The Boxtrolls

(PG) ★★★★

Director: Graham Annable & Anthony Stacchi.

Cast: (voices of) Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Elle Fanning, Ben Kingsley, Toni Collette, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade, Tracy Morgan.

The Republican convention was in full swing.

Despite the onslaught of the digital era, the painstaking process of stop-motion filmmaking refuses to die, and thank goodness for that.

If stop motion animation had gone the way of the movie intermission, we would have missed out on such recent gems as Frankenweenie, The Pirates! Band Of Misfits, Fantastic Mr Fox, Mary & Max, Coraline, and ParaNorman - some of the best films of the last five years.

Laika, the production company behind the latter two, are responsible for The Boxtrolls, another brilliant addition to the list of modern stop-motion classics.

As with their previous two films, Laika has infused The Boxtrolls with a welcome layer of darkness amid the all-ages appeal. Based loosely on Alan Snow's book Here Be Monsters!, it follows the story of Eggs (voiced by Hempstead-Wright), a young boy who has been raised by the subterranean-dwelling Boxtrolls.

While the Boxtrolls are merely meek scavengers, they have been portrayed as baby-stealing cannibals by Archibald Snatcher (Kingsley), who heads up a team of troll exterminators and is waging his own war against the little monsters in the hopes of climbing the social ladder and become part of the ruling class.

It's up to Eggs and his new friend Winnie (Fanning) to save the Boxtrolls and reveal the truth about Snatcher.

There are some interesting ideas and fascinating themes at play here, but from a kid's-eye view it's an enjoyable tale about doing the right thing, helping others, and looking out for your family, peppered with funny pratfalls and slapstick, plus a few "yucky" bits that the young 'uns (and oldies) will likely find funny.

But a great kids' film should reveal extra layers as its audience ages, and The Boxtrolls has that in spades. Government wastefulness, the power of fear, racial prejudices, self-determination, non-nuclear families, and the nature of evil all get explored, and there are a number of very clever jokes that will sail over younger heads, including many from a pair of comically philosophical henchmen voiced by Frost and Ayoade.

They're just two names in a stellar voice cast. Kingsley's voicework is particularly outstanding, while youngsters Hempstead-Wright and Fanning lead the way well.

The look of the film is impressive. Set in the faux-British town of Cheesebridge, the film encompasses a mixture of Victorian-era, gothic and steampunk elements, but unlike some stop-motion movies, The Boxtrolls is not afraid to dabble with computer-generated elements to enhance its world, pushing the boundaries between the old and the new.

As a result there are some shots and techniques not commonly seen in these styles of movies and which expand on some of the intriguing tricks and effects achieved in Coraline and ParaNorman.

The script is also sharp, barely wasting a second, developing its characters in unexpected ways, and using plenty of symbolism to "show not tell" - it's intelligent filmmaking that never talks down to its audience, which means the film will keep on giving with future re-watches.

In short, it's the kind of film that's a joy whether you're 11 or 77.

Step Up: All In

(PG) ★★½

Director: Trish Sie.

Cast: Ryan Guzman, Briana Evigan, Adam Sevani, Stephen Jones, Izabella Miko, Chadd Smith.

No one could believe they were making a fifth Step Up film.

The Step Up series is now five films long - at the time of writing, that's as many movies as Die Hard, Dirty Harry, and Twilight.

Judging by this longevity, the franchise is evidently doing something right, and that something is dancing.

Throughout the series, which launched the career of Channing Tatum way back when it began in 2006, Step Up films have thrived on their truly stunning dance sequences, which have been consistently impressive and innovative.

The biggest drawback has been that when you remove the popping, locking, crunking and breaking from the equation, what is left is a level of melodrama, shorthanded plotting, and lame characterisation usually reserved for movies made for the Disney Channel.

Fans of the series don't care about that though. They'll just be happy to see lots of dancing and so many returning faces - Andie from #2, Camille from #1 and #3, Monster from #2 and #3, the Santiago twins from #3, Sean from #4, and that guy that does The Robot really, really well in #3 and #4.

These people, and then some, team up to form a crew called LMNTL (that's pronounced 'Elemental', not 'Lemon Tell' apparently), who enter Las Vegas dance competition The Vortex, which promises the winner a three-year residency in Vegas.

Sean (Guzman), who was the focal point of the last film, has set up LMNTL after falling out with his old Miami crew The Mob, so naturally The Mob will be competing against LMNTL in The Vortex at some point. And Sean doesn't get along with his new crewmate Andie (Evigan), so naturally they'll fall in love and learn to trust each other at some point.

