Ron’s upset that his mum, Olga, has nicked his cheese. Irate, he bundles her into his car in her pyjamas with the intention of making her buy more, but crashes into an open shipping container bound for Morocco, and when the pair awake they find themselves miles from home with no apparent means of returning.

​Writer-director Alberto Sciamma attacks his piece with energetic abandon, ensuring that this high concept comedy whips past at a sprightly pace, never allowing us to get bored. The cinematography by Fabio Paolucci is also sterling and endlessly inventive, which again valiantly manages to maintain our interest despite the film’s not inconsiderable flaws.

Tommy French embraces his role of the put-upon Ron with gusto and impressive naturalism. Unfortunately the humour is too broad to put his performance to good use, and while technically impressive, he’s lumbered with a character so spectacularly unlikable that it is impossible, even in moments of pathos and vulnerability (of which, thanks to Sciamma’s swift plotting, there are frustratingly few) to invest one iota in his plight. The same goes double for his mother, realised with repellent relish by Kierston Wareing.

To say this undoes the film would be an understatement. Ron and Olga embody the very worst aspects of humanity; boorish, obnoxious, abrasive, arrogant, and impressively loud. Why we would want to spend ninety minutes in their company is a mystery which is not illuminated as the film progresses. There is no redemption, only one-note animosity. In the hands of a different writer or pair of actors there might be a nihilistic comic delight in these twin grotesques, but here they are merely exhausting. When the sometimes deafening score overwhelms their incessant arguing it is, frankly, a welcome respite.

If you can get past this and engage meaningfully with the central couple and the admittedly inventive plot, it might be possible to appreciate this film as an undemanding bit of quasi-comic diversion. But even here there are roadblocks, as inconsistencies in the dialogue loom large, and it slowly becomes horribly clear that pretty much every supporting character in this film is more interesting than the leads, and belongs to a more interesting film. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the cases of Aida Folch’s feline karaoke queen Paloma – her effortless screen presence and unforced honesty elevating every scene she’s in – and the French cast, who probably come off best out of everyone, an eight-year-old child and an elderly restaurant manager landing the film’s two laughs. There is also a particularly grating sequence featuring laudable work from Gabriel Andreu as a Spanish doctor. If I see a more justifiable violation of the Hippocratic Oath in a film this year, I shall be very surprised.

'I Love My Mum' is perhaps best enjoyed (like so much other material in this area, with a truly perverse pleasure) as an allegory for Britain’s current relationship with the EU. The Brits here are adrift and scared, frequently confrontational, aggressive or just plain impatient with the Europeans (who are for the most part entirely reasonable and genuinely trying to help them), and constantly scuppering themselves with their own blinkered infighting. With this reading, the film ascends to a bitingly perceptive satire, and the very last beat is absolutely perfect on about three distinct levels. I supremely hope this is what Sciamma had in mind, otherwise the journey on which he has taken us, like that of his lead characters, seems distressingly pointless.

A fairly predictable psychological thriller where a timid and nervous high school girl Maria (India Eisley) is bullied by her schoolmates and gradually exacts revenge by absorbing her sinister alter ego mirror image. Maria’s parents (Mira Sorvino and Jason Issacs) are no help: mother being a repressed, depressive housewife and father a philandering plastic surgeon, who totally fail to communicate with both her, or each other. 

It all starts after Maria discovers a hidden ultrasound of twins, and starts to take on the personality of the bolder ‘Airam’, who it seems is her twin that never survived. We are shown flashbacks from Mum Amy’s nightmares and realise that Dad, Dan, thought it was "for the best" that only the "perfect" twin survived. So Mum is ineffectual, and Dad is a cold perfectionist that offers his beautiful daughter plastic surgery for a birthday present when she was hoping for a car…

Dysfunction all around, as her only friend, Lily (Penelope Mitchell) is shallow and deceptive, not rescuing her when she is humiliated at the Prom, and Lily’s boyfriend Sean (Harrison Gilbertson), who seems to be the only one who has any genuine kindness in him - and naturally Maria harbours a secret crush.  But all does not end well for the people in Maria’s life, to say the least, and it’s easy to guess who’s going to be on the receiving end of her wrath. 

As she becomes more bold in her execution of retribution, her actions as the mirrored Airam become more violent, and there are some nasty results. We are initially willing her on to stand up for herself, but she certainly gets a bit carried away! The wealthy plastic surgeon’s house and the stylish lifestyles of the clearly privileged high-schoolers certainly don’t amount to much happiness. 

