Hush (Mike Flanagan, 2016)

A deaf and mute female writer who lives in a house in the woods is terrorised by a psychopath. The static set-up therefore excludes any greater twists beyond the to-ing and fro-ing of the power balance, with the duellists taking turns to take lumps out of each other, and the amount of violence is vicariously excessive as is now the genre norm, but at least making the victim unable to hear and therefore vulnerable in a different way than usual adds a dimension to the mechanics. The script exploits this to its full potential, and the result is undeniably tense, with the character's muteness also mercifully meaning there is less interminable screaming and more emphasis on visual pointers. That said, it's still just a slasher pic.

5/10

The Magnificent Seven (Antoine Fuqua, 2016)

We can let the fact that a remake of the 1960 Western is wholly pointless slide, never mind that the source film itself was still just a morally simplified retelling for the American audience of Kurosawa's masterpiece. Because this manages to fail entirely on its own merits. The warning bells are there right from the first second, as a CGI-enhanced landscape gives way to an old-style Technicolor palette, which may be a break from the modern propensity to alternate constantly between blue and yellow sepia, but also serves as a statement of intent to make an old-school western, whether we want one or not.
The action is transposed from Mexico to the States, because who cares about Mexican peasants in the Trump era? And what does it matter that when the cartoonish levels of carnage by the evil land baron who terrorises the townsfolk pass by entirely without government intervention, it makes even less sense because of the transposition? Then the band, which is slavishly built up of every improbable ethnic representation, right down to a Chinese man throwing knives and an Indian brave (liberal Hollywood really is its own worst enemy sometimes), have their teeth extracted at once by the mercenary motive that made the previous versions more nuanced being forgotten about without so much as a by your leave.
After several instances of robbery from a few more films and boring fighting conducted in the spirit of body count hyper-inflation being a virtue, the politically predictable assortment of survivors ride off into the sunset. Cue the original Elmer Bernstein theme and the opportunity to reflect on the hours and millions wasted.

3/10

My Old Lady (Israel Horowitz, 2014)

Kevin Kline arrives in Paris to claim the flat that he has inherited following his father's death, only to find an old Englishwoman (Maggie Smith) in residence and not only refusing to move, but claiming a monthly annuity from him under the arcane French 'viager' system. Then her daughter Kristin Scott Thomas turns up too and is soon at loggerheads with him over the arrangement.
These are three fine actors somewhat let down by overly simplistic characterisation, Kline's character a sort of ageing distillation of the self-centred and intellectually insecure fool he's been doing on and off since A Fish Called Wanda and Maggie Smith presenting her usual curmudgeonly bluntness. Kline mopes about like a superannuated adolescent with verbal diarrhoea as the messy past of his father's affair with Smith and its consequences is excavated and then, somewhat inevitably, he finds love with Scott Thomas. It does contain enough instances of wit to justify persisting with, but offers little real reward at the end.

5/10

Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, 2013)

Fairly faithfully based on the hijacking of an American cargo ship by Somali pirates in 2009, Captain Phillips is another vehicle for Tom Hanks to dominate the screen as the decent everyman in distress, whereas some depth to the background of how Somali piracy became so systemic would have been more interesting. But perhaps also too much of a divergence from the facts of what occurred.
So instead, what we get is a protracted hostage scenario with the captain being shouted at and jabbed with guns for hour upon hour by the group who have kidnapped him from his own ship, while the U.S. Navy prowl about in the background exchanging the usual military comms about how to neutralise the situation. At least the performance and character of the group leader is more multi-faceted than the norm, but the other three are pure stereotypes from the psycho to the scared kid. True to life it may be, but also rather boring.

5/10

The Fundamentals of Caring (Rob Burnett, 2016)

Paul Rudd, a moping writer facing divorce, becomes the carer of Craig Roberts, a sarky teenager with muscular dystrophy. Naturally, a bond forms between them and they set off on a road trip to see America's regional curios, picking up a few more strays on the way. Rudd and Roberts do bounce off each other nicely, although nothing out of the commonplace for the comic odd couple set-up occurs, the film doesn't manage to penetrate under the skin in the manner of Little Miss Sunshine, for example, which it clearly seeks to emulate the mood of, and the ending is inevitably schmaltzy. It's amiable enough with a few decent pieces of dialogue that stave off complete saccharine overload,but at the same time completely throwaway as well.

5/10

Jason Bourne (Paul Greengrass, 2016)

Matt Damon is dragged out of hiding again through his ongoing quest to find out the whys and wherefores of his murky past, although by now it's difficult to see what else he needs to unearth, besides even more evidence of the CIA's utter villainy. To emphasise this, a secondary plot is added where the Agency Director (Tommy Lee Jones, effectively the Emperor from Star Wars) decides that a social media billionaire who won't play ball with them on allowing access to every user's personal details has to be bumped off. Then many, many foot chases and several city-wrecking car chases ensue across the usual assortment of locations, including Athens, Berlin, London and Las Vegas, with scant room for dialogue, particularly from the hero himself. There's very little credible espionage involved any more, and when the brave new face of the Agency declares at the end that Tommy Lee Jones's character belonged to the past, presumably with his propensity to reach immediately for guns rather than computers, one has to conclude that the makers of this are stuck with the same quandary. It is very difficult to make the technobabble of real modern spy games thrilling. But this really shouldn't be the way to go any more, even if the requisite thrills are still efficiently generated.

5/10

Remainder (Omer Fast, 2015)

A man rushing away from a building in the City of London is struck by falling debris from a building and, upon waking up from a coma, finds himself millions richer through an out-of-court settlement by the company that owns the building in question. Suffering from amnesia, he sets about recreating everything he can remember through sets and actors to jog his memory and things get out of hand as a criminal connection is revealed.
It's difficult to feel at all for the central character with his diffidence and disregard for anything beyond himself, and this the critical failing of the film. It's a shame, because it becomes apparent very late on that there's the seed of a very complex narrative structure struggling to manifest itself as time becomes a loop and every scene that has passed needs to be reevaluated. There is as much that frustrates as that which intrigues. This may have a lot to do with the director being a video artist: the end result generates more ideas than it's capable of, or even interested in, answering.

5/10