Garrett Hedlund. But for the second time in a row, Kosinski has directed a film that, while pleasingly designed and technically impressive, lacks the necessary spark to bring it to life — the result, once again, is a stunning spectacle, but a sterile one.

Set in the year 2077, “Oblivion” imagines a future Earth reduced to a nigh-uninhabitable, post-apocalyptic wasteland following a thwarted but catastrophic attack by alien invaders. What’s left of civilisation now hovers above the globe in a giant, upside-down pyramid while our planet’s last remaining resources are carefully extracted. Tom Cruise (“Jack Reacher”) is Jack Harper, a former astronaut tasked with repairing the unmanned drones that hunt down hostile alien life forms in the desolate American East Coast, as monitored from a palace in the sky by communications officer Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, “W.E.”) and overseen via video link by the chilly, disembodied voice of commander Sally (Melissa Leo, playing a perky, Southern-twanged HAL).

In two weeks, Jack and Victoria’s mission will be over and they will go join the rest of mankind on their new home, Saturn moon Titan. But when a spacecraft comes crashing down to Earth and from its fiery wreckage emerges the mysterious woman who for years has haunted Jack’s dreams (Olga Kurylenko, “To the Wonder”), Jack is forced to question the reality with which he has been presented and, to his horror, comes to realise that all is not as it seems.

There’s plenty to like in “Oblivion:” the future-tech design is neat, the techno score from M83 surges with a pulsating energy, and the tumultuous love triangle shared between Cruise, Riseborough and Kurylenko provides a brief but appreciated human element that crucially was missing from “TRON: Legacy." Unfortunately, glacial pacing means that the film drags considerably in its lengthy, world-building set-up, the story first gaining momentum well over an hour into the overstretched 120-minute runtime — by the time Morgan Freeman turns up, chomping on a cigar in a thankless supporting role as a goggled, all-knowing resistance leader, boredom has settled in, and the high-octane action that follows doesn't quite compensate.

Plus, the film is shrouded in an thick fog of eerie familiarity, far too derivative of other, better sci-fi movies: constantly borrowed, recycled and outright thieved are elements from enduring classics such as “Brazil,” “Planet of the Apes,” “The Terminator” and “Aliens,” along with newer, superior genre entries such as “Wall-E," “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" and “Moon" — even the grand, explosive finale is a clone of that of “Independence Day," if without the goofy sense of humour and the unashamed sense of fun. As always, Cruise makes for a breezily charming action-hero and wanders the ruined Earth with the same troubled look of wistful longing recently sported by Will Smith in Francis Lawrence’s last-man-on-Earth pic “I Am Legend.” But in the realm of high-concept sci-fi blockbusters starring Mr Cruise, this is hardly “Minority Report” — still, Kosinski gives it a good go, and the barren landscapes sure are pretty.

5/10

Evil Dead

It almost sounds like the premise for a horror movie: 34 years ago, in the winter of ‘79, a couple of college pals ventured deep into the dark woods of Morristown, Tennessee to make a low-budget splatter-shocker called “The Evil Dead.” The result, made with $90,000 and bathed in gallons of red karo syrup, was a cult classic of its genre: though its unwavering commitment to graphic grotesquery saw it initially branded by newspaper headlines as “obscene” and labelled in the UK as a “video nasty," writer-director Sam Raimi’s outrageous feature debut went on to become a roaring global success, topping the rental charts when released on video in 1983, transforming its star Bruce Campbell into a beloved cult icon, rightly hailed as a masterpiece of modern horror and going on to spawn two worthy, and increasingly comedic, sequels (1987’s “Evil Dead II” and 1993's “Army of Darkness”).

And, to complete the ritual with which Hollywood has recently bestowed the genre, now comes the inevitable remake, which flaunts the glossy visual flair and impossibly attractive leads that have come to represent the big-budget horror recycle. Yet it would be wrong to lump Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez’s lovingly crafted modern-day revival in with the vacuous, Michael Bay-produced, 21st century updates of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," “Friday the 13th" and “A Nightmare on Elm Street," or, god forbid, the infamously ham-handed “Wicker Man" hack-job featuring a gurning, career-torching Nicolas Cage. Given the stamp of approval by producers Raimi and Campbell, the “Evil Dead” of 2013 is an infinitely superior work to those dead-eyed imitations, springing with life and helmed by a director armed with a genuine care for the film he’s making and a heartfelt affection for the one he’s remaking.

The basic premise is unchanged: once again, a group of five doomed twentysomethings drive to a secluded cabin in the woods, and once again, demonic forces come out from the trees to ruin their vacation. There is, however, a neat twist this time round: heroin addict Mia (an excellent Jane Levy) vows upon arrival to put a stop her drug-taking, emptying her baggie of white powder into a nearby well and preparing herself for the familiar horrors of going cold turkey. This lends the group an intriguing dynamic once the evil is unleashed and Mia begins acting “strange,” but any sense of ambiguity as to her apparently fast-dwindling mental state — are these symptoms of withdrawal or signs of a possession? — is quickly thrown out the cabin window and left to die in the woods when an ominous warning from a crazed, shotgun-wielding Mia starts to be fulfilled: “You are all going to die tonight.”

Alvarez's reverence for Raimi's original is clear as he infuses his update with visual nods and winks — be it the camera gliding hurriedly through the woods in pursuit of our heroes, or the beady eyes of a “Deadite” staring out from under the chained-up cellar door — and daringly recreates iconic moments from the trilogy: the infamous tree-rape scene is given a legs-crossing, parasitic spin, while a scene of demon-ridding self-amputation evokes a similar life-saving act by trilogy hero Ash, if shown in more graphic detail and without the sly pay-off of a wickedly funny Ernest Hemingway gag. Of course, with unavoidable and nigh-unfair comparison, Raimi’s film always comes out on top, but it’s impressive how sturdily Alvarez’s version stands on its own two feet, thanks in part to his dauntless direction and the infectious verve with which he depicts the grisly carnage.

