Live by Night

Ben Affleck does quadruple duty as director, writer, producer and star in "Live By Night" - his forth film as director, and his first since the oscar-winning "Argo". But this one kinda comes unstuck - possibly because it's an attempt to do an old-fashioned epic gangster story, but it's one that struggles to come to life. The problem may be the overly-epic scope - much of the first twenty minutes or so, set in Boston, is a bit of a mess (Affleck feels a bit too old to play the naive young man caught between a gang-leader and his moll, and Sienna Miller as the moll doesn't entirely land as a force of fascination for two men). The film doesn't really come alive until the action relocates to Florida where Affleck gets caught up in rum-running and in setting up gang activities in a state dominated by the KKK and a hatred of both Irish (which he is) and Italians (which he's working for). 

There are a few moments of light - Zoe Saldana is a gorgeous presence as his eventual love interest, and Elle Fanning has some great scenes as the born-again Christian who frustrates his casino plan, plus Max Casella is an entertaining weasel. But the ending brings back a lot of the Boston elements in a way that doesn't feel like it's showing the film to best advantage - and in general, this never really finds a point to focus on - Affleck isn't dynamic enough to centre the film. It's a nice looking film with a period sheen, but that isn't quite enough to recommend it.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

A long running franchise can have its ups and downs. It's particularly unfortunate when the downs turns out to be the last film of the series. "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" is the culmination of six films about the Umbrella Corporation, a more than usually irresponsible evil corporation that spreads a mass virus that turns everybody into zombies - well, everyone except our dwindling group of heroes (and a couple of non-zombie baddies). The last six films have seen Mila Jovavich as Alice, initially an amnesiac who wakes up just above an Umbrella facility as an outbreak starts, who has travelled the globe and beat up all kinds of infected creatures, often in fairly skimpy outfits, and accompanied by characters from the videogames that have inspired the series.

This one sees her all the way back to where everything began as the clock ticks down to the final end of humanity (yes, quite literally the clock, as apparently humanity's demise has a very specific schedule). Along the way Alice assembles a team to break back into Umbrella headquarters to unleash a cure, but of course there are surprise revelations along the way and Umbrella operatives to be fought off.

This one doesn't have the pristine design sense or general aesthetic pleasure of the last two films (Afterlife and Retribution) - whether it's a budget choice (the budget is noticably 1/3 lower than the last two films) or an attempt to capture a post-apocalyptic vibe, this one looks grittier and noticably takes place at night. There isn't quite the entertaining supporting cast that previous films have offered - only Ian Glenn really gets a chance to chew on scenery as the chief baddie - everybody else is painted in pretty shallowly.

Still, it does close off the series for a fanboy, which I admit I am. And it's a nice chance to say goodbye. So maybe not for the general audience, but for the fans, it works.

Split

M. Night Shyamalan has spent a fair bit of time in the artistic and commercial wilderness - almost a decade. With his more recent films, he's brought back down the budgets and started back with the more exploitationy horror films he made his name with. In this case, the story of a man with multiple personalities who kidnaps three girls for a sinister purpose, the basic premise does feel perilously close to torture porn (albiet with a show-offy central role for James McAvoy - while the character is described as having 23 separate personalities, we only get exposed to about five for any length of time, but that's enough to show McAvoy has some seriously good acting skills to his bow).

The "insanity = evil" element has been criticised a bit online, but in the context of the film it's used fairly unrealistically -  pretty early on there's a lot of speculation about supernatural powers being invoked, and indeed the finale does take this to its ridiculous extension. I do find there's a bit of stuff about childhood trauma here that isn't quite as easy to take as part of a far-fetched fun-ride  - I often find Shymalalan a little difficult to take as he tends to try to combine fantastic premises with realistic portrayals, and while McAvoy's performance doesn't exactly fall within realism, the general tone isn't one I'm entirely comfortable with.

I appreciate this more as a vehcile for a performance rather than anything else - I find the later turns in the plot to wander between distasteful and ridiculous, which means I don't quite have the fun I'd like to have with this kinda film. There is a last minute moment that invokes another recent cinematic trend that I almost undoubtedly can't talk about without spoilers, and supporting performances from Betty Buckley and Anya Taylor-Joy give a certain grunt to the film, but generally this never quite held me as a great horror film should. It's certainly reasonably competent, but it's not quite my thing.

Moonlight

"Moonlight" is the story of a young man at three different ages, as a child, as a teenager and as an adult. Growing up in a poor black neghbourhood with a mother sliding into drug addiction, and with an emerging sense of his own sexuality, Chiron's life builds in tension until an explosion of violence changes everything - and then later in life, the question becomes what can be put back together again afterwards?

Barry Jenkins' film is a marvel. I haven't seen as deeply concentrated a character study in a while, one that paints the contradictions of growing up different to everyone around you, where even your closest friends may betray you, and how those feelings can still tear at you years later. The last third in particular is a masterpiece of subtext - a simple conversation where the weight of two characters' history lies underneath everything they say.

