Spectre - Danny's Review

After the success of Skyfall this is another strong Bond film. It combines big screen appeal with high quality actors. Even the action scenes were good. In the first big car chase through Rome's tiny streets Bond is also on the phone to Moneypenny back in London, which means if you're not that excited by fast cars you get some plot development too. It's all round entertainment, with a bit of comedy too, mostly through Ben Whishaw as Q.

The plot is similar to Skyfall. There is a super-villain from Bond's past, who has secretly been behind everything that's going on even though we've never heard from him before. The mechanism of evil is technological; in this case persuading several intelligence agencies to combine all of their spy satellites so everyone can be monitored all the time. They also mention drones, which may be prescient but may backfire and date this film in the same way that the Parkour of Casino Royale clearly dates it to the mid 2000s. The traditional plot element of trying to conquer the world, is absent. Instead this film sets up a nemesis who may appear in future films. Without giving it away, it's a re-imagining of equivalent scale to Khan in Star Trek into Darkness (but not as rubbish).

The Austrian villain is nicely played by Christoph Waltz, who acts calm but with an edge of madness. Sometimes you actually feel sorry for him, as he's clearly a bit of an outcast and has become progressively more annoyed with Bond always getting the better of him, looking flash and getting the women. He is introduced with a lot of gravitas through a very unusual board meeting, unlike anything I've ever experienced, where a candidate for a vacant board position demonstrates his credentials by gouging out his rival's eyes. This muscleman turns into an effective henchman. I looked him up, he's former WCW Wrestler Dave Bautista, and he wisely has been given a non-speaking role.

Waltz plays a very well organised villain, who has all sorts of protocols in place. For example, at one point in his lair he presses a button and all the ranks of spy-hackers behind him stop what they're doing and stand up. Do they practice things like that? He also lives a life of luxury, and when Bond willingly enters the lair a very smart servant pops up with champagne. Bond plays into this life of sophistication, and is dressed to kill wherever he goes. It's another world he lives in. At one point he's on a train with Bond Girl Léa Seydoux (a french Kate Moss, but better actor). He passes his suit to a butler with instructions to "press this" - you wouldn't get that on Virgin Trains.

Behind the front line and waging a political war are veteran spy-director Ralph Fiennes, and flashy new kid Andrew Scott, who you will probably recognise as evil as he played Moriarty in Sherlock. Needless to say it turns out there's still very much a place in the world for Bond's approach, and you can't trust computer's to do a man's work. There's also a few tie-ins to the previous Daniel Craig Bond films, and that makes me want to watch them all again, even perhaps Quantum of Solace.

This is the longest Bond film yet (148 minutes), and it is sometimes a little slow. Highlights for me are the opening scenes in Mexico, and the villain Christoph Waltz. I think it's going to be a massive hit, I went on Tuesday at 3pm and the cinema was packed.

Suffragette - Danny's Review

This was on my list of 20 films to see this year so I was delighted to go and watch it at the local Grosvenor Cinema in Glasgow (currently I've made it to about half the list). I was not disappointed.

The film follows one branch of the suffragette movement, who represent a cross-section of the women in society. At the bottom is Carey Mulligan, who works all day as a washerwoman with an abusive boss and has a small boy and husband to look after. She can't afford to risk being outcast for her political views, but gets accidentally sucked into the movement and pays a heavy price for it. Although the film is presented as an everywoman's story to add to the historical gravitas Mulligan brushes with the movement's leader Emmeline Pankhurst, gets interviewed by mustachioed Prime Minister Lloyd George and the finale of the film is with the King at Derby Day.

Although the big picture is Votes for Women, what the women really want is equal pay and conditions, such as in Made in Dagenham. However, since the protagonists are so clearly right it doesn't matter too much. They are treated badly, and deserve better. If it wasn't for the fact that it really happened, it would be slightly hard to believe. The film does not present any clear villain for the audience to rail against, just rows of smartly dressed uncaring politicians, and local men and housewives who scold those women who stand up for their rights. The chief policeman, Brendan Gleeson, is portrayed as quite sympathetically following the law even though he knows it's wrong.

You get the sense of how helpless the women are when Carey Mulligan comes back from a week in jail and asks her husband (Ben Whishaw) if their boy has been eating well. He replies that the woman across the road did her best, as it didn't even occur to him to cook himself. "I'll make some tea" she replies.

There is a parallel to the ANC movement in South Africa, where Nelson Mandela gives up on peaceful protest and becomes and terrorist leader. Just as Mandela eloquently defends this view as necessary when all else has failed, so does Helena Bonham Carter as a veteran suffragette militant.

Overall this film gives a nice insight into the suffragette movement, and even when nothing's happening it's interesting to see London life one hundred years ago. My wife enjoyed it too, and declared it a must-see.

Director Sarah Gavron, writer Abi Morgan and stars Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep

Macbeth - Danny's Review

Since this could be the last time I go to the cinema for a long while I wanted to finish with a bang. Something big and dramatic. This new Macbeth fits the bill. The opening battle, set in a cold and rugged Scotland, is epic in nature but also dirty and brutal. There's occasional slow motions on Michael Fassbender as Macbeth, grimly slaying his enemies, with not a word spoken.

For me the problems started when they began talking. They've not updated the original Shakespeare, and it's quite hard to follow. I imagine if you saw the text written down you could work it out, but it's often quite hard to process in real time, especially as a lot of the dialogue is delivered as voice over or through a scraggly beard. It's a bit like having English as your second language - you can understand what they're saying, but only if you concentrate. Sometimes you'll miss most of a sentence and rely on understanding one or two key words only. At one point I started daydreaming and realised I hadn't understood anything for the last minute, and was just watching Fassbender crawl across the floor grinning maniacally.

Thankfully the plot is fairly straightforward. Macbeth kills the old king, becomes king himself, then feels guilty about it. What is trickier, and I didn't actually get this until reading another review, is that director Justin Kurzel (soon to release Assassin's Creed) has added a twist, and Macbeth's children now feature. So that explains the child with stones in his eyes at the start.

Although I enjoyed the story, because of the effort required to focus I've never felt closer to falling asleep in a movie. Some of it is OK, such as when Macbeth seeks out the three witches he then meets someone else on the road: "Saw you not the Weird Sisters?" he asks. You can understand that and get a nice sense of olde-worldiness. But some of the rest of it, which I can't give an example of because I don't know what they were saying, didn't make sense to me.

The production had a very authentic feel. When Macbeth's reinforcements arrive at the start, they really are only children, including possibly another Macbeth son, though I'm not sure. This alleged son also speaks with a genuine Glasgow accent, which you don't hear often.

