Das letzte Schweigen (Baran bo Odar, 2010)

The Silence begins with a murder of a young girl in a field following an attempted rape, and the second of the men present leaves town at once to distance himself from the one responsible. This is structurally puzzling: the Columbo TV series was unusual in telling us who was guilty right at the start and then having the detective gradually get to what we knew all along, but the villains in that were ingenious and arrogant and the pleasure lay in them having the smiles gradually wiped off their faces. Here, however, the culprits are just human detritus and the crime fumbled and pathetic. It's hard to see where the director is going with this.
Then we move forward 23 years, and it happens again, but now the identity of the killer is unclear. Suddenly the film picks up. It's still a heartless, brutish affair, very much a cousin of recent and often overrated Scandinavian crime drama, but, crucially, it starts to engage the brain by remaining quite poker-faced about the eventual outcome whilst avoiding the trap of just chucking red herrings at the viewer.

7/10

State of Play (Kevin Macdonald, 2009)

A film adaptation of the BBC series, with the action predictably shifted to America, State of Play does work as a political thriller in its own right, and Russell Crowe doing a sort of reprise of his whistle-blowing tobacco executive from The Insider is at least a safer pair of hands as the journalist investigating a pair of murders and a congressman's possible involvement than an over-acting Brad Pitt would have been, which was the original casting mooted. Unfortunately much of the substance that elevated the TV series above a standard conspiracy thriller has been lost with the translation from a six-hour format.

5/10

The Grey (Joe Carnahan, 2011)

A plane carrying oil industry workers crashes in the middle of the Alaskan winter and the survivors find that the elements are the least of their problems when a pack of wolves starts to hunt them down. Carnahan's film is a muscular take on the survival horror scenario, and the action is presented in a gripping fashion. It's also, however, light on human interest: Liam Neeson as the self-appointed leader is a broken man even at the start, and the other characters are just stock figures. It's a thoroughly nihilistic piece of work.

6/10

Funuke domo, kanashimi no ai wo misero (Daihachi Yoshida, 2007)

The initial set-up is reminiscent of a number of Japanese films right back to Ozu: an elderly rural couple dies in an accident, leaving their self-involved children snapping at each other, with only the son's wife a beacon of long-suffering decency. As in Tokyo Story, therefore, the only character of the second generation who displays altruism is the one isn't a blood relative. There is clearly a sociological preoccupation in Japanese culture with the children who go off to the cities being ungrateful.
But Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! is also a black comedy of sorts, with the customary unfathomable quirks of Japanese examples of the genre familiar to anyone who's seen Takashi Miike's output. It doesn't really work as such, but there is some fun to be had from seeing how much more of a bitch the elder daughter, a failed actress, turns into as she torments her younger sister for a perceived offence from years back, with her comeuppance inexorably nearing.

6/10

Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011)

The excessively prolific Soderbergh assembles a cast of the biggest box-office draws from Winslet to Damon for a sort of hybrid between Outbreak and Babel, with the events jumping from country to country with those location headings so beloved of disaster films. Basically, there's an unidentified virus from Asia spreading like wildfire and civil order soon falls apart as the pandemic takes hold. In line with contemporary catastrophe flick orthodoxy, the authorities are accused of being in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry when a universally available cure fails to materialise.
On one hand, it's nice that Contagion goes easy on the pseudoscience and heavy on fatalism, including killing off a fair few of its stars with little warning. On the other, it's criminal how little tension is generated, with some of the storylines just superfluous and a good deal of the acting no more than going through the motions.

5/10

Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (Lone Scherfig, 2002)

Lone Scherfig has made decent nuanced films, most notably An Education, but this story of a big-hearted bookshop owner trying to thwart his younger brother's repeated attempts to cash in his chips is less sure of itself. This is largely because it wants to have its cake and eat it, trying to work as both black comedy and serious drama. There are several problems with this, not least in the personage of Wilbur, who we are somehow supposed to find charming for all his immature selfishness, and also accept that it's ok and even charitable to start copping off with your sister-in-law when your brother develops a terminal illness. It's tempered by a certain sweetness, but the taste of the film is still questionable.

5/10

Gianni e Le Donne (Gianni Di Gregorio, 2011)

Actor-director Di Gregorio's follow-up to Mid-August Lunch dishes up more of the same, right down to casting the same nonagenarian actress as his cloyingly demanding mother, and Di Gregorio's hangdog character is essentially the same too, albeit being given a family this time, but otherwise still as put-upon by others in undesired early retirement and hitting the aperitifs in a vain attempt to find temporary respite from his malaise. What difference in plot there is from the last time concerns his self-appointed best friend attempting to needle him into an affair, something Gianni then proceeds to fail miserably at realising.
The comedy of The Salt of Life is as gentle as its predecessor's, the protagonist just a bit more down in the dumps with impending old age. The supporting cast of unattainable nubile totty are just projections, and this is where the film falters a tad, but Di Gregorio remains hard to dislike with his lugubrious fretting. He may have to strike out of the mould next time round, though.

