L.A. Without a Map (Mika Kaurismäki, 1998)

David Tennant stars as an undertaker in Yorkshire who takes off for Los Angeles in pursuit of an American tourist he's smitten with. He is naturally a fish out of water there and much of the film's comedy mileage comes from him being either patronised or clocked or both by the horrid locals, punctuated by some odd random cameos from the likes of Johnny Depp. It's not without some moments of amusement, but the satire of the vacuous film world is not much less shallow than its target and the love interest of the sadsack main character so charmless that it's quite hard to see any point to it all.

4/10

Paddington (Paul King, 2014)

Michael Bond's much-loved books finally hit the big screen, but in a much-altered form from the hand-crafted BBC series of yesteryear. The bear is CGI and now has the obligatory action adventures with breakneck chases and a murderous villain, which is all a great flattener of character, reducing the charm of its uniqueness as it competes on an equal tech and thrills footing with the droves of other computer-rendered fare aimed at grabbing the increasingly short attention span of children. Not that anyone much younger than 40 will know or care, and it does have plenty going for it, with some hilarious sequences of Mr. Beanesque bumbling, knowing asides for the adults and a broad cast of British stalwarts all clearly having a whale of a time. If you have to take the sprogs to something this Xmas, you won't do better, even if it does leave you sighing with nostalgia for a simpler time.

6/10

Todos tenemos un plan (Ana Piterbarg, 2012)

Everybody has a Plan takes Viggo Mortensen back to Argentina, where he spent a part of his childhood, and I consider this of note simply because it highlights how few Hollywood stars can actually operate credibly in other languages. The film itself, however, doesn't offer much else of value. In it, Mortensen plays twin brothers of contracting personalities and lives, one of whom dies and whose life is then assumed by the other. It's a wearyingly downbeat affair in a bayou-like setting, serving up existentialist grief, but not quite managing to get to a point. Mortensen is always watchable, of course, but the whole chokes under its sombreness. The arch lunacy of another film which starts with a similar premise, Dead Ringers, is missed. 

5/10

Inside Llewyn Davis (the Coen brothers, 2013)

The Coens take time out to make a more single-genre film than they have for years, seemingly just to put live music on screen with the story of a hapless and truculent folk singer-guitarist living on the sofas of his acquaintances in early '60s New York. Oscar Isaac, as the feckless eponymous lead, does convince as a musician in a way few actors manage, the support is strong, from Carey Mulligan as Davis's former flame who can no longer stand his aimlessness to John Goodman as a pompously supercilious jazz player, and the creation of the period is as lovingly crafted as ever from the Coens. But it is also a very small story, and how much time you have for it ultimately comes quite largely down to how much self-important folk music you can stomach. A specialist interest, then.

6/10

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Stephen Daldry, 2011)

Based on Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling novel, this retains the bones of the story but replaces the flesh with blancmange. It's not that the lead, playing the quasi-autistic nine-year-old who, unable to accept the death of his father in the 9/11 attack, goes on an obsessive treasure hunt to find some hidden remainder of him, is a bad actor per se, but when you're exposed to him on screen rather than paper, his shrill and mechanical tone does not take long to start grating. Neither does having Sandra Bullock as the weepy mother help matters, which then makes relegating the estimable Max Von Sydow to a mute role a criminal waste of resources. It's not without certain finesses and subtleties, but ultimately wallows far too much in its cuteness and pathos to be wholly digestible.

5/10

Divergent (Neil Burger, 2014)

Hot on the heels of The Hunger Games trilogy, comes another teen-targeted dystopian trilogy based on books with a plucky young heroine fighting the system. Ostensibly, the setting is a utopia instead, following an unspecified (naturally; actual plausibility of background is both hard and boring to do) global apocalypse, but as sure as eggs is eggs, this will prove false. Here, the new society is divided into high-schoolish cliques of jocks as the law enforcers, geeks as the intelligentsia and several others to fill in the basic societal functions, with the set-up showing its fundamentally reactionary credentials by making the compassionate segment the polar opposite of the brainy ones. This is to say that you can either be a Democrat with feelings but no drive, or a Republican with vision but no altruism.
The young in this world are made to join one of the factions in a public ceremony upon maturity, a la Harry Potter. The heroine, who is of course secretly uncategorisable ('divergent'), which is unacceptable to the status quo but very palatable for confused teen audience identification, chooses the gung-ho one, because it is the easiest to script and allows for the maximum amount of action scenes. All this being in place, the plot then goes down the fascist coup route of least resistance and soon stops making much sense at all, the least of which is once again perpetuating the daft and frankly dangerous notion that women can be as physically hard across the board as men.

4/10

Outpost 11 (Anthony Woodley, 2012)

Ok, so World War I (presumably) has gone on for 40 years and there are three British soldiers in protracted isolation at an Arctic listening station. There is the weary officer, his veteran King-and-Country No 2, who is also addicted to drugs and wanking, and of course the timid rookie to round it off. Then they all go insane under psychotropic chemical attack.
Outpost 11 cannot be faulted for ambition, including its camerawork, which has positively arthouse aspirations. Unfortunately, it can be faulted for everything else. The script has all the hallmarks of having been written on a mucky Kleenex by an FPS-addled teen, its 'the horror of war' musings notwithstanding, and the inevitable eventual gore is to little purpose but to arouse distaste. Even Danny Dyer, Sean Pertwee and co. must have viewed this with suspicion if approached to come on board.

3/10

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, 2013)

The director may have changed for the second instalment, but it's more of the same with Katniss Everdeen forced once again into the arena to fight for her life by the fascist authorities. The first part of the lengthy film does make an attempt to flesh out the regulation dystopia as the two leads find themselves puppets of the state, but it's at a strictly cartoon level, with the villainy impossibly evil and the heroine every teenage girl's wish-fulfilment fantasy, one moment sporting fabulous dresses and stealing the gala and the next slaying men left, right and centre with her inexhaustible supply of arrows. At least the likes of Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Woody Harrelson are present in the wings to provide some interest for adult viewer too.

5/10

The Look of Love (Michael Winterbottom, 2013)

Winterbottom collaborates again with Steve Coogan on the biopic of English porn impresario Paul Raymond, although the focus is as much on Raymond's damaged daughter Debbie as she lurches from overdose to overdose before her doting father. This has the effect of making Raymond a rather sweet figure: a 'character' rather than just a seedy exploiter of women. There are good lines and scenes on display, but overall the film seems uncertain of how far to go down the comedy route in its rose-tinted depiction of an era where, pre-Aids, the biggest danger in the industry is shown as individuals getting a bit carried away with all the hedonism. Perhaps the look Coogan sports doesn't help here either, as he looks uncannily like an older version of his lothario crooner Tony Ferrino.

5/10