Once he becomes King Macbeth foolishly believes he's safe, because he can't be killed by man of woman born. He doesn't realise that MacDuff (Sean Harris) was untimely ripped from my mother's womb so doesn't count. Macbeth also knows he'll be safe until Birnham Wood comes to Dunsinane castle. In the play the wood comes to the castle (sort of) as the attacking soldiers strap twigs to themselves for camouflage; in the film this is adapted so instead the wood is burnt and the smoke comes to the castle. Macbeth recognises what's happening when the smoke arrives, and senses his impending doom.

In fact, almost from the moment he kills old King Duncan (David Thewlis) Macbeth is morose. He knows it's not going to work out well. There's a memorable scene when he and Lady Macbeth host a terrible dinner party, ruined by Macbeth's insistence he can see the ghost of Banquo, who he also murdered. Lady Macbeth is played by Marion Cotillard, who is a more calm and scheming counterpart to Fassbender's very expressive Macbeth.

Overall a grand film, which I think I will enjoy next time at home with the subtitles on.

The Martian - Danny's Review

Contains spoilers!

Following Alien, Bladerunner, and the under-rated Prometheus (I loved it) this is director Ridley Scott's fourth trip into space. The Martian is based on a book by Andy Weir, and follows it pretty closely. The major difference is that whereas the book focuses almost exclusively on the abandonned astronaut (particularly for the first three quarters, after which it gets rubbish) the film introduces the rest of his crew straight away, and spends much more time with the rescue attempt back on Earth. This is a shame, as what makes The Martian unusual is the loneliness and ingenuity of Mark Watney, the lost man on Mars. And he's not fighting aliens or anything like that, just growing potatoes and trying to survive.

The psychological aspect of Watney's lengthy exodus are not really explored, we just see him getting really thin and growing a beard. But Matt Damon is quite watchable and easy to empathize with. The jokes that he makes (constantly saying he doesn't like disco, and swearing) are fairly funny, which is not what you expect from a man with no one to talk to for a year. But then Watney is a remarkable character, and although his message of 'one problem at a time' could be useful to anyone he applies it particularly well himself. I hope if for some unlikely reason I found myself marooned on Mars I'd display the same ingenuity and resilience. The best parts of the film are when he deals with the everyday planning of life as the sole coloniser of Mars, either in montage form (growing potatoes) or in real time (running out of ketchup for his potatoes).

There is a strong support cast. Jeff Daniels is good as the mission boss. He's capable of making the hard decisions. Others are not so steely, in particular Jessica Chastain as the head of Watney's mission, who risks her own life (and therefore indirectly those who depend on her) by continuing to search for Watney when he is first lost, and again at the end. Watney has spent hundreds of days doggedly slogging along to protect his life, whereas others seem quite happy to recklessly throw theirs away. And NASA astronauts would never mutiny, it's ridiculous. It made me angry, nearly as angry as during Air Force One where they jeopardize everyone to try and save the president. Finally, Sean Bean looks and sounds like he's in a totally different film (a very boring one). Look out for the bit where he is given a tiny cup of tea and doesn't know what to do with it.

I found all of the excitement at the end during the rescue a bit of a distraction, that's not what the film is about. If you want to watch people spinning around in space, watch Gravity again. One thing I did like was the PR aspect of NASA back on Earth, and the scenes reminiscent of Apollo 13 where the engineers on Earth try and replicate what Watney is doing on Mars. It was a shame that of all the problems Watney solves they spent lots of time on the communication aspect, as his solution to that (using a two-digit code for each letter) is not an elegant one. Other that that of course I loved all of the use of Science and Maths. It's great to have a hero who's a Botanist and Engineer.

Overall, it was a slick production. The story moves along well and looks good. One advantage of using CGI to represent zero gravity is that since no one knows what it's supposed to look like, so it always looks fine. While I was really hoping for Castaway set in space I still found this very enjoyable. A final minor plus point is the use of picture credits at the end, normally reserved only for Army films but welcome here too.

No Escape - Danny's Review

There was a cracking film in the 90s called No Escape, starring Ray Liota. This is the description from IMDB:

A soldier convicted for murdering his commanding officer is dumped and left to die on a prison island inhabited by two camps of convicts.

What a great plot. Unfortunately the new film called No Escape is not a remake, and features no prison islands. But it does have the same tension and claustrophobia, and of course difficulty of escaping. This is no surprise, given that it's directed by John Erick Dowdle, who seems to specialise in horror in confined spaces. His last three films were about: demons in the catacombs under Paris (So Above, So Below); getting stuck in a lift with Satan (Devil); and a film crew trapped in a building with a zombie apocalypse outside (Quarantine).

Although there are no supernatural elements in No Escape, it still feels like a horror film. But this is horror for adults, where the greatest fears are losing control of the situation, and losing your children. Owen Wilson and his wife and two small girls are off to live in some un-named Asian country (Cambodia?) because of his job for a shady multinational company. Once they arrive things don't seem quite right, the TV and internet don't work and there's no newspapers. At first they casually put this down to it being "Just Asia" before things escalate rapidly, and soon they're in the middle of it desperately trying to get out.

The film nicely captures the fear of being in a foreign land. They can't speak the language. They don't know where anything is. They stand out everywhere they go, particularly Owen Wilson with his floppy blond hair. And there's hordes of machete-wielding locals after their blood.

Pierce Brosnan plays the veteran tourist, who helps out the naive family. It's a good role for him and I'm not sure if it's deliberate but I like his wandering accent. He's a well-travelled man. There's one point where he delivers a political speech and attempts to reverse our sympathies, but it doesn't work too well, as the movie is shot almost like a zombie film, with hordes of nameless baddies.

It also plays with a few of the classic moments in thrillers, such as when the youngest daughter drops her favourite toy and wants to go back, and when Owen drops his map and we think he's lost. The tension really gets cranked up, so much so that for the last 30 minutes I was sitting on my hands and didn't realise they'd become completely numb. The first invasion of the hotel and the rooftop scene are particularly good. Owen Wilson is believable as the reluctant hero; he's scared himself but has to keep his family moving. His wife is a bit annoying in panicking under pressure, but I suppose that's her role. At least the little girls are quite stoic, including quietly peeing themselves when they are hiding to avoid having to break cover.

Overall, this is a solid thriller, with some very thrilling moments.

Inside Out - Danny's Review

The magic of Pixar tempted me to pay to watch an animation, for the first time in decades. The cinema was packed, and some of the kids looked about four years old. I know people claim that these sorts of films are for adults too, but they're wrong. The target audience of almost every film is the same as the protagonist, in this case an 11 year old girl called Riley, who like all animated characters has eyes the size of lemons.

The action takes place inside the girl's head, where the control tower is manned by the five emotions of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. This references the theory that all human cultures have six basic facial expressions (Surprise gets left out). It's a bit odd that these emotions are in charge, I would have thought they were subconscious automated responses, and the actual control centre of the brain should be somewhere else. Perhaps with those little aliens in the Eddie Murphy film Meet Dave.

