Atomic Blonde (David Leitch, 2017)

The setting is classic Cold War Berlin as the Wall starts to fall, the director was involved in the John Wick films and the superspy charged with finding a Stasi defector with a vital list of Western spies is Charlize Theron, who has an established history of badass roles. Putting all this together, it therefore comes as no surprise that the result is a hypercharged and ultraviolent affair with evil Russians thrown in for good measure as the principal antagonists, and little time for actual spy work. That said, the action sequences, of which there are so many that it's hard to catch breath between them, are exceptionally well choreographed, the soundtrack of '80s alt-rock classics that accompanies all the action is aptly chosen and James McAvoy, as her smirking, double-dealing MI6 colleague, offers his usual dependable support. Naturally, a sequel is in the pipeline.

6/10

Valley of Love (Guillaume Nicloux, 2015)

This brings together heavyweights of French cinema Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert as a separated couple who reunite after their son's suicide to follow mysterious clues he left behind about reappearing in Death Valley one last time. There is a rather self-indulgent meta level to their characters, since they're both actors called Gérard and Isabelle, and really the interest of the film depends on your indulgence of the alarmingly corpulent Depardieu and the spiky Huppert as they bicker and dissect their erstwhile relationship while trudging from desert site to desert site, complaining about the heat all the way. The introduction of a supernatural element promises some sense of purpose, but doesn't really bring any dividends.

5/10

Todos lo saben (Ashgar Farhadi, 2018)

Iranian prodigy Farhadi moves into directing in Spanish, with mixed results. In Everybody Knows, a family gathers to celebrate a wedding in a small town, which turns sour as the daughter of the sister of the bride is kidnapped in the middle of the festivities, and the family are left helpless to do anything without any clues and a warning that going to the police will result in the daughter's death. The film relies strongly on the chemistry between real-life couple Penélope Cruz as the distraught mother and Javier Bardem as her first love from decades before, but the problem is that she's given little to do besides cry, while his role has more meat on it as he sets out to try to track down the kidnappers. Farhadi makes use of his trademark non-disclosure of information at a critical juncture, and this works, and there's also the mature complexity in the interrelationships that we've come to expect of the director. In other words, there are plenty of things to ponder and reward the viewer's patience, but it's more disjointed than his previous works.

6/10

The Ritual (David Bruckner, 2017)

You know the set-up: four friends take a wrong turn on a hike into a deep, dark forest and end up in serious trouble. The only difference here is that it's in northern Sweden (albeit really Romania for financial reasons) instead of the Appalachians and that the protagonists are English. In any case, the group dynamics are familiar: the constantly complaining speccy one, the no-nonsense leader type, the one who quickly goes nuts and the lead, who is a sort of moderated amalgam of all three and therefore naturally likely to be the last one standing. This means that Rafe Spall gets to play action hero for once, and he must have relished the prospect. The rest is just a hotch-potch of disembowelling monster stuff and creepy cultish locals. After a fairly promising, atmospheric opening, once the curtains are drawn back and the full scope of the menace is revealed it turns into the usual parade of running and screaming.

4/10

Horrible Bosses (Seth Gordon, 2011)

Three friends with awful employers hatch a plan to do away, in the fashion of Strangers on a Train (which is knowingly quoted) with each other's tormentors. Naturally, it all goes pear-shaped very quickly.
The initial part of the film, in which the bosses Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell, respectively a tyrannical sociopath, amoral nymphomaniac and coked-up prick, is good fun as they take turns in chewing up the scenery. Unfortunately, as this is very much in the depressingly enduring tradition of gross-out comedies in the mould of The Hangover at al,  it becomes progressively less interesting under a barrage of puerile cock, drug and race gags which are, of course, also borderline homophobic, sexist or racist, because the protagonists are, after all, three regular white Joes. It could have been so much better with a little more restraint and the courage to be darker.

5/10

Safety Not Guaranteed (Colin Trevorrow, 2012)

One of those low-budget Sundance successes with a cast of unknowns, this is essentially the sort of thing that independent cinema in the U.S. keeps turning out and which is plauded for being down-to-earth and insightful. Whimsicality is almost a hallmark and seen as an asset, rather than a blight.
Which is not to say that Safety Not Guaranteed, where a jaded magazine reporter and his interns take off to investigate a crackpot who claims he can travel back in time, is a bad film at all: the quirkiness is kept fairly low-key, which its kin don't manage that often, and the characters are fairly rounded. It's perfectly sweet and pleasant. There's just not a lot of substance to it besides that, and I guarantee you'll have forgotten you ever saw it within a month.

5/10

Hardcore Henry (Ilya Naishuller, 2015)

This is by far the most accomplished transference of the FPS experience to the big screen to date, told entirely from a first-person perspective, as a man wakes up as a cyborg, immediately plunged into fleeing for his life through Moscow. It's also soon as interesting as watching someone else playing an FPS, while the non-stop pace is simply exhausting. Even the most OTT shooter games have their quiet moments to allow not only for a pause for breath, but for mood to build up.
Not in Naishuller's macho Russian/adolescent wank fantasy world, though, where the chief aim is to come up with not only a higher body count achieved by the protagonist than ever seen before but ever more tasteless ways to achieve that. The effect is mind-numbing and worryingly desensitising: this may be one of the first cases I've ever seen, and God knows I'm no opponent of extreme violence as entertainment, where I've really questioned the validity of allowing anyone with an impressionable mind to see it. You can't help marvelling at the sheer technical skill involved in the enterprise, and yet feel morally aghast at the result too.

4/10

9. april (Roni Ezra, 2015)

April 9th tells the story of Denmark's six-hour capitulation to the German invasion in 1940, told from the perspective of a platoon on the border who put up a spirited resistance against overwhelming odds, only to learn after the event that their government already gave up hours before they had to surrender. Due to its reverential adherence to historical facts, there is little in the way of the heroic cliches of most war films, and the characters into a sense of emasculated betrayal as defeat comes so soon. This is clearly meant to mirror the overall mood of the nation at the time about the event, and it conveys this effectively for outsiders. The few skirmish scenes are also unflashily and tautly shot, and the platoon, while having its usual strong leader, sullen tough guy and nervous youth, is still nuanced enough to avoid being a collection of outright stereotypes. It's not amongst the greats of the genre, but nevertheless thoughtfully told.

6/10