He’s big and he’s bold and he’s got a beard. Thor is one of the most instantly recognisable characters from Norse mythology, thanks in small part to the 2011 film starring Chris Hemsworth as the eponymous hammer wielding hero.

The film was based on the Marvel comic that was in turn based on the original Norse legends. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, who gave it a Shakespearean twist by basing his direction on Henry V, Thor was a successful venture into the Norse underworld by Hollywood.

This year will see the release of the sequel, Thor: The Dark World, which again co-stars Natalie Portman and follows Thor as he rescues her from the dark world of Svartalfheim. But what of the legend behind the comic book and film?

As well as giving his name to one of the days of the week – ‘Thors’day – the character is associated with thunder, lightning, storms, strength and the healing of mankind. Pretty major then in Norse terms.

He’s a massive part of Germanic mythology in general and was especially popular during the time of the Vikings. In Norse mythology, most of the stories have him married to Sif, a goddess with golden hair and depict him with a red beard and fierce eyes. He was the son of the god Odin and Fjorgyn, who was the personification of Earth.

Archaeological findings from Viking Age Scandinavian burials include pendants in the distinctive shape of the hammer of Thor. Interestingly, the swastika symbol has been identified as representing the hammer or lightning of Thor. It seems, according to various scholars, to have been worn by the 9th century warrior. It is also found on memorial stones in Scandinavia next to inscriptions dedicated to Thor.

Thor has continued to resonate down the centuries and is mentioned over and over in modern popular culture. He’s been the subject of thousands of poems, stories and paintings and had a chemical element – thorium – named after him by Swedish chemist Jons Jacob Berzelius in the 19th century.

The Marvel Comics superhero version of Thor was created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby in 1962. This version not only has two of his own films, but he also appeared in the ensemble Marvel superhero film, The Avengers, in 2012.

Thor has also been the subject of a video game that tied in with the 2011 film. Thor: God of Thunder is a third person action game published by SEGA. Unfortunately most critics seemed to want to cast the game out of Asgard as it was cited as one of the worst games of 2011 by more than one reviewer.

Thor is also a major part of the Thunderstruck 2’s brand new online slots concept that features loads of characters from Norse mythology. It is guaranteed awesome fun featuring Odin, Thor, Loki and Valkyrie.

Film Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Dir: Derek Cianfrance
UK Release: out now

I hadn’t read or heard much about The Place Beyond the Pines before I went to view it last week, so had no idea what to expect – aside from maybe a tattooed Ryan Gosling. Amongst a selection of shorts and TV documentaries, The Place Beyond the Pines is Derek Cianfrance’s third film release after Brother Tied and Blue Valentine – the second of which heavily features aforementioned Gosling.

The story centres around two families from opposing classes in Schenectady, New York and how their lives intertwine over the next 17 or so years. Revisiting Schenectady, Luke (Gosling), a brooding chain smoking, travelling stunt biker happens to discover his 6 month old son after a previous love interest with local Romina (Eva Mendes). Romina, who is now in a new relationship, is keen to resist the temptations of bad boy Luke who commits to staying in town to provide for baby Jason, possibly due to his own lack of family and stability growing up. Luke feels that the only way of providing for Jason is to resort to bank robbing with his new workmate and accomplish Robin (Ben Mendelsohn).

After a spate of successful crimes and showering baby Jason with gifts, Luke, shunned now by Robin, finds himself in a spot of bother when attempting a solo bank heist. Pursued by police, Luke ends up one on one in a residential house with police cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). Avery becomes a local hero after the shoot-out results in the end of Luke.

The second part of Cianfrance’s tale now centres on Avery and his, also troubled family. Avery’s wife is obviously taking the strain of her husband’s day job with a small baby in tow. We see Avery struggle with the guilt of leaving a baby without a father; he empathises particularly well due to having a baby himself. From here, we watch Avery deal with local heroism whilst at the same time becoming embroiled into various corrupt police practices. Eventually we see Avery overcome his self-importance by doing the right thing and seeing his corrupt colleagues get their comeuppance.