It’s a decently filmed yarn, about the vengeance of a privileged, intimidated and unhappy teen that you’ll definitely have seen before. But it lacks any real tension, and although the "missing twin" theme is a good one, most of the characters are superficially written. Some are pretty cliched, particularly the high-schoolers. Directed and written by Assaf Bernstein, with some style in the first instance and very little depth in the second; Sorvino and Issacs are somewhat wasted here. But what do you want from a teen tale of angst and revenge? I quite enjoyed it, but I don’t imagine it will make much of a mark.

We open with a voiceover from newlywed Elizabeth (Abbey Lee) describing her dream of meeting a brilliant man to take her away from the ugliness of the world. The man of her dreams is husband Henry (Ciarán Hinds), a scientist who brings Elizabeth to live in his sheltered mansion and encourages her to enjoy everything the estate has to offer - so long as she never enters one particular room. So far, so fairytale. Of course, after exploring her new home, increasingly shadowed by house staff Claire (Carla Gugino) and the blind Oliver (Matthew Beard), she does enter the forbidden room. What she encounters brings into question her identity, Henry’s motivations and the nature of the house.

Unfortunately, what follows is a mystery as clunky and obvious as the title itself. Part of the problem is the confused pacing brought on by multiple flashbacks and dream sequences that interrupt the flow of the plot. It also doesn’t help that these scenes are saturated by block colours which jar with the otherwise coldly lit present-day scenes. These strange bouts of high stylisation, along with Abbey Lee’s affected performance, result in an inconsistent genre piece whose central mystery is too predictable to stay engaging. While the rest of the cast try gamely to work with the stained dialogue they are given - at one point Oliver says, “You were the prettiest, strangest creature I ever saw,” to which Elizabeth replies: “How would you know…if you’re blind?” - their efforts can’t quite maintain the tension needed to keep us invested. The conclusion, aided by a lengthy period of reading a diary laden with explanations, has all the subtlety of shotgun fired by a blind man (something that actually happens halfway through).

'Elizabeth Harvest' has a lot of good intentions, but any statement it is trying to make gets lost in an uneven visual style and limp plot. It seems aspire to be a 'Gone Girl' for the #MeToo era; a subverted fairytale about a young and beautiful woman reasserting her power over an older wealthy man. While this could've been a timely thriller about gender dynamics, it is instead a muddled mystery that’s too stylised for its own good.

Less full of minty fresh zeal than its namesake, 'Fisherman’s Friends' foists the tale of 10 serenading songsters spending their salient hours sailing the seas as fisherman and their unexpected chart success in 2010 upon audiences as a feelgood film full of hearty wholesome charm. In reality the predictably trite plotline fails to make much of a splash.

While the crux of the film seems rooted in a determination to whip up some sympathy for Cornish patriotism, one can’t help but feel the timing of showcasing fervent separatist sentiments seems entirely uncomfortable. This woeful attempt at delivering a heart-warming tale of unlikely victories and underdog appreciation feels like a hollow tick box exercise. Unruly local rag-taggle group of undiscovered stars with no desire for a life of stardom? Check. Bright, luscious views of the British Coast and a nostalgic jingoism? Check. Will they, won’t they romance between two characters torn between worlds? Check.

Despite Daniel May and Tuppence Middleton’s best efforts, their characters’ awkward love story haemorrhages much of the film’s narrative. May’s lamentable London boy, Danny, becomes enamoured with Middleton’s maddeningly bland local girl Alwyn who, for her trouble, has a poorly written backstory involving an overprotective father and a Montague-Capulet esque feud. It’s a shame, because there is a sense that had the screenplay bothered to delve a little more into character development, the two could have at least made some aspect relatively believable. Alas, owing to Piers Ashworth and Meg Leonard’s scuppered script there is little pathos to be eeked out from what feels to be a rather wrong-footed romance.

Though there are some pleasing vocals, particularly those filmed in St Kew Parish Church, where the group originally recorded their first album, it’s hard to imagine sea shanties have the capacity to gather much of a following. The specificity of the genre of folk music ensures that the film fails to capture the same loveable charm as similar feelgood films like 'Sunshine on Leith'' achieved, purely because there’s not much for the audience to hum along to. Often, it all feels like a lacklustre 'Doc Martin' episode that should have remained shoved in a back room and left to rot in the bowels of 2010.

After a world championship win in the previous film, the third installment of the Pitch Perfect franchise finds the Bellas lost in the pangs of post-graduation depression. They work various unappealing jobs, from food truck to Veterinarian’s office, while Beca (Anna Kendrick) and Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) stay the closest to singing. The former soon quits her job as a junior producer a record label and the latter struggles with her one woman street show "Fat Amy Winehouse". So when Aubrey (Anna Camp) tells the girls about an opportunity to play on a USO tour around the Mediterranean, they seize the occasion to reunite one last time... 

