Beasts of No Nation (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2015)

In an unspecified African country, a civil war leaves a young boy fleeing the summary execution of all the men in his family and into the arms of a rebel commander with a entourage of child soldiers. He is duly cultishly indoctrinated to become one of them, forced to kill and dehumanised in the process.
The little army is as garishly attired as a circus troupe, which does help to differentiate the characters from each other, and behaves like a fully psychotic version of the boys of Lord of the Flies, with guns and fanaticism. Idris Elba as the Commandant is a sociopathic demagogue one minute, a child molester the next and yet overall a kindly avuncular presence. His performance makes it easy to see how the orphaned boys would latch onto him. Of course, we have been here before, notably with 2008's Johnny Mad Dog, but here Elba's presence allows for a political subtext in addition to the carnage and unlike in the earlier film, there is still the prospect of light at the end of the tunnel too. It's a mature work all in all.

7/10

Eddie the Eagle (Dexter Fletcher, 2016)

A loose biopic of the ski jumper Eddie Edwards, who hit the world media for embodying plucky amateurism despite coming last in both his events in the 1988 Calgary Olympics, Eddie the Eagle features every cliche in the sports drama genre (training montages are just the start of it). The man himself could probably never have gained such fame anywhere else than Britain, with its cult of the underdog, but it's a national trait that should really be regarded with pride in the face of so much jingoism around the world.
Naturally, it takes liberties with the events for comic and dramatic effect, including making the head of the British Olympic Association an out-and-out villain, the ultra-professional Scandinavian athletes he competes against a snooty bunch, at least at first, and adding Hugh Jackman as a fictional former champion turned alcoholic for purely box office reasons. And of course Jackman starts off wholly unwilling to crawl out of his bottle to coach the nutty Brit, just as Edwards's plasterer dad thinks he's living in cloud cuckoo land. But it can't help putting a smile on your face, just like the best examples of the genre, and the buddy movie angle with comic interplay between Jackman and Taron Egerton as the West Country naif, his chin defiantly jutting against the inequities of the world, is genuinely funny.

6/10

Spectral (Nic Mathieu, 2016)

Another exercise in FPS-style American military hardware porn, with war-torn Moldova (played by Budapest, because who'd know the difference?) being ravaged further by the ghosts of the war dead and the U.S. Army going in to save the day. The plot is shamelessly lifted from Aliens, with a team of grunts charging around shooting at everything that moves and a couple of boffins - who naturally still turn out to be rather hard too - in tow; there's even a Newt clone that they find who has survived the unstoppable spectres. Then the problem is finally sorted out through some completely nonsensical science. The best you can say is that it's efficient and the cityscapes look good, but that's not much to go on.

4/10

P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont, 2014)

In a French seaside village at the forgotten arse end of the country, a series of gruesome murders the place for unexplained reasons and two inept policemen investigate while local urchins watch on. The film meanders for more than three hours with the pair getting no closer to the culprit but finding enough time to pontificate inanely and have detours that serve no narrative purpose. There is hardly a single likable character in the film: almost every one is afflicted with either childish stupidity or pointless gurning, and you also realise fairly soon that the director is of the ilk that considers having a plot that actually goes somewhere is simply far too bourgeois. Nor is it funny even in the gallows sense, which is hardly forgivable for something that sets itself up as a satirical mirror on society.

3/10

Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)

A superhero, or rather supervillain, Dirty Dozen, Suicide Squad is a blatant attempt to have DC compete with Marvel's ensemble films. Trashy, violent and widely panned for its derivative characters and hackneyed plot, it nevertheless manages to be more fun than many of its rival's earnest affairs, largely because of giving us effectively two Jokers for the price of one with Jared Leto and Margot Robbie hamming it up as the psychos in the pack. The former in particular could have been given more meaningful screen time, instead of which Batman drifts in and out to no particular purpose and Will Smith gets the leading role by virtue of being Will Smith as a lethal assassin with a heart of gold. Still, it's a considerable improvement on the muddle that was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

5/10

Saul Fia (László Nemes, 2015)

Son of Saul dumps the viewer straight into Auschwitz, 1944, without exposition because by now we ought to know. And that's fair enough.
It's almost all steadicam work following the lead's face, so patience is required as he, effectively a traitor to his Jewish kin, keeps on collaborating in the work of the gas chambers until reaching a moral breaking point. But it's worth the wait. This isn't some sugary Hollywood rewrite and feels like a documentary more than a work of fiction: less Schindler's List than Lanzmann's Shoah. This to the extent that it was praised by Lanzmann. It's every bit as brutal and undecorous as it needs to be to get the message across.

