San Andreas review

San Andreas (12A/PG-13, 114 mins)
Director: Brad Peyton
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

A disaster movie of the old school, albeit one with lavish amounts of modern technology at its disposal, San Andreas is an enjoyably silly action ride that benefits from lowered expectations and no pretensions of being anything other than fun.

Dwayne Johnson, fresh from revitalising the Fast and Furious franchise, now has to save the whole of California when the San Andreas fault-line decides now is its time to fall into the Pacific, causing an enormous earthquake that wrecks most of the state. Or more specifically he has to save his daughter (Alexandra Daddario) who is trapped in San Francisco while he and his estranged wife (Carla Gugino) are in Los Angeles. Johnson is a helicopter rescue pilot who, for reasons not explored, isn’t required to actually rescue anyone during the earthquake but instead makes the trip up the coast for his family, delivering well-timed quips along the way.

The blueprint is a familiar one, opening with a rescue scene, followed by some sciencey stuff (Paul Giamatti is the seismologist who sees the quake coming), followed by character intros and family stuff and dealings in personal problems that don’t really belong. It’s all filled with honking dialogue that no one would ever say, but really all you're looking for from this kind of thing is pleasing spectacle and some people to care about.

So the Hoover Dam disintegrates, the whole of downtown Los Angeles ripples like a rug and the Golden Gate Bridge gets washed away in scenes that are often properly harrowing. It’s one of those movies where thousands of people are dying off screen, but we deal with only a handful, which is pretty much how it needs to be for focus.

The well spaced out tremors and sequences of peril build in intensity to some quite astonishing levels of devastation once the city starts collapsing, and the CGI is at times miraculous. We’re not here for anything else, and in terms of terror and chaos, this cheesy adventure really hits the spot and is every bit as good and as bad as it needs to be.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 review

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 (12A/PG-13, 123 mins)
Director: Francis Lawrence
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The final book in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy gets a now standard two-movie split, and if you haven’t seen the films that have preceded it, you haven’t got a chance with this first part.

It begins immediately after the events of the second film, Catching Fire, with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) taken from the Games arena and waking up to find herself in the supposedly destroyed District 13.

We’ve had glimpses of the bigger picture before, but now that what was essentially training in the Games is out of the way, we can get down to the real business. And that aim is full-on revolution, the overthrow of the corrupt and authoritarian government of the Capital, led by President Snow (Donald Sutherland).

The rebels are fronted by Philip Seymour Hoffman and newcomer to the series Julianne Moore as President Coin. Katniss’s actions in the arena have been the spur for uprising in the Districts, and they want her to be the face of their campaign, to film propaganda videos that let the people see there’s hope.

She’s more interested in the fate of Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who is being held in the Capital, and it’s this tension that drives the drama rather than a reliance on set pieces. Because, goodness knows, it sure ain’t an action film, which is far from a bad thing.

As the third part in a four-part trilogy, there were always likely to be some pacing issues, and occasionally events that could take up one minute of screen time can be stretched into three or four. Some characters are afforded more screen time than might otherwise be the case or we’re introduced to people who don’t feel entirely relevant.

It’s a bit like trying to make a full meal from a limited set of ingredients, but it’s compensated for by a dramatic escalation of the threat level. Snow is going to town to destroy every threat posed by the Districts, stopping at nothing short of genocide, and the dangers are very real indeed.

This is serious, sturdy stuff, looking at fascism and totalitarianism and evoking World War II with its air-raids and underground shelters and wars of information. It’s also reminiscent of the third Matrix film or Return of the Jedi with its hidden rebel base antics, and the groundwork is worth it for a number of powerful, stirring moments.

Lawrence holds it all together as ever, with another committed and impassioned performance that reveals the steel of Katniss and demonstrates that she’s the best young actress on the planet. By the time this series closes out next November, we’ll hopefully be left with a sci-fi saga to be treasured for years to come.

Mr. Peabody and Sherman review

Mr. Peabody and Sherman (U, 92 mins)
Director: Rob Minkoff
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Animated characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman were part of Rocky and Bullwinkle’s cartoon show in the early 60s.

Mr. Peabody is a super-intelligent dog and Sherman is his seven year old adopted son, and together they go on educational adventures through time using Mr. Peabody’s time machine, the WABAC.

On the one hand it’s surprising that it’s taken 50 years for these characters to come to the big screen. But clearly the makers of Family Guy took from the concept their inspiration for the many time travel adventures Brian and Stewie have, so it’s likely that the ongoing success of that made someone deem it worthwhile to dust down the original property and turn it into a feature length animated movie. They needn’t have bothered.

