A Million Ways To Die In The West

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Seth MacFarlane.

Cast: Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman, Liam Neeson.

"But, my good sir, you don't own a moustache!"

IN his directorial debut Ted, Seth MacFarlane showed a fair amount of promise.

Despite it being an often puerile comedy about a bong-smoking anthropomorphic teddy bear, Ted managed to mix some solid gags with a good dose of heart and even a decent amount of tension and drama.

Less successful is this attempt at a comedy western, in which MacFarlane's biggest shortcoming is his abilities as a leading man.

There are still plenty of good laughs - if you're a fan of Family Guy, American Dad, or Ted, the humour will be right up your alley - but a lot of film misses the mark, whether it be thanks to annoying characters, frustrating segues, or the plot struggling to find direction amid the comedy.

MacFarlane stars as Albert, a sheep farmer born in the wrong place at the wrong time - his nerdish pacifism and sense of self-preservation doesn't fit in with life in the Wild West circa 1882.

His thoroughly modern attitude to life has also worn down his girlfriend Louise (Seyfried), who dumps Albert for the town's moustache shop manager Foy (Harris).

But during a chance meeting amid a saloon brawl, Albert meets the equally anachronistic Anna (Theron), who decides to help Albert win back Louise's affections.

Unfortunately for Albert, Anna is the wife of Clinch Leatherwood (Neeson) - the meanest, nastiest gunslinger in the west and the type of guy who doesn't take too kindly to strange men spending time with his woman.

There's ample opportunity for humour and MacFarlane and co's script starts strong, diving into bits about diplomatic attempts to resolve gunfights, the troubles with dating a saloon prostitute, and a lengthy rant on the titular mortality rate of those on the frontier.

But the gags run out of steam, dwindling to a barrage of poo, fart and wee jokes as the film wears out its welcome and struggles to pull together a satisfying third act.

It's a good thing the comedy is so strong at the start because it helps compensate for MacFarlane's so-so performance. The audience will warm to him as he goes on but he struggles to maintain a chemistry with Theron, and given much of the film finds the pair firmly in rom-com territory, it's a definite downside to A Million Ways. The strong supporting cast - Ribisi, Theron, Neeson and Harris in particular - helps prop MacFarlane up, but also inadvertently highlights his wobbly turn.

As co-writer, co-producer, director and star, there's no doubt this is MacFarlane's baby, but some guidance and outside influence wouldn't have gone astray. A lengthy CG-heavy drug hallucination scene towards the film's end is distractingly redundant and there are more than a few jokes that could have made way for a more streamlined film.

On the plus side, there are some cool cameos from Christopher Lloyd, Gilbert Gottfried, Bill Maher, Ryan Reynolds and Jamie Foxx, and some genuinely funny and clever moments.

If MacFarlane had hoped to join the short list of classic comedy-westerns (which contains the likes of Blazing Saddles and Back To The Future III), he's fallen short, but if you like the idea of Brian Griffin from Family Guy as a sheep farmer in the wild west, then this film is for you.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past

(M) ★★★★

Director: Bryan Singer.

Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Peter Dinklage, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page.

"Are you not entertained .... by my incredible cosplay?"

Time travel is a notoriously tricky device to use in movies.

Adding more characters with every increasing sequel (especially in comic book movies) is also fraught with danger.

With this in mind, the seventh movie to be based on the comic book mutants known as the X-Men isn't just playing with fire, it's juggling lit dynamite.

Returning director Bryan Singer has taken the cast of the original X-Men trilogy and combined them with the stars of the prequel X-Men: First Class in a decade-jumping story set both in 1973 and 2023.

In spite of the difficulties, or perhaps because of the way the film embraces these elements, Days Of Future Past is one of those increasingly rare things - a genuinely excellent X-Men film (alongside the 2000 original, 2003's X2 and 2011's First Class in case you're wondering how long that list is).

In 2023, the few surviving mutants fight running battles against the Sentinels, a bunch of murderous robots that ran rampant and ushered in a dystopia for mutant-kind and human-kind.

Among the last of the X-Men are Professor X (Stewart), Magneto (McKellan), Kitty Pryde (Page) and Wolverine (Jackman), who figure the best way to end the war with the Sentinels is to use Kitty's powers to send Wolverine back in time and stop the madness before it begins.

