#39: ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Starring Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Matt Lucas. Written by Linda Woolverton and directed by James Bobin. 123 minutes long, $160 million budget.

Alice comes home from sailing the seven seas as a sea captain only to be locked up as a loony by her jilted fiancee from the first film before escaping into Underland through a mirror only to discover the Mad Hatter is dying and Alice needs to travel back in time to save his life. However to do that she must do battle with the demented Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) himself.

Cue garish, 123 minutes of overblown, uncanny valley CGI, OTT acting courtesy of Johnny ("What hat shall I wear for this performance") Depp and the ever shrieking Helena Bonhma Carter.

Sharing nothing at all with the source material save for the title, this is typical Hollywood serial fair, more of the same but bigger, much, much bigger! Plus a threat that threatens the whole of the Underworld and a great big race against the clock, in this case -literally) towards the great big ending where the status quo is restored, and old and new enemies become friends, all wrapped up with incongruously inaccurate historical bollocks.

This film is like a great big bag of candyfloss. It looks like it should be wonderful, but the first bite dissolves leaving nothing of substance just a sweetness that so wears off leaving you feel a little queasy. It's an utterly empty experience, one that will leave no memory of its existance once its over, indeed I doubt seriously you'll ever think of it again once you've left the theater, two hours later. Although I bet you go home craving something with a little substance, I know I did. I went home and watched all of Ben Hur in glorious HD widescreen.

Seriously don't bother with this, it's an ugly, garish, empty, shallow grotty little greed machine with nothing to recommend it at all, they even squander the Cheshire Cat which in itself is a shameful travesty.

Avoid, unless you want to develop mental diabetics.

3/10 

#38 WAR CRAFT: THE BEGINNING

Starring: Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Robert Kazinsky and Daniel Wu.

Written by Charles Leavitt and Duncan Jones and directed by Duncan Jones. 123 minutes long. $160 million budget.

The plot. A bunch of multi-coloured orcs come through a portal from their dead world because of dark magic and attack the humans to takeover their world. The leader of the humans, Dominic Cooper, his wizard, Ben Foster and some of the other humans fight the Orcs and some of those swap sides to fight the real baddy, the Orc's evil witchdoctor who needs lives, to power his magic.

So the Orcs and Humans fight on, before teaming up to fight something worse than each other in order to save each other, and a baby is sent down the river like Moses for the second film and that's ab out it. It's a shame it takes so long to get there but hey it's a damn sight better than Battlefield Earh and the Hobbit films which I really disliked.

Now, if you believe the critics this is a terrible film, as bad as Battlefield Earth, it's a film they vilified and hated with a passion, indeed it scored a terrible 29% on Rottentomato.com and took just $24 million dollars in its opening weekend. Normally this would mean that this film was a terrible flop. That is except for the fact that in the rest of the world this 'terrible' film has so far taken over $313 million dollars, most of that in China where it was more successful than Star Wars: The Force Awakens, thereby guaranteeing a sequel.

But enough of all that, is it any good? Well I'm not sure i can tell you, I found the whole film rather bewildering, I lost track as to who was what, or who was doing what to whom, or whether what was who or simply just where was what standing, was it on first base or third I really don't know. And I know it's very racist to say this and I feel bad but I simply couldn't tell the Orcs apart, they all looked the same to me.

I will say that the film isn't a terrible film, certainly not this decade's Battlefield Earth that's for sure. Everyone involved gives it their damndest, none so more than Duncan Jones, whose love for all things Warcraftian is blindingly obvious. He directs the living crap out of this film and does a damn fine job and the film's failings aren't his that's for sure.

This is Lord of the Rings for the MTV generation, all of the character seem to talk with American accents, they're all very young, none more so than the wizard played by Ben Foster who just seems far too young to be a wizard and it's all very shiny.

It's very earnest and it's clearly the start of a new franchise. It even ends with events set up to continue on in the next movie.

This sort of film survives on its CGI and although there are aspects of it that are impressive, particularly the skin tones and textures, the effect of so much CGI is that you simply stop connecting or caring for the characters because you know they're all fake and some of the camera moves are so clearly impossible in the real world that you just disconnect, plus there's the ever present threat of the Uncanny Valley to take you out of the moment.

However, if you're a fan of the game and you know these characters I'm sure you'll love this movie, but if like me you've never played it then it might all become a little incomprehensible. Plus it's very hard to root for so many ugly non-human characters and there's a distinct lack of a good, strong human character to root for.

6/10

#37 MONEY MONSTER

Starring:George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell, Dominic West and Giancarlo Esposito. Written by Alan Di Fore, Jim Kouf and Jamie Linden. Directed by Jodie Foster. Budget $27 million and 98 minute running time.

When laborer Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell) loses his life savings of $60,000 after investing in Walt Camby (Dominic West)'s company thanks to the rabid advice of TV financial pundit Lee Gates (George Clooney) he does the only thing a man in his position can do. He marches down to the TV studio and takes Gates hostage live on air, forcing him to put on a bomb vest, before demanding answers as to how the company Gates promoted could have lost $800 million due to a 'computer glitch' in the company's automated trading algorithm.