This is demonstrated in a pointless introductory sequence in which Mr. Peabody and Sherman (voiced by Modern Family’s Ty Burrell and Max Charles) encounter Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution for no discernible story reason whatsoever. It’s the first sign that this is a film less interested in its characters than in being a history lesson, and that’s surely the last thing kids want when they visit the cinema.

Once that’s out of the way the story continues with Sherman starting school, where a bullying problem with a classmate gets out of hand and the question is raised of how a dog can possibly be a fit parent. It’s a fairly flimsy framework on which to hang a film, and after some thoroughly unengaging stuff involving this, the main plot kicks off when Sherman is forced to spend time with the girl who is bullying him.

Showing her the WABAC to prove he’s not a liar, they end up in ancient Egypt, forcing Mr. Peabody to go back and rescue them. The story doesn’t so much flow organically from there as ping randomly from one point in time to another, pushing on to Renaissance Italy and ancient Greece for no reason other than these are historical times, events and characters that people are aware of.

If you're going to dabble in these sorts of shenanigans, at least have the imagination to do something clever or original with it. But this is a story that seems thrown together with the bare minimum of care and attention, that never even attempts to do something out of the ordinary with the time travel element. So haphazard is it, that it could simply be a selection of episodes thrown together, each with a different historical setting, and loosely tied up with a stuck-in-time bow.

The jokes are largely science puns, and whose benefit these are supposed to be for is a mystery. Kids won’t get them (“I don’t get it” being pretty much Sherman’s catchphrase) and adults will groan at how weak they are.

There’s nothing like actual wit and Peabody and Sherman themselves are hardly the most endearing of characters. You’ll get more entertainment with Family Guy and your children will get more education with Horrible Histories.

Life of Pi review

Life of Pi (PG, 127 mins)
Director: Ang Lee
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Yann Martel’s award-winning 2001 novel, Life of Pi, has long been considered unfilmable, and without advances in visual effects technology, it may well have been.

This is a film in which, for probably half the running time, there’s a computer generated tiger on screen that for not one second looks anything other than real. That’s a remarkable achievement, up there with your Gollums and Jurassic beasties in terms of quality and realism, and not one that should be taken lightly.

The fact it’s in service of an ambitious but ultimately less than fully satisfying story doesn’t necessarily add credence to the unfilmable debate, but does perhaps reveal that it’s the kind of material that simply works better on the page.

That’s further backed up by the necessity of an all-encompassing narration to get the story across and accompany the episodes because, in its protagonist Pi, we don’t have a character forging his own path, at least initially, but being swept along by fate.

We begin in Canada, where Irrfan Khan’s adult Pi is telling his story to Rafe Spall’s author in a framing device that may at first seem clumsy, but which actually proves to be central to the film’s thematic intent.

“Believe what you want”, he tells him, as he recounts how he began life in India as a young boy called Piscine, after his uncle’s great love for swimming. Shortened to Pi, he follows three different faiths while his parents run a zoo that houses a tiger called Richard Parker. Pi doesn’t understand the nature of animals, thinking he and Richard Parker can be friends, but by the time he’s a teenager (and played by Suraj Sharma) his family are forced to sell everything and move abroad, transporting the zoo to Canada with them.

This makes for a stately first three quarters of an hour or more, until a stunningly executed shipwreck leaves Pi and Richard Parker on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific, along with a zebra, an orang-utan and a hyena, although the latter three don’t last long.

What follows is a battle for survival against the elements, hunger and the tiger, which while frequently exhilarating, can become repetitive. Though ostensibly a family film, it acknowledges the violence, the nature of nature as it were, though there are lots of animal antics for kids to coo over, and meerkat fans will be in raptures.

The vast amount of CGI is brilliantly realised yet never draws attention to itself, and there has rarely been a film this gorgeous, especially once we’re out on the open sea with its fantastic pastel shades. But it’s also quite static and given to treading water, missing that vital kick of emotion so that while beautiful, it’s never transcendent, and interesting without ever being able to fully exert a grip.

There’s empathy but never real soul as it rambles towards its point. Because, above all, Life of Pi is a rumination on the power of metaphors, in both storytelling and religion. Depending on your point of view it’s either a stirring parable or a nice story, well told. Its ultimate gambit is a bold one, but it’s not going to be for all tastes.