Sometimes you see into other people's heads. They have their own version of the five emotions, with a different one at the controls. For the little girl Joy is mostly in charge, but we see the value of the other emotions too, in particularly sadness. It's a bittersweet story.

We get a strange and colourful tour of the brain. At the end of each day the memories are shifted from short to long-term, and the Dream Production team puts on a performance complete with reality filter to make it seem real. There's clowns lurking in the subconscious, a graveyard of old childhood memories, and caretakers who destroy old memories that aren't needed any more ("Phone numbers? She's got them all on her cell now."). Most of it seems loosely based on neuroscience, though I'm not convinced by the personality islands and core memories.

Hearing someone's innermost thoughts is always entertaining, and this film had plenty of that. It was an enjoyable film, with some well thought out moments.

Ant-Man - Danny's Review

I went to the cinema yesterday for a double bill. One family-friendly superhero film (Ant-Man) and one animation for children (Inside-out). It was a tough sell as I don't like superhero films and I don't like animations. I like films with prisons, submarines, and Denzel Washington.

Arnold Schwarzenegger had it right in his autobiography Total Recall when he was anxious that his character in Terminator 2 wasn't allowed to kill anybody, and had to be reassured by James Cameron that the rest of the film was still violent. There's something hugely disappointing about action sequences where you know no one can get hurt. Weirdly Ant-Man's 12 certificate does allow swearing, specifically the word shit which appears a few times.

The premise is that Michael Douglas has discovered a way to "shrink the distance between atoms" but decided to bury the research as it was too dangerous. But his evil bald protege and former friend has now cracked the formula, so Douglas recruits ex-con Paul Rudd to use the tiny technology to destroy the research. There's also Michael Pena providing quite a good comedy sidekick, a woman with a massive fringe and icy demeanour (like the woman in Jurassic World; 80s power dressing is back) and look out for a surprise appearance by Avon Barksdale from The Wire.

Two plot flaws. The first time Ant-Man is shrunk nobody can hear him shouting, but later they all can. It's explained that when he's tiny he's much denser (his mass hasn't changed) which is why he's so strong. But Michael Douglas has a tiny tank on a keyring which he reveals is actually a full size tank. So why doesn't it weigh the same as a full size tank?

The CGI fest of Ant-Man shrinking and running around is all done in a helter-skelter way, which makes you think you're watching an animation (specifically B Movie). There's no time to think about what it would actually be like to be tiny.

This film is written by Edgar Wright (Sean of the Dead etc.) and Joe Cornish (Adam & Joe) but clearly has a studio influence too. It's a strange mish-mash of standard action and attempted comedy. Paul Rudd as Ant-Man occasionally has sarcastic lines that mock the action, such as "I really ruined the moment there didn't I?" When he suggests that they call The Avengers I thought he was joking, but he was serious and this film does surprisingly live in the world of The Avengers, and there's the worst sequence of the film where they meet The Falcon.

It's a good cast, and slickly made. The best bit is the surreal moment that you've already seen in the trailer when they zoom out on the crash-bang-wallop action and it's just toy-trains. I found this entertaining but think it could have been really good if it was made 30 years ago, with a bit less polish.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue; Nation = Jamie's (review)

The grammar primer's fifth instalment is the fourth best, ranking behind the beautiful De Palma confection in first place, Brad Bird's rollicking cartoon in second and JJ Abram's vicious, elevated-by-Philip Seymour Hoffman third entry in third. Woo's whiffy second entry, which now seems a lot more fun then it did at the time, remains in last position.

But they don't exist in a steep curve from excellent to crap. All five are of a high standard for this sort of whizz-bang-pop PG summer action confection. The franchise is helped by the fact that a different director takes on each entry, resulting in a new flavour every time, from De Palma's taut, balletic staging to Woo's hollow melodrama and slo-mo absurdity, from Abram's chaotic, verite paranoia to Brad Bird's live action Incredible's comedy and cartoonish stunts.

McQuarrie might have been expected to bring a bit of that seedier, more grounded street-level action seen in the under appreciated Jack Reacher, but instead the film is a bit of a grab-bag of styles (because who the hell wants a grounded Mission: Impossible film?). The results are mixed.

The stand-out sequence is a taut assassination attempt with multiple shooters poised around an opera house as Cruise tries to silently take them all out. Did McQuarrie watch the similarly-excellent opera scene in Quantum of Solace (also the highlight in that film)? There's something about theatre-set suspense that works well on-screen. Watching a theatre audience triggers a Pavlovian response in the cinema audience. We experience a disproportionate concern that the performance will be disrupted. See also the rollicking, grand guinol Grand Piano.

Cruise is also great. I've always been a fan. Say what you will about his cult membership, he is a movie star and he is not lazy. Ironically, he never cruises. Tom Effort would have been a more appropriate stage name. It's a quality that's more and more recognised now. I wondered if the film's opening was a knowing nod to the memes that have built up of Cruise sprinting, which he seems to do in every film, always with maximum effort writ across his beautiful brow, because as soon as the movie opens he's off, dashing like a dog let slip - inexplicably in a suit, like he's run straight from his running scene in The Firm.

Cruise is great in this. The shift in his attitude in the first film (which is now, unbelievably, almost 20 years old), where he accepts each sure-to-be-fatal task with a confident swagger, to this one, where he sighs and resigns himself to the next insane battering, is a good one.

Rebecca Ferguson, the putative but unconsummated love interest, is also good. Unlike Cruise, who like a true movie star plays himself (albeit to perfection), Ferguson is enigmatic. She's also interesting to watch, she's strong without being Hollywood's traditional version of female strong (boring leather-clad robot) and she does a neat jumping leg strangle.

Less successful is an action sequence underwater, because it looked too much like a computer game to me.

One interesting feature of this entry, which I'm not sure I like, is the winking at the audience. At one point the bad guy talks about Cruise in abstract terms as a manifestation of destiny itself. Several times the team's descriptions to one another of the latest bizarrely unique sequence of locks they have to break through verges on parody. Though I guess each heist has to involve doing something visually spectacular that hasn't been seen before, so it will get pretty ridiculous (M:I 19: "the only way in is through the guts of a crow, so we'll have to shrink you, and it will explode if it detects that you have lungs, so we will have to remove your lungs").

The increased involvement of Simon Pegg broke the fourth wall for me. I couldn't stop imagining how Pegg must have been pinching himself constantly as he shared scenes with Tom fecking Cruise. His mugging is a bit much, but I suppose the franchise is aiming to replicate a team feel.

