"Getaway" (The Guardian 06/12/13)

Getaway (12A) 90 mins **

There were, undoubtedly, ways of improving Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive – but reshooting it in Bulgaria, with a 12A certificate and Selena Gomez as a carjacker probably weren’t among them. Ethan Hawke is the former race driver obliged to take satnavved directions from the nogoodnik who’s kidnapped his wife; Gomez the hacker conveniently assuming the passenger seat. Stuck for better ideas, director Courtney Solomon (Dungeons & Dragons) waves the stuntguys through to total as many Bulgarian panda cars as the budget will allow. You watch the resultant, wholly bloodless carnage with brain in neutral and eyes glazing over, as you would a re-run of Police, Camera, Action! at two in the morning. 

Getaway opens in cinemas nationwide today.

For what it's worth...

Top Ten Films at the UK Box Office                
for the weekend of November 22-24, 2013: 
                 
1 (new) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (12A) **
2 (1) Gravity (12A) *****
3 (new) Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor (PG) [above]
4 (2) Thor: The Dark World (12A) **
5 (5) The Butler (12A) ***
6 (3) Philomena (12A) ****
7 (6) Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (U) ***
8 (new) The Family (15) **
9 (new) Andre Rieu: Home for Christmas 2013 (U)
10 (8) Turbo (U) 
   
(source: Guardian.co.uk)

My top five:                
1. Gone with the Wind  
2. Jeune et Jolie
3. Leviathan
4. Carrie
5. Saving Mr. Banks 

   
Top Ten DVD rentals: 
                 
1 (new) Now You See Me (12A)    
2 (1) Oblivion (12) *      
3 (3) World War Z (12) **    
4 (new) Monsters University (U) **     
5 (2) Behind the Candelabra (15) ***    
6 (new) Snitch (12) **    
7 (5) Cloud Atlas (15) ****    
8 (10) Hummingbird (15) **    
9 (7) Trance (15) ***    
10 (9) After Earth (12)        
     
(source: lovefilm.com)
                 
My top five:                
1. The Act of Killing  
2. The World's End  
3. Blackfish      
4. Foxfire      
5. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa
       
        
Top five films on terrestrial TV this week:                  
1. The American President (Tuesday, ITV1, 11.35pm)
2. Honeymoon in Vegas (Friday, BBC1, 11.50pm)
3. Walkabout (Tuesday, BBC1, 12.05am)
4. Warrior (Sunday, five, 9pm)
5. A Separation (Monday, C4, 12.30am)

"NFA" (The Guardian 29/11/13)

NFA (uncertificated) 74 mins ***

The title’s the acronym for No Fixed Abode, and this cautionary tale of displacement sports impeccable credentials: writer-director Steve Rainbow has worked at hostels across the country, and his supporting cast are evidently the real thing, drawn from Birmingham’s homeless population. A credibly befuddled Patrick Baladi is Adam, the sometime family man who wakes up in a hostel with no memory of how he got there; his plight is framed – perhaps a little conveniently – as a Memento-like puzzle, with flashbacks revealing grim truths during the trudge between makeshift shelters. It’s operating at a fairly low, scrappy level: there are continuity blips, and Rainbow can only assign two (representatively unsympathetic) policemen for the whole of Digbeth. Yet for once this doesn’t seem inappropriate: NFA has the air of a compellingly ordinary nightmare, and its modulated conclusion brings us closer than expected to the pain and confusion of a life lived on the streets. 

NFA is now playing in selected cinemas.

"The Best Man Holiday" (The Guardian 29/11/13)

The Best Man Holiday (15) 123 mins **

1999’s so-so The Best Man, directed by Spike Lee’s milder-mannered cousin Malcolm, begat that turn-of-the-millennium “buppie” (black yuppie) cycle. This tardy festive reunion is so utterly detached from ground-level realities that it transcends the aspirational to alight upon semi-alien lifeforms. Can we Brits identify with Morris Chestnut’s multi-millionaire running back? Emmy-laden TV exec Nia Long? A passing Real Housewife? All smartphone-reliant farce and slick R ‘n’ B tunes, it’s a genially soapy timekiller, though Lee’s as shameless in invoking cancer as he is about the catfights and smacktalk. Quoth said Housewife: “I didn’t swallow dick for tips, you dirty skank!” And a merry Christmas to you too, dear.

The Best Man Holiday is in cinemas nationwide.

"Marius/Fanny" (The Guardian 29/11/13)

Marius/Fanny (12A/PG) 90/97 mins **/**

Actor-director Daniel Auteuil has been handed the prime gig/poisoned chalice of refilming Marcel Pagnol’s Marseilles trilogy, two-thirds of which open here this weekend. The beloved 1930s film treatments, artefacts of the early sound period, were largely stagebound yet possessed of a crackling, bawdy, close-to-the-source life; Auteuil has fashioned hidebound museum pieces that expand the backdrop with sundappled glimpses of port activity, while generally resisting any notes of modernity or change of emphasis. What modicum of cosy Sunday-afternoon pleasure they provide stems from the performers: Raphaël Personnaz (from Tavernier’s The Princess of Montpensier) and Victoire Belezy make a handsome couple as the barman Marius and his on-off sweetheart Fanny (stop sniggering), while Auteuil and Jean-Pierre Darroussin are typically dependable as Marius’s father and love rival respectively. Still, in 2013, this seems a peculiarly antiquated project for anybody to be undertaking: not just cinema de papa, but cinema de grand-papa.

Marius and Fanny screen at London's Institut Français this week, before opening at selected cinemas nationwide from Friday.

"Day of the Flowers" (The Guardian 29/11/13)

Day of the Flowers (15) 99 mins **

This feels like a Ken Loach film that’s had its politics dialled back by producers keen to retain the centre ground. Eva Birthistle (from Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss…) is the Scots lass who gets one scene establishing her anti-capitalist credentials – basically: a sash – before she’s whisked to Cuba to scatter her father’s ashes. The journey’s meant as a renewal of the countries’ socialist bonds, but the script conceives this process in blandly literal terms by having Birthistle fall for local hunk Carlos Acosta. The pair’s pan-Cuban mooning occasions mucho guitar-strumming, yet nothing much catches fire: lame gags and supporting turns ensure it concludes closer to Mamma Mia! than Marx.

Day of the Flowers is now playing in selected cinemas.

"Who Needs Enemies" (The Guardian 29/11/13)

Who Needs Enemies (18) 91 mins *

Another week, another set of mouthy geezers in suits mugging one another off. Peter Stylianou’s microbudget thriller strives to rejuvenate the tired honour-among-thieves narrative with some grim business about child sex abuse, the detail of which is obscured from us less out of discretion than indifferent storytelling. Events are wrapped in a certain low-level flash – wardrobe from Burton’s, ominous chapter headings, narcissistic slo-mo – but it’s fundamentally alienating: you have to cheer yourself up by reasoning the grizzled faces drafted in to cameo as pederasts are those of retired newsagents and market traders, sweet-talked into making a less-than-wise investment of time and/or money.

Who Needs Enemies is now playing in selected cinemas.