Dwayne Johnson – also known as The Rock – continues to morph his way from wrestling and hard-nosed action characters, here playing a much more thoughtful lead in a run-of-the-mill crime drama. That’s not to say he’s given up the fight – he just won Nickelodeon’s Favourite Male Buttkicker Award for 2013, and as Snitch gains pace and much needed energy from the half way mark, you can expect Johnson to stop staring pensively into the middle distance and start moving a few of those muscles.

Johnson plays John Matthews, a smooth and considerate businessman with his own transport and construction company. Divorced from first wife Sylvie (Melina Kanakaredes) who lives with their lethargic 18-year-old son Jason (Rafi Gavron), Matthews has a new life, new wife and young daughter. But when Jason is picked up in a drug bust, he looks set to spend at least ten years in jail, thanks to the tough first time sentencing laws put in place by District Attorney Joanne Keeghan (Susan Sarandon). The only way to avoid the harsh penalty is to become a snitch. The problem is that Jason doesn’t know anyone in biz to finger. Well, just give The Rock a montage or two and, hey presto, he’s in touch with the nastiest drug guys in town and, to make sure they are really bad, offers to work for them, providing transport in the form of one of his shiny new trucks. Of course, the “it’s gonna be so easy” operation turns deadly, a rival gang entering the fray with sneers and submachine guns. The plot continues to get ludicrously ramped up, Matthews the only person who seems capable of infiltrating the drug world to the very top in an effort to save the community from evil and free his son.

With a screenplay co-written by Justin Haythe and director Ric Roman Waugh, the dialogue is full of exposition and the plot rampant with late-onset fist-pumping. Waugh pulls off some nice car chase sequences, but cant inspire much from of the cast – even Sarandon looking like a parody of a Town Hall figure. Johnson may be more sophisticated that Arnie, but there’s little new for him in this unbelievable tale of a good dad saving the world.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

A poignant and gorgeously visual story of the loss of innocence, Broken is the second feature film of theatre director Rufus Norris, and debuted to great acclaim in Critics Week at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Adapted from a novel that was inspired by Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, it’s a moving and redemptive story of an eleven-year old girl who is increasingly drawn into the complicated and cruel world of the everyday English suburbs.

‘Skunk’ (Eloise Lawrence) is on the edge of adulthood, a space where the whimsy of childhood mixes fluidly with the brutal shock of the real. Living at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac with her grounded father (Tim Roth), too-cool-for-school brother Jed (Bill Milner) and nanny Kasia (Zana Marjonovic), Skunk witnesses the frailties of human existence from a bedroom window that overlooks her neighbours. On one side lives Rick, a twenty-something young man with a condition that makes him seem childlike and dull-witted. On the other side live the Oswalds, violent and protective widower Bob (Rory Kinnear) trying his best to raise three precocious teen girls. If the explosive mix of characters at home isn’t enough, Skunk has to deal with a school where bullying and coercion seems rampant. Retreating into her own world, Skunk finds solace in the friendship of a younger boy Dillon (George Sargeant) and the calming force of her teacher Mike (Cillian Murphy) who’s dating Kasia. But her fragile world starts to come apart when the lies of the Oswald girls spin out of control, infecting everyone Skunk knows.

Director Norris takes the British realism from Mark O’Rowe’s screenplay and blends it with a beautiful visual lyricism, thanks to Rob Hardy’s dreamlike cinematography and an excellent score (the music is from Electric Wave Bureau). The effect is melancholic, perhaps the way we remember the last summer of childhood, and for those who enjoy a sensory emotional ride, this is not to be missed. The cast is universally strong, but newcomer Lawrence gives an outstanding performance, bringing Skunk to life as a warm, quirky, thoughtful girl who is not so much looking for anything particular, as feeling the pleasure and danger of growing up and coming alive.

