She has a point, especially when it comes to the preposterous Scanners III: The Takeover. David Cronenberg’s original 1981 cult classic remains serious sci-fi though, as reliant on ideas as cranium-bursting FX as it explores an underground war between persons of extraordinary psychic power (including unforgettable mind-assassin Michael Ironside).

But the director didn’t return for the follow-ups, and he’s similarly absent from the extras, a jovial series of cast and crew interviews. 3/5

Via Total Film

“It’s unlike anything George did or has done.” No kidding! Sandwiched between Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead (via Creepshow), George A. Romero’s medieval motorbike mash-up is a beguiling blend of two-wheelers and tantrums.

Harris is riveting as the king of a medieval re-enactment troupe whose disillusionment and fiery temper threaten to tear his kingdom apart.

At 145 minutes we’re firmly in epic territory, an ideas-stuffed dissection of society with added bike-duels for kicks. 3/5

Via Total Film

Where Brad Pitt’s pic was all about modern tech, Trouble With The Curveargues that “anybody who uses computers doesn’t know a damn thing about this game”.

It’s sentiment over cynicism as Eastwood’s scout butts heads with daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) in a by-the-numbers drama that uses baseball as set-dressing.

Humdrum plotting aside, Robert Lorenz’s directorial debut shows that Eastwood’s still got it – a graveside sing-a-long guarantees sniffles – while Adams is a fiery Lois Lane in embryo. 3/5

Via Total Film

While Epic‘s neat little parcel contains considerably less singing (Beyoncé warbling over the end credits notwithstanding) and considerably more gastropod molluscs (or, y’know, slugs and snails), it aims for similar pint-sized thrills. Fitting, then, that this 3D jaunt is unlikely to win the heart of anyone over three feet tall.

Between its assault course of airborne action scenes and over-populated cast of characters (including Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari on comic-relief duty as said snail and slug), it’s surprising that director Chris Wedge (Robots, Ice Age) finds room for any plot at all.

It’s there, sparingly, in the misadventures of Mary Katherine aka MK (voiced by Amanda Seyfried), who’s shrunk to a speck by Beyoncé’s green-fingered Queen Tara and then roped into the war between miniature leaf men and forest-trashing Boggans. Before anybody can groan “Honey, I shrunk the kids”, spears fly, swords clash and MK moons over leaf hunk Nod (Josh Hutcherson).

Despite a fun zinger late on involving giant electric shocks, few sparks fly between this insipid duo. The plot, meanwhile – based on a book by Rise Of The Guardians author William Joyce – seems to have taken narrative cues from the lyrics of Michael Jackson’s ‘Earth Song’.

There’s also a preoccupation with paternal problems that feels distinctly Spielberg-lite. (“I’m kind of on my own,” sighs MK; “No one’s ever on their own!” trumpets Colin Farrell’s warrior Ronin in a blatant lie.)

It’s almost a relief, then, that the action’s so relentless, distracting from the writing’s inadequacies with swoopy mid-flight skirmishes. Judicious use of 3D will have the nippers gripping their seat arms throughout. And there’s a bit with a mouse – the size of a bear in this teeny-tiny world – that brings the fear factor necessary to any fairy tale.

Verdict: By no means an epic fail, but lacking the spry wit of more adult-friendly animations, this is big on action and small on originality. Gorgeous visuals aside, Epic is resolutely kiddie fare. 3/5

Via Total Film

As abrasive and frustrating as the music cues are in Simon Killer– electro-pop tracks build to a crescendo before being abruptly silenced – it’s entirely fitting for Simon’s story. He’s a young man doing the tourist thing in Paris. Except he’s finding it a lonely experience, roaming the streets and bars in search of a connection and, in one moment of spot on comic tragedy, even has an awkward webcam rendezvous.

Things seem to pick up when Simon meets prostitute Victoria (Mati Diop), a fragile young woman who takes pity on him and lets him crash at her flat. It’s this relationship that begins to unravel Simon’s personality, and in the harshest, cruellest of situations, he’s revealed to be a little more than the naïve, backpacker boy-next-door we’ve been led to believe he is. Like the music, he’s fractured and conflicted.

