Reviews

The best TV shows tap into the current zeitgeist. The X-Files mined paranoid government conspiracies about UFOs at a time of great hope and uncertainty at the end of the Cold War when all the old convictions surrounding a traditional enemy disappeared in the 90s. 24 was a return to the tub thumping jingoism of Reagan's America when 9/11 seemed to presage a global threat to Western democracy in the noughties. Now at a time of even greater anxieties with the continuing War on Terror, the further destabilisation of the Middle East with the war in Syria and hawkish attitudes towards Iran, a global refugee crisis, President Trump in the White House, a sudden lurch to populist, Right Wing politics across the World, increasing tensions with Russia, an American trade war with China, Brexit in Britain and global climate change seen in catastrophic flooding, the melting of the Polar ice caps, bush fires in Australia and rising temperatures across the globe year-on-year for the past ten years, we have Messiah - an original series from Netflix.

The premise is devilishly simple - what would happen if a man purporting to be Jesus Christ returned to Earth? Played admirably by Mehdi Debhi, a Tunisian Belgian actor last seen in Mary, Queen of Scots, with a stillness and range of monosyllabic utterances that echoes Robert Powell's performance as Jesus of Nazareth, is Al-Masih as he is called a divine entity or a dangerous con artist? The set up is intriguing and keeps you hooked. Three miracles are performed in the first three episodes or are they elaborate tricks? Depending on your personal disposition, you will either root for Al-Masih and hope that he is the Second Coming as foretold in the Gospels as the antidote to present day travails, or consider him no more than a deluded false prophet with mental illness issues. After binging on the first six episodes, I'm hooked and hope that the story returns to the Middle East where there is much greater resonance and profundity in the remaining four episodes, but these are clearly much more expensive to make and more complex to write embracing as it does the intricate geo-politics of the Middle East and superpower rivalry. Messiah is a nuanced, multi-layered and captivating delight. Above all, it's relevance speaks of the times.

Labelled 'the Spielberg of China' with 15 box office successes in the last 20 years ranging from family-friendly comedies poking fun at China's materialistic culture to weightier, big budget historic epics such as 'Assembly', 'Aftershock' and now 'Back to 1942', Feng Xiaogang has become the most popular director of mainstream cinema in China. Yet, despite the work of Chinese directors such as Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-Wai and Ang Lee, Feng Xiaogang is virtually unknown to Western audiences, something that the Chinese government is attempting to put right by submitting 'Back to 1942' as the country's official Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film this year.

Adapted from the book 'Remembering 1942' by Liu Zhenyun, the film is a historical disaster epic following the fates of refugees during the drought and famine in Henan Province, which devastated the region and left 3 million dead of starvation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45). As well as featuring famous Chinese stars such as Chen Daoming (Aftershock) and Zhang Hanyu (White Vengeance), the film is one of the few Chinese productions to boast Hollywood talent in the form of Oscar winner, Adrien Brody and Tim Robbins, recalling Christian Bale's turn in 'The Flowers of War' (2011) chronicling the Japanese attack on Nanking.

The film follows the fortunes of landlord Fan (Zhang Guoli), who with his family joins the mass exodus of people after their village is destroyed by bandits, leaving behind their privileged lifestyle and falling in with the desperate masses as they head west looking for solace and hope. Hoping to lead the refugees is deserter turned priest An Ximan (Zhang Hanyu), though he soon comes to realise the hopelessness of the situation, with starvation spreading, (Chinese) soldiers raiding for supplies, and the Japanese bombing indiscriminately. With Nationalist (Kuomintang) politicians bickering over what to do and how to profit from the situation with their American, British and Soviet allies, it is left to Time magazine correspondent, Theodore White (Adrien Brody), to reveal the true extent of the catastrophe that has befallen Henan Province by venturing into the disaster zone and exposing the full horror of the people's suffering.

Back to 1942 is a hard hitting and unrelentingly grim disaster movie playing through the eyes and experiences of its ensemble cast, switching between the three main stories of Fan, White and the Nationalist and provincial governments at a pace that cracks along, despite its 145 minutes length. Through his earlier work Feng has demonstrated a talent for tapping into public sentiment and mining melodrama on a national scale. The result has been a slew of hit films that have dealt with little known areas of Chinese history and in doing so, reveals a little more about China itself and for a Western audience that is a welcome change from the usual diet of Hollywood teen comedies, superhero movies and remakes.

