UK Film Releases | Friday 29th April 2011

It’s Royal Wedding weekend, but if you’d rather hide indoors and let the regal parade roll by, cinema has been kind to all non-celebrators on this second lazy long weekend of British Summer Time.

Cedar Rapids

Sent to represent his company at the annual insurance convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Tim (Ed Helms) is soon distracted by three convention veterans (John C. Reilly, Anne Heche and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who will show him the ropes and push his boundaries. For a guy who plays everything by the book, this convention is like an overdue college road trip.

“Cedar Rapids” has something of the same spirit of “Fargo” in its approach to the earnest natures of its small-towners. The two films, otherwise so different, like their characters. Some of them do unspeakable things, especially in “Fargo,” but none of them want to be evil. They just hope to get out in one piece.
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

This trio of absolutely spot-on comic performances kick in as the movie’s hilarious mid-section rocks Helms’s cautiously circumscribed world, opening new horizons of alcoholic and narcotic intoxication, social interaction and commitment-free fornication.
— Miguel Arteta, Time Out

Insidious

From the director and producers of Saw, Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) have a happy family with their three young children, but when tragedy strikes their young son, they begin to experience things that cannot be explained by science.

The suddenly frenetic action is matched by a riot of visual references to Japanese horror, Wes Craven and David Lynch, but the strongest analogue for the second half of “Insidious” is one that the filmmakers probably weren’t trying for: it feels like a less poetic version of an M. Night Shyamalan fairy tale.
— Mike Hale, New York Times

A blatant patchwork of every haunted house movie ever made, it still delivers a creep-out (the midget dancing to Tiny Tim), a face-at-the-window shock or a well-crafted scare (it’s behind you!) every few minutes. Not especially well acted and weighed down by silliness, but consistently scary. It hasn’t got more to offer than cheap chills, but sometimes that’s enough.
— Kim Newman, Empire

Farewell

Written and directed by Christian Carion, Farewell follows the French intelligence service as it alerts the U.S. about a Soviet spy operation during the height of the Cold War, setting off an unfortunate chain of events.

Grigoriev was the catalyst for Glasnost, but Christian Carion takes a sober approach. The performances are expert, the friendship compelling, but it cries out for a streak of Le Carré’s damp- paved noir to get pulses racing. [A] slightly underpowered as an espionage thriller, this is nonetheless a fascinating story told with real panache.
— Ian Nathan, Empire

Caron expands the story to provide a bit of political context, but the appearances of Ward’s Reagan and French President Francois Mitterrand (Philippe Magnan) and Willem Dafoe as the head of the CIA needlessly distracts from the bond at the heart of the film. Played by well-known directors Canet and Kusturica, the leads give “Farewell” a humanity that also speaks to the high stakes at hand. They’re fantastic.
— Glenn Whipp, LA Times

Pick of the Week: Thor

Kenneth Branagh directs Marvel’s latest superhero comic book blockbuster, Thor. Starring Chris Henworth and Natalie Portman alongside Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleson and Stellan Skarsgård, The Mighty Thor, a powerful but arrogant warrior reignites an ancient war. Banished to Earth by father Odin, he is forced to live among humans, where the most dangerous villain of his world sends its darkest forces.

Aside from its excellent visuals and sense of fun as the star adjusts to his surroundings, Thor avoids the common superhero trap of spending an age on back story before the plot kicks in. Director Kenneth Branagh (yes, him) ensures the action comes thick and fast. By Odin’s beard, it’s a winner.
— David Edwards, The Mirror

I’d hesitate to call this a good film, exactly. It’s overlong and all over the place… Some of the supporting players (most notably a stricken Stellan Skarsgård) appear poignantly all at sea. But there’s something weirdly charming about it just the same. Branagh has knocked his film together with a terrific, freewheeling gusto. It has its tongue in its cheek and the fun is infectious. For all of its flaws, Thor’s never a bore.
— Xan Brooks, The Guardian

Want more? Check out last week’s review for more films on general release.

UK Film Releases | Friday 20th April 2011

Happy Bank Holiday weekend! It’s Easter madness at the UK cinematheque this week, with more films than we could squeeze into the Quotables Review. However, we’re still bringing you snippets from reviews of loads of this week’s releases, including Russell Brand as Arthur, comedy romance in Beastly, another injection of Fast and Furious with the new Fast 5, a somewhat premature How I Ended This Summer (we’re still enjoying spring!), Wim Wenders’ dancing delight Pina 3D, festival favourite documentary Sweetgrass, Fast 5′s 3D documentary counterpart TT3D: Closer to the Edge, and our Pick of the Week, Luc Besson’s Adele Blanc-Sec!

Arthur

Russell Brand stars in the remake of Arthur, taking on Dudley Moore’s boisterous billionaire  the brink of an arranged marriage to a wealthy heiress but ends up falling for a common working class girl instead.