Speaking of which, the film is certainly not to be viewed by the squeamish: once that Candarian incantation from the Book of the Dead is ill-advisedly read aloud, nary a minute goes by where the screen isn’t dripping with blood and guts and piss and vomit. To say that the film is gory is to say that the Atlantic Ocean is watery: indeed, so bloody is it that at one point in the nail-biting (and hand-lopping) climax, bucket-loads of blood literally pour from the night sky, a gloriously gruesome and utterly surreal sight shockingly topped moments later with the swing of a chainsaw — never before has the decimation of a human skull wielded such lurid beauty.

However, in amongst all the gratuitous mayhem, an error is made: screenwriters Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues and Diablo Cody (“Juno”) aim for both straight-faced sentimentality and sadistic glee in the same breath, a trick Raimi’s original pulled off thanks to a (reportedly unintentional) campiness that Alvarez's version, scared of being cheesy, deliberately avoids (“We can’t bury Shelly, s-she’s a friend of ours!” shrieked Ashley J. Williams in 1981, and oh how we laughed). Plus, for a film that boldly purports in its poster to be “the most terrifying film you will ever experience,” it comes up curiously short in the frights department: the scariest it gets is in its multitude of jump scares, while its moments of pulse-pounding suspense are, save for the 10-minute finale, all too brief, faltering in comparison with the overwhelming intensity of Raimi’s original.

Still, “Evil Dead” marks a mightily impressive debut from Alvarez, whose first film is an eye-popping technical marvel that champions old-school effects and which can pride itself as one of the finest horror remakes of recent years. Leave your skepticism at the cabin door, folks: “Evil Dead” is a rollicking, blood-splattered roller-coaster ride. Oh, and make sure you sit through the credits: there’s a stinger at the end guaranteed to put a grin on any fan’s face.

7/10

Trance

In the brain-bending, high-concept psycho-thriller “Trance,” director Danny Boyle takes us on a ride into the shattered mind and misplaced memories of an amnesiac art aficionado in search of a missing multimillion-pound painting. The painting is Francisco Goya’s late 18th century masterpiece “Witches in the Air,” and in an electrifying 20-minute opening — as slickly photographed by Anthony Dod Mantle and given pulse-pounding energy by composer Rick Smith — it is stolen from a London auction house by a gang of gun-toting crooks. Or at least that was the plan: when head honcho Franck (Vincent Cassel, “Black Swan") unzips the black briefcase supposed to contain his £25 million prize, he finds in his hands an empty frame.

Suspicion falls on the inside man, sharp-suited auctioneer Simon (James McAvoy, “Welcome to the Punch”), who swears while his fingernails are worked on with a Stanley knife that he has no memory of where he stashed the canvas prior to the handover. His excuse seems feasible: he was, after all, given a near-fatal bonk on the head during the final moments of the heist and, when taken to hospital, had a hole drilled deep into his skull. Things get trickier — and weirder — when Simon is taken to see Dr Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson, “Sin City”), a high-street hypnotherapist who agrees to trawl through Simon’s mind and extract the painting’s location in exchange for a cut of the loot. But when Simon is put under and his subconscious is rooted around in, the situation proves more complicated than previously thought, this gripping crime caper swiftly transforming into a head-spinning, brain-scrambling mystery where the line separating fantasy from reality becomes a deceptive blur.

It is a concept that naturally and dangerously evokes Christopher Nolan’s dream-hopping 2010 blockbuster “Inception” and Michel Gondry’s memory-wiping 2004 indie romance “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but “Trance” is  more twisted than both of those science fiction masterworks, traveling down unexpected paths where the darkest of secrets are unearthed. Screenwriters Joe Ahearne and John Hodge, adapting from Ahearne’s little-seen 2001 TV movie of the same name, revel in unravelling the plot’s countless twists and turns, while Boyle is clearly having a ball as he infuses the film with the same spunk and energy we’ve come to expect from him since his morbidly comic feature debut, 1994’s “Shallow Grave.”

Speaking of which, “Trance” has at its centre a similarly tumultuous character dynamic to that mid-90s Brit hit: once again we have a trio of self-centred, money-grubbing back-stabbers, none of whom we trust, nor particularly like. Though he is our narrator, the mentally damaged and double-crossing Simon is a wholly unreliable one, just like the increasingly psychotic, power-drilling attic-dweller played by Christopher Eccleston. Cassel, in typically seedy — but smoothly charismatic — badguy mode, at first glance appears to be the most straightforward of the three, but upon closer inspection we begin to wonder if this sadistic gangster is so repulsive after all. But the standout of the three is Dawson, who oozes raw sex appeal as the seductive and manipulative femme fatale of this knotty neo-noir whom we sense from the get-go knows more than she’s letting on; like her two male co-stars, and indeed the film itself, Dr Elizabeth Lamb is a beguiling figure shrouded in intriguing mysteries.

This is the first film Boyle has manned since his triumphant opening ceremony to the 2012 Olympics turned a whole nation’s frown upside down. Those seeking out the film based solely on his newfound national treasure status are in for a shock, what with the film’s garish explosions of sex, violence and full-frontal nudity, as well as, in one rather alarming fantasy scene, the sight of a character having the top half of his head blown off, picking himself up and then continuing to speak. If there’s anything to be said against the film, it would be that it is perhaps a little hollow and that the story, with its mounting revelations, is a little convoluted. But like the greatest of cinema’s directors, Boyle keeps us hypnotised at every turn, eager to see how the puzzle pieces will fit together — even at the end, when the puzzle is complete, we’re still not sure what it is we’re looking at.

