Ted

Seth McFarlane, Creator of family guy brings you the story of a 30. Something stoner with a girlfriend who wants him to take responsibility and a best friend who keeps distracting him. So far so Judd Apatow. Except the best friend is a teddy bear brought to life by a Christmas wish when the bay is 9.

As with Bender in Futurama and Brian, the dog in family guy, there are quite a few things an  anthropomorphised character can get away with that might be a touch too rude with a real person and McFarlane is happy to explore. Mark Wahlberg yet again proves expert at playing deadpan for laughs. The jokes come regularly and made me laugh. That's all I want from a comedy and this delivered.

The Dark Knight Rises

His reputation in tatters, Batman has disappeared from Gotham. Crime is down thanks to the Harvey Dent act denying criminals parole and Bruce Wayne is rarely seen. Into this calm city arrives Bane, a muscly, semi-masked psychopath intent on destroying Gotham. But how will Batman know to arrive with the batlight broken?

The key to Chris Nolan's success with his Batman franchise lies in taking key parts of the Batman mythos and fitting them to his much more realistic personal vision of Gotham. Bane is not just a steroid boosted thug. He's intelligent tactician first, physically intimidating second.

As with inception set pieces at the beginning, middle and end are breathtaking in vision but most of the film is character driven so we understand the why of the characters.

Surprisingly little is added to Batman leaving time for the new roles to step up. Tom Hardy as Bane delivers a literal powerhouse performance but is not the standout. Michael Caine with very few scenes elevates his bit part to be a prime driver of Batman's story but even this old hand can't outshine Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. She nails the manipulation of men, being criminal but not actually bad, and a tension around Batman with a performance of immense subtlety that will likely mark her out as the definitive Catwoman in many a fans mind.

An outstanding close to a triology that sneaked adult film making into the mainstream cinema with an end that is surprisingly satisfying for the closure of an excellent franchise.

Prometheus

Ridley Scott comes back to the Alien franchise he helped create with a film that is set before the first but isn't a prequel. Must depend on your definition of prequel. It is true the story doesn't lead directly into Ripley's own but it so heavily anticipates it that prequel seems a fair label. That said, the film stands alone perfectly well without requiring any prior knowledge of past films.

The plot boils down to archaeologists discover maps to alien worlds. Rich executive sends them to a far away planet. Exciting discoveries are made there. Then the screaming and the running start. But in amongst all the grooey scenes of extra-terrestrial terror, taking great delight in rendering people helpless, questions start to rise. Who made us? Who made them? Why do we care? Does it matter? Can androids learn to be human? How does alien evolution work? None of these really get answered which for me was a strength of the film. It dares to paint a picture big enough to ask those questions and leave you to ponder them providing great rewatch value and pub conversation.

On top of all this the film is fantastic to look at. Classic dark alien interiors, tunnels and spaceships are supplemented with expansive barren wastelands broadening the scope of the saga and making it feel more epic than before.

Viewed on its own terms this is an outstanding return to sci-fi from the great director. It doesn't feel like other Alien films because it doesn't really follow the predator and hunted template, nor does it derive much tension from the scenes where things are going wrong. But the fact it is different does not mean its bad. I predict in time a lot of negative critics will see how wrong they got it and realise how good this film is.

Carancho

In Buenos Aires solicitors are first to accident scenes to get insurance details and rip off victims in claiming their compensation. These are the vultures or Caranchos.

Following one of these vultures as he despairs of his life and tries to break free we meet an ambulance driver training to be a doctor and take a fairly depressing trip through the corruption, backhanders, favours and extortion that are part of the everyday in Argentina.

It's an interesting subject but the film doesn't quite seem to nail the message it wants to put across. This is in large part due to a huge shift in tone half way through the film as it leaves slow burning political drama behind and takes on high violence gangland drama instead. Both parts work well on their own but don't gel properly leaving a feeling you haven't quite seen the film anyone was aiming for.

The Raid

An Indonesian SWAT team look to take a tower block held by the local crimelord who sets the inhabitants on them. Carnage ensues.

The publicity for the raid focussed on comparisons with Die hard but these are a bit duff. Die hard had a charismatic villain stealing the show. The raid has a grubby man with no vision beyond survival. Die hard had professional mercenaries tooled up with military grade weapons. The raid has machete wielding drug dealers. They both have a tower. Die hard was an action film. The Raid is a martial arts film.