Warning 1: Anyone who’s seen 'Sex and the City 2' might get a tingling sensation of déjà-vu here, seeing familiar characters in an exotic location meet attractive men and do a bunch of outlandish things for no apparent reason. 
Warning 2: Anyone who’s seen any instalment of 'The Hangover' franchise may also suffer from déjà-vu as the opening sequence showcases the Bellas singing Britney to a bunch of thugs on a yacht off the French Riviera, until Fat Amy attacks said thugs and burns down the yacht. We then skip to 3 weeks earlier… 

On the plus side, in spite of having completely forgotten 'Pitch Perfect' and not having seen its sequel at all, I was able to catch up and follow 'Pitch Perfect 3' from the get go. Another plus was seeing the 12 year old girls who had been watching it as well step out of the movie theatre with delighted grins and joyful energy. Their parents were grinning too, by the way. ​

Added to this daddy issues duet, we also have a trio of underdeveloped romance stories: Chloe (Brittany Snow) getting together with Chicago their US military guide (Matt Lanter) after a series of mildly embarrassing exchanges, Lilly (Hana Mae Lee) falling into an offbeat bond with an equally eccentric musician, and Theo (Guy Burnet), DJ Khaled’s right hand man, falling for Beca though it’s never fully delved into but given his longing gazes, one can only assume it’s not all just for her talent. Between the contest, the romances, the daddies and the girls respective futures also a theme, there seems to be too much going on already. And then it all turns action thriller with a group kidnapping that definitely snatched my suspension of disbelief away for good. Explosions and side romances can be fun, but do not a strong comedy make. 

Instead of packing the script with so many things and all much to superficially, the film might have benefitted with more focus and depth (yes, it’s a light comedy, but light comedies need depth too). For example, Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) aka Bella’s latest addition, is a songwriter. Yet except for a few platitudes, nothing is made of this. If DJ Khaled is to sign Beca as a rising star and if the Bellas are to clearly surpass their opponents, didn’t the finale scream for a Golden Globe worthy original song instead of a George Michael cover? And wasn’t there more to show about Aubrey’s hidden fear or singing and the place it had with each and everyone of them? And how on earth can they do all those numbers with absolutely no notice and no rehearsals to show for it? Maybe a rehearsal would have been a better moment to break the news of Chloe getting into Vet school, instead of wrapping up everyone’s story rushedly at the very end.

The kids antics aren’t quite cute enough to endear us to them and as characters they’re pretty flat largely because the clunky script doesn’t give them anything believable to do. There’s a gentle “kids should get out more” message that doesn’t hold up considering these kids can barely go ten minutes without nearly getting killed in some irresponsible way. Kids outsmarting adults because they have a more simplistic view of the world is a fine plot device but this film fails to pull it off, these kids are just reckless and kind of stupid.

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All that aside, the premise was genius, and watching a pregnant serial killer made for a few deliciously unusual and disturbing scenes. It also made me very curious how men would react to the film, as the tradition of the helpless and highly sexualised female victim is now cleverly replaced by two sexually predatory men (one of them still living with his mother), in addition to a tough spinstress type and a young woman (Gemma Whelan) who will refuse to be a victim. I also imagine that one specific scene might be specifically painful to male audiences.

The choice of locations was also great: starting with a strange animal shop full of snakes and spiders, we move to a 70s disco night at a pub, with crucial moments later taking place at a climbing club and at a Halloween party. All greatly enhanced by Ryan Eddleston’s cinematography, which hits the perfect balance of beautiful, disturbing, realistic and almost grotesque.

Performances were also strong overall, with a few great scenes, though my favorite was Jo Hartley as Ruth’s midwife, as her utter sensitivity and truthfulness anchored in the tragic reality of the story, yet (and therefore) become the only character to give me the chuckles during the film.

The saving grace of 'Bitter Harvest', aside from its vitally important premise, is its cinematography. Milsome beautifully captures the lush tranquillity of the village the film opens with as well as the desolate hopelessness later on. His cinematography was the absolute highlight of the film for me.
Overall 'Bitter Harvest' filled me with regret and sadness. Not, as intended, due to witnessing millions of people starving to death, but the waste of opportunity at giving this important story the attention it deserves. I want this film to be great, to be a must see showcase of what happened, but I feel it does a disservice to this rather important event in history. The overly melodramatic script is its undoing, eliciting laughter where gravitas should reign. 'Bitter Harvest' doesn’t come close to the epic it wants to be, and wanting to be that epic ultimately sets it up to fail. Kudos to Mendeluk for bringing this story and its events to the big screen. I just can’t help but wish for better execution in bringing this story to life.

