Richard E. Grant Page 2

Hugh Jackman returns to his signature role one last time (so he says), reuniting with filmmaker James Mangold, who also directed 2013's The Wolverine. But this doesn't feel like any other X-Men movie; it strikes a sombre, gritty tone from the start to take the audience on a dark and rather brutal road trip. So while it feels rather long and repetitive, the movie also has a strong emotional kick.

It's set in the year 2029, when mutants have been wiped off the planet, and no new ones have been born for years. Hiding out in a drunken haze as a Texas limo driver, Logan aka Wolverine (Jackman) has stashed Charles aka Professor X (Patrick Stewart) across the border in Mexico, watched over by albino caretaker Caliban (Stephen Merchant). Then a nurse (Elizabeth Rodriguez) appears asking for Logan's help to transport the young Laura (Dafne Keen) to North Dakota. And Laura clearly has a genetic connection with Logan. It also turns out that she has escaped from a Mexico City hospital, so as Logan, Charles and Laura hit the road, the ruthless henchman Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and sinister Dr Rice (Richard E. Grant) are hot on their trail.

Mangold holds all of this in careful control, never tipping over into the usual whiz-bang Hollywood superhero action chaos (the violence is especially grisly). The story moves at a steady pace that adds an involving note of desperation to each sequence. This also makes the movie feel a bit repetitive and even wheel-spinning at times. Since the baddies are able to stay right on the heroes' heels, it's clear that even a nicely offhandedly sojourn with a farmer (Eriq La Salle) and his family will be short-lived. But the gnawing intensity, while never quite building into proper suspense, gets deep under the skin as it fleshes out the characters.

Continue reading: Logan Review

Definitely a film of two halves, this crime comedy kicks off with a spark of witty energy as the title character blusters his way through a series of events with hilariously profane rants. Then the plot kicks in. And from here on, it's a dull slog as we lose all interest in what happens next. It's well-played and stylishly directed, but it feels pointless.

We meet Dom Hemingway (Law) just before he gets out of prison after serving 12 years for refusing to rat out his boss Ivan (Bichir), a Russian mobster now living the high life on the French Riviera. So Dom and his sardonic friend Dicky (Grant) travel from London to see Ivan. After a very rocky start caused by Dom's loose tongue, they're in the middle of wildly hedonistic holiday when things take a sudden turn. Dom finds himself penniless back in England, turning to his daughter Evelyn (Clarke) for help. When she refuses to talk to him, he seeks work from a young thug (Hunter).

Up until the mid-point plot-shift, the film is a lot of fun, mainly because Dom's tirades are riotously rude but still have a literary lilt to them. This man clearly has no filter on what he says or does, so he goes from one spot of trouble to another. Law plays him with gusto, winning us over in the comical first half then struggling to keep even a hint of sympathy in the much mopier drama that follows. Frankly, we begin to think that Dom is finally getting what he deserves; we certainly don't want him to come out on top.

Continue reading: Dom Hemingway Review

James (Phillips) is a geeky misfit who has a sign above his head saying "loser". Literally. After his friend Ian (Grant) commits suicide, he receives a message from him that challenges him to learn how to talk to women. His friends (Leonidas and Grezo) encourage him to try, starting with an awkward chat at Ian's funeral with his school crush Hannah (Atkinson). He then starts a mentorship with cocky motivational speaker Ampersand (Conway), a disciple of womanising writer guru Zeus (Kemp). But this will require changing almost everything about himself.

Continue reading: How To Stop Being A Loser Review

What they generally aren't is full of capers designed by crackheads in search of comic relief, or a dominatrix dying to destroy the gold market with a Da Vinci alchemy machine only a cat burglar from Hoboken could steal.

Continue reading: Hudson Hawk Review

In The Little Vampire, Jonathan Lipnicki plays Tony Thompson, recent émigré to the Highlands. Rather than go the traditional route for Scottish fantasy and pick up a wooden sword and proclaim, "There can be only one," Tony begins dreaming of vampires. Night after night, Tony's slumber is disturbed as he dreams of a rite being performed by a clan of vampires. What it means, Tony has no clue. So Tony simply does what any other eight-year old stereotyped by cinema does: Goes to mommy (Pamela Gidley) and daddy (Tommy Hinkley), sleeps in their bed for the night, and then gets ridiculed by everyone he knows for his "wild vampire fantasies" during the day.

Continue reading: The Little Vampire Review

But seriously, that's what you're going to be doing if you see The Portrait of a Lady -- Jane Campion's follow-up to The Piano, based on Henry James's "classic" novel that you've probably never read. Now, I'm wishing that I had, though, because Portrait is a fantastic movie to watch, exquisitely crafted and painstakingly detailed, gorgeously photographed and full of style -- but it is just plain impossible to follow.

Continue reading: The Portrait Of A Lady Review

If Jonathan Lipnicki is washed up at 18 and looking back on his career as a button-cute child star, "The Little Vampire" is will very likely be the picture that embarrasses him most.

A quick, sloppy production of a throwaway script about a little boy who befriends a family of bloodsuckers and helps them recover a magic amulet, it suffers from a pungent collective apathy that wafts off the screen from the cast and crew. The little kids in the picture seem like they're just playing vampire in grandma's dusty attic and not really trying to participate in the plot. The grown-ups in the cast (including respectable actors like Richard E. Grant and John Wood) give let's-get-this-over-with performances and most scenes feel like the director didn't say "Cut!" so much as "Oh that's good enough let's just move on."

Lipnicki ("Stuart Little," "Jerry Maguire") plays Tony, a kid from California who has just moved into a small, renovated Scottish castle with his completely vanilla mother (Pamela Gidley) and father (Tommy Hinkley), a golf course designer hired to build new links for a local lord (Wood).

Continue reading: The Little Vampire Review