Chris At The Pictures

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

From Blumhouse, the producers of Paranormal Activity and Get Out, comes this teen horror-thriller with neither the franchise potential of the former, satirical edge of the latter, or scare factor of either. Our generic band of college kids (living in their ludicrously fancy accommodation and kitted our with every fruit-based device at their disposal) are partying in Mexico for Spring Beak when a mysterious stranger (who they can definitely trust because he’s the right kind of rugged) involves them in a game of truth or dare. When the teens return home, they find the game has followed them, their nearest and dearest briefly transforming into hideous pursuers who urge their victims to reveal dark secrets or perform dangerous acts.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this premise: many genre movies have been built on far less a stable foundation than a drinking game. It’s the flat execution and shrill performances that crush this unpopped kernel of potential fun. By-the-numbers doesn’t even begin to cover the construction. All together now: cast of idiot teenagers do something stupid. Something weird happens to one but they neglect to tell the others. Twenty minutes are spent fruitlessly trying to get us invested in their plight (a little personal bias comes in here, as the jock character closely resembles a childhood bully of mine). Everything goes very wrong and then there’s a stupid ending (credit where it’s due: there’s no final frame jump-scare).

For all the various crises - read: daddy issues - of our cast (such as a closeted student forced to out himself to a homophobic father or a habitual cheater dealing with her father’s recent suicide), I found myself cold to their plight. Largely because of their entirely plot-driven idiocy, but also because the methods used to dispatch them once the premise collapses and truth or dare become interchangeable are (with the exception of a crafty rooftop vodka binge) so blunt and bloodless. One supposes this comes part and parcel with production values of an episode of Riverdale, where prosthetics and make-up is made unaffordable by hugely unimpressive CG work. The sign of demon possession is little more than a Trollface Snapchat filter, an insult actually levelled by the protagonists towards their tormenters in a cynical attempt by the filmmakers to sidestep criticism. I dare Blumhouse to do better.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Declaring Roar Uthaug’s Tomb Raider “the best video game movie yet” sounds like damning with faint praise, but there’s nothing half-hearted about this genuinely exciting action adventure starring Alicia Vikander. We begin with some less-than-promising expository narration from Lara’s presumed-dead father, Richard, played by Dominic West (a lucky escape considering that back in the days of the Angelina Jolie movies, he would have likely been the villain-of-the-week). Our titular heroine, refusing to accept her father’s death and take command of the vast inheritance awaiting her at Croft Manor, is living as a bicycle courier with a reckless streak and no direction. When her advisor, Ana, (Kristin Scott Thomas) finally persuades Lara to open her father’s will, she finds a Japanese puzzle box containing a clue to Richard’s whereabouts, and sets off to find him.

This and a contractual obligation of a coda are the only scenes that drag, but once Lara arrives in Japan, the film and its heroine hit the ground running and barely give up the pace from there. Soon she and her guide, Lu (Daniel Wu, armed with a roguish grin), are cast adrift on the shores of the mysterious island detailed in her father’s diary. They’re in a deadly race with Walton Goggins’ deliciously named corporate operative, Mathias Vogel, to find the tomb of a legendary genocidal queen.

Despite the fact we all know the studios involved will try their darnedest to wring a franchise out of this, there’s never a moment where Lara doesn’t feel an inch from death. Vikander brings a vulnerability to the eyes of the icon without diminishing her character’s agency or competence. It’s a performance that would be astounding for any mainstream action film, let alone this particularly cursed genre. Working in tandem with Vikander’s squared shoulders is a reliance on tactile sets and bone-crunching sound design really sells the grit and grime: what a thrill it is to see a blockbuster where the star appears to be in real danger!

While Vikander and her stunt work have the physical side more than covered, the emotional ground is less confidently broadcast. The screenplay takes little time to explore Lara’s feelings of abandonment but at least attempts to resolve them towards the climax. Most of the passion comes from Tom Holkenborg’s thrilling score, which truly comes into its own during a final temple run that attempts (and largely succeeds!) to ape an Indiana Jones set piece for the digital generation. For what is Indy solving “Jehovah begins with an ‘i’”, if not the kind of puzzle a player would be confronted with in a Tomb Raider game? Spielberg’s adventures were a clear influence on the original games, and those reference points have bled through to the rebooted series from 2013 (the story of which informs Uthaug’s film).

