Locke

This is different, in a good way. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when it was pitched: "It's about a man driving his car and talking to people on the phone" ... "Huh? Then what?" ... "Nothing. That's it. A man in a car."

Very brave. There's no hiding for Tom Hardy as Ivan Locke, since he's the only character you see ... and you see him for the whole 85 minutes. And whilst this might have made a good radio play, the visuals you do get are totally compelling. Hardy is simply outstanding.

SPOILERS

The film starts with Ivan Locke getting into his BMW at a building site. Presumably he's heading home but when he has to stop at a traffic light he at first seems to fall asleep briefly, then when woken by a truck honking he seems to see something in his rear-view mirror and decides to turn right instead of left.

As Ivan drives we find out what is going on via a series of phone calls; and the odd monologue directed at Ivan's dead father who he seems to be imagining as a back-seat passenger.

Firstly we learn that Ivan is due to oversee a huge concrete pour early the next morning. His deputy Donal goes ballistic when Ivan calls to tell him that he won't be there and Donal is going to have to take charge. Andrew Scott is great as the skittish assistant - sometimes calm and showing initiative and other times almost completely losing it. Who would have thought that men talking about the ins and outs of a concrete pour could be so interesting?

Gradually we discover where Ivan is going. The plot is so cleverly constructed. He could have lied to everyone and made something up, but he is so inscrutably honest that he has to tell the truth. That sounds like it might be hard to believe, but the way it is played is totally believable.

At one point Ivan's boss Gareth says "Why didn't you just say you were ill?" and Ivan replies "Because I'm not ill."

There are some little nuggets worth looking out for. As Ivan calls people and they call him, you see the names and phone numbers coming up on his console. For most people it is their actual name, but I noticed that instead of "Gareth" it has "Bastard". Which suggests Ivan has had some issues with him in the past that aren't otherwise mentioned.

I think the film has a lot to say about modern life. Ivan Locke is a man who "has it all" in a modest way. He's successful in his career, he's respected and people like him. He has a wife and two sons who all love him. He appears on the surface to be unable to do anything wrong.

And yet he has made a mistake. One mistake.

Locke believes so firmly that anything can be put right, that he decides to do the right thing and sees that decision through to the end. He's clearly driven by the failure of his own father to do right by him when he was a child.

But the consequences are severe. Both his employer and his wife are totally unforgiving. Interesting that he works for an American company that immediately fires him for leaving the site in Donal's hands. I'm sure there are plenty of other companies that might have done the same, but American companies are singled out as the most soulless. His wife Katrina, voiced by the lovely Ruth Wilson, is both slow to grasp that he has made another woman pregnant, and then quick to kick him out of her life without any second chance.

You get the impression that Ivan was too good for them. His boss says he put in a good word for him, but probably jumped at the chance to force him out. Who knows what marital problems Ivan and Katrina had, but she accuses him of always loving his buildings more than her.

There's a fairly small role for the fabulous Olivia Colman, but as you'd expect she makes Bethan as real as can be. A lonely, scared woman who would like Ivan to love her, even though he hardly even knows her.

Probably the most surprising film I have ever seen... because it is just a man in a car... but such a well played story. Brilliant.

Lilya 4 Ever

This is possibly the bleakest film I have ever seen. Almost everything that happens to the main characters is bad. The brief moments of respite only serve to set Lilya and Volodya up for further misery.

So what is the point? Is it just to make the viewer feel bad that some people have miserable lives?

If so then it worked. I felt terrible at the end of this film. It made me feel like the world was a horrible place. I had to go and do something else to take my mind off it.

So I guess this is the cinematic equivalent of a beggar in the street. Most people will walk by without even noticing, some people will feel sorry for them, a small number will offer some assistance; maybe someone will be moved to actually help change things in the long term.

Fighter

This is about the Danish film Fighter from 2007... not one of the many other films with that title.

It's not really clear from the start that the film is set in Copenhagen. Because we see the Turkish girl Ayse with her family who are very traditional. Then it's very disorienting to start seeing blonde Danes cropping up everywhere.

Maybe I just wasn't paying attention, because I found the film very dull.

Fighter tries to be a social drama combined with a martial arts film. It does quite well at the former and quite badly at the latter. As the film progresses it almost starts to feel like a parody of The Karate Kid.

I think it would have been much better to leave out the "tournament". Girls fighting boys is one thing, but light-weights against heavy-weights is ridiculous and just wouldn't be allowed on safety grounds anywhere.

There was a story here that was worth telling, but by tying it up with a bad MA sub-plot it gets lost. The sifu character is quite funny though... his sage-like advice is staggeringly underwhelming... "look eyes".

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate

I find that I am usually hot or cold on Japanese anime films. And even the ones I like are a bit baffling. The visuals on Bayonetta are right up there with the best I have seen - the animation is fantastic - and I shouldn't really complain about the clichéd English accent that they gave the main character on the English soundtrack.

But the story is baffling. Even with the lengthy history lesson at the beginning... or maybe because of it. What is going on? Other than knowing that Bayonetta is a witch and there are some creatures that don't like witches, I was pretty lost most of the time.

It's hard to know if the script is better in the original Japanese. Maybe the translation was poor. But the English version is pretty dire... all the dialogue is just so stilted.

Bah. I just wish someone would write a decent script for films like this. The characters have so much potential beyond a few action scenes. Disappointing.