That team dynamic is a telling return to the television set-up of M:I. Back in '96, Cruise was a massive opener, the biggest star in the world, and the M:I rights were used to give him and only him an action role. So the film opened with the rest of the team being promptly killed off. Now, Cruise isn't so robust at pulling in the crowds by himslf (a pity: I'm sentimental and weirdly protective about the Cruister's movie star status, plus he clearly likes to be liked, plus Edge of Tomorrow is tremendous) and the Fast & Furious films have shown the box office benefit of an action family. Hence the somewhat awkward appearance of Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames, crowbarred in but no-one knowing quite what to do with them.  It can't help but feel like a bit of a cynical imposition. Ethan Hunt is a fair weather friend, I would say (the less said about his here-today, gone-tomorrow wife the better).

But it's still a good solid blockbuster.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Danny's Review

This is the fifth film in the series. I didn't really want to see it but nothing else started at the right time. I think for a blockbuster like this to be worthwhile, it has to be really good. It's not like some arthouse film you might find crushingly boring at the time then think of a week later; a Mission Impossible film is about instant gratification. It's got to be thrilling at the time. And this was not.

In the very first scene Ethan Hunt is hanging on to a plane, and his irritating sidekick Benji (Simon Pegg) is fumbling about trying to open the door. His slapstick efforts reassure the audience that there's no real danger here, and it's just a bit of fun. When Hunt does board the plane he finds some missiles and jumps off the plane with them. This scene has little bearing on the rest of the film, but it's justified as being part of a general plan for the evil boss to spread mischief and mayhem, which he continues to do. As far as I could tell, by the end we still don't know why he was doing this.

There's two standout action scenes. One is at the opera, where no fewer than four shooters are aiming at the Austrian Prime Minister. The other where the team rob a bank with Hunt diving into an water vault to change a security card. It's an exciting sequence, but you have to question the design of the bank. What do they do when they legitimately want to change the security cards, send down a diver? They are robbing the bank on behalf of the villain who it seems couldn't rob it himself; he needed the IMF (Impossible Mission Force) to do it for him.

So a couple of good bits, and Cruise is certainly a watchable star, but overall it does not hang together well. It's disjointed, with action scenes that don't move the story forwards then a burst of explanation. The chase scenes are dull. At least let's have Tom Cruise running really fast, like he does through the desert in MI:4. Another weak point is Ving Rhames, who pops up looking very much like a man with a contract to appear in all Mission Impossible films. Apparently this one had a lot of Chinese financing, which explains the extensive touristy scenes in London, including one shot featuring no fewer than six red phone boxes. There's also a Chinese name high up in the credits who does not appear at all in the film, presumably she was only in the version released in Asia to boost the appeal to that market.

Terminator Genisys - Danny's Review

I'm a big fan of the Terminator Series, and I'm pleased to say that this new instalment is the fourth best. It's better than Terminator Salvation but not as good as the first three.

As the plot gets quite complicated most of my review is recapping what goes on to try and make sense of it. Spoilers coming...

The story begins with the humans in 2029 fighting against the robots, and about to win. John Connor is very rugged and Kyle Reese looks up to him gormlessly. It's good stuff. Just before their final victory against Skynet John Connor is thwarted when the machines manage to send back a young-Arnie Terminator to 1984. The humans manage to send back Kyle too (just as John Connor is mugged by Doctor Who) and we get ready for a face-off in the 80s. So far this is a lot like the first Terminator film.

The twist comes when young-Arnie Terminator gets a surprise by meeting an old-Arnie Terminator. Old-Arnie is well prepared and kills the young version with the help of Sarah Connor, who is now a badass. However, there's also a shiny Asian T-1000 liquid metal Terminator chasing around Kyle Reese. I'm not sure where he came from. Then Sarah, Kyle and old-Arnie get chased by the T-1000 until they manage to trap him with some acid.

Kyle and Sarah decide that rather than justing killing the Terminator they should try to stop Judgement Day from happening altogether. But rather than going to 1997, Kyle has a weird vision that Judgement Day is now going to be in San Fransisco 2017 so they travel there on a time machine Arnie and Sarah built. In 2017 they get arrested but break out with the help of John Connor. What's he doing there? Old-Arnie shoots him straight away, and suspicious Kyle thinks that Arnie's mission all along was to shoot John Connor. But actually John Connor is now evil, he's a Terminator hybrid. This is the low-point of the film. He's half metal half-person and is determined to stop them stopping Skynet from activating. He's also highly magnetic, which turns out to be his undoing.

I didn't like all of it, and the stuff about Kyle meeting his young former self was a bit rubbish. There's a few interesting aspects though. The best of these is that the old-Arnie was originally sent back to about 1975, where he rescued young Sarah Connor from another Terminator. We never actually find out who sent back that pair of Terminators. Since her rescue Sarah was raised as an orphan by the Terminator, who she calls Pops. They've then been waiting for the next batch of Terminators to arrive in 1984. Then when Sarah and John jet forward to 2017 Arnie says he's going to get to 2017 'the long way' by waiting 30 years. I like the idea of a Terminator calmly waiting in a bunker for 30 years to be of service again.

Another nice idea is that in 2017 everyone is desperate to get hold of the new Genisys social-media super-App, not realising the danger they're in. They're all addicted to their phones too. We are a lot closer to Skynet level technology now than ever before, which is a point nicely made.

There's some nice continuity points in the film. The mall-cop who arrests Kyle in 1984 is still around in San Fransisco 2017 and is the only one who believes them. The new Cyberdyne building also features some molten metal and a quantum-accelerator, which get well used.

The cast are OK. The stand-out, of course, is Arnie. He is an old and world-weary Terminator in 1984 and even more so in 2017. It's touching when he admits he is "old....but not obsolete". His deadpan delivery is expertly done, and he doesn't quite as many awful lines as in T3.

This is not quite the Terminator film I wanted, but it's quite good and I might watch it again.

Jurassic World - Danny's Review

JW is the fourth film in the series, and this time they've actually built the whole park on Isla Nublar and opened it to the public, specifically two boys. The younger boy is excited by everything; the older one only gets into it once the dinosaurs escape and start chasing them.

There are many references to the disaster of the original film. Although John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is dead the new Indian billionaire owner also believes the aim is not to make money but to teach people to revere nature. However, he inexplicably leaves the day to day running to a frosty young lady who is in the pocket of the shareholders and sponsors, demanding bigger and bigger thrills. This is an obvious parallel to the franchise itself, which is seeking bigger thrills to excite the jaded audience. Hence Indominus Rex, a genetically modified T-Rex, and loads of CGI.

Apart from being about dinosaurs, JW is about family. The mop-haired younger boy works out that his parents are getting divorced, which means the brothers have to depend on each other even more. There is a strange series of scenes with some girls smiling at the older boy and him trying to look tough, until he stops chasing girls to look after his brother. Bros before Hos. There's dinosaur families too. Chris Pratt is a soldier who specialises in training Raptors. I was pleased to see he uses a clicker which is common in animal training to signal the animal has dome something you want, although I've never seen anyone hold one in such a macho way, side-on like a pistol. It's gangster behaviour training. The raptors just about do what he says, because he respects them and they respect him.

