Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014)

Tom Cruise does start off playing a coward here, shanghaied into service as unstoppable aliens sweep the Earth, but never mind the fact that you know that won't last long. What's initially more alarming is the fear that this will be no more than gung-ho grunts again playing with very big guns (now they've got exoskeletons too, like all good future soldiers do these days) and one tiresome explosion after another. All of which does of course come to pass. Yet it's quite compelling stuff, simply for the key idea: each time Cruise dies on the battlefield, he wakes up at the start of the same day, and that day is a lot harder to get through than its Groundhog Day template, as each time he has to mechanically execute the same actions just to get further to some hoped-for goal. In other words, there isn't a sense of free will: it feels like a Sisyphean hell.
Naturally, since the mission-style scenario, and even the look of the weapons and aliens are straight out of countless FPS games, you have to wonder whether the writers were fully aware of the film's vulnerability to scorn by presenting a narrative guided by scenes set in stone as, in effect, gaming save/respawn points. Nevertheless, it's a riveting ride.

6/10

The Martian (Ridley Scott, 2015)

The red planet will be a sobering place when and if we even get there; our expectations built up by so much guff about what an environment of promise it is by a full genre of films. Sure, most of the recent ones have involved people dying in horrible ways under attack from the elements, alien technology or ghosts, and The Martian can be seen as part of the sci-fi sub-genre harking back to 2001, seeking to restore some sense of proportion and realism, alongside, say Gravity or even Interstellar until it went postal. And I suppose mankind cannot bear too much reality, so there has to be some hope to cling on to. In this case, it's the notion that radiation wouldn't kill Matt Damon's stranded astronaut in an instant, after he's done surgery on himself and that he could get a potato crop started in the poisonous soil to live on. But maybe I'm too churlish; it is good, at times thrilling popcorn which also involves emotionally, and deserves some plaudits for that. Just don't tell me that it tells it like it is.

6/10

The Legend of Barney Thomson (Robert Carlyle, 2015)

Robert Carlyle stars in his directorial debut as a hapless and petulant Glasgow barber who inadvertently kills his boss, leading to an increasingly farcical downward spiral as he tries to cover up the crime, with Ray Winstone's snarling copper on his tail.
The brief here is clearly Irvine Welshesque black comedy, not a million miles removed from Trainspotting, with characters in a fag-end existence dragged humiliatingly through the drains through their own device, but the brushstrokes are even broader in a rather forced attempt to squeeze out gallows humour from the protagonist's plight at every turn. And while Carlyle, Winstone and Emma Thompson as Carlyle's monstrous mother, really chewing up the scenery. are all their usual good value for money, the descent into Grand Guignol is ham-fisted and unnecessary. If Carlyle continues in this genre, perhaps next time he'll be better served by adapting a story actually by Welsh, rather than a cruder imitation like this one.

4/10

The Lunchbox (Ritesh Batra, 2013)

In Mumbai, Saajan, a widowed office worker about to retire finds that his daily workplace lunch has started coming from someone else's wife, misdirected by the delivery company. They begin to exchange messages through the lunchboxes and a tentative relationship forms gradually between them, as they share more details about their lives in their letters.
The overall mood remains wistful, despite some levity introduced by the interaction between Saajan and his less than competent replacement-to-be. Without being railroaded into it, it becomes easy to root for the innocent romance to blossom and at the same time feel relief when the pat resolutions so common to the romantic drama genre are sidestepped. It's just a simple story of lifelike people, delicately acted and directed and serves as a reminder that there is very much an Indian cinema beyond Bollywood bombast.

7/10