The Imitation Game (2014)

 "You just defeated Nazism with a crossword puzzle..."

I've been waiting to see this film for years. It's very good: Alan Turing deserved a biopic, amd he needed to wait until an age where homophobia, if not cured, is at least disapproved of by the law. If only we could say the same of transphobia.

Benedict Cumberbatch is extraordinary. Keira Knighlley is good. Allen Leach is subtly superb as John Cairncross, a Soviet spy and one of the Cambridge Five. Bloody traitor, and blackmailer to boot. His development is very clever indeed. Mark Strong is perfect casting as Stewart Menzies, or C.

This ois a fairly standard film, not brilliant by any means, The script and plot are pedestrian. Yet the themes are huge: the appaling treatment, of gay men in the '40s and '50s; the fat that those who persecuted this war hero were traitors; and, most clearly, autism.

Turing's life was tragic. Deeply so. Cumberbatch shows this so well. Yet his genius shines through here, with allusions to the Turing Test. And, as important as the injustice dine to this British hero because of his sexuality may be, he is portrayed here quite explicitly as autistic. And that may well describe the man. But we should not assume either way. Whether autistic or living with metaphor-loving allistic behaviour like myself, we all owe a huge debt to the real Alan Turing. For our computing, and for our freedom. 

The film is... ok. But Cumberbatch is superb.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

 "Um, did your traffic jam have something to do with the Russian mob?"

Ouch. This is a rubbish film, isn't it? I mean, Andrew Garfield is great. Emma Stone, too. Jamie Foxx is superb in a very different take on Electro, although Dane DeHaan misses the mark as Harry Osborn. Still, the cast is pretty good, although Paul Giamatti is absolutely slumming it in a part like this. So why is the film such utter pants? After all, nobody wants to make a bad film.

For a fair chunk of the running time I was expecting to be expressing the opinion that this was a good script ruined by bad direction. Marc Webb was ok in the film's predecessor but this instalment is shot much more obviously like a music video, and is frankly annoying with all that jiggery pokery with the POV of the camera. I don't mind creative camerawork, in fact I admire it. But when it draws attention to the artifice, as it does here, it fails.

But it's not just the camerawork. This film has Electro, a half-hearted Green Goblin with a rushed backstory, and an even more half-hearted Rhino. Electro is sidelined tooo much to be effective as a villain,whereas the whole attempt to replicate Gerry Conway's classic 1970s comics tale of the Green Goblin and the tragic death of Gwen Stacy is frankly an insult in how rushed it is. The entire conceit of Gwen's graduation speech, and how it seems to impart extra maning after her death, is the ultimate in faux profundity. It really is a pathetic waste of a storyline that could have been devastatingly good. 

I seem to be on a run of bad Marvel films. Can we have a good one, please?

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

 "This ain't that kind of movie, bruv."

This, in spite of being from pretty much the same creative team as the rather good Kick-Ass and ultimately, indeed, the creation of Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, is a film I've somehow avoided seeing for seven years. I'm glad thise years are now over; ths doesn't pretend to be anything other than a gloriously violent and stylish blockbuster, but it does this very well indeed, and with a great deal of visual flair.

The premise- a private secret service operated as a second venture of a posh Savile Row tailors- is intriguing although, unlike Eggsy, I'd be inclined to be concerned about the acountability of such a private organisation. I don't think we should read too much into the class subtext as chav Eggsy goes through a rite of passage to become an agent, but it's fun to see him succeed. Colin Firth, too, is superb as his effortlessly awesome mentor, and inevitably there's a cool role for Michael Caine. We also have Mark Hamill playing against type as a British professor, but the most stellar perfrmance by far is that of Samuel L. Jackson, as the Bond villain he was born to play, rather intriguingly pointing out that the Chinese secret service is rather worrying as it has no particular name..

The film works superbly as a straightforward Bond-Style action film, but with the added little touch of lots of nods at the fourth wall, from the verbal sparring between Harry and Valentine on old Bond film tropes to the moment where the latter seems about to tell the former all his plans before putting him in an elaborate death trap, but shoots him instead. 