Cut to 15 or so years later, there have been some changes in Avery’s life. Now parted from his wife and with a difficult and distant relationship with his son AJ, he is now running for the high office of attorney general of New York. Predictably so, both teenage sons of Avery and Luke meet in high school where their drug fuelled friendship is broken by getting caught by the police. On the discovery by Jason of the father of his ‘friend’ AJ, Jason now takes appropriate ‘revenge’.

Overall, The Place Beyond the Pines is a fantastic piece of cinema with heartfelt quality performances. In particular Bradley Cooper impresses, being out of his natural comedy role. Gosling, as ever, gives an outstanding performance creating a frustratingly sad character. The themes of fatherhood, family ties and nuture play a strong foundation in The Place Beyond the Pines, and we ultimately see the repetition of nature and relationships come to the fore. Parts were predictable and I do personally have a pet peeve to ’15 years later’ types of filming with little ageing present – although in general an enthralling must see.

You can catch The Place Beyond the Pines at a Showcase cinema near you www.showcasecinemas.co.uk

A group of actors and entertainers with unparalleled cool and chutzpah, the Rat Pack’s attitude, style, and live fast (but not actually) die young attitude has resonated down through the decades. Their influence on musicians, films and style can’t be underestimated and though many have tried to match that kind of cool – and copy that kind of cool – nobody has managed to pull it off in the same way.

The original Rat Pack centred around Humphrey Bogart and his wife Lauren Bacall and included people like Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Sid Luft, Bogart himself, Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant. Who wouldn’t have wanted to be a fly on the wall at their poker games?!

But this isn’t actually the full group that’s associated with the ‘Rat Pack’ of the 60s – that morphed out of the original gang of friends and entertainers and formed after Bogart’s death. it included Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Joey Bishop, Marilyn Monroe and Shirley MacLaine among others.

They were a tight group of friends who wielded enormous power in the entertainment, film and music industries. With Sinatra, Martin and Davis Jr widely regarded as the leaders of the group, they referred to themselves as ‘The Clan’, actively eschewing the Rat Pack moniker that nevertheless remains their label right up to today.

They regularly performed in the gambling capital of the world Vegas – and many other venues. And if one of them was performing, the audience could be pretty sure they’d see the rest of the Rat Pack in the audience as they always turned up to support each other. When they played the big casinos in Vegas, it was a huge deal for the casino bosses as the presence of the Rat Pack would guarantee a full house of rich high rollers, read to gamble away small fortunes on the roulette, poker and blackjack tables. Their legacy has inspired and made possible the casino culture that exists today, enabling you to even play from home at places like Jackpot Capital Casino.

Casino signs advertising their gigs would routinely echo the famous Sands Hotel sign: “DEAN MARTIN – MAYBE FRANK – MAYBE SAMMY”. Casinos were guaranteed to make loads of money when the Rat Pack were in town – if not from their own poker and betting exploits – most definitely from their audience.

Sinatra remains a pivotal and fascinating figure of the Rat Pack, with his well known and fully acknowledged connections to the Mob and to the most powerful people in America. He was extremely close to JFK and he and the Rat Pack campaigned hard for the Democrats to get Kennedy elected. It’s thought that his connections to the Mob led JFK to snub him in favour of the clean cut Bing Crosby, leading to Sinatra turning away from the Democrats and eventually becoming a full blown Republican with his support for Reagan in the 70s.

His allegiances constantly conflicted and he became a split personality – outwardly performing at Democratic fundraisers and advocating left wing policies and by night the boss of the Rat Pack – the personification of everything sleazy, seedy but undoubtedly cool that America could offer.

The Rat Pack held a comeback tour in the late 80s, with Sinatra, Davis Jr and Martin on the bill. Martin left after just four performances, to be replaced by Liza Minelli. Their glory days were definitely over and with Joey Bishop’s death in 2007, the last of the Rat Pack was dead.

And despite filmmakers including Tarantino and Scorsese attempting to find that elusive ‘cool’ it’s just never been replicated.

Film Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Dir: Michael Winterbottom
UK Release: 26th April

Having collaborated on 24 Hour Party People and The Trip, director Michael Winterbottom and actor/comedian Steve Coogan are reunited once more in The Look of Love. The film is a biography of Paul Raymond (Coogan), dubbed as the ‘King of Soho’ once his strip clubs (the first of their kind in the UK), soft porn magazines and real estate empire took off making him the wealthiest man in Britain before his death in 2008.