Russell Brand doesn’t exactly improve on Moore’s playboy billionaire so much as convert the character’s tragic immaturity into alcoholic toxicity. Brand, already a Dionysian visual joke of swirling hair and rock-star poses, is always funnier when saying less. Too bad he’s got a lot to convey here; he comes off as more of a match to his narcissistic arranged bride, Susan (Jennifer Garner), than must have been intended.
— Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out

Brand shares a British heritage with Moore, but his comedy is much different. The guy is a talent, no doubt. Only last week, he put an undeniable comic jolt into Universal’s animation/live-action mix Hop. But there is edginess to Brand’s humor, even an aggressiveness. His Arthur creates scenes, not laughs. He’s a pathetic, bratty little boy who refuses to grow up rather than a genial alcoholic who wouldn’t harm a fly.
— Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter

Beastly

Starring High School Musical’s Vanessa Hudgens and I Am Number Four’s Alex Pettyfer, Beastly is the edgy teen romance between handsome high-schooler Kyle who has been cursed to look like everything he despises. The only way to lift the curse is to find someone who will love him for who he is inside.

Barnz gives no life to any of these characters, nor does he make their situations the least bit believable. Perhaps most disappointing, since witchcraft underlies much of what is supposedly happening here, is that no sense of magic whatsoever pervades this movie.
— Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

But all good humor must come to an end, and a love story has to be able to fall back on tenderness and sweetness eventually. Unfortunately, every time Beastly reaches for either of those things, it’s … really bad.
— Linda Holmes, NPR

Fast 5

The Fast and Furious series continues with part 5 of its speedy franchise. Vin Diesel is back in the driver’s seat, taking on one final heist job in Rio to set himself up for a lavish retirement.

There may be more brains in your bucket of popcorn, but this gleefully silly smash-’em-up heist film is sturdy enough to restore much of the fan goodwill torched by the horror movie that was the Diesel-free The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
— Megan Lehmann, Hollywood Reporter

Full of foot-to-the-floor action, bikini babes and gleaming hoods, Fast and Furious 5/ makes no attempt to adjust the formula. But why should it? Converts may be scarce, but fans will lap up its major-league mayhem. Oh, and stay for the end-credits cliffhanger…
— James Mottram, Total Film

How I Ended This Summer

Set on a desolate island in the Arctic Circle, where two men work at a small meteorological station, taking readings from their radioactive surroundings. One day, apprentice Pavel receives news for Sergei and can’t bring himself to relay it. When his deception is discovered, dire consequences are not far behind.

Visually, it’s not ugly, but sundry shots of spectacular ice fields feel academically picturesque and impart a sense of prettiness not profundity. Characters, too, totter in arbitrary circles, their motivations entirely unfathomable. Their gradual descent into savagery is signposted by much anguished wailing and even a laughable shot of Dobrygin gnawing at some salted trout like a grizzly bear in a body warmer.
— David Jenkins, Time Out

Sergei Puskepalis (Sergei) and Grigory Dobrygin (Pavel) give powerful performances, but the real star is Mother Nature — her fury and her beauty, which cinematographer Pavel Kostomarov breathtakingly captures with his hand-held camera.
— V. A. Musetto, New York Post

Pina 3D

Wim Wenders’ 3D dance documentary is a tribute to the life and work of world-renowned choreographer Pina Bausch.

Instead of abandoning the idea of making a film about Bausch, Wenders has made a worthy tribute to her, inviting members of her ensemble to express their feelings about their mentor, partly through words, but mostly through achingly heartfelt performances, using 3D technology’s enhanced depth of field to capture the depth of feeling ever-present in Bausch’s work. It may not win any converts to the art form, but ‘mere’ movement has seldom been so moving.
— David Hughes, Empire

Presumably the 3D’s main role is to substitute for the “liveness” of the original performance, and there’s no doubt that 3D adds a lusciousness of texture to the company’s already refined and polished visuals. As the camera hovers over lines of dancers moving in unison, or inspects their controlled, intense gestures, Wenders creates an impeccably stylish, almost sculptural rendering of the performance.
— Andrew Pulver, The Guardian

Sweetgrass

Shot in the summer of 2003, this documentary follows a group of shepherds taking a herd of sheep one final time on a 300km journey through the snowy hills and valleys of the Beartooth Mountains of Montana, in the extreme northwest of the United States.

Sweetgrass does without interviews and without voice-overs. The only human voices heard are those captured in random snatches of conversation…. Made as well in the restrained tradition of Frederick Wiseman, “Sweetgrass” is intent on doing no more than observing, on having as unobtrusive a presence as possible in the world it is recording. But that world turns out to be as compelling as the circumstances under which the film came to be made.
— Kenneth Turan, LA Times

The film is visually stunning, filled with more breathtaking shots than you can count: silently falling snow; clouds’ moving shadows caressing a green mountainside; a bird singing on a single, bare branch; the cold white moon set against a midnight sky. It’s pure poetry.
— Michael O’Sullivan, The Washington Post

TT3D: Closer to the Edge

By vividly recounting the TT’s legendary rivalries and the Isle of Man’s unique road racing history, this 3D feature documentary will discover why modern TT riders still risk their lives to win the world’s most dangerous race. It’s also an examination of what motivates those rare few, this elite band of brothers who risk everything to win.

Whether you like motorcycle racing or not, Richard de Aragues’s debut is a must-see evocation of the event’s inherent dangers and the ‘balls to the wall’ bravery (or stupidity) of its adrenaline-seeking, carefree contenders. In the realm of the rousing sports doc, this truly excels.
— Richard De Aragues, Time Out

Billed as the world’s first 3D sports movie, that third dimension is really just window dressing on a motorbiking doc that’d be exhilarating in only two. The Isle Of Man TT is pure cinema—an insane blur of leather and machines that claims several lives every year—and director Richard De Aragues shows the bikers in their fearless element…It all makes for a motorsports movie you don’t need to be a petrolhead to enjoy.
— Phil de Semlyen, Empire

Pick of the Week: Adele Blanc-Sec

Set in the early 20th Century, Luc Besson returns with the tale of a popular novelist and her many distractions from suitors, to cops and monsters.

