Film: Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

What an utter joy and cause for celebration the new Star Wars movie is.  This film should inspire street parties in commemoration of the series being revived in such a wonderful way.  JJ Abrams and the folks at Bad Robot should be patting themselves on the back for successfully rebooting a cult Sci-Fi franchise - twice (the first, of course, being Star Trek in 2009).  With the franchise under the ownership of Disney and George Lucas out of the picture, fans can finally get the long-mooted "sequel trilogy" of Episodes VII, VII and IX.

A relatively simple story to set up this new trilogy, we find ourselves thirty-odd years after Return Of The Jedi and hearing only vague references to the prequels ("balance in the Force", the Sith, and the suggestion of cloned Stormtroopers).  The Empire is dead but now a new take on an old enemy has arisen from the ashes in the form of the "First Order", commanded by the human General Hux (a fantastically maniacal Domhnall Gleeson), Kylo Ren (a deliberately-Poundland Vader played by Adam Driver) and the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke (a motion-captured Andy Serkis).  We also find a hero-to-be on the other side in the person of Stormtrooper, Finn (Attack The Block's John Boyega) who finds himself overwhelmed by the requirements of the job.  But the focus of the film is Rey (Daisy Ridley), a scavenger on the desert planet that is not Tatooine and soon falls in with Finn and a lone droid named BB-8 and they find themselves joining forces with old favourites Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewie (their entrance almost invites the audience of a US sitcom to whoop and applaud).  They all end up on a quest to find Luke Skywalker (and when Mark Hamill finally appears... there are no words).  Meanwhile, the First Order have constructed the latest Death Star in the form of Starkiller Base, the size of a planet rather than a moon and can destroy multiple planets at once - a demonstration of its firepower is worth seeing the film on the big screen alone and may well evoke the feeling of seeing Alderaan being blown up for the first time.  The First Order are to be countered by the latest incarnation the Rebel Alliance, the "Resistance", led by the now-General Leia (Carrie Fisher).

Yes, there is very familiar territory being revisited and perhaps there could have been less use of CGI (particularly a man-eating monster).  The work done on Snoke is creaky but in an acceptably cheapy Sci-Fi/fantasy way like Azog in The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies (2014).  But the film is both fun and laugh-out-loud funny (we're a long way from Jar Jar Binks shouting "Ex-squeeze me!").  How fun it is to see our new leads fun aboard the abandoned Millennium Falcon (curiously unchanged in the duration of its various changes of owners).  Abrams and co have made a pretty-much note perfect tribute to the Star Wars films of old, whether it's using '70s graphics in the Falcon's gunner targeting system, or the performances of the First Order's fascist Imperial-esque officers (a nice little touch harking back to The Empire Strikes Back has a nervous young officer remove his hat before reporting a failure to Kylo Ren).

But at the centre of the film is Rey, in whom the Force appears to be awakening.  After two generations of whiny Skywalkers and women of royalty being used to sell dolls or fulfill Lucas' onanistic fantasies, we finally get a female leading the story and at no point is exploited for eye candy (one gag has Finn asking her if she has a boyfriend but that's about it) and gets to be rather badass too.  Both her and Ridley have quickly become a symbol that there is indeed a "new hope" for the series.

Film: The Bad Education Movie (2015)

Spoilers ahead.

A few years ago, comedian Jack Whitehall had an idea for a sitcom about a schoolteacher who was "a bigger kid than those he teachers" (IMDB).  Before sitting down to write it, he had a bowel movement and suffered a horrendous case of diarrhea.  Before flushing the lavatory, he gazed into the shit-spattered abyss and found that despite all the undeniable crap, there were still traces of sweetcorn and he had what passed for an idea.  Why work hard when you can sketch out whatever and include the odd, passable gag when you happened to think of one by accident?  Rather than write it, he would simply use his toilet paper to gather some samples.  Due to the physical impracticality of using a stapler to join the corner of each sheet, he had to resort to a few wanking sessions in order to provide the glue.  When the manuscript was dry, he slipped it into a manuscript and posted it to E4, the channel that broadcast The Inbetweeners (2008-2010), a sitcom that proved popular with young people.  E4 decided that this submission - entitled Bad Education - was beneath them and the reader chucked it down the rubbish chute and it found itself drifting down a sewer.  Sometime later it passed a door built into the tiled walls of the dank underbelly.  The door was marked BBC3 (a channel which, yes gave us Doctor Who Confidential, Torchwood and reruns of Family Guy, but also puked up the satanic Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents).  A security camera fitted to the ceiling spied the debris and the door opened.   Someone emerged from the darkness within and grabbed it before it could sail on forever.  BBC3 loved it and the series grew up to become - according to Cineworld's synopsis - "one of the BBC's most cherished sitcoms".

Apparently the series proved popular enough to garner a feature-length motion picture spin-off  (Helloooo No. 8 in the UK Box Office Top 10).  Well some of it would be passingly amusing and not intolerable company, even if might never be laugh-out-loud funny (something which Mrs. Brown's Boys could achieve at least once) so perhaps the same could have been said of the film.  And could it?