Spoliler alert! - towards the end of the film these raptors meet the Indominus Rex, but after smelling each other and a bit of dinosaur-barking they decide not to attack it. This is because they somehow recognise that the Indominus has raptor DNA in. This is stupid for several reasons. Firstly, how would you recognise shared DNA? Secondly, shared DNA sequences are common: we share DNA sequences with chimps, sheep and even bananas. Thirdly, if for some reason dinosaurs don't attack those with the same DNA why do the two T-Rexes fight each other?

In the end though, the Raptors decide that their bond with badass Chris Pratt is stronger, as although he's not genetically related to them, he has looked after them since they were born. In a way, he's their real Dad. This is a bit like the moment in nearly all films with aliens or artificial intelligence, where it is shown that nothing is stronger than human compassion. Here it is shown that nothing is stronger than human-dinosaur compassion. It's a touching moment.

There are a few good visual highlights in the film, such as when the big fish-dinosaur jumps out it's tank, and when all pterosaurs escape. The worst special effect is when a raptor is flung against a wall and explodes, like a car that's fallen off a cliff.

There are many lowlights. Whereas Jurassic Park cleverly explained about dinosaur DNA and everything else in a way that made you empathise with the characters as they explored, in Jurassic World you are clumsily told things that you don't need to know. Who cares that the hamster balls are made of toughened aluminium? JW also uses the old I-have-enough-phone-signal-to-call-you-but-not-enough-to-hear-you-clearly gimmick no less than three times in the first hour. Three times! This device should be limited to a maximum of once per movie, or given some sort of warning with the certificate. PG-12, contains scenes of mild terror and frequent phone calls cutting out at key moments.

The Indominus escapes it's enclosure, by masking its heat signal using the fact that is has DNA from a frog that can mask infrared heat. It can also camouflage because it contains DNA of cuttlefish who can disguise themselves. This is nonsense. It was a nice idea in Jurassic Park for female dinosaurs to switch genders as nature finds a way but now they've taken it to far. Is the Indominus going to start flying because it has some strands of pigeon DNA?

My final gripe is with a very odd scene when the two boys are on the run and discover the old Jurassic Park control room, and steal a jeep. The older boy constructs a torch to help him light the way for about 30 seconds. Each stage of the torch construction is carefully illustrated. First he finds a bone, then a stretch of cloth to wrap around it, then finally he asks his younger brother "Have you still got those matches?". The younger boy looks confused, as you would, as the matches have never been mentioned before. But then astonishingly he does produce a small box from his bumbag. Why on Earth would a 10 year old boy be carrying matches in his bumbag for a trip to Jurassic World? And, even more oddly, why did the film-makers feel the need to meticulously explain the origin of the matches? Couldn't they just have been found on a bench? It wasn't even important that they made a torch. When they get to the jeep and need to repair it, the older boy then whips out another hammy line "Do you remember when we fixed up Grampa's old truck?"

Overall then: good special effects, and an interesting idea about training raptors, but pretty poor otherwise.

Mad Max: Fury Road - Danny's Review

Whenever there's a remake/sequel of an older film it's a trade off. You're expecting something bigger and brighter and possibly full of CGI, but without the originality and excitement of the first one. The success of Mad Max: Fury Road is that it captures the mad spirit of the originals. It's like a beefed up remake of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. This is not surprising, as it's also directed by maverick George Miller, and according to reports he was able to make the film that he wanted.

Right from the start vehicles are set in motion and the chase is on. Max himself takes a slightly peripheral role, and has his face covered for the first hour. Even when he files away his iron mask there's no sudden change, and he's far outshone by Charlize Theron as the Imperator Furiosa. You get the feeling this is the way Max would have wanted it. He drifts in and out of other people's stories, saving their post-apocalyptic communities then disappearing into the crowd, with barely a nod of recognition. It reminds me what a great (and underrated) film Waterworld is. Mad Max is a really dusty Waterworld.

My favourite parts of the movie are the crazy touches that are added but never explained. That simply wouldn't happen in a big studio picture. The big boss and all his cronies are strangely deformed (inbred?) and are supported by a warrior caste of bald and painted maniacs. These warriors are religious fanatics believe when they die they'll be born again in Valhalla, and when they think they;re about to die spray their faces with metallic paint. This doesn't actually do anything except further excite them. The landscapes are incredibly barren, and at their best reminiscent of Conan the Barbarian (the original, certainly not the remake). At one point the big-rig, having temporarily outrun their pursuers, is travelling through the night and the weary passengers are slipping in and out of sleep. They drift through a marshy land with camouflaged men on stilts wading along the water. It looks great.

When I came out of this movie (at 3pm) my head was spinning and the lights seemed far too bright. It's a crazy thrill ride.

Fast and Furious 7 - Danny's Review

I was unexpectedly called in to work this morning, and had to rush across town for the 10:45 am showing of Furious 7. I popped my Volskswagen Fox through the gears and raced along the motorway, overtaking a bus and swerving into the car park. Screech! I made it just in time, thanks to the 29 minutes of adverts at Cineworld Glasgow.

Being the seventh in the series (including the non-canon ones) there's a whole lotta history, and this is acknowledged. There's especial poignancy as Paul Walker is dead (more of this later). In the very first line villainous Jason Statham claims that "They say if you want to glimpse the future, just look behind you" although I've never heard anyone say that. Then it pans out to reveal he's killed all the special forces people protecting his kid-brother, who presumably was the conquered villain in a previous film (I've not seen them all - who has?). Statham is now out for revenge, and that's his character sorted.

Cut to Vin Diesel driving along. "They say the open road helps you think" he muses and so it goes on. They race through a few locations, and in every one there are rows of shiny cars, young people cheering and women in bikinis jumping up and down. What was I doing here?

For their part the team are out to get Statham, but get heavily sidetracked by the surprising appearance of Kurt Russell. He tells them about a hacker, who is identified merely by 'Ramsey' and a blank photo (so it's clearly a woman). She's invented the God's Eye that can hack into all cameras and find anyone. Kurt Russell says that if they find it he'll let them use it to find Statham. While they are looking for the God's Eye they come across Statham several times, but seem to forget that finding him is their ultimate objective. Then in an extremely fanciful setup the device is inexplicably hidden inside, you guessed it, another sports car, which they obviously end up stealing and driving.

There are a few good moments. Early on Paul Walker revs up a car, only for it to be revealed that it's a mini-van, and he's now a family man. In the very same scene there's a second visual gag where a car speeds round but it's a toy car and the kid then throws it on the ground. "Cars don't fly" says Walker, prophetically, as later in the movie cars do fly. He gives a a strangely muted performance. He seems genuinely morose to be shackled by his family, but then when his loving wife absolutely insists that he abandon their family and go on another reckless (and pointless) mission he still seems rather morose. The only time he perks up is when delivering a touche comeback to his kung-fu nemesis he's just sent hurtling down a big hole. "Too slow!" he says with childish glee, though that sort of bad-ass line would be much better deadpan. During filming Walker was a passenger in a car that hit a lamppost, killing him. The film was finished with the help of his similar looking brothers.

