Choose life, Danny Boyle told us in Trainspotting. That seemed to be dripping in irony, but here, 14 years later, he really, really means it, directing one of the most inspiring tales of human endurance. To answer the obvious questions first, yes, it’s grueling, yes the crucial scene is agonising to watch, but believe it or not you will emerge from the cinema feeling more full of life and compassion than before you went in.

It’s the true story of Aron Ralston, a super-fit, very smart twenty-something who loves the outdoors. One Friday he drives out to Utah to cycle and hike across a famous crack in the canyon. After a slight fall off his bike he meets a couple of fellow hikers, Kristi and Megan, and urges them to push themselves by following him through a dangerous path. He films the ensuing adventure on his video recorder (remarkably the actual one Ralston used). He then leaves the girls to their walk and carries on alone. A simple slip and half a second later, he falls down a ravine and has his right hand pinned by a 300lb rock.

127 Hours Trailer

Astonishingly that is all handled in the pre-credit sequence, but tells us all we need to know about what is to come. Boyle uses every trick in the book to tell a story which, visually, should be limited – after all, it’s the story of a man trapped in a dark ravine for 127 hours. However, as Ralston’s food, then water, runs out, and he begins to dream, and hallucinate, the film constantly surprises in its storytelling. While the beauty of the landscape and the pulsating music engage the eyes and ears, it’s the insight into Ralston’s struggle for life which engages the heart. While he is trapped he thinks about his life and relationships, especially his dumped girlfriend Rana (Poesy) and his adoring parents.

Slowly it emerges that Ralston is not the most likeable of chaps – in fact he and Mark Zuckerberg from the Social Network should get together and form a club for anti-social dweebs – but he learns the lesson which fate or nature seems to be teaching him. In one remarkable sequence he becomes a guest on his own breakfast TV show, suddenly realising he cannot live his life entirely on his own. Even a daily sighting of a raven gives him some hope.

127 Hours – Aron Falls Into Canyon Clip

[SPOILER ALERT] As everyone now knows, Ralston escaped by cutting off his own arm, a sequence which certainly pulls no punches but is absolutely necessary in the context. It’s also followed by two of the most remarkable words in any film you are likely to see this year, as Ralston makes his escape. [SPOILERS END]

James Franco has been chosen to host the Oscars this year, a very strange choice as he is almost certain to be nominated for Best Actor, and may even win. It’s a remarkable performance, never going for the obvious sympathy, utterly convincing in communicating Ralston’s anger, fear and in the end resignation of his fate. His face during the rescue scene at the end is of a man almost embarrassed rather than terrified. In the brief supporting cameos Poesy is eye-catching as the girlfriend whose memory keeps him going.

Overall verdict: Gritty but gripping and rewarding story of the human spirit, brilliantly brought alive by Boyle’s vision. Much like Slumdog Millionaire you’ll feel better for having seen it.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

Vampires have been having a bit of a bad time recently. Gone are the days of the Lost Boys, Nosferatu and Kathryn Bigelow’s criminally underrated debut Near Dark. At the moment, if they’re not sparkly abstinence promoting protagonists of a middle-aged woman’s glorified fan fiction (Twilight), then they’re glossed up, morally dubious, sexually obsessed yuppie types (True Blood). It’s a sad fall from grace for the princes of darkness and as long as bored teenagers continue to feel angsty every time they have to stare real life in the face, it seems as though the descent will continue for the foreseeable future.

Occasionally though, vampires catch a break. Joss Whedon combined their romantic allure with their primal violence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and in doing so created one of the best TV series of the modern age. And last year, Sweden’s burgeoning film industry churned out a film called Let The Right One In, a beautiful, eerie story of childhood innocence juxtaposed with bloody undead murdering. It was a smash hit in its native country, and when it was released to critical and commercial success worldwide, the words “US remake” were never going to be far away.

