Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012)

This is cinephile fetishism on several levels: filmmakers can relish the vintage equipment on display while horror buffs can take delight in what is also an homage to the Italian Catholicism and gore productions that produced the likes of Dario Argento. It's pointedly lo-fi, right down to the script, without actually being that at all. Toby Jones's Churchill Insurance hangdog face is an ideal canvas on which to paint indignation, prurience and disorientation as he gets bullied into sound engineering for a ghastly picture that we never see, but might as well have done as it's perfectly evoked through increasingly twisted recording sessions. In essence, it's a paean to the contaminating effects of film production, and as such probably somewhat exclusionary towards outsiders in that aspect, but there is nevertheless a lot more to take out of it as it functions as a psychological horror film independently of its layers of allusion.

7/10

Sykt Lykkelig (Anne Sewitsky, 2010)

In the wintry Norwegian countryside, a couple with relationship issues latch onto their worldly new Danish neighbours and for all the wife's simple-minded notions that amorous couplings with anyone serve goodness just by being open, things get sticky before long in all too predictable ways.
Happy Happy is rather adolescent at heart, which is both an asset and a diminishing factor in its overt belief that people are daft and confused but their actions have no irreversible consequences. The overall result is a drama with comic overtones that sings out sweetness but doesn't ring true either. Still, at least there's no sanctimonious sermon behind its front.

5/10

Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Michell, 2012)

Speculatively based on a supposed affair Franklin Roosevelt had with a distant cousin, Hyde Park on Hudson at least proves Bill Murray can do impersonations that don't wholly depend on parodic elements with his take on the President. The insubstantial plot centres around a visit to the Roosevelts' country manor by King George VI, still stuttering despite having apparently been cured in The King's Speech, although this may be explained by the fact that he has now turned into a cuddly George Osborne. Olivia Colman's characterisation of Queen Elizabeth as a comically dim figure constantly affronted by all things modern and foreign is probably the highlight, but that's not the main focus and the narrative voiced over the mannered milieu by the President's naive cousin seems to serve little purpose. It's finessed and whimsically cute, but too bloodless and stage-bound to properly engage the passions.

5/10

Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013)

On this evidence, Winding Refn has got overenamoured with his own style. Only God Forgives looks amazing, cuts sharply and makes great use of its soundtrack. It also has no substance at all.
Ryan Gosling, this time a drug dealer in Thailand, cannot be left to coast along just on the strength of his puppy-dog sad expression. Nor can every scene be supersaturated with colour. Winding Refn has committed this sin before, with his conviction that Mads Mikkelsen's face alone could carry Valhalla Rising, but at least there you felt an inkling of empathy for the characters. There is the same doomy background drone and horrific violence but no sense that any of it matters. Swords are fetishised and dream fugues abused to serve the cool shot, and that only. This is a director who badly needs to be shown how to reconnect with mankind.

4/10

Babettes Gæstebud (Gabriel Axel, 1987)

Two devout elderly sisters in a small Jutland village do their best to dedicate their lives to humbly serving God and keeping their late father's church flock together. Then the widowed Babette arrives, fleeing a France in turmoil, and gradually insinuates herself into the community over the years. Finally, a day comes when she declares that she wants to prepare a French dinner for them and this throws the pious locals into quite a flap with their fear of sensual pleasures being not far removed from witchcraft.
Babette's Feast is the epitome of a film built on the small gesture and the telling detail. Nothing apart from the aforementioned actually happens, and nor does it need to: there is a wealth of simple pleasure in the wryly detached but affectionate observation of the earnest villagers.

7/10

The Count of Monte Cristo (Kevin Reynolds, 2002)

You have to approach this with some trepidation, knowing that the director was previously responsible for bastardising the Robin Hood story with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Happily, the umpteenth film adaptation of Dumas's novel is faithful to the source where it counts and does not Americanise the content, even if the eponymous hero is played by Jim Caviezel. In fact, since the plot of the novel gets more ludicrously convoluted as it goes on, as is so often the case with 19th-century potboilers, the decision of the film to pare down and streamline the events and relationships after the main selling point, Dantès's years of captivity, is a judicious one. This cannot extend to getting rid of the original's melodrama in the final tying up of revenge and reconciliation and so greatness is denied, but it is nevertheless a respectable modern addition to the swashbuckling genre.

6/10

[Rec] (Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, 2007)

[Rec] makes effective use of the lo-fi technique that served The Blair Witch Project so well, with the video cameraman part of the action: this provides only a single vulnerable perspective on events, with any threat just outside frame left to your imagination, and naturally also means imperfect lighting, making for darkened spaces all around where again anything could be lurking. The story itself, with a TV crew following firemen on a routine call to a building where things rapidly go pear-shaped in biohazard zombie outbreak fashion, is purely perfunctory, but the execution is disciplined enough to have generated its own legion of imitators since, including the seemingly endless Paranormal Activity cycle and of course its own sequels too, with predictably diminishing returns.