8/10

Compliance

When it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2012, “Compliance” caused quite the stir: those who hadn’t already walked out of the screening stayed to boo at the screen as the curtains were drawn, and when writer-director Craig Zobel took to the stage for the post-film Q&A session, he was met with furious outcries and accusations of misogyny. Now that it’s arrived in UK theatres, it’s easy to see why festival-goers kicked up such a fuss: this low-key, fact-based suspense thriller is a uniquely disquieting, squirm-inducing 90-minute trip into the deepest, darkest pits of human nature, where audiences are invited to become voyeurs to the degradation and exploitation of an innocent 19-year-old girl when a prank phone call spirals dangerously out of control.

This victimised teen is Becky, a small-town counter girl at an understaffed fast food joint played by the notably attractive Dreama Walker (“Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23”). Her manager is the middle-aged, overworked Sandra (Ann Dowd, “Side Effects”), who, on the restaurant’s busiest day of the week, receives a phone call from a man who identifies himself as Police Officer Daniels (Pat Healy, “The Innkeepers”). He needs Sandra’s help: it seems a pretty young blonde among her staff, whom Sandra guesses to be Becky (“Ah yes, Rebecca!” recalls the caller), has been accused of stealing money from a customer, and it is up to Sandra to detain the suspect until a squad car can arrive on the scene. Eager to cooperate, Sandra escorts Becky into the storage room, where Becky stubbornly protests her innocence and where “Officer Daniels” has a few tasks for the pair to perform for him.

What unfolds in that room is several harrowing hours of humiliation and violation, as conducted by the disembodied voice of a phoney policeman: using fine-tuned tactics of persuasion and manipulation, “Officer Daniels” slowly but surely coerces Sandra into stripping Becky from head to toe and subjecting her to an all manner of emotional, psychological and eventually physical abuse, all while oblivious customers eat in peace at the tables outside. What’s most remarkable about the film is not that it’s based on a true story — it’s that it’s based on over 70 true stories. From 1992 through to 2004, similar incidents were reported across 30 US states, as fast food chains were targeted by a sadistic prank caller who convinced staff members to conduct strip searches, and sometimes more than that, on unsuspecting female employees.

“Compliance” most closely resembles one specific case in 2004 where events escalated further into depravity than they ever had before, and in recreating that devastating night, Zobel presents us with a fascinating, if flawed insight into how human beings respond to the illusion of authority — almost immediately, “Officer Daniels” demands that he be called “sir,” and almost immediately, Sandra falls in line, willing to betray her most basic moral values in the name of following the officer’s every order, no matter how sleazy, nor indeed how criminal. Called into question is whether or not Sandra herself is a victim in all of this (she is, after all, cruelly manipulated), but one could argue that she’s not the one left to quiver and weep in the corner while wearing nothing but an all-too-revealing apron.

I say the film’s insight is flawed because although Walker and Dowd succeed in creating believable characters — the sort we might recognise from our own lives — the actions they commit and the situation in which they find themselves are inherently unbelievable. That such implausible events truly did occur in the spring of ‘04 doesn't let the film off the hook, as it fails to supply a sufficient reason as to why no one at any point ever thinks to question the caller's true identity. This is particularly jarring when Sandra’s fiancé enters the equation, is handed the phone and as the film launches, in its most shocking scenes, into full-on sexual assault — this leaves us to wonder, as one baffled lawman later remarks, just what exactly was in these people’s chicken. Still, this is a gripping film, Zobel ratcheting up the tension to near-unbearable levels and presenting a deeply penetrating experience that will not be easily forgotten — “Compliance” is a film that crawls its way under your skin and refuses to leave.

7/10

Identity Thief

In the Judd Apatow-produced, Paul Feig-directed 2011 comedy juggernaut “Bridesmaids,” supporting star Melissa McCarthy was a side-splitting force to be reckoned with: stealing the show from leading lady Kristen Wiig — partly down to her bullish, boisterous charm, partly down to the startling sight of her explosively defecating into a bathroom sink — the former “Gilmore Girls” regular and long-time bit-player was suddenly thrust into the public consciousness, transformed into a household name, showered in global critical acclaim and rightly nominated for an Academy Award. And if she has any wishes to continue this hard-earned, long-overdue success, “Identity Thief” is surely a calamitous misstep.

This poisonously undercooked studio product, in which McCarthy shares top billing with co-star Jason Bateman (“The Change-Up”), claims in its TV spot to be “the year’s first great comedy" — looks like it’s taken its title a bit literally. It comes from the director of “Horrible Bosses,” a darkly comic — though broadly played — murder-scheme farce with a cracking cast and an inspired concept. The concept here — a rowdy scam artist and her latest hapless victim embark on a disastrous road trip together — has equally ripe comic potential, but the barely half-hearted execution falls a hundred miles-or-so too short, Craig Mazin’s (“The Hangover Part II”) woefully witless screenplay leaving any hope of a giggle or two to wither and die by the side of the road.

Still, McCarthy — sticking to her lovable wild-gal persona — does good with rotten material as Diana, a rambunctious crook living the high life in sunny Miami thanks to the unwitting help of Sandy Patterson (Bateman), a mild-mannered pencil-pusher from Denver whose identity Diana has craftily stolen. Sandy, finding his bank account drained and the justice system bafflingly unable to help, decides to travel to Florida himself to personally arrest Diana, bring her back to Colorado with him and dupe her into confessing her crimes. Diana, told that all she has to do is clear Sandy’s name, reluctantly agrees, but the 1500-mile ride proves less than smooth — pursuing the pair is a psychopathic bounty hunter and a couple of hired guns, whose presence is pointless and needlessly convolutes the plot.