Though born in 1925, the film deals with Raymond’s life between the late 1950s to the death of his daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots) in 1992, which acts as a framing device for the entire film. Raymond’s relationship with Debbie along with his wife Jean (Anna Friel) and his most significant girlfriend Amber aka Fiona Richmond (Tamsin Egerton) are all utilised to illustrate the inner workings of a man who came from a poor background in Liverpool and unselfconsciously made his money via the flashing of flesh and the buying of bricks and mortar.

Moving from rich black and white of the 1950s to vibrant colour in the 1960s up to the 1990s, the art direction, cinematography and costuming of The Look of Love are at all times stylish and visually attractive. The strip club scenes, of which there are many, are depicted in the more burlesque end of the stripping spectrum. When the film moves into the soft and then increasingly more graphic porn of Raymond’s magazines or his love life, we are certainly in the Adult Section.The cast are all solid particularly Anna Friel, Imogen Poots and The Thick of It’s Chris Addison as the coke snorting Tony Power.

Steve Coogan seems to be portraying a cooler form of Alan Partridge with the local DJs presence being felt throughout Coogan’s performance and costumes. For a film dealing so much in sex, at no point does the film indicate that people working as strippers are anything other than delighted in their profession which seems somewhat over simplified. The film is peppered with cameos including David Walliams, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas and Dara O’Bríain. Ultimately however, the film’s material feels overly stretched into what becomes quite a predictable script which pales in comparison to portraits of similar men as in 1996′s The People vs Larry Flynt.

Film Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Dir: Richard Linklater
UK Release: 26th April

Can the sweetest guy in the world also be a cold-blooded killer? That’s the question posed in Richard Linklater’s latest picture, Bernie.

School of Rock star Jack Black teams up once again with the Texan director for a much darker picture, this despite all the camp humour and occasional singing.

The first act is set up as near-hagiography, where the townsfolk of Carthage, Texas sing the praises of Bernie Tiede (Black). The balance between real and imagined is further blurred by Linklater using actors along with real-life people during talking-head interview scenes.

Of course Bernie seems too good to be true and he shows either his true colours or a moment of madness (you decide) when he guns down Shirley Maclaine’s elderly widow. Mixing up a Sunset Boulevard style relationship with a true-life tale of avarice and murder, Linklater’s film is far more ambiguous than it appears.

Matthew MacConnaughy is also on stellar form as good ol’ boy D.A. Danny Buck, the man charged with sending Bernie down. It makes you wonder why he spends so much of his time making rom-coms when he’s a superb character actor.

Time Out recently revealed their 100 best romantic movies ever made list. Last year I took part in the Top 100 Horror movies survey. Which was nice. Inspired by this countdown and fellow blogger Adam Batty, from Hope Lies, declaring his selection on Twitter, I thought I’d follow suit…

#10 A Horrible Way To Die (Adam Wingard)

One of my absolute favourite movies of the past few years is as twisted a love story as imaginable. Sarah (Amy Seimetz) is a recovering boozehound whose ex-boyfriend is the infamous serial killer, Garrett Tyrell (AJ Bowen). She thinks he’s coming to kill her after grassing him up and sending the nutjob to prison for ever. Only he’s escaped custody! A Horrible Way To Die shows that even monsters can love – ask Dr. Robert Ledgard from The Skin I Live In.

#9 The Whole Wide World (Dan Ireland)

I’m a sucker for stories of tragic writers (also see Bright Star, a film that could of – and nearly – made this list). Instead I’ve chosen The Whole Wide World, the sad story of Robert E. Howard, the Texan author of Conan The Barbarian and friend of H.P. Lovecraft. This one stars Rene Zellwegger and Vincent D’Onofrio and is a lovely, if little seen, picture. Howard blew his brains out, aged 30, after hearing news that his mother had passed away. The Whole Wide World is a low-key charmer.

#8 Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian)

This early musical has got one of the best openings to a musical I’ve ever seen. It was also revolutionary in its use of sound montage. In fact, the use of sound effects to build up the intro to a song was surely an influence on Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark? Mostly forgotten today, Mark Cousins, not for the first time bigging something up I’ve come to love, wrote about it in The Story of Film and that led me to this Maurice Chevalier/Jeanette McDonald musical. It’s pure cheese and quite dated, but it is the epitome of romance.