With only his producer, Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) talking to him through his earpiece from the control room and the police eager to storm the studio and kill Budwell by shooting Gates, it's a race against time to find out the truth behind the huge loss.

This starts off fantastically, with a great turns from Jack O'Connell, George Clooney and Julia Roberts, but as the film progresses it turns from an intriguing exploration of the stock-market as seen as a metaphor for the banking crisis, into a typical thriller with a race against time to uncover the vast global conspiracy behind the loss and the greed of the big baddy, Walt Camby.

This is an okay thriller, directed with skill by Jodie Foster that despite becoming quite generic is still an entertaining enough view.

7/10

#36 & 40: NICE GUYS

Starring Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley, Keith David and Kim Basinger. Written by Shane Black and Anthony Bagarozzi. 116 minutes long. Budget $50 million.

Set in Hollywood, Los Angeles during the smog-heavy summer of 1977, but with no mention at all of Star Wars, this sees heavy-for-hire, Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) team up with reluctant, down on his heel, Private Eye, Holland Marsh (Ryan Gosling) search for, not only, a missing 'dead' porn actress called Misty Mountains, but also the daughter of high ranking Department of Justice officer, a porn producer and the missing reels of a porn movie called: 'How Do You Like Your Car, Big Boy?', which all put together might just bring down entire US car industry if it's broadcast.

Confusing, complicated and at times bewildering the plot to this glorious film is so convoluted as to begger belief as our two anti heroes and Healy's daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) ram raid their way through Hollywood from party to shot-outs and national car show in search of the macguffin and it's utterly and unhinge-ingly glorious!

But what makes it so glorious isn't the plot, it's the casting and characters, Gosling and Crowe who bring a wonderful easy charm and likeability to their roles, that coupled with the young Angourie in her first role as as Marsh's daughter Holly is fantastic making this film more of a trio than a buddy movie. Those three plus Shane's writing and direction make this a satisfying meaty thriller that has the same easy casual air of ultra violence and charm as Freebie and the Bean.

Funny, utterly violent, coarse, crude, smutty and charming. A great Saturday night special.

9/10

#35 & 38 X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn, Hugh Jackman and Lucas Till. Written by Simon Kinberg. Directed by Bryan Singer. 244 minutes long. Budget $234 million.

So, here it is, X-Men: Apocalypse, or X-Men 6, if you prefer.

So, what's the plot, David? Well there's this big, blue mutant, no not Beast, Mystique nor Night Crawler, but a new one who's blue called – Apocalypse as played by Oscar Isaar. He's a really old baddie, maybe 10,000 years old who gets buried inside a booby-trapped pyramid in 3000 BCE and then gets woken up accidentally in the 1980s by Prof X's on-off squeeze Moira MacTaggart (Rose Byrne). Actually my old therapist used to say there's no such thing as an accident, so in that case, this whole film is Moira's fault.

ANYWAY.

3000 years later, Apocalypse (who joins a list of people who get things named after him, like Wellington, Sandwich and Crapper) wakes up in the 80s and decides the Earth needs a make over and so recruits four new horsemen, including Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and sets about destroying the world so he can remake it in his image, leaving it up to Prof X, Mystique, Beast, Cyclops, Quicksilver and lots of others mutants to stop them.

After that, it's a whistle stop tour of our massive cast of characters, each getting a good minute or two of screen time to propel this monster of a film on to the next plot point. never pausing for breath or for any other emotion other than angst, moodiness or action, before the huge big-boss smack down at the end of the film in an city weirdly devoid of any humans. Then there's just time for the world to  forgive the X-Men, before we get 10 minutes of credits and the obligatory post credit clip which sets up something really sinister, if you know your Marvel lore.

There's no real story, just pure plot and nothing more, one action beat linking to the next, building to the final showdown, this is a fun-free, thunderously dramatic, action-packed, super-hero smack down which easily eclipses Batman Vs Superman but comes nowhere near being as exciting as Captain America 3: Civil War.

Sticking the old adage of 'more please but bigger' Bryan Singer and writer Simon Kinberg up the ante by unleashing Apocalypse whose actions kill literally 10s of millions of innocent bystanders and civilians who seem to matter not one jot to the X-Men who despite being the heroes make no effort to save anyone. This film also has no time or patience for humour and is as dry as English mustard powder, the only glimpse of lightness comes courtesy, once again, from Quicksilver who, as he did in the last film stars in the highlight sequence of the movie.

Not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination and it's certainly and utterly action-packed, but this suffers from a strong case of been there, done that, it's entertaining enough, just not very original and the need for upping the ante every time is getting a little wary, Bond film villains don't need this threat of global destruction every time, so why do so many superhero films? Anyway, this should entertain, but like all the best popcorn this will leave you ripped to the tits on sugar but strangely hungry for something more.

