Agent Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston) is an expert in undercover work and, despite being offered retirement he takes on another job chasing a drug cartel who are money laundering their cash through the US banking system but instead of taking the usual approach of chasing the drugs Mazur tries chasing the money to get to the big fish and finds much more success which brings about the birth of Bob Musella, an alias he uses to gain access to their world. Running with the cartel brings it’s own pressures however and when the job begins to leave his family in the line of danger the stakes are raised and Mazur is torn between his personal and professional lives as they begin to merge into one.

We see very early that Mazur is a man that will go the extra mile to complete his mission but we also see that he is a family man who quite obviously loves his wife Evelyn (Juliet Aubrey) and kids so much so that when he is undercover he refuses to be unfaithful or participate in the taking of narcotics even though it potentially hampers the strengthening of his undercover persona. When he is partnered with Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo) who is much more of a seat of your pants guy against Mazurs’ methodical approach it looks like the two will be unable to work together plus, when his principals force him to pretend he has a fiancée it requires a third party in the form of Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger) as his soon to be wife complicating things further but between the three of them they manage to worm their way into the Medellin cartel and when they show that they can be of use they are introduced to higher level members,  eventually managing to build up a relationship with Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt) a lieutenant of Pablo Escobar.

Whenever I see a movie in this genre, especially about undercover work, I find it very difficult to remove it from the classics such as Donnie Brasco or The Departed so there tends to be a high bar set and it is no different here. It’s a good film but it’s not a classic because we’ve seen it all before and it has been done better. It’s not that there are not some good tense scenes, there are moments when their lives are on the line and there are situations where one wrong word will bring their façade falling down, throw in the fact that Javier Ospina (Yul Vazquez) never warms to Mazur so with his instable personality coupled with his mistrust leave their meetings on a knife edge but the sense of danger never really comes across on screen in the way I expected it should given the situation.

The saving grace for the movie comes in the form of the performance of the three agents, Kruger is excellent as the rookie field operative who takes to the role like a fish to water, Leguizamo gives arguably, his best screen performance as Abreu and while it is not his best role, Cranston solidifies his position in the top echelon of the industry with a great lead performance. Watch out for the restaurant scene where he is having dinner with his wife which was the best couple of minutes in the whole movie for me.

Also keep your eyes peeled for two interesting performances in small roles with both Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, who you will remember as Nidge from Love /Hate and appearing as Mazurs work colleague Steve Cook and Joe Gilgun, who played Woody in This Is England, as Mazurs go to man for inside knowledge, Dominic. It was good to see two really good actors from this side of the water appear in a big Hollywood film.

If you like crime dramas then you will enjoy it but despite the ‘based of a true story’ links and the seriousness of the situation, the lack of palpable tension and suspense leave you feeling a bit empty upon the conclusion of the movie.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6 Out Of 10

Taken from the Arthur Ransome novel of the same name Swallows And Amazons is set in England in 1935 and follows the story of the Walker children John (Dane Hughes), Susan (Orla Hill), Tatty (Teddie-Rose Malleson-Allen) & Roger (Bobby McCulloch) who head on a holiday to the Lake District with their mother (Kelly MacDonald) while their father is away at sea serving in the army. As they are exploring on the lake in their boat The Swallow they land on a supposedly uninhabited island and come across a house boat owned by Jim Turner (Rafe Spall) who Tatty initially believes is a pirate. After following Jim the children realise something bigger is happening when the find out that a man named Lazlow (Andrew Scott) is trailing Jim.

When another boat called The Amazon appears on the island claiming that they are trespassing, the Walkers are introduced to Nancy (Seren Hawkes) and Peggy Blackett (Hannah Jayne Thorp), Jim’s nieces. After initially declaring ‘war’ on each other over ownership of the island they are forced to put their differences aside when they find out that Jim has been kidnapped and they need to work together to rescue him from the clutches of Lazlo.

In a throw back to the innocent adventures of tales like The Railway Children mixed with a bit of The Famous Five, Swallows And Amazon has the feel of a BBC Sunday afternoon drama where most of the suspense is if the children can find a way to cook fish in order to satisfy their growing hunger, but with the opt out that they can always just head back home in time for tea. Even when the adventure takes a turn towards the espionage sub plot of Jim being sought by Lazlo and his associates the danger is never palpable, while guns may be pointed nobody actually wants to use firearms and would rather resolve the situation as gentlemen.

