Ginger & Rosa (4½ Stars)

I bought this film when I was in England at Christmas, and it's been lying on my shelf ever since. To be honest, I don't remember why I bought it. It doesn't look like my sort of film. The sticker says it's part of an HMV "Five Blu-rays for £30" sale, so it's possible I picked it up in desperation as the fifth film. I didn't even intend to watch it today, and may have left it on the shelf for another six months. I wanted to watch "Picasso Trigger". I recently bought all 12 films in the Andy Sidaris collection from Amazon, and I'm slowly working my way through them in order, but today something terrible happened. I opened the case, and there was no disc inside. The disc was sealed in foil, so it was probably a packing error. That's never happened to me before, in my 17 years of buying films on DVD and Blu-ray. And I've bought a lot! I was too lazy to go down to the cellar to pick another film from my to-watch list, so I grabbed the nearest film: "Ginger & Rosa".

I was amazed, from the first minutes onwards. Somehow it touched a nerve. It's a family drama and (to a lesser extent) a coming-of-age drama.

Two women, Natalie and Anoushka, meet on 6th August 1945. They're both in labour, lying in beds next to one another, and they hold hands to comfort one another. They both have baby girls. Natalie's daughter is called Africa, although she's later given the nickname Ginger. Anoushka's daughter is called Rosa. The two mothers become close friends, and the daughters also grow up as friends.

The girls are separated at the age of 11 when they have to go to different schools. Ginger passed the 11+ exam and went to a grammar school. Rosa failed the exam and went to a secondary modern school. Nevertheless, they still spend as much time as possible together.

Fast forward to 1962, shortly after their 17th birthdays. Anoushka is a single mother, after her husband walked out for unstated reasons. Natalie's marriage is on the rocks, because she suspects that her husband Roland, a university lecturer, is having affairs with younger students. Nevertheless, Ginger is closest to her father. Natalie tries to control Ginger's life, preparing her for marriage and a future as a housewife, whereas Roland recognises Ginger's intelligence and encourages her to be a free thinker.

All this is happening against the background of the Cold War. Ginger and Rosa visit CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) meetings. Ginger is convinced that something needs to be done, including illegal protests, while Rosa says that nuclear war is inevitable, so they should just enjoy the short time they have left.

Roland leaves home. A few weeks later Ginger goes to live with him. She soon discovers that Rosa is having an affair with her father, which drives her to the verge of a mental breakdown.

This is a film with incredible emotional depth. Maybe it touched me because I can relate to being alienated from a daughter to whom I used to be close. I don't know. Timothy Spall delivers a stunning performance as Ginger's godfather and close friend of both parents.

Christina Hendricks is convincing as Natalie, apart from the fact that she's too attractive. Why would any man with a gorgeous wife like her run around after young girls? In my opinion, she's one of Hollywood's most beautiful actresses.

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Dark Places (4 Stars)

Do you pay attention to the success rate that I post at the bottom of my reviews? It's the relative success of a film, proportionally to its budget. I don't always have the details, but when I do I post the value. Basically, any film with a positive success rate (especially if it's larger than +1) is a success, while any film with a negative success rate is a flop. "Dark Places" has a success rate of - 5.7, which means it bombed at the box office, despite its collection of A List stars. That's unfortunate. It's a good film that deserved to be successful.

When Libby Day was eight years old her mother and her two sisters were murdered. She was the only witness, and in court she testified that her brother Ben, aged 16, was the killer. That's a trauma that would ruin anyone's life, and it's certainly ruined her life. For 28 years she lived off her mother's life insurance, but now the money is gone, and she faces the possibility of having to work for the first time in her life. That is, if anyone will hire a 36-year-old who's never worked. Her chances look bad.

She receives a letter from a man called Lyle who promises her $500 for attending a meeting. That sounds too good to be true. She meets him at night in a launderette. It seems weird, but he says it's the best place, because he owns the launderette. He belongs to a group called the Kill Club. Its members are people who are fascinated by unsolved murder cases, so they want to meet her. Why Libby? The murder of her family was solved, wasn't it? Lyle says that the members of the club don't believe Ben was the murderer. They think that Libby's testimony was too confused and didn't match the evidence.

Libby thinks Lyle and his Kill Club are a bunch of cranks, but she needs the money, so she helps with Lyle's investigations. It's more accurate to say that she leads the investigations herself. She visits Ben in prison for the first time in 28 years, and he's not at all bitter, even though he claims he's innocent. Over the next few days Libby tracks down childhood friends and acquaintances, and she uncovers things that she's either forgotten or never knew. There were conspiracies involving drugs, Satanism, child abuse, and worst of all: heavy metal music!

Watching the film today for the first time, it fascinated me. How could a film like this possibly have flopped at the box office? There are first class performances by Charlize Theron, Christina Hendricks and Nicholas Hoult. Chloe Grace Moretz is a good actress as well, but her character, Ben's girlfriend, is constantly smoking. That puts me off. Despite that small negative aspect, I can strongly recommend the film to my readers.

