Review Category: Movie

Review: Black Rock / Cert: 15 / Director: Katie Aselton / Screenplay: Mark Duplass / Starring: Kate Bosworth, Lake Bell, Katie Aselton / Release Date: June 21st

The last time Mark Duplass was involved with a horror film we got the uneven Baghead. This time around he takes on writing duties only while his wife and co-star from The League, Katie Aselton, sits in the director’s chair. Black Rock goes to prove the old adage that just because you might see horror as an easy option for your directorial debut, that doesn’t mean you should do it.

We start off with three friends, Sarah (Bosworth) Lou (Bell) and Abby (Aselton), getting together for a weekend trip away to an island off the coast of Maine where they spent their carefree younger days. They bicker and gossip but it’s clear from the dialogue that we are supposed to think that they have a long history together. At night they meet a trio of hunters who turn out to be soldiers on leave from the war in Iraq. One of the soldiers gets a bit rough with the drunk and flirtatious Katie and in defending herself from an attempted rape she ends up killing him. The other two soldiers get quite miffed about this and start to hunt the three of them across the island.

Black Rock suffers a fatal self-inflicted blow fairly early on in that it presents you with a female dynamic that just does not work and never once rings true. You do not for a second buy that the three of these actresses are playing long-time friends and the mumblecore, semi-improvised-sounding dialogue just piles up on top of each other with everyone seemingly talking at once. The film will make you nauseous and not for the reasons expected.

Once the threat element is ramped up, the supposed tension you are supposed to feel simply is not there because the characters are too poorly sketched in for you to care what happens to them. The action scenes are badly shot and thought out and there is not even any good gore to mention. The bone sticking out of a limb effect has lost all of its power and has now become cliché.

For about 5 minutes Black Rock threatens to become interesting with a naked, dreamlike wander round the woods looking for weapons but soon wanders back into its standard feminist thriller format for a boring and obvious finale. To its credit though, the soundtrack is quite good.

Duplass has proved he is a good writer in the past but this feels like one of his earliest practice screenplays reheated and he can do much better. Black Rock is a film you don’t so much watch as grudgingly go along with; it just kind of happens.

Expected Rating: 6 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Review: After Earth / Cert: 12A / Director: M. Night Shyamalan / Screenplay: Gary Whitta, M. Night Shyamalan / Starring: Will Smith, Jaden Smith, Sophie Okonedo / Release Date: Out Now

Uh oh. Another cinematic clunker from M. Night Shyamalan to add to his fast-growing reputation as the most clueless and inept filmmaker in the western world? Well, maybe not. After Earth isn’t quite the return to form we might have secretly hoped for from the man who once gave us The Sixth Sense but this futuristic sci-fi adventure (from a story by Will Smith himself), despite some niggling flaws and planet-sized plot holes, is solidly entertaining, agreeably spectacular stuff which if nothing else serves as a decent aperitif to the summer big guns rolling out across the next few weeks.

After Earth sees Shyamalan mercifully abandoning the twist ending shtick which rapidly became the millstone around his neck after his early success and, arguably more interestingly, sees Will Smith adopting a less upfront and more thoughtful role, sitting out the action as his sprightly son Jaden does all the running, jumping and monster-slaying. Perhaps this is what leaves After Earth feeling a little under-powered; love him or loathe him, Smith, Sr is a hugely charismatic presence, but here he’s muted and contemplative, worlds away from the wise-cracking freewheeler of the Men in Black series. As Ranger General Cypher Raige, Smith is in charge of a group of shock Ranger troops from the planet Nova Prime, the new home for the human race after the Earth is ravaged by an environmental disaster. A too-close encounter with an asteroid storm causes the Ranger ship to crash land on the now-quarantined Earth and Raige and his determined young son Cadet Kitai (Smith, Jr) are the only survivors and a hostile human-slaughtering alien, a ferocious Ursa, which was inexplicably being transported on the Ranger ship, has escaped the crash site and is running wild. Cypher is wounded and incapacitated, the ship is split in half and young Kitai has to travel across a hostile and savage landscape to activate the beacon which will summon a rescue ship from Nova Prime.

