#76 MOTHER!

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson and Brian Gleeson. Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. Running time 121 minutes. Budget $30 million. Certificate 18.

SYNOPSIS  
WHAT FOLLOWS IS A SOMEWHAT MORE DETAILED THAN USUAL SYNOPSIS OF THE FILM. AS IN IT GIVES AWAY THE WHOLE STORY. IF YOU REALLY WANT TO SEE THIS FILM AND GO IN BLIND THEN PLEASE SKIP TO 'REVIEW PART, NO SPOILERS' AT THE BOTTOM, HIGH-LIGHTED IN RED. OTHERWISE, GET READY FOR A REAL SHOCKER...

The film opens with a badly beaten woman standing in a wall of fire, that is before Javier places a beautiful crystal on a small plinth in the charred, smouldering remains of a once magnificent wooden house, referred to later as 'paradise'. The crystal radiates light and transforms the blackened husk of a house back into pristine glory. Then a young woman, Jennifer Lawrence wakes up alone in bed, rolls over to look for her husband and calls out, 'Baby?'.

We discover that the house is tended to by Jennifer Lawrence, indeed she does everything in the house and spends 2/3rds of this movie doing house work while her husband Javier Bardem, a poet with writer's block struggles to write a new book as good as his first one. He spends his days looking for inspiration while Jennifer drifts from room to room, doing DIY or cooking meals for Javier. Then one day Ed Harris and later Michelle Pfeiffer turn up and take over. Jennifer puts up with them for a while but really wishes Javier would just ask them to leave, but he won't, especially when Ed reveals himself to be a big fan of Javier's work. Then they start to mess things up and no matter how much she pleads, Javier refuses to send them away. Then their two sons turn up, Domhnall and Brian Gleeson and before you know it, the former's only gone and murdered the later by bashing in his head. Distraught, Ed and Michelle throw a wake in the house and invite loads of people who just take over and Jennifer gets really upset. Anyway, one day while Javier is away, Ed and Michelle break into Javier's office, despite being told that's the only room in the house they're not allowed in, and break his crystal and finally he loses it and he throws them out of his house. Then in an argument, Javier and Jennifer have break up sex and she instantly falls pregnant, which in turn inspires Javier to write a new poem. On the day the baby is due, the poem is finished and before she knows it, the house is filled with thousands of new people who all worship Javier and his new poem, and that's when things finally go bat shit crazy.

These new interlopers utterly trash the house to such an extent that an insanely violent riot breaks out and a whole new religious order emerges with those who take the new poem as a religious tract and inter-faith fighting erupts with other supporters of the poem fighting over its interpretation. Finally open warfare erupts and the house is horribly trashed. In desperation, Javier rescues Jennifer from the anarchy and barricaded in his office she gives birth to a baby boy. And then something truly horrible happens to the baby and Jennifer is horribly beaten and in a fit of rage destroys the house and herself in a huge fireball, reducing the once magnificent house to a smouldering ruins once again. Javier carries her badly burned body back to his office and tells her he needs her love and that he has to try one more time. Then he rips out her heart and removes a beautiful crystal from it which he places on the small plinth, which once again transforms the blackened husk of the house back to its former pristine glory. The film ends with a new woman waking up in Javier's bed, rolling over to look for  her Poet husband and calling out 'Baby?'.

To make sense of all that has gone before here is a handy guide as to who Jenn, Jav, Ed and Michelle really are, although you might have already worked it out for yourselves. I'd sort of guessed from the literal get go.

SPOILER ALERT.
Jennifer Lawrence is MOTHER NATURE, Javieer Bardem is GOD, Ed Harris is ADAM and Michelle Pfeiffer is EVE. The Gleeson boys are KANE and ABEL.

REVIEW PART, NO SPOILERS.

This is a huge, self-indulgent pile of utter bollocks. And although beautifully art-directed and well directed is just so pretentious that it literally disappears up its own arse with self-importance twaddle. If you found Darren's equally appalling Noah a tad too religious for your taste, listen lady you ain't seen nothing yet!

Actually for a while this is quite an interesting and intriguing film, its been marketed as a strange horror/mystery but believe me the only horror here is your own when you realise this is just a fucking 'what-if' Sunday school story. Honestly it's so utterly annoying because when the religious bollocks finally gets flung in your face you're frankly past caring.

