Shameless Self Expression

As the title suggests, the film presents a recreation of the 1940 evacuation of Allied soldiers (400,000+) at the title Belgian port during WWII. Kenneth Branagh plays a British Naval Commander, Tom Hardy is an heroic Spitfire pilot, debutant Fionn Whitehead is a young infantryman and the audience surrogate, Mark Rylance is a civilian boat captain doing his part, and Cillian Murphy is a troubled Navy man whom Rylance rescues. A lot of people think this 2017 WWII film from Christopher Nolan ( “Memento” , “Insomnia” , “Inception” ) is one of the best movies of the year. Personally, I think it only narrowly qualifies as a good movie. With its brief running time at around 100 minutes, this is a far too slight, snapshot of a film, that while everything in it is pretty much exceptionally done, there’s just barely enough movie at all. I was quite shocked at how limited it was, actually, I think calling it impressionistic or minimalist would be a tad too kind. I admired it, but nowhe...

A plague has seemingly hit, with Joel Edgerton a family patriarch keeping his wife (Carmen Ejogo) and kid alive in their home in the woods. Another family man (Christopher Abbot) happens upon their home, looking for supplies. Edgerton is initially wary and hostile until he susses the man out. Pretty soon both families are living together in harmony…for a while. Frustratingly shy of getting a recommendation, this moody, dour 2017 genre piece from writer-director Trey Edward Shults (who has previously worked on Jeff Nichols’ interesting “Midnight Special” , co-starring Edgerton) has you intrigued for a while. There’s not all that much actually going on and you’re not entirely sure how it all makes sense, but you figure it’ll all come together by the end and arrive at an interesting and satisfying destination. Nope, not really. Playing like a pilot episode to a TV series that would eventually play everything out, this is all there is and it never quite gets around to explaining ...

Set in Tekken City, in the corporate-run future where the Iron Fist tournament is held featuring the best fighters from each rival corporation/sector. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa plays Heihachi Mishima, creator of Iron Fist, with Ian Anthony Dale as his son Kazuya. When young Jin (Jon Foo) steals Tekken equipment for a band of rebels, Kazuya retaliates by killing Jin’s mother (who trained him in martial arts, by the way). Jin, hoping for a chance at revenge, signs up for a free slot in Iron Fist. Meanwhile, Kazuya seeks to usurp his father’s control and chooses the Iron Fist tournament as his opportunity, whilst also making sure that Jin (whom he quickly recognises) has no hope of winning the tournament. Luke Goss plays a former Tekken contestant who acts as manager for Jin. Gary Daniels plays current Tekken champ (and all-round badass) Brian Fury, whilst other competitors include Christie Monteiro (Kelly Overton), Raven (Darren Dewitt Henson), Nina and Anna Williams (Candice Hillerbra...

Dylan O’Brien plays Mitch, who loses his girlfriend to a bloody terrorist attack whilst holidaying in Spain. The poor guy had only just proposed, too. We immediately jump to a year and a half later and now Mitch is full of ideas of furious vengeance. Having tracked down the terrorists responsible, he finds that the problem is taken out of his hands by the CIA, who then offer him a job. Recruited by Sanaa Lathan’s CIA bigwig, he will join an elite squad of covert operatives to be trained under gruff Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton). Eventually things lead to a plot about Iranian terrorists supposedly working on building a nuclear device. Scott Adkins plays one of the other recruits, Taylor Kitsch plays a former agent now gone rogue, David Suchet is Lathan’s superior in the CIA, and Shiva Negar plays a female recruit. In a perfect world, Scott Adkins would already be the biggest action star on the planet. He’s got the looks, the martial arts skills, he can speak English coherently ...

Set in the 1930s, ten disparate characters go on an African Safari at the behest of a mysterious benefactor. When reaching their destined campsite, the travellers begin to tell their stories of how they were summoned by the still-absent host. And then the murders begin, one by one, just like the title poem. It appears that each of them has a skeleton or two in the closet, and more importantly, one of them is most likely the killer. Frank Stallone plays Capt. Lombard, hired by the host to lead the safari, but whose luggage bears another person’s name. Donald Pleasence plays the ‘hanging Judge’ Wargrave, Herbert Lom is General Romensky (when didn’t Lom play an authority figure during this stage in his career?), Paul L. Smith and Moira Lister play the camp cooks Elmo and Ethel, Brenda Vaccaro is Marion Marshall, an aging and plump actress, Yehuda Efroni plays doctor Hans Werner, Warren Berlinger is American detective Blore, Neil McCarthy plays caddish British gentleman Anthony Marsto...

Apparently 2019 was an environmentally shite year. Wait, what? Did I sleep through the rest of 2018? Oh, no. This is just set slightly in the future. No, apparently in 2019 the Earth gets besieged by extreme weather events causing all kinds of major infrastructural havoc. This causes countries and their representatives to band together in the fight against (cover your ears, science deniers) climate change, via the creation of a hi-techy tech satellite system that is supposed to combat the problem before it gets out of hand. Three years later and the shit hits the fan just as the U.S. are about to hand over the system to an international authority. The U.S. President (Andy Garcia) and his Secretary of State (Ed Harris) decide to bring in the former head of the satellite project, engineer Gerard Butler to go up to the International Space Station and fix the problem. Jim Sturgess plays Butler’s pencil-pushing State Department brother, who was the guy who fired Butler in the first plac...