The history of film is littered with bad books which have made great films – Hitchcock made a career out of adapting terrible novels. In this case, however, it’s a case of bad book, worse film. Quite why is not that easy to say.

It’s based on Rachel Seiffert’s novel The Dark Room, which is actually three stories in one book, which are not related, apart from they are set in the dying days of the Second World War. The story that director Shortland has chosen to film concerns the young children of a Nazi family whose lives are just about to collapse in 1945.

The family are in deep trouble – the parents know that the Fuhrer is dead and the war is all but over, and they know they are doomed. The problem for the children is that they have been thoroughly indoctrinated into Nazi ways, taught to hate Jews and believe in their own superiority. As the Allies approach the children are shovelled onto the road and told to go to Aunt Omi’s house far in the north where they will be reunited with their parents.

Lore is the eldest’s name, a thoroughly Aryan youth who will lead her younger sister, two twin brothers and a baby through the Black Forest to Omi’s house. It’s a huge ask for a girl who, although it is never stated, can’t be more than 15. Lore pulls and trudges her family through the dark forest where they come across several unfriendly families.

Just as the family look to be held by American troops who intercept them on the road, they are saved by a Jewish boy, Thomas, who claims to be their brother, therefore making the whole family Jewish. Quite why Thomas does this is never explained, either in the film or the book, but they stick together to survive the arduous journey.

A crucial scene has Thomas trying to seduce Lore, who automatically rejects his advances, calling him a “filthy Jew”. He ploughs on in his quest though, and helps the family get towards the train station where it will lead them to safely.

Let’s face it, if you’re going to make a film about Nazi youth you’d better get the tone absolutely right. Of course there was a whole generation of white, beautiful youths whose heads were filled with vile ideology, and who had to be re-educated, but here it is far too weighted in Lore’s favour. She is gorgeous, evil and not particularly bright, so why are we taken on such a long journey with her? The device of a romance with a Jewish boy is far too ham-fisted and makes little sense, and her final defiant act of smashing her mother’s china toy is too obvious to have any emotional depth. This is the darkest chapter of the 20th century, not a soap opera.

Director Shortland handled previous effort Somersault so carefully, but uses the same techniques here in a totally inappropriate way. The film is drenched in soft focus, picking out fluffy flowers, birds and tree life, and Lore herself is undeniably eroticised, constantly drenched in a flimsy dress, bare-footed and combing her hair. It creates an extremely uneasy feeling which is never overcome, and not helped by a plinky-plonky piano score that is irritating in the extreme.

Rosendahl as Lore is the film’s one shining light, giving a tremendously sensitive, brave performance in a role that requires the viewer to sympathise with a Nazi. It’s to her credit, if not the film’s, that she manages to pull that off. She is physically tough, defiant and always clear-eyed, and even when scolding her family she manages to be engaging.

Overall verdict: An uneasy adaptation of an uneasy and unsuccessful book which attempts to shine a light on what happened to Nazi youth – a subject that really should be left well alone. A great central performance cannot save a consistent feeling that this is attempting to achieve something that is not admirable.

Review: Mike Martin

Side By Side is a film geek’s heaven, but even for the apparently uninterested it’s a cracking, surprisingly rollicking ride through the history of cinema. Put simply it explores the current movie debate; can digital ever match the majesty and grittiness of 35mm film? The answer is not as straightforward as you might imagine.

Keanu Reeves is our host, and he’s excellent – friendly, funny, surprisingly knowledgeable about film history and also, obviously, very comfortable with a camera. Several times he asks a question which an unknown might not have got away with; several times the director in question answers truthfully because it’s Reeves. He might not be the world’s greatest actor but he has been in front of a camera, and he has worked with plenty of directors, and he makes that count.

The great, the good and the frankly weird appear in turn to say whether they are for or against the rise of digital and the death of 35mm, but not always giving views you might think. Danny Boyle, for example, is a real cineaste, but he’s actually all in favour of digital for the freedom smaller cameras give him. He claims Slumdog Millionaire would never have looked the way it did were it not for digital, and his DP was the first to win an Oscar for digital work rather than 35mm. Boyle is as entertaining as usual of course.