This level of predictability has been ever-present in the Step Up series, where every plot is just a minor variation on the previous one and merely a vague excuse to unleash its trump card of killer dance routines. These movies are to teenage girls what shoot-'em-up action movies are to teenage boys - predictable plotting surrounding slight reasons for the actiony bits.

When the film puts on its dancing shoes, it wins. A "mad professor" themed sequence LMNTL uses as its entry submission for The Vortex is very cool, and the grand finale is a jaw-dropper, especially considering the film has managed to up the impressiveness with each preceding routine.

The stellar choreography and dance performances are almost enough to distract from the endless Vegas montages, the lame subplots that are resolved in two seconds, the unintentionally hilarious "villains", and "laughs" that fall flat on their faces.

It feels futile poking holes in the non-dancing moments or the wasted opportunites, such as a subplot about The Vortex competition being filmed for reality TV which is underused and proves inconsequential. The people who loved the previous films will probably turn up en masse to see this.

And realistically, it's all about the cool dance moves, which Step Up: All In has in spades.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

(M) ★★

Director: Jonathan Liebesman.

Cast: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, Tohoru Masamune, Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, (and the voices of) Johnny Knoxville and Tony Shalhoub.

One of these kids is doing their own thing.

It's hard to figure out what's the most annoying thing about this TMNT reboot.

Is it the ear-shattering sound design or the endlessly moving camera?

Is it what the animators have done to the turtles' faces or what plastic surgeons have done to Megan Fox's face over the years?

Or is it the fact that producer Michael Bay has added yet another treasured childhood cartoon memory to his back catalogue of crap films he's affiliated with?

The whole thing starts promisingly enough - during a nicely stylised introduction mutated rat sensei Splinter (voiced by Tony Shalhoub) narrates a brief introduction to the ninja turtles and their war against the evil Foot Clan.

From there it goes downhill pretty quickly as Fox takes centre stage as journalist April O'Neil. Not only is O'Neil in the running for the title of "worst movie journalist ever", but Fox can probably expect a Razzie nomination for worst actress when the anti-Oscars comes around.

While trying to crack a big story about the Foot Clan's nefarious plans, she accidentally uncovers the existence of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and soon finds herself embroiled in their efforts to save New York City from the evil Shredder and his foot soldiers.

It's not a total waste of time because in one sense this is the TMNT movie some fans have been waiting for. Gone are the cumbersome rubber suits of the original trilogy, which relied on clever editing to make Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo move like ninjas. In their place are strange, hyper-real-looking computer-generated turtles that take some getting used to, but which move and fight better than ever.

Their characterisation is spot on too and the film is at its best when the heroes in a half-shell are interacting - a brief humourous respite featuring the turtles killing time in an elevator is a great example of this.

The other highlight is the CGI, particularly during an insane downhill running battle featuring a runaway truck, a mini-avalanche, and electrified harpoons.

But with such impressive effects it's a shame Liebesman feels compelled to keep the camera constantly moving so we can't get a good look at things, most notably during a distracting fight in the sewers featuring Splinter and his turtles versus Shredder and his foot soldiers.

Obviously the idea of mutated adolescent amphibians with a knack for martial arts requires a fairly large suspension of disbelief, but this can't excuse the huge amount of frustrating plot contrivances and "what the" moments crammed in here.

O'Neil's connection with the turtles is a good example of this, as is the bad guys' ability to move so quickly from capturing the MacGuffin to executing their diabolical plan (this makes no sense out of context but trust me on this). Then there are the endless efforts to cram in every touchstone from the previous comics and cartoons, including a groan-worthy attempt to get the title of the film into the dialogue.

Managing the inherent goofiness of the concept behind these pizza-loving turtles and the current trend towards the "oh-so-serious" approach to all reboots and comic-book movies is a balancing act Liebesman and the multiple writers can't quite nail, particularly when Fox's O'Neil seems to have wandered in from a completely different movie.

The result is an annoying mess. A few memorable moments can't save it from the frustrating editing, a ridiculous script, and way too much Megan Fox and her bizarrely enhanced features.

Magic In The Moonlight

(PG) ★★

Director: Woody Allen.

Cast: Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Simon McBurney, Hamish Linklater, Eileen Atkins, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver.

"Wait... where did I park my bulldozer?"

Even 46 films into his career as a director, Woody Allen still finds interesting subject matter.

It's part of the secret to his success. His knack for catching intriguing story ideas and his prolific nature (he still puts out at least one film every year and has done so since 1977's Annie Hall) means you never have to wait long for a triumph to make up for a misfire.