Out now!

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Clay (T.J. Miller) runs a branch of his late fathers company but his sister (Jennifer Aniston) is the ruthless CEO with a grudge to bare and sets him an ultimatum to increase profits or close in the new year. With best friend and employee Josh in tow (Jason Bateman) Clay embarks on a mission to save the jobs of his beloved workforce.
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Unfortunately Clay is something of an emotionally stunted man child and somehow the plan becomes to hold an epic booze filled Christmas party (something his sister is strongly against) to try and seduce a wealthy potential client to save the company. But somewhere between an overly enthusiastic DJ and an unpredictable drug dealer things get out of hand, and the safety of the company seems to be more and more unpredictable with every passing second.

This movie is not nearly as much fun as it sounds. The characters are a nice mix but the story is much too tame and the set up is squandered on a plot that inches up to the line several times but doesn’t have the guts to cross it. On the positive side there’s some good laughs and the main storyline basically concluding about halfway through the movie was a nice twist that actually left me wondering where this whole thing was going, but did little more than waste time as the plot resets making a huge chunk of the movie kind of pointless.
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Whilst this sounds like a classic comedy set up of our heroes battling increasing disaster our characters are never really allowed to fail so the stakes don’t feel real. Problems are solved almost as soon as they appear, characters change their personalities to fit whatever it is they need to do to move the plot forward from scene to scene, and without giving away any spoilers the ending just seems like super convenient nonsense.

An extended segment of the office party turning into some sort of post apocalyptic war zone has a lot of potential but is over before it has a chance to develop. A surreal segue into this kind of thing could have really saved the movie and added some much needed drama, comical though it would have been. Ultimately that’s the problem, the cast are a gaggle of very funny people and the jokes largely land but there isn’t a drop of dramatic narrative to be found and it’s impossible to get invested in anyone or anything.
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This goes double for Bateman and Olivia Munn’s burgeoning romance that plays like the emotional core of the movie but is actually really boring and has absolutely no reason to not work out so what’s the point. On top of that almost all the side plots of the various employees fall completely flat.

​All in all this is more like the Christmas special of a fairly average sitcom without the bonus of you already being invested in the lives of the characters. I’d skip this one as I expect it’ll disappoint.

Three “friends” (it actually isn’t entirely clear how they became a gang) have been making a career for themselves as thieves. Alex (Dylan Minnette) utilises his father security business to rob its customers, bypassing their security measures and meticulously planning the cover up including always keeping their ill-gotten gains on the small scale so they don’t draw too much attention to themselves. He’s the brains, Money (Daniel Zovatto) is the muscle and most believable criminal, and Alex (Jane Levy) is the female member of the group who we’re supposed to sympathise with because she’s the only one who gets a suitably tragic backstory.

Things have been going well until Money hears of a potential big score that could be easy money even if it does break Alex’s small scale rule. Said job involves a lonely old blind man who supposedly has several hundred thousand dollars hidden away in his dilapidated house in the middle of an abandoned neighbourhood. Sounds simple, but once inside the house things go wrong as The Blind Man (Stephen Lang) turns out to be an ex-soldier who has presumably “seen some s**t” in addition to being traumatised over the recent death of his daughter, and is just crazy and highly skilled enough to try and kill them all despite his impediment.

So the kids, who aren’t really bad guys they’re just desperate, enter a complex game of cat and mouse when they become locked in the house with The Blind Man hunting them down. Thing is he’s just as much a victim as they are, he’s sympathetic and not a villain as such, he’s just scared and detached from reality, that is until … sigh … suddenly he isn’t. If my initial description, a thought provoking character piece on trauma and criminality hidden inside an extremely well crafted horror setting, seems intriguing to you then prepare to be disappointed. Yep, there’s a twist or two here and it turns out The Blind Man isn’t what he appears to be and our trio of thieves are in serious trouble as he devolves into just another psychotic slasher movie villain and the film moves from one shock to the next with such predictable pace that all I could think about was all the others things I could have been doing with my time instead of being sat in the theatre.