This film may not have much to say about the world, but it entertained me an awful lot. One of the better class of modern Bond pastiches.

Maps to the Stars (2014)

“She’s a Scientologist.”

“I was thinking of converting. Kind of a career move.”

I know I've blogged a lot of Cronenberg fils lately, but he fascinates me. He's known for his body horror, but his work (especially in recent decades) is so much more than that- philosophical, dreamlike, with clear themes but a very adult ambiguity of meaning. So here's another.

This film is, of course, a blatant denunciation, from far to the north, of Hollywood and it's vacuous culture where everyone is an aspiring actor/writer/second gaffer. And Hollywood royalty is as horrible and exploitative as anything in the Ancien Regime- arrogant, entitled, obsessed with new age mumbo jumbo, and full of nasty casual prejudices beneath the surface liberalism. They are empty leeches who both feed off and discard ordinary people, from whose lives they are so very far removed. Havana (an excellent Julianne Moore) is as much a monster as anyone in the creepily incstuous and cursed Weiss family, and the relationship between her and Agatha is, I suppose, the fairly straightforward thematic core of the film.

But we also have the weird, incestuous and similarly loathsome Weiss family, seen being generally empty and horrible until prodgal daughter Agatha returns to "make amends". The plot unfolds at the perfect pace as the full, repetitive, abusive horror of the family's curse slowly unwinds. This is, I think, a film that will reward repetitive viewings. While critics are, I know, divided on ths, still Cronenberg's latest, I personally find it utterly compelling.

See No Evil 2 (2014)

“I’m more of a cake and cadavers kind of girl...”

This may be a by-the-numbers modern slasher sequel, it may have no stars and it may be a bit obscure. But it’s a perfectly decent film and far better than any Friday the 13th I’ve seen so far.

It’s a direct follow-on from the first film, set in the morgue to which the dead are taken, including Jacob, who of course is not actually dead for reasons that solid genre convention allows to go cheerfully unexplained. Working here are Amy, Seth and Holden plus a bunch of interestingly flawed individuals invited for an unorthodox birthday party. It’s a solid basis for a slasher.

The film is, of course, like all the best of its ilk, winking at us with regards to the cliches. Hence the couple who have sex next to Jacob Goodnight’s apparent corpse are doomed. Hence Amy signs her death warrant by offering to stay and help with the nine incoming bodies rather than take her chance to leave for her birthday piss-up. And there are, of course, no survivors, with Seth seeming to get away until the last moment where Jacob gouges out his eyes- we need to have some kind of nod to the title, after all.

This is a classic, well-constructed, traditional but delightfully self-aware base under siege slasher that benefits from a strong setting and good characterisation. I rather liked it.

Big Hero 6 (2014)

 "That is both disgusting and awesome..."

A somewhat unusual Marvel film here, but an inevitable consequence of said comics giant being swallowed by the greedy jaws of Disney. Awesome Stan Lee cameo aside, the obscure Marvel origins are minimised in order to make a Disney kids' film, and the result works well.

Hence there's no Silver Samurai and no Sunfire. The setting is not Japan but the amusingly named "San Francokyo". But it's all very Disney with the plot, characters and humour having all the kid-friendly charm we might expect. So Hiro inevitably becomes the, er, hero while Baymax becomes the kind of cute robot we might also expect from Disney. I don't know the source material myself (I Googled it; 1998 is well after my comics-reading days) but it adapts amazingly well to the modern house style of a Disney kids' film.

There are some awesome ideas, like the Microbots (wasn't there something like these in the Bob Budiansky Transformers comics in the '80s?), Alan Tudyk as the (spoilers) red herring and all the cool robotics. But it's a heartwarming tale of a boy coming to terms with grief at its, er, heart while at the same time, with the character of Professor Callaghan, showing us the terrible things that grief can make us do. Plus, of course, Hiro gets five, yes five, comedy superhero sidekicks (because that's what they are) with powers.