Rafe Spall does a good job as the mysterious Jim who even his nieces think is strange and at times I thought I was looking at a live action doppelganger for Tin Tin. Andrew Scott does what he does best as the antagonist with the cheeky smile and his gentle demeanour which you know is hiding something darker underneath. The children are ever so perfectly British and middle class with not a hint of stepping out of line and when the ‘war’ for the island is taking place you just know its going to end up with a congratulations and a handshake for the victors.

It’s not a bad film in itself it just felt a little like I had travelled back in time once the movie started as it is rare these days to watch any film, even a kids movie, without any hint of modernisation in it. As an faithful adaptation of a book written in 1930 then it is a case of mission accomplished but I’m not sure if there is a modern audience for this tale.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5 Out Of 10

Don’t Breathe is a story about three young opportunistic burglars who carry out small robberies on houses in the Detroit area as one of the group Alex (Dylan Minette) has a father who runs a home security company so he has managed to gain access to the keys and security codes for said houses. He is joined in this spree by Rocky (Jane Levy) a young mother who wants to gather enough cash to allow her escape from her situation living with her abusive mother (Katia Bokor) and current man (Sergej Onopko) who treat her with disdain. The third member of the group is Money (Daniel Zovatto), the street wise, hard man of the group who is doing the burglaries for fun as well as for financial gain. They always keep the takings small scale so as to stay under the radar and this is working well until Money receives word about a potential hit on a man, Norman Nordstrom (Stephen Lang) who has received a large cash settlement after the death of his daughter.

When they scope the house and realise he is blind it seems too good to be true as he is living alone in an isolated, run down part of town. However Norman is an army veteran so once they enter the house they find that it is going to be more difficult that imagined as the security is beyond what they expected, still they continue on unperturbed but when their plan to ensure the home owner stays asleep using gas is ruined as Money produces a gun and shoots the lock on a door which he believes the cash is stored behind this alerts Norman to their presence and transforms the act from home invasion to armed robbery so the stakes are escalated beyond their previous escapades and it turns into a stand off of sorts as he is unsure exactly who is in his home but has correctly guessed that they are looking for his cash.

Director Fede Alvarez, who also gave us the decent remake of the Evil Dead movie a few years back, uses great camerawork with good tracking shots, quick cuts, shaky camera and the use of POV in some scenes which all really add tension and the since most of the movie has a very claustrophobic feel, taking place in real time it adds a great sense of realism to the situation. The switch from the burglars being the bad guys to you rooting for them to escape is done both cleverly and subtly that it’s hard to think back to at which point your brain makes the switch as both sides are essentially the bad guys.  While the overall plausibility of the movie is a little far fetched if really analysed it’s one of those stories which has enough elements of possibility that make you think, what if that actually happened? The jump scares are appropriate and do catch you unawares plus there’s a scene with possibly the best use of night vision cameras since Silence Of The Lambs.

All three intruders get their time on screen and are flashed out reasonably well but both Minette and in particular Levy get the majority of the moments to shine and Levy does a great job often acting by facial expression alone which deserves credit. However, Stephen Lang is the real star of the show here as the blind veteran who makes the house an almost unescapable fortress where every movement and sound potentially alerts him to where the intruders are located. His screen presence made him feel threatening despite his disability and as we learn during the progression of the film, he may be blind but he is far from helpless. So, as the intruders are forced to take more and more desperate measures in an attempt to escape they begin to realise just how dangerous he really is. One thing I did notice was that he seems to have enhanced senses such as smell at one moment but not at other times and in a similar vein his hearing seemed to go from almost super human to average which made some scenes a little unbelievable but this is not the fault of the actor and he gives a Tour De Force performance here.

I did have a few issues with some elements of the movie as I thought that the motivations of Alex were a little weak as, despite the obvious attraction he had towards Rocky the lengths he is going to seem a little extreme for a guy who outwardly, looks to generally be on the straight and narrow. Also, the ending was a little disappointing in comparison to the rest of the movie as it seemed to drag on and the movie could have been about fifteen minutes shorter. On the plus side, once the movie hits the point where all the characters are inside the house it really was a tense situation and there were some real edge of your seat moments when you almost found yourself shouting at the screen, which doesn’t happen to me often.