Whether Let Me In is worthy of that dreaded prefix is a matter of some debate. The story is identical – alienated young boy (Kodi Smitt-McPhee) befriends new neighbour Abby (Chloe Moretz), who is perfectly nice apart from an aversion to sunlight, the inability to enter people’s homes without invitation and the trail of bloodless corpses that follow her wherever she goes – and the style and feel of the film are, give or take, almost identical. However, director Matt Reeves has insisted time and time again that this is not a remake of the film, but a reimagining of the original novel. He even states he went as far as to tell his cast and crew not to watch or re-watch the previous film for fear of tainting their imaginations.

Whatever the case may be, the idea that Let The Right One In could be improved upon is farcical, and Reeves’ interpretation will do little to sway opinions. Whilst not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, Let Me In is a perfect demonstration of how Hollywood rarely grasps the art of the subtle narrative. It is, for lack of a better phrase, a diet version of its parent film.

What Let Me In lacks is a bit of peace and quiet. This interpretation begins violently and never really allows the energy to drop from then on.  In contrast, Let The Right One In was so relaxed and understated at first that, when the claret did start to flow, it was placed in even starker contrast against the playful, almost gentle nature of the story up to that point. Like a good piece of classical music, it started softly and built up to a crescendo, rather than turning the dial up to eleven in the first verse.

The underlying bleakness of the story arc is also rather shoved in our faces here. In Let The Right One In, the consequences of Eli and Oskar’s relationship don’t reveal themselves until almost the final frames of the movie. Here, the sense of doom is thrust front and centre from a much earlier point in the story. Sure, it becomes an easier concept to grasp in its immediacy, but losing the contemplative element is much less satisfying for the audience in the long run.

All these unfavourable comparisons rather do the film a disservice, as there is plenty to like about Let Me In. Whilst subtlety has been sacrificed, the added intensity has been put to good use. Director Reeves expertly weaves supernatural violence into a suburban setting and his broader focus on a community in peril serves to make this a grander spectacle than its predecessor.  His interpretation of the adults in the story also makes a more direct statement about how disconnected the world of the child, with its monsters (both real and imagined), and that of the adult can become.

The two leads are exceptional, with Chloe Moretz taking a different, but not ill-advised, direction in her interpretation of the young vampire Abby. Whilst not as spooky and with the clear detachment of the immortal as Lina Leandersson’s Eli, Moretz presents a more relatable character, that of a girl who, whilst still young at heart has seen and done too much to ever go back. Kodi Smitt-McPhee, fresh off his sterling performance in The Road, presents a more naive central performance than his European contemporary, less conscious of the darkness pervading his newfound friendship.

Let Me In is an accomplished piece of filmmaking and were it an original piece, apropos of nothing else, it could be held in even higher consideration. It’s an intelligent and thoughtful romantic horror and I’m sure the people behind it want us to judge it on its own merits, and not against those of its Swedish progenitor. The nature of the business however, means that we must hold up the two as different branches of the same tree and, against the pure horrific beauty of Let The Right One In, this edition seems almost superfluous by comparison. Unless you have a real issue with reading subtitles, picking this ahead of the original is to make a conscious decision to invest in an inferior product.

Overall Verdict: A pretty good remake, but an entirely unnecessary one. Let Me In does most things right in its execution, but adds nothing that the original hasn’t already done, and done much better.

Reviewer: Alex Hall

There are some films which stay with you for a long, long time – Pan’s Labyrinth, Secrets In Their Eyes, Lives Of Others. This stunning Iranian drama belongs in that category, and who knows, when the history of cinema is finally written, it might even climb above those masterpieces. It is brave, powerful beyond words, brilliantly acted and stunningly realized.

The title pretty much gives away the central scene of the story, but it takes its time to build up to that stomach-churning sequence. It opens with a quote from a 14th century Iranian poet: “Don’t act like the hypocrite, who thinks he can conceal his wiles while loudly quoting the Koran”. It then shows a journalist breaking down in a small Iranian village, who is then grabbed by Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo, Oscar-nominated for House of Shadows And Fog) who tells him her story.