Snow White and the Huntsman review

Snow White and the Huntsman (12A/PG-13, 127 mins)
Director: Rupert Sanders
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The second Snow White movie of the spring transforms the fairytale into an outstanding fantasy adventure, taking a Lord of the Rings approach in action and scale, and playing it completely straight to fine effect. The basics of the story are still there, as young princess Snow White’s mother dies and her father re-marries the beautiful Ravenna (Charlize Theron). But she kills him and takes over the kingdom, imprisoning Snow and plunging the kingdom into darkness. Theron gives it everything in a fiery performance that kicks the campy Julia Roberts in Mirror Mirror into touch with a properly threatening turn, as she reveals herself to be a soul-sucking demon obsessed with being the fairest of them all. But when she discovers the grown up Snow (Kristen Stewart) is now fairest, the princess escapes and Ravenna dispatches a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth with a thick Scottish brogue) to bring her back. Where it goes from there offers rousing thrills, surprises and an unusually strong emotional core. It looks fantastic, but the sumptuousness is not just a sideshow to the story, instead creating a genuine atmosphere of darkness and oppression, particularly in a first half that’s so good, you keep waiting for it to come apart. Yet it continues to add elements of thematic richness, visual originality (which is tough in this genre) and plain old great action. The addition of the dwarfs is an ingenious touch of casting, even the sometimes dull Stewart has a spark to her, and everything is brought together with verve in one of the best films of its type in an age.

Mirror Mirror review

Mirror Mirror (PG, 106 mins)
Director: Tarsem Singh
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Mirror Mirror is the first of two Snow White films hitting cinemas this year. Arriving in June is Snow White and the Huntsman, which will put an epic fantasy action adventure spin on the Grimm fairytale.

In the meantime, this more comedic effort targets family audiences during the holidays and should offer moderate entertainment as long as you’re not demanding anything too memorable.

A handsomely animated prologue tells us Snow White is the king’s daughter. The queen died in childbirth and the king re-marries to Julia Roberts then disappears. Snow grows up and we join the story as she turns 18 and, played by Lily Collins, is intent on leaving the castle for the first time.

Meanwhile a prince looking for adventure (Armie Hammer) has made his way into the kingdom, but falls foul of a group of bandits who turn out to be the Seven Dwarfs. He and Snow meet in the forest and fall for each other, but the queen has other ideas.

A snarky Roberts has some fun, presiding over her unhappy snow-covered kingdom with acidic one-liners. She’s broke, taxing the people to the hilt to pay for her luxuries, and reckons a marriage to the prince is what she needs to revive her ailing fortunes.

She’s also concerned about her aging, and is using magic to keep herself looking young. The “mirror, mirror on the wall” stuff is limited to a couple of scenes but in these moments we get to see the full extent of the visual splendour that defines the work of director Tarsem Singh.

His eye for gimp opulence provides most of what is interesting in a shaky first third, when his imagination is allowed to run riot, like the accordion stilts the dwarfs use to  attack their prey. Lavish sets and very impressive computer-enhanced locations are a feast for the eyes, but it’s strangely rather lifeless and staid for all its sumptuous trappings.

It aims for a light and airy tone akin to something like The Princess Bride, but with nothing close to the wit or charm. Categorised by silliness instead of genuinely clever writing, it’s more zany than funny, with exaggerated sound effects often used as a substitute for a decent line.

But a far stronger second half goes some way towards saving the day. The dwarfs are great value as Snow teams up with them against the queen, and it’s largely thanks to them and the surprisingly good Hammer that Mirror Mirror ends up being a perfectly presentable slice of family fun.

The Hunger Games review

The Hunger Games (12A/PG-13, 142 mins)
Director: Gary Ross

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

With Harry Potter having hung up his wand and the Twilight saga drawing to a close in the autumn, the desperate scramble for the next blockbusting teen-lit movie franchise gets underway with this adaptation of the first novel in the bestselling trilogy by Suzanne Collins.

It’s a bleak futuristic adventure set in a post-civil war North America that has been divided into 12 districts. From each of the districts two tributes are chosen, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18, to take part in the annual Hunger Games, a battle to the death that takes place in front of a TV audience.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) comes from District 12, a place where people look and live like it’s the 19th century even though it’s many decades in the future. Food is scarce and she hunts and barters for the little she and her family have. When her young sister is chosen to represent the district, Katniss volunteers in her place and is taken, along with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), to the Capitol.

The Games themselves are a long time coming, but when they arrive it doesn’t then turn into Rambo but instead a chilling depiction of how easily people turn to savagery. The tributes have had a few days training before they're let loose in a forest - 24 will go in, 23 will die, with cameras all around to broadcast their every move.

A selection of weapons are available, but a better strategy is to find water and shelter. Some have been training for years and some form alliances, lending a disturbing gang element made all the more troubling because they're children. The violence is brutal and merciless yet restrained in detail but still the lack of blood doesn’t detract from the cruelty of the contest.

It’s anchored by a strong character in Katniss, matched by a fine, confident performance from Lawrence. Colourful support comes from Woody Harrelson, a former Games winner who acts as a mentor to Katniss and Peeta, and Stanley Tucci as a reptilian TV host.

