Some may be distressed by the severe lack of female primates in She Monkeys, but this Swedish flick is nevertheless an engrossing watch. Teenagers Emma and Cassandra train at a riding academy and become firm friends. However Cassandra soon starts to exert a surprising amount of control over Emma, something the other girl meekly relents to. What initially seems like an uneven but strong bond soon starts to have dark undertones, especially when Cassandra feels jealous or that she isn’t totally dominating what’s happening. While love could bloom, there’s the ever present danger of things ending badly.

Alongside this Cassandra’s younger sister is on the verge of puberty and starts to become self-conscious about her body and wants a bikini to wear. However while the adults around her seem worried about sexualising her, whether she’s already sexualised or if they can maintain her innocence for longer, the film plays with just how unknowing about her burgeoning sexuality the girl is. This results in a wonderful moment where the girl puts on a revealing leopard print two-piece that her father seems unsure about, but Sara just paints whiskers on her face so she’s a cat – although she’s not always so innocent.

She Monkeys manages to create a wonderful feeling of desire and tension, building the relationship between the teenage girls so that it runs very deep and yet always seems like something potentially dangerous. Initially I kept wondering why Emma just goes along with whatever Cassandra tells her, as she doesn’t particularly seem to enjoy being dominated, she just constantly does what she’s told. Indeed with that and her sister’s behaviour, it makes you wonder if something unsavoury has been going on in their household that’s never explicitly mentioned. And while the movie never fully deals with this, it works well to add to the tension, as you realise that Cassandra’s control is utterly reliant of Emma’s unquestioning acceptance of it, and could therefore come unstuck at any moment.

Lisa Aschan’s direction is strong, with a wonderful way of uncovering people’s thoughts through a mix of close-ups and long shots, with a particular concentration on what people’s hands are revealing. The film also uses a lot of symbolism about animals and the training of them, which occasionally seems a bit heavy-handed, but not to the point of undermining the experience.

By the end it leaves you with plenty to consider, with everyone’s characters revealed to be complex and flawed.

Overall Verdict: An interesting character study of burgeoning power, dominance and sexuality that will certainly leave you thinking.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

 

In the same way that you can judge how funny a comedy film is by the amount of times you laugh out loud, you can tell how brutal a martial arts action film is by the number of times you wince, suck in your teeth or let out an involuntary yelp as you watch the carnage unfold.

The Raid is a very brutal film indeed, and one that has been hyped up to the point where going into it you almost expect to be disappointed. But this is one case where the hype is justified; it’s one of the slickest, most effective and exhilarating action films in recent memory; one that puts all the latest Hollywood efforts to shame and surely announces the arrival of two future stars of the genre in director Gareth Evans and leading man Iko Uwais.

Set in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, The Raid wastes no time in setting up its streamlined plot. We’re introduced to Uwais’ rookie cop Rama as he begins his day by training, praying and bidding a fond farewell to his pregnant wife and elderly father before heading off to work. He doesn’t seem to realise it yet but this is going to be quite a hectic day at the office. Turns out Rama is be part of a squad of 20 officers sent into a 30-storey apartment building to bring to justice Tama (Ray Sahetapy), a ruthless drug lord with a penchant for murdering people with a hammer and a psychotic right hand man named Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian) who prefers to use his bare hands.

Tama rules over the building from the penthouse suite like a king, inviting all the worst criminal scum of Jakarta to live there rent-free in exchange for acting as security. When Rama and his colleagues arrive they soon find themselves sealed inside as Tama announces their arrival over the intercom and asks his tenants to deal with them, politely insisting that they “enjoy themselves” while they’re at it. As plots go it’s pretty sparse but it gives us everything we need to get to know the main players and set up an hour and 40 minutes of mayhem that truly has to be seen to be believed.

Director Gareth Evans is an expat Welshman with only one previous feature credit in the little seen, low-budget Merenta,u which also starred Uwais. Evans’ relative inexperience is staggering considering the confidence and efficiency with which he mounts the action set pieces here. The bloodshed begins with several explosive gunfights but once the bullets run out and things get desperate, most of the action in The Raid involves cops and criminals going to toe-to-toe using Silat, an Indonesian martial art that isn’t often seen in movies and which seems more brutal than kung fu.