The film opens in Amsterdam with some Hasidic Jews visiting the Anne Frank house.  The camera dollies past a queue of these quiet visitors until we come to the back where some British pupils are being disruptive.  Yes, the ever so unloveable Alfie Whickers (Whitehall) - who is also inexplicably romantically linked to the pretty-but-dull (Sarah Solemani) - has taken his charges on a field trip to the house where a young girl was hiding from the Nazis with her family.  Whickers decides to jump queue by pretending that the disabilities of a chair-bound student aren't restricted to his leg.  Afterwards, he is drugged as a prank and hallucinates his Chinese pupil as a panda.  He then mistakes an Anne Frank dummy for the real deal and abducts it, escaping on a bicycle.  During this, the dummy is wrapped in a white towel while Alfie is dressed in a red hoody.  Yeah, you can tell where its going before John Williams is invoked.

A year later, Whickers takes the class on another trip, this time to Cornwall.  This time, they are joined by the overprotective Trunchball-like mother of one of his students.  She dons a pair of what are essentially Google glasses so she can record everything that goes on (the one gag which passes for a joke is where a student tells it to search for "Two Girls, One Cup").  The class stay in the "Baits Hotel" and witness a Summer Solstice procession straight out of The Wicker Man (1973) (the filmmakers even go to the trouble of recreating a shot of two masked participants poking their heads out of a window).  Are the majority of the target audience really likely to get these references?  They might get the later references to Braveheart ("They can take our lives but they'll never take our..." "Pasties!") and 300 ("This.  Is.  Cornwall!") when a parodic battle is about to take place (Zack Snyder's use of slow motion is also given a nod).  Someone makes a jokey comparison between the procession and pantomime - presumably Whitehall thinks nothing of pantomime when tucking into his Christmas dinner or chocolate Easter egg.

In a pub, they fall in with members of the Cornwall Liberation Army and they mistake Whickers for a member after seeing his amateur tattoo "CLA...", which was meant to read "CLASS K FOREVER" before he fainted.  So at least, Whitehall understands the concept of "set-up" and "pay-off".  One of the members persuades Whickers to smuggle in what he thinks are drugs into a party for toffs (where Alfie is dared into "teabagging a swan" - the least funny gag involving a large bird this year since Kevin James fought a peacock in Paul Blart Mall Cop 2) but it turns out to be a bomb.  It takes some gall to depict toffs as victims of extremists whilst the country is under Tory occupation but this set piece is bookended by passing seemingly liberal quotes as "...the rich get richer..." (just like Whitehall will from the profits made from this abortion) and "Austerity is bullshit".  Alfie is later mistaken for a leader of the group and this is captured on the News (which brings to mind the infinitely superior Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa).

There is no excuse in all of conceivable reality for how this film exists in the state that it does.  With no laughs and no Michelle Gomez, The Bad Education Movie is not just a bad film, it is a call-to-arms.  Critics and reviewers should feel compelled to implore their audience no to spend one penny on this furball of British "comedy" (this is the same country that gave us The Ladykillers and Monty Python).  If anyone was curious about wanting to watch this in good conscience, the most ethical solution might be to find a cinema where a season pass is available.  Then it might motivate aspiring filmmakers to get their hands on what they can find and afford to produce something worthy of the faintest praise, free and independent of the industry responsible for this film's existence.  How dare this get past the script read-through without someone with a tenth of a brain cell raising an objection?  How dare the actors say yes to the project in exchange for more money)?  How dare there be more carbon emissions from the vehicular transport of actors and equipment to the various locations?  Really, Britain?  This is what it has come to?

Film: Terminator Genisys (2015)

