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 Chronicles 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

La Faute à Fidel! (Julie Gavras, 2006)

Blame it on Fidel is centred on the attempts of a nine-year-old girl in early '70s Paris to make sense of the weird behaviour of her parents as they become left-wing activists and take to spending more time worrying about the plight of the Chilean people and women seeking abortions than they do about about their kids. At the outset, the girl is spoilt and strident in her peer-pressure-driven demands, and before long the urge to strangle her will arise, but at least this gives plenty of room for character development and the film has a reasonable go at exposing the hypocrisies of adults on both sides of the political fence too through a variation of subtly acerbic and cutely comic moments. It is nevertheless heavily dependent on the feisty little lead for the whole to hold together, so it's a blessing that the casting got this so right: the actress chosen is at once a miniature grown-up and a petulant child, and completely credible in the role.

6/10

Escape Plan (Mikael Håfström, 2013)

If director Håfström had wanted to start getting his career back on track after a succession of Hollywood fiascos, culminating in 2011's execrable The Rite, he should have steered a mile clear of agreeing to do the super-annuated Sly and Arnie's first real filmic back-slapping fest. He doesn't stand a chance of making a mark as the plot is spat out of a computer (Sly a 'security expert' who breaks out of prisons for a living and Arnie a big cheese on the inside in a supposedly escape-proof jail) and then it's two hours of the gristly meat-sacks alternately grunting and hamming away at each other with lines and scenes about which even they, with their steroid-addled brains, must privately have got uncomfortable pangs of deja vu.

4/10

Safe (Boaz Yakin, 2012)

It's Jason Statham's umpteenth outing where he reluctantly ends up having to look after an innocent, which of course involves brutally disposing of hordes of gangsters. For the record, this time the innocent is a young Chinese girl who is also a maths genius wanted by the Triads, Russian mafia and corrupt NYPD alike, and he's a former cage fighter who upset his backers by not taking a dive...as if a Statham character ever would. To be charitable, it zips along, mercifully the relationship between the guardian and the ward doesn't get too mawkish - though that's probably just because the ADHD pace doesn't allow any time for it - and there is actually one surprising touch in the finale. It will while away the time between meals on a long-haul flight and serves no other productive purpose at all, not even for the Stath-man's resume.

4/10