While kung fu movies often feature exaggerated, almost balletic fight scenes, the scraps here are fierce, frantic and always feel like desperate men fighting for their lives, albeit desperate men with almost superhuman levels of skill and athleticism. Evans also doesn’t rely on the old Hollywood action editing trick of having each fight cut into dozens of quick shots so that you can’t tell when it’s the star or the stunt double on screen, or to make the fighters appear more skilled then they actually are. He uses long, action-packed shots so you’re left with no doubt that these actors are actually capable of what you’re seeing. And it’s not just the action where Evans’ proves his metal; he knows how to ratchet up the tension as well, especially in one excruciatingly tense scene where Rama and a wounded colleague try to hide from a machete-wielding gang.

Probably the best move Evans made with The Raid was in casting Iko Uwais as his leading man. Although a former Silat champion, Uwais was apparently working as a delivery driver before he was discovered by Evans and had never acted before. Although The Raid doesn’t exactly require any great acting skills from him, he’s almost as good in the dramatic scenes as he is in the action ones and is a naturally likeable screen presence that it’s hard not to root for. This is mostly due to the fact that he looks about 20-years-old, is taking on enemies twice his size and is playing quite a traditional, nobly heroic character rather than the cynical, wisecracking sorts you get in Hollywood action movies.

It’s a safe bet that both Evans and Uwais will be heroes to action-movie fans for years to come and all things considered it’s something of an understatement to call The Raid the best action film of the year; it’s probably more accurate to say it’s one of the best examples of the genre ever made.

Overall Verdict: The Raid sets out to be a heart-quickening, nail-biting, blackly funny piece of entertainment and is wildly successful.

Reviewer: Adam Pidgeon

 

Dark Shadows has always been a somewhat problematic proposition for a film conversion, especially as it’s been brought to the screen by people who are obviously in love with the original US soap opera that ran between 1966 and 1971. The show ran for over 1,000 episodes and featured a vast array of characters and all sorts of different supernatural shenanigans. Those then needed to be distilled down to a single movie that’ll work for a generation who’ve never seen the show.

It’s a challenge that Dark Shadows only partially succeeds in, with the whole thing having the whiff of being filled things Johnny Depp and Tim Burton wanted to include, but which might have been better to have dispensed with.

In an extended prologue set in the late 18th Century, we meet Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), son of a wealthy businessman who’s built himself a huge fortune and a palatial mansion in the New World. After spurning the advances of the maid Angelique (Evan Green), Barnabas discovers he’s bitten off more than he can chew as Angie is a witch, and an extremely vengeful one at that. She kills his parents, causes his girlfriend (Bella Heathcote) to jump off a cliff, turns Barnabas into a vampire and then locks him in a coffin for what she hopes will be eternity.

However eternity turns out to be just under two centuries, with construction work digging Barnabas up in 1972. He rises from his coffin to find the family fortune on the point of collapse, the mansion in disrepair and his descendants plagued by possibly supernatural problems and curses. The vampire sets out to restore the family’s fortunes, which is made all the more difficult due to the fact that Angelique is still around, still as beautiful as ever and just a determined to destroy everything about the Collins family, unless Barnabas will finally agree to be with her forever.

As you’d expect from Tim Burton, Dark Shadows looks wonderful, with bright colours and great production design. However as we’re also increasingly coming to expect from Burton, a potentially great concoction fails to live up to its potential.

The main problem is Seth Grahame Smith’s script, which feels as if it’s trying to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks and as a result doesn’t really make a huge amount of anything. Threads are picked up and dropped, underwritten characters seem to change moment-by-moment depending on what the script needs from them, and plot ideas come out of left field only to vanish. It’s partly a result of a seeming indecision over whether Dark Shadows is a modern movie in its own right, a spoof of soaps or a homage to the original.

Johnny Depp’s obviously having a blast playing a character he’s loved since he was a child, but even his kooky persona and white-face makeup can’t carry the film on its own. It’s a great shame as everyone involved seems to be doing their best, but with a script that’s all over the place and a lack of the momentum needed for a truly joyous comic supernatural diversion, it adds up to something that passes the time but is essentially a missed opportunity. It seems to be happening more and more with major Hollywood projects that the scripts feel as if they’ve been through so many hands and had so much input from so many different sources that they lose cohesion. That certainly seems to have happened here, which is a great shame. All the other pieces are in place for an extremely fun ride, but without a strong screenplay to hold it together, it’s never going to hit the heights it could.

