In modern cinema we are overwhelmed with an endless stream of Hollywood films. All too often they’re barking up the same tree and rehashing plots, characters and themes in ways that have been done a hundred times before. Action films overly packed with special effects or romantic comedies filled to the brim with clichéd characters: we are often spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing a mindless way to fill a Friday night. However, this independent film directed by David Mackenzie came to me as a breath of fresh air. This is a love story that unfurls slowly and eloquently and, in the process, makes itself all the more endearing and engrossing to the viewer.

Set in what seems to be the modern United Kingdom, Perfect Sense tells the story of our two main Characters; Michael (Ewan McGregor) and Susan (Eva Green). Very early on they are set up to reveal a troubled past (which duly comes out later), and the way in which this is inferred indirectly by their actions, rather than literally through their dialogue, makes them all the more real to us. We begin to care about their story and want to go with them as things in their world begin to go awry.

The film chronicles the spread of a new disease that has scientist Susan somewhat baffled. It comes with such swiftness that people seem completely powerless against it’ effects. The disease is fantastical and terrifying in its simplicity: the systematic loss of your senses, one by one. Each loss of sense is preceded by an extreme bout of emotion – anger, grief etc, and then the sudden loss of the sense.

Although this is the main event in the film, what makes it so special is the characters reaction to it and the way in which the director and cinematographer present it to us.

Perfect Sense Trailer

The gritty realism of the filming, the use of quick cut editing, as well as the excellent use of stock footage of riots and violence as well as from locations such as Kenya and India, create a visually enthralling film. The strong musical score by Max Richter also plays a pivotal role in the tension and drama. It’s at its most notable at the climax before the loss of the character’s hearing.

Loss of senses highlights the themes in the film for us. For example, Ewan McGregor’s character, Michael, is a chef, a profession that is obviously highly effected by the loss of taste and smell. However, the way in which he and his colleagues in the restaurant he works in deal with the loss of taste and smell, and how they learn to continue with their lives demonstrate one of the strong, underlying themes of the movie – a testament to the strength of the human spirit.

However the love story here is the most important. Although the disease takes centre stage initially, it is the romance between Michael and Susan that draws us in and enraptures us. The brilliant dramatic irony, ultimately, is that as the love between the two characters begins to climax so does the chaos of the worldwide effects of the disease. In this lies the tragedy as well as the beauty – the revelation of the endurance of the human spirit, and our capacity to love even against the strongest of odds.

Overall Verdict: Perfect Sense is an exquisite film with engaging and enrapturing cinematography and characters that feel real and honest. This sci-fi love story explores universal themes in a refreshingly unique and subtle way that engages the viewer and allows them to reflect on them in light of all we have to lose.

Reviewer: Kevin van der Ham

As we move into the future and sci-fi technology becomes real life, a very important question must be asked. It’s a question of progress, a question of how far we as a species have come and indeed, where we are going. And the question is this: What sports could be improved by replacing the competitors with massive robots?

Think about it. Imagine basketball with 30ft high nets and slam-dunks that interfered with local air-traffic. What about track and field, where the long jump has to be done on an airfield runway and the hammer throw is performed with a Nissan Micra on the end of a tow chain? Imagine if the entire England football team were replaced with over-priced, mindless automatons, devoid of personality and unable to follow anything other than the most basic instr-, eh? Oh.

Anyhow, Disney have taken what I feel is the coward’s way out and gone straight for boxing. It actually makes a lot of sense. With a cast of robots, you can fill up your movie with a ton of high-impact violence and yet keep your certificate safely in the 12A region, because hey, they’re only machines, right? As far as concepts go, it’s so sound it’s incredible to think that nobody thought of it the second the first Transformers movie appeared.

In the not too distant future, mankind is, surprisingly, almost exactly where we’re at now, the only exceptions being slightly niftier touch-screen technology, and of course, the robots. Yes, human on human competitive violence is a thing of the past, as public attention has drifted to Robot Fighting, in which people from all over the world build themselves ten-foot tall humanoid fighting-bots and then compete in traditional one-on-one unarmed combat, the winner obviously being the bot that doesn’t end up in the recycling bin.

Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman), once a flesh-and-blood boxer but forced into retirement by the rise of the mechanical fights, stays in this new fight-game, but is so down on his luck that he and his robot are scraping a living fighting wild bulls for the amusement of rednecks at county fairs. His life, however, takes an interesting twist when the mother of his long-estranged son (Dakota Goyo) goes and makes an early appointment with the Almighty, leaving him stuck with an irritating tween he feels he could do without. When the kid stumbles across a disused and outdated fight-bot, the two of them bond through their mutual love of beating the tar out of other people’s science projects.

Let’s get the film’s selling point out of the way first and examine the robot combat itself. The mechanical beasts are exceptionally well designed. The level of detail is quite extraordinary, especially as fights go on. Little things like a dangling circuit board or a splinter piece of metal shell really serve to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality. The patchwork nature of the ‘bots also gives them heaps more personality than anything that has issued forth from the Michael Bay Crap Factory^TM over the last few years.

Obviously, special effects driven actioners such as this one are a dime a dozen in today’s world of easily accessible CGI, so immediately the pressure’s on to appeal to the audience on a level that doesn’t involve face-punching. In this respect, Real Steel is a pleasant surprise. The characters, whilst deeply clichéd, are not unlikable and Jackman and Goyo have real chemistry in a convincing double-act. This strength of relationship comes from the fact that Kenton Snr. is, to start with, a genuine asshole, being mean to children, using bribery and subterfuge to get his way and his initial outright rejection of his offspring only serves to make the relationship more appealing. Less convincing is the slightly tacked-on romance between Charlie and struggling gym owner Bailey (Lost’s Evangeline Lilly), but the writers, to their credit, don’t place it any closer to the front burner than it needs to be. However, that’s not to say that the script is played with any real emotional subtlety.

Without wishing to over-state the matter, this film is waist deep in sentimentality. It’s all there, the underdog story, the heart-warming father/son relationship, the love interest struggling to keep her business afloat, the dead mentor. Seriously, you could order five helpings of nachos before the movie and there’d still be less cheese on your lap than on the screen. The level of cliché is at times hilarious. All the villains are foreign, the rock-themed training montages are in place and they’ve even thrown in some doorstep confessional showdowns for good measure.  It is, without a doubt, the most Disney-fied Disney film that the company have put out in quite some time (while the movie was made by Dreamworks, it’s being distributed by Disney).

But here’s the twist. Somehow, someway, Real Steel comes through this avalanche of sugariness relatively unscathed. The temptation as a reviewer is to write it off as ‘Rocky with robots’, and that view is not entirely without merit. What stops the film from sliding into the abyss is how self-aware it is. Like last years’ Karate Kid remake, it knows just how ridiculous it is and revels in it. This produces exactly the kind of guilty pleasure vibe a film of this nature needs to survive in the face of cynical 21st Century audiences. Between the feel-good story and the shamelessly silly robo-combat, Real Steal somehow contrives to slap a big stupid grin on your face by the time the credits roll.

Overall Verdict: Like a big stupid dog, Real Steel will knock over your furniture, make a mess on your carpet and might even leave the odd dead bird on the doorstep, but for reasons you won’t quite be able to fathom, you’ll still enjoy its company, pretty much from start to finish.

Reviewer: Alex Hall

How can a film with Steve Carell, Julianne Moore and Ryan Gosling be anything less than likeable and watcheable? Well, it can’t, but three scenes apart this is a sticky mess of a romantic comedy which over-relies on its acting talent and takes way too many liberties with a paper-thin plot.

It’s a simple set-up – Carell is a version of his 40-Year-Old Virgin character, but now married. His wife, Moore, reveals she’s having an affair with Kevin Bacon and wants a divorce. His life falls apart and he takes to drinking in the same bar night after night, telling anyone who will listen – basically no one – about his woes. Eventually Gosling’s ladies man, who picks up girls in the same bar, takes pity on him and coaches him into how to pull women. Gosling smartens Carell up (‘You’re better than Gap’), ups his confidence and gets him back on the dating scene. When Gosling falls in love however, it’s Carell’s turn for a bit of life coaching.

There’s also a toe-curlingly bad subplot involving the babysitter being in love with Carell, and his son being in love with her, which eventually all plays out at a school ceremony in a sub-Richard Curtis-like avalanche of cheesy lines. The film is a bit all over the place, but there are three sequences that remind us how good these actors can be with even the thinnest of material. Two involve Carell and Moore reminiscing about their marriage and where they went wrong, one of those is simply a phone call about fixing the boiler but it drips with emotional charge.

