Red Lights (Rodrigo Cortés, 2012)

Unlike Paranormal Activity, this has the twist of scepticism about the supernatural, and carries it through whilst letting doubt remain. The heavy-duty cast is largely wasted, though - there is no need to drag in Weaver or De Niro for perfunctory roles, and they don't have to do anything except go through the motions. Cillian Murphy takes centre stage, largely just because of his vulnerable face.
The element of uncertainty raises it a notch, but the ending is a cop-out and disappoints on several levels. A waste of time for all concerned.

4/10

The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012)

A novel torn off a chunk of Battle Royale, with teenagers fighting against each other because of a societal decree, should not function at all. The premise is spurious and makes less sense than The Running Man, which may have been crap, but at least had some internal logic. The saving grace of this film is that it is well made within the strictures of the pointless storyline: there is extreme violence, but it isn't dwelt on in the manner you'd expect from teen-oriented chowder. There's a proper film struggling to get out; it's just that this story is chaff.

5/10

Dredd (Pete Travis, 2012)

Excessive credit has been lavished by comic-book purists on this reworking of Judge Dredd for the simple reason that it doesn't try to humanise the anti-hero, go for laughs or get him to take his helmet off even once, unlike its throwaway 1995 Stallone precursor. This would lead one to suppose it is a better film for that. It is not: the grunting robot-like Dredd persona is an uninteresting one when left untouched in translation to screen and the best aspect of the comic, namely the gallows parody of a world that is a nightmare distortion of our own, is mostly left unexplored, while the film trudges on like Dredd through a buildingful of cannon-fodder baddies, filling them with bullets on the way. It's like The Raid with inferior choreography and no more wit, whereas it should have at least been satirical.

4/10

Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012)

When rumours began to circulate of Ridley Scott making a prequel to Alien, the director sought to distance himself from the notion. If the intention was not to burden Prometheus with undue expectations, it was a prudent if vain attempt, as the finished product bears no comparison to his 1979 classic in terms of strength of characterisation or plot, nor indeed to James Cameron's follow-up. There is again a motley crew landing on a distant planet to investigate an alien vessel under orders from a secretive corporation, which of course has a different agenda, as carried out by the one android on board. The vessel turns out to harbour a dangerous life-form that is soon decimating the band by invading their bodies. The storyline purports to do with the discovery of the origins of mankind, but this is messily thought out and turns up nothing in the way of real originality. If Scott hadn't been behind it, it would have ended up in the B-list bin as a competent rip-off. Let the beast lie.

4/10

The Amazing Spider-Man (Marc Webb, 2012)

Studios continue to reboot their lucrative superhero franchises at a increasing rate safe in the knowledge that their target demographic is adolescents who will always adopt the new version as being made just for them and consider an exponential increase in action and angst as justification on quality grounds. Hence it comes as no wonder that the hero is still at school in this version, allowing for further identification with his teenage emoness.
The first hour drags somewhat through a checklist of standard high school outsider status investigating what happened to his parents, the 'science' moment when he gains his powers and the death of his uncle which makes him don the costume at last. Then he acquires a bland but spunky girlfriend, the police chase him and the villain is created indirectly through his own doing, which gives him further cause for hand-wringing.
It has to be admitted that Andrew Garfield does vulnerable and sullen very well, with an emotional credibility way beyond that of Tobey Maguire in the laughable Spider-Man 3. And there are other merits: the film does come alive in zippy variations on the youth's discoveries of what he can do and moments of invention in the fight scenes, and Rhys Ifans is great as the good scientist gone mad. Nevertheless, the base level is too Twilight to give grounds for any optimism for the impending sequels.

5/10

Hodejegerne (Morten Tyldum, 2011)

Based on the novel by Jo Nesbø, Norway's answer to Henning Mankell et al, Headhunters presents one of the business variety, who also has to subsidise his wife's lifestyle by moonlighting as a fine art burglar. He is at first sight a cold fish, insecure and arrogant, but other layers come out as he bites of more than he can chew by stealing from a corporate alpha shark who also happens to have been a headhunter of the special ops kind, and his life rapidly goes to hell in a handcart. There is a graveyard humour at work, but also a growing and plausible empathy with the weaselly lead, excellently portrayed by Aksel Hennie, even as the situation gets progressively more nightmarish. You'd never have believed at the start you'd end up rooting for the hapless anti-hero.

