'Pitch Perfect 2' review by Captain Raptor

'Pitch Perfect 2' review by Jake Boyle

Forget creating one of the few female-centric franchises in existence, inspiring a whole wave of viral videos and making a capella interesting again after the unbearable schmaltz of Glee; Pitch Perfect's principal achievement is the number of words it added to my lexicon in an hour and a half. Toner, aca-scuse me, queerballs and treble-boned all belong in the dictionary, and even aside from the strength of its dialogue, the original film was a joy to behold.

Thankfully, the new one is too. For the most part, everything that was good about the first film is just as good a second time around - Lilly's freaky non-sequiturs are still comically startling, Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson are still endlessly charismatic, and the song and dance routines are as excellent as ever. What has occurred is a process of doubling down on the previous film's strengths. One of the things that made the comedy so likeable was the heartfelt warm core at the centre, surrounded by sharper and more crass humours. As such, the sequel contains many moments of sincerity and emotional bonding, usually led by Brittany Snow's impressive performance - but to prevent things from ever getting Dixie Chicks serious, Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins' commentators are back on hand with some truly jaw-dropping quips of insensitivity. The occasional reliance on stereotypes is disheartening and lazy, but a couple of them are made easier to swallow when delivered by Flula Borg, who aside from possessing great comic timing, has also been making the exact same jokes about himself for years. Fat Amy, widely and correctly recognised as the funniest element of the first film, has unfortunately been overused, and at times her dialogue can feel either forced or just far less funny that it's supposed to be - luckily, Wilson's irrepressible flair mostly salvages this.

The new elements, while not abundant, are pleasant treats. Hailee Steinfeld's dorky freshman and Keegan-Michael Key's short-tempered producer are both welcome editions to an already strong ensemble, and the funniest scene in the film (a brand new Riff Off!) is primarily helmed by David Cross. There's also a greater sense of pop culture savviness, with more jokes about modern music and some fantastic as-themselves appearances by Snoop Dogg and various members of the Green Bay Packers. Banks, now in the director's chair as well as on screen, incorporates some nice touches of playfulness, filming a couple of shots on GoPros, inserting newsreel clips of Obama and splicing a montage into various sub-screens. It's a relatively compact film, but all events are given enough breathing room to be fully enjoyed, and it's always good having left the cinema wanting more. Still, it would have been preferable to see Anna Camp in a few more scenes, and she never really gets to flourish in the brief moments she does appear. The all-important final a capella performance has a slight lack of dynamism, but makes a bit of a risky and successful move in making it a more sentimental affair, and if there is to be no Pitch Perfect 3, then this a strong ending.

Pitch Perfect 2 should definitely please all returning fans, keeping things similar but staving away repetition by alternately increasing either the scale or the emotional impact. The cast and dialogue are still perfectly matched, and the high standard for musical performance is maintained. By building on what came before through callbacks and deepening the characters, Pitch Perfect 2 is an equally good film to its predecessor but elevates the franchise as a whole. Toe-tapping and side-splitting from beginning to end, and even tugging on the heartstrings a little, this film marks a strong directorial debut by Banks and provides a great opportunity to see the ever-charming Barden Bellas & co in all their sustained glory.

'Mad Max: Fury Road' review by Captain Raptor

'Mad Max: Fury Road' review by Jake Boyle

The Mad Max franchise has got increasingly bizarre with each new iteration, but even the high-octane anarchy of Fury Road pales in comparison to the insanity of Aaron Clarey's already notorious review. Taking issue with the fact that in this film "women are equal to men in all things" and that Charlize Theron's character "talked a lot", the gratifying backfire of his outrage is that it's brought the film's positive portrayal of women into sharp focus and attracted a more enlightened crowd to see the film just to piss off one guy.

When it's not espousing the radical bigotry that women can also drive, and that sex slavery is immoral, Mad Max: Fury Road is just generally having a bloody good time. It's the biggest and barmiest of all George Miller's films to date, and his penchant for vehicular violence undeniably benefits from the budget increase and improved computer graphics. The action is pleasingly over-the-top and frenetic, but it's also coherently pieced together, if lacking a certain finesse. The visuals are fantastic, from costume to props, and this helps to create one of the most credible and immersive post-apocalypses in an increasingly saturated market for them. Fury Road brings strong levels of creative detail to its own inventions, such as the culture and beliefs of the 'Warboys', who should seem completely alien but you quickly reach a solid understanding of. There is an issue with the pacing of the weirdness - the audience is just thrown into this madcap, chaotic world, which certainly makes for an exhilarating start, but it also means that the level of danger or insanity never really feels like it's building from where we began, and the final fight sequences just don't feel climactic enough. Because there's no great sense of progression or escalation, the few moments where the momentum does drop (to let the characters show a little depth and give the audience time to catch their breath) do feel a little longer and duller than they otherwise might.