The other is a scene between Gosling – the man of the moment – and his new sweetheart (played by Emma Stone) which, with the thinnest of lines, plucks at the heartstrings. Gosling is usually the king of indie but clearly enjoys this moment in the mainstream – an improvised scene where he is telling Carell of his latest conquest is delightful – but he knows this will not be remembered among his finest work, especially after Half Nelson and Drive. Bacon and Marisa Tomei are pretty much wasted in cameos.

Overall verdict: Throwaway romantic comedy that won’t linger in the memory, but worth catching for masterclasses in acting from its three leads, and a handful of half-decent jokes.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

Held up as the quintessential Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets gets a cinema re-release ahead of its scrubbed up DVD, looking crisp, sharp and sounding as witty as ever. So why only three stars? Surely this is the ultimate British satire on class and ambition?

Well, it is and it isn’t. Time has not been kind to a film that was made in 1949, when the idea of the British class system was under some suspicion. Put simply it is slow, dull at times and suffers from a seemingly interminable voice-over. At times it feels like a short story being read out by the central figure more than an actual film. A scene towards the end is a classic example – there is some subtle word play between the accused man and his potential saviour, and the narrator deems it necessary to explain what has just taken place.

Dennis Price – wonderful – plays Louis Mazzini, whose mother was a member of the D’Ascoyne aristocratic family but who married an opera singer and both she and he were cast out. He determines to claim his inheritance by bumping off all the remaining members of the D’Ascoyne family – all eight of whom are famously played by Alec Guinness. Some meet a watery death, one famously plummets from a hot air balloon, one has his port poisoned. The subtleties come when Louis falls in love with one of the D’Ascoynes’ wives, and also his one kind employer also happens to be the last remaining member of the family.

Obviously a film made in 1949 is going to feel and sound dated, and allowances have to be made. It still manages to produce some marvelous moments, and the chemistry between Price and his two female lovers is genuinely sexy. Much has been made of Guinness’ playing of all eight parts, and it could have bordered on the spoof, but actually he reigns it in for much of the time and it’s all the better for it. Ultimately though the film does seem like a timepiece, an ‘important’ film rather than one which is still essential viewing.

Overall Verdict: Dated classic which creaks more than it should, but which still manages to raise a smile. Price’s performance is the real heart of the film, which looks marvelous in its restored version.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

In years to come this slice of monkey business might be seen as something of a guilty pleasure, a slightly camp classic with several sequences featuring just chimp noises instead of dialogue. That said, at the moment it looks like a slightly daft, slow, science-heavy and tension-light adventure, albeit one with impressive visuals and effects.

Here’s the science bit; James Franco is Will Rodman, a scientist working on a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s a personal crusade for Will as his dad (Lithgow) is struggling painfully with the condition. Will tests a new drug on a primate which seems to have remarkable effects. It increases the chimp’s IQ and actually helps the brain repair its cells. However when the chimp goes nuts in the lab it is shot, but leaves behind a newborn – it wasn’t being aggressive, but protective. Will adopts the baby chimp, Caesar, who seems to have inherited his mother’s massive IQ, and has the same side-effects as the drug – green flecks in the eyes.

Will is so convinced by the drug’s value he – illegally – injects his dad with it, and Rodman senior suddenly goes from playing chopsticks on the piano to Chopin. Will has also by this time fallen for vet Caroline (Pinto), and his world seems complete. However Caesar however is exhibiting some strange side-effects, and a court order puts him in a sanctuary run by the evil Landon (Cox). Caesar however has learned sign language, and organises a mass break-out with all the other primates trapped in the prison.

Apart from a repeated line from the original classic film – yep, “Get your hands off me you dirty ape” appears again, with a surprising pay-off – what’s remarkable about this remake is how little fun it is. Franco is far too earnest and indie for his part, Pinto is merely decoration, and Cox’s nasty zookeeper is as bad as his hair dye – his American accent gets worse as he gets older. There’s a big set piece at the end on San Francisco bridge, which is technically well done and visually precise, but it’s too late in the piece to pick up the pace, which for most of the film is far too doddery. It’s a real oddity – does the world really need another Apes movie? – and apart from some vague stuff about big companies’ greed for profit there’s no real contemporary theme to it.