As those games were made with a concentrated effort to be more cinematic and narrative-driven, Tomb Raider’s transition from console to cinema feels less forced than previous video game adaptations, which often fall apart due to a lack of narrative (Street Fighter) or too much (the increasingly convoluted Resident Evil series). Like Duncan Jones’ Warcraft made use of the contemporary digital moviemaking landscape to bring its fantastical world to life, Tomb Raider plays to the strengths of the updated source material by balancing Lara’s personal struggle with the exhilarating derring-do we’ve come to expect. If all involved play their cards right with the inevitable sequel, adventure may soon have a new name.

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

In a revelation as inevitable as the “dead on arrival” gags accompanying its reviews, this sequel to Joel Schumacher’s 1990 thriller is as pointless as it is sterile. Five medical students become obsessed with triggering their own near-deaths in attempts to capture evidence of the afterlife. After initial highs and cognitive awakenings, the group find themselves hunted by the ghosts of their individual pasts.

The post-flatline powers exhibit themselves in trust fund hunk Jamie (James Norton) as increased proficiency in medical practices, whilst in the three lead women (Ellen Page, Nina Dobrev and Kiersey Clemons) as a sudden desire to get into Jamie and Ray's (Diego Luna) pants. Though they each have their own unique traumas to shape the apparitions, increasingly tiresome jump-scares and dark corridors morph them all into interchangeable quivering wrecks by the end. Courtney (Page) at least has some of her character fleshed out (the opening sequence clues us into the revelation she withholds from her peers, so they’ll indulge her experiment), but it’s all for nothing come the final act.

Luna plays the token sceptic, and is immediately engaging to the point that he almost pulls the whole enterprise together, though his hairstyle (perhaps in unspoken homage to the original’s fabulous array of wild wigs) is a choice almost as poor as his recent decision to work with Woody Allen.

A more befuddling decision is made by the filmmakers to include Kiefer Sutherland, reprising his role from the original as the students’ mentor. Again, it’s all for naught: never does he factor into their decision to explore flatlining, investigate them, or even deliver a knowing sermon. It’s the screenwriters showing they care enough to draw Sutherland back, but not quite enough to give him anything to do, nor to provide any other tangible connections to the first film, narratively or visually. Religious imagery and reveries make way for insipid sob stories, and the smoky streets and dark architecture are swapped out for crisp surfaces and vapid digital backdrops.

All this heavy comparison might fool you into thinking I hold the first Flatliners in high esteem. For the record; I don’t. Any interesting concepts are rapidly overridden by hammy performances and Schumacher’s total reliance on imagery over intelligence. This new iteration can barely pretend to offer the former, exhibiting drama as slack as its characters, living or dead.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Matthew Vaughn’s spy series makes a haphazard pivot from ‘parody of bad Bond films’ to ‘bad parody of itself’ in this simultaneously listless yet overblown sequel. Taron Egerton returns as Eggsy, now left with only Mark Strong’s agent Merlin for company when the Kingsman organisation is all-but obliterated around them. Their enemy: Julianne Moore’s drug overlord, Poppy, a sugary-voiced villainess with a penchant for human meat burgers, robots, and Elton John.

The first Kingsman was very much a Marmite film: you were either won over by its homegrown Bond/Bourne/Bauer pastiche or disgusted by its button-pushing. Being an awkward sort, I fell somewhere in the middle, appreciating the unabashed comic violence and Alex Rider overtones but blanching somewhat at its seedier elements, particularly that final bum note (pun fully intended).

Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman have clearly taken the controversy over Hanna Alström’s backside deeply to heart…and doubled-down. Partway through The Golden Circle (which sees Eggsy and Merlin join forces with their American counterparts, the Statesman), Egerton’s character is tasked with tagging the girlfriend of an enemy agent with a tracking device. With no explanation besides a sly wink from Pedro Pascal’s Agent Whiskey and a shrugged “It’s not going up her nose!”, our hero is to secrete the tracker within the genitalia of the oblivious Clara (Poppy Delevigne). After calling his girlfriend to ask her permission (which she does not give), Eggsy commits. As composers Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson deliver a heroic fanfare, Matthew “bloody feminists” Vaughn treats us to a close-up the likes of which a certain orange-faced misogynist would call “Tremendous”.

Looking for any excuse for this abhorrence, some fans might reach for The Golden Circle’s plethora of great female roles. They’d come up short. Halström is a plot motivation, Eggsy’s classmate Roxy is blown to smithereens in the opening salvo, and Halle Berry (playing Merlin’s equivalent in the Statesman organization) is exposition in a wig.