The difference is significant. The bad guys here lay down guns so they can have a proper fight. And fight they do. Brutally. Time and again as a neck snaps or an ankle breaks the audience ooh and erghh in unison as henchmen and policemen alike are knocked down. And the fights are done with a whirling choreography that constantly astonishes. Hollywoods constant cutting to disguise the fact the actors can't really fight has no place here. But neither has the long wide shot to show the action. Instead, the camera dances in the middle of the fight, snapping with punches, whirling with throws and putting us right in the heart of the murderous halls. The characterisation and plot are certainly flimsy but the fight sequences are more than enough reason to search this film out.

Headhunters

An incredibly amoral thriller with the blackest of comedy and occasional bouts of extreme violence, in which a corporate headhunter by day is an art thief by night until he steals from an ex-military headhunter and the headhunting turns more literal.

This is one of those strange films where you root for your anti-hero not through any redeeming feature they carry but because their nemesis is so much worse. The characters are charicatures, the set pieces increasingly OTT and I'm not altogether sure the plot adds up. But, as with the similar American Psycho, it was so entertaining I didn't find the implausability at all jarring. Not for the faint of stomach.

Avengers Assemble

Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Captain America and Iron Man must come togeher to fight off Loki and a horde of marauding aliens. Cue opening set piece, talky exposition with minor set piece action followed by extensive mayhem.

The mayhem is on an incredibly grand scale and a joy to watch but what keeps it ticking over is snappy repartee courtesy of director JJ Abrams who blends masterfully, comic geek reference with zippy one-liners to embellish what is a paper thin plot.

With so many characters and so many set-up films preceding, little time is given to fleshing out the characters but the bickering and teasing means come the end, you'll probably wish you could join them all for a schwarma. If only all comic adaptations were this good. 

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

A collection of pensioners in gray old Britain decide a brighter life awaits in an Indian retirement hotel but when they arrive they find it isn't exactly ready. Still, India is the perfect place for even pensioners to grow spiritually.

As with so many British films containing an ensemble cast like this, (Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Dev Patel, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and more) a largely predictable and fairly lightweight plot doesn't prevent the film being highly entertaining. The presented view of India is very Anglo-centric and simplistic but provides scope for fish out of water comedy where the characters, and hence us, learn these views aren't an appropriate lens through which to view exceedingly complex cultures.

The laughs are gentle and with beautiful cinematography you may well find yourself longing for a holiday to India. 

The Woman In Black

A Widowed father with a young son is dispatched by his law firm to the NorthEast for a last chance to keep his job by clearing up the affairs of a dead woman with a mansion full of old documents. The locals immediately try to get rid of him but naturally, in true Hammer Horror style, won't talk to him so he doesn't know why. So he goes to the house in the middle of a tidal estuary and bad things start to happen.

The film is a masterclass in how to create suspense and shock without resorting to gore, violence and constant loud bangs. Glimpses of things in mirrors, early flash backs of dreadful events, and an oblivious solicitor leave us to guess at the real nature of the haunting. Then things start to happen. Who knew how creepy a rocking chair could be? And relief doesn't come from leaving the house as the events spill into the village. So when our dauntless man heads back to the house we gasp in union "why?"

Don't be put off by the 12a rating. There are 18 rated horrors much less scary than this. Do be advised though that 12a really does mean 12, unless you like 10 year olds having nightmares.

The Muppets

The Muppet Show is over. The Theatre is being sold and an evil oil baron will knock it down to drill for oil. Better get the Muppets back for a benefits gig. Cue madcap shenanigans from the madcap fluffy puppets, daft songs from an on form Brett McKenzie (flight of the conchords) and an hour and a half of solid, cheerful film that will make you smile and occasionally laugh. 

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

Dr Caligari keeps a Somnambulist (sleepwalker to those not in the freakshow profession) in a box. He wheels him out to crowds who can ask him questions whereupon he wakes up and predicts death. Death shortly follows. Coincidence?

Made in 1920 and as such, a silent film, the mugging that constituted acting in films then significantly detracted from the atmosphere the story might otherwise have generated by constantly making me chuckle. The exagerated acting of The Artist is left looking completely natural in the face of this.

It is only the acting that really stands out in that way though. The mehanics of the film surprised me a great deal. Told in flashback using decoys and twists this sets up what is still the quintessential horror template today.

What little tension did rise came from the score, never more obviously important. This highlighted how accustomed we have become to particular musical cues, being a modern composition to play along with the classic film. The fact it was played live was a terrific bonus adding that indescribable something that usually comes with any live show.

Brilliantly enjoyable and strange.