Speaking in those terms, Magic In The Moonlight is definitely a misfire, but at least it has some great concepts and an interesting conceit at its core.

Set between the wars in Southern France, it stars Firth as Stanley Crawford, a man known to the world as the master illusionist (and fake Chinaman) Wei Ling Soo.

After a show he bumps into old friend Howard (McBurney), who convinces Stanley to use his skills and cynicism to help debunk Sophie Baker (Stone), a young American proclaiming to have psychic powers and the ability to speak with the dead.

Sophie has ingratiated herself with the rich and influential Catledge family and Stanley is certain she must be a charlatan chasing the Catledge fortune, but upon meeting Sophie, Stanley finds himself questioning everything he knows.

As a set-up, it's fascinating, and the mysteries surrounding Sophie help maintain interest, even though the script is blunt and hurried, and the dialogue occasionally distractingly unnatural.

The battle of the minds between Sophie and Stanley is equally gripping, at least initially, and Stone and Firth are good, but again, it's undone by the script.

The flaws in the screenplay eventually win out over the potential of the premise and the talent. Despite being only 90-something minutes long, Magic In The Moonlight drags, and neither Stone nor Firth can save it as the rushed feeling of the first half gives way to an unnecessary slog in the second half.

But worst of all are the incongruous characters and their actions. Stanley's arrogance and mirthless intellectualism feels like it should be funnier and less of a caricature, while Sophie is equally shallow, showing little beyond her mystical abilities and opportunism.

This is all in spite of Stone's bubbly performance and Firth's excellent stiff upper Britishness, which aren't enough to overcome the unnecessary aspects of their characters and relationship.

Beautifully shot with gorgeous art design and featuring a good cast and a promising set-up, Magic In The Moonlight should be a dazzler, but instead it fizzles thanks to an undercooked script.

The Inbetweeners 2

(MA15+) ★★★

Director: Damon Beesley & Iain Morris.

Cast: Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Emily Berrington.

The day was hotter than Satan's ballbag.

When you're on a good thing stick to it - that's the motto of the makers of The Inbetweeners, which began as three seasons of British television before leaping to the big screen in 2011.

If you've seen any of the previous misadventures of Will, Simon, Jay and Neil then you'll know a) what you're in for and b) how much you'll probably love it.

Having run rampant in the Greek islands after finishing high school, this time the boys are up to more of the same in Australia.

Via a cleverly filmed introduction we learn Jay (Buckley) is supposedly living the high life in Sydney, leaving his down-on-their-luck mates keen for a pick-me-up holiday. Will (Bird) is hating his loner's existence at uni, Simon (Thomas) is struggling to deal with his worryingly clingy girlfriend, and Neil (Harrison) is, well, still Neil, ie. not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Heading Down Under provides the boys with plenty of opportunities for shenanigans and embarrassments, and the movie is gushing with gross-out gags, toilet humour and plenty of just-plain-wrongness.

Thankfully it's refreshingly light on with the Australianisms, except for Jay's hilarious koala-punching intro. While it can't resist slipping a couple of ocker bogans in there, The Inbetweeners 2 is more concerned with taking the mickey out of annoying backpackers as opposed to piling on the Aussie stereotypes. The "spiritual" tourists, dreadlocked campfire bongo players, and the hostel lifestyle are right in the firing line, as are "Pommie morons" who get lost in the outback.

Thankfully the interaction of the four leads is still great because it's an incredibly flimsy film otherwise. There are no lessons learnt, no character arcs and no deeper themes, which is welcome in a way due to the nature of Will, Simon, Jay and Neil and their states of arrested development, but it means the movie is pretty inconsequential.

The laughs are reasonably constant for the first hour at least and luckily what's left doesn't run on too long after that because the film runs out of petrol (quite literally) and collapses in an anti-climactic heap at the end.

What's going to matter most to fans is how often they laugh and how hard. The digs at Byron Bay hippy tourists are pretty good and some unfortunate incidents at a water park will certainly stick in the memory, so there's no doubting this will appease fans.

If you haven't seen any of The Inbetweeners, you're either missing out on some hilariously juvenile humour or you're probably enjoying the fact that you've been missing out on some puerile juvenile humour. Take your pick.

The Expendables 3

(M) ★★

Director: Patrick Hughes.

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Kelsey Grammer, Terry Crews, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Jet Li.

Los Angeles just wasn't the tourist destination it used to be.

Look at how long that cast list is.

And look at some of those names - Rambo, Zorro, Mad Max, Blade, Indiana Jones, The Terminator.