The only saving grace (pun intended) is the delightful sight of Jennifer Lawrence wearing a see-through top right at the beginning of the movie. Oh and Ed Harris who's another one of those actors who can do no wrong, well almost no wrong, cos this one really tested my patience.

Nothing to see here, save yourself and jog on.

3/10

#75 AMERICAN ASS ASS IN

Starring Dylan O'Brien, Michael Keaton, Sanaa Lathan, Shiva Negar and Taylor Kitsch. Written by Stephen Schiff, Michael Finch, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. Directed by Michael Cuesta. Running time 111 minutes long. Budget $33 million. Certificate 18.

Based on a series of books written by Vice Flynn, Mitt Rapp (Dylan O'Brien) is sent off on the revenge trail when his fiancee is killed in a terrorist beach attack. 18 months later a laser-focused Mitt has grown a beard, learned the Koran, become fluent in Arabic, infiltrated the Muslim terrorist cell responsible and transformed himself into a one-man killing machine. However, before he can exact the revenge he's dreamed and trained for he's recruited by C.I.A Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) for an ultra bad-ass black ops outfit managed and trained by cold war warrior and utter bad-ass Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton). It transpires that a shipment of weapon-grade Plutonium has been stolen on behest of a splinter group of the Iranian government and the chase is on to track it down before it's used to destroy the United States 6th Fleet. To make matters even worse the man behind the crime is a mysterious terrorist known only as Ghost (Taylor Kitsch) whose skills and training seem awfully familiar to the sort of training Hurley provides. Hmmm, I wonder if there's a connection...

This film is a real rarity, it's an 18 certificate action film and it's hardly surprising considering the violence, graphic deaths and torture scenes that populate the film. It also doesn't skim on the detail or cut away before we see multiple bullet holes, knife wounds and the close ups of finger nails getting ripped out that seem to behalf practically all the cast of this film, my god even the utterly innocent unnamed bell boy who takes Dylan up to his hotel gets chainsawed to death when he asks for a tip!

Starring Dylan O'Brien who had the misfortune to star in the dreadful YA movies Maze Runner and also Taylor Kitsch, who not so long ago was the next Dylan O'Brien, that was before he had a truly dreadful run of terrible films like Battleshits, John Carter and Savages that seriously derailed his career. This time round he's playing the baddy and he's rather good at it, as is Michael Keaton in the gruff drill sergeant role who just eats up the screen in every scene he's in. Actually there's quite a lot to like about this film, it's an aggressive, hard edged spy thriller with double crosses, hidden agendas, car chases, explosions, fights and more swarthy looking assassins than you can shake a stick at, and it's even got a ticking fricking atom bomb for god's sake, A TICKING FRICKING ATOM BOMB!!!!!

So, in the final analysis, what this is is a typical DTV Steven Siegel movie but with an A-List cast and a bigger budget, oh and no Steven Siegel which is a blessing and earns this film an extra star before we've even gotten to the final score on the door. It's in no danger of blagging a Best Picture Oscar, or one for screenplay, or direction, but it might just spawn a franchise, perhaps even becoming the next Bourne, actually if you liked Bourne then you know what to expect with this, although this is a more violent Jack Ryan than Jason Bourne. It's cut from the same cloth although one without the splashes of shaking camera splashes of vomit, the endless plots-beneath-plots, double crosses, or amnesia suffering super spy because the last thing we need is another one of those!

This is a solid, but utterly poe-faced, violent romp, which has no room for brevity or a lightness of touch and in the final analysis is the male equivalent of a romcom, so let's call it a ACTROM. It belts along, giving you no time to get bored, it's punctuated by action every couple of minutes, it's got guns, car crashes, explosions and punch ups and it's got Michael Keaton, so all-in-all, this is a solid enough Saturday Night Special of a movie and nothing more or less.

7/10

#74 WIND RIVER

Starring Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Gil Birmingham, Jon Bernthal, Graham Green, Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. Budget $11 million. Running time 111 minutes. Certificate 15.

When a US Fish and Wildlife Service agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) finds the shoeless corpse of a young native American woman frozen to death six miles from the nearest house, he triggers an FBI investigation, in the form of green-horn FBI special agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) that forces him to relive the terrible death of his own daughter who died in horribly similar circumstances several years earlier, a death that cost him his marriage. However when a second naked corpse is discovered, this time of a dead male miner, the murders takes on a chilling new dimension.