An ambitious second feature from Afterschool director Antonio Campos, Simon Killer marks a definite evolution for the filmmaker. Stylistically, there are a lot of similar visual cues – elegant, slow pans, restrained framing – but Campos attempts to fuse his keen eye with an exploration of what is, essentially, a potentially dangerous sociopath.

Far from putting Simon under a microscope and dissecting him, though, Campos sets up a series of mysteries that may or may not hold the clues to his warped mind. Presented in snippets of dialogue, visual motifs and encounters with other characters, we’re left to come up with our own answers. Is Simon a predator? Or just slightly messed up? Most importantly, does he have the capacity to murder?

This emphasis on set-up with few answers is both Simon Killer’s biggest strength and its greatest weakness. It’s a beautifully-realised enigma, aesthetically faultless (the film was shot entirely on location in Paris using only natural light) and unashamedly provocative. Even the title is a puzzle, inviting certain expectations but then not entirely delivering on them.

“Can I just look at you?” breathes Simon whenever he gets within a few feet of a naked woman. Simon Killer invites us to do the same. It’s obsessed with perception, the power of looking (Laura Mulvey would have a field day), what it means to objectify and be objectified.

It should come as no surprise that Martha Marcy May Marlenedirector Sean Durkin produced Killer (Campos himself produced MMMM). The two films are like twin sides of the same scuzzed coin – one a portrait of a victim, the other of a victimiser. Both are haunting cinematic experiences and, at Killer’s centre, Corbet plays a wily game, slowly chipping away Simon’s veneer until we’re left with something genuinely disturbing. 4/5

Via Grolsch Film Works

Though Mud is named after McConaughey’s character, a grubby loner living in self-imposed exile on a remote Arkansas island, it’s the fuse that Mud lights in 14-year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan) that gives the film its impetus. The pair meet when Ellis and best bud Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) head to the island in search of a boat left in a tree by the last flood.

There, they find Mud. Superstitious, romantic, a teller of tall tales, he’s in the middle of hatching a desperate plan to get back his love, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), while evading the targets of vengeful bounty hunters. Resolving to help Mud out, Ellis and Neck become his willing aids. But could Mud be more dangerous than he’s letting on?

Told almost exclusively from Ellis’ point of view (there are only a handful of times that the audience is granted access to conversations that Ellis isn’t), Nichols’ take on the traditional coming-of-ager is an affecting, poetically-lensed exploration of how a teenager’s ideals don’t match those of a complex, contradictory adult world.

Example: Ellis’ certainty that Mud and Juniper belong together, which is both unquestioning and naive. “They love each other,” he tells neighbour Tom (Sam Shepard), and it’s no coincidence that Ellis’ own parents are on the brink of divorce. This idea of love and heartbreak beats through Mud, and it’s never more poignant than in Ellis’ puppy-dog affection for an older teen whose growing apathy he can’t understand.

For his part, Sheridan perfectly captures Ellis’ inner struggle, imbuing his thoroughly modern Huck Finn with pluck, warmth and not a little frailty. He’s as naturalistic as he was in The Tree of Life (Nichols himself shares that film’s love of gorgeous nature shots), and Sheridan’s relationship with Lofland’s comic-relief swear machine is just one of the many elements that keeps Mudrooted in a relatable reality.

As well as Huck Finn, there are also echoes of last year’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, another tale centred around a youngster’s attempts to understand a discombobulating world while living in ramshackle riverside humility. While Mud doesn’t stray into the same fantasy-hued terrain as Beasts, they’ll make for a fantastic double bill one day.

Really, there are few stumbles in Nichols’ film, which forgoes the all-out crazy of Take Shelter for something slower and more intimate. It’s a film about family and love; themes that McConaughey brilliantly encapsulates in his chip-toothed anti-hero. Baked hard by the sun, he’s as much of a kid as Ellis; the world’s chewed him up and spat him out again. He’s everything Ellis wants to be, and everything he shouldn’t be. It’s this clever gambit that Mud enjoys toying with, and the result is an immersive drama that skips ‘adult rite of passage’ cliché by striking a killer blow to the heart. 4/5

Via Grolsch Film Works

In a neon-blasted strip club, Clara Webb (Gemma Arterton) performs a lap dance in fishnets and heels. Meanwhile, her daughter Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) encounters an old man on their estate and goes back to his house. Within minutes we’re treated to a thrilling foot chase, some frantic blood-sucking and a spectacularly-staged beheading as this mother and daughter are revealed to be vampires.