It's definitely a Disney kids' film which will appeal mainly to kids (not Little Miss Llamastrangler, sadly; it is apparently lacking in princesses), but is a charmingly different little superhero film.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

“Humanity has always feared what is different,"

 I've read a lot of Chris Claremont's run on X-Men (the comic book, of course) but not this seminal storyline although, of course I have a broad awareness of it. It’s a good choice of storyline for the next film and, course, offers a great opportunity for a bit of sneaky retconning; welcome back, Jean and Scott.

It’s all very much what we Doctor Who fans call “timey-wimey”, of course; Wolverine is sent back in time to 1973, with shades of Life on Mars, in order to prevent a Sentinel-riven hellish dystopia, and we follow the twists and turns as he does so. It’s an enjoyable concept and one not slavishly following the comics, as we find a disillusioned Charles who has clearly been taking hairstyle tips from me, while Magneto’s allegiances are again ambiguous and interesting. Michael Fassbender is, of course, superb, and it’s a shame we don’t see more of Ian McKellen but this film is crammed to the rafters with characters jostling for something to do.

The cast is superb, to the point that I’ve had to leave the likes of Elliot Page, Halle Berry and Famke Janssen off the tags through lack of space as the boys, alas, drive the plot and hog the screen time. There are some magnificent performances, though, the highlight being the interaction of James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart as the two Xaviers talk. Plus of course we have cameos from so many characters including an awesome-looking Bishop, Kitty Pryde and Colossus, and Peter Dinklage being superb as the villainous yet idealistic Bolivar Trask.

This may not be the greatest film of the series but it’s solidly entertaining, well-acted and full of surprises, so the Utopian ending comes as a surprise. The post-credits sequence suggests trouble to come, though...

Paddington (2014)

“Um, you're not using those ear brushes to clean your mouth are you, Mr Brown?"

Ok, this isn't my usual type of film, but I happened to watch this on the telly with my wife and daughter. Any you know what? It's bloody brilliant, far better than, frankly, it needed to be, genuinely clever and witty, Little Miss Llamastrangler was glued to the telly, and I can't say enough nice things about it.

I have only vague memories of the books and 1970s BBC series, so I can't compare the film to Paddington's previous outings in other media. But this is a perfectly plotted film where all the characters, even the stuffy Mr Brown, are ether fundamentally likeable or splendidly comical grotesques or both, unless they happen to be the delightfully dastardly Miss Clyde. The film knowingly plays up all the London visual cliches for an international audience and, most heartwarming for these days of Brexit, tabloid stupidity and a worrying insularity, is fundamentally a positive story about an immigrant, an asylum seeker, who may look different from everybody else but is just as easy to love.

All this, and a cockney Peter Capaldi. The film is quirky, uplifting, gripping and frequently laugh out loud funny. It's a film that has to be seen, and not jut for those of us who can use our young children as an excuse. Brilliant stuff.

The Theory of Everything (2014)

"While there is life, there is hope."

I'm quite familiar with Stephen Hawking's career from reading both his biography and A Brief History of Time, both a considerable number of ears ago and t was inevitable, I suppose, that a major film should be made about his life and relationship with Jane; as we can see from A Theory of Everything, the events of Hawking's life are extremely well suited to being dramatised; it's not surprising that the film is bloody good. But what is surprising is that the performance from then-newcomer Eddie Redmayne is so utterly transcendent. At last I can see what the fuss was about. The Oscar is well-deserved.
Redmayne excels both as the awkward young man and as the older Hawking in his iconic chair.

The film starts with a shot of said iconic wheelchair and then immediately flashes back to the young Hawking riding a bicycle through the colleges of Cambridge in 1963- quite an effective contrast- on the day he meets Jane, and the film shows the development of his relationship with Jane, his meteoric career and the terrible gradual progress of his motor neuron disease. He's given two years to live, and that seems normal for the condition; I'm led to wonder why it is that he's fortunately survived for all these years.

The film shows us Hawking's stubborn, ambitious, attractively humorous and non-self-pitying personality but also the awful pressures on Jane of looking after Stephen with three small children in tow. The pressures on their relationship are shown with sympathy. It's also wonderful to see his colleagues treating him as normally as possible, a real sign of respect.