Feng said recently in an interview that if it were not for censorship, Back to 1942 'would be even more cruel'. I am not sure how this could be possible without the film lapsing into parody. Feng pulls few punches and does a good job of recreating a believable sense of desperation and despair and at times, darkly satirical comedic moments are exposed which puts the viewer in an awkward position as to whether to laugh or cry (the loss of the donkey being a good example). In part this is due to the real horror of the situation, depicted in fairly graphic detail in the film, as the refugees run out of food and trudge onwards through incredibly harsh conditions, being reduced to eating bark and eventually resorting to cannibalism and selling family members for meagre bags of millet in order to survive. Feng presents much of this without fuss or fanfare and the film is all the more harrowing for the way in which it shows conditions spiralling quickly out of control against the backdrop of the government jockeying for position.

Where film can often be politicised by the Chinese authorities as criticisms of the government, Feng does a good job of appearing neutral and never assigning blame for the disaster, nor criticising the behaviour of the Chinese soldiers who frequently rob the refugees for their own survival. Even the casual and indiscriminate violence of the Japanese soldiers is portrayed as a by product of war, rather than as any grand social or historical criticism, which no doubt the Chinese government would have preferred. In doing so, the film has escaped much of the censorship that plagues Chinese directors who are often welcomed as the darlings of the international film festival circuit.

For students of Chinese history, the complete omission of the government's taxation policy is jarring since it made the food shortages far worse, nor is there any reference to Mao Zedong and the communists, ironic given that the refugees are travelling to Shaanxi Province to escape the famine which was the headquarters of Mao's fledgling Chinese Communist Party.

Despite these pedantic omissions, Back to 1942 is a gripping telling of a little known period of Chinese history that wears its heart on its sleeve without the film being too melodramatic, or trying to drown the viewer in manipulative tears. No doubt tears will be shed as a result of the horror of the situations that the refugees find themselves in but Feng tries hard to make his film politically neutral and to tell the story as it was. Feng is one of China's most talented directors and the huge budget he has to play with (by Chinese standards) really shows up on screen with some stunning visuals and action. Though grim and quite depressing, Back to 1942 is a worthy addition to the pantheon of epic disaster movies and succeeds in revealing the horrific human suffering behind a monstrous and quite possibly avoidable tragedy.

The Film of the Year, Gravity is simply a wonderful, astonishing and sensational experience that will leave you perched on the edge of your seat throughout its lean and mean 90 minute running time. In Hollywood parlance, it is also a game changer in much the same way that films like 2001, Jaws, Star Wars, Die Hard, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings and Avatar et al changed the face of film making and storytelling forever. The Lumière brothers will be turning in their grave in delight because Gravity is exactly what they envisaged cinema to be – a big, bold, larger-than-life visceral experience. It is also what 3D was created for and for once, does the format full justice and more so when viewed on IMAX screens. Suffice to say, it will Hoover up all the technical prizes in awards season and put Sandra Bullock up for Best Actress in a head-to-head with Cate Blanchett for her role in Blue Jasmine – perhaps a more accomplished work but Ms Bullock is America's sweetheart and there is no denying the power of her performance which is at once heartbreaking and profound. Alfonso Cuarón was always a visionary as his early Hollywood work on Children of Men showed, but this film is surely his finest moment and has at once, catapulted him into the same technical sphere as George Lucas and James Cameron as geniuses and visionaries of their craft. Cameron called Gravity 'the best film ever made about space' and he is not wrong.

Like all the best films, the idea is simplicity itself. Sandra Bullock plays Ryan Stone, an accomplished scientist who has made her inaugural journey into space to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. She is aided by Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), the avuncular captain of the Space Shuttle, and another more experienced scientist, Shariff (Phaldut Sharma). Disaster strikes as debris from a Russian satellite destroyed by a missile strike hurtles and careers into the path of the American mission. What follows in the ensuing 70 minutes is a tense, gripping and heart pounding survival story that will leave you breaking into spontaneous applause at the end credits.

The tag line for the 1978 version of Superman was 'You'll believe a man can fly'. Well, you'll believe that you're in space, not the space of Star War or Star Trek, but the grounded reality of space as we know it. The experience of working in the vacuum that is space is stupendously realised as you spin, hurtle, fly, crash and bounce along with the characters. In fact the effects are so good that I'm surprised that it doesn't induce benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) in the audience.

Gravity is such an enormous technical achievement that in the quieter moments you feel yourself being humbled by the achievements of mankind (the exploration of space) and wishing that you were better at science in school. You'll also marvel at the breathtaking beauty of some of the shots and two stand long in the mind – a wide panoramic shot of Bullock and Clooney stretched out into space, tenuously tethered by the straps of a giant Stars and Stripes flag caught on the International Space Station and the onset of the Aurora Borealis on the Earth's atmosphere as day turns into night. Yup, in those moments of quiet wonderment, you'll be ruminating on life, the universe and the existence of God and especially the latter when your eyeballs are blistered with images of such searing and startling beauty that you question whether a Big Bang really did create life, the universe and nature – I did anyway. At the end of the film, you realise that you have witnessed an important pivotal moment in the history of film and that film making, cinema and entertainment will never be the same again. In short, you have seen the future and life as we know it will never be the same again.