#7 City Girl (FW Murnau)

I absolutely adore Mary Duncan’s portrayal of lonely waitress kate, a spirited lass who one day, whilst slaving away at her job in a city diner, meets country boy Clem (Charles Farrell). F.W. Murnau’s 1929 picture, City Girl, is a beautiful and achingly romantic picture, even if Herr Direktor wasn’t there for some of the filming (due to illness) and Fox then took the picture off him. I swear I’m not being a contrarian with this: but I love it more than Sunrise, even if the former is a ‘better’ movie. Kate and Clem running through the wheatfields as the camera glides along is enough to make me cry.

#6 Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)

Midnight in Paris is basically my own daydream turned into a movie fantasy. I imagine for other book lovers, this film will chime with them too. It’s not the romance between Adriana and Gil that I fell head over heels with, but the fact the American time traveller gets to hang out with literary titans such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and hear Cole Porter tickling the ivories. Tom Hiddelston and Corey Stoll are pitch perfect as Scottie and Ernest. I’m obsessed with literary modernism and this film, for me, is a total dream-within-a-dream. Also, somebody needs to cast Adrien Brody as Dali in a proper movie. His cameo is superb. Annie Hall would have been in this place, but I love Midnight in Paris more. If you can imagine that.

#5 Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

Loathed by some, adored by many. Amélie is the definition of romantic. Yann Tiersen’s score is the final touch of magic in Jeunet’s 2001 instant-classic. Interesting that this movie was originally to be set in London and starring Emily Watson. Amélie is the kind of sentimental, syrupy fare only the French could get away with because they do it with such panache. Amazingly, the Americans didn’t set to remake it. Probably a bit too kooky for them.

#4 Regular Lovers (Phillipe Garrel)

This tale of two students meeting during the Mai 1968 riots is long, talky, in black and white, and I loved it. Louis Garrel and Clotilde Hesme (who appear in this list twice) play the leads in Philipe Garrel’s film. My favourite scene is the students dancing to This Time Tomorrow by The Kinks.

#3 Aimée & Jaguar (Max Färberböck)

I saw this in the early 2000s. A German housewife and a Jewish lady named Felice fall in love against the backdrop of Nazi Germany. It’s handling of ‘forbidden love’ could have been cheesy but the performances anchor it into a devastating drama. I think, in a flood of tears, I said something like “Why can’t they just be together?” then carried on sobbing. Maria Schrader and Juliane Köhler give excellent performances.

#2 Les Chants d’Amour (Christophe Honore)

This film has a personal resonance in a way that few films do. It’s nothing to do with the content, more where I saw it and who I saw it with. I shall leave it at that, unless you want me to break down in tears? Louis Garrel, Clotilde Hesme, Ludivine Sagnier and Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet lead the cast of bright young things and they sing of heartbreak, love and bitterness. A wonderful musical, for sure, but Honore’s next attempt, Beloved, was a bit … disappointing.

#1 Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch)

Ernst Lubitsch’s 1932 proto screwball comedy, Trouble in Paradise, posits the idea that money and the art of the con can be as romantic as falling in love. The tale of two loved up thieves fleecing wealthy marks in Paris and Venice, I agree with Gilbert Adair that Trouble in Paradise has the best delivered dialogue in screen history. The dialogue sparkles like a gem. Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins are a match made in heaven.

Film Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Extra Features Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Dir: Mario Bava
UK Release: 29th April

Mario Bava’s 1972 gothic horror features a lineage all the way back to Black Sunday (1960). There are major differences; it’s in colour for a start, but the references, although oblique, are intriguingly handled.

Curses, witchcraft, ages-old revenge, gothic mansions and the idea that future relatives of wicked aristocrats are marked for death (potentially): all play a vital functions in both movies.

Baron Blood (Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga) was the first collaboration between Bava and producer Alfred Leone, who can be spied sitting on the aeroplane during the opening scenes, right behind lead actor Antonio Cantafora. If you know your Bava history, the collaboration did not end well with their next film together, Lisa and the Devil, being reworked extensively, so much so, Bava walked off the picture in disgust. The Italian title is intriguing, also. The film’s narrative takes place in Austria but names German Nuremberg as the setting. As Alan Jones notes in his video intro (see Extras below), is Bava drawing parallels between Baron Blood, decayed and vile aristocracy and the then recent memory of Nazism? Or is the German city somehow more appealing and correct to the medieval horrors showcased in the film?