Performances throughout are exemplary - the three performers playing Chiron (Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders and Alex Hibbert), Naomi Harris as his mother, Mahershali Ali as the drug dealer who simultaneously enables his mother and is his protector, Janelle Monae as the dealer's kind girlfriend, and particularly Andre Holland as Chiron's oldest friend.

This hit me in several places I live, and feels utterly gripping in its portrayals of the brutal elements of life and the moments of tenderness that holds you through them.

Lion

"Lion" is the kind of prestige film I feel a bit bad for disliking. It's certainly very worthy, and for the first half an hour or so, is pretty good film-making, as young Sunny Pawar plays Saroo, a child whose world collapses when he accompanies his brother to a train station and loses him. Getting on a train, he finds himself in a part of India he doesn't know, not even being able to speak Behghali. Finally he ends up in an orphanage, where he is adopted by a Tasmanian couple. Twenty years later, while studying to be a hotel manager, he reconnects with his Indian past and his quest to find his real home begins...

Unfortunately, it's about where that quest begins that this film loses me a bit. I'm not sure if it's the leap from the vibrant Pawar to the somewhat more brooding Dev Patel, whether it's the somewhat aimless romantic subplot with Rooney Mara (who gets the worst version of the obligatory girlfriend plot, the "girlfriend is largely ignored because her man has something more important in his life that he doesn't want to share with her, but she'll accept it once he's solved it" one), or whether it's that a lot of the other subplots feel underpowered (Nicole Kidman basically has one Oscar-Scene-Speech but is otherwise doing a lot of polite nodding, while David Wenham gets less than that). The scenes of the search tend to boil down to one guy in a room doing a lot of googling, which is never particularly fascinating. And while the resolution, yes, is appropriately cathartic, it didn't make up for the slight tedium that had crept in for the previous 45 minutes or so.

This is not necessarily a bad movie, and for some people, they're going to buy into the search and the struggle for connectednesss more than I did. But for me this is an interesting concept and story that doesn't quite land emotionally.

XXX: Return of Xander Cage

The original “XXX” was one of the more obnoxious blockbusters of the early 2000s. Starring Vin Diesel as an extreme-sports-star-turned-superspy, it attempted to give the spy movie genre “attitude”, but managed to look ludicrously dated pretty much the moment it came out. While, yes, it did have the pleasures of stupid fun action and globe-hopping locations, Diesel himself didn’t come off particularly well – irritatingly arrogant, snide, acting like a massively over-roided teenager.

This belated follow up levers off the success of the “Fast and the Furious” franchise, which has benefitted from surrounding Diesel with a multi-ethnic team of similar car-driving hoons, which softens his arrogance considerably. Here, he’s surrounded with similar acceptably-rebellious meatheads (Ruby Rose, Rory McCann and Kris Wu), and initially posed up against a team of similarly multi-ethnic neer-do-wells (led by the ludicrously charismatic Donnie Yen, with Deepika Padukon, Tony Jaa and Michael Bisping has his goon-force). Samuel L. Jackson makes a minor appearance as Diesel’s old recruiter, with Toni Collette being the woman running the agency and Nina Dobrev the tech-geek who's never been a field agent before and who inevitably will end out in the field at some point. 

The basic plot is still pretty much your standard spy shenanigans (there’s an object that does evil things, Yen stole it, Diesel has to get it, twists and turns ensue), there’s a dopey reminder that Ice Cube was in a dodgy sequel-by-name-only, and generally this is a thoroughly pleasant way to watch a lot of explosions, shooting and people being kicked and thumped.This does what a good franchise film does - it entertains and it makes me want to come back and hang out with these people again at a later date. It's empty calories but entertaining empty calories.

Jackie

The best biopics tend to pick a very specific period in the subject’s life – say, a particular day or series of events – rather than try to cover the lot from cradle to grave. This allows them to delve a bit deeper into how that person really ticked – how this one event altered them, with more intense focus, rather than having to try to shove in every famous event of a person’s life.

Natalie Portman delivers in spades as Jackie Bouvier Kennedy – largely focused on the week immediately following her husband’s death, as she attempts for the last time to stage manage the legacy of a president. There’s a hell of a lot of surface calm covering up rage and frustration – an immaculate sense of complete control  with turmoil held underneath. It’s a film that is very much about surfaces – about how the country presents itself in a time of crisis, about whether a person can will themselves and their world into greatness.

This doesn’t quite sustain its length – there’s a period of about ten-twenty minutes near the end where it seems the film is slightly turning its wheels, covering the same ground repeatedly rather than progressing anywhere. A lot of the minor characters are played by established names which does make it particularly odd that their parts are pretty functional rather than anything more interesting. And the ending is a little too eager to wrap everything up patly, while the rest of the film allows few easy resolutions. But this is a powerhouse vehicle for Portman, and she meets its demands with aplomb.