Success Rate:  - 5.7

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The Strangers: Prey at Night (3 Stars)

This is the eighth film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

This is a sequel to the film "The Strangers" that was released in 2008. It's not understandable why the writer Bryan Bertino waited so long. The first film ended with a hook to make a new film.

I'll admit that I didn't like the first film very much. I enjoy slasher films if there's a good story behind the slashing, but that didn't seem to be the case. The second film features the same three killers but even less story. When one of the killers (Dollface, on the left in the poster) is asked why she's killing people she answers "Why not?"

If you really want a plot summary, here it is:

A family with two teenage children moves into a trailer park. On their first night three strangers arrive and kill them one by one.

There's nothing else to say. They're not carefully selected victims. They're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Most of the films shown at the Stuttgart Nights Festival are new films that haven't been shown in the cinema yet. This is an exception. It was released in March in almost every country except for Germany and the UK. The fans obviously disagree with my negative rating. It's already a massive hit which has earned more than five times its budget. Maybe cinema audiences just want to see killing without having to worry why it's happening?

There's one amusing thing that I noticed in the final credits. There was a list of set medics. 14 of them. Why does a film need so many medics? In fact, why does a film need any medics at all? Did something happen that we haven't been told about?

Drive (4 Stars)

After watching "Neon Demon" last week I decided to watch a few more films directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Luckily several of them are available on Netflix. I'm beginning to get a feeling for his style now. He and his films have never been nominated for Academy Awards, but he's a favourite at independent film festivals, most notably at the Cannes Film Festival. His two most highly praised films so far have been "Neon Demon" and "Drive".

First of all I'll state my biggest criticism of "Drive": it's too short. The plot is complex, so 100 minutes isn't enough. A running time of 150 minutes would have done more justice to the subplots, as well as further developing the characters. Is there a director's cut lying in a draw somewhere?

Ryan Gosling is the film's unnamed hero. He's moved to Los Angeles to make it big, like so many other anonymous faces in and around the film industry. His job of choice is as a stunt driver. Nobody can crash a car like him. Aren't stunt men the most anonymous of all film stars? They're paid to remain unseen.

His relative success in Hollywood isn't enough to pay the bills. He works as a car mechanic. He also does freelance work as a getaway driver for robberies. It's all very impersonal. He doesn't want to make friends, he just does his job. He doesn't even speak to the crooks that he drives to and from crime scenes. They respect him for his driving skills, not for his personality.

He becomes romantically attached to his neighbour, a woman whose husband is in prison. It's a very underplayed romance. He's a decent man and respects the woman's marriage. When the husband is released from prison they make friends, and he offers to help him pay off debts to other criminals. He offers his services as a getaway driver to rob a pawn shop, but the robbery turns out wrong. Instead of the relatively small takings the Italian mafia is using the shop to store over a million dollars. The innocent driver gets caught up in a mob war in which he's the designated scapegoat. Or is he so innocent? That isn't clear. He might be a quiet person whose casual attitude makes other people think he doesn't know what he's doing, but he's more than able to handle himself in a fight.

The film is characterised by two features: bright colours and extreme violence. The style is very much like Quentin Tarantino's films, or at least it would be if there were more conversations. That's why "Drive" needs an extra 50 minutes. And, of course, Tarantino's films don't have such dazzling colours.

I can't help feeling that Nicolas Winding Refn is still slowly developing his style. His big masterpiece is yet to come. I can hardly wait.

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The Neon Demon (4 Stars)

Jesse is a 16-year-old girl who moves from Georgia to Los Angeles to become a model. On arriving she meets a photographer called Dean who takes her first photos. She uses these pictures to present herself to a modelling agent, who immediately recognises she has talent.

The modelling business is hard and merciless. As Jesse quickly rises to the top the other models ask her who she's been sleeping with to get so far. They don't believe that it's possible to become a top model without sleeping around. Jesse is naive and hardly believes what's happening to her. She's like a deer caught in the headlights, as her new best friend Ruby tells her. Ruby says that she's a makeup artist, but she doesn't admit that she does makeup for corpses to prepare them for burial.

The lights are bright, the music is loud, and Jesse's virginal innocence prevents her from seeing the dangers of the new world she's entered.

The Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn has a psychedelic style which is unique today. He has more similarity with 1970's directors like Robert Fuest. There's a distinct similarity with the colour contrasts of Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange". The clash between the superficial beauty and the depths of the horror beneath the surface is staggering. After watching "Neon Demon" you have to rub your eyes and ask yourself if you really saw what just happened. This isn't a film for everyone, but it's a film for viewers who like to be shocked.

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Lost River (2 Stars)

What can I write about this film? Where can I even begin? I can tell you what happens in the film, and if I wanted to give away spoilers I could even describe the whole story, scene by scene. What I can't do is explain the film's deeper meaning. I can tell you what happens, but I can't tell you why it happens. I'm sure the director wanted to say something, but I have no idea what it is.

