REVIEW: Looper

Is it odd that the thing I found most remarkable about the film Looper wasn't its intricate plot, innovative sci-fi setting or strong performances, but the strange look of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's face? Seriously, it looks like it's been moulded out of plasticine, like a sophisticated Doctor Who creature. Why they chose to do this I can't quite fathom, although I suspect it's to do with his relationship with Bruce Willis. No, not that kind of relationship.

Looper has the hallmarks of classic sci-fi written all over it, but somehow manages to appear fresh and exciting. The setting is a sleek cyberpunk future, where that old Star Trek writer's gem has recently been invented – time travel. The problem is, it's illegal, and only available on the black market, where strangely Jewish-looking gangsters send back people to be killed by "loopers" – hitmen of the past operating for mob bosses of the future. A little confusing, but handily explained by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a practically fourth wall breaking voiceover. On a routine day of the job, Levitt is suddenly confronted by a future version of himself, played by none other than Bruce Willis. I guess that's what the prosthetic face was for, to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt appear like a younger Bruce Willis (although I'd rather see Willis looking like an older Levitt). The problem is, Levitt looks more like Homer Simpson than John McClane, with a practically shaded in beard stubble.

But that doesn't really detract from the overall quality of the film, which is one of the most innovative and exciting films I've seen all year. As Levitt goes after an escaped Willis – not killing your future self is considered a Bad Thing by scary mob boss Jeff Daniels – we see the film settle into its element, which is a redemption story of sorts. Levitt joins up with ranch worker Emily Blunt and her alternating cute/arsehole son, as they work out what Willis and Levitt's shady organisation is playing at.

The film is clever in manipulating the audience's sympathies. While Levitt is initially set up as a kind of anti-hero of the film, Willis comes along and shows him up to be the self-centred douchebag he really is. But Willis then goes on a mission that even Alex Delarge would find morally dubious, and it's left to Levitt to play the hitman-with-a-conscience role.

Overall this is probably one of my favourite films of 2012; high praise in a year with such greats as Margin Call, Skyfall, and (of course) The Cabin In The Woods. And don't be put off by the time travel element, since there's a conscious effort to not go into the wibbly-wobbly technicalities of it. Take note, Shane Carruth.

★★★★★

REVIEW: Argo

Argo is Ben Affleck's third directorial effort, and further proves his reputation as one of Hollywood's greatest assets. His films are consistently and refreshingly mature (particularly the astonishing Gone Baby Gone) and this  is no exception. While they have previous focused mostly on blue-collar crime in Boston (Affleck's home turf), Argo is a political thriller of sorts, based on the true story of the joint CIA-Canadian operation to extract six diplomatic fugitives out of an increasingly unstable revolutionary Iran.

The year is 1980, and Iran's political situation is beautifully illustrated with an animated opening sequence. The movie then launches into a dramatization of the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. It's a grippingly tense scene, as we see the diplomatic figures within the embassy awaiting the inevitable attack from the angry mob outside. Affleck's attention to detail is scrupulous, and a sequence during the credits compares the similarities between photographs of the event and frames of the movie (with startling alikeness). The fact that the movie remains fact-based throughout instead of resorting to inventing drama from the proceedings is a testament to Affleck's ability to tell a story, as well as retaining the audience's engagement (despite their knowledge of the outcome).

And the film is very tense indeed. Six hostages escape the embassy and take refuge in the Canadian ambassador's house. From this, the U.S. – or rather the CIA – must now find a method to extract these valuable assets. Enter Ben Affleck as CIA specialist Tony Mendez. He proposes the idea of a fake scouting mission for a movie, assigning various roles of production to the hostages, to bring them home. An idea so crazy, it may just work.

Mendez meets with John Chambers (John Goodman), a Hollywood make-up artist, and producer Lester Siegel (the always fantastic Alan Arkin) to go about creating their fake movie – a Star Wars rip-off called 'Argo'. The film's first hour or so is a light-hearted parody of Hollywood in the 1980s, as the team try and make their movie appear convincing to investors and the press. But when Mendez arrives in Iran to carry out the plan, the film becomes much more tense and thrilling. Iran is justifiably painted as a very dangerous place to be, and their plan looks susceptible to falling apart at any moment; the complications that arise continue to raise the stakes as the film progresses, making its climax all the more exciting.

It should be said that the picture emphasises the role of the Americans in the proceedings - the role of the Canadians in the rescue efforts is unfairly minimised, as well as the role of the British and New Zealand embassies in harbouring the fugitives - although one suspects this was not due to political reasons nor historical misreading of the events, but rather to engage the American audience in the narrative and to engineer a protagonist the audience could support. It's disappointing, but not unexpected, and the aspect of diplomatic cooperation between governments remains intact.

Ultimately, Argo's strengths lie within its performances, with Affleck carrying the film with a strong, believable performance. Goodman and Arkin are both great in supporting roles, but special mention has to go to Bryan Cranston as Affleck's superior, who's presence is always greatly appreciated. Yet Argo's trump card is, without doubt, its director. Few possess the skill to turn a fact-based story without shootouts or car chases into a highly-strung, expertly crafted, Oscar-worthy thriller. I can hardly wait to see what Affleck does next.

★★★★

REVIEW: Skyfall

By the way, I can safely say this review will be spoiler-free. Having been to the first ever screening of this movie, I'm actually sworn to secrecy about its plot. I've never been sworn to secrecy before! This is all very exciting.

Skyfall was a movie I just couldn't make my mind up about. I figured I was done with the franchise after I'd found Daniel Craig's Bond movies so disappointing - Casino Royale was a great action movie, but it felt so serious and gritty that it no longer felt like Bond, more like Bourne. And the less said about Quantum of Solace the better.

But then I found out Sam Mendes, one of my favourite directors (Road to Perdition still stands on my Top 10 list), was signed on to direct. I couldn't help but take an interest. And as we neared its release date, there were more and more signs that this would be a return to form - the return of Q, the new cast members (Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardiem) to name a few. Yet even as I sat in the theatre itself, I still had my doubts. I'd been burned before, so I proceeded with caution.

Ten minutes in, all was forgotten. I was drawn in immediately by a thrilling, high-octane chase in the streets of Istanbul. One of the first things I noticed about Skyfall during these opening moments was how different it was to the previous two Bond movies. The style, humour and charm of the franchise is, thank God, back. Bond is back as the suave, effortlessly cool secret agent with the dry, witty sense of humour that defined the earlier films. His one-liners are back, and the banter between him and his colleagues is on sparkling form.

This is what I wanted. James Bond is finally fun again. As much as I appreciated Casino Royale, it was just so serious. The set pieces were great, the acting was great, but did I enjoy it? Not so much. Although I did appreciate the need for a reboot after the stupidity of Die Another Day (so camp it might as well have been a pantomime).

Perhaps the smartest decision here was to let Sam Mendes direct. His fanboy-like obsession with Ian Fleming is evident here, as this movie is clearly the work of someone writing a love letter to the franchise. But don't think for a second that this stands in the way of a highly original plot - it twists and develops in deceptively clever ways, and many of the surprises he sent my way caught me off guard completely. In fact, the script itself is very strong, and has real depth (as opposed to Quantum's style over substance approach).

The movie's strongest suit, though, is its characters. The new cast members all range from good to brilliant - Ralph Fiennes is a highlight as an M16 bigwig (who plays an important role in events), as is Naomie Harris as a fellow agent. However, the greatest addition to the cast is (as you may have guessed) Javier Bardiem's villain. The theory that a Bond movie is only as good as its villain proves to be true here, as Bardiem proves to be as menacing as ever (at times he reaches No Country for Old Men levels of evil) but also - surprisingly - the movie's funniest character in a sick way - the first scene between him and Bond was the funniest in the movie.

Yet this is Bond's film, and, to some extent, M's. There's a subplot involving their relationship which, while I can't spoil anything, proves to be the movie's most moving element. We see the characters as real people again, and we learn more about James' character than in the rest of the franchise combined. This was what has been sorely lacking in many of the Bond movies - humanity.

I say without exaggeration that Mendes has made one of the greatest Bond movies in 15 years, perhaps 25 years, perhaps of all time. It is an astonishing piece of film-making, that captures everything that makes the Bond movies so great, with an original storyline to boot. On no account should you miss this.

★★★★★

LOVEFILM REVIEW: Interstate 60

As a side note, I've recently become a member of LoveFilm, meaning from time to time you'll see a review of a movie I found randomly in the bowels of the internet. Just go with it.

Interstate 60 is an oddity. It has all the elements of a classic – a great cast, a talented writer/director, an interesting plot filled with great oddball characters – and yet no one seems to have heard of it. Here in the UK especially, there was no cinema release, no straight-to-video, nothing.

Which seems strange, considering the talents attached. Bob Gale, the co-writer of the first Back to the Future and the writer of its subsequent sequels, makes his directorial debut here, and does so very well. He creates a deconstruction of classic road movies, set in a surreal, magically realistic universe. The movie is about James Marsden at a crossroads in his life (figuratively and later literally), under pressure from his father to become a lawyer. During his 22^nd birthday, he wishes for answers in life, which a magically being (a mirthful Gary Oldman) overhears and grants. Marsden gets sent on a road trip to deliver a mysterious package, and along the way he runs into all kinds of trouble. Hilarity, poignancy and adventure ensue.

It's a good movie elevated by a great cast – Chris Cooper is particularly good as a businessman with an obsession for the truth (and dynamite), and keep an eye out for Christopher Lloyd and Michael J Fox (in a hilarious cameo), reunited on screen for the first time together since 1990. If you have the opportunity to watch this underrated and under distributed movie (I hesitate to use the word 'gem' as I hate the phrase), do, as there's nothing quite like it.

★★★★

REVIEW: The Sweeney

The Sweeney was originally a British television police drama starring John Thaw and Dennis Waterman, and aired throughout the 1970s. Seeing as I'm not my Dad, I can safely say that I've never sat through one of its episodes, nor do I ever intend to. From what I've heard, the show was a true product of its time. It was a violent, edgy drama that pushed the boundaries of what could be shown on television, something the BBC had largely whitewashed up to that point.

This then makes it somewhat confusing that the show would be moved to the present day in this newest incarnation of The Sweeney. With heavy violence being on display in pratically every theatrical release nowdays, it makes it seem odd to dig up old property with little relevance to today's society. But the plot deals with that. Kind of.

The premise is Ray Winstone and his chums (including Ben Drew, a.k.a Plan B) are old fashioned coppers who punch first and ask questions later. It's as if they're transported straight from the 70s, with their heavy swearing and misogynistic banter. Yet the twist is that new policing methods and protocols (in the form of the often underrated Steven Mackintosh) are intruding in on their old-fashioned sense of justice, threatening to shut it down for good.

Ray Winstone takes on the title roll of Jack Regan with much needed grit and machismo, the kind we've been seeing in Ray for his entire career. It makes you wonder whether they even gave him a script - maybe the director just told him where to go and he took it from there. Plan B is also quite good, and if the critics are to be believed his directing debut Ill Manors is very good too, making him a talent to keep a keen eye on.

The film itself isn't too bad, but nothing to shout about. Much of the plot is dull and clichéd, and seems to lack much needed pace at times (although the car chases and shootout sequences are undeniably thrilling). Also, the characters, who I'm sure were intended to be cheeky and fun, more often than not come across as plain childish, with a sense of humour shared only by teenagers. And I don't believe I'm the only one who found Ray Winstone's sex scenes to be absolutely disgusting.

But it is a competent and entertaining action movie, despite its unpleasantries. Yes, it's clichéd, but at least it manages to pull it off in style. And Ray Winstone punching people while making gravelly-voiced cockney threats will never cease to be fun.

★★★

REVIEW: The Bourne Legacy

It's nothing short of infuriating that Hollywood refuses to let its property go out on a high, or even let it die. If they aren't selling unimaginative films with a number on the end then they'll be desperately searching for an old franchise to dig up and reanimate in the form of a reboot – see The Amazing Spider Man or the new Total Recall reboot out later this month. Admittedly, sometimes this has worked out for the best (Christopher Nolan was nothing short of a saviour to the dying Batman franchise) but more often than not it is totally pointless.

In many ways, The Bourne Legacy feels like a reboot. Following the excellent trilogy of adaptations of Robert Ludlum's books, the latter two directed by Paul Greengrass and all three starring Matt Damon, it was expected that the series would remain finished, going out on the high of The Bourne Ultimatum. Not so. The key players of the franchise have been dropped – Greengrass and Damon are out – and some fresh meat been brought in – Jeremy Renner takes the main role, Rachel Weisz is the obligatory love interest, and Edward Norton is the new government baddie. On reputation alone, it seems as if the movie could work – the main actors are good, it looks to be a solid (if unnecessary) addition to the canon, and if all goes well could spawn a new trilogy. Not thrilling news, but not overwhelmingly bad either.

Yet somehow, it doesn't quite fulfil expectations, and to some extent feels like it belongs to a totally different franchise. To begin with, the film starts off by making no sense, and continues to be that way for a good half-an-hour/forty-five minutes before any hint of a plot begins to kick in. It does that thing that most Hollywood sequels do, in that it expects you to have complete knowledge of all events in the canon that precede it, down to the detail of names, places and events. Do you know how long ago the last Bourne movie was? 2007. I hate it when this happens, as they expect you to have watched the movie's predecessor the night before, which I simply refuse to do. A 'previously' would suffice. But anyway, as characters name dropped organisations, people etc. I had no clue whatsoever what was happening – and why I should care.

What I gathered is this – the CIA (or some shady government agency) has decided to pull the plug on a program of agents following the monumental cock-up that was Jason Bourne. The best way to go about doing this is – you guessed it – to kill off all their agents through some drug which gives the world's worst nosebleed. I wonder who thought this was a great idea. "Hey", someone said at a meeting, "we don't want those guys going around getting information and killing people and – you know – doing their job anymore, so instead of, say, offering them a generous pension and severance package, we should kill them all!" "Don't you think that's not a great idea” said someone else, “what with them being powerful trained killers who have proven themselves to be able to kill anyone else in the world at the drop of a hat?" Whereupon he was promptly escorted from the room for being a sane individual. I think it would be nice to give trained assassins a chance to turn their life around – who knows, under the right circumstances they could become care workers or go and build houses for starving African children. But no, they have to kill them, and as Renner's character avoids death by ballistic missile, he goes on the run to wean himself off some kind of mind-control job and to get revenge on those who betrayed him and – I don't know, start a cocktail bar on the coast of Barbados.

If I sound somewhat indifferent about this movie it's because I am. While the action sequences are serviceable, the characters presented here are so mind-numbingly boring and unvaried from what we've seen before it's hard to care about any of them. Edward Norton's character is given little else to do but bark at his colleagues and it seems Rachel Weisz's sole role is to act unstable and nervous all the time – a perfectly normal reaction to the violent events happening around her, but it does make her feel bland and somewhat like a tool. And as much as I liked Renner in The Hurt Locker and The Town I feel as if he can't fill the gap left by Matt Damon – you know, Jason goddamn Bourne, the character the franchise is all about – and I would personally be surprised if a movie as dull as this would spawn any sequels. Oh wait, it performed well at the box office, so I guess we'll be seeing The Bourne Legacy II: Electric Boogaloo sometime next year.

★★

FILM4 REVIEW: Paprika

This summer, I've become oddly obsessed with Japanese cult films. Not only have I watched Battle Royale and the majority of Studio Ghibli's works (which I must say are still as brilliant and mesmerizing as I remember them), but I most recently watched Paprika, a Japanimation about a machine that can enter people's dreams. The machine is stolen by a terrorist and the scientists who devised the machine must set about tracking the culprit down before they cause chaos.

Needless to say, it's a surreal affair. The Japanese are somewhat notorious for taking off on flights of fancy when creating these types of films, but in this case it fits. Dreams are known to go in odd directions, as our subconscious has no boundaries when exploring our vast imagination, and when expressing this through the medium of film it's clear than animation is best way to go about this. The dream sequences are often spectacular, as the animation on display here is, at its best, absolutely breath taking.

And despite its subject matter, the plot is surprisingly easy to follow, despite occasional surreal asides so typical of this type of film. The main character, played by Megumi Hayashibara, is a psychiatrist-turned-scientist, who wants to use the dream machine – called the D.C. Mini – to treat her patients by examining their subconscious. However, when she ventures into dreams (and this is where it gets a little complicated) she uses another personality called 'Paprika', who is her diametric opposite – while she is very cold and professional, Paprika is the embodiment of passion and life.

If presented differently, this could be a very hard to follow story element; yet in this film, everything makes a twisted kind of sense. Satoshi Kon, the director, grounds his dream sequences with a kind reality, and this is when the film is at its strongest. He also fleshes out the characters on display here substantially, giving those who could be lazily assigned to a stereotypical supporting role real importance – for instance, the abnormally fat creator of the D.C. Mini evolves from being a comedic sidekick into a character important to the narrative (not something seen frequently in Hollywood). And while the film loses its way somewhat towards the end – the viewer gets lost in a frenzy of bizarre imagery – it is still strong for its combination of fantasy, character development and, to a certain extent, mystery (the search for the terrorist is compelling throughout).

It's no wonder, then, that Christopher Nolan stated that this film was his inspiration for Inception. The parallels between the two films are clear – both explore how the line between dreams and reality begin to blur (Paprika explores this far more literally) and both explore the danger of living a different life within dreams, and how this can damage one's subconscious.

Admittedly, Paprika is sometimes a little too strange for its own good, and it's also somewhat irritating that it sometimes becomes clichéd in a Japanese way (yes, a young girl gets attacked by tentacles). However, it's still a good film, both compelling and imaginative, and is well worth a look. Just remember your totem.

★★★½