The chimps themselves are expertly realised – a cruel fan might say the computer-generated primates are better actors than the humans – and there are some laughs when they organise their prison break-out – with the help of some subtitles and lots off ooh-oohs. The violence is kept to a minimum to secure a certificate tailored for the younger audience, who may well be as baffled as the adults.

Overall verdict: An oddity, somewhere between a spoof, serious eco-theme and daft adventure. Some fun on the way but it adds up to a load of monkey business.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

The problem with being the best in the business is that you are bound by your own high standards. The reason everyone was so shocked by footballer Ryan Giggs’ sordid off the field antics was that he had spent nearly 20 years cultivating the image of being the sport’s Last Good Man and had succeeded so well that the revelations had twice the impact. On a more relevant theme, Steven Spielberg’s 1991 family film Hook was met with almost universal derision from critics. Why? It wasn’t a terrible film by any means, but for those of you too young to remember, during the eighties, the idea that Spielberg could make anything other than a superb piece of cinema was unheard of.
 
And so we arrive, in a roundabout way, at the point. Pixar are the Spielberg/Kubrick/Scorsese of the current era (at least in terms of mainstream filmmaking). Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Monsters Inc, the studio has been turning out classic after classic for the best part of 20 years now. Sure there’s been the odd misstep along the way, but in recent years, with the astonishing 1, 2, 3 combo of Wall-E, Up and Toy Story 3, the Pixar juggernaut had picked up some frankly frightening momentum.
 
And then we get Cars 2, a sequel so ill-advised it’s astonishing it even made it through the planning period. Financially it makes perfect sense – Lightning McQueen and co. made Disney a huge sum in merchandising after the release of Cars and you can almost hear Mickey Mouse’s accountants rubbing their hands together at the prospect of a second round. Money however, should not be the catalyst of creativity and the only way Cars 2 could be a more obvious cash-in would be if Lightning McQueen’s catchphrase had been changed from “Ka-chow!” to “Ka-ching!”.
 
The plot, in its basic state at least, is undemanding, formulaic stuff. In a world of anthropomorphic cars, racing champion Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is invited to take part in a global invitational tournament, where the greatest racers from each country compete to promote a new type of environmentally friendly fuel. Along for the ride is McQueen’s well-meaning but dim-witted best friend Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) who, through a convoluted series of events, winds up trying to stop a shady conspiracy behind the tournament.

Visually, this is as good as anything Pixar have done thus far. From the huge rolling American plains to the dazzlingly brilliant lights of Tokyo, the level of detail has to be seen to be believed. If Pixar continue to outdo themselves in this way, then the difference between CG and live action is going to be moot by the end of this decade.

Unfortunately that’s where the shine wears off. The first and most fundamental mistake lies in the shifting dynamic of the characters. The decision to move comedy side-kick Mater into the role of main character is nothing short of disastrous.  The writers attempt to work a “wise fool” motif into his character but it fails to show through, and we are left with a central player who is woefully two-dimensional and highly irritating after the first hour. A valiant effort is made to back up this shortcoming with a varied supporting cast, including smooth secret agent cars Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer), as well as old favourites such as McQueen’s pit crew, but the overall effect is that of flogging a horse that is, if not dead, then at least in critical condition.

In terms of pacing – again an area in which Pixar have previously proved themselves to be masters of their craft – rookie mistakes are made. First and foremost, just because you can do high octane actions sequences doesn’t mean you should fill up the entire movie with them. Anyone who has seen Up!, one of Pixar’s finest, will attest that while the action scenes were entertaining, the most memorable parts of the film were the quieter, thought provoking scenes that shone the characters in a more philosophical light. In Cars 2, with its constant – and I do mean constant – flashing lights, revving of engines and bright colours, the audience has no opposite point of reference, meaning that the action, impressive as it is, loses its relevance.

There will doubtless be those who say that this is a move for children and should be judged as such. True enough, but the best examples of children’s entertainment are the ones that don’t treat their audience like idiots. Cars 2 blindly assumes that all kids have ADD and so assaults them with a hyperactive story wrapped in meaningless action. The characters lack charm and the adventure loses momentum.  Pixar are still the best when it comes to the CG revolution, but this represents a very bad day at the office.

Overall Verdict: A disappointingly lazy effort. Cars 2 is the kind of film that is usually served up by Pixar’s less illustrious competitors. A really mediocre piece from a company we all know can do much, much better.

Reviewer: Alex Hall