Tamara Drewe review

Tamara Drewe (15, 111 mins)
Director: Stephen Frears

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

A diverse bunch of people gather at a rural writers’ retreat run by the philandering Nicholas (Roger Allam) and his wife Beth (Tamsin Greig). Into their lives comes Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), who used to live in the village but has been away for some years, and her return causes passions to run high among the group, as well as an out-of-town a drummer (Dominic Cooper). Based on a newspaper comic strip, this is a broad and overwrought comic drama, pitched like a sitcom in tone, delivery and situation. And just who is Tamara, what does she want and why are we supposed to root for her? It’s full of larger than life characters, not one of whom is remotely likeable or believable (with the possible exception of Beth) and the whole is really rather irritating.

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Cyrus review

Cyrus (15, 91 mins)
Directors: Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Divorcee John (John C. Reilly) is depressed and lonely, made worse by the news that his ex-wife (Catherine Keener) is remarrying. He gets a boost when he meets the lovely Molly (Marisa Tomei) but struggles to bond with her grown up son Cyrus (Jonah Hill), a forthright young man who is perhaps a little too close to his mother. As John and Molly see more of each other, Cyrus’ behaviour becomes increasingly odd and disturbing in a low-fi indie given polish by a highly creditable group of actors. It deals in discomfort and is grounded in reality, not slipping into the daft escalation of situations that you might expect, but where it stops, nobody knows. At the same time though, it’s all pretty slight but it’s worth it to see such a top rate cast come together, especially the wonderful Tomei. But it’s mostly Hill’s show, and he plays it quiet but intense, ably demonstrating that he might just have more range than his Superbad co-star Michael Cera.

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The Runaways review

The Runaways (15, 106 mins)
Director: Floria Sigismondi

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

 1970s all-girl rock band The Runaways are the subject of this by the numbers biopic that focuses mainly on Cherie (Dakota Fanning) and Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart), put together by Michael Shannon’s producer. In its early stages it’s a fairly straightforward look at a band getting together, practising, and establishing the clashing personalities, with the second half turning into the standard descent into pills and booze, and while there’s lots of moderately interesting details, there’s not much in the way of a compelling bigger picture. Shannon has loads of fun as their off the hook manager, but Stewart is her usual underpowered self and Fanning outclasses her at every turn. But aside from the checklist nature of the story, the biggest problem is that these 21st century actresses can’t really convince as 1970s gals.

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The Last Exorcism review

The Last Exorcism (15, 87 mins)
Director: Daniel Stamm

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Last Exorcism arrives looking very much like the first horror to try to cash in on the success of last year’s Paranormal Activity, by aping its faux documentary style to present its dramatised events as real.

The subject of the documentary is Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a Louisiana preacher who comes from a long line of exorcists. But following a crisis of faith, Marcus gives up performing them and instead sets out to expose charlatans by supposedly filming this documentary of him performing fake exorcisms.

This takes him to a remote rural community where a widowed farmer believes his 16 year old daughter Nell is possessed by a demon. Marcus and a film crew go to their home where he performs his “exorcism” by setting up speakers emitting demonic noises and strings to shake the bed.

But when the girl shows up at their hotel seemingly still possessed, and with the father ready to kill her to save her soul, what’s really behind these unexplained events?

A lot of skill is required to deliver performances that look as though they're real, and the doc style is highly convincing in the early stages. A bold, deliberately paced setup is also reminiscent of Paranormal Activity, but where that was full of suggestion, this is quicker to show its horrors, mainly involving Nell contorting her body in grotesque ways.

There’s some interesting ground being covered in its focus on debunking and scepticism and preying on the vulnerable, while also harkening after Rosemary’s Baby, REC and The Blair Witch Project.

But after a promising start, The Last Exorcism falls apart in spectacular style. A large part of the problem lies with it trying to have its cake and eat it in the way it tells the story. The fact that it’s clearly a dramatised movie is betrayed by the ominous score that flares up whenever something unsettling is supposed to be happening.

Worse than that though is the way it portrays events with a shaky handheld camera when it suits, but at other times the lens is all-seeing, leading to camera movements and edits that simply wouldn’t be possible if this were really a documentary. It’s a sloppy way to let something promising slide into incompetence.

Then there’s the fact that the slow build ultimately leads nowhere except a ridiculous climax. The first recourse in most films such as this is to loud noises and moving furniture but a novel approach is taken here in that it never really kicks off at all, meaning it’s dull when it’s not being farcical, and apart from a couple of jump scares, never remotely scary.

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The Switch review

The Switch (12A, 101 mins)
Directors: Josh Gordon, Will Speck

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston are platonic friends who hit a snag when she announces she wants a baby through artificial insemination and finds a donor in Patrick Wilson. Thanks to a moronic chain of events, Bateman drunkenly replaces Wilson’s sample with his own so that when Aniston turns up seven years later with a son in tow who’s as odd and neurotic as he is, Bateman finds himself unable to tell her the truth. It would be wrong to label this as a rom-com as it’s not really played for laughs except when their respective friends are at hand to offer pithy advice, and though not too objectionable, it’s just a bit stale with little character momentum driving it forward. It’s usually hard to go too far wrong with the likes of Bateman and Aniston at the helm, but it’s such an ill-advised idea to begin with that they're mostly powerless to save it.

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Dinner For Schmucks review

Dinner For Schmucks (12A, 114 mins)
Director: Jay Roach

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

In order to impress his loathsome boss, financial analyst Tim (Paul Rudd) must find the biggest idiot he can to bring to a dinner party and finds him in Barry (Steve Carell), who likes to spend his time dressing up stuffed mice and doesn’t appear capable of functioning in the real world. With its high concept in place, this desperate comedy then proceeds to ignore the dinner bit by spending most of the running time having Barry jeopardise Tim’s relationship with his girlfriend. By the time we actually get to the dinner there are finally a couple of laughs to be had, but only after scene upon scene that suffocate in a comedy vacuum of ridiculous situations and detestable characters. It’s another of those movies where 100 minutes of despicable behaviour is swept away by five minutes of moralising at the end. Just as bad is the total waste of two top drawer leading men, with Rudd as the straight man reduced mainly to reaction shots while Carell channels his inner Jim Carrey to mug as manically and gratingly as possible. If you want to see him play an idiot to infinitely greater comic effect, take another look at Anchorman instead.

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Jonah Hex review

Jonah Hex (15, 81 mins)
Director: Jimmy Hayward

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

The first warning sign that all is not well with this fantasy western is the running time which, taking the closing credits out of the equation is barely 70 minutes, with reports suggesting at least half an hour of it has been left on the cutting room floor. It’s yet another comic book adaptation, with Josh Brolin taking the title role as a back-from-the-dead bounty hunter tracking down the man who killed his family (John Malkovich) and who now plans to unleash a WMD on Washington. It’s visually impressive if ear-splitting, with a pounding rock score and frequent bruising action, and Brolin growls and scowls like a good ‘un throughout. But though it’s generally coherent, its brevity means it goes straight from the setup to the climax with almost nothing in between.

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