6/10

The Frighteners (Peter Jackson, 1996)

The first film in which Peter Jackson started reaping the financial benefits of the success of Heavenly Creatures casts Michael J. Fox as a conman trading as a medium and exorcist. The twist is that he does actually work with ghosts to achieve his stunts. Comeuppance for deceptions will be had, in any case, and when the ghost of a serial killer turns up to resume his record-breaking spree from beyond the grave, the charlatan must reluctantly step in to fix things.
Jackson is an imaginative filmmaker in his own right, but here he just seems to have channelled the spirit of Sam Raimi, complete with wacky characters, skewed angles and arch Danny Elfman soundtrack, and not added anything of his own. It's a degraded copy which starts perkily and then, bereft of its own ideas, descends into shouty hokum. This is a shame for Fox, as this was his last screen role to date.

4/10

The We and the I (Michel Gondry, 2012)

Gondry turns his eye on a bunch of black and Latino teenagers in New York, homeward bound on a bus on the last day of school. The director has proven time and time again that he places a high value on the smallest of people and their stories, and this credo is acutely tested by the kids put before the camera: they are loud, squabbling and vacuous, and for a large part of the film the viewer will have to fight an urge to get off the bus before the last stop. Finally, the passengers do thin out and then something more delicate emerges. The performances by a non-star cast are wholly naturalistic and Gondry's trademark semi-fantastical flashbacks and other digressions provide some relief and wit, but it's doubtful whether the end justifies the journey.

5/10

Ted (Seth MacFarlane, 2012)

It's a reasonably universal constant that TV comics will come up short when crossing over to features and MacFarlane ventures a step further beyond his comfort zone by having real live actors carry this. Or so it would seem at first glance. But of course the remove from Family Guy is very slight: the potty-mouthed layabout teddy bear is just a composite of Brian and Peter Griffin via Wilfred, right down to the non-stop perishable pop culture references, and the other lead characters nigh on as infantile. Since it isn't actually a cartoon, there's also a homily about learning to accept who you are or somesuch piffle, but at least here you know it's meant to be disregarded. On the whole, it chugs along without a care in the world, openly ransacking things which were already parodic first time around, including the whole disco scene from Airplane, and then wraps things up insouciantly having provided a fair few rib-ticklers, much like any average episode of MacFarlane's TV output. This simple forthrightness makes it superior to the vast majority of laddish Hollywood comedies, and is at the same time no particular reason to head out to the cinema either, except to wind up slavering American Christian fundamentalists.

6/10

Le Locataire (Roman Polanski, 1976)

The third film in Polanski's 'apartment' trilogy, following on from Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant has the director put himself through the psycho-torture mill at last instead of using female surrogates. He plays a single man who moves into an apartment previously occupied by a woman who leapt off the balcony. We know from the first two films to expect Kafkaesque lunacy to unfold and, sure enough, he's soon caught up in a growing delusion that his sinister landlord and the other uptight tenants are out to drive him mad. Accordingly, he starts dressing up as the now deceased former occupant of his flat.
Polanski interjects stark flashes of insanity as chillingly as ever, and the overall atmosphere is thoroughly unsettling. However, this time around, the protagonist's breakdown is too sudden and not sufficiently validated by circumstances, nor does one care a great deal for him, having been set up from the beginning with unctuous and cowardly traits. In some of Polanski's other films, the absurd progression of events would also serve as a metaphor for a larger concern, but this is just effective loopy psychological horror and nothing more.

5/10

Les Misérables (Tom Hooper, 2012)

The film adaptation of the long-running musical is bombastic, melodramatic and begs ample tolerance for its virtually unbroken two-and-a-half-hour stream of shamelessly sentimental song. It is also handsomely presented with crowd scenes of epic grandeur and a host of fine performances from big names, not all of whom you would expect to be able to hold a note. Anne Hathaway's rendition of 'I Dreamed a Dream' is perhaps the stand-out piece, utterly heartrending in its delivery. The bottom line is that you either allow yourself to be immersed and swept along by its full brunt or have a miserable time resisting instead.
It is rather forced to have even every one-line interjection turn into quasi-song halfway through. Casting Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe respectively as Valjean, the redeemed ex-convict, and Javert, the representative of vindictive tyranny, does also bring to mind Homer Simpson sitting down to watch Paint Your Wagon with the eager anticipation of a monumental dust-up between Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin, turning to dismay as they start singing at each other instead. Nevertheless, the relentlessly bulldozing power of this production is undeniable.

6/10