And who is the director? It's Ryan Gosling. It's the first and so far only film that he's written and directed. He's one of Hollywood's top actors. Women love his smile and his boyish looks. But "Lost River" shows that everyone, including me, has underestimated him. What on Earth is going on inside his head?

Billy is a single mother who lives with her two sons, Bones and Franky, on the outskirts of Detroit. There's a big difference in the ages of her sons. Bones is 20-ish, while Franky isn't in school yet, probably about five. It happens. Billy's neighbourhood is dying out. People are moving away. If they have a mortgage they just stop paying and let their house be repossessed. If their house is paid off they just move away and leave it behind, because they can't sell it anyway. Weeds are growing in the middle of the road. The only two families remaining are Billy, and a girl called Rat who lives with her grandmother.

Bones makes a living from salvaging copper from abandoned houses. Now it looks like his source of income will dry up, because another young man has claimed ownership of all the scrap copper in the neighbourhood, and he has threatened to kill anyone else who takes copper.

Billy is unemployed and three months behind with her mortgage payments. She goes to her bank manager, who tells her that he will have her house demolished if she doesn't bring her payments up to date within a month. He advises her to apply for a job at a club he regularly visits. It's a club which puts on acts of women dying. It doesn't matter if it's murder or suicide, as long as there's lots of blood.

Billy manages to put on a good act that entertains the audience, but she's told that there's a way to make even more money. Women are put inside a see-through plastic case, and men are allowed to touch the case in any way they want, either stroking it or hitting it. The women are safe inside, but please tell me what sort of a man would find pleasure in something like that?

The area is called Lost River because there's a town that was sunk to make a new reservoir. Shouldn't it be called Lost Town instead? Houses, shops, churches and schools have all been submerged. There was also a dinosaur theme park in the lost town. Rat's grandfather was killed when the town was sunk, so her grandmother sits watching films about the town every day, oblivious to everything happening round about her.

There's a legend that the area is under a curse because of the way the town was submerged. According to Rat, who seems to be better informed than anyone else in the film, the curse will only be lifted if someone goes down to the town and brings back part of it.

Matt Smith is hardly recognisable in the film. He plays Bully, the young man who is willing to kill to keep hold of the copper which doesn't belong to him anyway. He plays a disgusting character so realistically that I can't help hating him.

Rat is played by Saoirse Ronan, one of the most promising young actresses in Hollywood today. She's called Rat because she has a pet rat that she always carries in her pocket. The rat's name is Nick.

I'd never heard of Christina Hendricks before this film, but I have to admit that she has some outstanding qualities. I'm surprised that the club had a plastic case in her size.

This is the house that Billy is so desperate to keep? This is the reason why she lets herself be touched by strange men every day? Only in Detroit.

But I have a question. If she can't afford to pay the mortgage on the house, why doesn't she just move into another house in the street that is standing empty? I mean a house that's fully paid off, of course. That would ease the financial pressure.

One more piece of information. "Lost River" was filmed in 3D. Honest! This was a waste of effort, because it went straight to video. The 3D version has only been released in Germany. Click here to order it.

As you can see, I've given the film a poor rating. I admire Ryan Gosling's courage at making such an adventurous film, but it's not something I could ever enjoy. The violence against women is bad, even if it's only simulated, but it's even more awful that people are shown who enjoy seeing violence against women. Apart from that, the chaotic jumble of themes in the film disturbs me. There are too many incoherent ideas.

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Zoolander 2 (4 Stars)

Normally I would groan when a sequel is made 15 years after the original film. It seems too much like an act of desperation to get people into the cinemas. However, I do have faith in Ben Stiller, especially as a director. He's someone who takes risks and gets things right. I even like "Cable Guy", which is generally considered to be his worst film. Apart from this, I read that Ben Stiller wanted to make "Zoolander 2" for years, but he didn't do it because he was waiting for a suitable script.

It seems that not many people have the same faith in Ben Stiller's judgement as me. Only four members of the Birmingham film group decided to see the film with me. Actually there were five, but one of them didn't turn up because he fell asleep on the sofa. Life is hard.

I don't think that "Zoolander 2" is quite up to the quality of the original, but it's still a very good film. When a sequel is made to a comedy film the temptation is to repeat the same jokes. See the second Austin Powers film for an example of this.This was only partially the case with "Zoolander 2". A few of the original jokes were repeated, enough to make me feel comfortable and accept it as a sequel, but most of the humour was new. Overall, the film went in a new direction. The first film was all about exposing the shallowness of the fashion industry. In the second film this subject is only mentioned in passing. Instead of this we have an epic battle between good and evil.

That's all I'll say about the plot. My recommendation to my readers is that if you enjoyed "Zoolander" you'll probably like "Zoolander 2" as well, even though it's a different film. If you didn't enjoy "Zoolander" this probably isn't a film for you, but give it a try anyway, you might like it. If you've never watched "Zoolander" I suggest that you watch it first. There are enough references to the first film to make "Zoolander 2" slightly confusing if you don't know the original.