The Last Witch Hunter review

The Last Witch Hunter (12A/PG-13, 106 mins)
Director: Breck Eisner
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

When you’re the star of what is currently the most lucrative franchise in cinema and can pretty much take your pick of projects, it looks like an odd choice for Vin Diesel to pitch himself front and centre in a hokey-looking fantasy horror.

There have been no shortage of duds involving witches and their ilk of late, and anything with a whiff of Dungeons and Dragons has been roundly rejected by audiences. And yet The Last Witch Hunter, while by no means particularly good, sets its sights on a low bar and clears it with some style. By maintaining a sense of fun and of its own silliness it stays on just the right side of ripe, and Diesel more or less manages to sell it, even through the nonsense he's forced to speak.

A meaty prologue gives us medieval Vin, where he and his beardy, leather-clad pals tackle a witch queen who has been terrorising the lands and is responsible for spreading the plague. The only way to deal with her is, of course, by sticking her through the heart. Diesel’s character, named Kaulder, manages this, but in the process the witch curses him with immortality.

There can be only one, and 800 years later we're in modern day New York where Kaulder functions as a guardian, keeping an eye on witches and making sure they stick to their code of not bothering the humans. Given that the title conjures notions of him spending most of the running time, well, hunting witches, it’s not the all out action fest that might have been expected.

Instead there’s a lot time devoted to details and backstory. There’s an old priest and a young priest, played by Michael Caine and Elijah Wood, who are known as Dolans, an order of aides who have been by Kaulder’s side through the centuries. With Caine’s Dolan 36 about to hand over the reins to Wood’s 37, he comes under attack, leading Kaulder to investigate what some bad witches may be up to in the city.

When it comes to plotting The Last Witch Hunter is largely gibberish, particularly in a final third that grows increasingly undisciplined. But there are still some worthwhile developments along the way and in terms of the mythology created, it actually contains one or two original ideas.

It's not been put together on the usual mega budget but the special effects and production design are of an accordingly decent standard, and it really does look very nice. It has a sense of humour, Diesel is a competent star, and for daft undemanding fun you could do a lot worse.

Interstellar review

Interstellar (12A/PG-13, 166 mins)
Director: Christopher Nolan
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

There are very few directors out there who would be given a budget the size of Interstellar’s for a non-franchise or non-adaptation movie. But very few directors are Christopher Nolan, and this is 2014’s most anticipated movie, and has been since it was first announced.

It’s also been a fine year for Matthew McConaughey, and he caps it with the lead in this vastly ambitious sci-fi epic that’s two parts magnificence to one part frustration. He plays Cooper, a one-time pilot who is now a farmer, as are many people since a crop blight led to a world food shortage and turned many parts into a dustbowl.

But life has to go on in this near-future world for Cooper and his son and daughter. He’s all about the pioneer spirit, living in a world where he’s no longer able to use his skills, until he encounters a team of scientists led by Professor Brand and his daughter Amelia (Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway), They have a plan to leave earth in order to find new inhabitable worlds since, as Brand puts it, “mankind was born on earth, it wasn’t meant to die here”.

This sends Cooper, Amelia and another pair of astronauts on a two-year journey to a wormhole that’s been discovered near Saturn, and to whatever lies beyond that. That’s all you really need to know, because from this point in there are many thrills and surprises to be discovered in a film that’s all about what we leave behind for future generations. There are echoes of 2001 in its silent, balletic space sequences, as well as in some of the more surreal imagery that Nolan unleashes in the later stages.

A lot of the time it’s hard science, as actual rocket scientists come up with plans for how to save mankind. Questions of relative time may scramble the brain, but it’s done with the utmost sincerity and not without humour, which is a welcome touch. It’s not an action film, certainly not a single-minded one like Gravity, so that shouldn’t be expected, but when Nolan does throw some in, he runs with ideas and visuals that make for jaw-dropping sequences.

