Green Lantern * * *
Cert 12A, 113 mins
Of all the superheroes on our screens, Green Lantern is not the first to spring to mind.
That’s not even the name of one man with special powers, but a collective noun for a band of intergalactic peacekeepers. Whose weak accessories are a lantern and ring.
A wordy prologue tells us their power comes from the “emerald energy of willpower”, harnessed by immortals and controlled by 3,600 wearers of a special ring.
When one of the purple-skinned, pointy-eared aliens is badly wounded and crash lands on Earth, his ring selects the next person to bear it – which turns out to be Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds).
He’s a reckless, irresponsible Top Gun pilot who tends to walk away when times get tough, which is hardly the character for a hero. But his macho motto is “It’s my job not to be scared”, which gets him selected. Now he just has to overcome his fear, because that’s what Parallax, the biggest threat facing the universe, feeds off.
Parallax is a huge nebulous smoke-monster, but there’s a more human enemy on Earth in the shape of Dr Hector Hammond (Peter Saarsard, with a ludicrously large forehead to show he’s brainy), who’s infected with nasty stuff after examining the alien’s body.
The above-average cast also includes Mark Strong as fellow Green Lantern Sinestro, grey-haired Tim Robbins as Hector’s Senator father, an underused Geoffrey Rush as an alien Hal describes as a “talking fish” and Blake Lively as love interest Carol.
The best thing about Green Lantern is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. When Hal tries to disguise his identity with a little green mask, Carol scoffs: “You don’t think I can’t recognise you because I can’t see your cheekbones?”
Casino Royale director Martin Campbell makes everything look good and the action scenes are watchable. It’s filmed on an epic scale as we zoom around the universe, although the 3D element doesn’t add much.
Hal’s powers mean that, as well as flying a lot faster than a speeding bullet, he can create anything out of thin air by imagining it, which looks cool on screen.
It’s fairly entertaining, just a shame that it gets bogged down towards the end with too many long speeches. RL.
Stake Land * * *
Cert 15, 98 mins
I do like the universal nature of this movie title – it could refer to a burger bar, a betting shop, stockmarket trader or garden centre.
Or even a vampire/zombie movie with cannibals and a dodgy religious sect glued on to a Western-style template.
Now we’re talking!
The idea of survivors trying to butcher seemingly unstoppable creatures just keeps coming back into cinemas.
And the good news is that even when it’s only got its vampire wings on, this film has a lot more bite than the Twilight series.
Like Stallone’s 1997 film Cop Land and Jesse Eisenberg’s more recent Zombieland and Adventureland movies, adding ‘Land’ to the title has not let the side down either.
When it’s not reverting to some cheesy, face-splattering visuals and bone-crunching sound effects, Stake Land is often easy on the eyes having been shot during three different seasons using a landscape-loving Red digital camera like the one used on the Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone.
Gossip Girl’s Connor Paolo is also a likeable presence as a young man called Martin who “didn’t believe in the bogeyman until the world woke up to a nightmare.
“We live and die by his rules,” he adds. “Or worse – we die and we come back!”
After his family is slaughtered, he meets up by chance with an Undead hunter simply known as Mister (Nick Damici).
Can this pair really make it to Canada’s New Eden after stumbling across Top Gun star Kelly McGillis playing a nun?
One of Martin’s early lessons in the art of survival illustrates the grim humour underpinning the script: “Get a hammer...I’ve only got two hands, boy, do it!”
Or, with food now scarce, how about: “It’s not the vamps you have to worry about...it’s the cannibals.”
Jeff Grace’s varied score is way above average, offering sensitive touches of class you wouldn’t think were possible in a low-budget decapitation drama armed with lines like ‘‘death came...with teeth’’ and ‘‘guns don’t hurt them unless you sever their spine’’.
A flying tyre wrench offers one spectacular termination and the dialogue is underpinned with phrases like ‘‘Stake the b***h!’.
Anyone who saw The Road last year will recognise the post-apocalyptic survival tone here, but in truth you can see any number of movies from Badlands to The Terminator, I Am Legend, Drive Angry, 28 Days Later and even American Werewolf.
The ‘‘eye for an eye’’ speech at the end is ludicrously clichéd, but as a one-size-fits-all introductory compendium of horrors there’s much for late teens to sink their teeth into in anticipation of practising for real on the way home with a doner kebab coated in tomato sauce. GY.
Life In A Day * * * * *
Cert 12A, 94 mins
Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald (One Day In September, The Last King of Scotland) teamed up with producers Ridley and Tony Scott to ask people around the world to capture a moment of their lives on July 24 last year.
They were amazed by the response, with more than 80,000 videos, mainly loaded on to YouTube, from 197 countries from Australia to Zambia. More than 4,500 hours of footage have been cleverly edited down to 95 minutes of 331 fascinating clips.
We see everything from a lad shaving for the first time – “I’m bleeding!” he cries in surprise – to a giraffe being born and a man in Nepal who’s been cycling round the world for nine years.
Then there’s eccentric Ken, who collected pianos and cardboard boxes but has lost it all. We learn the surprising things that people keep in their pockets and how easy it is to shoplift.
There’s extraordinary footage of someone sky-diving through clouds, an hilarious Elvis wedding and the disturbing sight of people being trampled to death at the Love Parade festival in Germany.
This is not just amateurish footage – thought has gone into filming things in a beautiful, interesting way. We see a snapshot of people’s lives and can’t helped but be touched by their funny and sad stories. It reinforces the fact that humans are basically the same the world over, with the same hopes and fears.
All life and death is here in a film full of joy, tears, excitement, fear and heartache. It’s touching, dramatic, original and absolutely compelling from start to finish. RL.
Kaboom * * *
Cert 15, 82 mins
If you think that Donnie Darko would have been a better film if it had copious amounts of sex and nudity, then this is the movie for you.
Like Jake Gyllenhaal’s Donnie, our handsome hero has visions that include animals and there’s an ‘‘end of the world’’ element.
There are also a lot of couplings, involving all possible permutations of sexes – and a threesome.
Smith (Thomas Dekker) is a college boy who says: “I don’t believe in standardised sexual pigeon holes.”
Which means he fancies his surfer dude roommate Thor (Chris Zylka), and picks up strange men on the beach, while also romping with London (Juno Temple). Meanwhile his best friend Stella (Haley Bennett) is seeing a lesbian witch with supernatural powers.
This is where events start to take a surreal turn. Smith sees someone being stabbed to death by sinister people wearing animal masks.
“I think that something freaky is going on,” he says, when a woman’s headless body turns up. No kidding!
There are some frustrating and annoying moments. Writer/director Gregg Araki overuses the cliché of people waking up from dreams by sitting bolt upright.
It also tries to be a little too cool. While the cast is good-looking, making them wear quirky hats doesn’t always work. But, despite all the oddness, it is strangely compelling with some sharp and witty lines.
If you like quirky films, it might be worth seeking Kaboom out at Birmingham’s Electric Cinema. RL.
Mammuth * * *
Cert 15, 91 mins
With recessionary winds still ravaging the West Midlands, there might well be quite an audience at the MAC eager to see directors Gustave de Kervern and Benoît Delépine following up their Made in Dagenham-flavoured black comedy revenge thriller Louise-Michel.
Made redundant after never taking a day off from his meat processing job, the indignant Serge rides round on his motorcycle revisiting his life while trying to sort out his finances. Depardieu’s lugubrious features have rarely been better suited to playing a character who is such a handful that he is duty-bound to shock. GY.