It is also noted as one of the very few times the maestro set foot out of Italy to work. The location found and used in Austria is pretty much perfect for the narrative and the director – an expert cinematographer – gets plenty of visual mileage out of the locale.

Baron Blood tells the tale of an inquisitive descendant of Otto von Kliest, the enonymous baron, whose sadistic ways earned him the wrath of a local witch, whom placed a curse on him. Peter Kliest (Cantafora) turns up with a parchment upon which is scrawled a resurrection incantation. Believing it a lark, he and Elke Summer’s architect read it aloud one eerie night and, naturally, all hell breaks loose.

There’s a very intriguing line between ancient and modern in Baron Blood. Characters dismiss as superstition and old world thinking. How can such things happen in the age of cold, hard existentialism and science? Bava has fun with this approach as the characters slowly realise the baron has returned from beyond the grave and sets about restoring his castle to its former blood-soaked glory. Until the last act, nobody quite comes to terms with the idea magic and supernatural evil exists.

As ever with Arrow Video releases, the HD transfer is splendid with extra features to make cult movie fans salivate like a zombie at an all-you-can-eat human buffet. We get three versions of the film: the international version, the AIP (American) cut and the Italian. As ever with the AIP releases, the score was rewritten by Les Baxter, here, surprisingly, doing an inspired job. However Stelvio Cipriani’s original accompaniments align much better to the thematic and stylistic direction by Bava. The cheesy, modern romantic suite that opens the film – almost putting us off guard, in some respects – alters as the supernatural encroaches on the lives of the lead characters. Therefore Cipriani’s music gets more atonal and icy. Conceptually, this appears strong, even if the opening and closing music has dated terribly.

For modern viewers, Baron Blood might be too slowly paced. Releasing the film in the US, AIP thought so and excised around eight minutes. The film does take its sweet time in getting to the good stuff, though several sequences are as expertly crafted as any Bava had ever staged. The incantation scene, in particular, is excellent. The reference to the Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton flick, The Leopard Man, will be noted by horror aficionados.

Extras

The audio commentary by Tim Lucas, presumably, like the Black Sunday one, imported from another release from a few years back, is well worth a listen but not as good as the Black Sunday chat track. The mixture of trivia and analysis, however, makes this a must-listen.

The short featurette with Ruggero Deodato, in which he discusses Bava, is filler and not especially revealing but, again, enthusiasts are likely to be interested in hearing Deodato’s recollections of meeting the grand master and singing his praises.

As stated, there are three versions of the movie to view and if you want to study different cuts of Baron Blood in detail, you’ve got the perfect opportunity to do so. An introduction by Alan Jones, radio spots and a lovely photo gallery titled ‘Bava at Work’ are also featured. Also included is a booklet with an essay by James Oliver.

The Blu-ray HD transfer (1080p) is top stuff and this release comes with brand new English subs. All in all, this is yet another excellent addition to the Arrow Video collection.

Summary

With ageing American star Joseph Cotten on hammy form as the mysterious new owner of the schlockly schloss (who could he be?), Baron Blood might not be Bava’s greatest motion picture, but when it comes alive, it’s a belter. Fair to say, the film was indeed one of the director’s biggest box-office successes.

Beautifully lit, equally chilling and cheesy – with electric sequences of pure dread – there’s plenty for horror fans to savour. Carlo Rambaldi’s makeup for the Baron’s messed up face – he looks like a proto Freddy Kruger – is excellently done, too. Baron Blood is mid-table Bava yet compared to a lot of horror directors, that’s positively vertiginous.

Over the past few days there’s been lots of announcements on the Festival de Cannes front. We’ve had the In Competition and Un Certain Regard line-ups, the Critics’ Week roster and today we’ve got the Director’s Fortnight slot announced.