It is on this ride that “Identity Thief” slavishly ticks every box in the Road Movie handbook — here we have a mismatched pairing, motel shenanigans, run-ins with the law, broken-down vehicles, a woodland attack by a wild animal and of course that old classic: a character obnoxiously singing along to the radio. The only thing that’s missing is the laughter as the plot plods along with depressing predictability, leaving one to yearn for the knee-slapping brilliance of superior road comedies “Midnight Run” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” or hell, even “Dumb and Dumber.”

McCarthy and Bateman do share a certain odd-couple chemistry as they bicker and bond on the open road, and they are admirably committed to their roles, even when the film misguidedly wallows in unearned, teary-eyed sentimentality — movie, you’ve yet to make me laugh; don’t turn around and try to make me cry. But the film struggles to wring so much as a titter out of their frequent interplay, often leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere and having to survive solely on their comic dynamic — for 110 minutes, that’s not enough to keep our attention. I think I might have half-smiled once, 30 minutes in, when Bateman bashes McCarthy in the face with an acoustic guitar. That’s about as inspired as the gags get, and it’s a gag that is of course given away in the trailer. McCarthy will next be seen in Paul Feig’s buddy cop comedy “The Heat” alongside Sandra Bullock. Let’s hope that does her more justice than this joyless dreck.

3/10

Oz the Great and Powerful

The amazing Technicolor dreamworld of Oz, as originally imagined at the turn of the 20th century by children’s author L. Frank Baum, was unforgettably brought to life in the iconic 1939 screen musical “The Wizard of Oz,” a groundbreaking masterwork that would enrich and live on in childhood memories for decades to come — just think of the glimmering green towers of the Emerald City or the swirling golden spiral that births the Yellow Brick Road, and feel that flood of sweet nostalgia wash over you and cleanse your soul. Seven decades later, we return to director Victor Fleming’s fantasy wonderland in “Oz the Great and Powerful,” Disney’s spiritual prequel to the MGM classic, which — copyright issues kept in mind — rebuilds the land brick by yellow brick, albeit with more than a little help from computerised jiggery-pokery.

Of course, this is not the first time Oz has been paid a grand revisit by Hollywood — 1978’s “The Wiz" retold Dorothy Gale's tale with a Harlem-inspired urban environment, while 1985’s “Return to Oz" continued her adventures with a dark and twisted steampunk edge — but not since the Golden Age has it been so richly detailed, elaborately designed and vividly realised. Director Sam Raimi, whose blockbusting “Spider-Man” trilogy was a technical marvel, seamlessly blends practical sets with computer-generated imagery and presents Oz in carefully orchestrated 3D that bursts out from the screen — here, Oz is as immersive as the alien moon Pandora in James Cameron’s “Avatar.”

Journeying with us through this magical realm is James Franco (“127 Hours”) as Oscar “Oz" Diggs, the one destined to become the “man behind the curtain.” Oscar is an ambitious, small-time carnival magician and charlatan who, in 1905, is whisked away from humble Kansas to the magnificent Land of Oz when his hot air balloon is consumed by a vicious cyclone — this is achieved in a dazzling sequence during which the film makes a startling transition from Academy-ratio monochrome to widescreen Technicolor, surely an affectionate homage to Oz’s wondrous introduction in Fleming’s original. Upon arrival, Oscar discovers he is prophesied to free the locals from the tyrannical Wicked Witch of the West and become the rightful ruler of Oz, a task he reluctantly takes on in the name of fame and fortune.

Joining him on his perilous quest is Finley (voiced by Zach Braff, “Scrubs”), a winged, scene-stealing chimp in a bellhop’s outfit, and an adorable two-foot girl made of china (voiced by Joey King, “Ramona and Beezus”), whose shattered legs are repaired by Oscar in a touching scene following an attack on her porcelain village. Both Braff and King appear physically as human characters in the Kansas-set prologue, just like the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion in Fleming’s film, but with slightly less impact: the intended effect isn’t quite the same when actors reappearing from real-world Kansas are merely providing voices for their characters in Oz.

As in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth," there are three witches in this origin story. Michelle Williams (“My Week with Marilyn”), a stand-out, is bubbly and wise as Glinda the Good Witch; Rachel Weisz (“The Bourne Legacy") is deliciously menacing as the ruthless and conniving but ever so elegant Evanora; while Mila Kunis (“Black Swan”) gets the film’s meatiest role as the naive and easily manipulated Theodora, whose tragic descent into the dark side (or should that be the green side?) is a little unconvincing; though Kunis plays both sides of Theodora marvelously, the set-up of her character’s physical and psychological transformation is far too rushed, the end result failing to pack the necessary punch.

As for our fated wizard, though Franco grants him a roguish grin and a rascally charm, one can’t help but feel the fizzily charismatic Robert Downey, Jr. — an early candidate for the role — would have been better suited in Oscar's top hat and waistcoat. The real star of the show is the infectiously enthusiastic Raimi, whose kooky visual quirks are on full display throughout and whose horror roots are showing: remembering the fear struck into the hearts of many a movie-goer by those barbaric flying monkeys in 1939, he here uses the winged beasts for one or two inspired frights — after all, what’s a trip to the movies without a good scare?