I find myself reminded of why I don’t watch horror films for fun. That’s not to say there aren’t good horror films out there but being a good movie and being a good horror movie don’t seem to be the same thing. Horror has a tendency to go purely for shock value and it really feels like this film has a unique and interesting premise that it chickens out of almost immediately. I honestly think the filmmakers looked at this script and were worried it was too nuanced and interesting so decided to gradually make it get stupider to compensate.
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The set pieces of our heroes trying to silently negotiate their way around the house whilst The Blind Man hunts them work brilliantly, they’re gripping and exciting and the movie could easily have survived on that alone, but no, they felt the completely pointless need to ramp up the shock value for no reason and it’s just ridiculous. Once the final truth about The Blind Man comes out no matter how grotesque it is, and it is, it can’t help but be almost comical, except the film has a crushingly dark tone so the audience isn’t even allowed in on the joke. Thus we end up laughing at
the movie rather than with it, and believe me people in my screening were laughing, it just didn’t seem appropriate.

And like I’ve said there’s no reason the original premise wouldn’t have worked, distraught highly skilled ex-soldier struggling with a myriad of personal issues ends up in a stand off with a group of reluctant teen thieves who are in over their heads. Great, some elements would have even made more sense and Scott Lang brings some real gravity to the character even in this dopey story so he clearly could have pulled this off. Watching him break down in tears should have been moving, made you question whose side you were supposed to be on, except it isn’t and it doesn’t because he’s clearly pure evil.

Plus the kids don’t want to kill him, even after it’s really clear he deserves it, and that would have made more sense if we were able to view him as just as much a victim of circumstance as they are, but no, instead it’s just the tired horror cliche of the heroes not killing the villain when they had the chance and we all know that’s bound to be a decision they don’t grow to regret. And no spoilers but the ending leaves everyone in a questionable moral position of supposing that getting away with theft is better than getting away with murder and not to nitpick but aren’t those both bad things?
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It’s all so much potential wasted and whilst it’s a perfectly good movie I kind of want to hate it for that reason alone.

Hands up if you've ever been to see a film without having read the book.  Yep, that's a lot of us.  Hands up if you've ever been to see a comic book film and have never read a comic.  Yep, lots of us again.  Well, sorry, but if you go and see 'Batman vs Superman' you're screwed.  In fact, considering that I was watching this film with a self-confessed Super Geek and at times he still had no clue what was going on, you're possibly screwed regardless.  It's one of the most disjointed, indecipherable blockbusters in a long time that is played out with arrogant, adrenaline heavy bravado.  Working out what on earth is going on is a lot like having a conversation with a very attractive, but very drunk high school meathead.  

The sense of anticipation I had at the start of the film dwindled within minutes into confusion and then plummeted into downright indifference.  Arguably you shouldn't be thinking "meh" when the fight scene that has been billed as the punch up of the year is being duked out on the screen in front of you.  That's not to say that the 'Batman vs Superman' barney didn't contain pleasing CGI.  It was a short, reasonably perfunctory affair that was done no justice by the 90 minutes preceding it and still left you somewhat confused as to how you got there.  It wasn't a justifiable rumble in the jungle so much as a petulant grudge match.  What immediately followed the fight was also meant to be the emotional linchpin of the warring duo's reconciliation, but was utterly facile, saccharine and unbelievable.  I don't expect to have my bottom lip quivering when I watch a comic book film, but I do want to feel some empathy with the characters in the moments that count.

And that's the point.  Because most of the film was so desperately disjointed it was hard to grasp the characters' real motivations and gain any sense of connection.  When the crunch of the film came I wasn't that bothered, especially considering that this film is a butt-aching 150 minute trailer for all the other films in the franchise and you know that's not really the end.  But unlike your average 3 minute trailer 'Batman vs Superman' doesn't have a helpful Voiceover Man telling you who's who, who you should be rooting for and what's going on and why.  Instead you're left to puzzle through on your own because even your adjacent Super-Geek is getting stuck.  

"Hey Super-Geek, is Batman dreaming or hallucinating now? 

"I have no idea."

"Why are we in a Mad Max type desert and what are those things?"

"Still no idea."

I love comic book films.  Marvel's films are colourful, dynamic and full of witty conflict and camaraderie.  DC films are the perturbed and pessimistic counterpart.  The irasicble good guys fight with neurotic force more than finesse and only Wonder Woman provides any light relief. 

There's definitely themes you will get (all the mega wealthy are mega nuts or prone to going mega nuts mega quickly) and religious and terrorism tropes aplenty.  But that's about it. Because of the need to cram everything in the actors felt underused. Cavill is chiselled, Eisenburg isn't truly enabled and the women, well they look pretty and/or need rescuing and sympathising with until Wonder Woman weighs in.  She actually has one of the best moments of the film.  Super-Geek leant over the me and said "chills!" when she leapt up to the plate. And that's no mean feat when you are fighting a wannabe Orc that's just birthed itself from an amniotic sac. Overall it feels more like an outline for film that was meant to preview half a dozen other different films that unless you are an avid comic book reader you are not going to get.  If you are going to see this film and aren't very familiar with the DC comics either read up or take a geek.  Or wait for the GIF of Affleck thumping a tyre with a sledgehammer.  It'll be on the internet within a week and will tell you all you need to know.   

