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POMPEII
Kit Harington, Emily Browning, Kiefer Sutherland
We
had modest hopes for this historical disaster flick, in which Emily
Browning’s patrician beauty falls for Kit Harington’s slave-turned-
gladiator thanks to his horse-whispering skills and sculpted abs. And
who can blame her? Shame they’re stuck in such direly written romantic
pap. Had they amped up the camp, this might have been a scream, but it
ends up preposterous, with the grumbling volcano out-acting both and
lava showers failing to extinguish Sutherland’s awful turn as an evil
Roman senator until far too late.
2/5
LOCKE
Tom Hardy, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott
It’s
best to go in knowing as little as possible about writer-director
Steven Knight’s highstakes drama, apart from the bare facts: Tom Hardy
is a Welsh construction supervisor, he’s speeding down the M6 while his
wife (Wilson), sons, co-workers and baby mama (Olivia Colman) plague him
with phone calls and the camera never leaves his side. Sinewy,
compelling and magnificently acted by Hardy. Who knew a delivery of
concrete could be so nerve-wracking?
4/5 THE LAST DAYS ON MARS
Liev Schreiber, Olivia Williams, Tom Cullen
The title says it all in this mildly creepy sci-fi thriller, in which a solid cast including Olivia Williams, Liev Schreiber and Weekend star/ Attitude cover boy Tom Cullen fight, fret and fall away as a devious Red Planet bacteria turns them all into shrieking zombies. Recalling a zillion space movies before it, The Last Days On Mars fails to make enough of its lean, mean spook-house set-up, not to mention wasting Cullen even more than Downton Abbey does.
2/5
MAGIC MAGIC
Juno Temple, Michael Cera, Emily Browning, Agustin Silva
Juno Temple is terrific as Alicia, a young American vacationing in Chile whose selfish cousin (Browning) leaves her in a house full of wankers, worst of all Michael Cera’s sadistic creep. Cue Alicia’s rapid descent into a highly disturbed fugue state and the film’s into a realm that appears headed at any moment into slasher-movie terrain, only to become something far more insightful in the hands of gay Chilean director Sebastian Silva.
4/5
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