SIDE BY SIDE trailer from Axiom Films on Vimeo.

Then there’s Martin Scorsese – surely the man who’s a walking history of cinema will stick up for 35mm? Well no, he’s as happy as anyone to take on the new technology becauye it can free up the camera and therefore the director.

In the Luddite corner there’s Chris Nolan, ironically for the man who uses special effects for his Batman movies with such relish. He insists film will always stick around, and some clips from the Dark Knight do indeed look beautiful.

Then there an ageing cameraman who makes the most interesting point of the film. Storing digital on a hard drive is almost impossible, he claims, whereas film is easy – shine a torch through it and wind it with your arm and it will always work, a point that silenced the screening room.

So we go back and forth through the argument, with a little bit of the history of the digital camera thrown in – David Fincher’s face when told he was using a £1m digital camera that had the same weight and handling flaws of a 35mm camera is a picture. It’s amazingly engaging, and the use of clips to illustrate points is fantastic.

The final irony is that this is a low-budget doc, shot on – yes, you guessed it, digital – and it looks superb. You really can’t tell the difference.

Overall verdict: Hugely entertaining ride through the history of cinema with a nod to the future which is not an clear-cut as you might think. And the old photographer at the end is right – 3D is bloody awful.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

A really delightful little watch, This is 40 brings some great laughs to a portrayal of a reality that can be anything from unpleasant to even hellish. This film gives married life the Knocked Up comedy treatment as it takes a very close look at a family of four and how they come into both conflict and resolution.

Labelled as a ‘sort of’ sequel to the pregnancy comedy Knocked Up, this film is about the married life of Pete (Paul Rudd), Debbie (Leslie Mann) and their two daughters, Sadie and Charlotte (Maude and Iris Apatow). The film starts with Debbie and Pete turning 40 in the same week. Although Pete seems pretty content with the thought, Debbie is not ready for 40 and decides to stay in her 30s for a bit longer. They have a party planned for later on, and what ensues during the rest of the film can only be described as an exaggerated story of married life.

The plot throws a series of spanners in the works, such as the difficulties of financially dependent parents (who have had triplets at 60 years old!), failing businesses, children growing up and being snotty teenagers; as well as the more personal problems of coming to terms with middle age and learning to love one another through it all. The plot at times seems un-inventive as it throws one problem after another at the family. There seems to be little evidence of the traditional story arc of one grand disruption and resolution, as it favours a continuous series of problems to be overcome. This may seem tiresome at times but ultimately it mirrors reality, and so makes the story that much more believable.

This is 40 provides some really great laughs and this definitely saves it from being too sombre amongst all the family disaster. Rude jokes are found in abundance here; from shop assistants on drugs, how to tell the difference between and gay and straight men’s moustaches, how to kill a spouse humanely, and the emotional connection your teenage daughter has with the show Lost.

The cast do a sterling job and make the whole thing quite engrossing and entirely believable. Leslie Mann as the nagging and moaning mother, Paul Rudd as the father trying to find escape in his life, and the daughters just trying to survive fitting in at school and their parents’ general craziness. There are also some great supporting performances from the lovable Jason Segal, Megan Fox, Charlyne Li (the stoner girlfriend from Knocked Up) and Chris O’Dowd (The IT Crowd, Bridesmaids). The production is fantastic and the musical score provides great accompaniment to the story. Writer Director Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40 year old Virgin) all in all did a great job in making a light hearted comedy that pokes fun at the challenges of adult life.

Overall Verdict: Although lacking the shock value of films such as Knocked up, This is 40 is a great comedy that most will thoroughly enjoy. Although there are moments of seriousness, in general the film is a good viewing that will definitely having you laughing out loud. Great performances from the cast bring this story home and make for really engaging viewing. Very recommended.

Reviewer: Kevin van der Ham

The British have carved a niche with romantic comedies such as Four Weddings, the Americans have hit comedy gold with scatological humour with Bridesmaids – so fuse the two of them together and you’ve got a guaranteed cracker, right? Wrong – very, very, very wrong.

This updating of Four Weddings or the truly ghastly Love, Actually is so ill-judged, so badly written and poorly timed, and so wrong in just about every level of its comedy, it’s a thorough waste of the talents on show. It’s not just that the script is unfunny – and it is – or that the physical gags don’t work – they don’t – there is a really unpleasant, nasty undercurrent.