What’s most remarkable about “Oz the Great and Powerful” is the degree to which Raimi has provided for audiences of all ages; here is a family movie truly suitable for all the family, capable of entertaining the young and the old in equal measure. Considering its unblinking commitment to breathtaking spectacle and its luscious, vibrantly rendered fairy tale setting, comparisons to Tim Burton’s crushingly disappointing “Alice in Wonderland” are unavoidable, and Raimi’s film thankfully comes out on top: for behind all its whiz-bang special effects and sensational production design is something Burton’s dead-eyed dud was crucially missing, a key ingredient that keeps us engaged and enchanted right from its black-and-white beginnings all the way through to its explosive finale — a healthy heart beating away inside its chest.

7/10

Safe Haven

Tiptoeing its way into UK theatres a whole fortnight too late (apparently it was scared off the coveted Valentine’s Day slot by “A Good Day to Die Hard”), “Safe Haven” is a Nicholas Sparks adaptation like any other. Based on his bestselling 2008 weepy of the same name, it marks the eighth occasion on which a Sparks novel has made the leap from page to big-screen — a near-annual tradition sparked in 1999 with the Kevin Costner/Robin Wright romance “Message in a Bottle" — and, coming fresh off the assembly line, it proudly ticks all the expected boxes: a mawkish story of love against the odds, it’s up to its neck in maudlin melodrama, drenched in heart-wrenching tragedy, soundtracked by soothing acoustic strums and, as it’s set against the glowing backdrop of blinding sunsets, is exceedingly well lit.

So closely does it stick to the Sparks movie formula that it almost descends into self-parody, as if director Lasse Hallström (once Oscar-nominated for “The Cider House Rules”) is slyly mocking the niche with which Sparks has made his name — if only there were oppressive, disapproving parents integrated into the plot, then it would be a full house of the author’s hackneyed clichés. Even the poster, in which our two leading lovebirds cling to each other’s faces in a passionate embrace, is almost entirely identical to that of “The Lucky One,” the last Sparks adaptation, released last April. That one boasted the smouldering good looks of Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling. This one boasts Julianne Hough (“Footloose”) and Josh Duhamel (“Transformers”), two impossibly attractive actors who appear to be doing this as an advised career move rather than as a passion project — hey, “The Notebook” worked wonders for a certain Mr Gosling.

She is Katie, a big-city runaway who flees to the sleepy coastal town of Southport, North Carolina to escape her troubled past and start afresh. He is Alex, the local hunk and father-of-two who manages a convenience store and whose wife has conveniently died of cancer (another Sparks trope — incurably diseased loved ones). After Katie gets a job waitressing at the local fish house and rents a creaky cabin in the woods (the sight of which made me think I’d really rather be watching “The Evil Dead"), romance blossoms between the pair as they take long walks on the beach together, take a ride in a canoe and get caught in the rain — as bland as it sounds, and is, Hough and Duhamel do admittedly share a warm chemistry.

Livening up proceedings is a parallel plot involving Kevin (David Lyons, “Revolution"), a slimy cop who, in the film’s opening, pursues a petrified Katie before she sneaks onto a bus out of Boston. For reasons initially unknown, this boozing law enforcer is hell-bent on tracking Katie down, a task which sees him — in a bizarre, career-torching move — mocking up posters falsely claiming that she is wanted for first-degree murder. This gives the film the status of a stalker thriller very much in the vein of “Sleeping with the Enemy,” and is damn near the only thing in the film that is remotely interesting, if only for the logic-stretching absurdity of Kevin’s boundless obsession.

Well, that is until the final few minutes, during which an eye-popping revelation about a seemingly trivial supporting character is sure to inspire both howls of laughter and exclamations of bewilderment from confounded audience members who didn’t predict it the minute said character appears on-screen. I shan’t detail much other than to say that it is a bonkers, hilariously misjudged plot twist that is completely out of place with the rest of the film, altering its tone, mutating its genre and bending its reality, as well as bafflingly paying tribute to the works of M. Night Shyamalan — you’ll see. The best Sparks adaptation remains the engaging “The Notebook,” which is hailed by many to be a modern classic of its genre. “Safe Haven,” while perfectly harmless, is just another in a long line of dead-eyed imitations.

4/10

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

“Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” is a fairy tale remix that’s Grimm in all the wrong ways, a one-joke premise that’s stretched paper-thin before the end of the first reel. Its title will remind many of last year’s “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” a goofy comic-book actioner in which America’s 16th president was reimagined as an axe-wielding slayer of bloodsucking ghouls. A similar concept is explored here, with the eponymous siblings growing up to become killers of witch-folk, but with less fun to be had this time round: while it was kind of amusing watching Timur Bekmambetov’s 2012 effort put a supernatural spin on US history, it’s not so amusing watching this messily directed fantasy dud half-heartedly poke fun at a 200-year-old fairy tale.

It is the telling of this well-known tale that serves as the film’s opening. You know the drill. Abandoned by their father in the middle of the deep, dark woods, young brother and sister Hansel and Gretel happen upon a cottage made of candy. Within the cottage is a wicked old witch who enslaves them, fattens them up and plans on eating them. As the witch prepares to cook Hansel alive, Gretel breaks free from her chains, boots the bitch into the oven and roasts her on an open flame — as the narration usefully points out, fire is essentially a witch’s kryptonite.

Years later, they’ve gone pro. Now played by Jeremy Renner (“The Bourne Legacy”) and Gemma Arterton (“Song for Marion”), Hansel and Gretel hunt witches for a living, ridding towns and villages of infestations “Van Helsing”-style, using a full-blown arsenal of high-tech weaponry — double-ended crossbows, rapid-fire Gatling guns, etc. — to send them cackling to Hell. But they may have met their match in the snow-dappled German town of Ausburg, where children are being abducted for a "Moonblood" ritual sacrifice, the completion of which will make the local coven impervious to fire.

