Her

In the not too distant future, an emotionally disenfranchised writer falls in love with his mobile operating system. What could’ve easily been a ludicrous concept turns out to be a disarmingly profound film about our hopeless dependence on love and technology, and how the two are becoming increasingly interconnected. Need proof? Online dating websites are no longer the shameful secret they were ten years ago and apps like Tinder have rendered sex pretty much a transactional commodity. Spike Jonze’s script stirs the mind and touches the heart in equal measure and if ever there were an award for Best Disembodied Performance, Scarlett Johansson would be up for it, hands down.

5/5

Boyhood

Back in 2002, indie darling Richard Linklater began production on a movie that would chronicle a six year old boy’s journey through childhood, puberty and end on his first day in college. The kicker? The director felt that, in order to recapture the authenticity of growing up and maturing into an adult, he would have to film his pet project over the course of 12 years using the same child actor surrounded by the same supporting cast, with no replacements along the way.

Boyhood sounds like the kind of bold indie experiment that can’t be pulled off. A film production spanning 12 years? What if some of the cast members lose interest before completion? And won’t the end result be patchy and unfocused? Both justified questions and legitimate concerns, but this is Linklater we’re talking about, the very same filmmaker who successfully pulled off real-time sequels with the beloved Before… trilogy, in which we revisit Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke’s characters after 9 year intervals. With this in mind, Boyhood feels like the next logical step in Linklater’s progression as an auteur.

As with the Before… films and especially Slacker, there’s no real plot to speak of. In fact, those who prefer a their movies with a defined narrative are likely to be put off by Boyhood’s seemingly random structure, but that would be missing the point. This is a viewing experience more akin to flicking through a series of family photo albums or, to adopt Ethan Hawke’s more eloquent spin, “like witnessing timelapse photography of a human being”. Throughout the film we see our protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane) struggle with his absent father, witness his mother get domestically abused by an authoritarian husband and deal with heartbreak after being dumped by high school sweetheart, but rarely are these events followed by the catharsis you’d get in mainstream cinema. As we all know, life is often little more than a succession of events void of meaning or interconnection and for this reason, there’s an authenticity to Boyhood that feels immensely refreshing.

Of course, the film rests on the very delicate shoulders of Ellar Coltrane, who we watch grow from a 6 year old youngster to an 18 year old young man in the space of two and a half hours. Luckily for us, he is a joy to be around. There’s none of the wide-eyed staring we’d typically get from a pre-pubescent Daniel Radcliffe, nor the swagger and sardonic wit synonymous with a teenage Zac Efron or Shia LaBeouf – because of his lack of exposure to the film industry, Coltrane never comes across as a performer, but as an average kid who just happens to be caught on camera. When Mason bickers with his sister Samantha (Linklater’s daughter, Lorelei), it’s like watching memories of your own fights with your sibling; when he reaches the age when girls start flirting with him, his discomfort and embarrassment feel genuine. Admittedly, his penchant for putting an existential spin on everyday life in the latter stages of the film is a little too reminiscent of Jesse in Before Sunrise, but then again, didn’t we all fancy ourselves as philosophers of life when we were eighteen?

While Coltrane does a solid job as Mason, it would be a big mistake not to acknowledge Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette’s efforts as his on-screen parents, who both also do a fair amount of maturing over the course of 12 years. She’s goes from being a fragile single mother constantly falling for the wrong men, to becoming a strong, independent woman who also eventually finds professional fulfillment. He on the other hand starts off as an irresponsible parent who refuses to grow up, before eventually settling down with a new family while also finding the time to be the wiser father figure that Mason so clearly needs. Despite both having forged careers in the film industry, Hawke and Arquette deliver poignant and believable turns that you’d struggle to get out of, say, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Adding further to the whole mix is Linklater’s reluctance to use intertitles and instead relies on music (The Hives and Coldplay lead to Arcade Fire and Family of the Year) and justifiable product placement (CD players are swiftly replaced with iPods) to signal the passing of the years. It’s in those moments that you realise Boyhood is not just the story of a boy becoming a man, it is also the most nostalgic portrayal of the 2000s to date. There's no denying it, Linklater’s lovely little masterpiece already feels like a classic.