Her niece, Soraya (Marnò), is a loving mother of four whose brutal husband, Ali, wants out of their marriage so he can marry a 14-year-old girl. Soraya wants a divorce, but the village’s elders decide the best thing is for her to go and work for an old man whose wife has recently died. She agrees, doing his washing and cooking, and he in turn treats her kindly. Ali however wants his ounce of flesh, and concocts an adultery charge, for which the punishment is stoning to death.

Despite Zahra’s desperate efforts to save her niece, Soraya is buried up to her waist in the village square and slowly, brutally, stoned to death. It’s worth pointing out here that the film does not shy away from showing the stoning in all of its full, gory horror – it takes a long time for a person to die from stoning. The scene is rendered even more shocking by the presence of Soraya’s family – her father does actually symbolically cast the first stone, and her sons join in.

Based on a true story, it’s difficult to overstate just how much emotional impact this story has. It is measured, beautifully written and clearly, but with great skill, exposes the hypocrisy and evil of a society based on bullying, greed and corruption. Yet for all of the obstacles the women face in the film, the character of Zahra shows how bullies can be stood up to – use your brain, your mouth and sometimes your body to get in their way, the film argues.

If it sounds like a harrowing watch – well, it is – but there are also moments of great beauty, especially when Soraya escapes with her two gorgeous daughters for a day out by the river picking flowers. That scene will come back at a crucial moment later in the film. A story like this does depend hugely on the performances, and they are titanic throughout. Aghdashloo as aunt Zahra in particular gives a quite brilliant display, desperately trying to prevent this terrible event virtually alone and armed only with her voice and her laser-like eyes. Marnò too as Soraya is fantastic, genuinely baffled by her accusations and desperate to protect her children against a tidal wave of corruption and abuse.

The final frame, a photograph of the real Soraya, would seem like a cheap shot in a lesser film, but here it is entirely justified. Straight into the top 10 films of the year, no question.

Overall Verdict: Powerhouse of a film about a corrupt and emotionally bankrupt regime, made by brave, hugely skillful people. Just brilliant.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

The Social Network is a film about the setting up of Facebook, which isn’t really that interested in the actual truth of what happened. After all, while there were some courtroom machinations and back-stabbing, to be honest, the story on its own isn’t really that scintillating. Instead David Fincher’s film, based on Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay, has a slightly bigger objective, massaging the actual truth to reveal the deeper reality and create a truly compelling chronicles of our times.

The story the film tells is passably interesting but fairly slight, and if Sorkin and Fincher didn’t have much more interesting ideas, it would make for an ok TV movie at best. Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is a bit of a socially maladroit Harvard undergraduate wunderkind who, after being justifiably dumped by his girlfriend, angrily blogs about it before vindictively hacking into the Harvard database and setting up a website called Facemash. This rather misogynistic site allows users to rate whether female undergraduates are hot or not (with the pictures of the women stolen from Harvard’s servers), and it unsurprisingly gets Mark into a bit of trouble.

However Facemash serves as a sort of first step on the road to Facebook, or ‘The Facebook’ as it’s initially known. Into the mix comes Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who supplies a small loan to help get Mark’s site off the ground, as well as the Winklevoss twins (both played by Armie Hammer, although you’d swear it was two real twins, as the effects are so good), who want Zuckerberg to help them create their own site, but Mark artfully plays them while putting his own plans in place. Saverin and the Winklevoss’ set in motion much of the meat of the plot, with both suing Zuckerberg once Facebook takes off, the former because he was basically pushed out of the company he’d helped found, and the latter claiming Mark had stolen their ideas.

The final main player is Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the 20-something-year-old co-founder of Napster, who sees the “holy-shit, once-in-a-generation moment” potential of Facebook, comes onboard and helps shape its future.