Ronan provides lyrical narration (“love confounded her”) while Arterton is engagingly forthright (she’s a vampire and a vamp, hoho). Their relationship is, unsurprisingly, somewhat fraught, especially given they look more like sisters. Things simmer down, though, when Clara and Eleanor head to a sleepy seaside town and take up residence in a rundown hotel. As Clara establishes a brothel to pay the bills, Eleanor struggles with their secret and drip-feeds us the duo’s centuries-spanning history.

More often than not, vampirism in movies is used to comment on everything except vampires – The Addiction used it as a metaphor for AIDS; Blade to tackle racism. Where Byzantiumtriumphs is in employing vampirism as a device that heightens a mother-daughter relationship. Much like the more cult-y Ginger Snaps, Byzantium’s script – by Moira Buffini, who adapts her play ‘A Vampire Story’ – uses neck-chewers to pick apart not only female sexuality, but also the power of the maternal bond and the effect that otherworldly forces have on human relationships.

Given this thematic richness, it comes as a surprise – and a disappointment – that Byzantium ultimately ends up favouring aTwilight-aping romance. While Clara and Eleanor’s fundamental differences are briefly investigated – Clara’s punishment of men who degrade women, Eleanor’s refusal to feed from anybody under 70 – a will-they-won’t-they dalliance between Eleanor and mortal boy Frank (Caleb Landry Jones) bleeds much of the narrative dry.

True, Ronan and Jones have great chemistry, and their romance does occasionally hit upon surprising poignancy, but Byzantiumoften zeroes in on this been-there-moped-that saga at the expensive of Clara and Eleanor’s story. Despite some intriguing early interplay, their scenes quickly devolve into snore-worthy slagging-off matches that belong in EastEnders.

With Jordan at the helm, though, Byzantium is frequently ravishing. Like Interview with the Vampire, this spiritual follow-up involves lush flashback sequences that have fun with vampire lore. And while the stroppy teenager angle is on the stale side,Byzantium is a resolutely adult horror story with interesting – if not revelatory – things to say. 3/5

Via Grolsch Film Works

Why? Well, if you pop the cork on Populaire, you’ll find yourself pirouetting in bubbles. It’s impossible not to get swept up in its infectious satire, its swoonsome romance and its sepia-toned innocence. As 1950s village girl Rose (Déborah François) first lands a secretary job at a big city insurance firm, then becomes the pet project of boss Louis (Romain Duris), Populaire whisks along like a petal on a breeze – buoyant, bright, playful.

In the place of show tunes we get (wait for it) thrillingly-choreographed type-offs. See, Louis is coaching Rose to put her secretarial skills to the test in national (and later, international) competitions. If cut-throat type-offs sound like your idea of office-desk hell, it’s here that Roinsard impresses most, his singularly crafty eye transforming scenes that should be loud, clacking annoyances into the kind of visually-inventive sports-movie montages that get your temples resolutely thumping.

It’s part sitcom, part sports film, and Populaire is as immaculately groomed as its stars. The fifties setting is fastidiously, sumptuously recreated, though nothing looks even remotely lived in. The aesthetic is as artificial as a set of acrylic nails, but that’s part of Populaire‘s charm – this is one man’s dollhouse vision of a bygone era, glimpsed through gauzy window netting. Roinsard’s film is positively crammed with delicious sights – painted fingernails, haute couture and, in one risqué moment, a striking red-blue neon sex scene (mon dieu!).

Ensuring that there’s substance behind the style, François is an endearingly goofy lead. It’s no mistake that she has a picture of Audrey Hepburn tacked to her bedroom wall. Not only is François a likeable Hepburn double, her comedy timing is impeccable. Meanwhile, her chemistry with Duris crackles. Sure, the film follows the expected peaks and troughs of a screwball romance, but it’s difficult to complain when it’s played out this beautifully.

Consider Populaire the My Fair Lady of typing. It’s a poem to and pastiche of ’50s rom-coms, full of knowing sexism (“Your life! Everything a modern girl dreams of!”), head-spinning fashion and frothy, infectious fun. Like the prophetically-named typewriter that Rose first falls in love with, Populaire is a triumph. 4/5

Via Grolsch Film Works 

It’s a sequel few were demanding, but fewer still can ignore, especially with The Rock plastered all over the posters, dangling there like a dumbbell-loving carrot for fanboys who scoffed at Stephen Sommers’ ludicrous G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra.