A romp magnifique, with enough thrills, giggles and pretty pictures to reward adventure-lovers who wouldn’t normally entertain the idea of taking in a treat with subtitles. Don’t miss the mid-credits postscript.
— Angie Errigo, Empire

The cast is terrific, bringing plenty of sassy attitude to each hilarious role. Everyone is so impulsive that the plot seems completely out of control from the start, and things get increasingly silly as it continues, with some genuinely ridiculous twists and turns along the way. Adele’s repeated cry “Into my arms!” usually results in something both corny and amazing. Yes, it’s hugely imaginative, but it also feels somewhat made up as it goes along.
— Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

UK Film Releases | Friday 15th April 2011

Spring is still powering on at the UK box office, with a range of releases this week including kids’ favourite Winnie the Pooh, promising independents Meek’s Cutoff and Little White Lies – both hits at recent film festivals, and this week’s biggest release, the much anticipated Scream 4.

Winnie the Pooh

Disney returns with a new adaptation of A. A. Milne‘s classic Winnie the Pooh tales. Narrated by John Cleese, this adventure begins when Christopher Robin takes leave and Pooh must help his friend Eeyore his lost tail.

The decision to keep the runtime down is wise, as none of the plotlines really need feature length development, but this is worth seeing in the cinema if you can, not least for a rather sweet short animation being screened before in about Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, and her quest for a home…. completely adorable and beautifully drawn.
— Catherine Bray, Film4

There’s much metatextual joy to be had in the way that the characters interact with the books from which they originated, walking from one of E. H. Shepard’s drawings to the next as scenes develop, or using letters displaced from the text as tools or toys. So while there’s little here that’s edgy, hip or envelope-pushing, under-tens and animation-fan parents will adore it.
— Helen O’Hara, Empire

Red Riding Hood

Set in a medieval village that is haunted by a werewolf, a young girl falls for an orphaned woodcutter, but she is betrothed to another man.

The level at which Red Riding Hood borrows from Twilight is not just limited to the dueling suitors and the werewolf component. The actor who plays Valerie’s father, Billy Burke, even plays Bella’s dad in the Twilight series. And Valerie has a special bond with the creature: she can talk to it, which causes her to worry about her own nature… Oh, Red, what purple prose you’ve been given.
— Mary Pols, TIME

The best that can be said is that the production design is striking. Otherwise, it’s a foolish story, marred by a strange blend of overacting and bland, offhand performances.
— Claudia Puig, USA Today

Meek’s Cutoff

Michelle Williams and Shirley Henderson star in this film from Kelly Reichart, following the 1845 journey of American settlers traveling through the Oregon desert in 1845. Leader Meek leads 3 couples on their expedition, wehre they find themselves stranded in harsh conditions.

There is a comparable sense of an embattled, frightened expeditionary force, out of food and water, and ideas: without the experience, resources or language to understand someone who may be their destroyer or their only hope of survival. This superbly made, austere film is Reichardt’s best yet, certainly a huge advance on her previous work, Wendy and Lucy (2008) and a powerful new addition to the western genre.
— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Reichardt recreates the journey of Western-bound settlers…But the film remains very much of her style: it’s a deceptively small piece of onscreen art that resonates afterward with such insistence that I felt positively nagged by it. Because Reichardt leaves it open-ended, I kept having the illogical urge to get back to the film — as if it were a half-read story that could be picked up again.
— Mary Pols, TIME

Little White Lies

Little White Lies or Les Petits mouchoirs follows a group of friends who, despite a traumatic event, go on their annual beach vacation. Their relationships, are tested until they are forced to confront the little white lies they’ve been telling each other.

Clearly inspired by The Big Chill, Little White Lies feels overstretched in its two-and-half hour running time, with Canet too reliant at times on montages… You do, however, believe that these characters are long-term friends, who’ve become used to not being entirely truthful to themselves and to one another. Alongside some enjoyable comic moments… the real strength of this film lies in the performances.
— Tom Dawson, The List

Despite some good moments and strong performances from a talented cast, Little White Lies is ultimately something of a slog to sit through and the lack of likeable characters means that it fails to deliver the required emotional punch.
— Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

Scream 4

Eleven years after Wes Craven’s Scream became a cult hit, part 4 sees the director return to the franchise to redefine its own genre expectations.

Scream 4 is not without enjoyment. It’s good to see familiar characters back and the opening moments are quite spirited. But it’s a film about horror films without being a horror film itself. It’s enough to make you scream.

— Phellim O’Neill, The Guardian

There are flashes of wit in the opening film-within-a-film-within-a-fi lm sequence, which uses bankable blondes like Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell as Ghostface fodder. And some later jokes, like a visual jab at the director Robert Rodriguez, are funny. Others…are just dumb.

But the central conceit of the characters’ fates being determined by the “rules” of horror movies feels irredeemably tired; a clever idea that was worth one movie.
— Mike Hale, New York Times

All that choice and nothing appeals? Take a look at last week’s releases.

