San Andreas is a big summer disaster picture in which the famous fault that stretches for 810 miles along the Pacific coast up through California begins to collapse, causing all kinds of mayhem and destroying every landmark you can name from the Hoover Dam to the Golden Gate Bridge.
The worst earthquake ever measured 9.5 on the Richter Scale, we are told, and since this one is beginning at 9.6, the whole state could very well fall into the sea by the time the closing credits roll. Skyscrapers will collapse and topple over on each other, highways will fall apart and tsunamis will attack the downtown San Francisco.
Unfortunately, San Andreas is too chicken to invite us to comprehend anything like the full human cost of this carnage; it is too big, distant and unfathomable to engage us. Instead it concentrates on the B-movie story of a Los Angeles search-and-rescue helicopter pilot (Dwayne Johnson) who sets about searching, initially for his estranged wife and then his teenage daughter amid the mayhem.
The story line and characters are paper thin and they get no help from the movie's incredible green screen and CGI background. Yes "disaster" is the word.
Dwayne Johnson, the wrestler-turned-movie-star, has been winning a lot of kudos for his promotional work for the recent Furious Seven and now San Andreas. Johnson, who appears to have been on one long promotional tour since the beginning of March, has even won an entry in the ‘Guinness Book of Records’ for the ‘Most selfies taken in one three-minute period’.
Vanity Fair magazine said that Johnson approached his work with such grace that he could make virtually anything seem like a good time. Unfortunately nothing he does is going to make San Andreas seem like a good movie – through no fault of his own.
Man Up is a very likeable British romcom in which the talented American actress, writer and director Lake Bell plays a 34-year-old woman who is mistaken for a blind date when travelling across London to attend her parents' wedding anniversary party.
Bell's character is discovered under a clock at Waterloo train station carrying a copy of a popular romantic self-help book by a middle-aged divorcé (Simon Pegg) who believes she is the younger woman he is scheduled to meet. As they traverse London's familiar, garishly-lit tourist spots, they develop a halting relationship and start to fall in love.
Man Up, which was written as a spec script by TV writer Tess Morris – who was once mistakenly approached by a man underneath a clock at Waterloo Station – acknowledges enough of the reality of the main characters' situations to enable us to connect with them and Bell as a love-starved, late-blooming singleton, a kind of down-market Bridget Jones, is quirky, smart and human. I have to say I found it immensely enjoyable.
Also out this weekend are The Connection, the true story of a young magistrate who was sent to Marseilles in the mid 70s to break up a notorious drugs ring. As the story progresses it develops into a tight, fast-moving cat-and-mouse game between the magistrate and the charismatic leader of the drugs gang.
The Connection is written and directed by Cedric Jimenez whose family lived in Marseilles at the time. It's good, taught, and arresting.
Danny Collins is a true story of a very different kind. It is loosely based on a letter which John Lennon sent to a Liverpool-born folk singer called Steve Tilston in 1970. Lennon had read an interview with Tilston in Zig Zag magazine in which the latter had expressed concern that his growing success might affect his songwriting. But Zig Zag had closed down shortly after the letter was written and it didn't surface until 34 years later.
In the tear-jerking, feel-good story, Danny Collins, the title character, is a successful middle-of-the-road musician who is presented with the letter by his manager and wonders what might have been if he had received it when it was originally sent. It stars Al Pacino, in typically broad form, with Annette Bening, Jennifer Garner, Bobby Cannavale and the ever watchable Christopher Plummer.