Despite critical claims that After Earth is a thinly disguised advertisement for the teachings of the much-vilified Scientology movement, the movie’s really little more than a fairly traditional father-bonding-with-son action adventure which suffers from sidelining Will Smith and focussing on the surly and rather bland Jaden who has yet to develop the self-effacing charm and effervescence of his dad and who spends much of the time running around looking worried or else being bitten by parasites or attacked by baboons. The dialogue is pretty much a humour-free zone, consisting of clunky sci-fi space talk, and the plot often has to disregard its own logic (and the basic principles of common sense) for the sake of the next setpiece. Quite why “everything on this planet has evolved to kill humans” when humans haven’t lived on Earth for a thousand years is never rationalised and when Dad Will, linked to his adventuring son via some gubbins strapped to the latter’s arm, warns Kitai about “an approaching life-form” which turns out to be a baboon (which Kitai inadvisedly chucks a rock at), you too might wonder why Dad didn’t warn him about the dozens of other baboons which were right behind the first one.

But to its credit After Earth doesn’t mess about; it’s got a very straightforward tale to tell and in the end it just gets on with it, pitching Kitai into combat with apes, leopards and birds and finally the monstrous Ursa itself and if the action’s rarely more than entirely predictable and the dialogue frequently pretentious and clumsy, Shyamalan makes the most of his stunning Costa Rica locations and brings a real drive and dynamism to Kitai’s race against time. After Earth is light throwaway stuff which probably has ideas way above its execution but it’s easily the best movie Shyamalan has made since Signs and whilst it misses the lightness of touch Smith, Sr usually brings to the blockbuster table it’s nothing like as diabolically disastrous as some stuffier critics might have you believe. 

Expected Rating: 4 out of 10 

Actual Rating:

Review: This Is the End / Cert: 15 / Director: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg / Screenplay: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg / Starring: James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel / Release Date: June 28th

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have teamed up to write and direct a feature based on the short film Jay and Seth vs. the Apocalypse. Rogen and Goldberg’s writing credits speak for themselves; they’ve had their hits with stoner and teen comedies and have decided to launch their directorial career with an apocalyptic comedy that subverts their personas, plays up to their critics and includes a cast made up entirely of their friends. Sure, it’s indulgent but if you’re a fan of any of those involved, it’s a playful, entertaining and amusing way to spend a couple of hours.

James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson make up the core cast, each playing an exaggerated version of their real-life selves. The narrative is simple and explores what happens when a bunch of head-in-the-clouds actors face the apocalypse. And so begins a race to reference as many movies as possible, including many of their own, with the cast even acting out a low budget version of Pineapple Express 2. It sticks to the formula of an end of the world thriller but it’s mostly an exercise in juvenile jokes, gross out, comedy cameos, self-reference and nostalgia. Highlights include a video diary confessional allowing for some amusing direct-to -amera cussing, Michael Cera as an out of control party animal, and a rivalry between Jay Baruchel and Jonah Hill (who’s written as the nicest guy you’ll ever meet).

The action is reminiscent of ’90s disaster movies, with sinkholes sucking people up and electricity poles falling and bursting through chests. At times it feels like you’re on the Twister ride at Universal studios as the actors flee across well-trodden and hokey sets. The chemistry between the core actors is the real appeal here and the quieter, more intimate parts of the film work the best with petty squabbles delivering the laughter.

Repetition and overstretched jokes do become grating though and the running time could have done with a chop. Some of the parody sketches feel tacked on, not sitting well within the overall narrative and at times the film dips into really cheap gags. The soundtrack includes a mix of pop and rap that’s been used many times before but works well in context. A feel-good film about friendship, Franco’s fortress and the end of the world that’s incredibly enjoyable and highly quotable.

Expected Rating: 7/10

Actual Rating:

Review: The Purge / Cert: 15 / Director: James DeMonaco / Screenplay: James DeMonaco / Starring: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Adelaide Kane, Rhys Wakefield / Release Date: Out Now

Sold as a science fiction film because it’s set a few years in the future, The Purge is in reality a grim, rather mean-minded home invasion thriller in the style of Straw Dogs or The Strangers and it’s never quite as compelling and gripping as it thinks it is because of the sheer lunatic implausibility of the sky-high central conceit which underpins its dark, claustrophobic narrative.

