12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

Now decisively having made the transition from art to directing, McQueen's third film is every bit as truthful, unhistrionic and harrowing as Hunger and Shame were. In many ways even more so, since we're dealing not only with a true story but one that illustrates a dark historical era that still resonates to this day. Chiwetel Ejiofor, as Solomon Northup, who was abducted from life as a free man in the North and pressed to work on estates in the South, puts in a performance which contains both gravitas and control of nuance, utterly convincing as Northup learns to resist passively, with a mixture of pragmatism and indignation. The supporting cast from slaves to white plantation owners are impressively chosen too. With repeated scenes of abuse, it's not a comfortable experience for the audience, even if we know the light at the end of the tunnel, but then how could it be when you find out that with this McQueen became the first black director or producer ever to win the Best Picture Oscar?

8/10

A Late Quartet (Yaron Zilberman, 2012)

An acclaimed string quartet begins to disintegrate after decades of success when one of their number discovers that he has Parkinson's and must retire. This indirectly precipitates the break-up of the marriage between two of the other performers and their falling out with the fourth member, who has started an affair with their daughter. All the ingredients of a soapy pot-boiler are there, and the film would probably not be held together by its reliance on wistful cutaways of snowy New York streets or soulful renditions of Beethoven, so it's fortunate that in the scenes where the material is strong, there is not only Philip Seymour Hoffman but Christopher Walken to call on. Hoffman does great self-pity, but this time Walken really steals the show as the man facing imminent physical decay with stoicism.

6/10

Ender's Game (Gavin Hood, 2013)

The premise does not promise much: a bunch of kids are recruited to save mankind from an alien menace. Will this be The Last Starfighter, only with millions more pissed down the toilet on the FX?
So, what a relief to find many of one's worst expectations confounded. The young hero is not cute and most of the running time is taken up not with space battles but with the training of the kids, which repeatedly involves their emotions being experimented on in an under-hand way to test their limits, while also plausibly explaining the reason for their selection, i.e. that modern children will have superior mental processing speed due to playing computer games. And then the resolution is really quite unexpected in its psychological complexity. A pleasant surprise in view of the genre, and certainly a sign director Hood may yet return to form after the mess of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

6/10

Riddick (David Twohy, 2013)

The Vin Diesel franchise rolls on, and this installment, despite lacking all of the heavyweight cameo contributions of its 2004 predecessor, The Chronicle of Riddick, is actually a substantially better film simply because it strips away the pantomime-villain and costume silliness and gets back to the basics of Pitch Black, namely that Riddick is an unstoppable bad-ass and no number of beasties or bounty-hunters is going to stand a chance against him when he's on his personal playground. There has quite possibly never been an anti-hero so far at the 'anti' end of the spectrum: you certainly wouldn't want a drink with the guy, let alone root for him any more than you would the shark in Jaws. It's still trash, of course, but at least it has no embarrassing pretensions to be otherwise.

4/10

Life of Pi (Ang Lee, 2012)

Any adaptation of Yann Martel's best-seller centering on a boy stuck in a lifeboat with a menagerie of animals, including a tiger, was always going to need some crafty effects, and Ang Lee's film succeeds handsomely on this score, but it manages scenes of great beauty beyond that, with thunderous rolling seas and murderous islands coming to life to magical effect. Less convincing is the composite religion-come-spirituality that the main character presents, which was a turn-off for many readers of the source novel, but when the ride is so enchanting, it's a forgivable sin.

6/10

Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)

I appreciate that this is a film that should, for once, be seen on an IMAX screen and in 3-D. Seeing it on anything less exposes its slenderness: the space dynamics still stand out, but the drama comes to the fore and falters. It's gripping in places because of the director's grasp of the mechanics of action, with anything flabby discarded, but Sandra Bullock is too weak a lead to single-handedly carry anything of substance: you never believe she has the nous to hit the right buttons on a Russian spacecraft, let alone deal with any of her other challenges. The scientific part deserved more.

5/10

Les émotifs anonymes (Jean-Pierre Améris, 2010)

In the first encounter between the two leads of Romantics Anonymous, the chocolate factory boss asks the woman who has come seeking a job to define the particular quality of chocolate that sets it aside from sweets, and she summarises it as being distinguished by its degree of bitterness. This film, however, despite being about two painfully and dysfunctionally shy people, is far more sugary sweet than bittersweet in essence; basically a fairy-tale as the wallflowers cautiously circle each other before plunging in at last. It's a very slight piece, granted a great deal of indulgence by being as airy as a ganache with some titterworthy scenes, and Poelvoorde and Carré do make a charmingly hopeless duo, even if their neuroses hardly convince.

5/10