It starts with a wedding, and indeed the same gag as Four Weddings, with a stuttering vicar unable to complete the ceremony. Rowan Atkinson did it much better 20 years ago. Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne are the happy couple, while Stephen Merchant is the idiot best man who gives a misjudged speech – it’s supposed to make you cringe, and it does but not for reasons to the film’s credit.

Spall plays a writer who has had a hit with a book called ‘Three Months’ – which has the same cover as One Day – and Byrne is a successful PR. It turns out that although living in extreme comfort, they are not as compatible as they initially thought, and seek help in the form of marriage counsellor Olivia Colman, a bizarre man-hater who spends most of their sessions screaming at her husband on the phone. Maybe it’s this that sums the film up – Colman is a superb actor, especially with comedy, so why is she so shrill and shouty? It’s all notched up far higher than it needs to be, and any real jokes are lost in the crudity of it all.

The happy couple’s marriage really hits trouble though when they discover two other people who they seem more compatible with. Byrne gets a PR job with Simon Baker, a rich manufacturer who wants to promote his green credentials. He seems perfect – handsome, well dressed, rich and a man who gets a hug from his factory workers every time he goes onto the shop floor. Personally I wouldn’t get tired of punching him, but Byrne seems smitten.

Spall meanwhile spends his time with old flame Anna Faris, and the tedious script tells us they never actually formally split up, just grew apart when she went travelling. Despite appearing to have nothing in common whatsoever, the story tells us they have genuine chemistry and he still cares for her – he even brings her a bag of sweeties when she’s upset, which apparently is a declaration of love in these contrived movies.

Faris, in a dreadful wig, suffers arguably the most ill-judged scene of the whole sorry mess, when she, desperate from some contact, has a threesome with a work colleague after the Christmas party. It all gets messy, but this has to be the most badly-choreographed piece of physical comedy in some time, merely embarrassing rather than remotely funny. When she shouts at the remaining couple, “You can’t have sex with your pants still on”, it’s the one line of the soggy script that rings true.

The whole film has that irritating glow that suffocated Love, Actually and Four Weddings – who are these people living in bespoke flats with scrubbed floors and furniture, wearing lovely clothes and sipping coffee all day while moaning about their sex lives? Each and every one of them needs a damn good shake, which might actually raise a laugh, more than the film does.

Overall verdict: A horrible, unfunny mess of a transatlantic comedy, with zero charm and about as many laughs. Director Dan Mazer seems to badly miss his colleague Sasha Baron Cohen, and has made a big mistake directing his own awful script. A saggy, baggy, tired comedy that will disappear very quickly – I give it a week.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

I have to admit I’m a little confused about the British film industry at the moment, or at least he more commercial side of it. Currently we only seem to be able to produce wedding comedies and movies about irredeemable criminal assholes.

The Fall Of The Essex Boys fits squarely in the latter category, telling the true of the run up to the Rettendon Triple Murders of three drug dealers in Essex in 1995. It’s a crime that seems to have a strange hold on some people as this is the fourth movie made about the events surrounding it, following Essex Boys, Rise of the Footsoldier and Bonded by Blood. Quite why this crime has created a mini industry of films, books and even merchandise is a bit of a mystery, because in the annals of murder, the demise of three impressively scummy drug dealers is amongst the least worth getting exercised about.

The film attempts to tell the true story of the run up to the murders of The Essex Boys, who are described as one of the most infamous criminal organisations in Britain since The Krays. Pat Tate, Tony Tucker and Craig Rolfe run a drug dealing empire. Their operation grows and with the police always one step behind them, they start to feel increasingly untouchable, able to kill those who piss them off and spread drugs across the country.

However while they may feel invulnerable, their lives begin spiralling out of control as they anger those around them and make enemies of other criminals. They also have DI Stone on their tail, who’s feeling extra pressure to get them after a girl falls into a coma after taking a dodgy ecstasy pill – although it’s not initially clear who’s side he’s on.

However, when the boys plan a big operation that could take them to the next level, they may have bitten off more than even they can chew.