As a poetic tale of a young girl beginning to understand the complexities of human nature as she witnesses acts of cruelty, kindness and desperation, it rightly deserves the top prize it picked up at last year’s British Independent Cinema Awards.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

It’s won prizes for artistic innovation and has been praised by the more discerning end of the film criticism world. Yet Miguel Gomes’ beguiling and eerie tribute to colonialism, love and Africa is never easy going. A strange black-and-white tale in two parts, traditional notions of plot and character are pushed to the background as a hazy and exotic sensibility of nostalgia and loss float over proceedings. Nearly two hours in length, it’s definitely a journey for the patient and the adventurous, but there are gems to be found along the way – whether in the naïve humour of colonial existence or the danger-tinged episodes of illicit romance.

The film opens with a colonial explorer treading carefully through the jungles of Africa, a voice-over explaining his story and the dangers that lie close by – mainly crocodiles and ghosts. Yet he is merely a character being watched by Pilar (Teresa Madruga) a woman living in contemporary Lisbon. But we haven’t come to the heart of things yet, for it is Pilar’s bolshy neighbour Aurora (Laura Soveral) that the story orientates around. Suspicious that her maid Santa (Isabel Cardosa) is making her ill, Aurora sets out to make contact with a man named Ventura (Henrique Espirito Santo), the love of her life from another era. And thus we are transported back to Portuguese Mozambique for the second part of the film, and the romance thaht takes place on a colonial farm nestled at the base of Mount Tabu.

Drawing inspiration from F. W. Murnau’s 1931 film of the same name (also told in two parts, and about young lovers in the tropics), Miguel Gomes baths this love story in a dreamy nostalgia. But whereas Murnau’s two parts are “Paradise” and then “Paradise Lost”, Gomes reverses the order, taking us slowly back to the seductive charms of colonial Africa accompanied by drumbeats, 1970s pop music and the scent of adventure. The young lovers (played by Ana Moreira and Carloto Cotta) are everything that nostalgia makes of memories: passionate, daring and secretive.It’s a much more seductive place to be than the grim reality that comes with a paradise lost.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

An ambitious and epic tale of tragedy and redemption among fathers and sons, director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) lets this multi-generational triptych of a film run away from him as it plays into its final third. Yet there’s such a strong sense of the film’s intentions, along with a superb performance from Ryan Gosling, that it remains a watchable – if long – experience.

Gosling plays motorcycle trickster Luke, a tattooed drifter working in a travelling circus, with little more to his name than the ragged clothes on his back and his precious motorbike. Returning to the small town of Schenectady, he discovers that he fathered a son to Romina (Eva Mendes) when he blew through a year earlier. Although Romina now has a new man in her life, Luke is determined not repeat the sins of his father and insists he will take care of mother and child. But the way he provides support is tainted by his complicated bouts of violence and a decision to make some fast cash by robbing a bank with low-life friend Robin, superbly played by Ben Mendelsohn.

The second segment of the narrative involves thoughtful policeman Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) called to track down Luke in the line of duty, and who also has a troubled relationship with his baby son.  In the final part of the film Cianfrance examines the relationships that have developed between fathers and sons fifteen years later, and the way that the errors and omissions of one generation are passed to the next.

It is blood – inherited and spilt – that unites the three stories, Cianfrance carefully and cleverly placing scenes in each third of the narrative in the same locations, giving the film a poetic sense of echo. However, the usual structure of the film, many underwritten scenes (particularly involving police corruption in part two), and the fact that no-one looks fifteen older when we fast forward, challenge the viewer to remain fully connected. The energy built early with Gosling’s performance as a brooding, powerless man desperate to find some way to break the cycle of poor parenting is never matched by the writing and style of the remainder of the film. By the time the credits roll, the wandering journey – through police procedural, thrilling car chases, gut-wrenching robberies and routine domestic concerns of love and care – seems less than the sum of its parts.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

