From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Two criminals on the run take a few hostages and head for Mexico. Seth Gecko (Clooney) is smooth and calm under pressure. His brother Richie (Tarantino) is a trigger-happy prick who needs protecting from his own impulses.
It's a movie of two uneven halves. For a while it's an edgy crime flick with QT-penned dialogue. It doesn't go anywhere particularly interesting, but there's at least the feeling that it might. The latter part of the film, however, has no such aspirations. Instead, it goes all out to please fans of a very different genre. I'll say no more, to avoid further spoilers, but the direction it takes will either float your goat or it won't. My goat was thoroughly sunk, but I have to hand it to the creators for trying something so outrageously divergent.

2½ lapdogs of Satan out of 5

Ghost in the Shell: Arise - Pyrophoric Cult (2015)

Fire-Starter, mentioned in previous episodes but never fully explored, is the central threat in PC, pushed to the fore when a group of cyber-brain engineers are murdered. Discovering why the killings happened and why those specific individuals were targeted is a mystery that the Section 9 team must solve.
The entry picks up some loose ends that were left after Border 4: Ghost Stands Alone (2014), and it leads directly into GitS: The New Movie (2015). That means it's a bridge narrative, a situation that's very apparent, given that it has no end - it's an enjoyable adventure for the most part, but it feels like half a story. The dual purpose of Pyrophoric Cult defines it, completely, so you'll need to explore the other works in order to get the most from it.

3 game plans out of 5

Last Action Hero (1993)

A satire of the action genre that starts out with genuine promise but gradually pisses it away, to the point where I found it almost insufferable.
It mocks movie cliches playfully, but is itself reliant on them. The situation was perhaps intended to be further commentary on the same, but it fails to be convincing onscreen and instead of being deeply ironic feels astonishingly stupid. It doesn't help that the script ignores its own rules when in a setting that's supposed to be governed by logic. A final nail in the coffin is that the movie didn't seem to know who its target audience was; it's Rated 15 but more often feels awkwardly assembled to fit the template of one closer to 12. Ultimately, it's a mess of half-baked ideas and poorly-defined intentions.

2 ticket stubs out of 5

All the President's Men (1976)

A political thriller about the 1972 United States Watergate scandal. It's not something I have any real interest in, but actors Hoffman and Redford are eminently watchable in their portrayal of the two real-life Washington Post reporters who were instrumental in uncovering and publicly exposing the conspiracy, namely Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, respectively.
Dir. Pakula's camera positioning and split focus techniques give the busy office environments a real sense of presence, to such a degree that the meticulously constructed set feels like an actual, functioning office - it wasn't until afterwards that I found out those scenes weren't shot on location.
I don't know how faithful to the truth the events depicted in the story are, but as a film it's a clear-cut success that's worthy of its accolades.

4 pages polished out of 5

The Last Legion (2007)

Set in Britain and Rome in the year 460 AD, TLL is an action/adventure movie with an underdeveloped coming of age element, some acceptable sword fighting, a bundled cliched romance between allies, a rousing few-versus-many speech and a cookie-cutter battle-heavy finale. Its best feature, however, is that it has very little CGI in support of most things on that list.
Themes including self-sacrifice, friendship, honour, duty, and accepting responsibility are surface-skimmed in a manner that suggests the filmmakers achieved what they set out to do, which was to tick a number of well-worn boxes and avoid any of the more interesting ones. It is what it is: i.e. a movie that's as unremarkable as my half-assed commentary on the thing itself.

2½ well-groomed beards out of 5

The Great Escape (1963)

A number of new inmates arrive at a WWII German POW camp, a place designed to hold men who have attempted, and in some cases succeeded, in escaping from one or more of the many other POW camps. Naturally, the determined prisoners make their first priority a coordinated escape plan.
US actor Steve McQueen adorns the front cover of most home editions, even though he's just one small part of a superb ensemble male cast. McQueen does have a memorable role to play, but the best part of the film for me is a less action-orientated, more tragic scene than McQueen's legendary moment.
All things considered, everything about The Great Escape is... well... great, made ever more memorable by a famous Elmer Bernstein score.

5 socks full out of 5

Heroine (2012)

A glimpse into the darker side of Bollywood fame, exploring the pressures and the backstabbing that its stars have to contend with. Mahi (Kareena) is one such star, sitting pretty on a wave of popularity that can't sustain itself. When stormy waters hit, she takes drastic measures to remain relevant.
There's some interesting commentary on the country's big budget output vs its lower budget stuff, and a clever parallel with Kareena's own career choices, but very little about the production gels together. It looks pretty, but too often opts to tell rather than show its most important themes, and the acting of most of the secondary characters is rubbish, at best. Not for the first time in Indian cinema, the last half hour is where it really shines.

2½ controversies out of 5

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

Set three Narnian years after events in Prince Caspian (2008), part III follows the children as they search the wider realm for seven missing lords.
The film's depiction of the return to Narnia is an indication of things to come: it's mostly good again - at times it even seems like the production was engineered as a direct response to what they did wrong in PC (Reepicheep is better!). Anyone familiar with the story will recognise how it sails away from the source text, with a number of omissions and non-Lewis penned inclusions. The missing scenes definitely weaken the narrative overall, but, looked at objectively, the new stuff mostly works in context to what the filmmakers kept intact, so, in that regard, it's a success. In short, VotDT has its heart in the correct place, but it's a heart that sometimes beats a different rhythm.

3½ painfully subjective diary entries out of 5

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

Set one Earth year after the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), PC begins hurriedly and gets steadily worse. Jumping directly into an action scene robs the Prince of some much-needed characterisation and relationship building. Thereafter, the basic events of the novel are referenced but there's so much new stuff that at times it's barely recognisable as Lewis' Narnia. The world is pretty but has none of the magical feeling.
The new additions aren't just at odds with the source - they actively change the entire tone of the piece. It's an almost complete travesty in which original and new utterly fail to gel. They even cocked-up Reepicheep!
The saving grace is Lucy and her attachment to Aslan, even though it's weakened and Aslan's inclusion in Adamson's script feels like obligation.

2½ sticks and stones out of 5

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

Aside from a few minor changes and a couple of newly written action scenes (because it's Hollywood and they can't help themselves), the WMG + Disney version of C.S. Lewis' 1950 children's novel is much better than I expected it to be. The first third is excellent, including each of the young actors - Lucy (Georgie Henley) in particular, who embodies the sense of wonder that a child should feel after finding another world in the back of a wardrobe.
Things only really begin to slide when the talking CGI animals appear. The lion Aslan should have a splendour that eclipses all else, but his being rendered in boring CGI (most of the time) means that he might as well not be there at all; the unnecessary use of such across the board is a stain on what I feel is otherwise the best filmed version of the novel to date.

3½ small favours out of 5

Iron Monkey (1993)

A familiar set-up of a masked individual who steals from the rich to give to the poor; in this case the stealing is from a corrupt government official who hoards gold and obsesses over capturing the generous hero of the people.
The big difference is that it's a HK martial arts movie directed by Yuen Woo-ping. Combat is wildly impressive but very much on the fantastical side. The acting and ofttimes even the structure play second fiddle to it. But the skill of the performers is undeniably masterful, even from the film's youngest star, Angie Tsang (Tsang Sze-Man) as Wong Fei-Hung. Despite its failings elsewhere, Iron Monkey is a defining classic of the 90s martial arts genre.

4 named stances out of 5