Friday’s cinema reviews

Here’s the best (and worst!) of what’s new in the cinema this weekend.

Friday’s cinema reviews

Lone Survivor

Based on the true story of a failed Navy SEALs operation to kill a high-ranking member of the Taliban, ‘Lone Survivor’ is a rousing tribute to the men who perished in June 2005.

Director Peter Berg is no stranger to explosive action and male posturing, having previously helmed ‘The Kingdom’, ‘Hancock’ and the water-logged 2012 blockbuster Battleship.

He is the perfect fit for this gruelling material, delivering a final 30 minutes that will have audiences wincing in horror as four SEALs fling themselves down the Hindu Kush Mountains near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border during a gunfight with the Taliban.

Broken bones jut through shattered limbs and bullets scythe through flesh as the four-strong team continues to fight.

‘Lone Survivor’ jangles the nerves as Luttrell and co refuse to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds.

Wahlberg, Kitsch, Hirsch and Foster rise to the physical challenge with gusto, propelling themselves around hazardous mountain terrain as the enemy swarms.

Berg directs the climactic sequence with aplomb, seemingly turning up the volume of sound effects to accentuate every crack of a cranium on jagged rocks.

While ‘Lone Survivor’ hits hard in the action set pieces, and leaves us breathless and slightly queasy thanks to brilliant make-up, the film is underpowered when it comes to fleshing out the characters and their back stories.

Star Rating: 3/5

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 74%

That Awkward Moment

Tom Gormican’s smutty-minded comedy explores the mating rituals of 21st century 20-somethings and concludes that the pursuit of love is as precarious now as it has ever been.

The internet, smartphones and dating apps might have made it easier to make initial contact, or simply enjoy fleeting physical gratification, but for the embers of a fledgling relationship to smoulder, a few smiley faced texts simply won’t suffice.

‘That Awkward Moment’ charts this haphazard search for physical and emotional closeness through the eyes of three swaggering best friends, who live and work in New York City.

Gormican’s film demands a huge suspension of disbelief.

For instance, it asks us to believe that ‘High School Musical’ dreamboat Zac Efron, who reduces hordes of teenage girls to screeching harpies, would struggle to find a woman of substance to keep the other half of his duvet warm at night.

‘That Awkward Moment’ is a sweet yet instantly forgettable ensemble piece that throws in the now obligatory raunch and nudity to draw in teenage audiences.

Thus two of the central trio demonstrate a unique way to relieve themselves while under the influence of Viagra and Efron attends a fancy dress party with an oversized rubber appendage that could take someone’s eye out.

On-screen chemistry between Efron and Poots isn’t convincing and in a pivotal declaration scene, she wrings out tears convincingly while he can’t.

Teller is a far better actor than the script allows him to be here and Jordan provides solid support in another underwritten role.

Star Rating: 2½

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 24%

Out of the Furnace

Brotherly love burns bright, and lights the fuse on a powder keg of messy emotions in Scott Cooper’s slow-burning and sporadically violent revenge thriller.

‘Out Of The Furnace’ is unrelentingly bleak and trades in the misery of hard-working, hard-drinking folks, who exist just above the poverty line in Braddock, Pennsylvania and must occasionally break the law to survive.

The opening scene – a blood-spattered punch-up at a drive-in cinema - establishes the grim tone and film’s repeated use of bruised knuckles rather than words to resolve bitter disputes.

Pain is etched on the face of every character in Cooper’s film, and suffer they do, most grievously. Justice is served with hunting rifles and murderous stares.

This descent into the heart of darkness is predictable but Cooper sparks the script, co-written by Brad Ingelsby, to life with incendiary performances from Christian Bale, Casey Affleck and Woody Harrelson.

‘Out Of The Furnace’ would be straight-to-DVD fodder were it not for riveting performances from the male leads.

Bale commits himself wholeheartedly to his role as reluctant avenger, putting himself through the emotional wringer, while Harrelson is deliciously repugnant as a thug, who tells enemies what he thinks of them by flashing an obscenity tattooed on his knuckles.

The threat of violence hangs in the air throughout the pedestrian two hours, detonating with fury in the fight sequences.

The linear nature of Cooper and Ingelsby’s script keeps us two steps ahead of the characters as they struggle to get out of the moral quagmire, but end up sinking deeper and deeper to their doom.

Star Rating: 3/5

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 52%

I, Frankenstein

There have been many silver screen versions of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, but the latest, ‘I, Frankenstein’, sees the nuts, bolts and ghoulish green paint of yore cast aside for a rather more attractive ’monster’, played by the handsome Hollywood star Aaron Eckhart.

In the film, Eckhart, who has been Christened Adam and is implausibly made out of the corpses of eight equally attractive hunks, has been roaming the earth for 200 years looking for his purpose in life.

While doing this, Adam meets the demons and the gargoyles who are embroiled in an age-old conflict between good and bad. The demons, fronted up by Bill Nighy, are desperate to get their mitts on Adam, to see if they can use his soulless body to resurrect their late demon pals, and have also got hold of Adam’s creator’s diary to find out how to create more monsters.

The gargoyles, meanwhile are busy enough trying to keep peace on earth. A big task and one they take very seriously, as they repeatedly infer.

Naturally, when a young scientist played by Yvonne Strahovski finds out what the Demon Prince (Nighy) is up to, she tries to help Adam get the diary back and abort the demon prince’s plans.

Will they get the diary back? Can Adam be saved? Will the rest of the cast perfect their pained expressions in time for the final fight..?

To be honest, by that stage, you’ll scarcely bother to ask the question, let alone be interested in the answer.

Despite ‘I, Frankenstein’ being billed as an epic battle of good versus evil, the simplistic plot, one-dimensional writing and next level corny script (entirely lacking in intentional humour) mean you neither root for the good, abhor the evil or cheer on the monster. You simply don’t care.

That’s not to say that Eckhart is bad, he’s not, it’s just that ‘I, Frankenstein’ is beneath his, and the rest of the cast’s, talents.

The film is mercifully short though.

Star Rating: 2/5

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 6%

In selected cinemas…

The Armstrong Lie

Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney often uncovers uncomfortable truths in his work.

In his latest picture, Gibney learns he has been peddled half-truths and lies by Lance Armstrong, who famously overcame cancer and won the Tour de France seven times.

Gibney began shooting his documentary in 2009 and intended to follow Armstrong on the comeback trail as the sportsman returned to cycling after retirement and attempted to win a famous eighth title.

Then in 2012, Gibney was stunned when Armstrong went on national television and admitted to Oprah Winfrey that he had won those titles with the aid of illegal substances.

As this story unfolds, Gibney’s cameras capture Armstrong in the eye of a media storm and the subsequent investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency.

RottenTomatoes.com Rating: 84%

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