There are few films that so exquisitely combine the chilling tension of a thriller and the depth of a character study with cinematic beauty and a penetrating examination of society. Superbly directed by Thomas Vinterberg, The Hunt is his best film in a mixed career (he directed Festen, It’s All About Love and Submarino) and will long be remembered for an extraordinary performance from Mads Mikklelsen – for which he won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a mild-mannered teacher who has recently separated from his wife and who dreadfully misses his teenaged son Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrom). Lucas finds work in a kindergarten where six-year old Klara (Annika Wedderkopp) forms an innocent crush on him. When he gently resists her childish advances of affection, Klara – feeling sad and rejected – accuses Lucas of indecency, after much aiding and abetting by frightened teachers and a system that assumes Klara to be a victim. Within a few days the whole community, a close-knit village in wintery Denmark, has judged Lucas guilty. Fuelled by female gossip and male animosity, Lucas becomes the subject of a disturbing witch-hunt even though he doesn’t know what he is accused of doing.

As the title suggests, it’s the anxiety, hysteria and pack mentality of the chase that dominate the narrative, Lucas seeking emotional and physical shelter in an ever decreasing circle of family and friends. Vinterberg and co-writer Tobias Lindholm heighten the inherently savage world that exists just beyond the veneer of rural civilisation by framing the film with an annual hunting trip that Lucas takes with his male friends, closing the film with a reminder of the fragile nature of civilisation.

Mikkelsen portrays Lucas as a deeply sensitive man who becomes unbearably bewildered by what is happening. Such is the power of this performance that it’s almost impossible not to share the pain and anguish as Lucas tries desperately to stay connected in his small world, keep his dignity, and make sense of the wrongs done to him. It’s an unmissable performance in one of the best films of the year.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Towards the end of The Paperboy, Nicole Kidman – in superb form as Southern white trash – says: “I wanna go live in the swamp.” Hell, yeah! This whole movie is a swamp, a seething, messy murder investigation infused with the sweaty smell of bodies and driven by a casual force that is seductively unstable, darkly funny and strangely exhilarating.

Based on a novel by Pete Dexter, director Lee Daniels (best known for the Academy Award-winning Precious) pulls in a top shelf cast and helps them get down and dirty. Set in 1960s Florida, the film opens with the murder of a racist policeman, a brutal crime that puts the very nasty Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) behind bars. Believing it to be a miscarriage of justice, journalist Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) and his black colleague Yardley (David Oyelowo) descend on the steamy town to scoop the dirt. Driven around by Ward’s lovesick younger brother Jack (Zac Efron), the paperboys are joined by Charlotte Bless (Kidman), a 40-something sex-bomb who’s become erotically infatuated with Van Wetter – even though they’ve never met. Charlotte, like the Florida weather, manages to get everyone hot and steamy, pushing Jack to the limits of desire. And when the dysfunctional team aren’t on the case – which seems to be much of the time – they’re found at the Jansen family home where long-suffering servant Anita (Macy Gray), manages their self-indulgent antics with spectacular finesse.

The film premiered at Cannes nearly a year ago and has had a troubled time getting around the big screen. Easily misunderstood, it’s best viewed as high-grunge parody, a rambling and visceral examination of small town racism, corruption, sex and inbreeding. If it’s a logical police procedural you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong swamp.

The cast are uniformly superb, with Kidman doing her best work since Gus Van Sant directed her in To Die For and Cusack scarily puffed up and slimey like one of the ‘gators his family kill for a living. Efron and Gray play out one of the most touching non-romances ever seen on screen and McConaughey oozes self-satisfied control as he tries his best to get the story.

The film’s aesthetic is blown out inelegance, colours faded as if by the Florida sun, and the editing is sometimes as deliberately random as the obsessive characters who wander through this uncertain world. Daniels confirms his talent as a visionary director – watch out for his next film The Butler, due out later this year.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Perhaps capitalising on the current success of small-screen Downton Abbey, co-writer and director Donald Rice adapts Julia Strachey’s 1932 novella for cinema, a period piece about English restraint and love lost last summer. With the critical narrative information delayed until the film’s final moments, it’s a waiting game for the audience, not unpleasurably spent watching the gorgeous costumes and eccentric behaviour of the family and friends of an anxious bride.