There’s nothing wrong with a good gangster movie, but too many of the recent efforts are essentially crime porn. The Fall Of The Essex Boys isn’t about redemption, the reasons people get involved in crime, and it’s only vaguely a cautionary tale. It pretty much just about revelling in the lives of scumbags and getting a vicarious thrill from murder, drug dealing, sex and violence. There are moments when the movie seems to have real admiration for the bravado and balls to the walls attitude of the Essex Boys.

For example there a sequence where we’re shown one of the guys going ‘out of control’ as he shouts at his girlfriend after she catches him cheating on her, has copious amounts of sex, does drugs and beat a pizza guy to a pulp. While we’re told he’s gone too far, the film almost treats it in a triumphal way, enjoying his violent hedonism.

Part of the problem may be due to the way the film is constructed. As with Paul Tanter’s previous movie, The Rise And Fall Of A White Collar Hooligan, the film often resorts to a rather overbearing voiceover. It uses it as a way of introducing things and then telling us what’s really going on, but it often feels as if we’re seeing a few scenes that wallow in the underworld, and then the actual plot is simply told to us in voiceover in a rather perfunctory way.

It’s not like there’s anyone to really root for either. The possible good guys don’t reveal their true colours until the end, so for the majority of the time they seem almost as scummy as the Essex Boys themselves. Even DI Stone whose goodness is signified by him tucking his kids up at night could actually be bad. And either way, the possible goodies are rather sidelined and made to seem far less interesting than the criminals.

It would have also helped if the characters actually seemed like real people, but most of the time they simply shout at one another and run around gangster cliché world. I’ll admit I’m not an expert on what drug dealers and crime lords are like, but I find it tough to believe their entire existence is about shouting and treating even their best friends incredibly badly. I’m not suggesting it should be presenting them as saints, but as with many recent British gangster films, there’s something almost cartoonish about the way the criminals act. Indeed, the actors who play the Essex boys must have had an easy time learning the script, as about 90% of their dialogue is either, “[Insert name or pronoun here] is a c*nt,” or “Do you think I’m a c*nt?”

They can’t do anything – even order fast food – without threatening (or committing) bodily harm and saying the word ‘c*nt’ about 70 times. The film is admittedly about how they go out of control and no one wants anything to do with them anymore – even other criminals – but it’s tough to believe them as actual people. A willingness to literally do anything and having no morality whatsoever might help in the world of drugs, but I’m pretty sure that if you were as dumb as these guys you’d never get anywhere.

It’s not a dreadful movie and if you’re the sort of person who loves all things criminal, you’ll probably enjoy it. But if you’re hoping for some insight into the world of crime, you’d better look elsewhere. Likewise, if you enjoy films where pretty much everyone onscreen is a vile, unpleasant, immoral scumbag with no redeeming qualities, this will be right up your street, but if you want someone to root for, the film rather fails (it does give it a go towards the end, but it’s a bit late by then).

This really is gangster porn, and while I can imagine some people liking it, personally I like more from my crime flicks than revelling in scumminess and getting vicarious thrills from violence and murder. Even its credentials as the true story of the Rettendon Murders get a little murky towards the end, when it tries to twist things on the audience but ends up making you questions how much of what you’ve seen is genuinely true.

Overall Verdict: I don’t really get this sort of gangster porn that lionises the scummiest of scum while pretending it’s about their downfall (and even questions whether these violent murderers’ death were any kind of justice), but if that’s your thing, The Fall Of The Essex Boys is a passable enough.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Anthony Hopkins gave some amazing performances in the 1980s and 1990s, but for the last decade or so it’s seemed like he’s simply turned up for his paycheque. However it turns that to get him to give a real performance you’ve got to give him a role where he doesn’t have much choice but to act. After all, Alfred Hitchcock is far too well known for Hopkins just to have coasted it. Thankfully he doesn’t, not just doing a dead-on impersonations of the master director, but creating a fully realised character in a way Toby Jones couldn’t quite manage in the recent, The Girl.

Rather than being a birth-to-death biopic, Hitchcock concentrates solely on the period around the making of Psycho. It opens just as North By Northwest is hitting cinemas; a movie that proves a commercial hit but has critics saying Hitch is playing it safe and simply going through the motions. For his follow-up he wants to do something different and sets out to find something unusual, eventually settling on Robert Block’s novel, Psycho.

