‘Crisis’

Addiction leads to crisis – in this instance opioids and oxycodone in particular – as three separate stories across the American/Canadian border inevitably collide.

But Crisis is no intense, on-the-streets junkie-fuelled realism. Recovering addict architect Claire Reimann (Evangeline Lilly – Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Hurt Locker) looks for answers to explain the murder of her teenage son as Jake (Armie Hammer – J. Edgar, Call Me By Your Name) arranges a shipment of oxy from Montreal. At a university laboratory, Dr. Tyrone Brower’s (Gary Oldman – The Dark Knight, Darkest Hour) research is showing unexpected results for a giant pharmaceutical company’s much heralded non-addictive painkiller.

Written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki (Arbitrage), Crisis is a minor player in its genre with nothing new to say. Leaden performances (particularly Hammer) and leaden script fail to live up to the attempted honesty of its narrative.

Rating: 43%

‘Death on the Nile’

Slick, stylish – and as dull as stagnant river water. Big budget, big names but the result is a sporadically interesting adaptation of the Agatha Christie crime thriller featuring her beloved detective, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh – Murder on the Orient Express, Dunkirk).

Socialite and heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot – Wonder Woman, Red Notice) marries fortune hunter Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer – The Social Network, Call Me By Your Name) and arranges a celebratory honeymoon with a few friends and family on a private Nile cruise. Only things go desperately wrong resulting in five deaths, including the hostess. But just who is responsible? With Poirot aboard, things will eventually become clear.

With all aboard benefitting from Ridgeway’s death in some way, all are under suspicion. But a less than impressive and sympathetic array of characters they are, victims of the heiress’ thoughtlessness or money. Hectic and stagey (with a great deal of digital 1930s Egypt as a backdrop), there’s little emotional investment in creating characters beyond the cut out tropes they are, leaving the likes of Annette Bening (American Beauty, 20th Century Women) floundering in the shallows.

Rating: 40%

‘Rebecca’

An inane adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier novel, Rebecca is little more than eye candy with the love affair across class lines between wealthy Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer) and lady’s companion, Lily James amidst the soft focus, autumnal hued 1920s French Riviera coastlines.

Things change when the couple return to Cornwall and Manderley, the ancestral home on the windswept English coast where the legacy of Max’s deceased first wife, Rebecca de Winter, is all-pervasive. Housekeeper Mrs Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas) maintains the dead woman’s presence in every detail. But not all is what it seems.

Inconsistent and desparate to be liked, the Rebecca of director Ben Wheatley falls at the first hurdle in comparison between the classic 1940 Hitchcock. In a desperate attempt to remain respectful towards the source material (the novel) but stamp his own take on the story, Wheatley has delivered a bland, albeit stylish, melodrama lacking in any suspense.

Rating: 44%

Director: Ben Wheatley (High-Rise, A Field in England)

Writer: Jane Goldman (The Debt, The Limehouse Golem), Joe Shrapnel (Seberg, Race), Anna Waterhouse (Seberg, Race) – adapted from the Daphne Du Maurier novel

Main cast: Armie Hammer (The Social Network, Final Portrait), Lily James (Cinderella, Baby Driver), Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient, Darkest Hour)

‘Hotel Mumbai’

The harrowing events of the coordinated terrorist attack on multiple targets across Mumbai in 2008 form the basis of Anthony Maras’ feature film debut.

The luxurious Taj Mahal Hotel, where terrorists controlled the corridors for four days killing more than 30 people, was the highest profile target. And it is here that Maras focuses his occasionally gripping, predominantly bland, factional telling. Like many disaster films of old with large casts, it’s the lack of characterisation that’s the problem. Dev Patel as staff member Arjun is the film’s mainstay but with Armie Hammer, Jason Isaacs, Nazanin Boniadi and Carmen Duncan as guests, their stories need to be told – along with time spent with the (admittedly gripping) rampaging terrorists stalking the hotel.

Hotel Mumbai certainly has its moments, but in terms of a tribute to victims and survivors, it falls somewhat short as excess of killings and violence outweigh any attempt at a message.

Rating: 53%

Director: Anthony Maras

Writer: John Collee (Tanna, Mahana), Anthony Maras

Main cast: Dev Patel (Lion, Slumdog Millionaire), Armie Hammer (On the Basis of Sex, Call Me By Your Name), Nazanin Boniadi (Ben Hur, TV’s Homeland)

‘On the Basis of Sex’

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is trending, an icon of our time. Last year came the acclaimed documentary RBG which introduced the fiery advocate for the advancement of gender equality and women’s rights to a wider audience.