He does get the best moment in the film, which you may have already seen in the trailer. It's when he's running up a bus which is falling off a cliff. He also gets a rather odd tribute at the end of the film, when Vin Diesel goes on and on about what a brother he's been and there's flashbacks to a young curly-haired Paul Walker grinning in front of some more sports cars. The spiritualism runs deep in Fast and Furious 7. When The Rock decides the hospital can't hold him any more he doesn't cut himself out of the plaster cast, he simply grimaces and his arm bursts out. When Vin Diesel's heart stops, following his final stunt attacking a helicopter with his car, the CPR has no effect, but an emotional appeal from his amnesiac girlfriend brings him back with a gruff one-liner.

I think the appeal of the film is the sense of camaraderie between Vin's team, and they act as a high functioning gang of delinquents. That's probably the appeal of the whole series. I'm partly tempted to go back and watch all the rest now.

John Wick - Jamie's Review

With John Wick, Keanu secures his legacy as a film star for the Taken generation (being Hollywood actors in their 50s and 60s who want to play taciturn hardmen). Reeves isn't a natural fit in that bracket, despite being 50. Unlike king-of-the-genre Liam Neeson and upstarts Sean Penn and Kevin Costner, he still looks 24.

But I think unlike those guys, Reeves picks projects out of love. He's a geek who isn't just after a box office rocket but a story that sparks his interest (how else would you explain Johnny Mnemonic?). So whereas Neeson et al go through the motions double-tapping Albanians muttering "is this what the kids want, ok then", Reeves is invested. And it shows. He often picks projects which have a risky dose of weird in them, and he's done it again here. The result is a good, dirty little film which hits almost all the B-movie beats you want in a story about a retired assassin forced to saddle up to avenge the death of his dog, but is also unexpectedly elevated by the reveal that this isn't happening in the world we know.

The dog really is cute. You don't want it to die. Keanu seems a lot happier after his wife's death because of it. You understand why he takes up arms when a punk (Reek from Game of Tits & Dragons) shoots it in the head. I'm a cat person, and even I was upset on Keanu's behalf.

With a grizzled aspect and a cold manner which suits him, because Keanu emoting is a bit gruesome (exhibit #1, Bram Stoker's Dracula), he kills acres of goons to get to his man.

One of the best things about the film is the spin it puts on the action movie convention of baddies underestimating the hero, Usually they think he's laughable, and don't even really worry about him when they discover that he won a silver star in 'Nam, is an expert in black ops and only took the job as the nuclear submarine's cleaner because he killed so many of the world's terrorists he made himself redundant. Not so in Wick, where the big bad immediately shits his pants when he hears whose dog his son popped. Over a punchy meeting with his entitled spawn, he explains that Wick once murdered three hard cases with a pencil. Even though they far outnumber Wick, the army of bad guys reckon he has a pretty good chance of killing them all, whatever they do. Almost all his enemies approach him with grim-faced expectations of death, which in every case he satisfies (the ones who are cocky or dismissive of his reputation also die).

Oddities like this make John Wick stand out. Oddest of all is its setting. Wick takes place in an underworld where everyone hangs out at a hotel for villains, where the currency is special gold coins. It's weird, this break with reality, and it could have flopped. But instead it injects a welcome novelty into the familiar, heartwarming trope of revenge killing.

It helps hugely that every supporting role is cast with a top-drawer character actor - Willem Dafoe, Lovejoy, Reek, Lester Freamon from The Wire, but Keanu's also solid. I say he's embarrassing when he expresses himself, but there's one bit where he shouts which is quite powerful, though even then I can hear him bursting to say "dude" at the end of the sentence. He just has that kind of voice.

And so he can add John Wick to his list of Good Movies Starring Me, under Point Break, Speed, Bill & Ted, The Matrix, Devil's Advocate and, yes, Constantine. Dracula is also very good, though that's in spite of Reeves, whose dudeiness nearly derails it completely.

Wick is a much better fit.

Far from the Madding Crowd - Danny's review

This is a very relaxing movie. It's a bit like going to an art gallery. The majority of the film is a series of beautiful landscape shots reflecting different moods, mixed in with some farming and a good love story.

The first scene is the only one with a voiceover, with Carey Mulligan explaining why she's called Bathsheba (she doesn't know) and saying how independent she is. This is underlined by her lewdly riding a horse normally (not side-saddle) and charging around on her own. Then she meets a rugged farmhand, gets an inheritance and meets a few other suitors. It culminates in the best love dilemma since Twilight, and that includes The Hunger Games.

There are some excellent farming scenes, with Bathsheba mucking in. It actually looks quite fun, but would probably be crushingly hard work if you had to do it all year round. The grubbier it is, the more lavishly it's shot, so it all seems quite nice.

I enjoyed the stately pace of the film, and for Sunday afternoon it was perfect.

Director Thomas Vinterberg, Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts

2015's Most Anticipated Movies - Jamie

Not on the list below because I can't find a release date:The Hateful Eight and Spielberg's unnamed cold war thriller.


Black Hat - Michael Mann - 20th Feb

I've already missed this. Apparently it's widely regarded as a steaming pile, but I have never seen a Michael Mann movie I didn't love for its cold, intense aesthetic. Apart from Public Enemics, which looked like it was shot in Tru Motion on a camcorder.

Predestination - The Spierig Bros - 20th Feb

Starring Ethan Hawke, who also made Daybreakers with the Spierig siblings. He picked more succesfully than Paul Bettany, who got Legion and Priest for working with director Scott Stewart twice in a row. Although Predestination seems to have left cinemas very quickly.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 - 10 April

Apparently it's mean-spritied, so looking forward to it.

John Wick - 10 April

A glaring omission from Danny's list and one I predict we will both love. It's had raves in the states from action movie buffs who say it's the first classic of the genre THIS MILLENNIUM. My most anticipated of the year.

Child 44 - Daniel Espinosa - 17 April

Tom Hardy plays a Russian policeman in the cold war unravelling a conspiracy while investigating a series of child murders. As a fan of Gorky Park and Fatherland, this could be right up my hammer and sickle. One problem: Espinosa also directed the pap (apparently, I haven't seen it) Safe House. And to waste a Denzel is a sin which cannot be lightly forgiven.

The Salvation - 17 April

"In 1870s America, a peaceful American settler kills his family's murderer which unleashes the fury of a notorious gang leader. His cowardly fellow townspeople then betray him, forcing him to hunt down the outlaws alone." Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green and Eric Cantona. Of course it's on the list.