7/10

Serbuan Maut (Gareth Evans, 2011)

The Raid hits mayhem-level immediately, which is at least decent of the director, as the plot of a SWAT team in Jakarta raiding the tower-block stronghold of a crime lord would not take up the back of a matchbox. It's proficiently choreographed and contains about as much violence as any genre buff could wish for, but a little more characterisation would not have hurt and the end-of-level boss action gets repetitive, since everyone gets bloodier and bloodier but will not respect the laws of biology and actually stay down for once.

5/10

Hell (Tim Fehlbaum, 2011)

End-of-the world fetishist Roland Emmerich executive-produces this formula piece on isolated survivors of an environmental catastrophe where solar activity has caused temperatures to shoot up, turning the world to desert. They are trying to reach the mountains where greenery and water are rumoured to still exist, but of course post-apocalyptic scenarios routinely require humans to be bastards to each other too and this chucks a group of Deliverance-style feral hicks in their way just in case starving or burning to a crisp weren't sufficient perils. It hobbles along and then evaporates utterly from the memory as the closing credits roll.

4/10

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson, 2012)

Right from the off, we're back in the cosy slippers of Hobbiton and it's like we'd never left. God knows why Tolkien obsessives had reservations about the casting of Martin Freeman as Bilbo: his discomfited and indignant air fits the bill perfectly as he gets swept along by Gandalf and a band of uncouth dwarves on the quest to regain their city from the dragon Smaug. More doubts might be expressed about the wisdom of stretching the story with extra scenes to a trilogy, considering the book was substantially shorter than any of the Lord of the Rings ones, and no amount of justification of this on narrative grounds by Jackson will convince me that the studio's thirst for lucre wasn't the main motivation. But it does come with a side benefit, namely that the pace can afford to be more relaxed and allows for a deeper build-up of character, which is just as well when you have fifteen heroes.
The sets, backdrops and set pieces are even more breathtaking than before, and the original story outline is followed from checkpoint to checkpoint, even if it is embellished in between. It is a disappointment, however, that once again the fight and chase scenes towards the end get too overblown and protracted, the cardinal sin of so many more mundane action-based films, with multiple repetitions of the same types of cliffhanger: at times it actually starts feeling like a loop tape of sword-slashes, collapsing bridges and people nearly falling into chasms. Jackson should be told that there's no point in trying to outdo the battles of his last Middle-Earth excursion: this story was always meant to be smaller. This also applies to the challenges of the heroes: after a while it's difficult to fear for their lives when they are apparently indestructible. It may be a fantasy world, but it should still stick to its own ground rules. We'll see how things go from here on.

6/10

Paul (Greg Mottola, 2011)

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are a likable slacker buddy duo, but starting to get a little long in the tooth for playing boy-men, just like yet another film which milks the remaining dregs of their geeky pop-culture fetishes for sniggers and limps over the finishing line powered only by the audience's indulgence for the cheeky pair. This time, with them on a alien site roadtrip after attending a comics convention and coming across a real wiseass extraterrestrial, the sci-fi references really take centre stage and returns from this for the individual viewer depend heavily on recognising them. There are some broader gags too, but these are too frequently just tedious, as is the prepubescent glee taken in using naughty words constantly. Time to change track.

4/10

Mientras Duermes (Jaume Balagueró, 2011)

The scenario of Sleep Tight may be straight off the shelf, with an obsessed lonely concierge creeping night after tight into a young woman's flat to carry out his fantasies as she sleeps, but the execution is far superior to most of its kin, such as the same year's tediously OTT The Resident. With Luis Tosar as the caretaker, informing us right at the start that he only finds solace in the unhappiness of others, things can only get unpleasant ere long, but the build-up is for the most part restrained and anchored in psychological credibility.