Sinister

This is supposed to be a psychological horror film, but I didn't find much of it scary at all. There are a few yuk moments when, along with the main character, you want to look away but can't quite stop watching. I think there were a couple of attempted jumps... but they were totally telegraphed so didn't have any effect.

I did find the film intriguing though. The idea seemed quite original and I wanted to find out what was going on. That's all that kept me watching, in spite of the clichéd creeping around alone in the dark for no good reason.

SPOILERS

The plot is quite simple on the surface. Ethan Hawke plays one-hit-wonder true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt who is desperate for another crack at the big time. He moves his family to the house where the previous owners were hanged and their daughter disappeared, in the hope of writing a best-seller about it. His family know there was a murder in the area (as that is what Oswalt always writes about) but don't know they are living in the actual house where it happened. They aren't happy at moving again, as clearly Oswalt has clearly been fruitlessly chasing his next hit for 10 years.

Nice introduction. Some interesting characters. Plenty of possibilities.

Then things get weird. Oswalt finds a box of old Super 8 films in the attic along with a projector. He rigs up a screen and watches the most recent film first. It shows the family being hanged by an unseen assailant. Wow, he's only been on the case a day and has hard evidence already! Of course he wonders how the film got there and who shot it...

It takes several days for Oswalt to get round to watching the other films. This is silly. The only reason for this is so that the plot can be strung out and we can see some clumsy character development. Also, obviously, Oswalt can only watch the films alone at night after everyone has gone to sleep so that he can be scared by the creaky house and "footsteps" in the attic.

Despite the clunkiness of the plot, it is quite intriguing. The films show other families being murdered in novel horrific ways, seemingly by the person who shot the Super 8 movies. These scenes aren't particularly graphic. The horror comes from the suggestion of what is happening rather than the depiction of it - which I like in a horror film.

Obviously the murders are linked and we eventually find out that there is an ancient Bogey Man who "eats children" and has been on the loose since Babylonian times. OK, right.

Just as Sinister looks likely to descend into a terrible ending with the "good guy" battling the demon, it surprises you. Oswalt does what he should have done on day 2 and decides to get himself and his family away from the death house ... immediately. And he does. They leave and don't come back.

This wrong footed me for a moment, and got me thinking "OK, so the demon must follow them somehow". And of course he does. Oswalt gets a call from his police insider who tells him that all the families that were murdered had lived in the house where the previous murders occurred.

Oh shit. At this point Oswalt might have been wise to move back to the death house... but that might not have worked anyway. Instead he goes up to his attic and finds the box of Super 8 films and the projector there ... which I forgot to mention that he burned before he left the death house.

This freaks him out a bit, as you might expect. He tips the box over and spots an envelope labelled "Extended Cuts". It might as well have read "Ha, Ha. Gotcha!" because the previously unseen clips of film show that each of the murders was in fact committed by the child which then went "missing".

Crikey. What does he do now? Is one of his children going to be possessed and try to kill him? No. His daughter is already possessed and has already drugged him. He wakes up to find his wife and son gagged and bound like him. In a nice touch the girl says "Don't worry Daddy, I'll make you famous again." before killing them all with an axe. She captures it all on film, of course.

The movie ends with the girl being carried away by the Bogey Man and then the box of Super 8 film sitting neatly in the attic.

So, quite neat I thought. There are plenty of flaws obviously, but on the whole Sinister is quite entertaining in a, ahem, sinister way. I particularly liked the suggestion that Oswalt's fate was caused by his own reckless fame-hunting at his family's expense... shame that his family shared that fate... but that's demons for you!

Murk

In a psychological thriller you only get real tension if there are options. The problem with Danish thriller Murk is that there are very few options throughout and, as a result, the tension evaporates quickly rather than building to any sort of climax. What is there is promising, but I think the plot needed a few more characters and twists to make it a good film.

SPOILERS

The film starts off with Jacob and his girlfriend hosting a visit from his wheelchair-using sister Julie and their mother. Gradually we find out that Julie tried to kill herself and was left brain-damaged by the attempt. Then Julie surprises everyone by announcing her intention to marry Anker, who she met on the internet. The family are concerned but happy and the wedding proceeds.

But Julie kills herself on the wedding night. Cutting her wrists in the bath, as Anker slept.

At this point I couldn't see why she would do that, but she'd tried several times before... and who knows the mind of a troubled soul?

We jump forward to Jacob sorting through Julie's possessions. This is nicely done, as he finds many things that remind him of the past (both good and bad times) before making the plot-moving discovery. Anker has left a book behind which contains a memorial to another girl, with the same wording that he requested for Julie's memorial. Jacob is suspicious and starts investigating.

Firstly he finds that Anker has left him a dud phone number. We also learn that Anker has no family and that Jacob's family know almost nothing about him. This is stretching credibility a bit.

And that's how the film continues. Jacob finds more and more evidence that Anker is seeking women on the internet who have survived a suicide attempt. He marries them and kills them on the wedding night. No-one else has noticed this. Jacob doesn't think he can tell anyone.

There are some mild twists. The town of Mørke has a creepy policeman who might be helping Anker... or maybe he is the murderer, somehow. It's possible, but always unlikely. Later it looks like Jacob might be fitted up for one of the murders, but that doesn't run far either.

The ending is the most disappointing part. After a really clichéd villain's explanation of what he's done (including the revelation that there are more victims than Jacob ever thought) Anker drugs Jacob and tries to kill them both. Of course Jacob survives! Just.

The plot lets the film down. Many, many other things are good about it, but overall it just left me tutting.