With its potshots at the manipulation and venality of reality TV, and the voyeurism of audiences, the satire is never overdone, and even though any number of socio-political parallels are raised, none of them get shoehorned in at the expense of the drama.

It’s nothing new of course, covering ground already trodden in television satires or gladiatorial style action films for decades. But it brings together its influences in a way that’s mature, intelligent and compelling.

One thing it certainly isn’t is fun, though it’s not without its stirring moments. In truth it’s more like The Road than Twilight, grim and gritty and stripped of colour, at least until they get to the Capitol, where pastel-coiffed oafs live in luxury.

But it’s largely grimy and oppressive and so unlike typical teen fare, with no handholding when it comes to plot and, if anything, sometimes too economical with explanations. We learn that the Games are an attempt to keep the peace, but quite what the benefits are for the winner isn’t made clear and some will perhaps be left wondering just what the purpose of the Hunger Games is.

These may be questions that get addressed somewhere down the road, because this is going to be huge, and sequels are bound to follow.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island review

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (PG, 94 mins)
Director: Brad Peyton
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆


This sequel to 2008’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth replaces star Brendan Fraser with Dwayne Johnson, who along with his stepson Sean (Josh Hutcherson, returning from the original) gets washed up on a remote fantasy island while searching for Sean’s grandfather (Michael Caine). Jules Verne’s source gets freely and amiably adapted, and the literary and mythological references get layered on with glee, even as they’re being chased by giant beasties brought to life by well realised visual effects. It’s all agreeably silly, with high production values and likeable performances from everyone - Johnson even sings! Though slightly light on danger, it builds to a strong finish, is smashing fun for the most part, and as Indy rip-offs go, there’s a whole lot worse out there.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows review

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (12A/PG-13, 128 mins)
Director: Guy Ritchie
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Surprising for all the right reasons, 2009’s Sherlock Holmes brought Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary sleuth to a whole new generation of fans, and cemented the comeback of Robert Downey Jr. as a smooth-talking, all-brawling Holmes.

It was more than enough of a financial success to beget this sequel, one that more or less replicates the first movie in terms of spotty and sporadic enjoyment to accompany its storytelling inadequacies.

Downey Jr. returns as Holmes, as does Jude Law as his associate Dr. Watson, and their banter and interplay remains the heart of the piece, with Holmes less than happy about Watson’s impending marriage, although this does develop into a rather wet and distracting subplot.

But the big news here is the appearance of Professor James Moriarty, arch-enemy to Holmes, who was merely seen in shadows in the first film. Played with a cool detachment by Jared Harris, it’s the scheme of the so-called Napoleon of Crime that drives a convoluted plot.

Set in 1891, there’s anarchy across Europe, and a series of bombings that Holmes, consulting detective, martial arts expert and amateur alchemist, is trying to get to the bottom of. Rachel McAdams pops up ever so briefly, reprising her role as the treacherous Irene Adler, working for Moriarty not entirely of her own choice.

But she’s soon replaced by the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Swede Noomi Rapace, given a rather thankless role as a fortune teller roped into the whole business thanks to the involvement of her brother with Moriarty’s plans.

It’s here the film takes a bit of time to settle into its main story, rounding up all the supporting players including Stephen Fry, who puts in an appearance, essentially as Stephen Fry, playing Holmes’ brother Mycroft.

There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of logic or flow to the mechanics of the plot, more a sense that certain characters need to be in a certain place, and then the next sequence can begin. The result is disorganised, yet consistently fun enough almost to overlook the weaknesses.

Holmes soon has his first brief meeting with Moriarty, one which provides a promise of great machinations to come, so it’s a shame they only have a couple more opportunities to play their intellectual chess game that ultimately becomes a literal one.

Holmes thrives on having a nemesis in Moriarty worthy of him and their scenes together are when they're both at their most interesting, when the game is afoot. Moriarty is seemingly always a step ahead, with an early reference to Reichenbach Falls tipping off Holmes fans as to where it all might be heading.

And yet their mutual antagonism fails to sizzle quite as much as may have been hoped, with Moriarty never quite as dangerous and menacing as he ought to be, and the actual details of his plan to start a major Europe-wide war little more than window dressing.

The rest is robust fights that too often descend into shootouts, but with so much fisticuffs and gunplay it leaves little time for any real sleuthing, surely the driving force behind why Holmes exists at all. Still, the meticulous pre-planning of everything that will transpire when he’s about to pull off one of his ingenious plans is still something to marvel at.