The full list is below with the short film entries list also. I’m especially interested to see the remake of We Are What We Are, a remake of Jorge Michel Grau’s cannibal family film, which I saw at FrightFest in 2010. Also in announced to appear is Frank Pavich’s doc on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s abandoned Dune project. Clio Barnard, who won massive acclaim with The Arbor, also screens her movie The Selfish Giant.

If you haven’t read the In Competition line-up and Un Certain Regard or Critics’ Week entries, click on the highlighed links. Cinemart will be at Cannes next month with a daily blog, reviews hot off the press and other festival goings-on.

This year’s jury will include Nicole Kidman, Ang Lee, Christoph Waltz, Naomi Kawase, Vidya Balan, Lynne Ramsey and Cristan Mungiu. Steven Spielberg is acting as jury president.

Features

The Congress, dir: Ari Folman
A Strange Course Of Events, dir: Raphael Nadjari
Apres La Nuit, dir: Basil Da Cunha
The Apaches, dir: Thierry De Peretti
Blue Ruin, dir: Jeremy Saulnier
La Danza De La Realidad, dir: Alejandro Jodorowosky
Jodorowsky’s Dune, dir: Frank Pavich
L’Escale, dir: Kaveh Bakhtiari
Henri, dir: Yolande Moreau
La Fille Du 14 Juillet, dir: Antonin Peretjako
Ilo Ilo, dir: Anthony Chen*
Last Day On Mars, dir: Ruairi Robinson
Les Garçons Et Guillaume, A Table!, dir: Guillaume Gallienne
The Selfish Giant, dir: Clio Barnard
Magic Magic, dir: Sebastian Silva
On The Job, dir: Erik Matti
Tip Top, dir: Serge Bozon
Ugly, dir: Anurag Kashyap
Un Voyageur, dir: Marcel Ophuls
The Summer Of The Flying Fish, dir: Marcela Said
We Are What We Are, dir: Jim Mickle

Short Films

Gambozinos, dir: João Nicolau
Lágy Eso, dir: Dénes Nagy
Le Quepa Sur La Vilni!, dir: Yann Le Quellec
Man Kann Nicht Auf Einmal Alles Tun, Aber Man Kann Auf Einmal Alles Lassen, dir: Marie-Elsa Sgualdo
O Umbra De Nor, dir: Radu Jude
Pouco Mais De Um Mês, dir: André Novais Oliveira
Que Je Tombe Tout Le Temps, dir: Eduardo Williams
Solecito, dir: Oscar Ruiz Navia
Swimmer, dir: Lynne Ramsay

Source: Twitch

Film Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Dir: Shane Black
UK Release: 25th April

With hopes and expectations set high by Joss Whedon’s take on the Avengers, it’s perhaps easy to forget that, as a solo franchise star, Robert Downey, Jr’s Iron Man is coming off a disappointing second film.

Given that Iron Man 3 is the launchpad for phase 2 of Marvel’s plan for domination of the world’s cinemas, it really needs to put the franchise back on a solid footing. To that end a new creative team has come in, led by Shane Black; screenwriter of Lethal Weapon, among others, and Downey’s director on Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.

The broad strokes of the story don’t seem all that different. Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr) has hardly slept since the New York battle at the end of Avengers Assemble, he spends all night tinkering with his various suits of armour, and paying little attention to girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Meanwhile, a terrorist who calls himself The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) has begun attacking the world and covertly creating an army of super powered soldiers. Can Iron Man stop The Mandarin, and how does the villain tie in to his past?

Iron Man 3 is not an easy film to review, because so many of its finest qualities have hardly even been hinted at by the trailers and TV spots, and divulging any of these impressively protected secrets would be a crime. It is probably safe, however, to say that this isn’t the film you are expecting it to be, and that’s almost all to the good.

When Shane Black was brought in as co-writer and director I was undecided about the appointment. Happily the excitement that goes with the possibility of Black getting a big canvas and budget wins out, and my concern that his personal voice might have been lost under the mythology and the requirements of blockbuster making was completely unfounded. Black and co-writer Drew Pearce’s screenplay is fast moving and funny, but it manages to find room to give the ongoing relationship between Tony and Pepper and the friendship between Tony and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), now suiting up as Iron Patriot, some weight in between the wisecracks and action sequences. Even better, these relationships end up playing into the action scenes in surprising ways, making them about much more than robots punching each other and things going boom.