5/5

Begin Again

There are people who direct musicals and people like John Carney, who direct films about why we love music so damn much. The Irish filmmaker’s Once charmed the socks off cinemagoers back in 2006 and now he’s repeated a similar trick with Begin Again, which sees a dwindling producer (Mark Ruffalo) and an aspiring songwriter (Keira Knightley) record an album on the streets of New York with the help of friends, family and curious onlookers. The tunes are ace, the tone is just the right side of feel good and the central pairing offers further proof that the best on-screen romances truly are the ones left unspoken and unresolved. 

4/5

Capturing the Friedmans

Anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about with documentaries should take a look at Capturing the Friedmans. What starts off seemingly as a heartwarming account of a suburban family that enjoys capturing their quirky day-to-day lives on film soon reveals itself to be an unsettling exposé on paterfamilias Arnold Friedman, who may or may not have molested dozens of his pupils in the 80s with the aid of his son Jesse. Making the whole experience all the more disconcerting are the inconsistent accounts put forward by police officers and alleged rape victims, as well as the unexpected revelations that emerge throughout the court trials. Less a documentary about abuse, more about how obscure a concept the truth really is.

5/5  

22 Jump Street

Much like its two protagonists, 21 Jump Street was a buddy cop movie that posed as a hilarious high school comedy. While 22 Jump Street doesn’t quite manage the same hat trick with the college scenario, it does however succeed as a parody of blockbuster sequels that is not afraid to poke fun at itself. As one character notes, nobody gave a shit about the Jump Street reboot to begin with, but after its unexpected success a lot of money has been invested to make sure this program keeps going (wink wink). The movie is made all the more enjoyable by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum’s side-splitting and occasionally touching bromance.

3/5   

X-Men: Days of Future Past

You’d think that, seven movies in, the X-Men franchise would start to show signs of fatigue. And while there have been a few missteps over the past 14 years ranging from the awkward (X-Men: The Last Stand) to the outright embarrassing (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), the balance was recently readdressed with the appropriately titled First Class, a film that thrilled and entertained in a way that prequels usually don’t.

But reenergising a series is one thing. Bridging together two existing ones is a rather less enviable task. And before you point out that Joss Whedon managed to pull off the triumphant feat of tying in four separate titles with The Avengers, he did not have to contend with the time-travelling loop holes that Bryan Singer is burdened with in Days of Future Past, not to mention an ensemble of characters that spans across two separate timelines. As a result, this makes DOFP effectively an “inbetweenquel” and arguably the most ambitious comic book adaptation to date.

The set-up alone requires some serious mental gymnastics. In a post-apocalyptic future, mutantkind is being systematically decimated by a legion of unstoppable killer robots called the Sentinels. Realising that the introduction of these systems stems from the 1973 assassination of a public figure at the hands of shape-shifting mutant Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), the X-Men decide to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time in order to persuade the younger versions of Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor X (James McAvoy) to team up and prevent the murder from happening.

As you can deduce from the above premise, this is one film where a toilet break could prove fatal to your grasp on what’s going on. If DOFP had an overarching flaw it’s that, with so much going on both in the past and future storylines, it demands a lot from viewers’ attention spans. Also, because it does its best to reference events from all of the X-Men movies to date (yes, ALL of them) and tie up loose ends left hanging throughout the franchise, the movie is virtually impenetrable to newcomers.

The fact that the quality of the film does not suffer from the convoluted narrative structure is a testament to Singer as a filmmaker. While he certainly possesses a keen visual sense – the filming of one scene through the lens of an 8mm camera manages to single-handedly nail the 70s aesthetic – he is more importantly a director with a natural talent for handling large ensembles, and one astute enough to understand that it’s not his mutants’ powers that make them colourful, but their personalities. Stick two characters with polar opposite moral/political views in a tentative game of chess and you know you’re going to get an electrifying scene without the need of a CGI-fuelled bust-up.

Adding more intrigue to the proceedings is witnessing just how different the younger incarnations of Magneto and Professor X are to their older, much wiser counterparts. Fassbender easily channels Ian McKellen’s gravitas and even manages to outdo him in the bastard stakes, making this Magneto’s most threatening on-screen portrayal to date, yet there is no arguing that this is James McAvoy’s show. Bitter, boozing and with the shaggy long hair to match the tortured soul, this is Charles Xavier like we’ve never seen him before – less Professor X, more Lieutenant Dan. It’s his emotional journey of redemption we’re invited on, and it is the stuff of compelling drama. Despite remaining cool and reliably charismatic, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine definitely takes a backseat to these two characters, not to mention Jennifer Lawrence’s more fleshed-out Mystique.