It's weird seeing a line-up like that these days. In the '80s it would have meant you were about to watch The Greatest Action Movie In The History Of The Universe. But watching these people together on the screen in 2014 reminds you how cruel the passage of time can be and how far some have fallen since their 1980s glory days.

None have fallen further than Mel Gibson, who is the best thing in this movie.

Regardless of what he said or did in the past to earn his effective blackballing from Hollywood, there's no denying Mad Mel can act and seeing him as villain Conrad Stonebanks is a perverse delight.

Stonebanks is the trigger for this Expendable outing - he's supposed to be dead, but when head Expendable Barney Ross (Stallone) and his team spot Stonebanks alive and well in Somalia it leads them to pursue him across the globe on behalf of the CIA, who plan to put Stonebanks on trial at The Hague for war crimes.

There's also history between Ross and Stonebanks as they started The Expendables together, but Ross is not willing to risk his current team to bring him in and instead hires a bunch of newbies to do the dirty work (hence the low-wattage names of Lutz, Rousey, Powell and Ortiz in that lengthy cast list).

This last point ends up being one of the film's biggest downfalls. While physics and logic go out the window whenever you step into a darkened cinema to see an Expendables film, the idea of Ross sending a group of talented yet inexperienced kids on a suicide mission instead of his trusted (and frankly over the hill) teammates doesn't sit very well with him being the movie's good guy.

It also strips away one of the best aspects of these films to date, which has been the interaction of his endearing team of muscle-bound, machine gun-toting lugheads. With them out of the picture for most of the picture, we're left to watch a pack of nameless 20-somethings who we don't care about.

Things work best when the old hands are in the mix. New addition Banderas is a scene-stealer as the garrulous Galgo, Schwarzenegger gets some good lines (including the old favourite "get to the chopper!"), Grammer is great, Ford looks like he's having fun filling in for Bruce Willis, and Snipes' acting may be shaky but he also looks like he's having a blast, even getting in a joke about his recent stint in jail for tax evasion.

As mentioned, Gibson steals the show, and the film lights up whenever he's on screen, in much the same way as previous series villains Eric Roberts and Jean-Claude Van Damme. It makes you want to see him back on the big screen more, or to play more villains.

While it's great watching these familiar faces together again, The Expendables 3 lacks the spark of The Expendables 2, which is the best of the series. The second film was in on the joke, having taken itself too seriously first time around - these guys are predominantly past their prime and can't do the things they used to do, meaning their legends now cast longer shadows than their present-day action personas.

This made The Expendables 2 genuinely funny, in a laugh-with-it way. As line after line clunks to the ground, as the stunts get more impossible, and as the bravado becomes sillier, you're laughing at instead of with Expendables 3.

It's a shame. The cast is likeable, the stunt work is exemplary, and the wave of nostalgia brought on by seeing The Italian Stallion, The Austrian Oak, Mad Mel and Han Solo share scenes almost makes it all worthwhile.

For these reasons, it's hard to totally shoot down The Expendables 3. And even though this one's not very good, I'd still line-up to see The Expendables 4, which will probably star Jackie Chan, Michael Dudikoff, Steven Seagal, and Pierce Brosnan.

But yeah, this isn't very good.

The Trip To Italy

(M) ★★★½

Director: Michael Winterbottom.

Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Rosie Fellner, Claire Keelan, Marta Barrio, Timothy Leach.

"Dear Diary, I can't help but feel like Coogan is looking over my shoulder constantly, reading everything I write."

Coogan and Brydon are back for another serve of good food, great locations and hilarious impersonations in this sequel to The Trip.

If you've seen the first one, you're already on board for this one because effectively The Trip To Italy is more of the same.

Winterbottom has taken the six episodes of season two of the TV series and boiled them down into a feature length film, in which Coogan and Brydon re-team to travel through Italy under the pretence of writing some more articles (or possibly a book) about the food and frivolities they enjoy, all the while listening to Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill (as it's the only CD they have with them).

Once again, the starring pair play fictionalised versions of themselves, with the main difference being that Brydon is the focus character this time - the ups and downs of his marriage and career provide the closest thing the film has to a narrative.

Through the examination of these stylised renderings of the leads, The Trip To Italy meditates on the nature of fame and ageing, but it doesn't delve too deep - the whole thing is really just a wonderful excuse to show off the Italian countryside and coastline while Coogan and Brydon bust out their impeccable impersonations.

Their Michael Caine impressions are a favourite, but we also get to hear their skills as Hugh Grant, Robert De Niro, Anthony Hopkins, Roger Moore, and Michael Parkinson, and it's hilarious.

The whole thing is a thin and flimsy travelogue but the banter between the pair make it better and far funnier than it has any right to be.