Moore’s villain finds me yet again confused as to why I’m supposed to dislike the Kingsman antagonists (decapitation bombs and cannibal fast food hobbies aside). Hot on the heels of Samuel L. Jackson’s eco-warrior from the first film, Poppy’s demand to the government is the legalization and supervised access to recreational drugs, an aim that makes her more sympathetic than the brutish Anglo-American spies bulldozing their way across the globe to find her (at least, until her relationship with the US president is revealed, to more sinister ends).

Her beaming smile as she feeds Keith Allen into a mincer provides some glee, as do the rough-and-tumble brawls towards the film’s conclusion. A robot arm-wielding henchman allows for some inventive choreography, and in the long-take ballets of umbrellas and uppercuts, it’s easy to see where the budget’s been spent. It certainly didn’t go towards the CGI, which is replete with green-screen outlines and aliasing as digital models of buildings, landscapes and cages meld into one-another.

You may have noticed I haven’t got around to mentioning the other big names from the poster campaign: Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, and the inexplicable return of Colin Firth as Harry Hart. I only thought it fair to give them their representation as reflected by the film. Tatum is little more than a cameo appearance, Bridges is…well, Bridges, and I’m still not entirely convinced that Firth ever showed up. There’s a catchphrase-spouting waxwork doing an impression of him, though, the artifice of which is further exacerbated by Egerton’s uncrackable charisma.

As for Moore, her total screen-time is eclipsed by that of her popstar prisoner. John’s gormlessly smug guest spot culminates in his offering free tickets to his next gig, should the Kingsman help him escape. If his eye-scraping appearance here is any indication of his current talents, he can keep them.

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

Here’s a deliciously sordid and gory gem from director Juan Carlos Medina and screenwriter Jane Goldman (Kick Ass, X-Men: Days of Future Past). Based on Peter Ackroyd’s book, Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem, Medina’s film stars Bill Nighy as Inspector John Kildare. Eager to restore his reputation after damaging rumours of not being “the marrying kind”, Kildare is given the case of the titular Golem, a moniker appropriated by a killer who stalks the streets of London.

Olivia Cooke plays Lizzie Cree, a suspect in the death of her husband John (Sam Reid), himself under investigation for a possible part in the Golem murders. The alleged perpetrators have been whittled down to four: Cree, scholar George Gissing, stage performer Dan Leno, and Karl Marx (yes, that one).

During their individual questioning, we’re treated to fantasy sequences of each suspect committing one of the horrific homicides. Stylistic merits aside, they’re a hoot purely for the spectacle of Karl Mark dismembering someone with childish glee.

Each interviewee leaves an impression, but none more so than Douglas Booth as the exuberant Leno, who leaves no scenery unchewed. Eddie Marsan also puts in a juicy turn from under a very unconvincing bald cap, a prop which – combined with murky CG and an invisible but extremely loud orchestra in the music hall scenes – brings the film’s modest budget to the forefront.

Cooke is the best of the bunch by far, overshadowing even Nighy. Though reliably strong in his role as the noble and empathetic detective, the veteran British actor appears lost occasionally; the murder-mystery plot writ large over every inch of the marketing only rearing its head every once in a while. For most of the running time we’re taking trips back into Lizzie’s past, exploring her humble origins and deteriorating relationship with her husband and the stage she so desperately loves. Cooke proves a great companion for the journey, even if it’s genuinely painful turns feel somewhat at odds with the pulpier moments of misty streets and shameless viscera.

To its credit, the film itself seems aware of this imbalance. Infuriated by Kildare’s infatuation with Lizzie’s predicament, policeman George Flood (a great but misspent Daniel Mays) proclaims his confusion “as to whether we’re here to find the golem or save Elizabeth Cree!”

The unravelling revelations surrounding Lizzie’s guilt (or lack thereof) means Goldman can briefly raise a few discussions concerning the perceived innocence of one gender over another and the act of preserving one’s work after death. They’re piecemeal offerings, but to have them handed over by a B-movie Victorian horror is a welcome surprise. It’s not quite the ‘Hammer Horror takes on Mr Holmes’ we’re led to expect, but it’s well-acted, effectively gruesome and engagingly labyrinthine. Just one question: following Pride and now The Limehouse Golem, what film can we expect to complete the Gay Bill Nighy trilogy?

★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