The slower moments are still well-sustained, however, with Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron demonstrating an ability to convey a lot of emotional information whilst only slightly straying from the stony-faced stoic aura they project. Nicholas Hoult does a good job of doing exactly the opposite, hooting and screaming in such a convincingly manic manner that he's barely recognisable. Humour isn't as common as one might expect from a film that's so unabashedly gleeful in everything from crunching metallic behemoths together to displaying horrific mutations, but when comedy does occur it's effective and well-delivered. The earnest commitment to pure mayhem is both impressive and endlessly fun, but it helps my giving the plot and characters a grounding that is simple without being vague or stupid. There are sentimental moments sparsely scattered through proceedings, some of which work more than others, but garnering any real emotion from this experience is just icing on the cake rather than an expectation, A little exploration into Max's psyche might not be the most affecting of incidents, but it does finally suggest, four films into the franchise, that Max might be at least a little bit mad, and Hardy's panic-laden eyes prove a great counterpoint to his grizzled, unmoving bottom lip.

Aside from some neat feminist undertones and a slightly unexpected sense of occasional tenderness, what you see is what you get with Fury Road. If two hours of lunatic trying to run each other down in absurdly high-octane death machines sounds good to you (and I can't fathom why it wouldn't), then this film will not disappoint. The effort and sheer enthusiasm embedded into this fourth instalment by Miller is infectious, and there's few people who could make a desert full of death and decay feel so vivid and exciting. Mad Max: Fury Road is a worthy addition to one of action's most revered franchises and deserves a heap of bonus points for its distinct vision and brass balls - and now brass ovaries too. 

'Congo' review by Captain Raptor

'Congo' review by Jake Boyle

Nobody makes good old-fashioned, mildly stupid movies anymore. Action fare often either has to be po-faced and taken entirely seriously (Taken! Get it?), or as self-awarely ludicrous as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter or Machete. Harkening back to the older days when films were genuinely dumb rather than 'ironically' dumb, I watched 1995's (practically prehistoric) Congo, a film about deadly apes from Frank Marshall, the man who brought the world Arachnophobia and produced absolutely every film of the last 30 years. 

It was immediately clear from the beginning that Congo was going to be the good variety of preposterous when one of the first faces on the screen is Bruce Campbell. Ash is on hand to help set up the 'killer ape' premise, which never actually shows up until the final fifteen minutes. That might sound like a recipe for boredom, but there's enough ludicrous filler material to keep momentum going - homing missiles, hippo attacks and civil war all interrupt the journey. It has to be said that even within Hollywood, this is an exceptionally stereotypical depiction of central Africa. The audience isn't shown a single African character who isn't either a rebel militant or a jungle-dwelling tribesman, and patience is tested further by Tim Curry's cod-accented Romanian, who despite being only mildly morally dubious is played with moustache-twirling camp evilness. Dylan Walsh and Laura Linney make decent leads, but it's the cool charm of Ernie Hudson that makes up for the more troubling elements of the film. His charisma is especially necessary given the briefness of Bruce Campbell's appearance.

The shooting locations and sets are very atmospheric and give the film a real sense of adventure, but the special effects are an embarrassment. The rubber monkey suits are bad enough, but the digitized lava looks like it was rendered on a ZX Spectrum, and this is all made especially disheartening as it's coming from the legendary Stan Winston. A good sense of humour and a commitment to its own ridiculousness helps to keep the film afloat - it's not quite self-aware but it is, at the very least, arch enough to know that anything vaguely serious went AWOL two seconds after the title card was shown. The characters, while familiar stereotypes, all have their own motivations and agendas, and at least of half of them are pleasingly amoral, which is one nice differentiation from the norm. The execution of the action is occasionally sloppy (often poorly shot in order to hide as much of the subpar special effects as possible) but passable enough to be enjoyable, and it's impressive that such a ridiculous premise can register any sort of palpable threat level at all.

Congo, really, is exactly what it says on the tin. It's pretty asinine and in some respects lazily made, but it's amusing and pleasingly silly and vaguely exciting, so in terms of quality it overall ekes out a positive experience. The only serious mark against the movie is its treatment of Congo itself and African characters, which while not mocking or overtly bigoted, could quite easily turn a frivolous experience nasty. It marrs an otherwise pleasant film that serves its purpose well enough as daft, cheesy entertainment.