That said, there’s still fun to be had and sections of the movie show us what could have been. The movie has fun with Barnabas being a man out of time thrown into the 70s and Eva Green has some wonderful moments as the obsessively vengeful Angelique. Likewise there’s humour from Helena Bonham Carter as psychiatrist Dr. Hoffman and Johnny Lee Miller as the sleazy Roger Collins, while Michelle Pfeiffer does a lot with only a little as current Collins matriarch Elizabeth. Unfortunately though all three of those characters end up suffering from a lack of consistency and a tendency towards the random.

There’s fun to be had with Dark Shadows, at least in parts, but overall it can’t help but feel like a missed opportunity.

Overall Verdict: Great production design, good acting and quite a few fun scenes can’t hide the fact that Tim Burton’s latest is undone by a script that never quite feels like it’s decided what it’s doing.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

A film starring Jason Segel and Ed Helms should be hilarious, right? Plus it’s directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, the brothers who had indie success with the likes of The Puffy Chair and Baghead, and are now making their first properly mainstream movie (the underwhelming Cyrus doesn’t really count). Sadly the results are less than the sum of the parts, with the movie being infuriating in parts and only sporadically entertaining.

As the title suggests, Jeff (Jason Segel) lives at home. He’s in his mid-thirties, has no job, doesn’t leave his basement all that often and spends most of his time trying to work out the ‘signs’ he feels are all around him, which will tell him what his destiny is if only he can interpret them properly. His mother (Susan Sarandon) asks him to go out and get some wood glue, however when he receives a wrong phone call for somebody called Kevin, he sees this as a sign, which leads him to get distracted from his task and ends up following someone with the word ‘Kevin’ on his basketball vest.

This eventually leads him to bump into his loud-mouth brother, Pat (Ed Helms), who’s about as different to Jeff as it’s possible to be. Pat’s marriage isn’t going well, and together the brothers end up on an inadvertent quest, following Pat’s wife (Judy Greer) who may be having an affair, while Jeff continues to search for the perfect moment when all the signs and hints come together to tell him what he needs to do to fulfil his destiny.

There’s nothing wrong with making films about people who aren’t 100% likable, but I found it difficult to empathise with either Jeff or Pat. I presume we’re meant to see Jeff as a lovable loser whose naïve but sweet view of life is somehow endearing, but I found it difficult not to see him as a feckless twit whose failure to launch is less sweet than irresponsible. With Pat I’m assuming we’re meant to believe he’s a bit of a pompous ass, but sympathise with the fact his life hasn’t gone the way he hoped it would and that he’s blind to the effect his actions have. Actually though he’s an asshole who has destroyed his own marriage by being selfish and arrogant. Do I really want to spend 85 minutes in the company of people like that? Not really, especially if they’re no laugh out loud funny.

It would be okay if we felt they really learned something through the movie, but the film actively cheats on this score. There’s a scene where both brothers admit they covet the other’s life and then say that actually their existent isn’t as great as it looks to the other, but they’d have to be absolutely blind to want the other’s life, as they’re both blatantly flailing.

Towards the end it looks like the film might actually be going somewhere, but the ending is a giant exercise in smoke and mirrors, so that it looks like things have changed, but nothing’s actually been resolved and everything’s been sorted out utterly artificially. Admittedly there’s always going to be something a tad contrived about a film that fits into the Signs and Magnolia school of everything being connected, but here it feels like it’s mainly a cheat.

The only part of the film that works really well is the subplot involving Susan Sarandon, who has a secret admirer at her work. She doesn’t know who it is, but paper airplanes soar into her cubicle and someone is IM’ing her computer. It’s a sweet story that goes in an interesting direction and by about halfway through I was wishing the Duplass’ had just made a film about her and left Jeff at home.

Overall Verdict: Jason Segel and Ed Helms are great talents, but Jeff Who Lives At Home is too muddled, doesn’t know what to do with their characters and cheats the ending.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Being a reviewer in this, the “reboot” era, is sometimes an education in itself. Seeing films from one’s earlier years, especially those that deal specifically with being young and stupid, and judging them again in the cold, harsh light of adulthood, is quite a frightening experience. Looking back on the American Pie series now, especially for someone who wasn’t a huge fan to begin with, paints a rather distressing picture of teen life in the late 90s.