I, like most people, remember the first Maze Runner as a fairly decent addition to the teen angst 
sci-fi genre with a bizarre nonsensically stupid ending, so the hope here is that the sequel reconciles that dilemma. 

‘The Scorch Trials’ picks up almost immediately after the first movie with the survivors of the maze aboard the rescue chopper as it arrives at the mysterious base of their rescuers where they are taken in by the highly suspicious rebellion group. All is not what it seems, otherwise we wouldn’t have much of a story, and our plucky gang are forced to flee into The Scorch (the general term for, well, the planet I guess) in search of a better option. Or something, they don’t really have a plan.

In answer to my first question, no the nonsensical ending from the first movie doesn’t get any more logical. Spoilers for the first movie here (but this is a sequel so what do you expect), you might remember it ended with possibly the least logical explanation for the events of the maze there could be, the sun had scorched the Earth and people had turned into raving zombies and the maze was designed to help somehow... Except then an almost meaningless twist, that happened way too suddenly, meant that maybe this wasn’t true and we were left with a big ‘huh?’ to deal with. 

Tragically this raving gibberish turns out to be true, the world has turned into the ‘Resident Evil: Extinction’ and WCKD have taken up the most bizarre methodology they could think of to try and combat the problem, and I’m afraid I couldn’t get past this. Much like the first movie it largely works really well, the 'Mad Max' meets 'Fallout' landscape is stunningly realised and the pockets of “civilisation” the kids encounter are all varied and interesting. The problem is we are stuck with what is still ultimately a very stupid plot hanging over the proceedings like a tidal wave threatening to drown the movie under it’s nonsense. 

WCKD are searching for a cure for the zombie apocalypse but don’t know how to do that without being incredibly evil, for unclear reasons. The best way to find said cure is to torment some children, trick them into submission and slowly ferry them to their doom, again for unclear reasons. The rest of the world are against WCKD’s search for the cure despite not having a better plan. It’s just … dumb.

Weirdly this film is also a total left turn from the first, they really have next to nothing in common besides apparently taking place in the same universe, and much like the first the premise, characters and beats of the story work great it’s just the story itself that let’s it down. But it means that I can’t honestly say that if you liked the first you’ll like this one because they’re very different creatures. 

I mean I know who the heroes and villains of this story are I’m just not sure why I’m supposed to care. WCKD are evil, sure, but what’s the point? A villain with essentially noble intentions is always interesting but there’s a limit to my suspension of disbelief and WCKD are at best idiots. 

I think it’s a damning indictment of the series that I’ve now seen two films and I wouldn’t lose any sleep if I missed the next one. I can recommend this film for it’s scenery and world building but I just wish we had a better story to explore this world with and ultimately I was bored. Not for me.

Fresh off the back of an appearance in the Academy Award–nominated 'Inherent Vice', as well as an equally lauded performance in 'Wild', Reese Witherspoon returns to more comedic stomping grounds for the first time since competent if somewhat generic 2012 rom-action-com, 'This Means War'. Unfortunately, the result does little to hit the same heights as her recent dramatic and much earlier comedic turns, as well as the standard elevated by other, similarly-spirited endeavours.

An uptight and by-the-book cop tries to protect the outgoing widow of a drug boss as they race through Texas pursued by crooked cops and murderous gunmen.

Kicking off with an original and actually quite inspired opening, which details the life and motivations of Officer Cooper (Witherspoon), it’s a shame to witness the film slip backwards and rely heavily on outdated clichés and tropes. Writers David Feeney and John Quaintance throw everything at the wall in the name of humour; missing only the kitchen sink, substituted instead for diamond-encrusted shoes. Sadly, very little successfully sticks, with only a running joke regarding Officer Cooper’s height and the age of Daniella Riva (Vergara), as well as Officer Cooper’s climactic choice of disguise, serving to provoke more than chuckles.

Reese Witherspoon gives it her all, throwing herself as unabashedly headlong into role as her character does her assignments, thus imbuing the technically intelligent but frustratingly inept officer with not only a pitch perfect accent but a degree of quirky, endearingly oblivious charm. However, even her considerable abilities are not enough to carry the weight of the writing she has been burdened with. A fact that is exponentially more evident in the scenes she shares with Sofia Vergara, who, is lumbered with a character so stereotypical and over-the-top, there is no room for her to do anything but play broadly into it. She also is extremely game, but the lack of subtlety serves mostly to grate rather than amuse. 