I found a lot of similarities to the movie Green Room from earlier this year but where that took a more visceral approach to the ‘no escape’ situation this movie has a more subtle build up to its climax. While not an out and out horror movie in the classic descriptive there’s enough to give it a borderline entry into the genre so it most certainly deserves a mention and continues the resurgence of generally good horror films which have hit the screens so far this year.

DJ Speaks Rating: 7 Out Of 10

Kubo opens with a superb line ‘If you must blink do it now!’ and from that point on you are hooked into the adventure. Set in ancient Japan, Kubo (Art Parkinson) is a young boy who lives with his sick mother (Charlize Theron) at the top of a mountain outside a small village where he travels every day to tell epic stories using his power to magically manipulate paper using his guitar (or Shamisen to be technical). These tales tell the story of a samurai warrior called Hanzo, who is Kubo’s father that he believes died protecting the family when he was a baby. He returns home each evening before sunset as his mother has told him never to stay out after dark otherwise his twin Auntie’s (Rooney Mara) and his grandfather Raiden, also known as the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes) will come for Kubo as they want to steal is remaining eye since his Grandfather stole one when Kubo was only a baby.

When he finds out from the villagers of a nearby cemetery where people light lanterns to communicate with deceased family members he decides to try and contact his father but inadvertently stays too long and his aunties appear to capture him. His mother manages to come to the rescue and tells him that he must find his father’s magic armour, but when he awakes he finds himself in a strange land and with his three companions, a monkey, an origami figure and an insect samurai he must undertake an adventure to find the magical armour and defeat this grandfather.

Using stop motion animation, Kubo is one of the most visually beautiful movies you will see this year and when you throw in an excellent score to accompany it you are already onto a winner. Using a similar premise the Laika studios have already successfully used this set up to bring us both Coraline and ParaNorman, but in my opinion this tops both of those movies.

Although it may sound like a strange plot the movie is told so skillfully that it perfectly brings you along for the ride and it’s only after the movie ends you realise just how dark some of the story actually was and the studio has taken a chance that the younger audience will be able to handle the heavy themes of revenge, sacrifice and loss but with it masked behind the colour, animation and joy the movie brings I think they got it just right. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of humour and light hearted moments as well and it is a testament to the excellent voice acting that you feel such a bond with the characters but the sisters have t be one of the most sinister things I have seen in a kids movie as yet. When they appear they are really creepy, as they float along looking like an evil version of the freedom fighter V in black hats and capes. As the adventure progresses and we find out more about Kubo, his skills and his companions we see their sense of honour develop as we discover more about them and their motivations and there’s a great character arc for each of them.

There is very little to complain about in the movie, I could argue that the Grandfathers motivation is a little weak but I’m being picky. The plot could be deemed a little bizarre and dark but it’s supposed to be a magical tale so again it would be very harsh to criticise that, so you are left with one of those rare kids movies that adults can also really enjoy which whisks you away on a magical journey and you are more than happy to be swept along for the ride.

DJ Speaks Rating: 7 Out Of 10

Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) is a risk assessor for a company who fund projects to create intelligent artificial beings so when their latest experiment, a five year old specimen called Morgan (Anya Taylor Joy) badly injures a member of the team Weathers is sent to investigate if the outburst was a one off or whether the project is no longer viable as they are fearful of a re-occurrence of an incident in Helsinki where most of the team were killed by a previous project.

As she carries out her investigation we find out more about Morgan and her situation, we learn that this was the third attempt by the team and, in their opinion, Morgan is a perfect creation. On the outside this would seem to be the case as, in general, Morgan seems to act just like a human but during an intense psychological evaluation by Dr.Shapiro (Paul Giamatti) things take a turn for the worst and Morgans aggression once again manifests itself with dire consequences so Weathers decides that the project is no longer suitable for continuity and demands that Morgan is terminated but this is in conflict with how most of the scientists feel as they have developed a strong, almost parental bond with Morgan. This leaves the only real defender of the termination as Dr.Cheng (Michelle Yeoh) who was involved in the incident in Helsinki which leaves Weathers  at odds with the team and when she pushes ahead with the cessation of the project the team decide to take affairs into their own hands, subdue Weathers and save Morgan but their faith in the experiment is ill placed as, while Morgan may be physically advanced, emotionally it is not and like most basic living things puts self preservation above all else. Once free it decides that it doesn’t ever want to go back into captivity so Weathers must track down the experiment and terminate it once and for all.