What follows is an thought-provoking and intense but also sadly bleak and somewhat depressing crime thriller set on the stunning vista of a Native American reservation in the depths of Wyoming in the middle of winter in the company of Tribal Police Chief Ben (Graham Green). That said, despite being depressing, that's not a bad thing, indeed it really helps to make this a gripping thriller.

Jeremy Renner is surprisingly good as the tracker and hunter, bringing to his role some real depth, humanity and pain. Although Elizabeth Olsen has a less success in her role which gives her far less opportunity to emote as silently as her fellow Avengers team mate does. Similarly, this is a political film with something to say, this time about the plight of the Native American male youth which is explored and the film rarely misses an opportunity to point out the bleakness facing this tragically disenfranchised portion of American life.

Written by the man responsible for both Sicario and Hell or High Water, this is a serious and intense film that builds slowly and ends with an extremely dramatic and somewhat startling burst of some unexpected violence, which does feel oddly out of place with what has developed over the course of the film. This is Taylor Sheridan's first movie as a director and although he handles it well, some of his scenes feel a little clunky and there is a sense he is still to find his feet as a director.

7/10

#73 CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS: THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE

Starring Kevin Hart, Ed Helms, Thomas Middleditch, Nick Kroll, Jordan Peele and Kristen Schaal. Written by Nicholas Stoller and directed David Soren. Based on the series of books by Dav Pilkey. Budge $38 million. Running time 89 minutes. Certificate U.

Two young friends, one a budding cartoonist the other a writer create a cartoon character called Captain Underpants who somehow becomes real and end up battling not only an angry principle but also a demented super-villain called Professor Poppypants.

This is one bloody funny animated film that came as an absolute suprirse to me, I'd avoided it when it first came out thinking I'd seen enough kids animated movies to last me a lifetime, but when my youngest Baxter said he'd like to see it I thought 'ah sod it, why not?' And I'm bloody glad i did. I loved this, it's silly, it's full of bottom and fart jokes and the animation is a delight! It's most certainly not big or clever and some parents will find it childish but they're missing the point! this is gloriously and unashamedly childish and I loved it for that! The jokes come thick and fast and even include a Uranus joke!

God, I hope there's a sequel. If you've not seen this yet and you get a chance DO IT! I promise you'll not be disappointed, unless you're a stuck up poppy-pants. This is a wonderful tonic to those saccharin overloaded, life-lesson-teaching animated films that get vomited up all the time, like all of the vile films that were previewed before it, like the My Little Pony movie.

So, if a school stage full of children making music with fart sounds has you smiling already then come and give it a go, you'll shit yourself laughing. I know I did.

Great unadulterated childish fun!

8/10

#72 IT

Starring Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgård, Jeremy Ray Taylor (Ben), Sophia Lillis (Bev), Finn Wolfhard (Richie), Wyatt Oleff (Stan), Chosen Jacobs (Mike), Jack Dylan Grazer (Eddie), Nicholas Hamilto (Henry Bowers) and Jackson Robert Scott (Georgie). Written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman. Directed by Andy Muschietti. Budget $35 million. Running time 135 minutes long. Certificate 15.

There's an ancient evil that lurks deep beneath the streets of Derry, one that awakens every 27 years to feast on fear, but this year it's picked on the wrong bunch of losers to try and feed on. Now seven pre-teenage friends will overcome their personal demons and phobias and come together and try and put a stop to the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) and its terrible rampage.

I personally think that in generations to come the name Stephen King will be listed alongside the likes of Dickens, Shakespeare and Mark Twain as one of the greatest story tellers of all times. his output is prestigious to put it mildly. He's written over a 100 books, including The Stand, The Shinning, The Shawshank Redemption and Salem's Lot. And although his books tend to be, on the whole, extremely satisfying, the movie adaptations of his work isn't always successful and for every Carrie, Mist, Misery or The Green Mile there's a Maximum Overdrive, Dark Tower or The Cell waiting for the unsuspecting.

And so to IT, the second attempt to transfer Stephen's most epic opus to the glittering screen, although the last outing better known as the John Boy Walton adaptation is best known for Tim Curry's portrayal of Pennywise the Clown, one of the most unsettling screen monsters of all times, rather than for its rather dull and scare-free and bum-numbing running time.