For all its spectacle though, it’s the immense force of the human drama that gives Interstellar its impact. The implications and the scale of what we’re dealing with here can be difficult to contemplate, and when it concentrates on its profound examination of humanity, it approaches brilliance.

In most regards, this is exactly what we should be demanding from our blockbusters. It’s conceived with intelligence and far-reaching intent and executed with immense skill, yet it never quite achieves that moment of transcendence that it seems to threaten for the first two hours.

There’s plenty of room for trimming in its much too generous running time, and Nolan throws into the mix the kinds of characters and plot developments you might expect from lesser filmmakers, undoing a lot of good work in a final hour that at times can be sluggish and ponderous.

So the year’s most anticipated film has turned out to be a good one, at times a very good one. But in the end does it really amount to much more than you might find in the very best episodes of Star Trek?

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.

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.

Inception review

Inception (12A, 148 mins)
Director: Christopher Nolan

★★★★★

OK, this is it. This is the big one. A summer blockbuster season that has so far been curtailed by a lack of releases, the World Cup and downright mediocre product explodes into life with Inception, probably the most anticipated cinema release of the year so far. Early reviews have suggested it’s also the best, and that’s probably true, at least until the arrival of Toy Story 3 next week.

On paper it has everything going for it: a director in Chris Nolan coming off The Dark Knight, the most critically acclaimed and financially successful summer blockbuster of all time and a star in Leonardo DiCaprio who is able to front mega-budget projects like this but is also a genuinely talented actor in his own right.

Most intriguingly, it has a truly original concept that looked, from the trailer anyway, like nothing we’d ever seen before, even if it offered no real idea what it was actually about. Even after a first viewing all may not become clear and this is a film that demands a second visit, such is its depth, complexity and intelligence, all of it taking place in dreams within dreams within dreams.

It’s in the world of dreams that DiCaprio’s Cobb operates, as an extractor who can invade someone’s subconscious to find sensitive information, often for corporate espionage purposes. He’s hired for what is called an inception – implanting an idea into someone’s head without them knowing it, specifically Cillian Murphy being persuaded by a rival business magnate to break up his father’s company after his death.

So, with a hint of Mission: Impossible about it, Cobb assembles his team that will enter Murphy’s mind and sow the seed of the idea. They have only the length of a flight to do it, but the conceptual rules of the dream world mean that time is extended the further down you go, so a few minutes in the real world could feel like months in the dream.

Inception is a wildly inventive blend of ideas and action, building in intensity and excitement as layers are added. It’s all insanely complicated, but with a little concentration you’ll be able to follow the bigger picture as long as you don’t spend too much time trying to process the specifics.

The main action takes place in anything up to four levels of dream, but each layer is well defined and refreshingly there’s never any attempt to hoodwink the audience with ‘it was all a dream’ theatrics like many a lesser filmmaker than Nolan might.

The concept is intriguing enough, but Nolan dresses it up by spending hundreds of millions on mind-blowing sequences of zero gravity combat or a Paris city block folding over on itself, that are all the more impressive for never looking like special effects.

It all makes for that rare blockbuster that doesn’t sacrifice story for spectacle, so while said spectacle is astonishing, the journey of DiCaprio’s character is the film’s main focus. The mission to plant the idea in Murphy runs in tandem with a major subplot where Cobb can’t forget his late wife (Marion Cotillard). Her frequent appearances in his subconscious threaten to jeopardise the mission and add further levels of emotion and poignancy, almost as rare as intelligence in summer blockbusters.

Nolan has been able to assemble an exceptional cast around DiCaprio to play his team of infiltrators, including Ellen Page as the architect of the dreamscapes, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy as the muscle and Nolan old-hands like Ken Watanabe and Michael Caine.

But we shouldn’t forget the contributions of DiCaprio and Cotillard, who provide the heart and soul of Inception, all the way to a thematically perfect ending for a sensationally entertaining movie experience.