If you have seen the trailer then you may find that the film is not quite what you expected. It’s a slow paced thriller interspersed with action sequences but director Luke Scotts (Son of Ridley) attempts to keeps us on the edge of our seals falls a little flat due to the predictability of the movie and the large plot holes which occur. Although you can see that he has picked up on some of his fathers talent as visually the movie is very good, with some clever camera work building tension by showing us things occurring behind the main focus of the scene. Also both the strong female character and the use of an unseen ‘Corporation’ pulling the strings both harked back to the original Alien movie.

Mara does a good job as the cold hearted investigator, more detective that risk assessor who is all about the job at hand. As she declares very early ‘Morgan is not a she, it is an it!’ but it did not come across as the most taxing of roles in terms of diversity which left it hard to like her character, although this was obviously the way the part was written. Some of the science team felt very under used Dr.Grieff (Jennifer Jason Lee) had little screen time and while, part of the most integral scene of the film, the same can be said of the Giamatti role. The big plus for the film is the performance of Taylor Joy as Morgan, after her great showing is last years The Witch, she once again shows her talent as, beyond the make up effect, she gives a real emotionless, almost robotic performance which gives a great feel for how this being was created and is almost alien like despite the best efforts of the science team to humanise it.

It’s a movie of two halves. The first is a slow paced thriller like introduction to the situation, the people involved and the subject in question. The second half is more of an action movie but is the weaker half of the two so despite the moralistic themes of genetics, tampering with nature and playing God plus the potential controversial link to abortion and the rights to terminate life it just failed to get the movie above the level of mediocre. If you like your science fiction then there enough here to make it worth checking out but if not you are likely to find it all a bit far fetched and end up losing interest. Try the excellent Ex-Machina for a much better film along the same lines.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5 Out Of 10

Kicking off with a bank robbery Hell Or High Water grabs you from the off and rarely lets go through the whole running time. Toby Howard (Chris Pine) is a divorced father who lives on his deceased mothers farm and rarely sees his ex-wife or kids and we see him engaged in the robbery with his ex-con brother Tanner (Ben Foster) as they make off with a small amount of cash in what, on the outside, seems to be a carefully planned heist. Over the next few days we see the brothers carry out a few more robberies with the same M.O but sometimes the facade drops and we realise that, while clever, these guys may not be the professionals we first thought. But there is more to these robberies than greed as there is a genuine purpose for what they are doing so there becomes a Robin Hood like feel to their actions. In the meantime a soon to retire Texas ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and his partner Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham) are given what looks like a cut and dry bank robbery to investigate but it soon becomes much more than that and their chase takes on a whole different vibe as with Bridges closing in on them the brothers must change their game plan as run their operation at a mush higher degree of risk as their window of opportunity is closing fast.

This description may make it sound like a been there, done that film as the concept is not new but the style, tone, dialogue and acting in this movie take this to another level. It’s a slow burn film, the tension is always there but it starts small and gradually building into a climactic crescendo before dropping again at the very end without ever leaving the screen. With script from Taylor Sheridan who also wrote the excellent Sciario I had high expectations and I was not let down, there are only a few action packed moments yet I was never bored as the setting is superb with the towns in ruin, the signs of foreclosure and sale of properties and the general depressing feeling hitting home and I almost felt the heat and dirt coming off screen, so credit must go to Scottish director David MacKenzie for his portrayal of a dying area with people trying to keep the wolves from the door by any means possible.

The casting was near perfect, there were moments that there was nothing being said on screen but the facial expressions of the four leads were enough and told us as much as any words could, the dialogue was superb and realistic. Humorous to relieve some of the tension without ever eliminating it. While it’s possibly the best performance I’ve seen from Chris Pine and if this is a sign of things to come from him then I’ll be looking forward to it, if Ben Forster and Jeff Bridges are not in the running for the Oscars then there is no justice. Foster has always been a good actor but he absolutely absorbs you into his character this time as the less moralistic of the brothers who will do anything to atone for his guilt over not being there for his family and you can feel his internal pain without him ever mentioning it while Bridges gives a smashing performance as the grizzled old, tenacious ranger who just cannot let the case go even when it is getting the better of him often to the detriment of those around him, especially his partner who pretends that he hates being around him but you just know will miss him once he retires. He doesn’t want to retire the job is his life and he’s not going to let his last case be the one that got away.

