Reviews by Angus Wolfe Murray

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Bleed For This (2016)

  Review preview for Bleed For This

  You could make a film based on the achievement of almost anyone at the Invictus Games and you would be making Vinny's story

  Story of world champion boxer Vinny Pazienza who made a comeback after a near-fatal car crash.
• 
  Paterson (2016)

  Review preview for Paterson

  After the initial disbelief that Jarmusch has written and directed a movie as simple and quiet as this, you settle into the rhythm of the piece and begin to appreciate the secret

  Story of a bus driver and a poet and a maker of cup cakes and a dog walker and a week in New Jersey where small things happen
• 
  The Edge Of Seventeen (2016)

  Review preview for The Edge Of Seventeen

  Hope is the antidote. Really? They all say that. Can it be true?

  How to be a teenage misfit without killing yourself.
• 
  A United Kingdom (2016)

  Review preview for A United Kingdom

  The tensions are taut and the feelings genuine

  Enduring love story of Seretse Khama, King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana) and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948.
• 
  Storks (2016)

  Review preview for Storks

  The plot pigs out on possibilities but the characters are great and if you can keep up with the speed of events you won't be disappointed.

  Storks have moved on from delivering babies to packages. But when an order for a baby appears, the best delivery stork must scramble to fix the error.
• 
  My Scientology Movie (2015)

  Review preview for My Scientology Movie

  Louis Theroux does not pretend to know everything. He waits to be informed and in the waiting good things happen.

  Louis Theroux explores the Church of Scientology. Or tries...
• 
  The Girl On The Train (2016)

  Review preview for The Girl On The Train

  Emily Blunt's performance gives the film a centre and a purpose.

  A divorcee becomes entangled in a missing persons investigation that promises to send shockwaves throughout her life.
• 
  Free State Of Jones (2016)

  Review preview for Free State Of Jones

  "Every man is a man. It's as simple as that."

  A disillusioned Confederate army deserter returns to Mississippi and leads a militia of fellow deserters, runaway slaves, and women in an uprising against the corrupt local Confederate government.
• 
  Deepwater Horizon (2016)

  Review preview for Deepwater Horizon

  You cannot begin to understand what's going on, or not going on

  A story set on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, which exploded during April 2010 and created the worst oil spill in US history.
• 
  The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

  Review preview for The Girl With All The Gifts

  It's never easy to remain true to Armageddon while retaining a positive attitude towards life after life

  A scientist and a child make a bid for survival in a world of zombies.
• 
  The Magnificent Seven (2016)

  Review preview for The Magnificent Seven

  You cannot carbon the copy of a tried'n'true people's favorite and expect applause for trying

  Seven gunmen team up to help save a village from an evil mining boss.
• 
  Blair Witch (2016)

  Review preview for Blair Witch

  Makes a lot of noise and throws the camera about

  Another group of innocent hikers return to the woods where a previous party disappeared 17 years ago
• 
  The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years (2016)

  Review preview for The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years

  Things emerge from this affectionate movie that may come as a surprise

  A compilation of found footage.
• 
  The Infiltrator (2016)

  Review preview for The Infiltrator

  The film is clever. It is violent and merciless, also.

  True life story of an undercover agent who infiltrates the upper circles of a Columbian drugs cartel in the Eighties
• 
  Kubo And The Two Strings (2016)

  Review preview for Kubo And The Two Strings

  A journey you have never travelled before

  A young boy named Kubo must locate a magical suit of armour worn by his late father in order to defeat a vengeful spirit from the past.
• 
  Sausage Party (2016)

  Review preview for Sausage Party

  After watching this movie you never want to eat again

  A sausage tries to find meaning in the world as well as carnal knowledge.
• 
  Brotherhood (2016)

  Review preview for Brotherhood

  You could have written the script on the back of Ray Winstone's betting slip

  First there was Kidulthood then Adulthood now comes Noel Clarke's last installment of his personal Odyssey.
• 
  Swallows And Amazons (2016)

  Review preview for Swallows And Amazons

  The whole thing is outdated to the dustiest degree with the flag of the Empire flying free from the masts of their imagination

  City kids holiday in the Lake District in the Thirties and have adventures on the water and against dastardly spies
• 
  Lights Out (2016)

  Review preview for Lights Out

  As a one trick pony the film executes a number of repetitive moves that inspire a factor of fear which seems genuine

  A murderous ghost is scared of the light so keep those candles burning.
• 
  Nerve (2016)

  Review preview for Nerve

  The film has visual chops but leaves too many threads hanging

  A dangerous game of Dare becomes the obsessive must play for social media addicts.
• 
  The Hard Stop (2015)

  Review preview for The Hard Stop

  Two docs for the price of one? Both would have been better on their own

  Documentary about the death of Mark Duggan and the difficulty of finding work for young black men in Tottenham
• 
  The Neon Demon (2016)

  Review preview for The Neon Demon

  The violence is internal as well as on screen.

  A young model faces jealous rivals in LA.
• 
  Now You See Me 2 (2016)

  Review preview for Now You See Me 2

  Any attempt to explain the detailed confusion of the storyline will cause brain damage.

  The Four Horsemen resurface and are forcibly recruited by a tech genius to pull off their most impossible heist yet.
• 
  Twice Upon A Time (2016)

  Review preview for Twice Upon A Time

  Itani's film asks more questions than it answers. She sets herself an impossible task, the sharing of memories, shuffling through darkness to find a familiar pain and then release it.

  The director, who fled Lebanon during the civil war, chronicles her friendship with a young Syrian facing the same spectre of conflict.
• 
  Mammal (2016)

  Review preview for Mammal

  The film has an intensity that creates its own tension.