Director Mimi Leder (Pay It Forward, Deep Impact) and her film introduces her to far more – although, inevitably, the biopic of only the second woman to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court is sadly diluted for mass consumption. Felicity Jones plays Ginsburg with steely aplomb, but in covering 30 years, the narrative skims across too much episodic detail.

Rating: 56%

Director: Mimi Leder (Deep Impact, TV’s The Leftovers)

Writer: Daniel Stiepleman

Main cast: Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything, Inferno), Armie Hammer (Nocturnal Animals, Final Portrait), Justin Theroux (The Girl on the Train, TV’s The Leftovers)

‘Call Me By Your Name’

Languid telling, during a 1980s Tuscan summer, of first love where 17 year-old Elio (a gentle, nuanced performance by Timothée Chalamet) falls for his father’s archealogical assistant, the over-confident Oliver (Armie Hammer).

It’s a bumpy ride for Elio – and for the audience. At times beautiful, at times stretching credulity as the all-American bumptious Jock purportedly falls for the skinny, bookish waif. Chalamet is pitch-perfect as Elio but a towering Hammer is less convincing.

Director Luca Guadagnino perfectly captures the nervousness of first love and its associated heartbreak but Elio’s relationship with his father, Michael Stuhlbarg and peers highlights the shortcomings of the love affair.

4 Oscar nominations in 2018 (including best film and best actor for Chalamet – won one, James Ivory, for adapted screenplay)

Rating: 68%

Director: Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love, A Bigger Splash)

Writer: James Ivory (Maurice, Shakespeare-Wallah) – based on the novel by André Aciman

Main cast: Timothée Chalamet (Interstellar, Lady Bird), Armie Hammer (The Social Network, The Lone Ranger), Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man, The Shape of Water)

‘Final Portrait’

An uncanny likeness of the two leads to the characters they are playing and a beautifully modulated insight into the painting process itself within the artist’s studio are the highlights of actor Stanley Tucci’s paean to artist Alberto Giacometti.

Tucci has chosen to restrict that process to the two weeks in 1964 it takes Giacometti (a nervous, full-of-energy but profoundly annoying Geoffrey Rush) to paint the portrait of American writer, James Lord (a suitably waspish Armie Hammer).

The result is well-made but less-than-satisfying as the material (unlike Giacometti’s paint) is spread a little too thinly.

Rating: 54%

Director: Stanley Tucci (Big Night, Blind Date)

Writer: Stanley Tucci (Big Night, Blind Date) – based on the book by James Lord

Main cast: Geoffrey Rush (Shine,  Pirates of the Caribbean), Armie Hammer (The Social Network, Nocturnal Animals)

‘Nocturnal Animals’

Stylish but deeply cynical, intoxicating but unnerving, director Tom Ford’s follow up to his 2009 debut A Single Man is a sensual minefield of emotions and narrative.

A beautifully modulated performance by Amy Adams as the unhappily married high-end LA art dealer is juxtaposed by the raw emotion of ex-husband Jake Gyllenhaal featuring in a different but interlinked storyline to the one inhabited by Adams.

With a support cast including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Shannon and Armie Hammer as Adams’ philandering husband, Nocturnal Animals is a sophisticated thriller with more than a hint of psychological revenge.

Nominated for 1 Oscar in 2017 (best supporting actor, Michael Shannon)

Rating: 82%

Director: Tom Ford (A Single Man)

Writer: Tom Ford (A Single Man) – based on the novel by Austin Wright

Main cast: Amy Adams (Arrival, American Hustle), Jake Gyllenhaal (Southpaw, Donnie Darko), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass, Savages), Michael Shannon (Man of Steel, Revolutionary Road), Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger, The Social Network)

‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E’

What happened? A light-hearted, frivolous, tongue-in-cheek, sexy (in its day) spy caper television series from the 1960s turned into this mess?

Panache by the bucketload (’60s fashion looks glorious on Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki) but too too often style outweighs substance. And there’s not an ounce of chemistry between Solo Bonaparte (Henry Cavill – Superman) and Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer – The Lone Ranger, The Social Network). Where was director Guy Ritchie’s high-octane entertainment of Sherlock Holmes and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels? Boring.

Rating: 31%

Director: Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels)

Writer: Guy Ritchie (RocknRolla, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), Lionel Wigram – based on the TV series

Main cast: Henry Cavill (Superman, Immortals), Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger, The Social Network), Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, Testament of Youth), Elizabeth Debicki (The Great Gatsby, Macbeth)