Friday's Film Reviews
Only a frozen heart could be unmoved as E.T. bids farewell to Elliot, Bambi cries forlornly in the forest for his fallen mother or Carl falls in love with Ellie in the opening sequence to Pixar’s ‘Up’.
‘The Fault In Our Stars’ will offer a stern test to the waterproof mascara of every teenager who fell in love with John Green’s bestselling novel.
Josh Boone’s polished adaptation deftly plucks heartstrings to the point that a trickle of saltwater tears threatens to become an unstoppable torrent.
One tissue simply doesn’t suffice as scriptwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber navigate the tricky topic of terminal illness with wry humour and sensitivity.
The film is blessed with a tour-de-force central performance from Shailene Woodley as a young cancer patient, who experiences the exquisite agony of first love just when it seems she has given up on life.
The 22-year-old Californian actress doesn’t hit a single false emotional note as her protagonist wrestles with guilt and mortality, catalysing smoldering screen chemistry with co-star Ansel Elgort.
‘The Fault In Our Stars’ is a beautifully sketched portrait of adolescence, anchored by emotionally raw performances from the talented cast.
Laura Dern impresses as a parent braced for the anguish of burying her child, while Willem Dafoe injects spikiness to the role of Hazel’s favourite author, who doesn’t welcome fans with open arms.
Director Boone makes a couple of missteps, including a crudely engineered scene at Anne Frank’s House in Amsterdam that feels wholly inappropriate.
However, once our tear ducts start leaking, we forgive him and the script an occasional faux pas.
4/5
In his role as producer and scriptwriter, Luc Besson churns out another testosterone-fuelled action-thriller to complement The Transporter, Taken and Brick Mansions.
Like those pictures, 3 Days To Kill splices a preposterous plot with explosive set pieces and offbeat humour, casting Kevin Costner as a former CIA agent who is wooed back into active service in the final months of his blood-stained life.
Besson’s script, co-written by Adi Hasak, is crudely and clumsily constructed, and peppered with scenes of staggering implausibility.
For example, the gun-toting hero’s daughter enjoys her first kiss at a society party, completely oblivious to the deafening booms and crashes of a shootout downstairs.
And when Costner’s assassin-for-hire shunts a bad guy’s car off a Parisian bridge, extras in the background go merrily on their way as if high-speed collisions are an everyday occurrence in the French capital.
Costner’s absent father teaches his daughter how to ride a bike and slow dance in a single afternoon.
As the title suggests, the film unfolds in a restricted timeframe, which should heighten suspense.
Instead, it increases the likelihood of unintentional hilarity.
3 Days To Kill bores and bemuses in equal measure as Costner struggles to conjure emotion that clearly isn’t in the script.
Heard is a clothes horse, who pouts and preens in skin-tight outfits on killer heels that would surely impede her ability as a hit woman.
Director McG orchestrates breathless action sequences but there’s no fluidity between scenes and a prominent subplot involving a family of squatters in Ethan’s flat, whose rights are protected by French law, is cloying to the point of absurdity.
Sharp changes in tone from sadistic violence to humour are disorienting and the running time feels uncomfortably longer than two hours.
2/5
30%
Before Beatlemania reduced grown women to whimpering wrecks, The Four Seasons were the sharp-suited musical heartthrobs of 1960s America.
The distinctive falsetto of lead singer Frankie Valli commanded attention on the radio and TV, producing three number one hits – Sherry, Big Girls Don’t Cry and Walk Like A Man – in the space of five months.
The band’s meteoric rise inspired Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice to write the 2005 stage show Jersey Boys, which subsequently won four Tony Awards including Best Musical and continues to play to packed houses in London and New York.
Like so many musicals before it, Jersey Boys struts and swaggers from the stage onto the big screen.
Pitched halfway between a traditional musical and a gritty portrait of the bonds of brotherhood in New York City of the era, Clint Eastwood’s impeccably crafted period piece entertains but never truly delights.
Like the stage show, the film is festooned with the group’s toe-tapping hits including Beggin’, Bye Bye Baby and Oh What A Night.
However, these languidly shot renditions lack the electrical charge of live performance and it’s only in the film’s closing act, and during the end credits, that there is any danger of audiences leaping out of their seats and shimmying down aisles.
Jersey Boys employs a similar narrative device to the stage production, allowing different members of the band to address the camera as their rags to riches story unfolds.
Vocal performances are note perfect and there are some delightful comical interludes involving Mike Doyle and Christopher Walken, the latter easing into his gangster groove with a twinkle in the eye.
The running time may be virtually the same as its theatrical counterpart, but Eastwood’s film feels pedestrian and emotional subplots, including Frankie’s fractious relationship with his wife Mary (Renee Marino) and daughter Francine feel undernourished.
The period is, however, beautifully evoked though costumes and faultless art direction.
Just as Frankie and the boys predict, we can’t take our eye off of the screen.
3/5
French writer-director Cedric Klapisch began his so-called Spanish Apartment trilogy in 2002 with Pot Luck (L’Auberge Espagnole), charting the trials and tribulations of a group of international students whose paths intersect in Barcelona.
The second chapter, Russian Dolls, reunited the characters for a wedding in St Petersburg and now some of the characters and storylines come full circle in Chinese Puzzle. Troubled writer Xavier (Romain Duris) endures a messy divorce from ex-wife Wendy (Kelly Reilly), who intends to take their two children (Pablo Mugnier-Jacob, Margaux Mansart) to New York to raise them with her new boyfriend (Peter Hermann).
Scared that he will lose touch with his family, Xavier follows Wendy to the Big Apple, where he blags a room with his Belgian friend Isabelle (Cecile de France) and her girlfriend Ju (Sandrine Holt).
Isabelle is desperate to be a mother and Xavier repays her generosity by agreeing to become a sperm donor.
Affairs of the heart are complicated when Xavier’s old flame Martine (Audrey Tautou) also arrives in New York and re-ignites dormant desires.
74%
Art thief Crunch Calhoun (Kurt Russell) serves seven years in jail after his untrustworthy brother, Nicky (Matt Dillon), double-crossed him following a bungled heist.
When he is finally released, Crunch attempts to turn his life around as a daredevil motorcycle rider, performing alongside his beautiful girlfriend Lola (Katheryn Winnick) and a thrill-seeking apprentice, Francie (Jay Baruchel).
Eventually, an irresistible opportunity arises to get back into the con game: ’Uncle’ Paddy McCarthy (Kenneth Welsh) hires Crunch to steal a priceless historical book from a Canadian warehouse.
45%
Released in 2013 in America as Arthur Newman, Becky Johnson’s drama centres on a former professional golfer, who escapes a life of failure in dramatic circumstances.
Wallace Avery (Colin Firth) works as a floor manager in Florida, which is a far cry from the sporting glories of the past.
His relationship with current girlfriend Mina (Anne Heche) is unfulfilling and he struggles to rebuild bridges with his estranged teenage son (Lucas Hedges).
Desperate to start anew, Wallace fakes his own death and moves to Terre Haute, Indiana, with a bogus passport and a new name: Arthur Newman.
En route, he crosses paths with a thief called Charlotte Fitzgerald (Emily Blunt), who almost dies from an overdose of morphine-laced cough syrup.
22%