6/10

Sound of Noise (Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, 2010)

This has urban terrorists being tracked by a cop and is not a thriller. It is also not a musical although a large chunk of the running time is devoted to full-length performances of pieces of music. It is, if anything, a comic flight of fancy: the terrorists are anarchists who take over public spaces to stage guerilla percussion performances, and their pursuer a man from a family of musicians who hates music. It gets very silly in places and the drumming numbers do start dragging somewhat as drum solos will do, but it's full of zest and light-footed invention, which is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the Scandinavian police film genre.

6/10

Jägarna 2 (Kjell Sundvall, 2011)

The sequel to the 1996 thriller has Rolf Lassgård, a.k.a Wallander I and again an ageing copper with baggage, return once more to his home town on the Arctic Circle to investigate the disappearance of a young woman. False Trail is full of stark scenery and well acted, but the mere act of casting Peter Stormare as the local policeman leading the search already gives the game away and at over two hours the film really overstays its welcome, with little compensation in the way of providing twists, red herrings or psychological complexity.

4/10

Simple Men (Hal Hartley, 1992)

The career of Hal Hartley, a filmmaker who could be bracketed twenty years ago in the U.S. indie sphere alongside the Jarmusches and Soderberghs, rather fizzled out thereafter. In truth, none of his low-key tales of the time quite found a hook, being too laconically whimsical and underscripted to project a clear sense of direction. Hence in Simple Men too, involving two brothers lying low from the police and meeting two challenging women in a Long Island backwater, the characters drift along exchanging mildly humorous epigrams and declarations until a sort of entropy is reached in place of a finale. It's pleasant and at the same time quite ephemeral.

5/10

Die Fälschung (Volker Schlöndorff, 1981)

Bruno Ganz plays a journalist sent to Beirut to report on the Lebanese Civil War. The war correspondents venture out from their hotel safehouse to dodge cars and snipers in a city too busy eating itself alive to pay any attention to them, and the most effective scenes of Circle of Deceit are thus mostly the ones highlighting the randomness of the devastation all around, with a few more on the cynicism and amorality of the journalists' role also resonating. The problem is, however, that neither the actions or motivations of the main character make a great deal of sense. He jogs around blithely through the gunfire and witnesses the daily killings with nothing more than a frown of discomfort and when he does finally crack up towards the end, it doesn't feel like a dam breaking under an accumulation of pressure. Ultimately, Schlöndorff is guilty of the perennial sin of the well-meaning but self-involved western artist: the plight of the third world takes a back seat to the angst and pontifications of the artist, within whose soul the war of real significance is fought.

4/10

Detachment (Tony Kaye, 2011)

There may or may not be only seven stories in the world. In any case, in Hollywood the one of the inspirational teacher who arrives to put a class of dysfunctional inner-city kids on the straight and narrow is one of the three biggies alongside the maverick cop out for vengeance and the tense courtroom drama. When it becomes apparent that this is not in fact following the blueprint and that there will be no triumphalist finale, a feeling of relief bubbles up, which is soon however tempered by Adrien Brody's depressed educator's portentous voiceover musings, raising a worry that we're headed for pseudland, where depression and bleakness will be taken as synonymous with depth. This is indeed where the film goes at regular intervals, as guilty of adolescent wallowing in hopelessness as the teachers at the end of their tethers accuse their pupils of. This means that some genuinely emotive scenes and even a few witty ones are rather suffocated, and it's a pity that the director seems to think that the only safe alternative to the backslapping winning-against-all-odds story is one of nihilistic despair.

5/10

Cedar Rapids (Miguel Arteta, 2011)

A simple small-town insurance salesman is sent to an annual industry convention and taken under the wing of three conference veterans. His weekend and life then unravel rapidly as they cajole him to loosen up.
Ed Helms is cringeworthily funny enough as the virginal stiff, but is of course completely blown off the screen by John C. Reilly's boozy and potty-mouthed party monster while he's allowed free rein. It's a shame, then, that the latter has to be downtoned and pushed to back of stage later on, just to allow a somewhat sugary feelgood finale to be played out.