This new adaptation was a deeply satisfying, surprisingly creepy and altogether thoroughly entertaining fright-fest, which while not scaring me as much as The Exorcist once did nevertheless left me feeling very unsettled and un-nerved by several of the encounters with Pennywise.

 I usually find films this long fairly exhausting, but not so this time, indeed I really think the long running time really helps the film. It makes you feel connected to the young cast and their plight. In fact, the young cast is excellent, be it class clown, hypochondriac or grief-stricken elder brother and the utter lack of a named actor makes it far easier to identify with them and the terrible horror they heroically face.

A terrifically gripping and satisfying movie that despite ending with a caption that reads: CHAPTER ONE still delivers a meaty and powerful ending that will easily satisfy you should the inevitable sequel fail to live up to this one.

A funny, gripping and genuinely scary horror film that despite following the 'don't show it all' rule, still manages to be seriously and unpleasantly gruesome.

8/10

#71 THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM

Starring Bill Nighy, Olivia Cooke, Douglas Booth, Daniel Mays, Sam reid, Maria Valverde, Henry Goodman, Morgan Watkins and Eddie Marsan. Written by Jane Goldman. Directed by Juan Carlos Medina. Running time 105 minutes. Certificate 15.

Cor, luv a duck, there's a series of 'orrible murders what are all taking place in the middle of Victorian London during a ruddy pea-souper and it's up to one man Inspector Kildare (Bill Nighly) to try and stop the murderer, known as the Lime House Golem before he strikes again. Kildare, using the killer's own journal, tries to decide which of 4 suspects including Dan Leno and Karl Marks might be the killer, while at the same time trying to find evidence that'll prove the innocence of a former music hall star Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke) on trial for the supposed murder of her husband.

A gory, well made, gripping who-dunnit murder mystery whose destination is far more entertaining that the journey, which isn't to say this is a bad film. Indeed far from it, this is a deeply atmospheric, very well acted and written murder mystery, ably directed by Juan Carlos Medina with a superb cast of actors and frankly anything with Eddie Marsan is worth seeing in my book!

Adapted from Peter Ackroyd's Dan Leno and the Lime House Golem this is an engrossing and satisfying thriller and makes for a very nice change from the usual summer glut of overblown special effects blockbusters that have been stinking up the cinemas for far too long this year.

8/10

#70 STRATTON

Starring Dominic Cooper, Gemma Chan, Austin Stowell, Tyler Hoechlin, Connie Nielson, Thomas Kretschmann, Derek Jacobi and Tom Felton. Written by Duncan Falconer and Warren Davis II and directed by Simon West. Running time 95 minutes. Cert 15.

Dominic Cooper is Stratton, a SBS operative assigned to MI6 on the hunt of Grigory Barovsky (Thomas Kretschmann) a supposed 20-year  dead KGB operative who killed Stratton's partner in a bungled mission deep inside Iraq, or Iran or somewhere in the middle east. Anyway, Grigory has got his hands on a bio weapon called Satan's Snow or something and he's out for revenge. So Strat and his new partner, Marty (Tyler Hoechlin) head off for revenge and to bring an end to Grigory's shit.

Back in 1982 Lewis Collins starred in Who Dares Wins, his showcase to prove to Chubby and Eon as to his suitability to play James Bond. 35 years later and Dominic Cooper seems to be having a punt with this, an utterly middling putt-putt of a spy thriller which jets around the world from Camden, to Docklands to Rome as our very laidback and reserved hero Stratton goes about his job of attempting to prevent Grigory from doing his. It all builds to a very piffling car chase between Stratton's Land Rover SUV and a No. 9 red double-decker bus in a London park.

And that's it really. This is a middling, toothless, non-offensive poottle, mostly through London, which features a couple of casual car chases, some slight blood letting gun battles and a body count in the low teens. Apart from one rather hard-edged interrogation scene this is a rather bland thriller. If you want to see a proper action film about the SBS (Special Boat Services) check out North Sea Hijack, starting the later great Roger Moore as the cat-loving, misogynist marine counter-terrorist expert Rufus Excalibur ffolkes who goes up against unhinged terrorist, Anthony Perkins who's only gone and booby-trapped three North Sea oil platforms with three massive bombs!

STRATTON 4/10
NORTHSEA HIJACK 8/10