Most superhero films proceed from A to B to C in a simple and rather predictable structure; we set up the villain of the piece, the hero gets beaten down, then he rallies when he’s needed most. Iron Man 3 doesn’t really break that well worn mould, but it does throw a lot of curve balls, and take you down genuinely surprising paths on the way through that familiar structure. It would be a crime to divulge too much, but suffice it to say that Ben Kingsley is fantastic as The Mandarin.

One of the most inspired things about the Iron Man films has been the casting of Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. He wasn’t an obvious choice to begin with, but now he seems like the only person who could have played the part. After a problematic portrayal in the second film Downey and Black take Stark back to his roots and Downey seems, once again, to be having a tremendous amount of fun with the role, while also allowing the cracks in Tony’s (in this case metaphorical) armour to show through. The other great stroke of casting inspiration in the series has been Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts. Black and Pearce have expanded and – crucially – broadened her role for this instalment. Pepper has evolved, and that comes across in the changes in her relationship with Tony, which is played expertly and with as much romantic and comic chemistry as ever.

Shane Black has written plenty of great action films, but his last directorial effort, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, didn’t exactly require much large scale action. He surely had plenty of help on the technical side, not least from the various effects companies who worked on the film, but Black shows himself to be a more than capable action director. The action scenes are sprinkled throughout the film at regular intervals, but they never become dull. This is largely down to the fact the action is driven by the story, rather than the other way round. The great thing about the action from a visual standpoint is that Black changes things up, giving us action scenes which find many different challenges for Tony. Set pieces range from a huge missile attack on Tony’s house, to several more up close and personal sequences that have him fighting out of costume, and they are all handled with equal assurance. The action feels fresh, and it’s cut in a way that actually makes visual sense.

The only real drawback of Iron Man 3 is the 3D that is now a required feature of every Marvel film adds absolutely nothing to the experience other than the requirement that you watch it through glasses.

Film Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Extra Features Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Dir: Kimble Rendall
UK Release: 29th April, also in 3D Blu-ray

‘We’re gonna need a bigger supermarket’. The line isn’t uttered in this silly B movie, written by Highlander man Russell Mulcahy, but it sums up the premise in apt fashion.

Bait takes a real world concern – a tsunami – then uses that as a spring board into madness by having a group of survivors locked up in a flooded shopping outlet with a great white shark. Starring Xavier Samuel and Julian McMahon, Kimble’s Rendall’s monster movie is pure genre filler where a killer beast – rendered in naff CGI – eats lesser known thesps in the frozen food section. Or should that be live food aisle? Bing-bong: “Clear up needed, there’s been another shark attack”.

The tongue-in-cheek nature of Bait saves it from being a write off. Heck, if we can have Snakes on a Plane or Flight of the Living Dead, we can have Sharks in a Supermarket, right? The film opens with two lifeguards and a reckless swimmer encountering a great white. Two chaps are chomped on and one survives. Josh (Xavier Samuel) blames himself for his pal’s death, though he’s not that bothered about the other victim. Fast forward a year and the guy is now stacking shelves for a living. He fears the ocean and looks schlubby and tired – which means he’s got ‘why not me?’ guilt. Luckily, resolution is on the horizon when a random tsunami wrecks havoc on the coast. Is it the very same shark or merely a perfect excuse for catharsis with a shotgun? The story never quite clears it up as a 12 footer prowls the ruins of a former retail establishment.

Extras

On the surface, a solitary featurette appears meagre but the ‘Making-of’ documentary, it turns out, is bonza and clocks in at 44 minutes. Things begin with a surly-looking Xavier Samuel mumbling answers during a press interview (he’s joking). This on-set diary/doc goes into fair depth about the film’s production and various aspects. For example, the shark design is a hybrid of Tiger shark body and Great White head. (It’s all in the detail.) Also included is a trailer. Slim pickings, for sure, but the featurette is well worth a watch. Audio Options include Stereo 2.0 and 5.1 Dolby Digital.

Summary

Hokey, jokey and very much a barrel of fun, Bait is a check-your-brain-at-the-door B flick with game performances and ludicrous scenario battling against a computer animated fish that historically, especially since the release of Jaws in 1975, has got a very bad press. Bait could be the greatest film Roger Corman never made.