You don’t cast The Rock for his sentimentality, and sure enough Retaliation has all the emotional range of a lobotomized goldfish. Sweating and straining his way through a dizzying number of scuffles, The Rock mainlines adrenaline for Retaliation’s rat-a-tat set-pieces, all of them as absurd as those of its predecessor – and, in one city-levelling jaw-dropper, even more so.

Can’t remember much about the 2009 original? No worries; an opening set of Top Trumps deals out the heroes and villains for you. Because, yes, everything in Retaliation is calibrated to snare a 13-year-old’s attention span and the story, such as it is, acts as little more than a limp washing line on which to peg those incendiary set-pieces.

The basics: Channing Tatum-led super-soldiers the G.I. Joes are framed for the assassination of the Pakistani President and outlawed. While evil outfit Cobra is put in its place, the Joes – among them Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) and Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki) – attempt to put the world to rights.

Naturally, that involves ridiculously-stylish undercover clobber, fist-fights with B-villains Firefly (Ray Stevenson) and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee), and Lady Jaye going for the jug-ular with a cleavage that could cause a serious injury. Oh, and in a second act upswing, recruiting original G.I. Joe Colton, played by a Bruce Willis…

Retaliation is an apt subtitle for a franchise fighting to stay afloat despite overwhelming bad will. To his credit, director Jon M. Chu (Step Up 2: The Streets) turns in a 3D post-conversion (the official reason for his film’s nine month release bump) that genuinely elevates the material, not least during a heart-in-throat Himalaya scrap that steals the show.

Otherwise, the film’s flatter than a nuked London. The banter lands awkwardly and the action’s all blaze, no bruise. Back-stories are reduced to hurried back-sentences.

And The Rock? He’s easily outshone by this actioner’s surprise golden goose: Jonathan Pryce. As the compromised US President, he’s catty and compelling, playing Angry Birds during a nuclear strike and boasting about hanging out with Bono… 2/5

Verdict:
“Rock solid,” is Bruce Willis’ nod-wink appraisal of an attack strategy in G.I. Joe: Retaliation. The film’s nowhere near as sturdy, trundling out middling action and nonsensical plotting.

Via Total Film

Living in the ‘near future’, 70-year-old Frank (Langella) is having problems with his memory. Residing alone in an isolated wood-side house, his place is a tip and his grown-up kids only seem to communicate with him via the TV-phone. When he refuses to move into a ‘memory centre’ (read: retirement home), Frank’s son (James Marsden) comes up with an innovative solution: give dad a robot butler.

A hi-tech humanoid with the voice of Peter Sarsgaard, the ’bot wastes no time putting Frank on both a schedule and a diet. Though Frank is initially annoyed at the intrusion (“That thing is gonna murder me in my sleep”), he soon finds a use for the robot as an accomplice in his latest jewel heist.

Admittedly, that last development is a bit of a stretch, but Robot & Frank pulls it off thanks to its infectious, knowing sense of fun. It’s a ‘what if’ for anybody with grumpy old grandparents, and the film offers a frighteningly realistic glimpse at a future where people are even more tech-reliant than they are now. With a nostalgic backward glance, Robot & Frank serves up micro-cars, see-through phones and symphonic orchestras that are scarily plausible.

Tech aside, Langella’s the real marvel here. Acting for the most part against nothing more than an emotionless mannequin, he’s fantastic, playing the cantankerous old man (think Up’s Mr Fredricksen minus the soft edges) with surprising sensitivity. And though first-time feature director Jake Schreier keeps the tone light, he never lets us forget that Frank is mentally fragile – a fact that’s given unexpected poignancy when Frank realises he’ll have to erase his robot’s memory as it’s evidence of his planned heist.

At its core, though, Robot & Frank is a fantastic futuristic buddy caper with an inexhaustibly quotable script (by Comedy Central scribe Christopher D. Ford). It’s full of lovely ideas (check out the scene in which Frank’s robot attempts to parlay with Susan Sarandon’s retro library ’bot), meaning that though Robot & Frank has an android at its centre, its heart is definitely in the right place. 4/5

Via Grolsch Film Works