About to be married is Dolly Thatcham (Felicity Jones), a young woman who refuses to come down from her elegant bedroom and join the guests who have gathered in her family’s country mansion on a cold and grey December day. Downstairs, Dolly’s bored and erratic mother (Elizabeth McGovern) tries to keep proceedings in line, preventing handsome Joseph (Luke Treadaway) from seeing Dolly before her wedding. It becomes quickly evident that Joseph is desperately in love with Dolly, and she with him, but neither have the ability to make that one gesture that will take them away from the gloom of the day and the impending union of Dolly to another man for whom she seems to have no feelings. Flashbacks, infused with the golden glow of a beautiful English summer, reveal the romance that occurred between the two young lovers earlier that year, memories of which Dolly and Joseph seem unable to shake. And when we are not watching the romance and willing the young couple to do something – anything for goodness sake – there are comic diversions a-plenty as the odd collection of guests reveal their very English foibles.

As Rice’s first feature, it’s a thoughtful attempt to capture the essence of Strachey’s slight tale of upper class manners, but the decision to withhold the most critical information until the end of the telling means much of the film is a mere diversion, filled with deaf uncles, silly vicars, naughty boys, drunken young fops, humble servants, and judgmental friends quick with a withering comment. Some of these characters – like Dolly’s desperate younger sister Kitty (wonderfully played by Ellie Kendrick) and nosey family friend David Dakin (Mackenzie Crook) – provide much needed energy for the wait until two o’clock when vows are to be exchanged, but they are still just a diversion. It’s the main dating game we want to see and whilst Jones and – in particular Treadwell – offer up lovely performances, there’s just not enough story to sustain the journey, more melancholic than cheerful.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Filmmaker Phil Grabsky wants more people to go to art galleries. The man behind celebrated documentary films about Mozart and Beethoven has now turned his attention to art, working with some of the most prestigious exhibitions and galleries in the world and creating a new experience: the exhibition event film, a cinematic portrayal of a blockbuster art exhibition.

The idea gives audiences around the world the chance to see great art like it’s never been seen before. Grabsky is adamant, however, that it’s not a substitute for the real thing. “I encourage people to go to see the exhibition itself, and I want more people to visit more galleries,” he says. “But for most of the world’s population, they’re not going to be able to see, for example, the Manet exhibition in London. Last week we beamed the Manet film via seven satellites to 1000 cinemas across the world. Ninety-nine per cent of those people have no chance of visiting the Royal Academy for the 12 weeks the exhibition is on.” The experience is neither pure documentary nor the straightforward capturing of a live event, presenting Grabsky with some significant challenges.

“It’s an interesting balance we have to strike with the film,” says Grabsky, who was recently in Australia visiting galleries, “because we want to bring the exhibition to an audience – like here in Australia – but it can’t just be a walk-through, and we don’t have the time to show everything in 90 minutes.”

“Of course, the film has to reflect the exhibition, but we need to make choices about what is seen. We must have really insightful guest speakers, and a really good biography of the artist. And there are some interesting decisions to make about how long you look at a painting, when you move to close-ups, and what questions the audience would be asking at any point.” A series of three films, all under the label Great Art on Screen, will be shown in Australia in 2013. Following Manet – Portraying Life from The Royal Academy in London, is Munch 150 from the Munch Museum and National Museum in Oslo, and Vermeer and Music from the National Gallery in London.

It takes Grabsky many years to bring an exhibition to the cinema, working with curators and institutions from the time they first conceive the exhibition, often three to five years before a gallery opening. Convincing museums of the concept of a film has been a challenge for Grabsky, but once curators realise what he and his team create, they have embraced the idea.

“The reasons they are so happy with the films,” says Grabsky, “is that an exhibition they have worked on so hard, and for so long, gets recorded, and their contributions are seen in 30 or more countries. Curators want to communicate their love of art and artists and this medium takes it far beyond their borders.”

Grabsky begins the Manet film with a nod to the live opening of the exhibition in London, with host and art historian Tim Marlow inviting us to go behind the scenes. The film then glides through the gallery, pausing at artworks captured in stunning high-definition digital video, before introducing curators and expert commentators who contextualise the work and provide interpretations.