Which films are you looking forward to watching this weekend?

USA Film Releases | Friday 8th March 2011

Welcome back, neighbours-to-the-west! The Quotables Review has returned. This week the jolly Russell Brand hits screens in Arthur, surfer-chic meets spirituality in Soul Surfer, Your Highness rollicks in the medieval mud, and Joe Wright takes a new direction with assassin-style Hanna. Can’t decide what to watch? The Quotables Review is here to help! Here’s a round-up of some of the best reviews on this week’s cinematic offerings.

Arthur

Russell Brand stars in the remake of Arthur, taking on Dudley Moore’s boisterous billionaire  the brink of an arranged marriage to a wealthy heiress but ends up falling for a common working class girl instead.

Russell Brand doesn’t exactly improve on Moore’s playboy billionaire so much as convert the character’s tragic immaturity into alcoholic toxicity. Brand, already a Dionysian visual joke of swirling hair and rock-star poses, is always funnier when saying less. Too bad he’s got a lot to convey here; he comes off as more of a match to his narcissistic arranged bride, Susan (Jennifer Garner), than must have been intended.
— Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out

Brand shares a British heritage with Moore, but his comedy is much different. The guy is a talent, no doubt. Only last week, he put an undeniable comic jolt into Universal’s animation/live-action mix Hop. But there is edginess to Brand’s humor, even an aggressiveness. His Arthur creates scenes, not laughs. He’s a pathetic, bratty little boy who refuses to grow up rather than a genial alcoholic who wouldn’t harm a fly.
— Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter

Soul Surfer

A teenage surfer girl summons the courage to go back into the ocean after losing an arm in a shark attack.

McNamara tries to connect “the energy of the ocean” and Bethany’s relationship with religion, but neither feels at all earned or engagingly fleshed out. Soul Surfer just sits there lifeless on a numbingly bland narrative template, waiting for a big wave of originality to validate its existence. That creative infusion never comes.
— Glenn Heath Jr., Slant Magazine

Nearly every conflict is built on market-tested platitudes of empowerment and registers as insincere, especially a spurious re-creation of Bethany’s visit to Thailand to aid tsunami victims. Congratulations, Holly-wood, for commissioning your own modern parable about a strained family questioning their faith… Young Ms. Hamilton’s story is inspiring, but if you need it spoon-fed by American Idol winner Carrie Underwood’s youth-group leader, you’re better off lost and godless.
— Aaron Hillis, Village Voice

Your Highness

From the team of Pineapple Express, Your Highness’ royal brothers Fabious (James Franco) and Thadeous (Danny McBride) embark on a quest to save the Fabious’s fiance Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) from capture. On their quest, they meet vengeful archer Isabel (Natalie Portman) and encounter great beasts and villains along the way.

It may be that “Your Highness,” a self-conscious, sometimes overly self-satisfied goof about ye olde high times, may be better enjoyed in an herb-enhanced condition. Getting stoned is, after all, a running joke in this comedy, which is as thin as rolling paper and just as ephemeral… Conjoined laughing and groaning is often the point when jokes are calibrated to go up (or down) with smoke.
— Monohla Dargis, New York Times

“Your Highness” is a juvenile excrescence that feels like the work of 11-year-old boys in love with dungeons, dragons, warrior women, pot, boobs and four-letter words… I hate it when that happens.
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Pick of the Week: Hanna

But while there’s always a lot going on, and none of it uninteresting or dull, pervading the enterprise is the distinct feeling that Wright is trying to prove something — that he’s a real filmmaker and not just a literary transcriber, that style may not just enrich but trump substance, that perhaps a genre film is only really worth doing if it’s piled with loftier ideas.
— Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

“Hanna” is quite the improper little package, stylish, rich in singular images and one that carries itself with both the bravado of a spy thriller and the winsomeness of a fairy tale… Given its fantastic elements, “Hanna” is, on a certain level, ridiculous. But the way Mr. Wright conjures his images and parcels out his narrative is hypnotic and so seductive that wherever the film is heading we want to follow.
— John Anderson, Wall Street Journal

In Britain? Check out The Quotables Review UK edition!

UK Film Releases | Friday 8th March 2011

After a bumper week of box-office releases last week, there are only 3 major releases this weekend: The Roommate, and animated features Mars Needs Moms and Rio. Last week’s films will also be screening at most cinemas, so don’t forget to check out last week’s Quotables Review to see what’s out.

The Roommate

Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester stars alongside Minka Kelly in this dramatic thriller. College student Rebecca finds that her roommate Sara has a bit of an obsession, and she’s the subject of her “enthusiastic” affections.

Covering tediously familiar territory, this is only enlivened by the appearance of Billy Zane’s fashion guru in a grey check tam-o-shanter declaring his love of Yves Saint Laurent… File under guilty pleasure.
— Tim Evans, Sky Movies

This premise would normally lead to all sorts of exploitation movie mayhem, but in the hands of Danish director Christian E Christiansen, it becomes a bloodless, charmless bore.Cat lovers may be unnerved, but fright fans will just yawn their way to the exit.
— Ken McIntyre, Total Film

Mars Needs Moms

In Disney’s latest 3D animation, a young boy named Milo gains a deeper appreciation for his mother after Martians come to earth to abduct her. Leaving his chores behind, he takes off on an adventure to save his Mom.