5/10

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011)

The moneymaker rolls on like a juggernaut, this time with the twist of having Brad Bird at the helm, previously responsible for sterling animations such as The Incredibles and Ratatouille. A Tom Cruise actioner may thus superficially seem like a divergence from this path, but then the Mission: Impossible films are at their best when they admit their cartoonish true nature. So the plot is purely perfunctory, with Russian nuclear missile launch codes to be recovered to prevent a world war, ridiculous gadgetry and preposterous stunts, but at least the first half is mercifully free of car chases and shoot-ups, although of course you know they will come, and Simon Pegg as the scowling Scientologist's sidekick provides welcome comic relief, making a few hours breeze by inoffensively.

5/10

New York, I Love You (various directors, 2009)

Following the model of 2006's Paris, Je T'aime, this is a collaborative effort by eleven filmmakers of varying renown, each contributing a short piece on a loose theme of relationships, featuring a wide array of big-name actors. Unlike in the case of its predecessor, there is no prologue or epilogue as such, but the characters spill over from story to story, knitting the whole together in a more organic way.
Filmic exercises like these easily turn into love-ins for the band of directors if there is no quality control: a strong hand is required to separate the wheat from the chaff, and this is unlikely when plurality of views is the guiding principle. Portmanteau films will therefore almost invariably end up unsatisfactory in comparison with single-auteur works, with the knowledge that any segment that works will soon be cut short and be replaced by something of less certain quality. In Paris, Je T'aime, this was not a major hindrance as there was little story merging, however here not only is the proficiency of some of the makers patchier but the greater overlap of stories also compromises the integrity of the better pieces. Consequently, some of the segments have virtually no point to them at all. It's probably best considered as a quick guide as to which unencountered directors it's worth investigating further or ignoring.

5/10

The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011)

The Artist is built on a premise of great ingenuity and daring for a modern film: it's black and white, silent, and shot using 1920s technology, with all the concomitant limitations. It pays off tellingly, and well deserved its Best Film Oscar: scene after scene is saturated with pathos, humour and invention, the lack of dialogue proving no barrier to effective story-telling. The two principal leads, Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo, are magnetic and succeed in conveying feelings and intent by expression alone as the best of the silent-era actors would have had to do. The story, of Dujardin's cinematic star being eclipsed by the arrival of the talkies and Bejo's simultaneous rise to fame, is uncomplicated by necessity but told with such zest and panache that no more elaboration is required or desired. It is a joy to watch.

8/10

Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011)

Nigh on forty years from Mean Streets finds Scorsese making a cute kids' film. Thankfully it stays the right side of saccharine, barring the cloying dimpled permagrin of Chloë Grace Moretz, whose brief seems to be to do the Famous Five while the main character of Hugo is more drawn from the Oliver Twist school. An orphan who lives inside a railway station clock, he is an engagingly unsentimentalised protagonist, purposefully striving to make the one item left by his father, a writing automaton, functional by any means necessary. The presence of Scorsese behind the scenes does then makes itself felt after all, as the historical figure of film pioneer Georges Méliès is brought in and with him the director's obvious adoration of cinema.
The setting of Paris in the '30s is ravishingly filmed, of course being rather safer terrain for twinkle-toed confection than, say, '70s Coventry, and a cast of British stalwarts provide security against schmaltz, even while the script persistently tries to veer off-course with false notes such as Sacha Baron Cohen's station policeman, who was presumably meant to bring humour to the proceedings, but is lumbered with such leaden dialogue that it's a losing battle. Nevertheless, there's plenty here to enjoy for children and adults alike.

6/10

Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)

In Nichols's second feature, a family man grows increasingly anxious about the future as he begins to suffer from apocalyptic dreams and builds a storm shelter in the back yard, to his wife's dismay. This is pretty much all that happens in two hours, but the lack of histrionics is welcome given the genre's usual mania for frenetic action. The barely enunciating and diffident Michael Shannon makes an unconventional leading man, and the film slips in and out of lifelike dreams with none of the usual signposting while moving away from the end-of-the-world storyline to become an exploration of mental health issues. Although it is too muted and bare to really grab the emotions, it's nevertheless commendable that the film focuses on the psychology of fear instead of the prescription screaming and devastation.

6/10