8/10

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards, 2016)

Buckle up, there'll be plenty more of these to come. As it is, this is a pretty no-nonsense affair, plunging you straight in without preambles, because they're now making these just for absolute devotees. The casting is strong (who'd have imagined you could get Mads Mikkelsen and Forest Whitaker in a Star Wars film?) even if you have to keep reminding yourself that the heroine isn't the same plucky girl as in the last one, and the action sharp and more adult-oriented than other films in the series so far. It's not a revelatory work, partly constrained by having nowhere to go than making a plot bridge to A New Hope, but it does do that with no small amount of skill. The link-spotting alone is a fun parlour game.

6/10

Hail, Caesar! (the Coen brothers, 2016)

Amiable if aimless, Hail, Caesar! is essentially the Coens' riff on the Golden Age Hollywood pictures they grew up with, fictionalising a host of stars around the beleaguered major studio fixer Josh Brolin. As with any of their comedies, there are many chortlesome moments scattered liberally through the film, and the big-name cameo spotting is fun, but the main storyline, which is the kidnapping of star George Clooney by aggrieved Communist writers seeking redress for their exploitation by the studios is somewhat lost amongst numerous recreations of famous scenes of the era. These are done in captivating detail, Channing Tatum's eerily proficient Gene Kelly homage probably the stand-out piece.
As long as you go in with the expectation of being entertained by the brothers' obvious love for both the wheat and the chaff of what was produced at the time, you won't be disappointed. If you expect a fully coherent dramatic arc, on the other hand, you will be. But I'd urge you to leave that expectation at the door and enjoy the ride. There are still few filmmakers who do breezy wit the way the Coens do.

7/10

Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015)

Sicario diverges from those of its predecessors dealing with the U.S. War on Drugs that are to be taken seriously, notably Soderbergh's Traffic, in that it is solely concerned with the actual bloody war between the CIA, FBI et al. and the Mexican drug cartels. This suits the modern tendency to equip every actor with big guns perfectly, and also plays conveniently on the current American paranoia of being a nation under siege, whether it be by terrorists or other irredeemably violent bad guys.
All that said, it is a tremendously efficient thriller, driven by an ominous soundtrack, Roger Deakins photography that's as striking as ever and taut direction from Villeneuve that bodes well for the decision to have him take charge of the upcoming Blade Runner sequel. Benicio del Toro broods menacingly and Josh Brolin growls cynical asides to good effect, which then means that Emily Blunt as the FBI agent flapping around in their wake, starting to have doubts from the outset of the legality of their approach, is even more at sea than she might have been with less toweringly macho figures around her. You can see that the idea was to present a complete contrast to their ruthless black ops manner, and she does put a game effort into it, but it's just too implausible.
Apparently a sequel is under way, focusing on del Toro's character, which will mean that one hand the awkwardness of such casting will probably be avoided, but without Villeneuve at the helm and the title of Soldado, the end result is likely to be much more conventional.

6/10

Ethel & Ernest (Roger Mainwood, 2016)

Based on Raymond Briggs's book about how his parents met and brought him up, Ethel & Ernest is as lovingly-drawn as Briggs's graphic novels. Jim Broadbent and Brenda Blethyn are perfect voice casting for the parents and it's impossible when listening to them to not think about how the sweet and comically befuddled elderly couple in his When the Wind Blows came about, for example.
The heart-felt pathos and wry observation of people's mannerisms are the film's strongest suit, the preoccupation with the war years less so, simply because it keeps on imposing over-exposed historical narrative over the author's personal human drama.

6/10

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (Wes Ball, 2015)

More of the same in the second instalment of the series, with the kids, having fled their original prison, now seemingly safe with the resistance. Naturally it falls to the weepy hero to suspect everything and lead his friends out when things turn out to be wholly pear-shaped. Then cue a wasteland of zombies, because the first film had already done robots and boxes do have to be ticked off. At this rate, the third will have to do vampires.
You would probably get a lot out of the thrills and set-up if you were an adolescent who'd never seen anything in the dystopian teens-against-the-big-bad-adult-world genre, but it's pretty unimaginative stuff when assessed in grown-up terms.

4/10

The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016)

On the face of it, Winding Refn should be on safer ground here than with his last outings with the subject of the fashion industry: it's very much a case of shooting fish in a barrel. Indeed, the first half of the film manages a fitting and hypnotic air of dislocation and insanity as a hopelessly naive teenage model new to L.A. has to ride the vitriol of rivals who are instantly threatened by her flavour-of-the-month status. But the story paints itself into a corner before too long, and all of the director's hyperstylisation can't paper over the thinness of the story as it turns to ludicrous horror excess. It's a lot like Black Swan and has almost all the same faults.
Ironically, this means that Winding Refn ends up proving yet again that he's as much guilty of gloss over content as the world he's purporting to attack, and you have to remind yourself how once upon a time, before Hollywood, he actually created characters and scenarios that you could give a shit about.

5/10