The skill level of this motion capture animation is getting better all the time. So Mars is accomplished at every level. But the three most important things in movies are story, story, story so the movie never comes off as the considerable achievement it truly is.
— Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

As the various forces convene, building up to a climactic battle sequence, the plot’s preposterousness becomes irrelevant; its primary goal, at this point, is to deliver thrills…. On a technical level, “Mars Needs Moms” is well assembled and proficiently directed. Production design, however, appears to be such a pastiche of sci-fi classics that one can only hope it’s intended as homage.
— Lael Loewenstein, Variety

Pick of the Week: Rio

Midwestern Macaw Blu is a happily owned parrot residing in small-town. When his owner, Linda, discovers he’s not the last of his kind, they head Tio to Blu’s female counterpart, Jewel. After arriving, Blu and Jewel are kidnapped by animal smugglers. Animal antics ensue.

Disliking Rio would take an immense amount of will. It’s generic – given just a list of character descriptions, you could probably lay out a rather accurate sketch of the plot. But it’s made with so much verve, voiced so charmingly, and with such tropical colour daubed excitedly into every inch of the screen that stimulation is not optional.
— Olly Richards, Empire

In the film’s favour, the 3D is crisp, richly realised and endowed with exquisite depth of field. But all that eye-candy counts for little when the jokes fall flat, the Latino songs lack lustre and the script is so ineffectual. ‘Rio’ isn’t totally devoid of merit – it could just do with a lot more zip and zing in its tail feathers.
— Derek Adams, Time Out

What are you off to see this weekend?

UK Film Releases | Friday 1st April 2011

It’s another big week here at the UK box office, with a whopping 7 new releases ranging from indie comedy Passenger Seat to animated adventure Hop. As Ken Loach sets up shop in Glasgow to cast his new feature, his son Jim Loach is hitting our screens after a successful awards season. Killing Bono reminds us that Irish cinema still has it while Sucker Punch is sucking it up with some less-than-favourable reviews. Most of all, we’re looking forward to our Pick of the Week, which sees our pal Jake Gyllenhaal alongside second-time director Duncan Jones in Source Code.

Hop

From the makers of Ice Age, Hop stars Russell Brand as the voice of E.B. – the teenaged son of the Easter Bunny. Rather than succumbing to pressures of running the family business, he dreams of becoming a rock star drummer. He befriends Fred (James Marsden), a slacker with big ambitions and, when all goes Pete Tong in E.B.’s home on Easter Island, they must join forces to save easter.

Big, brash movies are typically made by an army of highly intelligent folk who know exactly what they are doing at every step. The sadness is so much of it feels subsumed by focus group editing, lame in-jokes and an adherence to cliché that screams lowest common denominator, safety first filmmaking.
— Anwar Brett, Scoop Online

Looks suspiciously like a cack Santa flick in which the fat red guy’s been switched with a talking rabbit.
— Robbie Collin, News of the World

Killing Bono

A Dublin-based comedy about U2′s rise to fame, told from the perspective of their arch-rivals. Stars Ben Barnes and Robert Sheehan.

Like the late Pete Postlethwaite’s cameo (his final screen credit), alas, the messy, patchy and overlong result elicits more rueful sadness than side-splitting hilarity.
— Neil Smith, Total Film

[Their] hiccups are comical at first, but by the time we get to Neil turning down the chance to write for Rod Stewart or support U2 at one of their gigs, the fact he’s too proud or stupid to take the opportunities offered to him begins to grate. Serafinowicz adds sparkle as a flaky promoter, and Postlethwaite is touching in his final screen appearance.
— Paul Greenwood, Scoop Online

Sucker Punch

Watchmen director Zack Snyder returns with Sucker Punch, an action fantasy that takes us into the vivid imagination of a young girl (Emily Browning) whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Locked up against her will, she bands together with four fellow young girls to fight for freedom.

Great on paper, dull in practice, this is less Moulin Rouge meets Sin City and more Powerpuff Girls meet The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Proves that while masturbating over your cast may not make you blind, it can impair directorial vision.
— Catherine Bray, Film 4

Kudos to Snyder (who co-wrote the screenplay with Steve Shibuya) for letting his imagination run wild. It’s just a pity that imagination is so drastically circumscribed by the lurid “ho couture” culture of shoot-em-ups and soft porn.
— Tom Charity, CNN

Oranges and Sunshine

In Oranges and Sunshine, social worker Margaret Humphreys uncovers one of the most significant social scandals in recent times: the forced migration of children from the United Kingdom. Discovering a secret the British government had hidden for years, Margaret reunited thousands of families and brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to an extraordinary miscarriage of justice. Jim Loach tells the story in his directorial debut.

There is something about Hugo Weaving’s performance in Oranges and Sunshine that summarizes the film perfectly – mild, understated, slow to engage with, but ultimately, and without warning, powerful and heartbreaking.
— Tom Fordy, The Hollywood News

Like his father, Loach has made a film uncluttered by an obvious director’s stamp, peopled by sympathetic characters and driven by a desire to say something about the world without losing sight of human experience. In casting Watson, he’s also secured a performance that boldly lacks vanity while exuding a strength that leads you confidently through difficult, troubling terrain.
— Dave Calhoun, Time Out

Essential Killing

Vincent Gallo stars in this thriller from Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski. Following a man captured by American forces and transported to frozen European woodlands. To escape, he must kill everyone in his path. Essential Killing won the Special Jury Prize at Venice FIlm Festival.