There are some nice directorial touches, with a cup of coffee symbolising a black hole, but the film rightly stands on its performances and the emotional heart of its story. This is a superb film.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

"This isn't freedom.This is fear."

HERE BE SPOILERS

This was an extraordinary film when I first saw it at the cinema on my honeymoon and, even with the main twist spoiled, it's an extraordinary film today. The Russo brothers have done a superb job with what is effectively the spy genre of the Marvel superhero films, but Chris Evans is extraordinary too as a World War II Roosevelt New Dealer out of time, struggling to adapt to a time where nobody cares about civil liberties and the military-industrial complex has grown to monstrous proportions.

We begin as Cap bonds with Sam Wilson, another military veteran with similarly invisible scars, and we get a glimpse of Cap's notepad filled with things he needs to catch up on such phenomena as Star Wars, Nirvana (yay!) and the Berlin Wall, "up and down". It isn't long until his first exciting mission, a hostage crisis perpetrated by Cap's old for from the comics, - moustache-free George Batroc. But cracks begin to show between our SHIELD comrades as Cap and Black Widow are given markedly different mission objectives. Cap's complaint to Nick Fury leads to his being shown Operation Insight-a massive and, in Cap's view, disproportionate armoury. How can this be synonymous with freedom?

It can't, or so it seems, as there is a cancer within SHIELD, one that disdains Cap as much as it disdains liberty: HYDRA. And the revelation of this, and that Cap is suddenly hunted prey, is the most shocking and exciting part of the film.

There's so much more, though; Cap's heartbreaking meeting with the elderly Peggy, the nice bit of exposition in the bunker as Arnim Zola spends his last moments as an uploaded AI life form expositing on how HYDRA's takeover of SHIELD came to be, Natasha's general awesomeness, capped by a kick-ass session at a Senate hearing, the whole sequence with Nick Fury under pursuit in the car that leads him to fake his death. But the film is ultimately about the Winter Soldier; Bucky, Cap's oldest friend. Behind the explosions and the awesomeness the film always has a heart.

There's a lot of Marvel life here- HYDRA's targets include "Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange"- but the film is about two things: civil liberties vs. security and friendship. Hence Cap's new yet strong friendship with the Falcon. Hence Bucky being unable, when the moment comes, to kill Cap. It's an incredible film, but it ends with Bucky still at large...

Maleficent (2014)

"True love does not exist!"

OK, I haven't seen Sleeping Beauty yet- although, being the father of an 18 month old girl, in sure I will. But I get the point of this; to offer an alternative viewpoint of the same events from the same version of the same fairytale, just from another character's point of view, and revealing motives that are quite different from an apparent villain. It is, in other words, a massive retcon.

And it really works, much as I'm sure I'd have appreciated it more if I'd seen the cartoon. Angelina Jolie is superb in what is a finely judged performance, as is the whole cast, although why American actors seem reluctant to use their native accents in anything vaguely mediaeval is quite beyond me.

There's a hint of human corruption versus metahuman innocence; the "Moor" very much recalls the myth of Eden, and it's interesting that the very name recalls a kind of othering of their southern neighbours by mediaeval Christendom. There's also the hint of warlike masculinity versus a protective femininity; there are a pleasing number of potential subtexts here to encourage all kinds of readings.

But the climax is undoubtedly feminist; the princess is awakes by her slumbers by the true love not of a handsome prince but of a mother, and King Stefan is well and truly defeated. A fascinatingly rich and textures execution of a very intriguing idea.

A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)

"Our old school marm got her throat cut by a fast-moving tumbleweed."

Yes, this may be exactly what you expect from Seth MacFarlane, with his signature style humour, and pretty much Ted in the Wild West. But you say that like it's a bad thing.

This is great; a standard-ish Western plot gives the framework for MacFarlane to have fun and do what he does, including a prostitute who will do anything for her clients but won't have pre-marital sex with her boyfriend, plenty of observational humour and even a cameo from Christopher Lloyd as Dr. Emmett Brown, three years before Marty arrives in 1885.

The music, direction and style are done like a proper Western, which works brilliantly as a contrast to the humour, and MacFarlane himself succeeds magnificently as a leading man, even if he basically is Brian from Family Guy whenever he opens his mouth.