Chappie - Neill Blomkamp - March

After losing a lot of that District 9 goodwill with handsome but simplistic Elysium, this story about a robot looks a bit like a gritty Short Circuit reboot. Could be dire, then.

Second Best Marigold Hotel - Eli Roth - March

Early reports indicate that the sequel to the feel-good hit has a slightly darker tone. The orignal cast return, but take too much acid in an orphanage and fuck and kill the children. Maggie Smith pulls off Dev Patel's skin and feeds it to Bill Nighy.

Age of Ultron - Joss Whedon - 24 April

With Joss Whedon behind the camera and the script, and James Spader as an evil robot, this is surely going to be superb.

No Escape - 1 May

Pierce Brosnan and Owen Wilson in a film about a US family stuck in a hellhole country when a coup erupts and it's decreed that foreigners are to be executed on sight. Hopefully by Pierce's character from The Matador in the scene where he's only wearing a bath towel.

Everly - Joe Lynch - 1 May

Salma Hayek is confined to her flat as she is attacked, and kills off, waves of assassins.
 
Big Game - 8 May

Sam L Jackson is the US president and crash lands in the Scandinavian wilderness. A young boy helps him survive as he is hunted by terrorists.

Mad Max Fury Road - George Miller - 15 May

A solid lead to replace Mad Mel in Tom Hardy, a hard-as-nails female lead played by Charlize Theron, and have you seen the trailer? Every shot is eye-popping colour and incredible vehicular mayhem. Miller proved he was a master long ago, rarely putting a foot wrong - even when he took a left-turn from the apocalypse into talking pigs and penguins. He's returning to his roots to spill out decades of dreams about lunatic stunts in the desert, and we should all be in the congregation.

Tomorrowland - Brad Bird - 22 May

It's Brad Bird.

The Goob - Guy Myhill - 29 May

"A long hot summer in rural Norfolk and a rough coming of age for Goob Taylor, fighting with brutal,womanizing stock car racer Gene Womack for his mother's attention." Not only is it set in the finest county, but my friend did the (already award-winning) soundtrack.

Jurassic World - Colin Treverrow - 12 June

It's dinosaurs.

Terminator 5 - 3 July

It's Arnie.

Ant Man - Not Edgar Wright - 17 July

Wright spent years prepping this. He wasn't willing to compomise his no-doubt beautiful script which will have been a truckload of pay-offs wrapped up in a clockwork watch of a movie. Instead of adding in clumsy set-ups for future Marvel films, and toning down his script to fit it into Marvel's often very nice, but mite-too homogenous universe of blockbusters, he walked. Good for him, but what a shame - those are years he could have spent on something that made it to the screen. Still, it's got likeable Rudd in it and Duggles, and maybe enough of Wright's material will have survived to make it worth a watch.

Magic Mike XXL - Gregory Jacobs? - 31 July

Soderberg basically directed and shot this. The first one was great despite making me feel wholly inadequate. My wife saw the trailer and has already forgotten who I am.

MI: 5 - Christopher McQuarrie - 31 July

All but Woo's entry in the spy series have been enjoyable, and McQuarrie's recent team-up with Cruise produced Jack Reacher which was a very agreeable thriller.

Fantastic Four - Josh Trank - 6 August

Trank's Chronicle came out of nowhere, a troubling superhero origin story that also aced the much-maligned found footage gimmick. The trailer for the reboot wasn't fantastic, but Trank's pedigree earns the film the benefit of the doubt. Plus any attempt to overwrite the execrable efforts starring Hornblower deserves support.

Straight Outta Compton - F Gary Gray - 14 August

Could be a bloodless hagiography, but the soundtrack on the trailer pushed it up so many notches it only has to play NWA over lookylikeys prancing in front of the popo to be fun.

Legend - Brian Helgeland - 18 September

Alas, not a shot-by-shot remake of the Tim Curry and Tom Crusie-tastic Legend with the same actors, but a film about the Kray twins starring so-hot-right-now Tom Hardy, and probably Tom Hardy. Brian Helgeland's involvement gets it on the list. Yes he wrote crappy versions of Robin Hood and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, and The Postman, but he also squeezed out Man on Fire, Blood Work (I like it, ok?) and most importantly, LA Confidential.

Black Mass - Scott Cooper - 25 Sept

Depp has been absolutely stinking up cinemas, but maybe this biopic of Boston mob kingpin Whitey Bulger will allow him to wear weird hats, glasses and facial hair without looking like a coasting tool. Let's pray he brought the Depp of Donnie Brasco, and not the Depp of almost anything else.

The Walk - Robert Zemeckis - 2 October

They already gone done did a fillum about the guy who wire-walked between the twin towers, but it was a documentary with boring real people talking in it. So a fake version is not at all redundant, especially as Zemeckis directed Back to the Future AND Castaway. If anyone can capture lightning in a bottle three times, it's him.

London Has Fallen - Babak Najafi - 2 October 2015

Gerard Butler double-tapped a lot of terrible bastards in the head in Olympus has Fallen. Can a sequel take itself as seriously, or will it foolishly become tongue-in-cheek? Worth a punt, me old mucke- BANGBANG He's down. I bet a trailer is set to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down, tinkling eerily while Butler shoo-BANGBANG Area clear, moving on.

Crimson Peak - Guillermo del Toro - 16 October

A del Toro haunted house picture! Sounds almost as good as a del Toro giant robot v monster picture. Except Pacific Rim was a bit of a let-down. Too kiddy-friendly and a teeth-grindingly awful British scientist character. Hopefully this will be less broad strokes, more Pan's Labyrinth.

SPECTRE - Sam Mendes - 23 October

Mendes Does Bond Volume 1 was a bit up its own bum and slow, but it did have some great moments. If this one moves quicker than half speed and chucks in some of that spooky, the-evil-network-is-everywhere goodness exemplified in Quantum of Solace's opera scene (you know it, you nerd), then bring it on Rae Dawn Chong (not involved).

Steve Jobs - Danny Boyle - 13 November

Fassbender is good at the acting and if anyone can make a man looking at computer screens and unveiling a laptop exciting, it's Boyle. He turned the defiantly static story of a man trapped under a rock into the most kinetic film of the year, after all.

Hunger Games 4 - 20 Nov

For PSH.

The Martain - Ridley Scott - 27 Nov

Ridley Scott films an astronaut trapped on Mars struggling to survive. I was one of two people who liked Prometheus, and my favourite film last year was All Is Lost, so this is a must-see, unless reviewers say it is worse than Robin Hood.

Star Wars - JJ Abrams - 18 December

We pray this restores our childhood joy and does not, oh Lord, result in Danny having to defend its worth against all evidence to the contrary, like he did with the Phantom Menace.