Gallo, who was named best actor at this year’s Venice Film Festival, proves galvanizing without uttering a single word. Rarely has such strict physicality been used on screen to such potent effect.
— Gary Goldstein, LA Times

Arguably the most abstract chase film since Joseph Losey’s Figures in the Landscape, this is a furious, pared-down parable enriched by the Polish director’s sardonic understanding of man’s desperation forever alternating between prey and predator.
— Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine

Passenger Side

This indie comedy follows brothers Tobey and Michael (Adam Scott) on a road trip in search of the love of Tobey’s life. They get to know each other along the way, with odd places and wacky characters coming along for the ride.

Talk about making a virtue of your limitations: it’s a road movie set almost within one city, a romance where the love interest is off-screen and a moving family drama with no scenery-chewing showdown. What it has in spades is smart talk and tattered beauty…The faded hope of LA is perfectly captured, as is a depth of sibling love and resentment, with excellent performances, big laughs and emotional truth.
— Nev Pierce, Empire

If ultimately Passenger Side is a bitter pill to swallow, it is sweetened by the amiably bantering central performances, the hilariously caustic (and entirely credible) wit of the script, and by the perfect selection of songs on Michael’s retro mix tape… After all, even as some journeys change everything, others get you nowhere.
— Anton Bitel, Eye for Film

Pick of the Week: Source Code

In this sophomore film from Duncan Jones (Moon), Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up to find himself inside the body of an unknown man. He soon discovers he is part of a government experiment called the “Source Code”. Part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago Commuter train, Colter relives the incident during the final 8 minutes of the man’s life, piecing together the evidence of who is carrying out the attacks.

Those who inexplicably convinced themselves that Matt Damon and Emily Blunt had romantic chemistry in The Adjustment ­Bureau should check out true heat, courtesy of Gyllenhaal’s unblinking baby blues and Michelle Monaghan’s irrepressible glow. Dick would love the paranoid setup and probably hate the cheat of a denouement. But it all goes by too irresistibly fast to call a time-out for disbelief.
— David Edelstein, New York Magazine

Otherwise, it’s brilliantly constructed, going over an eight-minute cycle again and again with variations, each time advancing the plot — it may be that stories like these were inconceivable before choose-your-own-adventure books or computer games — but also bringing out the tragedy of a doom we are told is inescapable as the time-hopper makes different, deepening connections with the girl sitting next to him.
— Kim Newman, Empire

What are you off to watch at the cinema this weekend?

UK Film Releases | Friday 25th March 2011

It’s finally spring, and that means all action this week in the UK box office, with the release of Kevin McDonald’s epic Roman drama The Eagle alongside All-American action Faster. For a quieter weekend, you can also enjoy gentle drama Country Strong. For the film lovers, you can mix cultural gimmickry with thoughtful filmmaking in Herzog’s 3D documentary, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Finally, though we missed its official release last week, we’re excited about our belated Pick of the Week: British indie comedy Submarine.

The Eagle

Scottish director Kevin MacDonald returns to the mountains of Scotland in 140AD, twenty years after the disappearance of the Ninth Legion, Roman centurion Marcus (played by Channing Tatum) and his British slave (Jamie Bell) set out into the highlands to retrieve the lost legion’s emblem, the Eagle of the Ninth.

Director Kevin Macdonald, who fared poorly with historical drama in the factitious Idi Amin biopic The Last King of Scotland, performs an appreciable act of imagination here. The Eagle’s focus on Marcus’ personal mission avoids the specious allegory of the insulting Prince of Persia and steers clear of the dubious political metaphor in Macdonald’s contemporary espionage film State of Play.
— Armond White, New York Press

Without pretense, Macdonald regards landscape and tribal living mythically, and his collaging of visual planes throughout is practically expressionistic… The overall theme is the need and struggle for brotherhood, and it finds its most dazzling and poetic expression in a scene in which a warrior tribesman’s face makeup washes away with the tides—a murder that plays as the birth of a nation.
— Ed Gonzalez, Slate Magazine

Country Strong

Rising country-music writer Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund) teams up with fallen star Kelly Canter (Gwenyth Paltrow). Working on her come-back, their plans make a dent in the budding career of beauty queen turned star Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester).

This enjoyably OTT drama-with-songs-in-it was monstered in January by American reviewers, who were maybe expecting a highbrow, subtle and meditative drama in which Gwyneth Paltrow is an alcoholic banjo player.
— Robbie Collin, News of the World

Country Strong feels like a script that needed a Page One rewrite. Ideas and character relationships are poorly thought out. Motivations are hard to pin down as characters seemingly abandon their own best interests.
— Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

Faster

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson returns as a California gun-slinger straight out of prison, bent on avenging the death of his brother during the heist that put him in jail. Little does he know he’s being tracked by a veteran cop and an egocentric hit man…

“Faster” is a pure thriller, all blood, no frills, in which a lot of people get shot, mostly in the head. Rotate the plot, change the period, spruce up the dialogue, and this could have been a hard-boiled 1940s noir. But it doesn’t pause for fine touches and efficiently delivers action for an audience that likes one-course meals.
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Structurally “Faster” is as blocky as its star. Fancy camera angles and changes in hue cannot camouflage its stumbling, blunt-force narrative style, in which plot turns are dropped like bricks.
— Stephen Holden, New York Times

Pick of the Week: Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D

Werner Herzog’s documentary takes us deep into the Chauvet caves of Southern France. Though the area is sealed off from the public, Bavaria’s bravest filmmaker captures the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting in 3D.