Before I start being labelled a snob or a conservative, I should point out that I am quite partial to the “gross-out” genre, when done a certain way. The ongoing adventures of Harold & Kumar (the creators of which directed this latest addition to the American Pie saga), for example, are perfectly acceptable, even good examples of the self-referential absurdity needed to pull this genre off. Early Ryan Reynolds vehicle Van Wilder: Party Liason also contained enough charm and unexpected wit to be at least semi-appealing. My problem with the American Pie franchise is that it has always tried to balance societal comment with obscene comedy and managed to achieve neither.

So here we are, nearly a decade since the last proper installation of the franchise (there have been several equally risible straight-to-DVD spin-offs) and the gang have moved on. Jim (Jason Biggs) & Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) are married with a kid. Oz (Chris Klein) is a celebrity sports reporter, Kevin is an architect and Finch has disappeared. A 10-year reunion, however, brings them all back together for the usual brand of puerile hi-jinx.

For the most part, American Reunion is a piece of harmless fun, the cast work well together, with time eroding none of chemistry between them. The apparently ageless Alyson Hannigan plays a particularly good game, her performance layered with all of the issues and potential regret that dominate the minds of those bidding farewell to their 20s.

Unfortunately as likeable and relatable as the characters and situation are, the comedy is distinctly hit and miss, with more misses than hits. Ten years ago, Stifler defecating in a cooler would have illicited guffaws worldwide and been talked about as a classic comedy moment, but instead seems tired and dated in this age of post-post-modern comedy.

Unlike its horror equivalent, Scream 4, American Pie: Reunion misses a golden opportunity to deconstruct the genre that the original virtually created 13 years ago. Instead, it’s just another member of that genre, swimming adrift in an endless sea of crass jokes and obvious set pieces. Not a bad film, by any means, but this slice of pie is all pastry, no filling.

Overall Verdict: A decent coming of age comedy with some memorable moments, but when taken as a whole, it just doesn’t provide enough consistent quality to be anything other than just another genre piece.

Reviewer: Alex Hall

This award winning, intense debut from French writer director Alix Delaporte, takes you on a journey of frustrated emotions, trust and hopefulness in adversity. Think Taming of the Shrew meets I’ve Loved You So Long.

The synopsis – Angel (Clotilde Hesme) is a stunning ex-con currently on probation and looking for a new life, Tony (Gregory Gadebois) is a homely fisherman living in solitude with his family who have suffered a recent bereavement. The two meet through a personal ad in the paper, Tony wants a wife whereas Angel seems very direct and thinks that sex will get her what she thinks she needs (which is very obvious from the opening scene, where she has sex with a young man to get a toy for her son!).

Angel wants to get custody of her son and feels that a desperate attempt at marriage might allow her to get access. The rest of the film involves the journey the two take on, with Tony still living in solitude hopeful that something may happen, but who seems to accept his lot, whilst the obviously broken and secretive Angel has to come to terms with her past and make amends with her family before she can adjust to a new life.

The film centres around the journey these two embark on, with added pressures from both their families. Will it end in tragedy? Will Angel be able to get over her past? Will Angel fall for Tony’s more attractive brother? Will they get together in the end?

All of this is set in the local fishing village where Tony takes on Angel as his assistant, and introduces her to local life as well as teaching her everything from gutting fish to handling crabs.

Clotilde gives a very edgy, fractured performance as the broken (fallen) Angel, which is mesmerising to watch. She appears shifty throughout the film, always on the edge of society, scared to trust. Some of the most effective scenes are the switches of very dark night scenes at sea to bright daylight back in the village the next morning, and the most rewarding are where she is riding through the Normandy countryside on her stolen bike. As the camera zooms into her face, you can see and feel the tension and angst in every facial expression.

Overall Verdict: The film is by no means perfect, some scenes are not really required, but in summary, an interesting character study of troubled people looking for a connection, which many of us could relate to. Highlights of the film for me were the performances of the two leads and the final shot of the movie.

Reviewer: Stephen Sclater