One man in a boat - no back story, no people, (virtually) no dialogue and no unnecessary exposition - just one man against the elements and what a gripping story it is. Robert Redford plays an unnamed yachtsman deep in a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean when he is hit by catastrophe. Why he is there is not explained but that is not important. What follows is an epic struggle for survival between man and the elements. Fans of Robert Redford will be shocked by his aging good looks and this is accentuated by the sheer physicality of the role, which makes you wonder whether he is too old for the part, but Redford carries it off with aplomb. You'll be blowing hard with him as he lifts, climbs, carries, pushes and pulls his way around the boat. For a man three years shy of his 80th birthday, Redford shows that he is still supremely fit.

The director, J.C. Chandor, is fast developing a reputation for lean, mean electrifying storytelling and like his first film, 'Margin Call', another fat free but thrilling examination of the demise of Wall St, 'All is Lost' wastes no time in telling a simple story with skill, verve and edge-of-your-seat tension. What 'Jaws' did for sharks this film will do for yachts. The underwater shots reminds you of the best cinematography of the BBC's finest wildlife documentaries such as 'The Blue Planet' and the camera work of the boat beset by storms are nothing short of miraculous and astonishingly, seemingly free from CGI effects.

The fact that Redford does not talk (with one exception which will have you empathising hugely with the character – 'when it rains, it pours') turns the film into an intense character study and makes his plight even more compelling as you start to care deeply about his fate, so much so that by the end of the film, you are desperately hoping for a contrived ending. Does Redford's character survive? You will have to see the film to find out but what I can tell you is that tears will be rolling down your cheek at the closing credits but why......in sorrow or in relief?

With 'Gravity', another man versus the elements (albeit space) film, out in a few weeks time and gaining massive Oscar buzz as one of the best films of the year, 'All is Lost' can also be considered in the same breath as its more illustrious forebear and together with the imminent release of 'Captain Phillips', hearkens back to a time in the 70s when disaster films were all the rage with the triumvirate of 'The Towering Inferno', 'Airport 75' and 'Raid on Entebbe'.

Now go and wash your hands! That's what you'll be doing after you see this film. Contagion is a frightening realistic procedural thriller about the spread of an airborne pandemic virus, its impact on an ensemble cast of characters played by a veritable 'Who's Who' of Hollywood and the subsequent race to find a cure.

Like his earlier work 'Traffic', Soderbergh skilfully interweaves the various story lines into a bigger picture that breathlessly tracks and encircles the globe. The cast do not let him down. It's impossible to see a bad performance from Matt Damon and once again his role as a grieving father is sensitively and painfully played. We really feel his sense of sudden and unexpected loss as he struggles to internalise the news of his wife's death, disbelieving, dazed and confused. Marion Cotillard adds an international hue to her role as a World Health Organisation investigator whilst Jude Law plays the role of an insidious Australian blogger, who dangerously undermines the medical establishment's attempts to find a cure for his own conspiratorial and financial gains, to perfection. I could go on; Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle and John Hawkes all provide solid support in a starry cast.

What makes this film so compelling is the way Soderbergh is able to show how unhygienic human beings are and how easy it is to create a pandemic. In hundreds of different absent minded ways we touch our faces on a daily basis and in doing so, transfer and spread dangerous viruses amongst ourselves. Next time you're in the supermarket look out for the number of people who pick their noses, wipe their mouths and cough, sneeze and splutter their way past you without any attempts to cover their mouths. They're picking up (and putting back) the fruit and vegetables, handling groceries and even touching your hand when supermarket staff are giving back your card or change! Worse still, a recent survey showed that although 95% of people say they wash their hands, only 12% actually do so and consequently 1 in 6 mobile phones have faecal bacterial on them and 30% of all handbags. I could go on.

Despite a slightly preposterous storyline when Cotillard is kidnapped in Hong Kong, Soderbergh does portray the breakdown of society in an uncomfortably truthful way when people are suddenly and unexpectedly faced with their own extinction and the instincts of self preservation take over. This could have been explored a little further around the world although at all times the story is grounded in reality. Even the death toll of 27 million worldwide in four months has the ring of truth about it and this is due in no small part to the film's chief scientific adviser, Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University. The televised national lottery in the film is something that I could see happening in the interests of fairness and impartiality when the supply of vaccines is unable to keep up with demand when life and death is only one injection away.