For the most part his use of 3D is among the most appropriate in the format’s otherwise gimmicky history; the drawings that crowd the undulating, uneven walls of the cave spring into complex reliefs… Herzog’s philosophical musings might be a turn-off to those unfamiliar with them and, while he might be more poet than sage, he does make the provocative point that we moderns can never really know what the images meant.
— Adam Smith, Empire

Watching “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” is an interactive experience, and not in the bogus computer-game sense. I guarantee you will exclaim out loud, ooh and ahh, feel shivers of recognition go down your spine.
— Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

Pick of the Week: Submarine

Hailed as the Welsh Rushmore, Richard Ayoyade’s directorial debut is becoming an indie smash hit. 15-year-old Oliver Tate has two objectives: To lose his virginity before his next birthday, and to rekindle his parents’ relationship after an ex-lover who has resurfaced in his mother’s (Sally Hawkins) life. Submarine comes highly recommended from the Quotables team – we loved it and urge you to catch it before it disappears from the big screen.

Watching it, I got exactly the same exhilarated feeling as with Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead: someone very talented at comedy had been allowed to take the helm of a British feature film and do precisely what he wanted to.
— Peter Bradshaw, THe Guardian

Ayoade has a lightness of touch that enables him to weave in more sophisticated themes in a way that seems organic rather than forced… This is not a first-time filmmaker simply showing off what he can do. The use of New Wave-style jump cuts, still photography, freeze frames and Super-8 film clips plug us into the collage-like nature of his protagonist’s teenage brain while gently mocking genre conventions.
— Alistair Harkness, The Scotsman

Which films are you looking forward to watching this weekend?

USA Film Releases | Friday 11th March 2011

It’s almost Spring-time at the box office, and America is locked, loaded, and ready for invasion. The USA movie box office is a busy one this week, with the release of two alien adventures: Disney animated Mars Needs Moms, and apocalyptic thriller Battle: Los Angeles. For more conventional tastes, the long-anticipated Red Riding Hood has finally arrived. Here are snippets from the latest reviews to help you decide how to spend your bucks at the movies this weekend.

Mars Needs Moms

In Disney’s latest 3D animation, a young boy named Milo gains a deeper appreciation for his mother after Martians come to earth to abduct her. Leaving his chores behind, he takes off on an adventure to save his Mom.

The skill level of this motion capture animation is getting better all the time. So Mars is accomplished at every level. But the three most important things in movies are story, story, story so the movie never comes off as the considerable achievement it truly is.
— Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

As the various forces convene, building up to a climactic battle sequence, the plot’s preposterousness becomes irrelevant; its primary goal, at this point, is to deliver thrills…. On a technical level, “Mars Needs Moms” is well assembled and proficiently directed. Production design, however, appears to be such a pastiche of sci-fi classics that one can only hope it’s intended as homage.
— Lael Loewenstein, Variety

Battle: Los Angeles

Marines face off with Alien invaders bent on colonising Earth in this apocalyptic action-thriller starring Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez.

Stunningly shot on celluloid by cinematographer Lukas Ettlin, the grainy hand-held images resemble a 12A-rated version of ‘Black Hawk Down’, but the tone flips between documentary-style authenticity and the adrenaline-junkie excitement of a first-person computer game.
— Nigel Floyd, Time Out London

Locked and loaded from the off with explosions, fire-fights and close quarters combat, Jonathan Liebesman’s film has a full clip of eye-singeing, ear-battering mayhem that should sate sci-fi junkies after a quick visceral fix.
— Neil Smith, Total Film

Red Riding Hood

Set in a medieval village that is haunted by a werewolf, a young girl falls for an orphaned woodcutter, but she is betrothed to another man.

The level at which Red Riding Hood borrows from Twilight is not just limited to the dueling suitors and the werewolf component. The actor who plays Valerie’s father, Billy Burke, even plays Bella’s dad in the Twilight series. And Valerie has a special bond with the creature: she can talk to it, which causes her to worry about her own nature… Oh, Red, what purple prose you’ve been given.
— Mary Pols, TIME

The best that can be said is that the production design is striking. Otherwise, it’s a foolish story, marred by a strange blend of overacting and bland, offhand performances.
— Claudia Puig, USA Today

UK Film Releases | Friday 11th March 2011

It’s almost Spring-time at the box office, and it’s a bit of a sleepy week. The UK cinema circuit features Age of Heroes and The Resident – though reviews are difficult to come by. However, we can tell you all about the reception of recession drama The Company Men, apocalyptic fun in Battle: Los Angeles, and Farrelly Brothers’ comeback comedy Hall Pass. Here are snippets from the latest reviews to help you decide how to spend your pennies at the cinema this weekend.