That’s all fair enough, and in less brave hands would have played out as a nerdy underdog story of a guy with a dream who comes good. But this isn’t that film. In fact it’s almost the opposite. Just about everyone in the movie agrees that Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole, and they’re right (it should be noted that while in real life he doesn’t appear to be exactly the most charming of fellows, the film’s Zuckerberg is only loosely based on the real one, who had nothing to do with the movie). In some ways he is an overdog, a guy born into privilege, whose main problem is that he thinks he should be able to have whatever he wants – and which he sees many around him having – such as women, sex and great parties. However he lacks social skills and, well, real-life social network (one character comments he doesn’t have three friends to rub together), and so does everything wrong. However what he does have are brains and drive.

Perhaps the smartest thing about the film is that in the way he’s written, directed and played, Zuckerberg gives virtually nothing away. He is the centre of the movie, but at the same time he’s as much a slightly obscure mirror for all the other characters, and the movie’s ideas, to bounce off of. Zuckerberg is constantly driving forwards and never giving much away, which allows him to be the foil against which film’s grander designs play out.

And those designs are to illuminate a world in which the internet, and sites like Facebook, have very quickly changed the ground rules for the world, and how this happened incredibly quickly while virtually everyone was looking the other way. It’s a world where instead of power and influence being played out in boardrooms and on Wall Street, it’s amongst post-adolescents in their bedrooms whose brains hum with computer code. The very smart script plays all this out, for example using the elitist world of Harvard to show how the power has shifted from those who already have money and who traditionally have controlled all the access points to the market, to those who have the ideas and the skills to put them into motion via the internet, which allows virtually anyone who want to to go straight to the consumer (assuming they can attract the consumer, that is).

The Winklevoss’ court case almost seems to stem from their belief that just because of who they are – rich and privileged – they should be able to pay someone to change the world for them, and then keep all the cash for themselves. In the old days they could have, as Mark couldn’t have got anything off the ground without large amounts of cash from someone like them, but we live in a new age where someone like Zuckerberg can potentially bypass them and go straight to market. Money no longer has as much power as computer bytes, and if you can harness the latter you can get the former – Zuckerberg is after all famed for becoming a billionaire at 23.

Saverin meanwhile is almost the opposite of that, someone who deserves to be rewarded, but who in the modern world it’s far easier to screw over.

The Social Network loves the irony of a website built to help people connect and stay in touch with friends better, built by a man whose real life social network is all but non-existent. In many ways what Zuckerberg wants is to be a Winklevoss – tall, handsome, excellent at sports and a hit with the ladies – and that’s what drives him. The Winklevosses want all that too, but just don’t have the technical smarts needed to compete in this new world. It’s the likes of Zuckerberg who have the power now, and at such a young age that it increasingly pushes the world towards a younger, increasingly inexperienced mindset. Are we, as the film suggests, not far off living in a world run by those who are little more than super-smart adolescents?

In many ways it’s difficult to describe why this film is so good. It’s a movie that no matter how you describe it, sounds a bit dull. Other have compared it to films of the 70s like All The President’s Men and Dog Day Afternoon, partly because they share the sense of being about a time, place and society as much as a particular story, but also because they’re films that far exceed the limits of their plot.

Through TV series like The West Wing and Studio 60, screenwriter Sorkin has shown himself to be one of the best writers around for commenting lucidly, insightfully and entertainingly on modern society, and he does that superbly here. It’s a script that touches on so many ideas that your head will be buzzing after you leave the cinema. For example, is the somewhat juvenile internet-piracy mentality (why can’t I have what I want, when I want, for free?) slipping off the web and into the adult real world? Indeed the film loves the fact that both Zuckerberg and Sean Parker got their start basically digitally stealing things and having little social conscience about doing it, but then arrogantly see it as an affront if anyone wants to take anything from them, as Saverin and the Winklevosses do.

Few directors could handle the material as assuredly as David Fincher. While on the surface the director seems incredibly restrained here compared to his previous efforts, in many ways it’s his tightest and most mature movie yet. Just the decision to have everyone fire off Sorkin’s dialogue as if talking is charged by the minute is believed to have shaved nearly 30 minutes off the projected running time. It’s an astute way of handling the involved, slightly wordy and rapid fire way Sorkin writes, and gives the film an energy and immediacy it would otherwise lack.