Seemingly embarrassed by how things had been handled after Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the writers open this instalment with a voice-over of the new Kyle Reese (Jai Courtenay) who gives the year of Judgment Day as 1997 (there is still yet to be a depiction as scary as Linda Hamilton’s nightmares in T2), thus negating the postponement that led to Rise Of The Machines (2003) (and in doing so wiping off the pudding the writers of that film made of working around the ages of the Connors) and, consequently, Terminator Salvation (2009) (Katherine Brewster – the wife of John Connor – is unlikely to reappear anytime ever).  Those aside, we finally get to a scene only ever talked about rather than portrayed – the moment when the Resistance capture the technology that will send Reese back to 1984.  Prior to doing so though, the machines manage to send a T-101 – brought to life courtesy of a CG rendering of ’84 Arnold Schwarzenegger (perhaps there was some rights or age issue with employing stock footage).  This reboot goes the route taken with Star Trek (2009) in employing time travel to change everything we knew before and recasting the leads with some fresh faces (Game Of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke takes home the prize for best cosplay).  It also uses a similar technique seen in X-Men: First Class (2011) of recreating an opening scene in a way that might usually be hard to notice – in this case, the original Terminator’s encounter with some punks (at this point, the CG loses credibility when “young Arnie” speaks).  It is also here that the film uses its “one F-bomb” quota to retain a PG-13 (the “Fuck you, asshole!” catchphrase) because money.  The Terminator is now a blockbuster franchise that the whole family can enjoy because money and you can’t make mainstream films for adults anymore (except maybe Fifty Shades Of Grey).  Thankfully, the disappointing CG doesn’t last very long (much like “Arnold’s” better cameo in Salvation) as proper Arnie (to some extent taking the Leonard Nimoy role in the Star Trek reboot) interrupts the first film, backed by the Terminator jingle (which threatens to play every time he walks through a door).  To the filmmakers’ credit, the 1984 segment is designed with the original films various shades of dark blue (the early future sequence also brings back the purple lasers and with a hint of synth in the music).  Perhaps in future films, they’ll learn how from the independent first two films’ limitations.  Midway, our heroes jump forward to 2017 for the new, new Judgment Day, courtesy of an app spelt “Genisys” for no reason.  Also appearing is the latest incarnation of John Connor, as played by Jason Clarke, swapping one rebooted post-apocalyptic world ruled by apes for one ruled my machines.  JK Simmons bumbles alongside as a cop with a conspiracy theory and then disappears for the rest of the film.  Much in the same way that Star Trek (2009) and its follow-up …Into Darkness (2013) changed everything but had something of the spirit of the ‘80s film, there is fun to be had here – the series had resorted to parody in Rise Of The Machines – and at last we can perhaps not have to witness any more attempts to assassinate John Connor.  And, as with Thor: The Dark World (2013), director Alan Taylor gets to work with a largely thankless role for a former Doctor Who (in this case, the curiously credited “Matthew Smith”).

Film: Mad Max - Fury Road (2015)

A franchise reboot (or extension) that follows 30 years on from a series of post-apocalyptic films that started with an ill-behaved, nasty little revenge movie (but with some room for emotional investment) with a climax that explained how Max became Mad before we got two self-contained Hollywood-ised action adventures (the PG-13-rated Beyond The Thunderdome recalling Indiana Jones's Temple Of Doom and coming out the most family-friendly, despite a cheeky F-bomb) in which Max seemed the most sane whereas humanity had descended into chaos.  Here, it's slightly less well-behaved than Beyond The Thunderdome and we're back in R-rated territory and, even if adolescent in tone, it's more in line with The Road Warrior and is also the first installment since the original to bring up the subject of Max's state of mind (thanks to voices in his head and quickly-cut flashbacks).  Essentially a 90-minute film stretched out to two hours, (perhaps in part owing to some interminable chasing), it exchanges the minimal locations of the previous sequels for the open road as Max (Tom Hardy) teams up with "Imperiotor Furiosa" (Charlize Theron channeling Sigourney Weaver as Ripley) to protect a group of "babes" (including a surprisingly quite good Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) in an exodus to the promised land.   There is almost nothing for any newcomers unfamiliar with the other three films to have missed and, as entertainment, it might just scrape by as a night-in for teenage boys.

Film: Unfriended (2014)

Despite not being released at Halloween, here we have what might be the next franchise to fill in the gap left by Paranormal Activity and Saw, which is perhaps appropriate given that the story kind-of has a bit of both.  Less of a "found footage" horror but more a "live feed" teen slasher (and with the original title Cybernatural it could usher in a new subgenre), the cinematic experience resembling that of a big screen projection of someone's Mac - perhaps a theatrical live performance  - with our protagonist being the only occupier of the stage while all her co-stars Skype in their performances - might be a nifty idea.

Opening with what may or may not be an homage to The Exorcist (1973) - our protagonist "Blaire" mimics a demonic voice and has a crucifix on her wall - and soon developing into what comes across as the most inventive Saw sequel in years in which someone operating under the username Billie227 (recalling Jigsaw's puppet, Billy) informs our set of young people (with their own guilty secrets) that they want to play a game and - for at least some of it - leaves it to the characters to form their own destiny.  As well as possible supernatural occurrences, household appliances get put to particularly nasty usage.  Jigsaw operating from beyond the grave via Skype would be a fun idea but in this instance, the apparent troll may or may not be the ghost of Laura Barns, whose suicide the year before was caught on camera after a prior video uploaded to YouTube made her an object of public degradation.  What one can do on a computer screen gets fairly maxed out - Skype, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube and Instagram.  Tumblr and Twitter are absent and YouTube seems an odd place to display an apparent sex tape (perhaps any popular adult site would have garnered a more restrictive rating).  The most questionable moment is when a black-and-white YouTube video of Laura Barns holding up cards to the camera evokes a real life case.  The film stays on the computer screen for almost the entire film and, barring the odd ominous hum to let the audience know when its getting suspenseful, any music used is diegetic.  Expect quite a few songs to have "Unfriended sent me here"-type comments on their YouTube page.

Most of the characters aren't particularly emotionally investing but the pulse-raising suspense will be good for the heart in the safe space of a cinema.  Alternatively, it might be suitable to watch on full-screen on a home computer in the dark.  By yourself.