Searching for Sugar Man review

Searching for Sugar Man (12A/PG-13, 86 mins)
Director: Malik Bendjelloul

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

This glorious music documentary begins in South Africa, where a record store owner called Sugar tells us about an album that was released there 40 years earlier by a little known American singer called Rodriguez.

We hear how he committed suicide by setting himself on fire on stage, so we head back to the late 60s and Rodriguez’s home city of Detroit to try to learn something of his story, of beautifully recreated smoky clubs, where he would sit with his back to the audience, his mystique and enigma building with each passing moment.

Rodriguez’s original recordings are used sparingly and often fittingly for what we’re seeing on screen, as the grimy streets of Detroit glide by. Though sometimes dangerously close to Dylan parody, the songs are mostly tuneful slices of troubadour folk and occasional pop, not a million miles from Cat Stevens.

As we hear from the producer who made his first album and others who worked with him, what comes through is the regret and astonishment that his music failed to find an audience. Yet people went wild for Rodriguez in South Africa, so we return there to pick up the story.

Amazingly, and completely unknown to anyone in the States, he had become a rebel icon, a figurehead for South African musicians singing out against apartheid in any way they could, which led to his songs being banned by the authorities.

But even with such a huge fan following, no one knew the first thing about Rodriguez, which adds an extra layer of intrigue. Even the suicide story is disputed, with some saying he shot himself on stage, others that he died of an overdose.

But with half a million record sales in South Africa, where did the money go? A former boss of Motown provides a tremendously prickly response to that question, as a South African “music detective” digs deeper and deeper into the mystery.

It would be unfair to reveal any more of where the story of Rodriguez goes from here, because this is a documentary that’s able to provide astonishing twists in the tale that would grace any thriller, as it builds up a portrait of a remarkable man.

Director Malik Bendjelloul has a great storyteller’s knack for getting information across at the perfect time for maximum impact, which means there are several moments when Searching for Sugar Man soars, achieving emotional peaks and troughs that are rare in documentary filmmaking or indeed any film. The result is a joyous triumph that’s instantly one of the year’s best docs.

Ted review

Ted (15/R, 106 mins)
Director: Seth MacFarlane
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, makes his feature writing and directing debut with this high-concept fantasy comedy that shares several cast members and jokes with his monumentally bad-taste TV animation. MacFarlane also voices the eponymous Ted, a teddy that comes to life after young John gets it as a Christmas present in the 80s. Now a grown man, John (Mark Wahlberg) still lives with Ted, and he’s been seeing Lori (Mila Kunis) for four years. But she worries Ted is preventing John from making a commitment with her, and that perhaps it’s time he moved out. Though the structure is essentially that of a rom-com, it’s the same premise and the same joke as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s Paul from a couple of years ago, with a swearing, pot-smoking teddy bear replacing a swearing, pot-smoking alien. And like that film, it’s a moderately amusing one that doesn’t really know how to exploit the laughs beyond its central conceit. Like Paul, it relies largely on crudity and the sheer incongruence of its title character and, like Paul, there are fewer laughs than you might reasonably expect. It’s a case of throwing everything at the screen joke-wise in the hope that something sticks, with an OK number of guffaws among the ill-disciplined shenanigans. But it’s enlivened by some terrific cameos and is still a reasonably enjoyable movie experience, especially if you’re on the humour’s wavelength.

Brave review

Brave (PG, 100 mins)
Director: Mark Andrews
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Pixar’s 13th feature, a magical Scotland-set adventure that represents their first fairytale, is a triumphant return to form for the animation studio following the uncharacteristically poor Cars 2.

Though it’s the first Pixar film with a female lead, Brave develops along the lines that many a Disney princess fable does, where an independently minded character who yearns for something more in their life gets more than they bargained for in a be-careful-what-you-wish-for sort of way.

That lead is Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), a flame-haired princess who is a bit fed up with the expectations placed upon her by her parents; the king (Billy Connolly), who years before lost his leg to a savage bear that still supposedly roams the land, and queen (Emma Thompson), who wants Merida to comport herself in a more princess-ly way.

She’d much rather be a warrior but instead finds herself betrothed, with a clan gathering organised to find her a suitable husband, the clan chiefs presenting their buffoons of sons to win Merida’s hand, much to her annoyance.

Distancing herself from the goings-on, Merida stumbles across a witch from whom she gets a potion designed to change her fate. This leads to a major plot point around the halfway mark that is better left unspoiled, but let’s just say that fates are indeed changed.

What follows is a film about communication between parents and children, and listening to each other’s point of view, even as it deepens into a stirring mythology. Visually it’s an indisputable masterpiece, with every facial nuance and blade of grass and patch of heather alive with the shimmer that $200m worth of computer animation provides. A glorious Patrick Doyle score and a couple of splendid songs are just gravy.

The decision to use predominantly Scottish actors for the voices is an endlessly sensible one, and we can only imagine the kind of horrors the original choice for Merida, Reece Witherspoon, may have inflicted on our ears. Luckily we don’t have to, since the perfectly cast Macdonald combines spirit and warmth to create one of Pixar’s most memorable human characters.

Connolly is a delight, as are the trio of clan chiefs, voiced by Robbie Coltrane, Craig Ferguson and the especially good Kevin McKidd, who also gets to add his Doric tones to his chieftan’s near unintelligible son. Even the non-Scots like Thompson and Julie Walters as the witch with a big part to play in the plot get it just right.

In particular, it’s the sense of Scottish-ness that Pixar absolutely nails, from the visual majesty to the smallest vocal intonations. You couldn’t call it realistic exactly, since it’s a medieval fantasy, but still it’s one of the most authentic Hollywood portrayals of Scotland you’re likely to see, deftly sidestepping the pitfalls of going all Brigadoon on us.