That will involve Wolverine visiting 1973 and convincing younger versions of Professor X (McAvoy) and Magneto (Fassbender) to work together to prevent shape-shifting mutant Mystique (Lawrence) from kick-starting anti-mutant sentiment when she shoots Sentinels inventor Bolivar Trask (Dinklage).

It sounds complex and weird when you lay it out like that, but Days Of Future Past feels surprisingly linear and straightforward while it's happening. Deftly edited so as to keep events focused, the film rockets along at a solid pace, and while comic book movie fans of the future will surely poke holes in its time travel structure, for the present it seems to work.

As for that other potential problem of having too many comic book characters - otherwise known as Batman & Robin Disorder or Spider-Man 3 Syndrome (depending on whether you prefer DC or Marvel) - Days Of Future Past deals with it in the best possible: by simply ignoring the problem.

Rather than worrying about ensuring every character has an arc, it uses its multitude of mutants as either plot devices, weapons or key players.

For example, Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Kitty Pryde and even Wolverine don't get much in the way of development but their powers mean the plot couldn't happen without them (and Quicksilver's main sequence is as awesome as Nightcrawler's White House break-in in X2).

As for the majority of cool-looking mutants with neat names - Toad, Spike, Ink, Havok, Blink, Sunspot, Warpath, Colossus, Bishop - they're here to fight, preferably while demonstrating their special abilities. Most of them are only here as fan-bait and thankfully the film doesn't bother overloading its story with lesser unnecessary character subplots.

The key players, as with First Class, are Professor X, Magneto and Mystique, and Simon Kinberg's screenplay doesn't short-change their fascinating relationship triangle. It's a shame Wolverine and Beast (Hoult) don't get much more to do than quip, fight and give pointed looks, but it's a relief in a way because it means Days Of Future Past can strike a balance between its stunning action sequences, its central three-way character interaction, the continuing discrimination themes of the series, and its fan-baiting and in-jokes.

The end product is suitably lean, while managing to be a perfect blend of all-audience sci-fi actioner and fans-only nerd-out (there are some great cameos at the end for the true X-fans).

But when you consider much of the cast has either won or been nominated for an Oscar and that Singer was responsible for two of the best X-movies (X-Men and X2) perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising that Days Of Future Past works so well.

Godzilla (2014)

(M) ★★★★

Director: Gareth Edwards.

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, David Strathairn, Sally Hawkins, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche.

They were going to need a bigger boat.

Over 60 years and roughly 30 films, Godzilla has gained a reputation as the most fearsome of the kaiju (a Japanese word that means "monster" and which has become a genre of movies unto itself).

The reality is that Godzilla hasn't been the "king of monsters" for a long time. The last Japanese Godzilla film was made 10 years ago and it flopped, while America's last attempt resulted in Roland Emmerich's 1998 Razzie-winning disaster which did well at the box office but copped such a critical hiding that the studio gave up on making sequels.

It must be said that even the original films from the '50s, while influential, are, at best, pieces of schlocky fun that don't hold up terribly well today. Born of nuclear fears in a post-Hiroshima Japan, they served a purpose and are great party movies, but they don't stand as cinematic classics, like say the 1933 original of King Kong.

With all that in mind, why would anyone try to make another Godzilla movie and how could anyone possibly make one that's any good?

I have no idea about the "why" but Gareth Edwards found a way to make Godzilla awesome again. This version is everything Emmerich hoped his 1998 version would be, and everything Guillermo del Toro was wishing his kaiju dud Pacific Rim would be, but Edwards sidesteps all the dumb mistakes those directors made to deliver something weirdly relevant, sporadically jaw-dropping, and that lets us care about its characters, including the big building-smasher himself.

Even the opening credits are riveting, tantalising us with nuclear testing imagery, glimpses of Godzilla, and hints of a mysterious cover-up, all dating back to 1954. Then it opens proper in 1999, where Joe Brody (Cranston) and his wife Sandy (Binoche) endure the worst day of their lives at the nuclear plant where they work in Japan.

