The 5th wave is another of the ever increasing number of films aimed at the young adult market being released and is taken from a novel by Rick Yancey. It stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan a run of the mill teenage girl who’s life of worrying about school, friends and boys is irreversibly changed when she is thrust into the role of a survivor of an alien invasion which comes in the form of five waves, first an EMP type attack which leaves all electrical devices useless and removes all forms of communication, secondly a giant Tsunami which wipes out all coastal cities, thirdly a variation of the Avian Flu which kills most of the remaining population, fourthly alien patrols which pick off the few remaining survivors which leaves the pending fifth wave to complete the job.

Cassies mother is killed during the third wave so she sets out with her father and brother to find a local refugee camp and it’s while they are located here that the army appears and Leiv Schreiber shows up as Colonel Vosch explaining that the aliens have found a way to infiltrate humans so all survivors are to be taken to a nearby military camp where they will be screened and protected as the human fight back is underway. However the aliens have only managed to copy adult humans and not children so all kids are to be transported in advance. This does not go down well with the survivors and Cassies father, along with most of the rest of the adults, is killed in the ensuing melee, she is also separated from her brother and left stranded and alone while the other children are taken off and put through a boot camp in order to prepare them for the fight back.

The main the issue with the movie is that, once again, we are asked to believe the all survivors are good looking teenagers who act smart one minute then lose all reasoning when a member of the opposite sex turns up and the hormones are turned all the way up to eleven and despite the lack of amenities they all still seem to be able to look their best at all times. However on the flip side I liked the premise and the spin that was taken on the invasion, some of the apocalyptic sets are excellent and would stand up to most big budget movies and the CGI is good so perhaps this movie suffers from taking a step too far in taking material from a novel and instead of staying true to the material it tries to make it fit with the usual Hollywood clichés as it feels like a lost opportunity.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10

Based on a J.G Ballard novel from the 1970, High Rise is a dystopian tale of the effects on social class and human nature while in the confines of a ultra modern high rise building and stars Tom Hiddleston as Robert Laing a neurologist who moves into an apartment on the 25th floor and is soon befriended by free spirited Charlotte (Sienna Miller), his neighbour above and documentary filmmaker wannabe Richard Wilder (Luke Evans) who lives on the lower levels with his brood of children and heavily pregnant wife Helen (Elisabeth Moss).

Laing is also extended the pleasure of meeting the buildings architect Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons) on the penthouse floor who explains the setup of the building in terms of the floor layout and amenities, he also outlines how he wanted the building to be a crucible for change and a grand social experiment. It’s during this period that he also spends some time mixing with the more affluent members of the upper floors but realises that he has nothing in common with them and drifts back to socialising with the people on his own and lower floor.

It is not long after this that Wilder becomes more and more frustrated with the treatment he, and the other members of the lower floors, are receiving as they have to deal with power cuts, broken lifts, minor food restrictions and cordoned off areas that the higher floors do not have to deal with. This escalates and Wilder becomes a figurehead for the lower floors as they begin to fight back against what they believe to be tyrannical treatment from Royal and his upper floor friends so what begins as protesting and demonstration soon descends into full scale madness as the power cuts and food shortages become more frequent and drastic. Soon the whole building is in the throes of an internal civil war, with murder, rape, drug taking and general violence all becoming the normal state of play as the whole building descends into one long orgy of violence, sex and partying with the upper floors living a lavish lifestyle to absurd levels of aloofness to the situation, that in essence they created, which is creeping towards them unstoppably. While Laing initially tries to abstain from this madness he is slowly drawn into things as the lower floors see him as a gateway to access Royal and the upper floors see him as a pawn to try and control Wilder and his followers and he is increasingly pressurised on both side until he too snaps and joins the anarchy of the situation.

Some of the problem with the movie is the amount of secondary characters who drift in and out of the movie but don’t really add anything substantial to the occurring events so you have cuts to characters who haven’t been developed properly and take away from the main players in the ongoing struggles. Also, while Laing is the middle of the struggle, on the middle floor and is, presumably, supposed to be representative of the audience as the middle ground everyman, given his job and social life he is a long way from the everyman who will watch this film so in essence there is no empathy towards his plight which leads to a state of apathy towards all of the characters and the movie in general. It’s probably more the character of Wilder who gives a closer to accurate portrait of today’s everyman, at least until his descent into madness, in terms of his standing in social structure.

There are a lot of similarities to the 2013 film Snowpiercer which was also about class war but based on a train instead, although that movie showed the classes in a more open and divided way and didn’t have as many dream sequences, but there are also moments in this movie when it echoes the anarchy of A Clockwork Orange and even the social breakdown of Lord of The Flies so while it’s far from being a bad movie, as it still had me thinking long after I had watched it, I’m still not sure if this is a satirical look at how easily human nature can be sent back to primeval ways through the loss of basic amenities or if it’s a thriller based on how the human psyche can be manipulated by pressing the right buttons at the right time or, after watching the final scenes, whether it’s all just a dream or not.

Don’t let that last paragraph put you off completely, there is some fantastic use of symbolism and metaphors all through the film, the score is excellent, in particular the use of the ABBA hit SOS but done with an unnerving twist by Portishead and the 1970’s feel of the movie is great so if you enjoy a movie that gets you thinking and is a bit off center then you will enjoy it as it certainly opens up many discussion topics, but it’s not an easy movie to watch so make sure you are in the right frame of mind for this otherwise you’ll just end up hating it and won’t give it the time is deserves.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10

Based on the real life story of Eddie Edwards efforts to qualify for and compete at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary this underdog tale has a feel good factor even if a lot of liberties are taken with the actual story of the real life Edwards. Eddie (Taron Egerton) has spent his whole life dreaming of one day becoming an Olympian despite all and sundry telling him he is not good enough and he’ll never make it. But Eddie is made of sterner stuff than that and isn’t going to allow a few naysayers put him off so despite one failed attempt after another he eventually finds a calling in the world of ski jumping and heads off to Germany to train. It is here that he bumps into Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman) a washed up alcoholic but a one-time top level jumper who left it all behind due to his rock and roll attitude to the sport. Of course Edwards wears him down through a mixture of tenacity and pity and it’s not long before he reluctantly agrees to give tips but only in order to ensure Edwards does not kill himself. But even finding an ally is not enough for Edwards as he has to battle against his fellow ski jumpers who see him as a joke as do the British Olympic council who do their best to ensure he does not make the team.

Egerton does a good job in portraying the plucky, never say die attitude to the screen with a mixture of determination and childlike innocence which makes it hard not to want him to succeed but it’s Jackman who steals the show as he looks like he is having great fun acting like Wolverine, without the claws of course, through the literal ups and downs of Edwards journey and it wouldn’t be an underdog tale unless Jackmans character also learned from the experience and finds both a friend and confident in Edwards.

Director Dexter Fletcher does a good job in keeping you interested even if you know nothing about the sport. Although sometimes the sentimentality gets a bit thick and some of the CGI is a little suspect because everyone seems to be having a good time on screen it doesn’t matter. Credit goes to some of the camera work during the actual ski jumping moments which does a good job in showing just how dangerous the sport actually is.

With echoes of the similar fairy-tale story of Cool Running, which incidentally occurred at the same event there is nothing new here but there is still enough to make the movie worth a watch even if it doesn’t reach the heights the protagonist himself needed to scale.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5.5 Out Of 10