The Company Men

The movie debut of ER creator John Wells, The Company Men follows MBA Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) who, made redundant through recession, loses his white-collar job and must keep his family afloat. Brother-in-Law  contractor Jack Dolan (Kevin Costner) gives him an unlikely hand up in this topical drama.

Taken as a whole, “The Company Men” is about what you’d expect from an old-school TV showrunner: straightforward topical melodrama, with a throbbing social conscience, sympathetic characters, good actors and a script that regularly grabs a hammer from Jack’s tool belt and attacks you with it, just in case you’ve wandered away from the theme. (In other words, it’s a John Sayles movie in spirit, if not in fact.)
— Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

It’s simple stuff, but the movie’s heart is in the right place. And there’s something cathartic if not wholly effectual in Company’s message: Even for the Italian sports car set, things are tough.
— Scott Bowles, USA Today

Battle: Los Angeles

Marines face off with Alien invaders bent on colonising Earth in this apocalyptic action-thriller starring Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez.

Stunningly shot on celluloid by cinematographer Lukas Ettlin, the grainy hand-held images resemble a 12A-rated version of ‘Black Hawk Down’, but the tone flips between documentary-style authenticity and the adrenaline-junkie excitement of a first-person computer game.
— Nigel Floyd, Time Out London

Locked and loaded from the off with explosions, fire-fights and close quarters combat, Jonathan Liebesman’s film has a full clip of eye-singeing, ear-battering mayhem that should sate sci-fi junkies after a quick visceral fix.
— Neil Smith, Total Film

Hall Pass

In this lestest comedy from the Farrelly Brothers, Boorish pals Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) reach the end of their wives’ tethers with their roving eyes. Both wives decide to call their partner’s bluff, awarding Rick and Fred a “Hall Pass” – an unsupervised week-long break from their marital responsibilities with the promise of guilt-free sexual freedom.

Hall Pass would like to be as dunked in reality as Judd Apatow’s best comedies, but the movie is thin. The Farrellys can’t quite nudge the characters from two dimensions to three. When Rick and Fred get lessons in humanity, the movie seems to be about two sketch-comedy characters learning they have souls.
— Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Comfy is exactly the vibe that Wilson gives off pretty much all the time. He has a self-deprecating appeal that tends to make even his quirkiest characters in the most forgettable films embraceable. For all the off-colors they wave, the Farrellys have a winning sentimental side too. It’s time for them to get past their Peter Pan potty-mouth days.
— Betsy Sharkey, LA Times

Which films are you looking forward to this weekend?

UK Film Releases | Friday 4th March 2011

After two weeks of indulging ourselves silly on new and upcoming film releases at Glasgow Film Festival, the Quotables Review is back! We’re looking forward all of the Spring films which are ready to hit the screens. Here’s the latest from the USA: Ironclad, The Tempest, Rango, and The Adjustment Bureau.

Ironclad

There comes a time in every great movie-watching experience where a special little moment in the film makes you smile with purest joy. For me, in Ironclad, it was the bit where a guy tears another guy’s arm off then beats him to death with it.
— Robbie Collin, News of the World

It’s also a strange mixture of boyish filmmaking excess and messy historical detail. The exhilarating and hugely visceral battle climax comes far too early in the story, which leaves us checking our watches while we wait for the finale… There’s also a problem with the tone, which is glowering and over-serious, emphasising outrageously gruesome deaths at every turn while shyly turning away from any hint of sexuality.
— Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall

The Tempest

Taymor, by turning Prospero into a woman while retaining an “imperialist” view of Caliban, will no doubt simultaneously please and enrage left-wing critics. The rest of us can enjoy the movie’s strengths, including the dramatic blackened turf, the solid acting of David Strathairn and Tom Conti… and the shenanigans of Russell Brand and Alfred Molina as Trinculo and Stephano, Shakespeare’s inevitable buffoons.
— David Denby, New Yorker

Julie Taymor’s film “The Tempest” doesn’t feel like a farewell. She does not abjure her rough magic. In a film filled with sound and fury, she rages against the dying of the light. There is no reconciliation or closure. What reads as a poetic acceptance of human mortality plays as the defiance of a magician clinging to familiar tricks.
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Rango

Johnny Depp stars as Rango, a pirate-obsessed chameleon who dreams of becoming a swashbuckling hero. When he finds himself in Western town plagued by bandits, he is forced to play his dream role in order to protect it. Directed by Pirates of the Caribbean’s Gore Verbinski, Rango also features the voices of Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy, Abigail Breslin, and Ray Winstone.

Spoofs such kiddie favourites as Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, the mystical writings of Carlos Castaneda, and Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.
— Robbie Collin, News of the World

Good news: the film lives up to the trailer. If we weren’t forced to judge every animated film by the impossibly high standards of Pixar, this would score higher still.
— Tom Charity, LoveFilm

The Adjustment Bureau

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt star in this thriller from Bourne Ultimatum writer George Nolfi. The affair between bookish politician David and ballet dancer Elise is held apart by the mysterious forces of fate.

For her part, this is the best Blunt has been onscreen since her early work in My Summer of Love and The Devil Wears Prada and certainly the film in which she seems most vibrant and alive in a romantic pairing… For the film to pay off, it’s imperative that you believe in these two despite it all. And you do.
— Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

By keeping the pace quick, the explanation light and the characters strong, Nolfi achieves the near-impossible: a film puzzle you won’t mind leaving unexplained.
— Helen O’Hara