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.

The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 - Danny's Review

I was hoping for some light hearted entertainment and this delivered in style.

On the upside there's some good emotional moments when Katniss is being heroic, and she is a suitably reluctant hero. The love triangle storyline is much less annoying than the books.

On the downside it suffers slightly from being the first of a two parter, in that lots of the time is spend building things up and clumsily explaining the politics of Panem and Katniss' different colour super-arrows. There also seems to be a shortage of characters from District 13, so all of the main players from the other two films are drafted in to form an instant President's Council, with drunkard Haymitch advising on strategy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a general advisor specialising in whimsical filming.

Stanley Tucci has said in interviews that the Hunger Games premieres are a lot like the overblown parties they have at the Capitol, and there's a certain irony to the whole Hunger Games franchise becoming such a consumer hit. He said that Katniss is unaware of the political themes, but maybe becomes more aware during the trilogy, as will some of the teenage audience. However, the author Suzanne Collins is no Iain M Banks and the dystopian world she describes is not very well imagined. Still, it's lots of fun.

Suzanne Collins (author), Gale, Katniss, Peeta, Francis Lawrence (director)

The Imitation Game - Danny's Review

This is a very good bio-pic of Alan Turing. By the end you feel like you've learned about someone who did very important things you didn't know about. In fact, the final scenes more or less claim that Alan both won World War Two and invented computers.

However, I did know about Alan Turing, because he was a mathematician and Computer Scientist. I therefore have four minor gripes with the film:

• Turing's interest in thinking computers wasn't really relevant to cracking the Enigma code. The method there was just to use a computer to run through all the millions of possible combinations, using some logic to rule out the impossible ones.
• Keira Knightley mispronounces Euler (a little thing, but couldn't someone have checked?)
• It's claimed that Turing's Universal Machine was a machine to solve all problems; in fact it was more of a thought experiment which demonstrated that any solvable problem can be solved with a very simple computer, it just takes longer.
• They failed to include Turing's most visual eccentricity, that he kept his mug chained to a radiator so no one could take it.

I did enjoy the general mathematical rivalry between the group of super-nerds. There's a good bit where Turing mutters that the Engima machine has one hundred and fifty million combinations. "One hundred and fifty nine million to be precise" says the sexy chess champion. Knightley is also good as the human counterpart to autistic Turing, while also being really clever herself.

The three interwoven stories are all interesting. When Alan is a child and middle aged you mostly feel sorry for how he is mistreated. The main section when he is in his prime at Bletchley Park you get a glimpse of his darker side, where he was actually quite unpleasant. Benedict Cumberbatch (who plays Turing) said of the 2013 public apology that Turing was pretty appalling and he should have been apologising [Edit - I've crossed this out as I can't find the source of the quote and it seems like everything else Cumberbatch said about Turing was very positive, so maybe I've got it wrong - see comments]

The film also provides plenty of social commentary, about sexism, homophobia, paranoia and espionage. So there's tense scenes mixed with funny bits when Turing does something odd or clever. Overall, it's a winner.