That “Blade"-inspired detail aside, “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" does nothing interesting with its titular monsters: they’re just bog-standard spell-casters who ride on broomsticks, stand around bubbling cauldrons and conjure up spells with a flick of their wrist — if only they had conjured up a sharper script. Famke Janssen (terrific as Jean Grey in the “X-Men” franchise) tries her damndest to be menacing as the powerful witch Muriel, but truth be told, Anjelica Huston was much more terrifying as the Grand High Witch in Nicolas Roeg’s 1990 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Witches” — that gruesome make-up job still haunts my nightmares.

The action is handled with routine slickness and is startlingly blood-splattered: witches are decimated, delimbed and decapitated with frequency and viscerality, their icky innards spattering wildly. Writing and directing is Tommy Wirkola, maker of “Dead Snow,” a blackly comic Norwegian horror in which Nazi corpses rose from their graves. He’s clearly been inspired in his career by Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead" trilogy, but without the wacky invention of those three films, the action of “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" quickly succumbs to noisy monotony. The film must be commended, however, for its admirable use of practical stunts and effects, particularly in the creation of a noble but dimwitted troll named Edward (Twihards, fret not: this Edward’s no RPatz).

As for our two leads, they do good with limp material. Renner, who established himself as a capable action star in “The Bourne Legacy” and “Marvel's Avengers Assemble,” and Arterton, a Londoner pulling off an impeccable American accent, fully convince as smartmouthed, gunslinging badasses — Arterton in particular makes for a formidable hunter of witches, and I wouldn’t mind seeing her kicking butt in future action roles. In spite of this, neither of them can overcome the film’s fatal flaw: at its centre is an identity crisis, the same crisis that plagued “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” — does Mr. Wirkola's English-language debut wish to be a grizzled, balls-to-the-wall actioner or a tongue-in-cheek slapstick spoof?

It is a question that’s never answered, and as a result, it’s difficult to ascertain whether or not we’re meant to be taking any of this seriously — how can we when we spot Will Ferrell’s name in the opening titles (he’s producing alongside regular comedy collaborator Adam McKay)? To the film’s credit, it has no pretentions beyond being a big, dumb action movie, or, if you will, fast food entertainment. Trouble is, when I eat fast food, I enjoy it. Watching “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” was more akin to eating a trail of soggy breadcrumbs left out in the rain.

4/10

Mama

The unbreakable bond between mother and child is a theme of horror cinema almost as old as the genre itself: think of Mia Farrow’s twisted, unconditional love for her newborn baby boy, the spawn of Satan, in Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby;” how about Ellen Burstyn’s exhaustive commitment to curing her demonically possessed teen daughter in William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist;" and then there’s Rebecca De Mornay as a crazed, vengeful nanny in Curtis Hanson’s “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” iconic for a brilliantly disturbing scene in which De Mornay is caught breastfeeding the family’s newborn.

It is a theme that boldly returns in the aptly titled supernatural horror “Mama,” this time with an adoptive twist — here we have a meditation on assumed maternal instinct, specifically that of a young woman for two children that are biologically not hers, as explored through the ever-enjoyable medium of an old-school ghost story. Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nélisse are Victoria (3) and Lily (1), sisters who are abandonded in the woods when their father, under crippling financial pressure, goes mad and embarks on a killing spree. Found five years later, they are sent to live in the suburbs with their uncle and his longtime girlfriend, still feral from life in the wilderness and no longer accustomed to suburban living.

Turns out they may not have come alone: Mama, an unidentified entity they claim has been nurturing them for the past five years, seems to be paying them visits late at night. Doctors say Mama is a figment of the girls’ troubled imagination, but aunt Annabel (Jessica Chastain, “Zero Dark Thirty”) is convinced otherwise: she hears voices through the air duct, suffers unusually vivid nightmares and senses something watching her inside the house. The film itself, it decidedly wields little ambiguity as to the existence of Mama: this sinister home invader is all too real and has come to take Victoria and Lily back to the woods.

Mama is an intriguing movie monster, characterised not as a mindless killing machine like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, instead as a tragic-but-violent fairy tale figure capable of rational thought and granted a clear, ruthless and relatable motivation: to be a mother once again. It’s a pity, then, that although her ghostly presence inspires chills and occasional sympathy, she’s often presented on-screen as a computer-generated special effect and reduced to a squealing ghoul who leaps unexpectedly out from the shadows, withered arms flailing and face hideously distorted — though they pack a sufficient jolt, the jump scares feel cheap.

As haunted sisters Victoria and Lily, Charpentier and Nélisse are a great find, capable of performing the well-worn creepy-child archetype without cliché — there’s surprising subtlety on display from these fresh-faced young talents. But the film ultimately belongs to Chastain, who, fashioned as a punk rock chick with short black locks, is almost unrecognisable from her Oscar-nominated turn as a cold and stoic CIA agent in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty.” It is her character’s transformation, executed with growing warmth and unblinking class by Chastain, that lends the film’s title an intriguing ambiguity — is “Mama” in reference to the eponymous villainess or the heroine, whose bond with Victoria and Lily strips her of her past irresponsibility and, through thick and through thin, helps her discover her inner mom?