It leaves Joe a broken man struggling to connect with his son Ford (Taylor-Johnson) and in the present day they are estranged - Ford having joined the navy and started a family, while Joe still lives in Japan where he tries to uncover the truth about what happened on that fateful day in 1999.

This is the point where the film proclaims "Here be monsters!" but it does so in unexpected ways. It never scrimps on the action but relentlessly teases and hints at its big reveals to make them all the more impressive when they finally arrive. When you finally see Godzilla about halfway into proceedings, you realise you've been on the edge of your seat waiting for this moment for an hour. Edwards deals out his big moments sparingly, building to its mega-kaiju climax.

The best part is you really care about the climax because you care about Godzilla. The trick of King Kong was that we cared about the monster, and Edwards is aware of this and realises it's part of what made that film work.

But on a human level, this reboot also ticks boxes because we have humans with real concerns and fears and emotions for us to empathise with, unlike the caricatures that ran around screaming in Emmerich's Godzilla or the collections of bad clichés that populated Pacific Rim.

Taylor-Johnson does a great job in a role that is a mix of rejected son, desperate father, and action hero, while Cranston gets to walk the fine line between madman and genius in his brief moments. Olsen also does well, but it's a shame Watanabe doesn't have more to do than looked stunned for the entire film and that Strathairn is reduced to Token Military Man. Thankfully the emotions of the film revolve around Taylor-Johnson and Olsen.

As such, their parts bring Godzilla back to being a disaster film instead of a straight-out rock-'em-sock-'em kaiju battle. Edwards spends a long time focusing on the fallout and the ground level struggles happening as a result of the monster mash that's going on (something del Toro also largely forgot to do). It gives the film context and another reason to care about the characters and what's going on.

On a broader level, the script acknowledges the nuclear age fears that powered the original films in the '50s - fears that seem particularly relevant given the Fukushima meltdown of 2011. There are also ideas about man being powerless in the face of nature - a theme that never goes out of fashion.

Of course, there are holes and plot points and silly things along the way (Watanabe's character is apparently at least 70 years old, and typically the military have no idea what the hell they are doing), but they are merely mild annoyances rather than deal-breakers in the face of some genuinely exciting and cheer-worthy spectacle.

Edwards has made both an enjoyable modern kaiju film and an impressive disaster movie at the same time. Surely this is a feat of Godzilla-sized proportions.

Chef (2014)

(M) ★★★

Director: Jon Favreau.

Cast: Jon Favreau, EmJay Anthony, Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson, Oliver Platt, Bobby Cannavale, Dustin Hoffman.

"Yep. That's a dick."

With his last two films as director being Iron Man 2 and Cowboys & Aliens, it's no wonder Jon Favreau has returned to telling smaller stories.

The latter was a flop, the former not a patch on its predecessor (which he also directed), so trading in the big CG extravaganzas for an indie-vibe father-son story might be just what Favreau needed to cleanse his palate.

Chef is certainly a tasty offering - maybe not as filling as others and it runs out of ingredients by the end - but it's certainly worth a nibble.

Now that the necessary food metaphors are out of the way, here's what it's all about: Favreau stars as top class chef Carl Casper, who takes a bad review really badly.

He starts a flame war on Twitter, has a massive public meltdown, becomes a YouTube sensation (in the worst way possible), and ultimately finds himself jobless and wondering what he's doing with his life.

He's also a divorcee father trying to figure out how to connect with his son Percy (played well by newcomer Anthony), and isn't too keen on accepting helpful advice from his ex-wife (Vergara).

There's a breezy charm to Chef that washes over you, thanks in part to Favreau's casual yet effective performance and a supporting cast that is equally effortless (in a good way).

Prime examples can be found in Favreau's early kitchen scenes between him and his fellow chefs (Leguizamo and Cannavale), which have an improvised feel to them that is natural, even though they're light on for humour.

And "light on" is perhaps the best way to describe Chef. As much as Favreau's chef Casper slathers the mustard and butter on his mouthwatering Cuban sandwiches, he's more frugal with the drama and comedy (Favreau is not only director and star, but also writer on this effort).