7/10

#34 FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS

Starring Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Heldberg, Nina Arianda and Rebecca Ferguson. Written by Nicolas Martin and directed by Stephen Frears. Running time 110 minutes. Budget $4.5 million.

This is the sugar-free, bitter-sweet bio-pic of tone-deaf and tuneless Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep), a 1940's New York socialite and patron of the arts who believing herself to be a great singer hires Carneige Hall to perform, while her adoring husband, St. Claire Bayfield (Hugh Grant) hires pianist Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg) to train her for the performance of her life.

Despite being a gentle and funny film, this still manages to leave a bitter taste in your mouth when the novelty of her bad voice wears off and you begin to realise that all she wanted to do sing and entertain and has no idea how bad she really is, thus making you feel a little jaded for mocking her.

Streep and Grant are terrific and it makes you wish Grant had made more films, he's an old school actor and has a natural charm that reminds you of David Niven. Similarly, Streep performs effortlessly and makes Jenkins not a black and white figure of fun, but a character with depth and warmth and rather than mock her you find yourself rooting for her, despite knowing how this sad little tale will pan out. Stephen Frears' direction is, as always tight, and the film looks gorgeous. So it's sad to report that despite so much that is right with this film, it never really sings, it's sort of entertaining but nothing more, you find yourself wanting to learn more of her past which as it is is only subtly hinted at. The end of the film features an actual recording of the late Jenkins singing and it's impressive to see how well Streep captured it.

Also, while the cast, particularly Streep and Grant are great, the same cannot be said of Simon Heldberg who attempts to escape his Big Bang Theory fame by sporting an infuriating accent and a creepily effected manner, however all he succeeds in doing is making you realise he will forever be typecast as Wolowitz.

Still, this was a entertaining and funny romp and a nice distraction from the usual slew of big-budget super hero blockbusters that are slowly filling up the theatres.

7/10

#33 & 37: CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR

Starring: Chris Evans, Roberrt Downey Jnr, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd, Emly VanCamp, Tom Holland, Frank Grillo, William Hurt and Daniel Brühl.

Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. Budget $150 million. Running time 147 minutes long.

If I was to try and summarize the plot to this film I think it would take longer that the film's running time so I won't. Suffice to say, or nut-shelling it to a sound bite, the plot is something like this - the heroes gather after one too many incidents involving innocent bystanders and are forced to decide between signing up to a UN accord or going rogue, battle lines are drawn between Captain America and his chums and Iron Man and his, plus the arrival of two new supes, Spiderman and Black Panther. Meanwhile a shady looking young fellow is going around trying to get Sebastian Stan's Winter Solider blamed for the deaths of lots of people for his own nefarious purposes. After that, it's 147 minutes of near perfection.

This is, without doubt the best Marvel Universe movie so far produced, easily matching and surpassing Captain American's last outing and I thought that one was pretty damn good. The title is pretty misleading since there are so many characters it's more of an Avengers movie than it is a Capt American one however that's probably the worst thing you can say about this.

I was lucky to go into this film knowing little, apart from the trailers and for once the trailer reveals very little of this film! Plus, much of the trailer seems to have been made up of different takes and as such the film seems utterly fresh. The actors all seem to reveal in their roles so relaxed have they become in them. The plot is dense and complicated and builds nicely, never short changing you nor disappointing. The action is fantastic and the CG is used perfectly to enhance and not to create horrible plastic-looking monsters. There's little doubt that this will be the new benchmark by which subsequent super hero films are measured.

I bloody loved this film, it was effortlessly entertaining and the fights were genuinely peerless! you might have glimpsed the airport runway fight in the trailer but rest assured 'You ain't seen nothing yet!' in the true highlight of the movie the titular fight between the two bands of heroes is jaw-droppingly fantastic! And there are two sequences that had me not only gasping in sheer delight but whooping with utter joy, one is the introduction of the new Spiderman and oh boy what a glorious introduction that is, leading to a fight scene which eradicates the vile memories of the last three Spider Man movies in one go! And the other sequence I wouldn't dream of spoiling, it's just too wonderful for words, but it involves the Empire Strikes Back!

Taking time to develop the plot and giving each of the heroes time to shine, this was a film that despite it's long running time just zips along, a film that had me utterly engaged from beginning to end. The action sequences are fantastically mounted and the direction is lean and sharp.

I would suggest that if this is your first ever Marvel or super hero film then you're going to find it pretty incomprehensible but then that's your own fault for avoiding a simply glorious series of films, and it would pay for you to watch the last Captain America movie and the first Avengers one too before going in. However what makes this so good is that it doesn't all descend in the obligatory third act, final-fight showdown that often mars the Marvel movie template, this one ends in a much more personal way ending more with a whisper than a roar.

I won't take time to point out that this film is everything that the woefully piss-poor in comparison Batman Versus Superman would love to be. But the truth is that it is. Plus the Marvel Universe takes place in glorious day light and not the dreary, gloomy twilight fug of the DC-verse.

Without doubt the best blockbuster we're going to get this year!

See it once, see it twice, but whatever you do see it!

9/10