The obvious chemistry apparent in the traditional amid-credit outtakes fails to transfer to the preceding story, with the casual off-screen banter easily eclipsing the scripted humour. The  more dramatic elements and humanising back-story suffer a similar fate, shoe-horned into the reduced run-time in a vain attempt to generate pathos, empathy, and a sense of sisterhood. At no point amid the bickering, betrayals, and out-right cat-fights, does it ever feel believable that a genuine friendship would form, much less that they would rush head-first into danger for the other. Some late-in-the-game twists ably raise the stakes, but feel similarly incongruous and fail to connect with anything that came before, doing nothing to truly deepen the bond.

The mismatched pairing of opposites is nothing new to the world of cinema, and this has nothing new to offer, borrowing unashamedly from the likes of 'Speed' right through to Adam Sandler’s 'Bulletproof'. Director Anne Fletcher sets things in motion early and maintains a consistently rapid pace, navigating some impressive action sequences along the way, but following in the wake of such films as 'Spy', 'Hot Pursuit' not only fails to emulate but actually feels like more than a few step in the opposite direction.

'Cub' concerns Sam, a member of a Belgian scout troop venturing out into the woods of France with three of the least responsible adults to ever lead a scout troop into almost certain death. They stray from the designated camping ground and into the forest lair of a mysterious man and a feral child in a mask made of tree bark, which is a fantastically creepy piece of design, who has an unclear connection to the main villain who has set an elaborate array of traps to capture and/or kill anyone who dares walk amongst the trees.

Sometimes a film just loses you and 'Cub' lost me at the end. Unfortunately this makes it very difficult to explain why I ultimately didn’t like the film without ruining the ending, so to compromise the next four paragraphs are spoiler free but beyond that I’m going to make no effort at all.

There’s a relatively typical “Lord of the Flies” dynamic amongst the kids with Sam being the token outsider with a nerdy friend who are picked on by a bully on a power trip. Sam seeks out and befriends the feral child at first, which has the potential to lead the plot in an interesting direction, but the story is basically just a ticking clock to the slaughter, which once it kicks in is inventive but feels inconsequential and is actually a little ridiculous in retrospect.

But the characters are all interesting with no weak link, not even the token girl. The villain, though criminally underdeveloped, is creepy and monstrous enough to be an engaging presence. The feral child is a really interesting thread, it not being clear if he exists separate to the killer or as some sort of minion of his since he clearly has only an animalistic level of intelligence, but unfortunately this isn’t explored nearly enough and doesn’t really amount to much of anything. Let’s get to the crux of the problem, I was on board to enjoy this film even though it did drag a little, the premise was solid, the maze of traps throughout the forest made for an interesting and tense situation, and the characters were all interesting in their own way, in fact you could easily have made a drama out of the group dynamic going on. But the end … oh man, the end ruined it.

Here’s the last spoiler free paragraph. This film was very strange for me. About halfway through it was looking at a strong 4 out of 5, strong characters, intriguing mystery, terrifying villain, some clever kills, and then it started to drag... It wasn’t clear where it was going, aside from nowhere fast, and it fell to a 3. And then the final scene ran and it was almost immediately a 2. As I’ve said, the film is pretty solid up until this disappointing ending, so if you want to risk it then consider this a 4 out of 4 rating with the caveat that I hate the end and I can’t explain why without completely ruining it for you. Consider this fair warning.

'Cub' ends in what is a predictably unresolved “dark” way that I’ve seen too many horror movies to have been surprised by, in fact I saw it coming almost immediately. Sam ends up in the lair of the villain who proceeds to try and manipulate him into killing the last of the grown ups, Jasmijn (the token girl), but instead he winds up in a fight to the death with the feral child, even though they were kind of friends before. This fight becomes blurred and difficult to follow as one of the children falls but we don’t know which one! The unknown victor emerges from the fight and is revealed to be the feral child but Jasmijn has escaped and our two villains hunt her down. But during the struggle she removes the feral childs mask to reveal it is Sam underneath, he then kills her and walks off with the other guy into the sunrise with no explanation of who they are or why they are there and I’m left feeling hollow and empty.

There’s a trend in horror movies that I really want to campaign against and that’s the belief that an ambiguous or bleak ending is somehow automatically clever, and it really really really isn’t. Now we can all agree that 'Rosemary’s Baby' is a classic and films like 'The Stepford Wives', 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' or the more recent 'Se7en' are all the smarter for their bleaker endings but somehow it has become acceptable to think that simply being obtuse or depressing makes you clever.