Everyone around him thinks the idea of Hitchcock making a horror film is a terrible idea – it’s simply not something someone of his stature does. He’s determined though, but it proves difficult, with Paramount balking at paying for the production. As a result Hitch funds it himself, which means that is Psycho fails, he’ll be ruined both financially and professionally.

As production starts to gear up, Hitch begins to get paranoid about his wife Alma’s (Helen Mirren) friendship with writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), leading to a growing jealousy that somewhat mirrors the obsessions of Psycho. Alma meanwhile has plenty to put up with herself, not least the fact that as with every one of Hitch’s films, she knows he will start to fall for his leading lady (even if she’s aware it’s unlikely to result in an actual affair).

Hitchcock is certainly an entertaining movie about the making of a film that’s as interesting for what happened behind the scenes as the thrills and spills on-screen. However it is slightly stuck between a rock and a hard place. As it’s based on just a small chunk of Hitch’s life, it needs to provide enough info to ensure that those who don’t know much about him won’t get lost, but that results in a slight fudging of the truth of what actually happened during the making of Psycho.

The alterations are partly to make things fit better into the plot of a film but it does mean that fans of the master might get slightly annoyed that the truth sometimes gets altered, especially as it misses out some of the more interesting aspects (which admittedly would have been difficult to fit within a film).

Rather than sticking with being 100% factual about the period just before Psycho’s 1960 release, it instead wants to suggest broader truths about Hitch. The film never quite gets to grips with why Hitch is so obsessed with young blonde women (but then, there have been thousands of suggestions over the years and never a definitive answer), but you really can feel what Psycho meant to him. At the time he was 60 and the most famous director in the world, but many felt he was past his prime and coasting. Psycho saw him completely paring things back and doing something daring and different – something he’d been renowned for in his prime – and showing the world he was still a truly great director.

Unfortunately I wasn’t convinced by the attempts to make the movie a bit of a thriller in itself, with Hitch talking to the long-dead Ed Gein (the murderer who inspired Psycho) about the obsessions rising within him and his increasingly dark conviction that his wife his having an affair. The idea of the affair works thematically, but the aim of making the movie itself Hitchcockian is better in theory than in practice.

However, where the movie undoubtedly works is bringing Hitch’s wife, Alma Reville, out of the shadows and putting her into her rightful position as a vital part of Hitchcock’s success. It’s easily arguable that Hitch would never have attained the status he did without her. She helped rewrite his scripts, worked with him on the extensive shot-by-shot storyboarding he did, and was his sounding board for virtually everything he did. While the film doesn’t go too far into the nuts and bolt of how Hitchcock put together a movie (which is a shame, but I presume they were worried it would bore the audience), it certainly shows how important Alma was, even if she never got the recognition in her lifetime.

It helps a lot that both Mirren and Hopkins give great performances and it’s a great shame Helen didn’t get nominated for an Oscar, as she’s terrific. Hopkins has really studied Hitch, even mimicking the director’s slightly stilted style of delivery direct to camera in sections based on Hitch’s intros to his TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The two actors are the heart and soul of this movie, helping to patch over some of its flaws.

The likes of Scarlet Johansson (as Janet Leigh), James D’Arcy (as Anthony Perkins) and Danny Huston are also pretty good, although their roles don’t really ask them to stretch themselves too far. However Jessica Biel is surprisingly good as Vera Miles, an actress Hitch once planned to make a big star but who was sidelined after she got pregnant. Biel takes a small part and gives it far more depth that it might otherwise have had. It’s more evidence for my pet theory that Biel is actually a really good actress who normally takes rubbish roles.

Hitchcock is certainly not a perfect movie, but it’s definitely an interesting one. To be honest it might have been better if it had stuck closer to the facts, which are undoubtedly interesting, rather than trying to be a little too clever for its own good with the Hitchcockian elements. Even so it’s definitely worth a look, especially if you’re a film fan.

Overall Verdict: A flawed but extremely well-acted biopic that provides an interesting if not 100% factually true account of the making of a classic.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac