How to Change the World takes us behind the Greenpeace legacy

 

What do you know about Greenpeace?

Apart from the odd leaflet through the letterbox or a random encounter with a chugger, chances are not a lot. How to Change the World takes us behind the scenes of the environmental organization, which began in 1971 amidst a flurry of idealism aboard a run-down Canadian fishing tug, and, through decades of egotism, infighting, and litigation, went on to become a global entity with thousands of employees and a bankroll of millions.…

American Ultra is the stoner-MK Ultra actioner we’ve all been waiting for (maybe)

 

Jesse Eisenberg, ladies and gentlemen.

He wowed us as the coolly exploitative Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network and seems likely to do the same as a more intense, somewhat less omnivorous Lex Luthor in Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. …

Rosewater is a bit too floral and watery for its own good

 

As the directorial debut of a man better known for political satire than drama – The Daily Show’s long-time, recently abdicated host Jon Stewart – Rosewater is a suitably timely work of dramatized non-fiction.

It tells the story of Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian journalist imprisoned by the Ahmadinejad regime for 118 days following Iran’s controversial 2009 elections.…

Legend is a monument to Tom Hardy’s acting talents

 

Looking at the poster for Brian Helgeland’s latest film, Legend, you’d be forgiven you were suffering from (a slightly inexact) double vision.

The names are the same, but the men below them aren’t. Tom Hardy stars along Tom Hardy (himself) as Reginald and Ronald Kray, the notorious twins who held Sixties London in a grip of both fear and awe.…

The Visit makes for a sublime, ridiculous semi-return-to-form for M. Night Shyamalan

 

On a sliding cinematic scale from Christopher Nolan to Michael Bay, M. Night Shyamalan falls somewhere in the middle.

Equal parts auteur and hack, his output ranges from the sublime — The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable — to the ridiculous — The Happening, The Last Airbender.…

Z For Zachariah gets a B+ in the post-apocalypse stakes

 

Craig Zobel’s Z For Zachariah may have the same PG-13 age rating as the bloodless Terminator Genisys1, but there’s more to this adaptation of Robert C. O’Brien’s classic junior sci-fi than just The Road for kiddies.

While Cormac McCarthy’s famously grim work of fiction is structured around, well, the road, Z For Zachariah concerns staying put.…

Pressure never quite plumbs the depths

 

You can tell from its opening moments that Pressure is a film that means business.

Opening with text that warns us about the dangers of deep sea diving – as anyone knows who’s ever seen The Abyss – it manages to strand its crew (read: cast) on the bed of the Somali Basin, almost 700 feet below the surface, within twenty minutes.…

The Nightmare, or if It Follows was a documentary

 

What’s the worst night’s sleep you’ve ever had?

However bad it may have been The Nightmare delves into something worse: the nighttime torment of eight sufferers of sleep paralysis — a condition equally notable for bizarre and terrifying visions.

From visitations by shadowy figures — more literally, figures made of shadow — to out-of-body experiences, Rodney Ascher’s documentary relies on firsthand testimony as opposed to scientific evidence: they all seem to the agree that the medical community seems singularly unable to offer remedy for the condition.…

I loved The Falling

 

How do we categorize ambition in a film?

It has to mean more than scope or scale — Avengers: Age of Ultron is big and bold but what new does it attempt in terms of storytelling, apart from maybe giving Hawkeye something to do?…

Escobar: Paradise Lost thrives in the shadow of The Godfather

 

A feared and beloved crime family patriarch relaxes on a compound surrounded by loved ones, there to celebrate a special occasion. There’s music, and one of the clan has brought along their significant other.

So far so The Godfather, though the setting of Esobar: Paradise Lost is more akin to the film’s 1974 sequel, the isolated townships, dirt roads, and tropical forests of Colombia.…