The conversations between the partnerships, and when it occurs the interaction between the characters on either side of the fence, felt real so you believed that Pine and Foster were brothers and Bridges and Birmingham had been working together for years. So it is these two partnerships which keep the whole movie balanced and leave you conflicted as, while the bothers are criminals and should be punished, you are rooting for them to success given their purpose and goal which I find very rare in a movie.

I don’t want to give too much away or put this movie on too high a pedestal but I haven’t enjoyed a film this much in a long time and, along with Midnight Special and Sing Street it is in the top three movies of the year for me but this possible edges it. In a year full of promise for movies where we have had so many letdowns do yourself a favour and see this as soon as you can before word of mouth ruins some of the surprise moments as I believe it’s one of the best you will see for a while and as a pretty harsh critic that is high praise indeed.

DJ Speaks Rating: 8 Out of 10

Miles Teller is David Packouz who scrapes a living out as a masseuse in Miami where he resides with his girlfriend Iz (Ana De Armas) but he is tired living on the bread line so in an attempt to break out of the slump he decides to invest his life savings in bed sheets but when this venture fails miserably and he finds out that Iz is pregnant David is desperate to find an additional means of income. When at a funeral he bumps into his old high school friend Efraim Diveroli (Johan Hill) who has set up his own company, AEY, which acts as a middle man in the selling of arms to the US Government. While initially sceptical David quickly realises just how much earning potential there is so he agrees to work for Efraim, all the while pretending to his girlfriend that he is still selling sheets.

As the business grows both David and Efraim get deeper and deeper into the business leading to them making even more money which in turns allows them to bid for more profitable contracts and even expanding the business to take on staff. When a deal arrives to supply arms to the Afghan military, which is worth hundreds of millions they decided that this is the big one but such a big contract is proving too much for the guys so after an encounter with legendary arms dealer Henry Girard (Bradley Cooper) they decide to utilise his experience to locate a hundred million rounds of AK47 ammunition in Albania which in turn allows them to place their bid although their naivety leads to them massively underbidding. When thing start to go wrong the guys find themselves getting deeper into the mire trying desperately to find solutions but when the FBI start to poke their nose into the business their house of cards begins to crumble and things take a nasty turn.

All through this movie I kept things just how like a cut price Scorsese movie this was with many similarities to both Goodfellas and The Wolf Of Wall Street, the protagonists are bad guys, there’s drug taking which gets out of control, the unpredictable character calling the shots, the excellent use of music to enhance scenes and the freeze frame with voice over moments. I’m not saying it is anywhere near that class but it certainly suited the tale and subject matter. The difference here is that I felt no sympathy for Teller, not because of his acting which was good but because he came across as spineless and easily led. Always being manipulated by Hill and most of the time knowing exactly what was going on but rarely doing anything about it even when his relationship with Armas, who acts as the moral compass in the movie but is still more than happy with her new lavish lifestyle, is straining because of his constant lies. He’s sold as this good guy at heart but didn’t come across that way from his actions. Hill was excellent as Diveroli, a loose cannon who will do whatever it takes for the cash and watch out for his laugh which itself both hilarious and evil depending on the context of its use.

There’s a certain ironic feel to the contents this film no more so that very early where the real life David Packouz is sitting in an old folk home singing Don’t Fear The Reaper on acoustic guitar. Director Todd Phillips who also brought us the Hangover movies does a decent job of keeping the tension and action moving and keeps us intrigued, however the movies characters are very unbalanced which causes some tonal issues. The chemistry between Hill and Teller is excellent and gives us most of the best moments even when the story is in its slower pieces. Although having a pivotal role in the second part of the movie Cooper has very little screen time although it was nice to see him play the unemotional big shot, despite the off putting enlarging of his eyes through his glasses giving him a slightly comical feel and when on screen you hung on his word as his lack of facial expressions left you in no doubt that this was a man you didn’t cross.

In the end the movie tries to be too clever for it’s own good and it gets lost in not knowing if it’s a buddy caper movie, a crime drama about gun smuggling or a tale of a man who’s life spirals out of control and he is forced along on a ride he is unequipped to deal with. If you leave the analysis aside it’s a good comedy drama elevated by another excellent performance by Hill.