In 2022, we’re told, America has been reborn courtesy of its new ‘founding fathers’ who have established ‘the Purge’, a twelve-hour period across one night every year in which the rule of law and the emergency services are suspended and those with a criminal inclination can commit whatever crime they fancy – including mass murder – with absolutely no legal repercussions the next day or indeed ever. It’s a cathartic thing and as a consequence unemployment has tumbled and the country’s crime rate has dropped to 1%. Those who don’t feel the need to “release the beast” can barricade themselves in their fortified homes and wait until morning when normal service will be resumed. James Sandin (Hawke) has made a fortune selling home defence systems and he and his wife Mary (Headey) and their two teenage kids prepare to hunker down in their gated fortress and wait for the chaos of the Purge to pass. But inevitably a desperate refugee (Wakefield) gets into their house which is rapidly besieged by murderous outsiders and… yep, you guessed it, James and Mary face the prospect of becoming the very same amoral monsters they’re determined to keep outside as they try to keep their family together.

Unfortunately the idea of the Purge is so extreme and unlikely – it’s impossible to imagine any society being insane enough to enact such an implausible piece of legislation – it’s hard to really engage with the drama as it unfolds because your mind will be screaming “but this just couldn’t happen” even as guns are exploding, knives are buried in bellies and masked intruders prowl around the Sandin’s darkened home happy to murder anyone in their path just because they can get away with it. The Purge is essentially brutal and nasty, taking a pretty grim view of human nature and no one comes out of it especially well. The Sandins are a bit smug and mechanical (although Hawke and especially Headey put in strong, gutsy performances) and their attackers, many of them neighbours and acquaintances, aren’t convincing as murderers because there’s really no reason why they’d behave like this just for the hell of it. The Purge is a slick and oddly soulless affair, clearly out to make a point about the underlying violent nature of American society but you can’t help wondering if the point couldn’t have been made in a subtler and less extraordinarily unlikely story.

Expected Rating: 6 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Review: A Haunted House / Cert: 15 / Director: Michael Tiddes / Screenplay: Marlon Wayans, Rick Alvarez / Starring: Marlon Wayans, Essence Atkins, Marlene Forte / Release Date: June 21st

Happy Endings. The Last Boy Scout. White Chicks. Clearly, the entire Wayans family, all 163 of them, have impeccable taste when it comes to picking fantastic projects to be a part of. This however, is not one of them. A Haunted House has the potential to be the most embarrassing movie of the year, depending on whether or not you saw Scary Movie V. It’d be difficult to say that it’s the worst movie of 2013 with the IMDb plot keywords “anal + rape”, because, well, you’d have a really weird year if that’s all you watched.

The ‘plot’ is driven by what we can assume is a poltergeist (though it’s never referred to as such) terrorizing Marlon Wayans’ character Malcolm and his girlfriend Kisha, after it is revealed that she had made a deal with the devil years before in order to get a pair of red-soled Louboutin shoes. The film begins with an excitable Malcolm preparing to welcome his girlfriend of two years, played by Essence Atkins (who should really only be referred to as ‘the sister from Smart Guy’) into his home. She pulls up onto the driveway, her car packed to the brim with all of her earthly possessions, excited to be finally moving in with her boyfriend, and promptly runs over his dog, Shiloh. Cue the same dead dog gags that felt exhausted even in 1998’s There’s Something About Mary. 

Spoiler alert: making a conscious decision to continue watching after those first few minutes results in 85 minutes of fart, sex and weed jokes. The unfunny kind, too. A Haunted House takes most of its cues from the Paranormal Activity series, whilst also parodying The Devil Inside and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, though Marlon himself described it as “Paranormal Activity, but with a black couple”. The trouble is that the film cannot adhere to the conventions of the found footage genre; there’s a lazy opening credits sequence, and even though it’s probably stupid to apply logic or continuity to a film as dumb as this, the timeline is all over the place, the timestamp on the camera disappears/reappears at will, and there are scenes where it’s fairly clear that there’s a separate party operating the camera.