The cast also need plenty of praise. Eisenberg is superb as Zuckerberg. He’s never likeable – indeed he’s often almost the opposite, the sort of arrogant, entitled person you’d want to punch in real life – but he’s nevertheless magnetic. Like much of the rest of the cast, he’s tasked with bringing to life a character who is as much an archetype of The Social Network’s brave new world as they are a real, living human being. Even so, no one ever seems fake or merely there as a prop.

The film has come in for some criticism for its portrayal of women. All the women are peripheral characters, and are often little more than foils for the men. There is some justification for this, as despite the power-shift the movie dissects, it’s still about a world run by men, and pretty nerdy men at that. Part of their lack of understanding of other human beings is that they shove women into archetypal roles. They are Madonna and whore, unattainable beauties or bitches for men to blame their own failings on (e.g. the creation of Facemash). You can see why the film treats women the way it does – Zuckerberg desperately wants beautiful women and sex, but the type of women he’s after are a delusion, even if they appear to be what he wants from afar – but it’s undoubtedly true that with a script that so wittily and cleverly deconstructs the world Facebook represents, it’s a shame they couldn’t come up with at least one female character who could truly challenge this rather misogynistic view of the world.

Sorkin has defended himself by saying that the way women are depicted in the film is how it really was, but he changed plenty of other facts (not least that rather than being hopeless with women, Zuckerberg has had the same girlfriend since his Harvard days), so why go along so willingly with the misogyny and not challenge it?

However overall The Social Network is one of the best and most vital movies of the year. It’s a film that feels more than the sum of its parts, illuminating the modern internet-connected world in ways others have tried and failed to do in the past. It may well become the Wall Street of the 2000s – the film we look back on and say, that is what sums up that era. Indeed it’s interesting The Social Network is being released so close to the Wall Street sequel, Money Never Sleeps. While Oliver Stone’s new flick has a good stab at saying how the world has changed in the last 25 years, The Social Network does it better. While it may be different world, the creation of Facebook was nevertheless driven by the desire to live that Wall Street/American Psycho sex, drugs and women life. Zuckerberg wants all that, even if he lacks the social skills you’d normally think would be necessary to get it, or as one character puts it to him, “You’re not an asshole Mark, you’re just trying too hard to be one.”

Overall Verdict: A film that’s far better than you’d ever expect, with a screenwriter, director and cast coming together to create a film that explores, explodes and illuminates how our world has changed while virtually nobody was paying attention (the world was too busy checking its Facebook messages).

Reviewer: Phil Caine

While a film about a man trapped in a box with a limited amount of air sounds like a great idea, when you try to stretch that out over the course of 95 minutes, you’re in danger of turning a claustrophobic nightmare into boring tedium. While Buried often seems in danger of dissolving into a mess, it thankfully overcomes this thanks to great direction from Rodrigo Cortes and a very effective performance by Ryan Reynolds.

Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a contractor in Iraq who has been kidnapped. The movie begins in darkness, with Paul waking up in a small pine box that buried just underneath the soil (deep enough he can’t get out, but not so deep he can’t sometimes hear things above him). Also in the box with him is a cell phone and a few other things, which in his panicked state he uses to phone anyone who he thinks can help him, desperately trying to find a way out of his dire situation.

Then the kidnappers call. They want him to make a videophone plea, asking for a $5 million ransom. Paul’s American contacts don’t want him to do it, but what choice does he have?