If a criticism is to be levelled, it’s that perhaps it’s a bit thin and one-note when it comes to the plot, that perhaps it resolves a bit easily, neglecting the depth of theme and character that graces the very best of Pixar.

But the flipside of that is that it chugs along at a lick, with little to no flab and a single mindedness of purpose that suitably reflects Merida’s character, with Pixar once again showing that when it comes to animation, even though they're not perfect, they're still the best in the business.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days review

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (PG, 94 mins)
Director: David Bowers
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

For the third summer running, the likeable family comedies based on the book series by Jeff Kinney get a cinematic outing. It’s the summer holidays for teenager Greg (Zachary Gordon), who’s looking forward to three months of playing video games. His dad (Steve Zahn) has more outdoorsy ideas for him though, and has also had his head turned by a fancy prep school that Greg thinks he might be sent to if he doesn’t buck up his ideas. Greg’s misadventures are good natured but starting to wear a little thin, with their episodic structure and gags that are sometimes left dangling. But there’s plenty zany slapstick that offers comparable chuckles to many grown up comedies and an ongoing streak of decency and integrity that lifts the series above a lot of kid-oriented fare. And at least there’s much more Zahn than there’s been in the past, which is always a good thing.

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The Dark Knight Rises review

The Dark Knight Rises (12A, 164 mins)
Director: Christopher Nolan
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Having revitalised the Batman brand with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan has ensured The Dark Knight Rises arrives as the year’s most anticipated movie, and the pressure is on him to complete the trilogy in style.

Since taking the fall for the murders committed by Harvey Dent, Batman has been gone for eight years. In fact his presence hasn’t been required, since the work supposedly done by Dent has rid the streets of all the worst criminals. That’s until a metal-masked maniac named Bane (Tom Hardy) shows up, a hulking mercenary with a plan to unleash hell on Gotham.

With his cape tucked away, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a reclusive figure, broken in body and mind, and still mourning the death of Rachel. But the threat posed by Bane forces him to don the Batsuit once more and rise to the challenge.

Returning from previous instalments to aid Batman are Michael Caine as butler Alfred, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon and Morgan Freeman as gadget provider Lucius Fox. As well as Hardy, new additions Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt provide a fresh spark. As, respectively, a duplicitous cat burglar, a philanthropist with an interest in Wayne’s business, and a rookie cop who knows a thing or two, they’re all integral to the story.

With such a vast cast and sprawling narrative, keeping tabs on everyone becomes a challenge for both Nolan and the audience. Actions and motivations can be murky and confusing, and characters often seem able to pop up whenever they're required, Gordon-Levitt especially seeming to be everywhere at once.

And though it may seem sacrilegious to suggest it, Nolan just doesn’t have an iron grasp on the material 100% of the time. The plot often hangs on the shoogliest of pegs, and any sustained scrutiny would see the whole thing fall apart. He’s also perhaps guilty of overreaching in a script that wants to target capitalism and the justice system yet leaves many details dangling and doesn’t quite seem up to providing the moral depth of its predecessor.

So it’s flawed then, more flawed than you might have reasonably have hoped. The problem is, after The Dark Knight, we demand perfection. Anything less than that is a letdown. And yet more often than not The Dark Knight Rises succeeds in the most breathtaking ways, especially if you see it in IMAX.

For carrying on plotlines and themes begun in Begins, it’s part of that rare thing, a fully-rounded trilogy. And while it offers fewer of the electrifying jolts that were part and parcel of The Dark Knight, the compensation is that it exists on a level of scale and ambition that demands our attention and respect.

Massive set pieces are brought off with seamless technical precision, and the action pounds to the bone. But first and foremost it’s about the characters, and the stunning line-up of actors, and the sincerity they each bring to their parts, is to be applauded. Bale reaches deep to show us the human side of Batman, and while the relationship between Bruce and Alfred takes a bit of a bruising, it’s still the beating heart of all three films.

Hathaway gets to show many faces, from demure to slinky to ferocious, and she comes close to stealing the show at times. Bane is a truly dangerous villain, one who has the measure of Batman physically, and their confrontations are monumental in their ferocity.

It’s in the final reckoning that the film really earns its stripes. There are twists galore, most of them stunning, and a crescendo of action, character and emotion that has been worth the wait.

So as a summer blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises is really solid. As a Nolan Batman film it’s perhaps a slight disappointment. But as the third part of a game-changing series of comic book crime epics, it’s a hugely satisfying capper to a tremendous trilogy.

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Ice Age 4 - Continental Drift review

Ice Age 4 - Continental Drift (PG, 92 mins)
Directors: Steve Martino, Mike Thurmeier
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Massive returns at the international box office are the driving force behind this agreeable but completely unnecessary fourth trip with animated prehistoric pals Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano), sabre tooth tiger Diego (Denis Leary) and dopey sloth Sid (John Leguizamo). In a terrific setup, nut fanatic Scrat, who remains the undoubted star of the show, unwittingly causes the break-up of Pangea, leaving Manny’s wife and daughter, with whom he’s been squabbling, trapped on the landmass and Manny and pals stranded on an iceberg. The addition of a gang of pirates doesn’t add much except to give the plot some semblance of danger, but the iciness of the world is gleefully utilised, with most of the action involving slipping around like it’s a giant water park. The voice work is fine, a couple of jokes hit the spot and everyone learns the lessons they need to learn, about friendship and family and letting go. It's not the freshest animated franchise in the world, but its heart is in the right place and there's definitely a whole lot worse out there. That means you, The Lorax.