Either way, Argentian director Andres Muschietti’s debut feature — an extension of his three-minute short from 2008 — is an effective, bone-rattling haunted house chiller that draws heavily, and lovingly, from genre entries of the past. As a presentation of Guillermo del Toro, credited as an executive producer, it falls short of the poignant, antiquated greatness of “The Orphanage,” more on a par with the efficient spookiness of “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.” Along with last year’s hair-raising “The Woman in Black” (coincidentally also featuring a malevolent ghost mother), it shows that trashy, blood-soaked mutilations are not necessary in the art of frightening an audience: all that’s needed is an atmosphere capable of chilling you to the bone.

6/10

A Good Day to Die Hard

“A Good Day to Die Hard” is the worst of the “Die Hard” movies, not because of its restrictive 12A rating, nor its over-reliance on computer-generated effects, but because it is the first instalment in the 25-year franchise to treat its audience with open contempt — here is the “Die Hard" for the “Transformers" crowd, all flashing lights and no brain activity. That’s not to say that none of its four predecessors are guilty of similar crimes — “Die Hard 4.0” certainly could have done with a bit more brain power — but there’s something especially insulting about this fifth entry’s lackadaisical, almost perfunctory attitude towards anything not directly involving an explosion or a helicopter, or indeed a helicopter that’s exploding.

That’s an image that’s stuck with the franchise ever since its first appearance in John McTiernan’s classic 1988 original, as Agents Johnson and Johnson’s FBI chopper was swallowed up by a rooftop fireball. It reappeared several times throughout Renny Harlin’s airport-bound 1990 sequel “Die Harder,” albeit with winged aircrafts, did so again at the end of McTiernan’s 1995 threequel ”Die Hard with a Vengeance,” and then popped up again in Len Wiseman’s 2007 fourquel “Die Hard 4.0,” as Bruce Willis’ maverick cop John McClane took out an attacking helicopter with an airborne police car. “I was out of bullets,” was his smirking quip.

Be it through loving homage or lack of creativity, it appears yet again at the climax of “A Good Day to Die Hard,” this time in “Matrix"-style bullet-time, as a helicopter is blown to smithereens outside a power plant in the radioactive Chernobyl. But by this point in the film we’ve stopped caring enough to feel any surge of excitement or exhilaration, and so has Willis by the looks of it: here, he performs with the enthusiasm of a man impatiently waiting to be handed his paycheck, presumably because he knows just as well as we do that any semblance of intelligence this franchise once held has gone leaping off the top of Nakatomi Plaza after having forgotten to tie the fire hose around its waist.

But then, can we honestly expect anything else when the director is Irish hack John Moore, whose 2008 video game adaptation “Max Payne” is one of the few films I’ve actively sought out and then switched off in exasperation before the 30-minute mark? He presents his usual slick visuals here, as always drenched in CGI, along with his reliable ineptness when it comes to the handling of living, breathing human beings — this is a problem, considering the fact that where the film’s heart is supposed to lie is in the male bonding between John and his estranged son, Jack (Jai Courtney, last seen going fist-to-face with Tom Cruise in “Jack Reacher”).

Jack, unbeknownst to daddy, is a CIA spook operating undercover in Moscow. When Jack is taken into custody for his part in an assassination, John hops on a plane to the Russian capital and finds his boy in grave danger: heavily armed cronies of corrupt bureaucrat Viktor Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov, "Cold Souls") are after Jack and mysterious political prisoner Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch, "The Lives of Others"), who knows the location of a stash of nuclear weapons and whom Jack was attempting to extract to the US. Head of the cronies is Alik (Radivoje Bukvic, "Taken"), a cackling buffoon whose defining quirk is tormenting his victims by tap dancing while simultaneously chomping on a raw carrot — he’s a far cry from Alan Rickman’s quietly menacing Hans Gruber, that’s for sure.

John, Jack and Yuri go on the run together, chased at every turn by Alik and his men. In the resulting mayhem, which includes a destructive highway pursuit and a tumble through ten floors of scaffolding, Moore shows a talent for staging high-octane set-pieces, even if they're too cartoonish to build the necessary pulse-pounding tension. Trouble is, little-to-no thought or care has been put into everything in between, and Skip Woods’ dunderheaded script is almost entirely devoid of character or wit — the catchiest line is the hardly inspired “I’m on vacation,” probably because John utters it a total of five times.

Such qualities hardly seem worthy of a “Die Hard” movie, especially when they’re so glaring: Willis looks positively embarrassed to be reciting some of the clunky father-son banter he shares with Courtney. As for McClane, he’s a faded shadow of his former self, and any fondness we still have for him as a person has not come from this film, instead having lived on from previous instalments. Heck, he doesn’t even get to say his iconic catchphrase properly: annoyingly, for the sake of the 12A rating, it has once again been neutered to the briefer and altogether more family-friendly, “Yippee kay-yay, motherf-!”

In 1988, we believed in John McClane as a man of flesh and blood: while still a nigh-unstoppable killing machine, what set him apart from the rest of the ’80s action heroes was that he showed fear and anguish in the face of danger. The sequels saw fit to gradually grant him the power of invincibility: he now runs into speeding traffic and dives through windows with not a moment’s hesitation. In “A Good Day to Die Hard,” he even walks unprotected into an area of dangerously high radiation and suffers no consequences. John McClane is no longer a mere mortal; from the looks of things, he’s now a superhero. I once bought him as a human being; I’m not buying it now.

4/10

Wreck-It Ralph

Life is tough for Wreck-It Ralph, the bad-tempered villain of an 8-bit arcade game. It is a life lived within the various coin-operated machines of Litwak’s Arcade, but mostly within 30-year-old popular platformer “Fix-It Felix, Jr.,” where Ralph is a sort of humanised Donkey Kong figure; a gentle giant, he stands at a mighty 9 ft, weighs an elephantine 643 pounds and is gifted with tractor-sized fists that can demolish all that they touch. His job — if you can call it that — sees him scaling and angrily pounding at the outside of a high-rise building with his bare hands, a quest of wanton destruction instantly undone by the player’s avatar, celebrated goody-two-shoes and magically tooled handyman Fix-It Felix, Jr (Jack McBrayer, “30 Rock”).