Also worth marvelling at is a level of production value that amazingly makes this look even better than the already gorgeous first movie did, albeit a shade darker and grimier. Though it’s a shame almost all of it takes place outside of London, it remains firmly rooted in a late Victorian aesthetic, yet with a modern sheen that steers clear of steam-punk anachronism.

Director Guy Ritchie once again plays out the fights in super slow motion, a highly stylised approach that renders the movie exciting because it’s boisterous and noisy, not because it’s especially imaginative or clever. And, crucially, it lacks that that one intricate sequence that isn’t just a lot of bang-bang.

It’s not disappointing then by most standards, just likely to leave a nagging sense that it could, and should, all be so much better.

The Adventures of Tintin review

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (PG, 107 mins)
Director: Steven Spielberg
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Steven Spielberg’s first film since the much lamented Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull arrives as a huge, multi-million dollar gamble for many reasons.

First off, it’s an adaptation of what is a fairly niche property, Hergé’s 80 year old Belgian comic book. And, unknown for a film of this scale from the world’s most famous and successful filmmaker, it’s out in Europe now but won’t hit cinemas in the States until Christmas, the reason given that its Euro-ancestry makes it only right that it should play here first.

More to the point, the financiers will be praying it already has some hundreds of millions in the bank from its worldwide run before it arrives Stateside. That’s because the other massive gamble is that this is a motion capture animation, much like that notorious disaster from earlier this year, Mars Needs Moms, which was one of, if not the, biggest flops in box office history.

But it will sell on Spielberg’s name, and hopefully it will sell based on the fact that it’s really very good indeed, a rollicking adventure that contains several moments of unrivalled cinematic exhilaration from a director whom we’d thought had forgotten how to have fun.

We meet our hero, young reporter Tintin (voiced and performance captured by Jamie Bell) as he buys a model ship in a market, one which a lot of people seem keen to get their hands on, including the devious Sakharine (Daniel Craig).

The ship is the Unicorn, a replica of a real boat lost since the 17th century, and thought to have gone down with its secret treasure. Kidnapped by Sakharine, Tintin meets Captain Haddock, whose ancestor was captain of the Unicorn, and is played as a drunken Scotsman with a mostly agreeable but occasionally fishy accent by Andy Serkis.

It’s a blend of intrigue and action that spends much of the first half introducing plenty of engaging supporting characters, like Tintin’s dog Snowy, who frequently appears to be smarter than he is, and the useless detectives Thomson and Thompson (Nick Frost and Simon Pegg).

But it hits its stride during a marvellously inventive biplane sequence which takes Tintin and Haddock to Africa and the meat of the adventure, and an equally impressive flashback featuring the original Unicorn captain and his pirate encounter.

It’s at this point the action barely pauses for breath and when it most begins to resemble an Indy flick. The centrepiece, a chase through a Moroccan town, is truly breathtaking, although this does make it seem like the film peaks early.

A pertinent question might have been why it’s been filmed as an animation at all, and not simply live action. The answer to that lies in an astonishingly detailed level of richness and opulence in the design that would have been hard to achieve on any budget, and action sequences so fluid and imaginative that they would have been impossible as live action without the need for so much CGI that it would look like a cartoon anyway.

The issue of dead eyes and waxy features that has blighted so many mo-cap efforts also seems to have been addressed, with faces full of life and expression, although every once in a while the characters do move like they're on strings.

But that’s a tiny flaw, and let’s hope the gamble pays off, so that in a couple of years from now we’ll be enjoying the proposed Peter Jackson sequel, followed by many more Tintin adventures to come.

The Three Musketeers review

The Three Musketeers (12A/PG-13, 110 mins)
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

This umpteenth version of Alexandre Dumas’ novel announces itself from the off as a Pirates of the Caribbean style fantasy, much too interested in delivering 21st century thrills even though it’s set in the early 1600s.

We meet the three musketeers, the king’s elite guards, who are introduced to us as spies and assassins, and young D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) who longs to join up with them, even though they're all washed up.

Young king Louis XIII is on the throne of France, but Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) is plotting to start a war with England so that he can take over the running of the country, with only the musketeers able to foil his scheme.

A surfeit of baddies certainly doesn’t help to keep matters manageable. As well as Richelieu, there’s Mila Jovovich as M’lady, here turned into a super-assassin, Orlando Bloom’s Buckingham and Mads Mikkelsen’s Rochefort, each of them given a centre stage turn as the musketeers disappear for long stretches, leaving behind a useless teen angst subplot about the king and his bride.

All this takes place against truly lavish, opulent sets and magnificent computer generated recreations of Paris and beyond. No expense has been spared and every moment on screen looks glorious. But with the niceties out of the way, let’s take a look at what doesn’t work, which is pretty much the rest of it.

