The Man from UNCLE (12A)
Well, it looks like Tom Cruise made the right decision. He worked as Napoleon Solo on the film version of The Man from UNCLE for four months before dropping out to concentrate on a film in the other spy franchise, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.
Both movies are spin-offs from popular 60s TV series but there is no doubt that Rogue Nation is the better movie.
Although it is polished enough, The Man From UNCLE is a predictable origins story which shows how the two main characters , CIA agent Solo (Henry Cavill) and Russian Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) came together in 1963 against the background of the Cold War.
The CIA, in the gruff form of Jared Harris, learns that an international terrorist organisation has kidnapped a high-powered scientist and intends to employ him to develop an atom bomb. To prevent this happening, they combine agents from East and West and link up with the scientist’s daughter to help trace him and prevent the plan.
The Man From UNCLE plays like an elevated episode of the TV series with commonplace action set pieces and surprisingly dour dialogue, especially from the Kuryakan character. There is nothing in it that we haven’t seen before and the characters that show most promise, the 6’2” Elizabeth Debicki as the master criminal and Hugh Grant as the UNCLE chief, don’t get enough screen time.
Trainwreck (16)
The posters for the new comedy Trainwreck claim that it is “by the guy who brought you Bridemaids,” (writer-producer-director Judd Apatow) but, in a way, it is more of a straight-forward rom-com with one big difference – Amy Schumer plays the ‘man’ role.
Amy is a hard-partying, promiscuous journalist who was brought by her misogynistic father (the hilarious Colin Quinn) to believe that “monogamy is unrealistic,” and she makes this a near combined political/religious philosophy. Put it this way, the end credits list four separate actors playing the role of ‘One-Night Stand’.
Her life, her relationships, her dating record, and her work are all plaited together to support this viewpoint. Amy works with a male rag-mag that publishes articles like ‘How to talk your girlfriend into a three-way’, but when she is sent to interview a quirky sports surgeon (Bill Hader), she cracks and begins to fall for him.
Trainwreck has a collection of characters who all appear to have some depth, situations that evolve without feeling strained, and clever, sly dialogue. And it is also populated with funny supporting characters, most especially Tilda Swinton as a deliciously mean magazine editor and ColinQuinn as Amy’s father.
Pixels (12A)
In Pixels, the contents of a capsule which hasbeen sent into space to transmit the message of peace to the inhabitants of a foreign planet does exactly the opposite and causes the aliens to attack Earth using 1970s and 1980s computer games as models for their assaults.
This leads the US president, Will Cooper (Kevin James) to call on his childhood best friend, Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler) to lead a team of old-school arcaders (Peter Dinkledge and Josh Gad) to defeat the aliens and save the planet.
Pixels is another weak entry in the Adam Sandler CV, playing, as it does, like a half-hearted reworking of Ghostbusters without either the wit or the personality. Dinkledge, who is obsessed with Serena Williams, is the best thing in it.
Mistress America (15A)
Director Noah Baumbach and his co-writer and star Greta Gerwig walk a tightrope between contemporary satire and old-school Hollywood farce in Mistress America.
Continuing a collaboration that began five years ago with Greenberg and then paid off richly with creative dividends in Frances Ha, they've now come up with a girl-bonding-and-breaking tale that simultaneously feels tossed off and minutely choreographed in its comic timing.
It is a densely plotted and structured screwball comedy that is driven by Gerwig as one of those busy eccentrics that Katharine Hepburn and Carol Lombard mastered with such likeable assurance in their day. Worth a look.
