City of Life (Ali F. Mostafa, 2009)

The title seems to be meant in earnest, as if what we're seeing is the richness of human existence rather than what Dubai certainly comes across as in this film, namely a soulless pile of steel and glass, populated by shits preying on the weak. The intersecting-ensemble template is directly stolen from Crash or Amores Perros, to name a few of its most recent adopters, and the primary job of the director and writers is to populate that framework with events and characters which work as moments of revelation.
City of Life fails badly in relation to its remit for because of three principal factors: many of the multinational cast intended to represent a cross-section of Dubai society can hardly act, the dialogue and scene tone swings between lifeless and melodramatic like a pendulum, and character developments and events are signposted miles in advance. Nor do you care for any of the personages, falling squarely into two sets: dumb victims and bastards. When the peak moment of catharsis comes in the form of a multiple pile-up on a motorway, it symbolises the entirety quite neatly.

3/10

Unagi (Shohei Imamura, 1997)

The Eel finds a man trying to keep a low profile after his release from prison, eight years on from killing his adulterous wife in a fit of passion. Eventually, he is forced to face up to what he did and reluctantly start reintegrating into society, as a woman he saves from an overdose attaches herself to him.
There are essentially two films at odds here: the primary a psychologically truthful study of guilt and self-repression, interspersed with telling imagery, the secondary a quirky semi-comic piece populated by gratuitously oddball side characters like a guy who keeps turning up obsessing about contacting aliens, or the woman's flamenco-dancing doolally mother. The former wins out, but the niggling presence of the latter does a lot of unwelcome work in undermining the impact of the message.

6/10

After Earth (M. Night Shyamalan, 2013)

Did anyone need another scenario with a devastated future Earth and a senior statesman of an action hero being tested by its CGI tribulations? Yet this year we had two appear simultaneously and the only seemingly judicious choice made by Shymalan, who is by now justly maligned for the bottom line of his output, over the set-up of Oblivion,  is to focus the action on Will Smith's son instead. Or, rather, that would have been a wise move if Jaden Smith in his teens demonstrated any evidence of acting ability in place of constant whining.
They have crashed on an Earth populated by monsters and the son has to undertake a perilous trek to retrieve a rescue beacon, pursued by a sort of amorphous giant sausage with claws, while injured Smith Sr. at base camp issues gruff Jediisms over the radio. This is sold as father-and-son bonding, but that won't work when you basically want the little prick to shut his trap and sit still. What you absolutely don't want is a trilogy of this guff, and yet that was something mooted, at least until the reviews came out.

4/10

Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013)

Tom Cruise sails in to rescue humanity once more, with aliens having wiped out the world as we know it and him as a jet-flying caretaker for the whole planet, which seems to consist of only American ruins. He's a maverick, of course, constantly questioning his orders to leave things as they are and with a hidey-hole where he can shoot hoops and listen to Led Zep. Morgan Freeman turns up in standard post-apocalyptic gear at some point to cash his cheque, there's a computer-game dogfight sequence and then the highest-level Thetan saves the day by dying and not dying all at once, because he's Tom Cruise. Highly illogical, Captain.

4/10

La Délicatesse (David & Stéphane Foenkinos, 2011)

David Foenkinos adapts his best-selling novel, Delicacy, with Audrey Tautou as a woman prematurely widowed who immerses herself in her work in order to cope with her loss until finding romance again with a Swedish co-worker. The character is equal parts Tautou's cute gamines and damaged but determined individuals and the film overall is likewise a melange of drama and romantic comedy, but this time the two elements have failed to blend. Scenes in both modes work in isolation, but too many leaps and elisions create a disjointed effect and as a result the characters, Tautou's in particular, tend to act impulsively without sufficient underlying psychological reasons having been laid out for their actions. Thus the eventual new-found romance ends up flat and unconvincing. The conclusion cannot be escaped here that novelists, used to relying on the structural shortcuts and internal monologues of their art form to create emotional and narrative coherence, are not necessarily the best people to convert their stories into the medium of cinema when other means are required to achieve the same effect.

5/10

Stoker (Chan-wook Park, 2013)

We know Chan-wook Park does extreme violence, has already delved into the vampire genre in Thirst and now comes up with a title which can only make you think of the writer of Dracula. Then he has a field day with the notion by scattering vampiric hints liberally throughout and despite the overwhelming glut of films on the theme you almost start wishing he will actually deliver on the formula.
If Stoker only had its fun and games with supernatural allusions weeded out, it would work better as a study of sociopathy, which is what it essentially is. The protagonists, a withdrawn and moody teenage girl stuck with her needy mother after her father's apparent suicide, and the oleaginously seductive and disquieting uncle she never knew that existed coming to stay and swiftly taking over their lives, are interesting enough, even if the lead is a bit too close for comfort to Wednesday Addams. Park's technique of focusing on seemingly disconnected minutiae is also as effective as ever in creating a wholly unsettling atmosphere. However, with the narrative lacking any particular place to go, the guessing game played with the audience's expectations comes across as camouflage for that aimlessness rather than as a valid extra layer to the onion.

5/10

Trance (Danny Boyle, 2013)

James McAvoy plays an art auctioneer who gets mixed up in a heist perpetrated by Vincent Cassel's gang. He stashes away the painting they're after and then forgets where it is following a blow to the head, so the crooks force him to see a hypnotherapist to regain his memory. The film soon forks off into a succession of rapid twists and turns as reality comes under doubt. The casting is strong enough to retain interest, but the plot itself gets irritatingly garbled and obviously begs to be viewed again to make full sense of it, unfortunately without having an adequately rewarding pay-off to make this a worthwhile undertaking. Diverting, then, but considerably short of the elan and sense of purpose of Marnie, Inception or Memento, to name some notable precursors in amnesia-driven mental discombobulation.

5/10

Philomena (Stephen Frears, 2013)

The wildly oscillating-quality director Frears is decisively peaking again with this one, probably helped by having the support of a true story to curb any sentimental excesses. The other back-up is of course the actors, with Judi Dench in fine fettle and Steve Coogan successfully putting more distance between himself as a dramatic actor and his Alan Partridge monster.
Philomena Lee is a former victim of Ireland's Catholic workhouse system for 'fallen women', as seen in The Magdalene Sisters. The child resulting from her unplanned teenage pregnancy was sold to the highest bidder by the nuns and she is now seeking to find that child after decades of self-denial. Coogan plays the BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith, at a loose end after his sacking, who sets out to get his career back on track by helping her track down her lost child. There is gentle comedy at the mismatch between the devout and seemingly simple mother with a mission and the cynical journalist with a constant eye on his human interest angle, but it does not stifle the bittersweetness and righteous anger generated by inhuman institutions and cruel circumstance along the way on their road trip.

7/10