Making sure the film stays close to the thinking behind the exhibition is critical for Grabsky. “We hustle the curators for a long time,” he admits, ”working out what their argument is and making sure we get what they’re trying to say. They understand that we can’t show everything, but we reflect their intentions. Manet is about portraiture, so that remains the focus.”

But Grabsky has an advantage that curators, bound by physical objects, can’t match. He can introduce relevant missing works by taking his cameras and crew to another gallery.

“Inter-gallery loans are very difficult to organise,” he says, ”and we can bring in other works when it makes sense. In the Manet film, we include famous works like A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, which is at the Courtauld Institute, and Olympia, which is in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

A documentary filmmaker for 30 years, Grabsky is clearly excited about the venture into art. But his first films were about people, such as the Dalai Lama, Pele and Muhammad Ali, and his most popular films are the In Search of series about composers such as Beethoven and Mozart. Known for his biographies, he laughs when recalling a phone call he received from a commissioning producer to make a film about impressionists. ”I honestly thought for a moment they were talking about stand-up comedians.”

Yet, whether he’s making films about people or their art, he has an enormous respect for the audience. “We don’t dumb down anything,” he says. “The art films are made for people who appreciate art. But we want to encourage younger people to get to galleries and people who haven’t been to an art exhibition before. My two kids were not too keen to go to their first sushi restaurant, but now they love it. It’s part of our job as filmmakers to encourage people to do things they haven’t done before.”

Which brings our conversation back to the role of the gallery. Grabsky gets a little philosophical. “I’m such a believer in community,” he says. “Here in the UK, our post offices have closed down, our banks are more and more anonymous, people do their shopping online, and even our pubs are closing. Where do you go to meet people and bump into other humans?”

“Well, there are some great parks, but galleries are getting better and better at becoming a great place to wander around. The shops are better and the cafes are better, and if you can stop and be engaged by a painting for a few moments, well that’s brilliant.”

You may be in the company of an all-star cast (try Robert Redford, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Julie Christie, Chris Cooper and Richard Jenkins for starters), but not so with the screenplay and direction of this political thriller, which reduce Neil Gordon’s novel of the same name to a run-of-the-mill affair with few surprises.

The film opens with a series of news reports from the heady protest days of 1970s America, focusing on the illegal activities of a radical group known as the Weather Underground Organisation. We learn that some of this group escaped after a violent robbery that left a man dead, and have been on the FBI’s wanted list for more than 30 years. Shifting to the present, Sharon (Susan Sarandon) – now a suburban housewife with a young family – is arrested and brought in for questioning about her role in the group’s radical activities. Her capture triggers both media interest in the case and a sense of panic for the remaining members of the group, including Donal (Nick Nolte), Mimi (Julie Christie) and Jed (Richard Jenkins), all getting on with life using new identities. Also in hiding is Jim Grant (Robert Redford), now a single father and homely lawyer, living not far from New York. When ambitious young journalist Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) is assigned to dig into the story, he charms his way into the mysterious world of Grant’s past, slowly piecing together the puzzle of what happened all those years ago.

Screenwriter Lem Dobbs focuses on the mechanics of Shepard’s investigation rather than the moral intrigue and personal dilemmas of the ageing radicals and, combined with Redford’s tepid direction, this makes for a film that never lives up to its potential. Redford (now 76) and Christie (72) are no longer fast moving, running, jumping action heroes and an exploration of the emotions of their troubled, secret lives would have made for a far more fascinating film than watching them being chased by helicopters and FBI sniffer dogs. Their saccharine-style reunion in front of a log fire drags the film a long way from its promising, gritty political opening. The clumsy structure of the adaptation also means that actors of the calibre of Nolte, Jenkins and Cooper have little chance to make an impact with their characters, all of whom have very different responses to the impact of the law finally catching up with them. There are some touching scenes, the occasional intriguing moment, but little power and depth.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

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