First things first, get some fun, charismatic actors to play your musketeers. Matthew Macfadyen, Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans are solid enough, but no one’s idea of star attractions, while Lerman fluctuates wildly between an American accent and various parts of Europe.

Next, get a director with the first clue about staging action. It’s a movie full of swordfights and explosions and therefore mildly diverting as it goes, but the action scenes are modelled after 300 and Resident Evil, only without the benefit of sane editing.

The numerous fancy booby traps and devices give it a certain pizzazz, no question, but it becomes all about the whizz-bang, with the anachronistic weaponry and gadgetry an attempt to turn it into a shiny confection rather than a period piece.

Dismal dialogue means it starts out silly and only gets sillier still by the time James Corden rocks up as Planchet with the sole purpose of having a bird shit on his head, and his attempts at comic relief are painful.

And though it’s marginally better than the Peter Hyams swing at the story from a decade ago, The Musketeer, that really isn’t saying a great deal.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 review

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (12A, 130 mins)
Director: David Yates
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

It’s been ten years, with eight films from four directors, over six billion dollars in the bank so far, and another billion to come with this one. But the Harry Potter saga finally draws to a close, and it’s been some ride, with frequent highs (Prisoner of Azkaban, Half-Blood Prince) and only the very occasional lows.

Has it been worth the journey, the investment? This majestic final chapter proves that the answer is an unequivocal yes, and we’ve been left with an octology the likes of which cinema has never seen, and never will again.

It opens with a very swift recap of how Part 1 ended, as Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) gets his hands on the Elder Wand, one of the three components of the Deathly Hallows that will grant him unstoppable power. But that’s your lot in terms of backstory, and if you haven’t seen every film up until this point, well then you really ought to remedy that before coming anywhere near this, because you’re going to be lost.

Following on from Part 1, Harry, Ron and Hermione (Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson) are still searching for the remaining Horcruxes, the objects that contain pieces of Voldemort’s soul, and destroying them is the only way to kill him.

One such is thought to be in a vault at the goblin bank, the starting point for a first rate early action sequence involving mine carts and a very angry dragon. To find the others, they need to get into Hogwarts, which is on lockdown, surrounded by Deatheaters and Dementors, with the treacherous Snape (Alan Rickman) now installed as headmaster.

All hope is almost gone, the Order of the Phoenix has been disbanded, and it’s all incredibly grey and mournful. Everyone is putting their faith and life in the hands of Harry Potter, who has grown from a frightened boy to a powerful wizard, attaining an almost messianic status in the process.

The fear was that the ball was dropped in the first part of Deathly Hallows last year, which was all talk and little forward momentum. But with all the moping out of the way in the first part, we’re left with an action extravaganza.

School’s out forever, and this is the final all-out battle between good and evil. Clashes between characters that have been a long time coming prove to be awe-inspiring, and there are consequences and copious amounts of death in a colossal adventure that simply rattles along.

And yet amid all the explosions and wand battles, somewhere in the middle we manage to find time for what will come to live in legend as the signature sequence of the entire series. Giving too much away would be grossly unfair for those who don’t know what’s coming, but just know that it involves Snape, some flashbacks and some home truths, as twists and revelations hit like hammer blows.

What we don’t get too much of is the byplay between the three young leads, but then we’ve had seven films of that and there’s very little left that needs to be said between them, though Radcliffe, Grint and Watson are still terrific. More pleasingly, the great actors who missed out in some of the previous instalments get to show what they’re really made of here, particularly Maggie Smith and the miraculous Alan Rickman.

Spending a decade and almost 20 hours of screen time with these characters has made them part of our lives, a theme that filters into the film itself. The saga has grown in depth and richness from colourful cartoons for children to parables of the bonds of friendship, family and love, until eventually it gets to a point where you realise you don’t want it to end.

And unlike Lord of the Rings, it doesn’t get bogged down in a dozen different finales that feel the need to give everyone a closing monologue. Instead there’s dignity, a quiet grace and a few tears. It’s a fitting culmination to a monumental achievement and everyone involved should feel immensely proud.

Green Lantern review

Green Lantern (12A, 114 mins)
Director: Martin Campbell

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Comic books heroes have been treated fairly well at the movies so far this summer, but this adaptation of the DC property has to be viewed as a backwards step. It begins with a cosmically silly prologue telling us all about the Green Lantern corps, an intergalactic peacekeeping force whose mystical green rings give them the power to do almost anything.

When one of their number is critically injured while battling a super-foe, he makes his way to earth to use the ring to choose the next Lantern. This turns out to be Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a hotshot test pilot, whose cocky, reckless nature at first seems at odds with the stoicism of the other 3599 Lanterns, but it’s nothing a training montage can’t fix.