When the day is done, i.e. when Litwak’s Arcade shuts down for the night, Ralph retreats to a junkyard and sleeps in amongst a pile of bricks, dreaming of a life where he is beloved and where he is a hero — badguys rarely get the credit they deserve for their hard work and effort. This is a life spectacularly realised in “Wreck-It Ralph,” a delightfully playful and wildly imaginative Walt Disney computer-animation in which video game characters enjoy a life of their own when free from the control of their human players. They share this quality with the plastic playthings of Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story,” if lacking the universally felt magic of that film’s concept: we have all at one point imagined that our inanimate toys spring to life when our backs are turned, but have we ever thought the same of a video game character?

Still, what “Wreck-It Ralph” has by the truckload is an infectious fondness for its pixelated protagonists and dollops of sweet nostalgia that will transform any casual gamer of the 1980s into as giddy a seven-year-old as the ones sitting in the audience with them: thanks to the dazzling array of brain-implanted video game sound effects and backdrops that are on frequent display, childhood memories of frantic button-pushing and joystick-manoeuvring will come flooding back with the unstoppable thrust and overwhelming force of a full-scale tsunami. And I haven’t even mentioned the countless familiar faces to be recognised throughout: the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog and Q*bert can be seen wandering through Game Central Station, while in a Badguys Anonymous support group, Ralph discusses his problems with M. Bison from “Street Fighter," Bowser from “Super Mario Bros.” and one of the ghosts from that old-school classic, “Pac-Man.”

Wreck-It Ralph himself, however, is an original creation, even if Disney have been so kind and thoughtful as to have made a real-life “Fix-It Felix, Jr.” game available for playing online — I’ve played it myself, and, like the film, it’s a good deal of fun. He is voiced by John C. Reilly (“Step Brothers”), usually a supporting actor whose endearing, sad-sack voice is a vital cog in Ralph’s lovability; here is a good-natured character who wishes to be appreciated, who watches with jealousy as Fix-It Felix receives praise for his work while he remains unrecognised and is faced with rejection upon pursuit of it.

It is a jealousy that causes him to abandon his game in search of popularity, a move referred to by fellow game characters as “going Turbo,” a reference to a racing character who, in a bid for attention, broke into the arcade’s newest racing game and consequently had his own game unplugged. Ralph’s journey sees him integrated into other games, and one of the many joys of “Wreck-It Ralph" is its gorgeously designed, meticulously detailed world-building: Ralph first encounters the very modern “Hero’s Duty,” a high-def first-person shooter that is essentially a sci-fi-twisted “Call of Duty” in which heavily armed marines do battle with giant, flying space bugs. “When did video games get so violent and scary?" Ralph wimpishly remarks upon entry.

But most of the action takes place in “Sugar Rush,” a teeny-bopper go-kart racing game made unique by the fact that it is made entirely out of colourful confectionery: its sugar-coated sites include a forest of candy cane trees and a river of chocolate, while, in a neat touch, the two local police officers are a pair of walking, talking donuts. Such a world provides ample opportunity for shameless product placement, and sadly, “Wreck-It Ralph” gives into such distracting, corporate-driven urges: our hero falls victim to Nesquik sand and encounters a Diet Cola volcano made eruptive by falling Mentos. This jars with the film’s intentions to lovingly pay tribute to the world of video games, and one might feel a slight tingle of cynicism when such moments pop up.

This is, however, vanquished whenever the adorably sprightly and lovably bratty Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman with a lungful of helium) is on-screen, which is thankfully often. She’s a smart-mouthed young resident of “Sugar Rush” whose dream is to be a go-kart racer; this, in spite of the fact that she is a “glitch,” and that it is strictly forbidden for glitches to race in “Sugar Rush.” Ralph quickly befriends Miss von Schweetz, and promises to help her achieve her goal; King Candy (Alan Tudyk, “Firefly”), the lisping ruler of “Sugar Rush,” has other, more diabolical plans for this malfunctioning tot.

Meanwhile, in an enjoyable sub-plot, Ralph is chased by Calhoun (Jane Lynch, “Glee"), the hard-ass sergeant from “Hero's Duty" supposedly programmed with “the most tragic back-story ever" — her beloved fiancé was gobbled up by a wedding-crashing space bug, one of which Ralph may have inadvertently set loose inside “Sugar Rush." Felix enthusiastically tags along, fearing that his game will be shut down forever if Ralph does not return in time. This leads to a climax that is disappointingly generic in its action-packed mayhem, but which is saved by its characters — it helps a great deal that we have been given time to watch them grow and learn to care about them.

I have a suggestion for the sequel, which, given the film’s box office figures, looks likely. All of the action in “Wreck-It Ralph" takes place inside Litwak’s Arcade and the games contained therein. But what if Ralph and his friends were to venture outside of the arcade and encounter multiple versions of themselves in other arcades — what if Ralph were to interact with another Wreck-It Ralph, like Buzz and the whole supermarket aisle of new-and-improved Buzz Lightyears in “Toy Story 2?" Anyway, it’s just a suggestion. I have a feeling that “Wreck-It Ralph,” like so many family films, will be played on a never-ending loop in households throughout the world when it is released on home video — it will, however, have the rare luxury of being repeatedly placed into the DVD player not just by children but by thirty-something gamers too.

7/10