A Perfect Day (Fernando León de Aranoa, 2015)

A group of foreign aid workers in Bosnia during an uneasy ceasefire find their path beset with obstacles while trying to find rope to get a body out of a village well. These range from mined roads and local hostility to ludicrous UN bureaucracy, and they keep on getting thwarted on their quest.
This is a film with much to commend it for its intentions, the farcical aspects of the situation in the broken country being its strongest suit. The interaction of most of the ragtag group is also strong, including the young boy they pick up, who thankfully isn't made just cute. But it's uneven: the black comedy that it goes for at times doesn't really come off and the group leader's former fling who ends up in tow against her will is a painfully shallow characterisation, involved in almost all of the forced, unnatural dialogue scenes. Add the superimposition of a soundtrack of rock standards at inappropriate moments (e.g. Marilyn Manson covering 'Sweet Dreams' after the boy's parents are discovered hanged), and you get the idea: despite the positive intents and elements, it doesn't quite gel.

5/10 

OtherLife (Ben C. Lucas, 2017)

A technology that provides life-like experiences lasting a fraction in real time of what they do in the virtual world sounds too good to be true, and of course it all goes south before too long as the commercial mind of the company behind it is touting the idea that it could be used to serve the prison system, with people serving their sentences of years in minutes. Then the lead character, the woman who invented the technology and is trying to adapt it to get her brother out of a coma, ends up being imprisoned in the selfsame virtual world for her unsanctioned activities.
There's a lot going on here, and barring a momentary disconnection with coherence towards the end, it just about hangs together. What it loses on some derivative aspects - Inception in particular looms large with the constant questioning of what is real, and the parallels with countless drug films - it makes up for with its visuals, soundtrack and ambience; it doesn't feel like a modern mass product but instead of those paranoid thrillers from the '70s like The Conversation or Three Days of the Condor.

6/10

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Davis Yates, 2016)

An extension of the Potterverse juggernaut, this takes us back to before the sprogs were entering school to a New York of the 1920s, where Eddie Redmayne, a wizard whose specialist interest is mythical creatures, arrives and has to set out soon in search of missing specimens from his menagerie. Meanwhile, Colin Farrell, as a senior wizard in the local fraternity, has sinister plans to gain power by controlling a cloud-like parasite called an Obscurus.
So far, so familiar. But despite being kid-friendly through the weird creatures in it, imaginatively realised, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has more adult appeal than all the Potter films, largely because it's not set in a public school: the depiction of the New York of yesteryear is just as rich as that of the beasts. It's hardly a thing of great depth, but rollicking fun all the same.

6/10

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (James Gunn, 2017)

Diminishing returns begin to kick in with this sequel, largely because it diverges so little from the formula of the first instalment. Hence, it's still witty enough and full of irreverent fairground thrills, following the motley crew adventure away to a non-stop retro soundtrack and Kurt Russell turning up as Quill's long-lost dad to ham it up shamelessly as some kind of god, but also beset with one of those interminable genre-obligatory end sequences where everything gets blown up, to the point at which you start clock-watching and thinking about what to do next with your day. Naturally, there'll be another one too because they make money and they're harmless fun, but a little more characterisation really wouldn't go amiss; here, the thing on screen with the most charm by far is the animated twig who can only say "I am Groot".

5/10

Life (Daniel Espinosa, 2017)

Neither fish nor fowl, Life takes the setting of Gravity on the International Space Station, and then superimposes Alien as the crew, as unwisely as in any horror film, decide to play around with a Martian microorganism until it turns into a tentacled monster and tries to kill them all. The initial realism does not serve the idea of an exponentially growing, intelligent predator that isn't bothered by a vacuum at all, and the film consequently becomes the usual checklist exercise in second-guessing the order in which the various ethnicities and genders on board are bumped off. A smart twist at the very end just isn't enough compensation.

5/10

ARQ (Tony Elliott, 2016)

Time loop stories are a sci-fi staple, easy to do with just a bit of attention paid to continuity, with even a basic plot powering itself once revved up. They are, in other words, a bit of a cheat: you can assemble something that will hold the audience's attention just because everyone likes playing I-spy with minor divergences. To make one exceptional, however, you need to put serious amounts of hours in at the corkboard with pins and string to map out the timelines. ARQ doesn't pay much heed to that requirement, slapping on whatever deviation from the rules that suits it by virtue of having an arcane machine (the titular generator of limitless power in the lead character's basement, in the midst of a war-torn near future with a global energy crisis) serve as a MacGuffin to steamroller over anything that demands a logical explanation as a home invasion by men after money replays again and again. It's diverting enough, but makes sure to steer well clear that might possibly confuse the average Joe.

5/10

Veronica (Carlos Algara Alejandro & Martinez-Beltran, 2017)

Confusingly, both this Mexican thriller and a Spanish film by the same name came out at the same time: this one is to do with a retired female psychiatrist who agrees to treat a young woman with an undiagnosed trauma at her house in the mountains. The relationship between the two soon turns twisted and sexual, and then, having promised so much more with the foreboding mood it set up to begin with, sails directly into cloud cuckoo land. Doubtless, the directors thought that they were making some kind of homage to Hitchcock with all the twists and psychological references they lay on, but what they have actually created is no better than an off-the-shelf slasher.

4/10