So with the Lantern home planet and earth under threat from the extremely powerful super-baddie, as well as Peter Sarsgaard’s scientist-turned-telekinetic-freakshow, Hal must overcome his human fears and weaknesses and save the day.

On the one hand, there’s not much to actively dislike about Green Lantern. It’s not aggressively stupid, just colossally goofy, with its endless references to the green power of will and the yellow power of fear, and as mythologies go it’s fairly out there.

Most accountable is the one-note script that spends an hour on the most cliched, cheesiest setup imaginable, all dead fathers and flimsy motivations, followed by a sustained burst of passable action. It does look good and the special effects are solid, but it’s just too puerile to be engaging, though the ever-likeable Reynolds does his best, and too reminiscent of kid-friendly chores like Fantastic Four to come close to the more mature and satisfying adventures of recent years.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides review

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (12A/PG-13, 137 mins)
Director: Rob Marshall

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It’s been eight years since the unexpected triumph of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, a movie based on a theme park ride that made Johnny Depp bankable at the box office for the first time in his career.

In that time we’ve seen the series go from fresh and surprising to bloated and incomprehensible. The good news is, On Stranger Tides is better than At World’s End, the threequel from four years ago that seemed to bring the trilogy to its natural conclusion. But that film raked in just shy of $1bn at the worldwide box office, so its makers were unlikely to stay away forever.

It’s the Depp factor that’s undoubtedly the biggest draw. His flamboyant turn as Captain Jack Sparrow earned him his first Oscar nomination and transformed him from quirky indie darling to blockbusting superstar.

When we reunite with Jack here, he’s in London and facing piracy charges. Spanish fishermen meanwhile have dredged up a half-drowned man talking of Ponce de León and the Fountain of Youth.

King George is also keen on finding the fountain and has hired Jack’s long-time nemesis Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) to find it in his name. Jack has no ship, but someone pretending to be him is putting a crew together, which results in Jack reteaming with old flame Angelica (Penelope Cruz) on board a ship run by the fearsome Blackbeard (Ian McShane).

With the race on to find the fountain, it doesn’t make for an especially scintillating first hour as the pieces are put in place. Conversations are expositional and much of the action is limited to rather repetitive swordfights, though Jack getting chased around Greenwich by guards is sprightly enough.

For the most part it’s just one thing on to the next without much flow, no longer particularly interested in constructing a character based story. It’s all about the exoticism and production detail, which is certainly of a very high standard.

It’s the addition of the supernatural elements that give it a boost, as the search for the fountain takes them on to encounters with mermaids, whose tears they need to make its rejuvenation powers work.

But this stretch threatens to outstay its welcome and introduces, in a preacher and the mermaid he takes a shine to, a couple of characters so dull that you long for the relative pizzazz of the now-ditched Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley.

Depp is just fine, but strange as it may sound, there’s actually too much of him here. His sheer number of lines means not all of them can be as pithy as they ought to be and, as a result, the movie just isn’t very funny. Cruz isn’t much of a character and McShane is reasonable value though cameos from Keith Richards and Judi Dench smack of indulgence rather than necessity.

It gets by on little more than the occasional flash of brilliance from Depp and one or two fun scenes, but it’s a sad state of affairs when being a marginal improvement on an utter shambles is worthy of scraping a third star by dint of not being terrible. And unlike the first instalment, you’re unlikely to come out clamouring for more of the same.

Sanctum review

Sanctum (15, 109 mins)
Director: Alister Grierson
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
A cave diving expedition in Papua New Guinea goes badly wrong when a sudden storm floods the system and the only way out for the small group remaining, chief among them a mutually antagonistic Australian father and son, is to venture downwards to try and reach the ocean. If you ignore the wooden characters, exposition-heavy script and ropey acting, Sanctum just about passes muster even if it is frequently tame and plodding. With James Cameron on board as executive producer, his name seems to be its main selling point, alongside the sometimes effective, often pointless use of 3D. Caves may be the ideal environment to fully exploit the technology, and the depth of field and immersion here means Sanctum comes off better than most. And yet it never gets close to setting the pulse racing, though it’s also far from a disaster. If it was doing its job properly, you should feel like you haven’t drawn breath for two hours, but any thrills to be had are moderate at best and ultimately it’s nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times before.

The Way Back review

The Way Back (12A, 132 mins)
Director: Peter Weir
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Inspired by the real life tale of a small group of prisoners who escaped a Siberian gulag early in WWII and walked all the way to India, this is a sort of Great Escape: What Happened Next. Facing certain death, the men break out of the camp prepared for a trek of many months, among them a Pole (Jim Sturgess), an American (Ed Harris) and Colin Farrell’s Russian psycho. This leads to a plodding midsection that threatens to become repetitive through endless cycles of watching them walk for a bit, camp for a bit then walk some more as they battle hunger and thirst through deserts, forests and mountains. It’s solid, handsomely mounted and on an epic scale, but there isn’t a great deal of meat to the drama, nor any particular tension, though the three stars offer commanding portrayals of characters of limited interest.