While the entire film is pleasant and enjoyable, it lacks a lot of big laughs, and Casper's very public downfall doesn't seem to hit low enough, making his subsequent rejuvenation less triumphant. Where are the scenes of him getting recognised and laughed at in the street? He tells us things are bad, but we never see them. Casper says "I'm a meme" at one point, but we never see the meme, nor the real downsides to his downfall.

Because of this, the whole thing peters out as it goes on. The second half is no less fun than the first, but it's nowhere near as interesting, which is a shame because the latter half is where the film's heart lies, given over to Casper rebuilding his life and reconnecting with his son.

It's heartwarming stuff but compared to the pith and vinegar of the first half - which takes potshots at critics, social media, and the food industry - it's a subdued and anticlimactic end. The latter half flips all those negatives into positives, which is intriguing in itself, but it means the film leaves with a dreamy half-smile as opposed to a beaming grin.

It should be noted that the big name cast is slightly misleading. Robert Downey Jr pops in for a cameo, Hoffman is in only two or three (admittedly pivotal) scenes, Johansson only has about a dozen lines, and Platt has only two scenes. Everyone does their bit but these sideplayers tend to fade into the background - this is definitely the Favreau Show.

As such, it's fun, and Favreau is an amicable host. His camera lingers over the cooking shots with relish (pun intended), he pulls some neat tricks to illustrate social media onscreen, and his script has some good lines and heart-warming moments.

While not quite a full meal, Chef is more like the decent-sized entrée you order when you're not sure how hungry you really are.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Wes Anderson.

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, F. Murray Abraham, Edward Norton, Mathieu Amalric, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jude Law.

"Here's to quirkiness and symmetry."

No director of the past few decades is as distinctive and idiosyncratic as Wes Anderson.

His cinematic style and visual language is so unique as to be instantly identifiable from just a few frames, and all those quirks are on display within the opening minutes of The Grand Budapest Hotel - the wonderfully weird offering which could be Anderson's best to date.

Like his previous gems The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel has all his skills and tricks coalescing around intriguing locations and bizarrely loveable characters.

The central player is Monsieur Gustave (Fiennes), a concierge during the 1930s at the titular hotel, which sits amid the mountains of the fictional European country of Zubrowka.

Due to a predilection for some of the older female guests of the hotel, Gustave finds himself having to clear his name after being accused of murdering the wealthy Madame Desgoffe und Taxis (an unrecognisable cameo from Tilda Swinton).

Helping him along the way in his quest for freedom is lobby boy Zero (Revolori), who is also relating Gustave's story three decades later as an old man (Murray Abraham) to an unnamed author (Law).

There's also an extra layer to this story-in-a-story-in-a-story conceit, which is ultimately unnecessary but sets the tone of the film and its sense of humour quickly.

That style and comedic sense is very Anderson-esque - fans of his previous work will love every colourful moment of this caper. His usual cinematic tics are in full bloom too, such as strange panning shots, a near constant use of symmetry, unnatural acting styles, general absurdities, a distinctive colour palette, and the use of inter-titles and animated dabblings. No other director would get away with such things all at once, yet they are the natural language of a Wes Anderson film, and once again these quirks combine as a thing of beauty (if you are willing to accept the weirdness and artificiality of it all).

The Anderson regulars return too - Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Bob Balaban get cameos among a mammoth cast that also includes bit parts from Léa Seydoux, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, and Tom Wilkinson.

The star though is Fiennes, whose remarkable performance makes Gustave one of the most intriguing characters to drive a film in recent years. A mixture of grace and snootiness, bluntness and front, fakery and honesty, he makes for a fascinating hero and a departure from anything we've seen Fiennes do in the past.

An argument could be made that this is Anderson's best film. Some of his past works have been derided for being plotless (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) and meandering (The Life Aquatic), but The Grand Budapest Hotel is neither of those things

It's story is gripping and moves at a breakneck speed - so much so that a bizarre chase sequence actually slows the film down and would feel like padding if it wasn't so absurdly funny. The whole film whirs by at a blistering, breathless pace.

Best of all, the movie is hilarious and easily the funniest Wes Anderson effort to date. Fiennes gets regular laughs, Wilkinson's opening address features one of the biggest guffaws, and the film includes probably the most absurd prison break in cinematic history.

Is this Anderson's best? Time will tell, but if nothing else it continues a remarkable run of modern classics.