It would have been easy for the filmmakers to pull away from Reynolds in his claustrophobic coffin and show what’s going on up on the surface, if only just to give the film more visual action, but to its credit the movie sticks with its premise (there are times when it feels almost like a radio play). Director Cortes does a bang-up job keeping things moving though, so that even though there’s a slight feel of Buried being a bit of a filmmaking exercise, it never stagnates or feels repetitive. Cortes is helped in this by Reynolds, who may be a bit shrill sometimes but know how to convey terror, even if  truck driver Paul sometimes doesn’t seem the sharpest tool in the box and really could do with thinking a bit more. Reynolds keeps up a huge amount of energy through the film, allowing you to stay with him over the 95 claustrophobic minutes.

The only real issue is the script, or rather the situations the script creates. It’s easy to see that when writing it and getting it financed, they felt the need to invent all manner of tricks to keep up the tension and ensure things keep moving forwards, but the problem is that on screen these have a tendency to come across as contrived and tricksy.

Some have commented that Chris Sparling’s screenplay is a commentary on modern communications problems – mostly the fact that while we have a panoply of communications options now, they remove us from other people as much as they bring us together – but to me these came across as more being slightly contrived ways to up the tension and keep things fresh. As Paul deals with voicemail, detached voices, being put on hold, phone signal problems and suchlike, there is a feeling of the film trying to push things too far, so that while still tense, it begins to feel more like a story than that you’re there in the ground with Paul. It’s a good story, but it’s a story nonetheless.

Also less than successful are the movies stabs at political relevance, with the script making idle comments about the way the Americans treat US civilians in Iraq. Again you can understand why, because on paper they must have felt the need to make it more than just being about a man in a box, but these things feel perfunctory and unnecessary.

Other than these contrivances, it all works extremely well – indeed better than it perhaps should, as it’s an often uncomfortable watch, with the panic dial turned up to 11 and the claustrophobia ever increasing. If you’ve seen the end of the unsettling and shocking original version of The Vanishing, just imagine watching that for 95 minutes and you have an idea of Buried. It’s a truly intense experience, which you don’t often get to say about a movie. It’s occasional stabs at politics may be a misstep, and it may get slightly contrived at times (one moment involving a reptile really did push things to the point where I was almost ready to give up), but the sheer level of tension throughout Buried ensure this is one box that’s well worth opening up.

Overall Verdict: Despite a couple of rough edges, Buried runs with its premise and makes being trapped in a coffin as scary as you ever thought it would be.

Reviewer: Phil Caine

Is it Halloween already? No, it isn’t, so why exactly is this DVD fodder being released in September? Presumably to get the DVD out by the end of October…one thing’s for sure, by the end of November it will be in the bargain bin.

This tries to pull off the very difficult trick of being a scary horror spoof, and, despite some strong moments, it fails. A group of kids go to a Halloween party in a big house in New Orleans, where everyone is dressed as a demon, but, shock horror, some of the demons are pretty convincing – for a good reason. Yep, you guessed it, they are real, and it’s up to our heroes to work out who is who – with some ‘twists’ along the way. It turns out the mansion holds some secrets – 80 years ago, six people disappeared without trace, and the owner hanged herself.

The cast is what you would expect in a teeny horror film, basically some ‘babes’ – Shannon Elizabeth, Monica Keena and Doira Bird, plus Edward Furlong – yes, John Connor himself. They begin to unravel the mystery – the demons need to claim seven victims of their own to break free of their curse, and will use any trick to lure the party-goers – sex, basically.

Night Of The Demons – Red Band Trailer

To be fair, the actors throw themselves into their roles with some gusto, and there are a few well-staged sequences. One, where a witch lures Furlong by pushing a finger into her nipple, is even disturbing, but the overall tone is so nudge-nudge it’s difficult to build up any tension. Director Gierasch mentions Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson in his notes but rarely achieves the visual vim of either of them. The make-up artist does deserve a special mention though for some clever, are they or aren’t they, faces.

Night of the Demons is the sort of movie you could play in the background of your own Halloween party to set the mood – it has some arresting visuals and loud, brash music. Watching it in a cinema though is a different proposition.

Overall verdict: Daft, silly horror spoof which never makes up its mind whether to be scary or funny, and ends up being neither.

Reviewer: Mike Martin