Into The Woods - Danny's Review

I was slightly duped into seeing this, and it wasn't what I expected. In fact when they started singing in the second minute there was quite a lot of giggling and surprised faces in the cinema. It didn't help that one of the first voices is the cockney boy, who like all cockney boys is a terrible character. I preferred the preppy American Little Red Riding Hood, who along with Chris Pine's over-the-top Prince were the best things in it.

The story is a mash-up of four different fairy tales, all of which lead the protagonists into The Woods where strange and wonderful things happen. Each storyline only lasts for a few minutes before they switch to something else, reflecting the undemanding family-friendly style of the movie. There's lots of comedy and action and fantasy and deaths and cameos to try and keep you entertained. It is moderately charming, but basically I don't like kids films and I don't like musicals so this wasn't for me.

The low-point is when it nearly finishes about 2/3 of the way through, then restarts with an extended epilogue. I don't mind a long film but it's criminal to nearly stop then start again (just like The Thin Red Line and Lord of The Rings Part 3).

Overall, a painful experience.

Taken 3 - Danny's Review

I went to an educational event at a venue which included an IMAX. Afterwards I thought I'd take advantage of the Cinema, but unfortunately the only thing playing was Taken 3. I was as excited as anyone by the first Taken movie, but any goodwill from that has now long faded, and it was no surprise that there were only three of us in the biggest screen in Scotland.

The start is dire as they reintroduce the characters in their daily lives. There's one major update. Since the last movie Famke Jansen has wisely divorced Bryan Mills (Neeson), but very unwisely shacked up with Dougray Scott. Neeson is cool with this though, and is at peace with himself and the world. He grins a lot and says how much he loves his daughter. It's definitely not what action fans want to see, and after 15 minutes of this I was desperate for someone to be taken, even if it was me.

When the action kicks in there are a few satisfying moments - I liked his secret hideout full of guns and other secret stuff. But there's a lot of dross too. The daughter Kim is exactly like Jack Bauer's daughter (also called Kim) in that despite having been kidnapped numerous times she constantly plays down the risk of it happening again. Doesn't she remember Paris? Istanbul?

Forest Whitaker plays the chief detective, who is much smarter than all the other goon policeman that Neeson routinely outwits. And much fatter. Each time when old man Mills gets away the detective says there's no point chasing after him, out of respect for Neeson's skills, or maybe just because he doesn't want to have to run any more.

At the end the plot thickens a bit and builds up to a decent Russian mafia shootout. The very best bit is when Neeson decides to let the final villain live, instead promising that when they get out of prison he'll come find him, "and we both know how that'll end". It's a bit chilling. But after that he ruins it by going to see his daughter and saying how much he loves her again, and the film suffers from the worst tough-guy-softened-by-baby ending since Wall Street 2.

Overall, very poor.

The Theory of Everything - Danny's Reviews

The appeal of this film is a bit like the The Imitation Game, marvelling at an odd genius. There's a further connection in that the 2004 BBC TV Movie about Stephen Hawking stars Benedict Cumberbatch. That film only goes as far 1978 and ends with Hawking's big bang theory being vindicated. The new movie takes us up to the present day, with lots more wheelchair scenes and Hawking's U-turn about black holes not being so black. And whereas the old film focuses on the scientific debate between different theories (with Hawking memorably debunking bluff Yorkshireman Fred Hoyle), the new film is a tearjerker with conflicts of the heart.

At the start Hawking is a bumbling graduate in charming Cambridge. He's a bit shy but meets Jane and they have a bit of banter about croquet and God then get married and have kids and some montages. The montages are presented as shaky and low-resolution exactly as if they've been filmed with an old videocamera, which is a bit confusing as I don't think anyone really was filming. As Hawking deteriorates Jane meets a hunky choirmaster and there's a bit of tension there, then Hawking surprises everyone by running off with his nurse.

There's a recurring theme of Hawking trying to find his big theory uniting the physics of the tiny and massive. This pursuit of a unifying theory is actually something much more associated with Einstein, who tried for years to unify the forces of nature (and failed). I think the reason for the film stressing a grand theory is to build up the moment at the end where Hawking has a little out of body experience then says that his philosophy is that the human spirit is uncrushable and "where there's hope there's life". He gets a standing ovation.

The director James Marsh has previously made the documentaries Project Nim and Man on Wire, and this film is a good case study not so much of Hawkings life but that of his wife Jane, who has an increasingly tough time (in fact the film is based on her memoirs). The leads Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are both excellent, and I also enjoyed all the Cambridge Professors, particularly the character Roger Penrose, who is my favourite living mathematician. It's a very nicely made movie and was enjoyable from start to finish.

2015 preview - by Danny

Here's my 20 films for 2015:

January 9	Foxcatcher	Bennett Miller
January 16	Whiplash	Damien Chazelle
January 23	A Most Violent Year	JC Chandor
March 13	In the Heart of The Sea	Ron Howard
May 1	Far from the Madding Crowd	Thomas Vinterberg
May 15	Mad Max Fury Road	George Miller
May 22	Tomorrowland	Brad Bird
June 12	Jurassic World	Colin Trevorrow
July 3	Terminator Genisys	Alan Taylor
July 17	Ant-Man	Peyton Reed
September 11	Suffragette	Sarah Gavron
October 2	Everest	Baltasar Kormákur
October 9	Untitled Cold War Spy Thriller	Steven Spielberg
October 16	Crimson Peak	Guillermo Del Toro
November 6	Spectre	Sam Mendes
November 13	The Hateful Eight	Quentin Tarantino
November 13	The Look of Silence	Joshua Oppenheimer
November 20	Mockingjay Part 2	Francis Lawrence
December 18	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	JJ Abrams
December 25	Mission Impossible 5	J J Abrams

I hope I've got a better list this year than last year. Had a good read around and found 19 films I really wanted, then added Ant-Man. There's lots of sequels from long-running series, with what is effectively Mad Max 4, Jurassic Park 4, Terminator 5, James Bond 24, Hunger Games 4, Star Wars 7 and Mission Impossible 5. I'm drawing the line at the new Fast & Furious movie though.

2014 review - by Danny

Here's the films I put on my 2014 preview to watch last year. I regret making the list so hastily as some of them I didn't really want to see.

January	Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit	Seen - OK
February	Robocop	Seen - OK
February	Pompeii	Seen - poor
March	Grand Budapest Hotel	Seen - OK
March	Noah	Seen - OK
April	Sabotage	Seen - poor
April	Transcendence	Seen - poor
May	Godzilla	Seen - good
June	Edge of Tomorrow	Seen - good
June	The Purge 2
July	Jupiter Ascending
August	Lucy	Seen - OK
August	The Giver
September	The Equalizer	Seen - OK
October	Gone Girl
November	Interstellar
November	Dumb & Dumber: To
November	Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1	Seen - good
December	Exodus
December	Unbroken

Overall a hit rate of just 12/20.