La Grande Bellezza (Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)

Sorrentino's meander through the life of an ageing Roman socialite, a flâneur with an arch wit drifting through the nightlife of the rich, wears its debt to La Dolce Vita explicitly, even though many other sources are also referenced. But it is the Fellini which looms the largest over The Great Beauty, not just for the character being a becalmed and wistful version of Mastroianni's lothario, but for the fantastical air pervading the endless parties and the social subtext of the vacuity underlying the hedonism. It looks stunning and the heady musical pieces sweep you off your feet repeatedly. Rome appears empty outside the high-society circuit, as if it's just a playground for them. Perhaps in the end it doesn't quite manage to escape the glitz to deliver its existential message, but the style and vitality is undeniable.

8/10

The Selfish Giant (Clio Barnard, 2013)

This is supposedly based on the short story by Oscar Wilde, but this is really a case of the director leading the audience a merry dance in a search for any possible parallels as the gap between fairy tale and gritty social realism is the smallest hurdle to tackle. So the allusion is best ignored.
This is bleak northern Shane Meadows country, but a sunless version where even the bitter humour has been leached out. Two young lads, one of whom has some form of ADHD, get themselves expelled from school and turn full-time to thieving scrap metal for an exploitative dealer while trying to stay out of the way of their fractured families. The kitchen sink imprint on the film goes all the way through like a stick of rock, except here an actual kitchen sink would not survive a minute before being melted down for a fiver.
It is vital that the pair of leads are naturalistic, and they are, as is the dead-end setting, but it's not quite enough to elevate the whole above worthiness: they are doomed from the start and watching the inevitable unfold is no education.

6/10

Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012)

This was seized on by critics all over in some desperation as Spielberg's return to form, but it's really just further evidence of irreversible flabbiness and sentimentality, in which the cracks are papered over by committed performances from Daniel Day-Lewis as the titular character and Tommy Lee Jones as a righteous firebrand.
It's basically the last three months of Lincoln's life, as he tries to force an anti-slavery amendment through an intransigent Congress in the dying days of the Civil War. We see a lot of politicking with countless grey-bearded men for most of the two and a half hours, punctuated by Day-Lewis delivering metaphorical anecdotes, quotations from a wealth of literature and parables in a voice which is probably higher-pitched and softer than what one would associate with previous stentorian depictions of the iconic character. He's as great as ever in his chameleon-like abilities, and if it at any point comes across parodically, it will be the director's fault. As it is, the director's great fault is the structure: too much time spent on trying to juggle legal process with private life, too much sugar-coating of a flawed hero and a very flat and sudden end that has less panache than a real-life story from the History Channel. This is a massively overrated film that only owes its status to a few key actors and U.S. critics in fear and awe.

5/10  

Red 2 (Dean Parisot, 2013)

The sexagenarian black ops crew are being hunted again, having been framed as terrorists for knowing too much, though clearly this doesn't extend to knowing when to call it a day. Morgan Freeman has now dropped out, presumably on account of explosion overload, so it's up to Bruce Willis and John Malkovich as his Mad Murdock-alike sidekick to jet around various touristically signposted world locales trying to evade a chasing pack of assassins and corrupt CIA while also seeking to prevent World War III, rather too many years since that was a credible proposition. But then the credibility gap is so gaping in every department that the anachronism of the scenario is really a side issue, with countless elisions in the plot for the sake of convenience, not least of which is believing poor old Bruce can hold his own against the world's most dangerous martial artist. Some jolly quips between the doddering duo, and Willis's feisty wife who is in tow, do keep things light and breezy in the brief intervals between the shoot-outs and chases, but it really is very thin stuff indeed.

4/10

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