You know what else are good films, 'The Exorcist', 'The Shining', 'Jaws' and a host of other horror movies that have respect for story structure. Now you don’t need to spoon feed your audience all the details of your plot, but at the absolute bare minimum as a filmmaker you have to know the details of your plot yourself, and I’m not convinced stories like this aren’t just being abstract for abstractions sake. That doesn’t work for me. For one thing it’s lazy, and at this point in a horror film it’s cliché not clever, regardless of the message you think you are conveying.

I’ve said before that there’s a fine line between artistic and messy and there’s an even finer line between meaningful and nonsense. I get the impression the filmmakers thought they were saying something with this ending but they’ve ended up with a meaningless mess as far as I’m concerned. The horror genre is not the only culprit of this but it’s certainly the biggest offender.

But like I say, if you can get past this then the film is good and the “twist” for lack of a better term doesn’t really matter enough that knowing it has ruined the film for you, just be aware that the end is much ado about nothing. I really wanted to like this film but can’t bring myself to forgive the end.

In cinemas June 3rd in the USA and June 19th in the UK!

The jokes and humourous situations come thick and fast, but unfortunately they fail to land as frequently or strongly as was probably hoped and intended. On some occasions, a knowledge of the show would probably help, adding context to the moments and dialogue. But other times, and over all, it feels inorganic and suffers from a mentality that feels at least a decade out of date. As though the writer is clinging to a by-gone era and that the majority of scenes are inserted for the sake of comedy, rather than the comedy emerging naturally from the various, supposed arcs. The same can also be said for brief attempts at more dramatic and poignant moments, shoe-horned in to create a faux-redemptive sense of brotherhood, and lacking from any substantial build-up. Although, one such recurring story does serve to give supporting cast-member, Rex Lee, some great and hilarious moments. As well as leads to, without a doubt, the funniest and most organic of their trademark celebrity cameos.

In cinema's now in the UK and June 26th in the USA!

In the forested mountains of Finland thirteen year old Oskari (Onni Tommila) is about to embark on a quest to find his manhood, an ancient rite of passage all the people of his community go through whereby a boy goes out into the wild alone to hunt and kill the first thing he comes across and thus comes back a man.

Meanwhile the president of the USA (Samuel L. Jackson) is on a fairly typical diplomatic visit when Air Force One comes under attack from a small terrorist group, led from within by his personal bodyguard Morris (Ray Stevenson). He is thrown into the escape shuttle and dropped into the forest below as Morris takes out the rest of the security team and the plane before parachuting to safety to meet the terrorists and hunt down the president. This isn’t a spoiler by the way, it happens within the first twenty minutes and I’m pretty sure it’s given away in the trailer.

Oskari is drawn into this conspiracy as Air Force One literally crashes down on top of him, destroying the forest and sending the young boy running for his life. As a result, and unfortunately for Morris and the terrorists, Oskari finds the president first and they form an unlikely duo as the conspiracy unveils and they must fight for their lives. I won’t give away any further details of the plot other than to say that it’s kind of weird that we never really find out what the big conspiratorial plan really was. Despite coming in at under ninety minutes, which is a rarity in the cinema these days, 'Big Game' manages to feel slow and drawn out. That might be giving away my opinion too early but I’m sorry, 'Big Game' just doesn’t work.

In cinemas now!

But despite my criticism it’s hard to deny that I don’t know the last time I saw movie mass destruction this compelling, exciting or just plain gorgeous looking. The film is all the poorer every time we have to cut away from the thrill and watch the actors stumble through the predictably awful script. On a side note the film also features Paul Giamatti in what is possibly the most pointless role to ever appear in a movie. He literally plays the science guy who knows everything because at some point during production the writers realised they needed a science guy who knew everything because disaster movies always have a science guy who knows everything. He genuinely shows up to tell us there are going to be lots of earthquakes after the earthquakes have already started in a movie about there being lots of earthquakes. He never interacts with Ray’s storyline, which is by far the main focus of the film, and whilst his story arch does involve hacking into the news network (which is complicated and dramatic for some unclear reason) and broadcasting a warning message to the people of San Francisco (which helps for some unclear reason), we never really get to see the point of all this we’re just told it was a good thing to do at the end of the film despite all the death and destruction we have witnessed. Supposedly he helped with the evacuation but buildings were falling down, were people not already evacuating? And how many people were really sat watching TV at this point?

In cinemas March 19th in the UK and March 20th in the USA!