At the film's closing credits one thing stands out and that is the unheralded and heroic work of the thousands of doctors, microbiologists, virologists and vaccine researchers around the world who labour night and day to minimise the effects of such a pandemic occurring which might wipe out the human race. If you're a pessimist like me in this age of global warming, massive deforestation, the depletion of the earth's natural resources, the extinction of wildlife habitats, overpopulation and overcrowding, go figure...a pandemic like the one portrayed in Contagion is inevitable (and long overdue according to the scientific world). The only question that remains is how many people will it kill? Anyway, go and see the film – it's a thought provoking and scary chiller that taps into the current zeitgeist.

For baby boomers of the 60s, Super 8 is a nostalgic period piece that harks back to the early films of Spielberg. It's Close Encounters meets ET meets The Goonies but with an emotional heartbeat that lifts it above the usual summer blockbuster fare. The film begins with a bereavement which is an indication of its true intentions - a film about pain, loss, broken families and friendship - but wrapped around a fast paced story of an alien cover up that is both thrilling and humorous throughout. The spectacular early train crash, for example, must be seen and (especially) heard in IMAX format to be fully appreciated. The alien is well designed and pleasingly strange and unfamiliar. The three main child leads of Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths and Elle Fanning deliver pitch perfect performances and in the case of Fanning has shown that she is even more talented than her precocious older sister, Dakota Fanning. An early scene in which Fanning is 'acting' in the Super 8 film will leave you awestruck in wonderment. Overall, Super 8 is not just the film of the summer, it's the film of the year so far. Only a young Spielberg at the height of his powers could have matched it.

I have not read the book nor seen the 1979 landmark series that garnered so much acclaim for the BBC and Sir Alec Guinness, but such contextualisation is not needed to recognise that this version of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' is a masterful re-telling of John le Carré's seminal work about British espionage during the Cold War. An early scene really encapsulates the whole tone and mood of the film. A retired George Smiley (played majestically by Gary Oldman) is sitting at home and enjoying a documentary about Winston Churchill (which seems suitably apt for a man of his former position) when his doorbell suddenly and unexpectedly rings. His head turns slowly to the left in the direction of the impudent sound and the instantaneous look of sheer effrontery and disdain on Oldman's face will leave you chuckling as his peaceful reverie is rudely disturbed. Such scenes like this leaven the film with humour but ultimately this is a chamber piece; expertly played by the cream of British acting talent headed by Goldman and Hurt (who incidentally could also have been a great George Smiley) and told with a languid verve that unravels the complex plotting in a series of tableaux vivants laden with mystery and suspense, but which also acts as important plot points and clues.

The film is about the hunt for a Soviet 'mole' in the highest echelons of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6 but fictitiously known as 'The Circus') by George Smiley, an intelligence officer who has been brought out of forced retirement by Oliver Lacon, the Civil Service overseer of the Circus. Through a love affair with the wife of a Russian intelligence officer, a British agent, Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) discovers that there may be a high ranking Soviet mole within the Circus. Aided by Peter Guillam (Bendedict Cumberbatch) who is Tarr's handler, Smiley sets about uncovering the mole without the knowledge of Circus leadership, anyone of whom might be the mole, headed by Percy Alleline (Toby Jones) and his deputies Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciarán Hinds) and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik) – the 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' of the book (codenames assigned by Control, Head of British Secret Service).

The director, Tomas Alfredson, established his reputation with 'Let the Right One In', an icy Swedish romantic horror that dealt with relationships and this too, is a film about human nature, moral dilemmas and relationships – friendship, loyalty and betrayal on intimate and grand scales with personal and national implications. Like 'Let the Right One In' Alfredson imbues 'Tinker, Tailor', Soldier, Spy' (his first English language feature) with somnambulistic pacing and mood that requires the audience to be patient, but this is richly rewarded with scenes, shot after shot, that ravish the eye and heavy with period atmosphere and drama. James Bond this is not and George Smiley has more in common with Harry Palmer than Ian Fleming's vigorous secret agent. Indeed, Robert De Niro's admirable treatment of the early history of the Criminal Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 'The Good Shepherd' (2006) has a similar cipher in Edward Wilson – a 'grey man' whose very ordinariness renders him invisible to counter espionage and thus makes him the perfect intelligence operative. A raised voice towards the end of 'Tinker, Tailor' is as excited as Smiley gets but for those not familiar with the story the ending will leave you with a broad smile of satisfaction as the 'grey man' (note Smiley's grey hair, grey countenance and grey suit replete with over-sized glasses and shambling gait) of the secret intelligence service wins the day.