Luckily, the younger of the Wayans bros proves himself to be a gifted enough comedian to make even the most idiotic of jokes land, as you’ll find yourself chuckling a handful of times during a movie that your better judgement knows should be relegated to a Blockbuster bargain bin. There’s a sequence just after Malcolm is finally convinced of the ghost’s presence, where he charges out of the house screaming, packs his things into a moving van and leaves for good, only to return in the morning realising that not even he “can sell the house in this market”, and it’s hilarious. He is able to take something that barely qualifies as a script, one he’s credited with co-“writing”, and inject it with enough personality to override its inherent awfulness; “this is for white people, we don’t investigate, we run, we live”.

Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between. The movie seems to revel in the lowest common denominator of comedy, sprouting jokes both crude and worse, stale. A Haunted House was released in the US at the beginning of the year, taking in $6.7 mil in its opening weekend to beat Gangster Squad to claim the no. 2 spot. So regardless of whether or not you actually see this movie, its sequel A Haunted House 2 is already in development, proving once and for all that all you have to do for a career in Hollywood is beat Ryan Gosling. 

Expected Rating: 6 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Review: Upstream Color / Cert: TBC / Director: Shane Carruth / Screenplay: Shane Carruth/ Starring: Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig/ UK Release Date: TBC

It has been eight years since Shane Carruth’s directorial debut, the dense, intelligent, time travel drama Primer. His follow-up, Upstream Color, is on the surface more accessible than his first film and yet somehow seems to be an even more baffling experience. Here the complex time travel mechanics are replaced by layers of meaning and emotion and a meditation on the threads that connect all of us to each other and the earth.

The plot kicks off with a woman (Seimetz) being drugged by a man who uses maggots in drug capsules, somehow gaining control over her mind. The woman withdraws all of her money to give to this man and finds her body crawling with worms. The worms are removed by a pig farmer who also happens to sample sounds of the world in his spare time. The worms are then placed into a pig. Sometime later the woman meets a former criminal (Carruth) who sports the same scars as her. The two form a bond and fall in love. As they get closer they start to realise that they share many of the same memories although they happened long before they met. They come to realise that something greater than themselves may be controlling their fate.

Upstream Color is not a film which will leave you with a definite idea of what happened come the credits. There is no expository monologue or big reveal. Instead we are given lots of gorgeously shot scenes of decay, nature and the everyday often accompanied with dialogue spoken in voice-over. Time seems to stop and start at will, dictated by the mood and the characters’ connections to each other. It is baffling, beautiful and bizarre and, approached in the right frame of mind, one of the most rewarding trips of 2013 so far. What you get from this is up to you and what you bring to it. Carruth seems to be saying something about connection and its drawbacks and going against nature’s grand plan. Going with the flow of the movie (downstream as it were) is the best approach. Letting the feeling and visuals wash over you and having patience will pay off, as those looking for meaning may find it come the ending.

Shane Carruth’s sophomore effort reveals him to be one of the most interesting directors working today; it’s an enlightening, spiritual trip well worth taking and will no doubt be discussed, enjoyed and puzzled over for years to come.

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Review: Star Trek Into Darkness / Cert: 12A / Director: J.J. Abrams / Screenplay: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof / Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch / Release Date: May 9th

In 2009, J.J. Abrams rebooted the Star Trek movie franchise with a thrilling mix of emotion, humour and adventure in a parallel universe where this crew have to find their own paths. Four years later and he is taking us into daring and action-packed darkness but also remembering to leave room for these characters to grow. Exhilarating free falling, vibrant visuals, marvel and menace, spectacular set design and spiralling starships deliver an immersive high that will leave you buzzing.  

The dazzling red landscape of Nibiru and the grey, sleek skyline of London 2259.55 are the backdrops to this fast, striding instalment. The story is set into motion with a bold act of terror by John Harrison (Cumberbatch), which leads into the exploration of this malevolent character and the reasons for his despicable actions. Military command and personal responsibility split crew members’ allegiances, just as the viewer’s own sympathies alter throughout in reaction to every twist and turn, but to reveal any more would ruin the fun. Rest assured though, it’s all a glorious display of technological know-how and cinematic imagination.  