The Descendents

George Clooney is a wealthy lawyer with a wife, 2 daughters and a very large house in Hawaii. But his wife is in a coma after a boating accident and he has discovered he has no idea who his daughters are or how to relate to them.

So clearly he has to learn to be the father he isn't and the older daughter has to find control and maturity she's lacking so they can both protect the struggling youngest from her own confusion.

It sounds predictable and clichéd but avoids both. The bonding forms around further significant events that are believable. There are moments that demand re-evaluating characters. They tend to confront audience prejudice as well as the characters but the moments are subtle so demand pathos more than ridicule. With characters response taking more time than a freeze frame, it is also possible to believe in the gradual redemption of broken characters.

George Clooney turns in a fine performance as you might expect but Shailene Woodley is the standout turning in a touching, vulnerable performance of a young woman suddenly forced to grow up.

The film as a whole is a fairly downbeat affair exposing more than its fair share of human frailty but the redemption of these faults, while not upbeat, prevents the film falling into a mire of depression.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo : American remake

Mikael Blomquist(Daniel Craig), a journalist just expensively convicted of slander takes a job to investigate a decades old murder case, taking on a hacker, Lisbeth Salender(Rooney Mara), the girl with the tat, as an assistant.

Whatever the American production team may like to say about this being a re-interpretation of the source novel thats rubbish. It's a cynical move by an American studio to bring in cash by REMAKING an already popular title in English. To claim re-interpretation you have to produce something significantly different from the former effort (reviewed previously). If anybody could find a different take, David Fincher would be a good bet. But no such luck. This is ostensibly the same film. A little more stylish in looks, a little less gripping in content. It just doesn't reach the claustrophobic tension of the Swedish version which is disappointing from the director of Fight Club and Seven.

His is a perfectly decent telling of he story, Craig and Mara both throwing in decent performances but I thought Noomi Rapace was better before and this really only stands to serve those who can't be bothered with sub-titles. 

The Artist

As the era of "Talkies" dawns on the age of cinema, a silent era star finds himself behind he times, out of work and down on his luck. It's a well worn tale with few surprises for the plot to spring.

What has grabbed peoples attention is it being a black and white silent movie itself. Its a bold move that has stunned audiences and I do mean stunned. From beginning to end of the showing I was in people were rapt, no rustling popcorn, no unwrapping of sweets as though to introduce unplanned noise would be to sully this work of art.

You suddenly became aware of how important the score is. How note perfect, capturing the prevailing mood and carrying you along with he characters. Without words every facial tic becomes important and an experience that is fundamentally the same "watching a movie" suddenly seems fresh and exhilerating by stepping back to something very old.

Essential.

Sherlock Holmes : A Game Of Shadows

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law reprise their roles as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson respectively. Holmes is convinced the well respected academic Professor James Moriarty is at the centre of a grand conspiracy. Watson is trying to marry his fiancè and thinks Holmes is mad. Holmes of course is right.

And so ensues a fairly breathless chase around Europe as the mystery is laid bare. Fights, as with the first film, are explained while being predicted by Holmes in slow motion before playing out in real time. Still a trick unique to this series in portraying the mental side of fisticuffs.

Holmes and Watson still bicker as though it were they who were to be married. The sets still feel slightly charicatured, the characters more so. In adding Moriarty to the blend the heroes are left struggling to keep up and balance is added to guessing what will be the final outcome. But where Ocean's 12 tried to do this and lost all the verve and swagger that made the original so enjoyable, here the focus remains the bromance of the central pairing and another enjoyable romp plays out.

Hugo

Martin Scorcese, famous for gritty, violent gangsters and making Robert DeNiro a star suddenly turns away from 30+ years of entertaining adults to try his hand at a kids film.

A young orphan is convinced mending an old automata he has will deliver a message for him from his dad but to do that he must fix it. This of course means making a new friend who can help, unravelling clues and outwitting grumpy grown ups. So far so formulaic. Which it is, but in a positive way. The film is crafted with a passion for all the delight cinema can deliver, shining with the tradition of the craft and making the old feel new.

As with films like Amélie and Mic Macs, Paris is a perfect location for the adventure, an element of fantasy seemingly infused into every real location.

I can't convince myself the 3D filming was necessary but there were points where it did at least interest me and since the second half of the film revels in depicting filmmaking of the early 20th century it is at least appropriate.

To call this a kids film is perhaps doing it an injustice. I wonder if it might not be more engrossing to grown ups than kids, especially with a very sedate opening. Either way, a great example of quality story telling that you should enjoy aged 9 or 90.