6/10

Another Earth (Mike Cahill, 2011)

The sci-fi label bestowed by this low-budget drama featuring the discovery of a duplicate Earth is wholly misleading: Another Earth is essentially a meditation on loss in the vein of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with the background presence of the twin planet symbolising the existence of alternative paths our lives could have taken.
Co-writer Brit Marling plays a teenage girl who kills a composer's wife and son in a drunk-driving incident and drops out of the college future in remorse after coming out of prison to become a cleaner. Her self-flagellation then leads her to find the man whose life she destroyed, and attempt to help him out of his mire without letting on her real identity or motive.
Very similarly to Eternal Sunshine, it's an uncertain blend: it swings from real poignancy to a misguided sense of its own perspicacity from scene to scene as Marling's performance fluctuates from appealing freshness to gratingly drawn out moping. It ends up in deficit overall largely because it places far too much stock in the power of its conceit, which is just too heavy-handed.

5/10

Elle s'appelait Sarah (Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010)

Sarah's Key tells the story of Jewish families rounded up for deportation in the Paris of 1942, focusing on one particular family in which the daughter locks up her brother in a cupboard as the police arrive, seeking to protect him. It makes use of the modern-day framing device with a journalist feverishly investigating what actually transpired at the time, a technique which may reflect much of how the facts are actually brought to light about a period many would still sweep under the carpet and which does contextualise the atrocities committed, but is also getting stale through overutilisation. Also, while Kristin Scott Thomas as the crusading lead is an actress of some finesse, one can't help suspecting making her character American and thereby cutting down on the need for subtitling for the English market is a commercial decision. Still, you can't fault its intentions.

6/10

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (Peter Lord & Jeff Newitt, 2012)

Gawd bless Aardman. A standard-bearer of British cottage-industry-engendered craftsmanship, the name is like a kitemark of quality in animation. From the stop-motion claymation of Creature Comforts right through to productions of this scale with the CGI enhancement bells and whistles, the studio has never lost sight of its key virtue: like The Simpsons, Aardman films captivate children through warmly realised and fantastically imaginative visuals and at the same time incorporate enough knowing asides to adult viewers to make each one a holistic delight. Hence here, with a tale of a pirate captain and his salty sea dogs adventuring in Victorian times, there is a non-stop barrage of immaculately timed hijinks on one hand, and on the other so much lovingly crafted background detail, such as absurdly un-PC posters on the walls of London for the likes of 'urchin repellent', that any parent will be tempted to hog the freeze frame button before the kids do. The notion of Queen Victoria as a murderous gourmand is a hoot, too.

8/10

De Vrais Mensonges (Pierre Salvadori, 2010)

An Audrey Tautou product to be filed right alongside 2006's Priceless, Beautiful Lies has the go-to-gamine as a hair salon owner riled by her mother's refusal to get on with life after her husband's abscondment, and discombobulated to discover that the office handyman is something of an intellectual prodigy. Who, meanwhile, is hopelessly in love with her, of which she's quite unaware. Yes, it's a romantic comedy ripe with farcical potential, the type that the French have made their bread and butter, and consequently repeatedly execute with   panache.
Beautiful Lies does have its share of succulently embarrassing quandaries, but falls on one critical hurdle: making the inevitable romantic union between the leads desirable. Too much faith is placed on Tautou's trademark adorableness, when her character here is actually just a petty manipulative bitch undeserving of riding off into the sunset glowing, no matter how much she's supposed to have been redeemed by a weepy catharsis.

5/10

The Reaping (Stephen Hopkins, 2007)

The swampy Deep South gets a hard time, doesn't it? It serves as a purpose-built repository for inbred racist satanists from one schlock thriller to another, and The Reaping is squarely in this tradition. This time, it's Hilary Swank wading circumstantially and thespically deeper and deeper out of her depth through the bayou as a lapsed missionary turned paranormal investigator, increasingly unable to deny the presence of the Fallen One behind the unfolding of a series of apocalyptic biblical plagues. Idris Elba and David Morrissey huff along in support under the considerable burden of their southern accents. It's basically The Omen muddled in geographical translation and losing most of its menace in the process.

4/10

Reykjavík Rotterdam (Óskar Jónasson, 2008)

Kristófer is a former alcohol smuggler fighting a losing battle to keep his young family above water, and thereby having to resort to another scam, in another downbeat Nordic crime drama.
By now, the cumulative effect of so many iterations of the 'it's grim up North' theme can only be detrimental to audience expectations of eventual outcomes, quite besides its impact on tourism. This is a shame, as Reykjavík Rotterdam is a serviceable thriller in its own right, with a few wryly comic touches, a novel setting and some neat twists arriving in quick succession that mostly gain conceptual indulgence rather than disappointing. Above all, the decision to avoid moralising is a blessed relief. What isn't, though, is the decision of the film's star, one-man Icelandic film industry Baltasar Kormákur, to subsequently remake it as the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Contraband.

6/10