Apart from the grand set designs, which are stunning and seen through the blue hue of lens flare (introduced in the first film and this time turned up to eleven), the characters are the strongest asset here and are brought to life by the stellar cast. The special spark between Spock (Quinto) and Kirk (Pine) is the emotional core of the film as their bond deepens into friendship. Spock’s emotions and relationships are brought to the forefront as his amorous affair with Uhura (Saldana) is tested right from the start. Quinto, Saldana and Pine all get time to shine with funny and poignant moments, but Abrams is careful not to dwell too long before interrupting with a big bang or fast-paced action sequence, which again all three get to have fun with in this sequel. The highly-strung Bones gets some corking one-liners and Karl Urban delivers them with aplomb. On the other hand, a baffling scene involving Dr. Carol Marcus (Eve) appearing in her underwear for no apparent reason feels entirely out of place and could have easily been trimmed to shorten the running time. As for Benedict Cumberbatch’s villain, he simply oozes intensity as he swoops across planets and collides with his foes.

Into Darkness does lack some of the emotional punch of the 2009 Star Trek and it would seem that the writing team of Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof didn’t have a clear idea of what the sequel would entail from the start of this franchise, but they’re also aware the characters are cherished for their traits and they play with this very well. They examine the blurry line between good and evil, explore the destructive nature of man and tackle the implications involving the creation of intelligent weaponry with some bold moves. That said, the need to entertain with battles, phaser fights and hand-to-hand combat takes over quite quickly. There are also some clever little flourishes, a tribute to Ray Bradbury in the naming of a USS vessel and Simon Pegg’s Scotty coming into his own and really having fun, which lighten the mood and delight.  

Abrams laid down the foundations and origin stories in the first film, couching them in a full-throttle, high-octane adventure. The sequel is more of a pensive journey of discovery, one that delivers a perilous but ultimately somewhat familiar ride. This works in its favour in that it allows the characters to mature into their iconic roles, but it also results in some loss of freshness and suspense; the amazing action sequences, impressive effects and spectacular starships are sure to bring a beaming smile to your face though.  

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Review: No One Lives / Cert: 18 / Director: Ryuhei Kitamura / Screenplay: David Cohen / Starring: Luke Evans, Adelaide Clemens, Derek Magyar / Release Date: Sep 6th

“It’s a beer and pizza movie,” said the barman, handing out beer and pizza before a screening of this WWE movie called No One Lives. One would be inclined to agree. Fast, furious and very violent, No One Lives is perhaps the perfect embodiment of a beer and pizza movie. 

Travelling through backwoods America, a pretty young couple are attacked and kidnapped by a violent gang of local hillbillies. Appearances can be deceptive though, as all parties are about to discover. Enter a young blonde heiress, bound and gagged in the trunk of a car. A ruthless serial killer, who will stop at nothing to ensure that No One Lives. A desperate fight for survival. Plenty of gore. And Lee Tergesen, playing an oddly likeable gang leader.

Don’t get too attached though. The most likeable characters in the movie are the first to go, picked off one by one, by this serial killer cross between Rambo and Jason Voorhees. Improvised and clever, the action is reminiscent of the Jack Ketchum novel Cover. Violent, unpredictable and nasty, No One Lives is a very old fashioned kind of horror movie. Lean, fast-paced and brutal, it’s a lot of fun.

While WWE (wrestling, not pandas) don’t exactly have the best track with horror or exploitation movies (See No Evil is barely memorable, The Condemned deeply unpleasant and misogynistic), No One Lives is a little more considered than their earlier efforts. Aside from a brief appearance by George Murdoch, there’s barely a wrestler in the film. That doesn’t stop it from laying down a few smackdowns though – including a bizarre fight between two female characters. The biggest coup the film has scored is in its acquisition of Ryuhei Kitamura as director. Having directed the massively entertaining Midnight Meat Train (one of the few decent Clive Barker adaptations, Bradly Cooper’s most enjoyable movie so far and Vinnie Jones’s best ever performance), Kitamura knows how to make a good beer and pizza movie. As one character emerges from within the sizeable corpse of another, you can be guaranteed a good time with No One Lives.