Gulliver’s Travels review

Gulliver’s Travels (PG, 87 mins)
Director: Rob Letterman
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Jonathan Swift’s 18th century novel, Gulliver’s Travels, will know it doesn’t contain a great deal of Star Wars references. With this modern day updating of the story throwing in countless 21st century cultural nods, purists may well baulk. But with a movie that’s positioning itself as a big daft Christmas effects bonanza, they're by no means the intended audience.

It clearly takes place in a world where Swift’s novel doesn’t exist, since Black’s character is called Lemuel Gulliver and no one else in the movie seems to think this is worth commenting on. He’s a schlubby nerd working in a newspaper mail room, and with a longstanding crush on the travel editor (Amanda Peet).

Gulliver somehow manages to bluff his way into getting a writing assignment from her, which involves him heading to the Bermuda Triangle where his boat is consumed by a vortex and he wakes up in the land of Lilliput where the tiny people there mistake him for a giant beast and imprison him.

This is where we’re given the first indication that all is not well with a script that rather throws us into situations, asking us to accept a lot of things without much introduction or explanation. Any sort of close examination will reveal that the writing is feeble, with great chunks of story appearing to be missing.

And yet it keeps on delivering uncomplicated fun and so, powering on, Gulliver meets Horatio (Jason Segel), a commoner in love with the princess (Emily Blunt), whom Gulliver subsequently saves and becomes a hero.

There’s also a subplot involving the jealous and deceitful Lilliputian general Edward Edwardian (Chris O’Dowd) that comes to the fore since the filmmakers don’t really seem to know what to do with Gulliver other than trot out references.

And yet this is where the movie delivers its funniest and most imaginative material, with Black’s semi-improvised shtick often hard to resist as he pretends that all the biggest movie plots of the last 30 years are episodes from his life.

Elsewhere it’s largely juvenile set pieces that offer a lot of bum and pee related stuff. And, as is invariably the case these days, the 3D is largely pointless though it does sometimes cover up the shoddiness of the special effects.

But it’s saved from disaster by the appeal of the cast, especially Black and Segel. Chuck in the likes of Billy Connolly and Catherine Tate as the king and queen of Lilliput and it gets by on its sheer silliness and goofy charm.

And unlike recent fantasy epics like Narnia or TRON, Gulliver’s Travels is never boring, it knows what story it wants to tell – even if it doesn’t always tell it too well – and for all its stupidity, it offers consistently undemanding entertainment.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader review

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (PG, 112 mins)
Director: Michael Apted
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

The third instalment in the movie adaptations of CS Lewis’ beloved series of fantasy novels brings them back to their traditional Christmas release date following the disappointing summer performance of Prince Caspian.

The first impression it gives is of being nowhere near as epic in scale as the first two films, probably in part due to a budget cut following on from the box office underperformance of the previous film. More discouragingly though, it’s also nowhere near as fun, as thrilling or as involving.

With World War II in full swing, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie (Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley) are staying with their uncle when once again they're transported the magical land of Narnia, this time via a painting that comes to life. They wind up on a ship called the Dawn Treader, where they reunite with Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) from the previous entry.

Narnia is at peace, so why have they been brought there? Trying to find out, they sail to the Lone Islands, where people are being sacrificed to a mysterious mist. It’s from here that this episode loses its way somewhat, with a plot that’s both undernourished and by the numbers.

There’s some guff about seven lords with seven swords that must be reunited in order to defeat evil, and it all makes for a rather follow-the-breadcrumbs fantasy quest that bumps along from one fight or escapade to another with little narrative cohesion.

It’s more of a Greek seas or Pirates of the Caribbean style adventure than the Christmas snows and epic battles we’ve been used to, and compared to the likes of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, quite weak in its mythology.

Temptation is the key theme, but it seems foisted on in order to give the characters some sort of arc to ensure the film isn’t just a special effects extravaganza. Even on those terms it’s hardly earth shattering, and what’s especially disappointing is that it’s actually quite an ugly film, with clumsy action that’s really quite tedious in places.

There’s solid if unremarkable acting from its young leads, but the newcomer to the series, Will Poulter, who plays Lucy and Edmund’s annoying cousin Eustace, is the only thing about the movie that approaches freshness.

There’s a little amount of magic and a well staged finale, but it’s quite an arduous journey for the audience to get there for a reward that’s not quite worth the effort.