All this and we get a cameo from Ryan Reynolds too!

Unfriended (2014)

"You're really sexy when you're violent..."

This surprisingly splendid film is not, to put it mildly, about the experience of 39 year old a like me who could never have experienced cyberbullying, but the premise packs a punch: a girl forced to suicide by her horrible schoolmates returns to an online afterlife to slowly punish her oppressors through guilt, dramatic revelations and horrible deaths. And the whole film is shown in real time, as the contents of one persons computer screen with Skype, YouTube and Facebook goving us the twentieth century equivalent of the epistolary novel.

That means, as you'll have guessed, that it's a low budget film, as the lack of stars indicates, but less is more; this is the rare example of a genuinely scary modern horror films. Yes, the gruesome deaths are barely glimpsed and the gore implied rather than shown, and there's a distinct lack of music video-style directing, but those are precisely the reasons why this film is so bloody good. 

Even better, the website about not answering social media messages from the dead actually exists; that's multimedia horror for you. This is a superb film, even if it does make me feel a bit old.

Young people these days, eh?

The Lego Movie (2014)

"Wiping your bum with a hook for a hand is really hard.."

This is the perfect Lego movie. Not only does the all-Lego animation look great (even the water in Emmett's shower is Lego!) but the message is perfect and splendidly anti-conformist: don't just follow the instructions- build whatever the hell you like. But preferably spaceships.

This being a Warner Bros films we get cameos from Star Wars characters (the Millennium Falcon gets gobbled up by that asteroid beast from The Empire Strikes Back) and DC characters are available for a bit of mickey taking, especially Green Lantern whose film recently flopped.

The baddie, President Business, as well as being improperly linked to business for a politician (ooh, but of politics there), has a secret agenda to glue everyone together as per the instructions for all eternity, a fate worse than death. Against him are a random assortment of "master builders" including Batman(!), a very sensible spaceman who wants to build spaceships, quite sensibly, and whose family has the crack at the bottom that Lego spacemen always have.

There's also Vetruvius, half Gandalf and half Obi Wan Kenovi who, in the funniest scene, comes back as a ghost for some very serious advice for Emmett and then flies away with a "woo-oo"!

I loved this film, and I don't even like Will Ferrell. It's probably my favourite animated movie of recent years and definitely a must-see.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

"I don't believe that anybody could be 100% dick..."

I'm an old-fashioned Marvel geek in that I bought a ridiculous number of titles up until around 1994, when most of my favourite runs were winding down, Mark Gruenwald died and I started building up my record collection, which left less budgetary room for comic books. I know an awful lot about Marvel up to that point (I had a lot of back issues going way back) but I'm patchy thereafter. I do, however, remember Jim Valentino's run on Guardians of the Galaxy, a title set a thousand years on the future and with characters called things like Vance Astro and Charlie 27. This film isn't based on any of that, but a load of Marvel's cosmic characters, many of them associated with the great Jim Starlin.

We have fanwanky Marvel goodness aplenty. There is Drax the Destroyer, Rocket Raccoon(!), Ronan the Accuser, Thanos(!), a strange cyborg version of Nebula who hears no relation to the character as written by Roger Stern in The Avengers back in the mid-'80s, the Collector, the best Stan Lee cameo yet and even footage of a Celestial!

But this isn't a po-faced epic film; it's  witty, fun action film full of funny and charismatic rogues turned heroes, a cross between Star Wars and Firefly. Chris Pratt stars as Peter, a transplanted human with mysterious parentage and the Han Solo of the film. Karen Gillan disappoints vaguely as Nebula. But the best thing in it is Bradley Cooper's Rocket.

This is a superbly plotted and scripted sci-go action film with wit, action, top tuneage (we get Bowie's "Moonage Daydream" and the Runaways' "Cherry Bomb"!) and an amazingly realised space opera world with some of the best CGI I've ever seen. If you haven't seen it, do so now. It'll be on at cinemas for a good while. 

Oh, and remember, this is a Marvel film. Stay to the end.