Provided you don’t think too much about it, or sober up halfway through. It lacks the mania and the wierdness of Midnight Meat Train, the likeability of Bradley Cooper (no, he is likeable, when not playing a hungover douche) and the physicality of Vinnie Jones. Luke Evans is handsome and suave, but not scary or even sympathetic enough. Biker baddie Flynn (Magyar) is annoying, his flunkies disposable. The film tries too hard to make its villain seem “cool”, leaving us with an artificial psychopath who talks too much and a heroine who seems disconnected from it all. No One Lives is the sort of movie which ends with one of the characters quoting its title.

Does it deliver the promise of that title? You’ll have to wait and see. Just make sure you come loaded with plenty of beer and pizza to make the most of the experience.

Expected Rating: 5 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Review: Iron Man 3 / Cert: 12A / Director: Shane Black / Screenplay: Drew Pearce, Shane Black / Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Jon Favreau, Rebecca Hall / Release Date: April 25th

Marvel Phase Two – the next raft of superhero movies based on the existing, successfully launched comic book franchises along with a few newbies such as Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy – gets off to a sensational, blistering start with Shane Black’s Iron Man 3. This is a movie which not only closes the cycle begun with Jon Favreau’s original Iron Man back in 2008 but also goes some way towards rehabilitating the unloved Iron Man 2 which now seems a better fit into the ongoing story of the life and times of Tony Stark. Early fears that fans were going to be treated to a Christopher Nolan-esque Iron Man mope-a-thon as our hero sinks into a world of deep despair and moody angst are fortunately blown right out of the water (much as Tony’s luxury cliff-top pad is spectacularly blown into it) in a film which tells a rousing, powerful character-based action/adventure story and balances the human drama of a man with massive personal demons threatening to tear his world apart with some genuine 24-carat belly laughs. Iron Man 3 is easily the funniest film yet from the Marvel Universe but its wit is slick and sophisticated and it never detracts from the thrills and excitement of a story where the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been for Tony Stark.

The events of last year’s Avengers Assemble have had a debilitating effect on the usually happy-go-lucky Stark. Thanks to his out-of-this-world experiences during the battle with the invading Chitauri, he’s plagued with self-doubt, he can’t sleep, he suffers from panic attacks. Fortunately there’s a sinister new super-baddie on the horizon requiring Iron Man’s attentions. This is the Mandarin, inscrutable and menacing public face of a global terrorist group dedicated to undermining and overthrowing Western values. Also on the scene is the crazed geneticist Aldrich Killian who is experimenting with the ‘extremis’ serum in pursuit of his goal of creating an army of super-soldiers (for reasons not entirely clear in the story). There’s no time for Tony Stark to sit around feeling sorry for himself, especially when the Mandarin launches a devastating attack on Stark’s home, capturing his beloved Pepper Potts (Paltrow) and hospitalising his best friend Happy Hogan (Favreau).

If a man can truly to be judged by the quality of his enemies then Tony Stark is right up there alongside his opponents in Iron Man 3, who are easily amongst the best yet pitted against any of the Marvel Universe’s movie superheroes. “You will never see me coming,” warns the Mandarin as he ominously sets himself up against the Western world – and the audience will never see The Mandarin’s true nature and motivations coming. Ben Kingsley (that’s Sir Ben to you) is very nearly the show-stealer, and Guy Pearce’s Killian is by turns sinister and powerful and yet as ready with the apt one-liner as Stark himself (scenes between the two could easily run with a laughter track as, indeed, could much of the whole film). Pearce, often underused in what are little more than cameo roles nowadays (think Prometheus) has rarely been better.

There’s little realistically left to say about Robert Downey, Jr himself as Tony Stark/Iron Man; the character now fits the actor like a glove. Downey’s comic timing is immaculate and his heroic chops are formidable. Any problems Downey may have had in the past in being lost in the Iron Man costume during the action sequences are cleverly countered here by showing Stark generally unmasked but augmented by various bits of Iron Man tech or else hurtling himself into Iron Man suits mid-flight. Writer/director Black, familiar with the rhythms of Downey’s style thanks to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, gives the actor dialogue which not only sings but is also as warm and witty as the best of Joss Whedon himself. And he’s not the only one; everyone here gets their moment to shine and Gwyneth Paltrow finally gets a bit more to do than just fawn over Tony or otherwise get sidelined by stronger characters and more substantial story arcs. Pepper Potts even plays a pivotal role in the explosive final action sequence – even if one apparently brave story beat disappoints by the predictability and inevitability of its undoing.