The X-Men that don’t get as much screen time certainly make up for their lack of depth and lines in the action sequences. Nicholas Hoult’s Beast sadly does not get to do as much as he did in First Class, but enjoys a game of tag team (stop snickering) with Logan in the final showdown. Evan Peters’ Quicksilver is a hoot in the film’s most memorable set piece and makes a serious case for sonic speed as the coolest superpower ever. And the future mutants make sure the Sentinels realise they won’t be going down without a fight, in a series of visually inventive battles that are sure to have kids (and adults) re-enacting them in the playground for weeks to come.

Factor in a perfectly executed finale and a couple of surprising twists and what you have is the best X-Men movie to date. Plus, if the tantalising post-credits sequence is anything to go by, we’re possibly in for an even bigger movie in two years’ time. Who knows? In Bryan Singer’s hands, the Apocalypse might just be something worldwide audiences will want to eagerly sit through in 2016.

4/5  

Godzilla

Back in 2010, a young British director by the unassuming name of Gareth Edwards made his debut with Monsters, a low-key sci-fi movie that chronicled a couple’s journey through a Central America infested by gargantuan extraterrestrial creatures. Shot on a shoestring budget and, more impressively, digitally rendered by said director’s visual effects software on his laptop, it played out like Them! meets Lost in Translation: a slow-burning romance that happened to have giant monsters in it. As unlikely a premise it may sound, it worked in its own, quietly affecting sort of way.

So when Edwards landed the gig of rebooting Godzilla, the mother of all monster movies, expectations were understandably high. Here was a filmmaker who clearly had a love for the genre, but also demonstrated he knew not to forget about the human element of the story by portraying characters the audience could truly identify with. Of course, there was always the risk that Edwards might sell out to the Hollywood corporate machine and end up churning out a soulless, pixelated mess for a fat paycheck…

… And yet, while it is safe to assume that what’s on screen reflects the indie director’s vision and not the studio’s, there is something undeniably underwhelming about Godzilla’s latest reboot. For starters, he’s hardly in it. His name is on the poster and at 350ft tall you’d think he’d be pretty difficult to miss but, as evidenced so clearly in the first two acts, the giant lizard’s more reclusive than Banksy.

One could argue that, despite the $150 million budget, the director is staying true to his indie roots and is more interested in telling a human tale about survival in the face of insurmountable odds or that, like Jaws and Jurassic Park, the choice to conceal his creature is a clever tactic designed to mount suspense until the big reveal. Both would be entirely valid arguments if it weren’t for the fact that, for some inexplicable reason, Edwards dedicates more screentime to the other multi-limbed, dragon-winged MUTOs (that’s “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism” to you and me). It’s an odd, even frustrating narrative decision that leads you to question the rationale behind it and ultimately makes it seem like Godzilla is gate-crashing his own movie.

The human cast, made up of some of the most intriguing talents working in Hollywood at the moment, also feels a little wasted. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is on Orlando Bloom mode (i.e. bland leading man), David Strathairn barely registers as a US Admiral, Ken Watanabe is on obligatory exposition duties, and all the lovely Elizebeth Olsen has to do is show up in a pair of hospital scrubs. Bryan Cranston almost steals the show from everyone involved (and yes, that is including the monsters), all teary-eyed and snarling his dialogue like he is the danger, but he’s regrettably whisked off the screen all too soon.

The final brawl between Godzilla and the MUTOs is admittedly the stuff of monster mayhem dreams – colossal, thundering and gloriously chaotic – but by then the pay-off doesn’t make up for the lumbering build-up. Even more awkwardly, the plot holes are of the gaping kind, similar in size to the craters left behind by the film’s MUTOs. How can a team of soldiers tip toe their way around a monster grudge match without getting squished? Surely Elizabeth Olsen’s character was hiding in a building that got flattened just now? And isn’t it a little too convenient that Godzilla seems to be siding with mankind despite being repeatedly fired at?

Granted, most of these questions could be posed for countless summer blockbusters that make their way onto our screens every year, but considering the serious tone Edwards is going for, you can’t help but be less forgiving with the lapses in logic. Godzilla is certainly not the most disappointing blockbuster of the season (that dubious honour goes to The Amazing Spiderman 2), but given the pedigree involved, it could’ve been so, so much more. A monstrous success, even.

2/5