  After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth.
• 
  Families (2015)

  Review preview for Families

  What should have been a chamber piece for veteran writer/director Jean-Paul Rappeneau turns out to be a racer, neither in control nor out of breath.

  Family secrets are revealed when relatives fight over a country house.
• 
  Tectonic Plate (2016)

  Review preview for Tectonic Plate

  This is not a film. It is an endurance test.

  An immersive camera-less film that translates transitory states and the fear of flying.
• 
  Sixty Six (2015)

  Review preview for Sixty Six

  If something like Sixty Six were 10 minutes long and repeated on a continuous loop it might have a chance with the Turner prize.

  Greek mythology meets pulp novels and 1960s iconography in this animated collage film in 12 episodes.
• 
  Diving Into The Unknown (2016)

  Review preview for Diving Into The Unknown

  Despite the confusion there is a tremor of excitement that never goes away.

  The survivors of a cave accident risk their lives to bring the bodies of their friends to the surface.
• 
  The Love Witch (2016)

  Review preview for The Love Witch

  There is smoke, there is a cauldron, there is an altar of sorts and there is a not very Grand Wizard who looks like someone who has crawled out from inside a bin lorry.

  Sixties-style film sees a witch use spells to win the hearts of men.
• 
  Bliss! (2016)

  Review preview for Bliss!

  So much depends on Freya Park's performance as Tasha. She achieves something many young actors would be afraid to try.

  A runaway teen goes in search of her father.
• 
  Brakes (2016)

  Review preview for Brakes

  This is how Brakes comes across. Cynical and homemade.

  Improvised black comedy charting moments in the lives of nine couples.
• 
  The Correspondence (2016)

  Review preview for The Correspondence

  The film plays on its clever concept, forgetting that its audience wants the agony to end and the action to begin.

  A relationship between a woman and her tutor conducted almost entirely in the virtual space, takes an unexpected twist.
• 
  Elvis & Nixon (2016)

  Review preview for Elvis & Nixon

  Dangerously thin on purpose

  Elvis goes to the White House to ask the President to make him a Federal Agent At Large.
• 
  Scott Of The Antarctic (1948)

  Review preview for Scott Of The Antarctic

  A stiff upper lip doesn't save you, the message reads. Only luck and preparation can do that.

  The story of the ill-fated South Pole expedition
• 
  Mother's Day (2016)

  Review preview for Mother's Day

  There is nothing remotely inviting, funny or admirable about it

  Families fall apart and hang together in a Mother's Day preamble.
• 
  Me Before You (2016)

  Review preview for Me Before You

  The plot behaves itself and is traditionally predictable

  A woman forms a friendship with a recently paralysed man.
• 
  Minuscule - Valley Of The Lost Ants (2013)

  Review preview for Minuscule - Valley Of The Lost Ants

  Opens your eyes to fresh fields of possibility

  In a peaceful little clearing, the remains of a picnic hastily abandoned spark warfare between two tribes of ants.
• 
  Alice Through The Looking Glass (2016)

  Review preview for Alice Through The Looking Glass

  Anything can happen and nothing makes sense and reality is a word as plain as it is pointless

  Alice returns to Wonderland to save the Mad Hatter.
• 
  A Hologram For The King (2016)

  Review preview for A Hologram For The King

  The film looks great if you like sand

  A middle aged salesman is sent to Saudi Arabia to sell a complicated IT system to the king and comes up against interminable delays and the prospect of terminal failure
• 
  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016)

  Review preview for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

  The film exposes the haphazard working practices of TV journalism in dangerous places

  A journalist recounts her wartime coverage in Afghanistan.
• 
  Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

  Review preview for Everybody Wants Some!!

  A college baseball team behave like sexist pigs with verbal diarrhea

  Male bonding Eighties style for a randy, chatty, sporty group of ball playing housemates
• 
  Robinson Crusoe (2016)

  Review preview for Robinson Crusoe

  The animation is odd

  Dafoe's classic gets an animal twist.
• 
  Our Kind Of Traitor (2016)

  Review preview for Our Kind Of Traitor

  You have to know your enemy. If everyone is an enemy, where's the tension?

  Caught between the British Secret Service and the Russian mafia, an oligarch with nefarious secrets uses an English teacher on holiday in Morocco to help secure political asylum.
• 
  Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

  Review preview for Florence Foster Jenkins

  The embarrassment levels are high

  The story of a New York heiress who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite being unable to carry a tune in a bucket.
• 
  Ratchet & Clank (2016)

  Review preview for Ratchet & Clank

  Somewhere the plot hangs by a thread. All you have to do is find it. But you can't

  The worlds in an unstable galaxy are threatened by a master villain. A happy-go-quite-lucky squirrel of sorts and his mini robot mechanic friend join the defense team
• 
  The Jungle Book (2016)

  Review preview for The Jungle Book

  The film has adventure at its heart and excitement in its pocket.

  Rudyard Kipling's classic children's book is given a post-Disney modern interpretation with a real boy and CGI animals that look more real than the breath they take away
• 
  Bastille Day (2016)

  Review preview for Bastille Day

  Makes for a series of violent encounters, a twist or two to liven up the already lively proceedings and a feeling that you have been here before, and before, and before...

  A CIA agent and a pickpocket attempt to uncover police corruption in Paris with the dubious help of an activist's ex girlfriend
• 
  Jane Got A Gun (2016)

  Review preview for Jane Got A Gun

  Westerns require action and pace not brooding silences and broken dreams

  A woman asks her ex-lover for help in order to save her outlaw husband from a gang out to kill him.
• 
  Criminal (2016)

  Review preview for Criminal

  There are two stories running side by side. When they reach the junction they collide. It's a Hollywood disaster

  The memories of a dead CIA operative are implanted in a dangerous convict.