The reality is that there’s very little flab or flounder to Iron Man 3. The first hour is engrossing and immersive and scarcely drags despite its focus on character and drama, but the iron gloves really come off as Black shows his deftness of touch in a relentless tide of breathless action sequences – the demolition of Tony’s home, an astonishing mid-air rescue, Stark’s own rugged bouts of fisticuffs and Shellhead’s battles with extremis-enhanced super soldiers. It’s the Iron Man film we really all wanted after the first feature, but only now does it feel like we’ve really earned this one, that Tony Stark has experienced enough to deserve a story this big and an epiphany this satisfying. Tony Stark at the end of Iron Man 3 is a very different man from Tony Stark at the beginning – in every sense – and whilst he’s now clearly at one with both himself and his world (and really no longer in need of his mechanical alter ego), the audience is left in no doubt that the story of Iron Man is far from over.

Because, as the final caption promises us, ‘Tony Stark will return”. Whether Robert Downey, Jr will too is another matter entirely, and whilst it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone bringing the character so vividly to life in any future instalment, Iron Man 3 sees Marvel’s most-likely-to-fail superhero franchise in uncommonly good health and it sets a very high bar for this year’s upcoming wave of summer blockbusters to strive towards.

Oh, and you will be sticking around for that post-credits sequence, yes?

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Review: Oblivion / Cert: 12A / Director: Joseph Kosinski / Screenplay: Joseph Kosinski, Karl Gajdusek, Michael Arndt / Starring: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough / Release Date: Out Now

TRON: Legacy, Joseph Kosinski’s debut feature, was an extraordinary cinematic experience let down by a basic, near-robotic handling of story and a bland lead. For Oblivion, he’s roped in Mr Star Wattage Charisma Inc. himself – that’s Tom Cruise – but the director’s handling of plot still isn’t as finessed as it could be.

Kosinski is the spiritual love child of Ridley Scott: conceived in an ad agency and birthed in cinema. They may suffer the same artistic affliction when it comes to storytelling but neither lets the material fail completely. Oblivion, of course, is feast for the eyes. A wondrous spectacle, especially in IMAX, there’s much to enjoy and savour. Claudio Miranda, a recent Oscar-winner for his work on The Life of Pi, paints with light landscapes and interiors of neutral tones – greys and whites, mostly – with carefully and expertly managed use of colour.

Oblivion is yet another modern sci-fi picture influenced by the design aesthetic of Apple. The future is made of iPods! Ito Morabito’s work for French electro group Air, specifically the album cover for 10,000 Hz Legend (2001), seems to be another reference point. The scale and attention to detail is nothing short of breathtaking with primordial Icelandic vistas – a natural landscape heightened with seamless special effects.

The year is 2077. The human race has successfully defeated an alien invasion via the use of devastating nuclear weapons, and Jack Harper (Cruise) is waiting out his last tour of duty on our ravaged world as a maintenance technician. “We won the war, but lost the planet,” he tells us in voice over during the opening moments. Accompanying him is Victoria (Riseborough), a by-the-book colleague. Both are haunted by memories of past lives, though only Jack is inquisitive enough to act upon these nagging thoughts. What unfolds spells peril for them both and the other characters with whom they come into contact.

Based on an unpublished graphic novel by Joe Kosinski and reworked by several hands (rumour has it William Monahan and Michael Ardnt submitted drafts), Oblivion is pulp fiction with a blockbuster budget. The actors have to chew on a fair bit of expository dialogue, but only enough to help the audience keep up with the plot’s various twists and turns, and the injection of paranoia into proceedings midway into the second act recalls Philip K. Dick’s writings.

Exciting, action-packed and complemented by production design that will blow your mind, Oblivion is an exquisite sci-fi adventure that needs to be viewed on the biggest screen possible.

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating: