The Lady in the Van (Nicholas Hytner, 2015)

Adapted from Alan Bennett's own play, this is an account of sorts of the 15 years that Bennett had an old woman living in a van in front of his house in Camden. Alex Jennings does a sterling impersonation of the curmudgeonly writer, with much of his trademark caustic wit on display, while Maggie Smith is an odorous and truculent force of nature as the unwanted guest. The dramatic interludes where the woman's shrouded past is explored work somewhat less well in conjunction with the modern-day satire, but director Hytner is as safe as pair of hands as his stars and so they don't get to detract much from the overall pleasure of the experience.

7/10

The Family (Luc Besson, 2013)

Besson, who it's fair to say hasn't made a truly decent film since the 1990s, still ploughs on with variable results despite his recent promises/threats of quitting. Here, a Mafia family is relocated under witness protection to a small town in France, where they are supposed to keep their heads down at all costs. Because the apparent aim is to create a comedy of cross-cultural differences, they naturally fail to do so, with the kids proving their gangster toughness at school, while Robert De Niro as the father pretty much blows his mob cover completely at a film showing and Michelle Pfeiffer as the mother blows up a local store who have upset her. It's broad stuff, with only a few comedic moments that work, and ends up in the usual Besson action finale. Ho hum.

4/10

Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier, 2015)

A young punk band find themselves in hot water after stumbling across the aftermath of a murder at a gig for neo-Nazis. Their hosts then set about trying to kill them by any means at their disposal.
The griminess promises the genre norm of messy killings and a low survival rate for the protagonists, and Green Room duly obliges. Patrick Stewart, essaying some kind of accent, comes in out of the blue as the leader of the supremacists and his casting against type is an interesting choice, and the execution overall is certainly more efficient than what the warring parties manage. But really it's just about the body count, as is usually the case with this template.

5/10

These Final Hours (Zak Hilditch, 2013)

An asteroid has hit the Atlantic, setting off a creeping global firestorm that is due to reach Australia in twelve hours, and society falls to pieces at a rate unprecedented even in the worst excessive apocalypse porn. Because apocalypse porn is what this is; easy to write and generate ready-made human tragedy from, even though it's elevated to some extent by its poignant tone and a superior performance from the asshole trying to make good in his final moments by taking a girl looking for her father under his wing and rejecting the rampant hedonism that he sought to exit the world with.

5/10

Self/Less (Tarsem Singh, 2015)

Dying property mogul Ben Kingsley has his consciousness transplanted into a freshly-grown young body, except of course this is playing at being God and so complications are sure to follow. For the remainder, we're following Ryan Reynolds as the host trying to resolve the unholy mess created. What starts as a fairly fresh premise, not wholly derived from anything existing, dissolves very quickly into a standard actioner complete with car chases, with the occasional weepy interlude to assure us that we're dealing with an issue of philosophical substance to do with memory, feelings, identity and all that deep stuff.

4/10

Chef (Jon Favreau, 2014)

Jon Favreau directs and stars as a top chef who falls out with his boss and a food critic over being forced to churn out conventional fare, and then goes on a road trip which turns into a bonding exercise with his son. Somewhat ironically then, the film itself proceeds to churn out plenty of conventional fare along the way and no surprises at all: Favreau just cooks, eats, quips and lays on the feelgood sauce until the viewer is both satiated and slightly sick. It's all very amiable, and makes a nice change from his superhero blockbusters, but also more of a souffle than a solid meal.

5/10

Spiklenci slasti (Jan Švankmajer, 1996)

To say Švankmajer is an acquired taste is somewhat of an understatement. Things never start too normal and will always go really sideways before too long. In Conspirators of Pleasure, his third feature, he takes surreal flights of fancy too far at times, and too aimlessly: even a stream of consciousness needs to be directed when put on screen. Nevertheless, in his observations of the intersecting lives of six people with their own individual sexual perversions, there are plenty of moments of delight at the sheer inventiveness, particularly in how far he takes his characters' individual dogged quests for the ultimate onanistic turn-on. The stop-motion animation could probably have been left aside this time though: the live players are putty enough to serve the director's purposes.

5/10