The screenwriters, Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor, have done an exceptional job in condensing down what is clearly a labyrinthine Cold War thriller into a classic two hour potboiler without losing any of its exposition, characters, and plotting. John le Carré and his fans will be proud. This is a thinking man's film about a period of recent history that is as murky as it is exciting and relevant today with its eternal themes of friendship, loyalty and national security. There must be many more stories of espionage to mine from both sides of the Iron Curtain and I do hope this film kick starts a renewed interest in telling the stories of the Cold War warriors who shaped the modern world. If the film does 'King's Speech' levels of business I think it just might and Hollywood would be the richer for it.

There seems to be a pattern emerging from Hollywood for the hits of the 80's to be remade with 'The Karate Kid', 'Wall Street', 'Tron' and 'Conan' being rolled out and 'Footloose', 'Ghostbusters', 'Robocop', 'Top Gun' and a 'Blade Runner' prequel up and coming and although not a re-make, 'Drive' has its heart and soul firmly rooted in the early films of Michael Mann, Walter Hill, William Friedkin et al à la 'Miami Vice', 'Manhunter' and 'To Live and Die in L.A.' As you nestle down into your cinema seat the screen begins to thrum with the narco synth-pop sound of 'Tick of the Clock' by the Chromatics and coupled with the stunning cinematography of Newton Thomas Sigel showing Los Angeles in its full blazing glory as a neon lit night time fantasy scape the effect cannot fail to impress. Yes, this technique of filming cityscapes may be a well trodden one but trust me, nobody has done it better – you'll be quietly mouthing 'Wow' as L.A. looks at once familiar, yet also new as if it had been coated with a very bright sheen of glossy paint, metallic of course. By the time the titles roll up in deep pink after the stirring audio-visual preamble, the effect that you are watching an 80s throwback is complete.

The film centres around the relationship between a mechanic-cum-stunt car driver (Ryan Gosling's take on the 'Man With No Name' with Chow Yun-Fat's tooth-pick sensibilities in 'Hard Boiled') who falls in love with a single mother (Irene played by Carey Mulligan) whose Latino husband is in prison on unspecified crimes. When he is released from incarceration he is beaten up by goons because of his refusal to do another job as a way of repaying protection money to a gang boss from his time in prison. Seeing the results of this beating the driver offers to help him hold up a pawn shop as the getaway driver doing what he does best – drive – as a way of protecting the single mother and her child to whom he has now built up a strong attraction before the untimely release of her husband (the director works hard at not making him a two dimensional cartoon character). Alas, things don't go quite according to plan which kicks in the second act of the story with the driver going on a bloody rampage to save the woman he loves from the mysterious 'Mr Big'. An adjunct to the story is the driver's imminent promotion to a stock car driver courtesy of his friend's machinations (a garage owner played by Bryan Cranston) and the hefty sponsorship of a local crime boss (deftly played by Albert Brooks and all the more chilling for his ordinary everyman looks). Both these stories dovetail into the climatic showdown at the end of the film. It is here that you are gripping the edge of your seat and rooting for the hero, the driver...

Legend has it that Gosling handpicked Nicholas Winding Refn as the director and in doing so what could have been another ho hum actioner has been turned into an existential art house thriller, although the film beggars easy categorisation. Other critics may refer to Refn's work on 'Bronson' as the provenance of the film's sensibilities, but really his superb 'Valhalla Rising' (another existential piece on the study and impact of violence) is more apt. And in this aspect of the film Gosling is surprisingly well cast. The actor's slight frame and build is clearly a counterpoint to the brutish power, physicality and menace of Mads Mikkelson in 'Valhalla Rising', yet both are equally effective in the art of violence which gives the film its visceral and bloody thrills. In a key scene the rise and fall of Gosling's back in melody with his heavy breathing as a result of recent carnage, set against the embroidered picture of a scorpion on the back of his jacket tells the story of the driver's true nature and the tale of the scorpion and the frog. Here, dealing out death and destruction is more about steely nerve and determination as it is about power, strength and size. Gosling doesn't even carry a gun for Christ's sake!

The film has its flaws; the Mulligan character is underwritten and for a man as introspective and taciturn as the driver, it is not clear why he suddenly makes a connection with a single mother and falls in love. Moreover, for a film entitled 'Drive' I would have expected a little more driving than the one car chase we are treated to and wanting more. Still, the film is certainly one of the best examples of 80s chic that Hollywood is currently mining with varying degrees of success. My over-ridding memory of the film? Sexy-cool – go and see it!